probably, added many Moorish and Arabian fables, and 

 Spanish Historias de Cavallerias, which might have found 

 their way to the western coast of this island, by means 

 of the commercial intercourse, which subsisted so early, 

 and so long, between Spain and Galway.* 



" A very gallant gentleman, of the North of Ireland," 

 (says Sir William Temple,) " has told me, of his own ex- 

 " perience, that, in his wolf-huntings there, when he used to 

 " be abroad in the mountains three or four days together, 

 " and lay very ill a-nights, so as he could not well sleep, 

 " they would bring him one of the tale-tellers, that, when 

 " he lay down, would begin a story of a king, or a gyant, 

 " a dwarf, and a damsel, and such rambling stuff; and 

 " continue it all night long, in such an even tone, that 

 " you heard it going on whenever you awaked/'-j- Now, 

 as giants, dwarfs, and damsels, are topics, in which the 

 Eastern romances are very conversant, we can be at no loss 

 to discover the source, whence they flowed into Ireland,:]: 



.though 



* The Irish prose romances of the middle ages, seem, in general, to have 

 been constructed, on the Spanish model: at least, such of them, as have met 

 my observation, were interspersed with poetical pieces, like the Historia de 

 las Civiles Guerras de Granada. 



t Miscel. Essay IV. 



J Pharroh, (or, as the name was sometimes written, Forroch or Ferragh,) 

 a giant, evidently of Eastern extraction, was the subject of a war-song, in 

 use amongst the Irish kerns ; and a name of terror in the armies of the early 

 Irish. Historical Memoirs of the Irish Bards, p. 96. It is a curious fact, that 

 we find a Sir Ferragh among the knights of Ariosto; who, certainly, cannot 

 be suspected of having borrowed, either the name or the hero, from the Irish 

 bards. 



