Blair Collection > Beside the fire

PREFACE. XIX
hand some of the Scotch stories may have been be-
queathed to the Gaelic language by those races who
were displaced by the Milesian Conquest in the fifth
century.
]\Iany of the incidents of the Highland stories have
parallels in Irish MSS., even incidents of which I have
met no trace in the folk-lore of the people. This is
curious, because these Irish ]\ISS. used to circulate
widely, and be constantly read at the firesides of the
peasantry, while there is no trace of MSS. being in use
in historical times amongst the Highland cabins. Of
such stories as were most popular, a very imperfect list
of about forty is given in Mr. Standish O'Grady's excel-
lent preface to the third volume of the Ossianic Society's
publications. After reading most of these in MSS. of
various dates, and comparing them with such folk-lore
as I had collected orally, I was surprised to find how
few points of contact existed between the two. The
men who committed stories to paper seem to have
chiefly confined themselves to the inventions of the
bards or professional story-tellers — often founded, how-
ever, on folk-lore incidents — while the taste of the people
was more conservative, and willingly forgot the bardic
inventions to perpetuate their old Aryan traditions, of
which this volume gives some specimens. The dis-
crepancy in style and contents between the j\IS. stories
and those of the people leads me to believe that the