Note 31 — APPENDIX.

In the oldest known version of the Exile of the Son of Usnech (preserved in the 12th century MS., the Book of Leinster) when Noisi sees Deirdre for the first time, he exclaims, ‘’Tis a fair heifer passing by me.’ She answers, ‘Where the bulls are there must needs be fine heifers.’ This is one of the passages relied upon by Prof. Zimmer in support of his contention that old Irish literature is so extremely ‘naturalistic’ in its treatment of sexual matters that we must needs suppose the Aryan Celts were polluted by a rude and more archaic population. I confess I see nothing in either the earlier or the present passage but the simplicity of a race living, 2000 years ago, as it still in part does, very close to nature, and accustomed to frank speaking about natural matters. The whole of this tradition is simply the fitting into a local frame of incidents which are commonplaces in the folk-tales.—A. N.