III. Manx Literature.— Almost all the Manx texts which have been printed are of a religious character, namely, the Bible, finished in 1775, the Book of Common Prayer, with the Psalms (1610),. and Bishop Wilson's sermons (1783). But the Isle of Man had a share in the earliest legends which take the place of history in Ireland. Some of the figures of the Ulster saga are found in Manx, tales, and it is likely that the Manxmen had Ossianic ballads of their own. The most original feature of their literature, however, is the carols or carvels which are still sung on Christmas eve in the churches at the service called in Manx Oiel V orry, °Mary's Eve)) Only a small part of these have been published. There is, besides, a fair amount of folklore, some of which con sists of tales belonging to the Gaelic stem and, in 1796, Th. Christian translated into Manx a part of Milton's
IV. Welsh Literature.— Welsh literature is neither so old, so original, nor so varied as Irish. It has nothing to compare with the Irish epic tales, and the oldest form of Cymric speech consists only of glosses to Latin works in the 9th and 10th centuries. Nor has it any such vellum codices as those mentioned under Irish literature. The oldest and most important manuscripts are the Black Book of Carmarthen, a collection of poetry belonging to the end of the 12th century; the Book of Aneirin, of the middle of the 13th century; the Book of Taliesin, of the end of the same century; the White Book of Rhydderch, and the Red Book of Hergest, both of the 14th century. The Myfyrian Archaiology of Wales, published in 1801, is an enormous, though uncritically edited, collection of old poetry, and other anthologies have appeared since and down to the beginning of the 18th century. The oldest literary pieces are poems ascribed to Aneirin, the author of the heroic poem, the Goddodin,' to Taliesin, called "the Head of the Bards," and to Llywarch Hen, *the aged," author of elegies, all of them bards who, according to tradition, lived in the 6th century. Some poems are even ascribed to Myrrdhin (the celebrated enchanter Merlin), but, even though the language of these poets is dark and obscure, it cannot belong to that period. The oldest literary prose texts were not composed before the 12th century. The ancient laws of Wales, codified by King Hwel Dda, "Howel the Good," who lived in the first half of the 10th century, are unaffected by foreign influences and are of importance both for the science of law and because they show the life, manners and social conditions of the insular Britons in the early Middle Ages. The original draft of the laws is lost, but there are at hand law books from the 11th to. the 14th centuries, containing the laws arranged accord ing to three divisions of the country. All the Welsh epic romances are in prose, as in Irish, but without the interpolaticin of verse passages. The oldest and most famous are known as the
by which is meant a collection of tales, marvelous or romantic and of divers nature and origin. The redaction, as we have it, cannot be earlier than the end of the 12th century, and the Red Book and the White Book, in which the tales are preserved, date from the 14th, but the legends which compose them cer tainly record traditions that were in circulation ages before. The word “Mabinogion" is the plural both of mabinog, a disciple or aspirant bard, and of mabinogi, meaning the state, con dition or training of a mabinog or his literary stock-in-trade. The
The early Welsh bards were greatly given to abstractions and fine-spun distinctions, and their thoughts were further hampered by the complicated verse of the professional schools. The theme of their poetry was mostly heroic and elegiac. As evidence of their artificiality we have the Triads, in which personages and deeds of the past are forced into groups of three. They cover a wide range of subjects — history, bardism, theology, ethics and jurisprudence and the majority are 15th century productions, though some go back to • the 12th. Although of doubtful historical value, they are none the less precious as showing the manner in which the scholars of the time codified and handed down their learning.
As in Ireland, the Welsh bards were attached to the houses of the chiefs and formed a guild apart from the rest of the community. Some of them in later days were forced to become wandering minstrels, and the troupes of poets became so numerous and so importunate that complaints are found against them in royal decrees from the 13th to the 16th century. Their flourishing period was in the 14th cen tury and their most distinguished representative was Dafydd ab Gwilym, a contemporary of Chaucer and in some respects the greatest poet of the entire Middle Ages. Dafydd died in 1368. He sang of many subjects but as a poet of love and of nature he is unsurpassed by any Provençal troubadour or German minnesinger. Early in the 15th century the deeds of the celebrated Owen Glendower became the sub ject of patriotic songs, and Iolo Goch, who ranks next to Dafydd ab Gwilym as a poet, in the early part of the 15th century urged on his countrymen in their wars with the English.
