Blair Collection > Beside the fire

XXiv PREFACE.
supposition, that bardic tales were only committed to
writing when they had become popular, may be drawn
from the fact that both in Ireland and the Highlands we
findin manyfolk-lore stories traces of bardiccompositions
easily known by their poetical, alliterative, and inflated
language, of which no MSS. are found in either country.
It may, of course, be said, that the MSS. have perished ;
and we know how grotesquely indifferent the modern
Irish are about their literary and antiquarian remains ;
yet, had they ever existed, I cannot help thinking that
some trace of them, or allusion to them, would be found
in our surviving literature.
There is also the greatest discrepancy in the poetical
passages which occur in the Highland oral version and
the Irish manuscript version of such tales as in incident
are nearly identical. Now, if the story had been propa-
gated from a manuscript written out once for all, and then
copied, I feel pretty sure that the resemblance between the
alliterative passages in the two would be much closer. The
dissimilarity between them seems to show that the inci-
dents and not the language were the things to be re-
membered, and that every wandering bard who picked
up a new story from a colleague, stereotyped the inci-
dents in his mind, but uttered them whenever he recited
alliterative language of the poems, will be likely to agree with the opinion
freely expressed by most of our representative men, that it is better for the
people to read newspapers than study anything so useless.