of much that Collier has left us; his coarseness was not necessary in order to depict the scenes about which he wrote; and the wonder is, that a man of such classical knowledge could be so wanting in good taste. Hogarth was coarse too, at times, but he did not delight in it, as we suspect our Lancashire Hogarth did. The former was a man of genius, who found his work before him in the world and did it well; the latter happened to arrange and write in a dialect to the literature of which not much importance had previously been attached. Collier died towards the latter end of the eighteenth century, and was followed by a host of writers who adapted and improved upon his researches, and achieved more or less local distinction. In 1803, died Robert Walker, who adopted the somewhat pretentious nom-de-plume of Tim Bobbin the Second. His writings bore a more political tendency than those of his predecessor, and did much to mould the opinions and enlist the sympathies of all who held Right stronger than Might. He is full of enjoyable humour, of a better sort than admirers of the dialect were in the habit of getting. Nothing could be better in its way than "The Saddleworth Shouting Telegraph." "The Songs of the Wilsons," lyrical compositions, written by a family of that name towards the beginning of the nineteenth century, deserve prominent mention in any account of Lancashire folk song. Therein are afforded vivid pictures of the times, not inartistically drawn either, nor without a certain smoothness and finish which place them high in the rank of literary compositions. We need only refer our readers to "Johnny Green's Weddin'" in the collection made by the late Mr. John Harland. With the appearance of these songs began a nobler era in dialect writing. We have seen that Tim Bobbin was coarse, that his successors were not

often men of particular feeling or sentiment, and that, up to this time the highest effort in the vernacular had been confined to detailing the uninviting misadventures of some country lout or frolicsome weaver. Of pathos and the tenderness of human life there was, at times, some slight mention; but this was of too trivial a nature to be noticeable as a speciality. Too often coarseness had been called humour, and everyone had, without question, admitted that the designations love, joy, grief, hope, were not the essentials out of which the so-called local poet framed his lays. This question, however, seemed to arise in the minds of thoughtful writers: If the dialect is adapted and can be so successfully used to delineate the progress of human weakness and folly, why should it not prove the medium for detailing the growth of human strength and wisdom. Accordingly, from this time we find that writings in the Lancashire dialect have good pretensions to be classed under the head of Literature. Mr. Edwin Waugh "set the fashion." He was, perhaps, the first writer who ever discovered any noble uses in the Lancashire dialect. "Chirrup" we have already quoted, and it is not necessary for the sake of his reputation that the reader should be now introduced to further selections from his writings. The highest praise we can award to him is to repeat what is universally admitted, by saying that he is a poet; which in these days of promiscuous writing is, perhaps, saying a deal. No writer has done more to idealise the rustic and town life of Lancashire; and there is scarcely a homestead throughout the country where his name is not known, and his songs rapturously applauded. This is the most genuine sort of popularity, and is worth more than a score of favourable notices in the reviews of the day.

His

Mr. Waugh holds in the literary

history of Lancashire a somewhat analogous position to that occupied by Alexander Pope in the wider field of English literature. The latter found the poetical expression of his times rough and devoid of grace, and ere long he gave it a preeminence for smoothly-drawn lines and sentences. In the same manner, Waugh, discarding most of the stupid wit and rudely-described wantonness which had hitherto been part and parcel of Lancashire literature, gradually raised dialect writing to an eminence it had little chance of otherwise ever attaining, melting down all its dross into pure gold, until it became a goodly and pleasant thing. The fashion being set, in there rushed a host of followers and many rivals. In which class are we to place Mr. Benjamin Brierley, at present the most popular of Lancashire authors? Mr. Brierley has written a few very good songs, noticeably "The Weaver of Wellbrook;" but he principally excels as a writer of local fiction. He seems to have a greater grasp and wider sympathies than Waugh; and passages might be taken from his novels which for their genuine pathos have rarely been excelled. Of late, we fear, he has somewhat receded from the position gained for him by his earlier works. They are certainly far better than anything he has recently produced. Financially,

Mr. Brierley's recent work may pay him well, being just the sort which is craved for by thoughtless and unintelligent readers, who look for amusement merely. A good reputation is, however, well worth preserving, even at a little pecuniary sacrifice.

