elapsed before the Norman barons became fully Hibernicised, previous to which their interest may be assumed to have turned to the compositions of the trouveres.  In the early Norman period, the poets of Ireland might well have begun to imitate Romance models.  But, strange to say, they did not, and, for this, various reasons might be assigned.  The flowing verses of the Anglo-Norman were impossible for men who delighted in the trammels of the native prosody; and in the heyday of French influence, the patrons of letters in Ireland probably insisted on hearing the foreign compositions in their original dress, as these nobles were doubtless sufficiently versed in Norman-French to be able to appreciate them.  But a still more potent factor was the conservatism of the hereditary Irish poet families.  A close corporation, they appear to have resented every innovation, and were content to continue the tradition of their ancestors.  The direct consequence of this tenacious clinging to the fashions of by-gone days rendered it impossible, nay almost inconceivable, that the literary men of Ireland should have exerted any profound or immediate influence upon England or western Europe.  Yet, nowadays, few serious scholars will be prepared to deny that the island contributed in considerable measure to the common literary stock of the Middle Ages.

We might expect to find that direct influence, as a general rule, can be most easily traced in the case of religious themes.  Here, in the literature of vision, so popular in Ireland, a chord was struck which continued to vibrate powerfully until the time of the Reformation.  In this branch the riotous fancy of the Celtic monk caught the medieval imagination from an early period.  Bede has preserved for us the story of Fursey, an Irish hermit who died in France, A.D. 650.  The greatest Irish composition of this class with which we are acquainted, the Vision of Adamnan, does not appear to have been known outside the island, but a later work of a similar nature met with striking success.  This was the Vision of Tundale (Tnudgal), written in Latin by an Irishman named Marcus at Regensburg, about the middle of the twelfth century.  It seems probable that this work was known to Dante, and, in addition to the numerous continental versions, there is a rendering of the story into Middle English verse.

Closely allied to the Visions are the Imrama or “voyages” (Lat. navigationes).  The earliest romances of this class are secular, e.g., Imram Maelduin, which provided Tennyson with the frame-work of his well-known poem.  However, the notorious love of adventure on the part of the Irish monks inevitably led to the composition of religious romances of a similar kind.  The most famous story of this description, the_ Voyage of St. Brendan_, found its way into every Christian country in Europe, and consequently figures in the South English Legendary, a collection of versified lives of saints made in