In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength of this conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in the preservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is this the case, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions appear, the author or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from that which he found handed down. For instance, in the “Great Breach of Murthemney,” we find Laeg at one moment killed, and in the next riding black Shanglan off the field. From this conservatism and careful following of authority, and the littera scripta, or word once spoken, I conclude that the distance in time between the prose tale and the metrical originals was very great, and, unless under such exceptional circumstances as the revolution caused by the introduction of Christianity, could not have been brought about within hundreds of years. Moreover, this same conservatism would have caused the tales concerning heroes to grow very slowly once they were actually formed. All the noteworthy events of the hero’s life and his characteristics must have formed the original of the tales concerning him, which would have been composed during his life, or not long after his death.

Klasik Türk Şiiri sahasında kullanılmış her bir nazım şeklinin elde bulunan hemen tüm divanların taranması suretiyle incelenip tarihsel seyrinin ortaya konması, edebiyat tarihimizin bir bütün olarak değerlendirilmesi açısından oldukça zaruridir. Altı yüz yıllık tarihi geçmişe sahip Klasik Türk şiirinin asırları aşıp günümüze kadar gelen her bir nazım şeklini biçim ve muhteva bakımından ayrı ayrı değerlendirerek ortaya çıkarmak, bu sahaya gönlünü ve ömrünü vermiş birçok araştırmacının ortak arzusudur. Bu arzu neticesinde bu çalışmamızda, tamamen millî bir nazım biçimi olarak kabul gören tuyuğ nazım şeklinin biçimsel ve tarihsel serüvenini, tespit edilen yaklaşık 1500 tuyuğu da çalışmaya katmak suretiyle ortaya koymaya çalıştık.