Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

196 Fictions of tJic Irish Celts.
for a divorce, he would soon detect a portion of his con-
stituents yawning, and the rest striving to escape from
the uninteresting lecture.
But our sixth or ninth century-man knew better. He
was a poet or story-teller of the first or second order
and if he had lately invented nothing new, he rattled on
with a siege, a burning, a batde, an adventure in a cavern,
a search over land and sea for some priceless commodity,
a love-chase, a war between the Ard-Righ at Team or and
one of his petty kings, or an adventure of the Fianna
in some stronghold of the Danaan Druids, where they
underwent spells, and at last found an unexpected
deliverance. Sometimes it was a coward-hero, who en-
dured troubles and terrors for a whole night in a strange
castle, and in the morning found himself uncomfortably
shivering in a ditch. Occasionally a wife was false, and
the strife waged by the wronged husband against faith-
less spouse and lover furnished a theme. But the poet
chiefly dwelt on the hairbreadth escapes of the false
fair, and the wonderful adventures that befell all parties,
and made no attempt to prove marriage an unjust and
tyrannical institution, or to show the blessings that
would hallow a cheap system of divorce.
The filea or scealiddhe addressed, even as a modern
play^vright, a mingled audience, including all ranks be-
tween chieftain and horse-boy, and sought the qualities
of a coi^iposition that would interest all. He studied
;