Page:The poem-book of the Gael - Hull.djvu/41

ejaculations; I have therefore endeavoured to bring together a few others to add to the groups gathered by Dr. Hyde in the west of Ireland and by Dr. Carmichael in the Western Hebrides; but in their original Gaelic they are the fruit of others' collections, not of my own.^[1] They are the thoughts of such humble people as the poor farm-servant who "had so many things to do from dark to dark" that she had no time for long prayers, and knew only a little prayer taught her by her mother, which laid "our caring and our keeping and our saving on the Sacred Trinity."

I desire to inscribe here my sincere gratitude to the living authors and authoresses who have kindly given me permission to use their work, and my gratitude to those authors who have gone, that they have left us so much good work to use. Especially I desire to thank my friends, Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves and Mr. Ernest Rhys, for permitting the use of unpublished poems.

Many friends have given a ready helping hand in elucidating difficult words and phrases, and it is a pleasant task to thank them here. Dr. D. Hyde, Rev. Michael Sheehan, Rev. P. S. Dinneen, Mr. Tadhg O’Donoghue, Mr. R. Flower, Miss Hayes, especially, have always readily come to my assistance; to Miss Eleanor Knott I am indebted for valuable help in the translation of the "Saltair na Rann," and to Dr. R. Thurneysen for suggesting some readings in this difficult poem.

I gratefully acknowledge permission accorded to mc by the following publishing houses to include poems or extracts from books published by them:—