never disturbed his serenity by endeavouring to clothe his words in proper orthography. The prose and poetic tales which he thus collected from oral recitation, are the same as those published by the Ossianic Society of Dublin a few years since, and their counterparts were heard by Mr. J. F. Campbell, in the West Highlands from fishers and shepherds only the other day. Mr. Simpson, though an Englishman and ignorant of the Gaelic, has collected Ossianic tales such as have been preserved in MSS. of the last century, from the mouths of Connaught peasants who could neither read nor write, and the writer of this article has heard from the mouth of an illiterate man born in a county of the English Pale, more than one long Ossianic poem in the native Gaelic.

An unprejudiced thinker taking into account the preservation of Ossianic and other fictions in the MS. collections happily still in existence, and their still dwelling in the memories of peasants and fishermen, can hardly come to the conclusion that this Gaelic fictional literature originated with romance writers of the twelfth or later centuries. There has been no period in which people advanced beyond the veriest savage state did not possess a vocal literature. Now if some spirits had been found in Ireland in the middle ages, possessed of sufficient genius and influence to bring in Ossianic literature, and extinguish such as had prevailed among their countrymen up to that time-a thing little short of an impossibility-how in the name of common sense did they manage to make the bards and storytellers of the West Highlands and Isles adopt Irish heroes, Irish localities, Irish traditional history, Irish every thing, and, struggling with the stream, make Highland chiefs, and their ladies, and their duine uasals, and their clansmen, and their gillies, all interested in unfamiliar incidents, localities, and personages. Mr. Campbell, gathering his stories from the mouths of the kindly fishers, peasants, and shepherds of Highlands and Isles foundtheGaiscas, and the Banthiernas, and the Gilla's of their stories dwelling or seeking adventures at Assaroe (Ballyshannon), or Ben Edair(Howth), or Bal'a-clia or Limerick of the Ships, seldom at Stirling, or EdinVOL, LXX.-NO. CCCCXVIII.

burgh, or Dundee, never at Morven that terra Saturnia of MacPherson. It is easy to account for this. In the sixth century Irish colonists settled in Argyle, and lived long in amity with the Picts, whom St. Colum Cille and his religious brothers converted to the Christian faith. There was ceaseless communication between these Alban Gael and the mother country. The original settlers brought to their new homes their favourite poetic fictions, and the Gaelic people divided by the sea continued to enjoy a common literature. The bonds between the Irish and Highland Gael were still more closely drawn by the circumstance of Somarled, a chief of Oriel (Louth, Armagh, and Monaghan), assuming the style of Lord of the Isles in the twelfth century. It was then as much a matter of custom for Irish bards to make progresses through the courts of Scottish Kings and Chiefs, as for London dramatic stars in our days to go shed their rays at fit seasons on the less favoured Cities of Dublin, Edinburgh, and York.

A WORD FOR OUR WELSH COUSINS.

We shall not insist more earnestly on the identity of the poets who have left us the lays of Aneurin, Taliesin, and Llywarch, than we have done on the claims of Fionn, and Oisin, and Fergus, and Caeilthe, to the very ancient poetic remains imputed to them; but we demand for all those pieces found in such collections as the Black Book of Caermarthen, or the Red Book of Hergest, an age of some centuries prior to the date of the books (12th and 14th centuries).

There is a circumstance bearing strong testimony to the difficulty of forcing an alien literature on any people in the history of prose and poetic fiction in England after the Norman conquest. If anyone is now suddenly asked for his recollection of any relics of pure Anglo-Norman genius subsequent to William's landing, Taillefer's "Song of Roland" presents itself to his mind, but more he cannot recal. Let us reflect on the poetry and romance which delighted the English court and the assemblies in the feudal castles from the days of Henry Beauclerc to those of Richard III., and we shall find

28

them exclusively Celtic in subject and in spirit. The Northmen, when they obliged Charles the Simple, after the memorable siege of the island in the Seine, to grant them Neustria or Normandy, had scalds among them, who perfectly remembered all about Thor and Odin, and the other Æsir, and their contests with the frost giants, and all that Saemund and Snorro Sturlason have preserved of Norse mythology and romance; yet once England became the home of the descendants of these Northmen we find not a trace of their native superstition or romance influencing the lays of the trouvères who still remained in the parent country, or those who followed the Conqueror into Britain.

