lit 



Notwithstanding, we have the same personages in most of them, and 

 their characters are well discriminated, and consistently preserved : 

 that of Conan, for instance, who is a species of Thersites; or some- 

 thing between Thersites and Sir John FalstafF, boastful, presump- 

 tuous, cowardly, yet capable of sometimes " screwing up his courage 

 to the sticking place," altogether a character of much originality.* 



In these tales the machinery of enchantment is frequently em- 

 ployed, and hence some of them are supposed by Walker to be of 

 eastern origin, and introduced by missionaries from the monastic 

 institutions of Italy, when they came to regulate the Roman Catholic 

 Church in Ireland. He is also of opinion, that many Moorish and 

 Arabian tales might have found their way hither during the commer- 

 cial intercourse that subsisted between Spain and Galway. He ob- 

 serves that there is a marked resemblance between the Irish tale of 

 Conloch, and the story of Rustam, as related by the Persian poet, 

 Ferdusi. He also ascribes the Irish poem of Moira Borb to an 

 Eastern origin, and thinks its heroine like the Armida of Tasso. The 

 story of the ring, related by Trissino, in his Italia Liberata, is so 

 strikingly similar to that in the Irish poem of the Chase, that "both, 

 it may be presumed, were raised upon the same foundation. In 

 both we discover the colouring of magic with which the Saracens of 

 the middle ages, then adepts in chemistry, tinctUred all their 

 fables." 



But a belief in the arts of enchantment had been introduced to 

 Ireland long prior to the age of the Saracens. Had Walker recol- 



• James Hardiman, Esq. M. R. I. A., the learned and ingenious author of the History of 

 Galway, has in his possession a MS. copy of many of the Fenian poems, transcribed, in the 

 Irish language, from the dictation of a Connaught peasant, and rendered verbatim into English. 

 For the use of this collection, the author embraces the present occasion of making his grate- 

 ful acknowledgments to its liberal and patriotic owner. 



