It is perhaps unnecessary to say that the present version is
intended for those who cannot read the tale in the original; it is
therefore inadvisable to overload the volume with notes, variant
readings, or explanations of the readings adopted, which might
repel the readers to whom it is offered.
At the present time, an enthusiasm for Irish literature is not
always accompanied by a knowledge of the Irish language. It seems
therefore to be the translator's duty, if any true estimate of this
literature is to be formed, to keep fairly close to the original,
since nothing is to be gained by attributing beauties which it does
not possess, while obscuring its true merits, which are not few.
For the same reason, while keeping the Irish second person singular
in verses and formal speech, I have in ordinary dialogue
substituted the pronoun _you_, which suggests the colloquial style
of the original better than the obsolete _thou_.
The so-called rhetorics are omitted in translating; they are
passages known in Irish as _rosc_, often partly alliterative, but
not measured. They are usually meaningless strings of words, with
occasional intelligible phrases. In all probability the passages
aimed at sound, with only a general suggestion of the drift. Any
other omissions are marked where they occur; many obscure words in
the long descriptive passages are of necessity left untranslated.
In two places I have made slight verbal changes without altering
the sense, a liberty which is very rarely necessary in Irish.
Of the headings, those printed in capitals are in the text in the
MS.; those italicised are marginal. I have bracketed obvious
scribal glosses which have crept into the text. Some of the
marginal glosses are translated in the footnotes.