I have tried, while carefully preserving the main outline of each story, to treat it exactly as the ancient bard treated his own material, or as Tennyson treated the stories of the MORT D'ARTHUR, that is to say, to present it as a fresh work of poetic imagination.

In some cases, as in the story of the Children of Lir, or that of mac Datho's Boar, or the enchanting tale of King Iubdan and King Fergus, I have done little more than retell the bardic legend with merely a little compression; but in others a certain amount of reshaping has seemed desirable.

The object in all cases has been the same, to bring out as clearly as possible for modern readers the beauty and interest which are either manifest or implicit in the Gaelic original.
[1] CUCHULAIN, THE HOUND OF ULSTER.

By Eleanor Hull.
For stories which are only found in MSS.

written in the older forms of the language, I have been largely indebted to the translations published by various scholars.