Mr. Samuel Laycock is another Lancashire writer whose songs, originally published at one penny each, have enjoyed a most extensive circulation, and have become on all sides deservedly popular. Such poems as "Bouton's Yard," and "Thee and Me," are the sort which do good; and it is not at all a matter for surprise that they are admired, read and re-read, in places far distant from the county where they were first published.

The writings of other Lancashire authors - such as R. R. Bealey, whose poem, "Eaur Bessy," is enough by itself to make any man popular—and J. C. Prince, who did not, however, write much in the dialect, are done ample justice to in Mr. Axon's little book. Should it serve no more useful purpose, it will, at least, do for Lancashire what is much wanted, in common with all our local dialects -a pretty full and accurate account of the principal authors who have written in them, and the value of their respective claims to the title of POET.

EARLY NORMAN POETRY.

WHATEVER our relations, disagreable

or otherwise, with France, she should never forget her debt to "Perfidious Albion" for the main body of her early fictional literature. The Gallic Celts, before, during, and after the Roman sway in the country, possessed the oral folk-lore common to

the Aryan peoples, and when they were obliged to share their lands and their habitations with the Franks, and had time to compare their separate myths and house-stories, they found a decided similarity in these long-descended heirlooms. Whatever abilities were possessed by their

reciters on festive and other occasions, they were found weak and imperfect when put in comparison with those of the vigorous minstrels to whom the Duke of Normandy and his nobles were delighted to listen. These brave Norsemen had fixed themselves in West France in the end of the ninth century, and when the most adventurous of them crossed the Strait with the first William, a little later than the middle of the eleventh, they were found to be so assimilated with the Franco

Celts or Celtic-Franks, among whom they had peacefully settled down, as

to have retained neither their northern speech, nor any knowledge worth mention, of the legends, or the traditions, or the mythology of their native Scandinavia. The earliest known, indeed, the only ones which pieces of Norman - French poetry preceded the ascension of the English throne by William I.,—are the revered by the Normans, translated lives of St. Wandril, and other saints, by Thébaut de Vernon, Canon of Rouen, from Latin into French verse; the "Lay of Saint William ;" and the "Song of Roland, recited by Taillefer, as he marched in front of the invaders at the fight of Hastings, and, in the words of his countryman, Wace (1155), sung,—

De Karlemaigne et de Rollant
E d' Oliver et des Vassals,

Qy morurent en Roncesvals.1

We are informed by Geofrey Gaimar, a man of learning, attached to the house of Ralph Fitzgilbert, a powerful northern baron (temp. Stephani)" that he performed many marvellous feats of dexterity, throwing his lance into the air as if it were

a small stick, catching it by the point before he cast it against the enemy, and repeating the same operation with his sword, so that they who beheld him considered him as a conjuror."

We find in the old chivalric romances no trace of the knights errant or stationary, performing such tours de force as are here mentioned; perhaps it was only in the few cases where the jongleur and belted knight were found united in the same person. An instance is afforded in that bloody and pitiless poem, the conclusion of the "Nibelungen Lied," by the terrible warlike fiddler. In the ancient Irish romances, the invincible Dearmuidk, and Cuchulainn, and Conal Karnach, are as much distinguished by their deeds of agility and sleight-of-hand as for their mighty strokes. Diarmuidh, when hunted by Fionn's troops, manages to kill a few hundred chiefs by such devices as these. He plants a spear upright in the ground, takes an airy spring, sets his sole on the spear's point, and there balances himself. He rests a glaive (cloidheam, pronounced "chloive"), edge upwards, on two posts, gives a bound, lights on the hilt, and then walks to the point along the razor-like edge. He stands upright on a barrel while it thunders down a hill, and then looks on complacently while the Green Fenians are being killed in their endeavours to imitate him. In the "Leabhar na Huidre," copied in the eleventh century from a MS., probably of the eighth, are particurised all the feats of agility of which Cuchulainn was master; the few given below will probably be considered sufficient.

