208 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [ Vou. LI. 
acquires a tone of strength and appears peculiarly adapted to impetuous 
diction and bold invectives, while the Trochee which falls from the long 
to the short has a feeble character. Its light tripping movement appears 
veculiarly suited to dancing songs, and hence besides the name of 
Trochaeus, the runner, it also obtained the name of Chorezus, the dancer.” 
Zeuss correctly observes, that from the Greek and Latin nations whose 
poems are contained in a metre either by a settled calculation or by an 
order of long or short syllables, other nations belonging to the Indo- 
European family such as the Germans and Celts differ, inasmuch as 
al] their poetry is founded on the agreement of sounds as well in the first 
as in the last syllable of words. Some races belonging to the Indo-Euro- 
pean family, employ alliteration, and have two and three words in the same 
verse—words that begin with the same consonant or vowel. Other races 
have followed the agreement of sounds not only in the beginning but 
also in the middle and end of words. ‘These peculiarities obtain in the 
case of the ancient Celtic poems. Daviesin his Hxamznation of the Claims 
of Osstan (p. 199) avers, that if we may judge of their verse by the oldest 
specimens which can be produced by their descendants in Ireland, 
Scotland, Wales and Cornwall, the Celts carried their art no farther than 
to adjust the number and cadence of syllables in each line, to add the 
embellishment of strong and impressive alliteration and to connect their 
verses with final rhymes which were sometimes continued without varia- 
tion for several lines together. Davies goes on to say, that to assist the 
memory nothing could have been more conducive than the strong allit- 
erations and long continued rhymes which we find in the Old Welsh 
Bards. The very sound of one word suggested the succeeding, and one 
line gave the echo of another. It must have been for the same purpose 
of assisting the memory, that these Bards frequently began several periods 
with the same phrase, and several successive lines with the same letter. 
Upon the whole it appears that the mechanical correspondence of articu- 
late sounds, however differently understood, is the great principle of 
Celtic verse in general, and that the obvious correspondence of sounds 
naturally similar was attended to, before the Bards thought of that which 
is more complex and artificial.” In his Introduction to his Beautzes of 
Gaelic Poetry, Mackenzie correctly contends “that though much of 
Gaelic poetry might be scanned, a great deal of it cannot be properly 
subjected to the classical test by the most ingenious, and yet a Celtic ear 
will tell that it is good. The rules for scanning by which Latin verses 
are governed, are alien to the Gaelic, which certainly does not owe the 
art of poetry to the Romans. The concord does not always depend on 
the coincidence of final words, but rests on some radical vowel in cor- 
responding words ; and these not terminal alone, but recurring in several 
