Excerpt from The Irish Liber Hymnorum, Vol. 2: Edited From the Mss. With Translations, Notes, and Glossary; Translations and Notes Admittin G that a certain importance may be naturally assigned/ to the question of the origin of the metres in these hymns, I have yet thought it better to set forth simply the facts ascertainable from the investigation of the texts themselves, without entering upon the difficult problem of their possible relations to continental writings of the early period. Whatever theory be held as to the original forms of Irish Metric, it must necessarily take into account the facts thus ascertained. The hymns that are the subject of this section are numbered in our collection I, 2, 7, 8, 9; 14, 15, 16; 27, 28, 31, 32; 44, 45 48. With one exception, they are the work of Irish poets, according to the undisputed tradition of native writers, but the internal evidence for this belief is not equally strong in the case of the several poems. The one admittedly foreign element is the hymn of. St. Hilary of Poitiers, Y7nnn7n a'icat, which, as we Shall see, bears the unmistakeable stamp of a totally different system of metrical structure and consequently of treatment of the language. This is a classic poem; the others are vulgar Latin. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.