The apple feat, edge feat (already described), rope feat, feat of cat, hero's bound, leap over poison (point of upright spear), wheel feat, champion's scream, straightening of body on the spear-point, &c.

His

Henry Beauclerc was not only possessed of good literary taste, and probably literary power, but he had the good fortune to obtain a sympathising consort in Matilda, daughter of St. Margaret of Scotland. second choice fell upon Adelais, of Louvain, a lady equally devoted to literary pursuits. Among the learned dependants on court favour was a poet, name unknown, who wrote for Queen Adelais the voyage of Saint Brendain. This he had, in all likelihood, obtained from some Irish bard, who, as well as his brethren, were glad to seize on some passage or passages in the lives of the Gaelic saints, and by investing them with romantic or marvellous circumstances, produce a lay which would forcibly seize on the attention and belief of their audiences. With regard to this particular legend, as in many other cases, the bard merely substituted St. Brendain for the hero of

some pagan story, one class of the native heathen fictions entirely consisting of imaginary voyages. Ter na-n-Oge, the abode of the happy departed, lay out in the Atlantic, but was only visible to the élite of the legends. Hy Breasil (Princely Isle ?) was another name for the same pagan Elysium.

The belief in the existence of an Isle or Isles of the Blessed in the great western sea was not confined to the Irish. It had its votaries as far east as Phoenicia. Probably, St. Brendain performed more than one voyage along our western coasts, and even ventured cut some distance from land; but the incidents in the legend were borrowed from the nautical exploits of some mythic hero, varieties of whom may be found in Mr. O'Curry's valuable work. "The Voyage of St. Brendain," after delighting Queen Adelais and her ladies, and other Anglo-Norman queens and their ladies, was admitted among the "Legenda Morea" of John Copgrave, a monk of the fourteenth century. It was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1516; and a spirited metrical version, by our national poet, Denis Florence MacCarthy, may be consulted in the DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE for January, 1848.

There is extant a poem, in Norman French, written about the same time (ie., the commencement of the twelfth century), and probably composed at the court of Henry I. It purports to be an account of a journey to Jerusalem performed by Charlemagne. It was published in London, 1836, from the MS. in the British Museum.

Although our chief concern is with the imaginative literature of the Anglo-Normans, we must not omit two other poems, composed about the same period, by Robert Philippe le Than,-one written for the clergy, and called "Liber de Creaturis," and the other "Le Bestiare," transated from the Latin into Norman

French, and dedicated to Queen Adelais. The first of these works is occupied with chronology, and the second with birds, beasts, and precious stones. The author was a native of Caen, in Normandy.

GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH AND HIS ROMANCE.

Hitherto there has been but a scanty crop of metrical legends to be quoted from, though there was no lack of Norman Trouvères to be found at the English court and in the great castles; but they were too much engrossed in their recitals to find time for committing their compositions to parchment, getting clean copies made, and thus preserving them for the entertainment of future generations. Then the troubled reign of Stephen (11351154) was not too propitious to literary leisure; but towards its end (1145-7) appeared a blended narrative of fact and fiction, which set at work all who had taste or ability for metrical romance; and during the next half-century, legendary histories, and legendary biographies, and legends connected with saints and the sacred narrative, continued to succeed each other at shorter or longer intervals.

The work which produced this literary activity was the celebrated "History of the Britons," either originally composed in Latin, or, as the author said, translated from the Breton branch of the Celtic. The author was the celebrated Geoffrey of Monmouth, who, towards the close of his life, was promoted to the see of Asaph. His death occurred in 1154. The first work of this churchman was a translation, from Welsh, into Latin, of the prophecies of Merlin. His great work, the British history, was dedicated to the estimable Robert, earl of Gloucester, the son of Henry I., by Nesta, daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the last Prince of South Wales. Our Irish chroniclers, in nearly