The Tan-bo-Cooalney was transcribed
into the Leabhar na Huidhre in the eleventh century a manuscript
whose date has been established by the consentaneity of Irish,
French, and German scholarship. Mark, it was transcribed, not
composed. The scribe records the fact:--
"Ego qui scripsi hanc historian aut vero fabulam, quibusdam fidem
in hac historia aut fabula non commodo."
The Tan-bo-Cooalney was therefore _transcribed_ by an ancient
penman to the parchment of a still existing manuscript, in the
century before that in which the German epic is presumed, from
style only, and in the opinion of Germans, to have been _composed_.
The same scribe adds this comment with regard to its contents:--
"Qaedam autem poetica figmenta, quaedam ad delectationem
stultorum."
Such scorn could not have been felt by one living in an age of
bardic production. That independence and originality of thought,
which caused Milton to despise the poets of the Restoration, are
impossible in the simple stages of civilisation. The scribe who
appended this very interesting comment to the subject of his own
handiwork must have been removed by centuries from the date of its
compilation. That the tale was, in his time, an ancient one, is
therefore rendered extremely probable, the scribe himself
indicating how completely out of sympathy he is with this form of
literature, its antiquity and peculiar archaeological interest
being, doubtless, the cause of the transcription.
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