EARLY BARDIC LITERATURE, IRELAND. 

By Standish O'Grady

11 Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin

Scattered over the surface of every country in Europe may be foundsepulchral monuments, the remains of pre-historic times and nations, andof a phase of life will civilisation which has long since passed away. No country in Europe is without its cromlechs and dolmens, huge earthentumuli, great flagged sepulchres, and enclosures of tall pillar-stones. The men by whom these works were made, so interesting in themselves, andso different from anything of the kind erected since, were not strangersand aliens, but our own ancestors, and out of their rude civilisationour own has slowly grown. Of that elder phase of European civilisationno record or tradition has been anywhere bequeathed to us. Of itsnature, and the ideas and sentiments whereby it was sustained, noughtmay now be learned save by an examination of those tombs themselves, andof the dumb remnants, from time to time exhumed out of their soil--rudeinstruments of clay, flint, brass, and gold, and by speculations andreasonings founded upon these archaeological gleanings, meagre andsapless. 

For after the explorer has broken up, certainly desecrated, and perhapsdestroyed, those noble sepulchral raths; after he has disinterredthe bones laid there once by pious hands, and the urn with itsunrecognisable ashes of king or warrior, and by the industrious labourof years hoarded his fruitless treasure of stone celt and arrow-head, ofbrazen sword and gold fibula and torque; and after the savant has rammedmany skulls with sawdust, measuring their capacity, and has adorned themwith some obscure label, and has tabulated and arranged the implementsand decorations of flint and metal in the glazed cases of the cold gauntmuseum, the imagination, unsatisfied and revolted, shrinks back from allthat he has done. Still we continue to inquire, receiving from him noadequate response, Who were those ancient chieftains and warriors forwhom an affectionate people raised those strange tombs? What life didthey lead? What deeds perform? How did their personality affect theminds of their people and posterity? How did our ancestors look uponthose great tombs, certainly not reared to be forgotten, and how didthey--those huge monumental pebbles and swelling raths--enter into andaffect the civilisation or religion of the times?

We see the cromlech with its massive slab and immense supportingpillars, but we vainly endeavour to imagine for whom it was firsterected, and how that greater than cyclopean house affected the mindsof those who made it, or those who were reared in its neighbourhoodor within reach of its influence. We see the stone cist with its greatsmooth flags, the rocky cairn, and huge barrow and massive walledcathair, but the interest which they invariably excite is onlyaroused to subside again unsatisfied. From this department of Europeanantiquities the historian retires baffled, and the dry savant is alonemaster of the field, but a field which, as cultivated by him alone, remains barren or fertile only in things the reverse of exhilarating. Anantiquarian museum is more melancholy than a tomb. 

But there is one country in Europe in which, by virtue of a marvellousstrength and tenacity of the historical intellect, and of filialdevotedness to the memory of their ancestors, there have been preserveddown into the early phases of mediaeval civilisation, and then committedto the sure guardianship of manuscript, the hymns, ballads, stories, andchronicles, the names, pedigrees, achievements, and even characters, ofthose ancient kings and warriors over whom those massive cromlechs wereerected and great cairns piled. There is not a conspicuous sepulchralmonument in Ireland, the traditional history of which is not recordedin our ancient literature, and of the heroes in whose honour they wereraised. In the rest of Europe there is not a single barrow, dolmen, orcist of which the ancient traditional history is recorded; in Irelandthere is hardly one of which it is not. And these histories are in manycases as rich and circumstantial as that of men of the greatest eminencewho have lived in modern times. Granted that the imagination which forcenturies followed with eager interest the lives of these heroes, beheldas gigantic what was not so, as romantic and heroic what was neither onenor the other, still the great fact remains, that it was beside and inconnection with the mounds and cairns that this history was elaborated, and elaborated concerning them and concerning the heroes to whom theywere sacred. 

On the plain of Tara, beside the little stream Nemanna, itself famousas that which first turned a mill-wheel in Ireland, there lies a barrow, not itself very conspicuous in the midst of others, all named andillustrious in the ancient literature of the country. The ancient herothere interred is to the student of the Irish bardic literature afigure as familiar and clearly seen as any personage in the BiographiaBritannica. We know the name he bore as a boy and the name he bore asa man. We know the names of his father and his grandfather, and of thefather of his grandfather, of his mother, and the father and mother ofhis mother, and the pedigrees and histories of each of these. We knowthe name of his nurse, and of his children, and of his wife, and thecharacter of his wife, and of the father and mother of his wife, andwhere they lived and were buried. We know all the striking events of hisboyhood and manhood, the names of his horses and his weapons, his owncharacter and his friends, male and female. We know his battles, and thenames of those whom he slew in battle, and how he was himself slain, andby whose hands. We know his physical and spiritual characteristics, the device upon his shield, and how that was originated, carved, andpainted, by whom. We know the colour of his hair, the date of his birthand of his death, and his relations, in time and otherwise, with theremainder of the princes and warriors with whom, in that mound-raisingperiod of our history, he was connected, in hostility or friendship; andall this enshrined in ancient song, the transmitted traditions of thepeople who raised that barrow, and who laid within it sorrowing theirbrave ruler and, defender. That mound is the tomb of Cuculain, once kingof the district in which Dundalk stands to-day, and the ruins of whoseearthen fortification may still be seen two miles from that town. 

