A word on the metrical system of Irish poetry may conclude this rapid sketch. The original type from which the great variety of Irish metres has sprung is the catalectic trochaic tetrameter of Latin poetry, as in the well-known popular song of Cæsar's soldiers:—
'Caesar Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem,
Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat qui subegit Gallias';
or in St. Hilary's Hymnus in laudem Christi, beginning:—
'Ymnum dicat turba fratrum, ymnum cantus personet,
Christo regi concinentes laudem demus debitam.'
The commonest stanza is a quatrain consisting of four heptasyllabic lines with the rhyme at the end of the couplet. In my renderings I have made no attempt at either rhythm or rhyme; but I have printed the stanzas so as to show the structure of the poem. For merely practical reasons I have, in some cases, printed them in the form of couplets, in others in that of verse-lines.
I must not conclude without recording here also, as I have done elsewhere, my gratitude for the constant help and advice given to me in these translations by my old friend and colleague, Professor J.M. Mackay.
K.M.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The poems referred to have been preserved in Continental manuscripts.
[2] See the admirable paper by Professor Lewis Jones on 'The Celt and the Poetry of Nature,' in the Transactions of the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion, Session 1892-93, p. 46 ff.