[Note.—This chapter was written in French by M. Dottin, who is a distinguished professor and dean at the University of Renacs, France. The translation into English has been made by the Editors.]
By the year 1200 of the Christian era, a time at which the other national literatures of Europe were scarcely beginning to develop, Ireland possessed, and had possessed for several centuries, a Gaelic poetry, which was either the creation of the soul of the people or else was the work of the courtly bards. This poetry was at first expressed in rhythmical verses, each containing a fixed number of accented syllables and hemistichs separated by a pause:
| Crist lim, | | | Crist reum, | | | Crist in degaid |
| Crist indium | | | Crist issum | | | Crist úasum |
| Crist dessum | | | Crist úasum |
This versification, one of the elements of which was the repetition of words or sounds at regular intervals, was transformed about the eighth century into a more learned system. Thenceforward alliteration, assonance, rhyme, and a fixed number of syllables constituted the characteristics of Irish verse:
Mésse ocus Pángur bÁN
cechtar náthar fria sáindAN
bith a ménma sam fri SEILGG
mu ménma céin im sáinchEIRDD.
As we see, the consonants in the rhyme-words were merely related: l, r, n, ng, m, dh, gh, bh, mh, ch, th, f could rime together just as could gg, dd, bb. Soon the poets did not limit themselves to end-rhymes, which ran the risk of becoming monotonous, but introduced also internal rhyme, which set up what we may call a continuous chain of melody:
is aire caraim DOIRE