Ossian Collection > Celtic revival in English literature

INTRODUCTION 15
that an important treatise dealing with Celtic my-
thology was printed practically every year from
1760 to 1800. Such a flood of information, while
doubtless to some extent a result of the poetry al-
ready published, was in turn a cause for the produc-
tion of more poetry as fast as the public was able to
understand and appreciate it. Furthermore, many
of the poems and plays, like Llwyd's Beaumaris Bay
and Sayers's Dramatic Sketches, were annotated so
profusely as to be in themselves mines of infor-
mation.
Another thing which simultaneously furnished the
poets with new material and educated the public,
was the appearance of several volumes on the Welsh
and Irish Bards. The first, and historically most im-
portant, was Evan Evans's Specimens of the Poetry
of the Antient Welsh Bards, which gave a tremendous
impetus to versification in English of genuine Celtic
poems of the Middle Ages. Later in the century
Edward Jones's Musical and Poetical Relicks of the
Welsh Bards and ]os>t^h.V^2iV^Qvs Historical Memoirs
of the Irish Bards offered more material and contin-
ued to popularize Celtic literature among the people
of England. While the poetry said to have been col-
lected in the Highlands of Scotland by Macpherson,
Smith, Clark, and others was too freely adulterated
with spurious additions to be genuine, the discus-
sion aroused served to advertise Gaelic poetry in a
manner most unexpected. In fact the whole Ossi-