Among the hundreds of poets of modern times who have made notable the Welsh renaissance which has lasted to our own times, the most eminent was Goronwy Owen, who, born on the island of Anglesey in 1723, found a grave in America. The religious literature in Welsh is enormous and constantly growing. It began with lives, genealogies and legends of saints and was continued with the translation of the Bible by Bishop William Morgan, in 1588, and by the modern religious movement. There are Welsh versions of Paradise Lost' and of
V. Cornish Literature.— Though there are reasons to believe that Cornwall was influenced to some extent by the Welsh literary movement in the early Middle Ages, the earliest extant literary fragments, dating from the 14-16th centuries and almost exclusively of religious contents, show a closer relationship to the literature of Brittany than to that of the Welsh. Apart from some old forms of the language which have a linguistic value, Cornwall's con tribution to the literature of the Celts is of the slightest and consists chiefly of mystery plays. One of these is a trilogy on the Creation of the World, the Passion and the Resurrection. These Mysteries show little originality and are clearly modelled closely on Latin sources. The
VI.- Breton Literature.— Nor have the earliest monuments, such as they were, of the Armorican Bretons been preserved. There is an abundance of gloss material, which is our best source of information on the earliest form of Brythonic speech, but for literary remains, for a connected Breton text, we have to wait until the beginning of the Middle Breton period at the end of the 15th century. This early literature, too, is almost exclusively religious and consists of such works as a translation of the 'Hours,' the 'Death of Our Lady,' and the 'Life of Man,' all of them be longing to the 16th century. In Brittany, more than in other Celtic lands, the theatre has met with popular favor and the Bretons still have a peculiar fondness for dramatic composition and performances. Upwards of 150 Breton mys tery plays are known to exist, of which about 25 have been published. The oldest is the Life of Saint Nonn, mother of Saint David. The Great Mystery of Jesus, of the Passion and Resurrection was published in 1530. The authors of these pieces were, for the most part, priests or former ecclesiastical students, though in some cases even uneducated artisans and small farmers were the playwrights. The Mysteries were mostly adaptations from the French and betray their foreign source also by the large amount of French words with which they are larded and by the versification. Most of the subjects are taken from the Bible, lives of saints and pious legends, though a few belong to the romantic cycle and to such beliefs, for example, as the Purgatory of Saint Patrick. Though they show little art and little origi nality, they are interesting and valuable under several aspects, as for their local color and their picture of the life of the period and as one of the last manifestations of the medieval Mystery. In the course of the preceding and present centuries, efforts have been made, and with considerable success, to revive and modernize the Breton theatre, and to provide it with subjects of a moral, historical and humorous character. In this field, the Van netais poet, J. Le Bayon, is facile princeps. Of much more interest are the ballads, songs and folklore. We owe the beginning of attention to these subjects to the Vicomte Th. H. de la Villemarque (1815-95), who, in 1839, published his famous collection 'Barzaz Breiz' which, as in the case of Macpherson's enjoyed great success in Europe and gave rise to a protracted and heated discussion. The search ing criticism to which the 'Barzaz' were subjected has proved that they were largely due, both as to matter and to form, to the author himself. Nevertheless, just as in Scot land in the similar case, these poems gave the start for a serious study of the popular Breton ballads. The most fruitful endeavors in that direction were made by F. M. Luzel (1821-95) who, in 1868, published the short ballads or complaints or village tales in verse, of a very dramatic quality and usually of tragic interest, and, in 1890 and following, with the aid of .Anatole Le Braz, the sailors', soldiers', scholars' and workmen's songs of love, marriage and satire. The popular literature in Brittany is of extraordinary wealth and every effort has been made to preserve it, with the result that a great deal has been pub lished, partly as taken down in Breton from the lips of the speakers or, to a larger extent, retold in French. It consists mostly of legends of saints, of death, of the sea and of pardons, and is all of the greatest interest to folklorists. The contemporary poets, from Brizeux, who died in 1858, to Jaffrenou, still living, to men tion only the best known names, form a bril liant galaxy whose poems are to be found in separate editions, collections and reviews.