Note 120 — Chapter III · LEGENDARY ORIGINS.

They will be found in Lady Ferguson’s excellent little work, The Story of the Irish before the Conquest, and in Mr. Standish O’Grady’s interesting work just published, The History of Ireland, vol. i. Heroic Period. The interest of this latter work is, in the author’s opinion, greatly detracted from by his having unfortunately adopted a practice, which cannot be too strongly deprecated, of spelling Irish proper names phonetically. There is nothing gained by it, as the form of the name has quite as barbarous an appearance as when the proper orthography is retained, the identity of the persons meant is lost, it is misleading as there is no uniform pronunciation of these names by those who speak the vernacular Gaelic, and the travesty of the Irish names is equally offensive to good taste and to sound judgment. In other respects this little work has great merits.