PREFACE
Celtic studies have grown apace within recent years. The old scorn, the old apathy and neglect are visibly giving way to a lively wonder and interest as the public gradually realise that scholars have lighted upon a literary treasure hid for ages. This new enthusiasm, generated in great part on the Continent—in Germany, France, and Italy, as well as in Britain and Ireland, has already spread to the northern nations—to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and is now beginning to take root in America.
A remarkable change it certainly presents from the days when Dr. Johnson affirmed that there was not in all the world a Gaelic MS. one hundred years old; and the documents were so derelict and forgotten, so little known and studied, that though this prince of letters travelled in the Highlands expressly to satisfy himself, Celtic knowledge of the existing materials and Celtic studies were so deficient that they proved wholly inadequate to the task of disproving his bold statement.
It was left to the scholarship of the nineteenth century to unearth the ancient treasures and to show that Gaelic was a literary language long before English literature came into existence, and that there are still extant Celtic-Latin MSS. almost as old as the very oldest codexes of the Bible.
There is undoubtedly a charm in the thought that all over the Continent of Europe, in the libraries of many of its romantic cities and towns, there are scores of MSS., some of them upwards of a thousand years old, fugitives in the early times from these much harassed islands; and that European scholars of the highest erudition, such as Zeuss, Ebel, Nigra, Ascoli, Windisch, Zimmer, and Whitley Stokes, have been profoundly interested in these literary relics, and have devoted much of their time to the work of studying, translating, elucidating, and editing the Gaelic texts or glosses found in them.
To-day the number of those engaged in similar research at home and abroad is vastly on the increase, and augurs well for the future of this department of knowledge.
Professor Kuno Meyer, Ph.D., himself a distinguished German Celticist, in reviewing the present state of Celtic studies last year at Dublin, made the following significant statement:—
“I cannot conclude without casting a glance into the future. I am convinced that the present is but the beginning of an era of still greater activity in all departments of Celtic studies. Everything points to that.
“The more reliable text-books and hand-books will be published, the greater will be the numbers of those taking up Celtic studies. As the fields of other more ancient and more recognised studies become exhausted, there will come a rush of students on to the fresh, and often, almost virgin soil of Celtic research, to study the great Celtic civilisation at its source, to collect the last lingering remnants of a mighty tradition.
“Again and again it has happened during recent years that workers in other subjects have in their researches finally been led on to the Celtic soil, where lie the roots of much medieval lore, of many institutions, of important phases of thought.
“And another thing, too, I will foretell. The re-discovery, as it were, of ancient Celtic literature will not only arouse abroad a greater interest in the Celtic nations, but it will lead to beneficial results among those nations themselves.”
Mr. W. B. Yeats, in the Treasury of Irish Poetry, 1900, gives pen to similar reflections and anticipations:—
“Modern poetry,” he writes, “grows weary of using over and over again the personages and stories and metaphors that have come to us through Greece and Rome, or from Wales and Brittany through the Middle Ages, and has found new life in the Norse and German legends. The Irish legends in popular tradition and in old Gaelic literature are more numerous and as beautiful, and alone among great European legends have the beauty and wonder of altogether new things. May one not say then, without saying anything improbable, that they will have a predominant influence in the coming century, and that their influence will pass through many countries.”
The interest thus lately evolved in the literature of the Celts, who were among the earliest inhabitants of the country, and whose blood still courses in our British veins, has naturally awakened a desire in many minds to know the nature and extent of the literary legacy they have bequeathed—its substance and quality, and also to gain some acquaintance with the opinions and results of recent scholarship on the subject.
But, strange to say, notwithstanding the activity of Celticists, no book has yet appeared which professes to give in short compass a general survey of the whole field. There is thus, I venture to think, room for such a volume as the present, which is intended to serve as a popular introduction to the study of the literature. Containing, as it does, the gist of two series of lectures which I delivered under the Maccallum Bequest in the University of Glasgow during the sessions 1900–1 and 1901–2, it is now prepared and issued with a view to meeting the demands not only of the general reader, but also of the private student in quest of a guide to the original sources, the authorities, and books on the subject.
In its preparation, in addition to the numerous published works mentioned in the text, I have received valuable help from Professor Mackinnon, Edinburgh University, and Dr. Alexander Macbain, Inverness, both of whom supplied me not only with many of their printed papers embodying the fruits of their own personal research, but also with other useful information. To the former I am still further indebted for interesting details regarding the life and work of several of the scholars, and to Professor Rhys of Jesus College, Oxford, for kindly reviewing in MS. form the chapter on Welsh Literature.
And, finally, I have to record my special indebtedness to the kind assistance of my friend, Mr. David Mackeggie, M.A., whose knowledge of Celtic history and literature is both extensive and accurate, and who, besides giving me much suggestive aid in the preparation of the lectures, read the proofs of this volume.
This volume has already appealed to so wide a circle of readers that a reprint is now called for; and it is very gratifying to the author to find that his confidence in the growing demand for a book of this kind has been amply justified.
November, 1906.
In the present reissue no alteration of the reprint has been required.
June, 1926.