Excerpt from Dan an Deirg, Agus Tiomna Ghuill (Dargo and Gaul): Two Poems From Dr. Smith's Collection, Entitled the Sean Dana; Newly Translated With a Revised Gaelic Text, Notes, and Introduction Say that a careful comparison of the two has led me to an Opposite conclusion. The specimens I have quoted from Dr. Smith's paraphrase, if read side by side with the literal rendering, will enable even an English stu dent to form an opinion on this point; otherwise it would, be obviously unreasonable for any one ignorant of Gaelic to pretend to' j udge - as much so, I presume, as for a man who knew no Greek to malntain that Pope's Iliad and Odyssey were the originals from which a modern scholar had composed the poems ascribed to Homer. Assuming then the Gaelic text Of the Sean Dana (by whomsoever written) to be the original of the English version, I find in it a composition Of unequal merit certainly, but contalnlng enough Of really good poetry and of interesting matter to make it worth pre senting to the public in a more faithful translation than that of Dr. Smith, the demerits of which will, I trust, be clear from the citations I shall give in my Introduc tion. As to the text itself, I felt quite unequal to the task of reducing the orthography to any modern stan dard, except in the correction Of a few manifest errors; but latterly, by: the courtesy of Mr. Donald Macpherson, Of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, I have been enabled to get this done, for me, and 1 am glad to take this opportunity of thanking him for his kind services, without which this portion Of my work must necessarily have been imperfect. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.