Many Bretons swelled the number of William's troops in his descent on England. They remembered the dispossession of their relatives, the Ancient Britons, by the intrusive Saxons, and they were now rejoiced at an opportunity of aiding in the punishment of those whom they considered the natural enemies and supplanters of their ancestors' kindred. The bards and others among these volunteers, who loved or practised the old heroic songs of the Armoricans did not fail to cultivate the taste for them in the new country, being encouraged by many visitors from Cambria, who came to the Court to enjoy the humbled condition of the descendants of their ancient op

pressors.

From that time we find the old Cymric kings, and chiefs, and ladies, and sages-the actors in the lays that delighted the ears of assemblies, the apparent exception of the triumph of Charlemagne and his peers being in reality no exception at all. The romantic exploits of himself and his peers were originally applied to Charles Martel and his knights, being all Bretons by descent.

A great impulse was given to the study of things Celtic by the discovery in Brittany of the famous Brut y Brenhined (Legend of the British kings), and its removal to Oxford, and its immediate translation into the kindred Welsh by its discoverer, Walter Calenius, an Oxford monk. The learned and very credulous Geoffry of Monmouth made a Latin version from the Chronicle, in

its Welsh form, for the edification of Robert Duke of Gloster, an illegitimate son of Henry I. Robert Wace translated this last attempt into French in the time of Henry II., and Layamon, a Worcestershire clergyman, rendered this French version into the Anglo-Saxon of his day.

If ever the Breton MS. of the Brut, brought by Calenius from Brittany, be recovered, it will be looked on as a most precious waif saved from the evil fortunes that attend on civil wars, fires, removals, and neglect.

WELSH MSS. THE CAMBRIDGE JUVENCUS.

We proceed to briefly notice some of the existing Welsh MSS., premising that in most of them the style of orthography in vogue before the 12th century was laid aside by the copiers of the middle ages. In the literary remains of Brittany the ancient and more simple system of orthography has been preserved. A student commencing the study of Irish needs much courage and perseverance, he meets at every step such legerdemain tricks and changes in the beginnings and endings of words. Under certain circumstances the initial consonants which begin nouns, l, n, and r excepted, must be content to yield place to others, which are thus said to eclipse them. A pupil meeting with the word tatair is mortified by not meeting with it in the dictionary. Overhauling his grammar, he discovers that masculine nouns commencing with vowels prefix a t to the nominative case of such words; he according searches for the word atair, and finds it to mean father. He gets the list of pronouns by heart, and studies their declensions, but when he attempts to construe a sentence these annoying words have disguised themselves by forming such unions with prepositions as to render their identification a matter of difficulty. How could a pupil of ordinary capacity discover air, on, and me, me, in the small word orm? Or suppose that ann (in) in certain positions with other words should be written san. Changes analogous to these took place in Welsh MSS. before the twelfth century, and gave a modern air to their subjects, however ancient in themselves.

In the University of Cambridge is preserved a paraphrase of the Gospels in the Latin of the poet Juvencus, supposed to have been written anterior to 700. In the upper margins of each of the pages, 48, 49, and 50, are written three lines in Irish characters, much smaller than the ordinary_text of the Book. The zealous explorer in the antique learning of the Welsh and Bretons, the Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarqué has thus translated them. The nine lines contain the lament of a dying warrior, and the writing dates from the beginning of the ninth century.

"No rest nor sleep for me to-night. Small is my house, my servant is greater than myself-(I possess) not (even) a pot (for boiling).

No more songs, no more laughter, no more kisses this night, as when I once drank

the strengthening mead; my servant is greater than myself; (I possess) not a goblet.

“No more joy for me this night; aid is hopeless; no one succours my distress."

The zealous Breton nobleman sees in the preservation of these verses, a striking proof of the antiquity of the poetry ascribed to the great Bardic Triad of Wales of the sixth century. There can be scarcely a doubt of the handwriting being as old as the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century. There is every appearance of the verses having been merely copied from some bardic effusion of earlier date; and they certainly have a strong resemblance in spirit and subject to remains attributed to Llywarch the Aged, on the occasion of his being deprived by death of the protection of the hospitable chief, Kendelan.

"The hall of Kendelan is not agreeable to-night on the top of the rock of Hodnet. No master, no company, no feast.

"The hall of Kendelan is gloomy to-night. No fire, no songs! my tears wear furrows in my cheeks.

"The hall of Kendelan is sad to-night. No more honours which I once received, no more warriors, no more ladies such as once thronged them.”

Count Villemarqué discovered on close examination that the first page, much injured through damp and neglect, consisted entirely of a piece copied by the same hand, and furnishing further proof of the poems attributed to the three great bards

having been composed about the period commonly assigned them, viz., the sixth century.

THE CODEX DISTINCTUS.

A MS. in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (xxxi. F. iv.) ascertained from a kalendar inserted in it to belong to the beginning of the ninth century, bears witness to the learning and taste of the Breton scholars of that early time. Two of the pieces are the grammar of Eutychius and Ovid's Ars Amoris with Welsh glosses both interlinear and marginal, an alphabet (supposed) of the ancient Britons, a series of words beginning with the different letters of the alphabet in order, and a long note in Welsh and Latin on the weights and measures of the time.

The invention of the ancient British

alphabet was ascribed to Nennius, of

whose ancient chronicle our readers have undoubtedly heard. Nennius may be called the Cadmus of the Britons. Hearing a Saxon scholar insult his countrymen for their neglect of letters and general ignorance, and blushing at the well-merited imputation, he felt himself inspired and invented the alphabet on the spot, forming the letters without the slightest hesitation, and giving their power. His countrymen however made little use of his invention. They soon adopted the debased Roman type introduced by the early missionaries, and existing to this day in Irish books.

THE BOOK OF SAINT CHAD.

An ancient Welsh MS. intitled the "Book of St. Chad," is carefully guarded in the library of the cathedral of Lichfield. It belonged originally to the cathedral of Llandaff, and was probably stolen by some ardent lover of literature. As a general principle no lent or stolen books are ever returned, but churchmen should be above giving way to covetousness even when literary treasures are concerned. Therefore the Book of St. Chad should long since have been sent back to its own proper library. It contains selections from the Gospels with acts of donation in ancient British and Latin made to the Church of Llandaff. These last are written on the margins in ancient British and Latin. On the first page it is men

tioned that the book was given to Teliaf, bishop and patron of the church by a certain individual named Gelhi, son of Arihtiud, who had bought it from another named Kingal, giving an excellent horse in exchange. This much valued volume is also supposed to have been written in the beginning of the ninth century.

A LATIN-BRETON VOCABULARY.

A curious Latin and British lexicon may be seen in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, marked 572, and supposed to have been written about the year 1000. It contains a British alphabet, differing in form from that of Nennius, which last, as archæologists know is to be found in Ussher, in the grammar of Owen (Archeologia Cambrensis), and other Welsh treatises. All the letters in the MSS. treatises. All the letters in the MSS. hitherto named have the shape of those in the Irish alphabet. After every Latin word comes the British (Welsh) explanation, and where space runs short, the gloss is placed over the word. An address of the docile pupil to his master will remind some aged scholars of their experience when getting through Corderius or Eras

mus.

.

"Hear, O renowned (clarissimus for clarissime) reader! come and explain to me my accepturium, that is my reading lesson; for I cannot understand it without a teacher, because I am imperfect in my reading." (All this in Latin.)

The Master answers, but owing to an injury sustained by the vellum a small portion (only) of his obliging reply can be furnished.

“(Bring) hither (ad huc) thy book that I may see how much obscurity (fusca tionem) you have in it, and I will point out all the obscurities (Glipha), that it may

plea

*

(cetera erasa sunt.)

The date of this ancient dictionary is ascertained by the mention of a contemporary victory gained in Cornwall over the Saxons by the British King Rhodri (Ruaighre,Roderic). This occurred about A.D. 722. From a mention made in the text of a pilgrimage made to Tours and a voyage into the Isle of Britain by the writer, Edward Lhuyd concluded that he was an Armorican.

Passing briefly over a Latin-Cornish vocabulary in the Cottonian Library,

British Museum, Vespasian, A, No. 14, probably written about the end of the twelfth century we arrive at―

THE BLACK BOOK OF CHIRK.

died about the year 954, got the laws King Howell Dha (the good) who existing in his time reformed, remodelled, and accurately engrossed. The best and most ancient copy of these laws, made in the beginning of the twelfth century, is found in the book above named, which now forms part of the rich library of Hengurt, belonging to the noble family of lated into Latin, in 1730, by Walton, Vaughan. The collection was transand into English by M. Aneurin Owen during the reign, and by the desire of William IV. From one of the enactments we learn that the men of Caernarvon enjoyed the honour of the vanguard when a battle was to take place. The fine old library, of which this valuable volume forms which this valuable volume forms part, has been removed to the castle of Rug, in the county of Merioneth. has been executed in a superior style. The English translation referred to

THE BLACK BOOK OF CAERMARTHEN.

This most interesting volume is supposed to have been written by the monks of a priory near Caermarthen. It became an inmate of the treasure house of St. David's at the dissolution of the priory, and afterwards fell into the hands of Sir Johu Price. In the seventeenth century it became the property of the Vaughan family, and was religiously treasured in the library of Castle Hengurt. The contents are those ancient poems attributed to the great Bardic Triad of the sixth century. of the sixth century.

guarded this precious book that his Sir Henry Vaughan so jealously most particular friends could not get a sight of it. The great folk of the time feared that the patriotic and anti-Saxon spirit of the lays might urge the Welsh of the seventeenth century to rush to arms, and endeavour to punish the Sasnaeg of the day, for the wrongs inflicted on Cambria by their wicked ancestors, who had been resting for 1100 years in their flagged cells. The estimable archæologist Lhuyd was not more fortunate than others. "I have," he says, "been admitted for a few hours only

and in a passing way, into this library. I have never got an opportunity of leisurely examining any manuscript, although the proprietor, Sir Henry Vaughan, who is not deficient either in intelligence or politeness, and was my particular friend, had made me the promise more than once. But he was dissuaded by a party of pseudopoliticians rather than men of letters, and withdrew his promise.'

In fact, had a rebellious spirit prevailed among the Welsh at the time (which was not at all the case), nothing was better calculated to urge them on than the martial, resentful, and exciting spirit of these old and naive effusions, uttered, as they supposed, by Taliesin and Merlyn, whom the Cambrians always looked on in the light of prophets. Hear how the latter of these sages commences to encourage his people :

“Seven fires which descend from the sky,

Seven fights for the common resist

THE BOOK OF THE BRUTS (CHRONICLES).

This volume is preserved in the Cottonian Collection, British Museum, and is found in the department CLEOPATRA, B. 5, 138. The writing belongs to the end of the thirteenth century. It contains the Laws of Howel Dha, already mentioned; a chronicle of the reigns of the Welsh kings, oddly enough styled "Brut y Saeson," (Chronicle of the Saxons); a chronicle of the ancient kings of Britain, by Caradoc of Llancarvan; and a fragment of Dares' "Wars of Troy."

The value of the contents of this

book is much enhanced by the presence of Latin texts, of which the British is generally a most close translation-thus enabling the student to ascertain the exact orthography and signification of a large number of Welsh words in use in the end of the 13th century. The Latin text (mingled with Breton) of the Chronicles of the Welsh Kings dates from the tenth century.

Of the Chronicle of the Ancient Kings of Britain, the bringing away of the original Breton MS. from Armorica to Oxford by Walter Calenius, A.D. 1128, its translation into the Welsh of that time, and the Latin version made by Geoffry of Monmouth, we have already spoken. The Welsh text in the book under notice is not a translation of the original Breton MS. brought from Brittany, but rather of a Latin one made from it, or from the Welsh translation taken soon after its arrival at Oxford. The Trojan Wars have always been a popular subject among Celtic peoples. At the present day an abridgment, which might be sold for two pence at a slight profit, may Le obtained on the book-stalls of Dublin and other Irish cities and towns. In this compilation Homer is considered a blind and prejudiced guide. The Welsh text of the Trojan Wars is taken from a supposed Latin translation, made by Cornelius Nepos, from the Greek of a Man of Straw, Dares the Phrygian. The Chronicles of the ancient Kings of Britain and of the Welsh Kings were published in the second volume of the Myvyrian Archæology, by Owen Jones, early in this century.

THE RED BOOK OF HERGEST.

This title brings before our minds the Mabinogion of Lady Guest, and momentarily recalls the delight with which the very name of that book would once inspire us. It is preserved in Jesus College, Oxford, richly bound in red morocco, secured by silver clasps, and, like our own very valuable ancient MSS., kept under a glass case. It is a large folio of 1442 columns, the writing belonging to the fourteenth century. At the end of the seventeenth century it belonged to a family of French origin, named Mansel de Margan, one of whose members