This is a single instance, and used merely as an example, but one outof a multitude almost as striking. There is not a king of Ireland, described as such in the ancient annals, whose barrow is not mentionedin these or other compositions, and every one of which may at thepresent day be identified where the ignorant plebeian or the ignorantpatrician has not destroyed them. The early History of Ireland clingsaround and grows out of the Irish barrows until, with almost theuniversality of that primeval forest from which Ireland took one ofits ancient names, the whole isle and all within it was clothed witha nobler raiment, invisible, but not the less real, of a full andluxuriant history, from whose presence, all-embracing, no part was free. Of the many poetical and rhetorical titles lavished upon this country, none is truer than that which calls her the Isle of Song. Her ancienthistory passed unceasingly into the realm of artistic representation;the history of one generation became the poetry of the next, until thewhole island was illuminated and coloured by the poetry of the bards. Productions of mere fancy and imagination these songs are not, though fancy and imagination may have coloured and shaped all theirsubject-matter, but the names are names of men and women who once livedand died in Ireland, and over whom their people raised the swelling rathand reared the rocky cromlech. In the sepulchral monuments their nameswere preserved, and in the performance of sacred rites, and the holdingof games, fairs, and assemblies in their honour, the memory of theirachievements kept fresh, till the traditions that clung around theseplaces were inshrined in tales which were finally incorporated in theLeabhar na Huidhré and the Book of Leinster. 

Pre-historic narrative is of two kinds--in one the imagination is atwork consciously, in the other unconsciously. Legends of the formerclass are the product of a lettered and learned age. The story floatsloosely in a world of imagination. The other sort of pre-historicnarrative clings close to the soil, and to visible and tangibleobjects. It may be legend, but it is legend believed in as history neverconsciously invented, and growing out of certain spots of the earth'ssurface, and supported by and drawing its life from the soil like anatural growth. 

Such are the early Irish tales that cling around the mounds andcromlechs as that by which they are sustained, which was originallytheir source, and sustained them afterwards in a strong enduring life. It is evident that these cannot be classed with stories that floatvaguely in an ideal world, which may happen in one place as well asanother, and in which the names might be disarrayed without changingthe character and consistency of the tale, and its relations, in time orotherwise, with other tales. 

Foreigners are surprised to find the Irish claim for their own countryan antiquity and a history prior to that of the neighbouring countries. Herein lie the proof and the explanation. The traditions and history ofthe mound-raising period have in other countries passed away. Foreignconquest, or less intrinsic force of imagination, and pious sentimenthave suffered them to fall into oblivion; but in Ireland they have beenall preserved in their original fulness and vigour, hardly a hue hasfaded, hardly a minute circumstance or articulation been suffered todecay. 

The enthusiasm with which the Irish intellect seized upon the grandmoral life of Christianity, and ideals so different from, and so hostileto, those of the heroic age, did not consume the traditions or destroythe pious and reverent spirit in which men still looked back upon thosemonuments of their own pagan teachers and kings, and the deep spiritof patriotism and affection with which the mind still clung to theold heroic age, whose types were warlike prowess, physical beauty, generosity, hospitality, love of family and nation, and all those nobleattributes which constituted the heroic character as distinguished fromthe saintly. The Danish conquest, with its profound modification ofIrish society, and consequent disruption of old habits and conditionsof life, did not dissipate it; nor the more dangerous conquest of theNormans, with their own innate nobility of character, chivalrous daring, and continental grace and civilisation; nor the Elizabethan convulsionsand systematic repression and destruction of all native phases ofthought and feeling. Through all these storms, which successivelyassailed the heroic literature of ancient Ireland, it still held itselfundestroyed. There were still found generous minds to shelter and shieldthe old tales and ballads, to feel the nobleness of that life of whichthey were the outcome, and to resolve that the soil of Ireland shouldnot, so far as they had the power to prevent it, be denuded of itsraiment of history and historic romance, or reduced again to primevalnakedness. The fruit of this persistency and unquenched love of countryand its ancient traditions, is left to be enjoyed by us. There is notthrough the length and breadth of the country a conspicuous rath orbarrow of which we cannot find the traditional history preserved inthis ancient literature. The mounds of Tara, the great barrows alongthe shores of the Boyne, the raths of Slieve Mish, and Rathcrogan, andTeltown, the stone caiseals of Aran and Innishowen, and those that aloneor in smaller groups stud the country over, are all, or nearly all, mentioned in this ancient literature, with the names and traditionalhistories of those over whom they were raised. 

There is one thing to be learned from all this, which is, that we, atleast, should not suffer these ancient monuments to be destroyed, whosehistory has been thus so astonishingly preserved. The English farmer maytear down the barrow which is unfortunate enough to be situated withinhis bounds. Neither he nor his neighbours know or can tell anythingabout its ancient history; the removed earth will help to make hiscattle fatter and improve his crops, the stones will be useful to pavehis roads and build his fences, and the savant can enjoy the rest; butthe Irish farmer and landlord should not do or suffer this. 

The instinctive reverence of the peasantry has hitherto been a greatpreservative; but the spread of education has to a considerable extentimpaired this kindly sentiment, and the progress of scientific farming, and the anxiety of the Royal Irish Academy to collect antiquariantrifles, have already led to the reckless destruction of too many. Ithink that no one who reads the first two volumes of this history wouldgreatly care to bear a hand in the destruction of that tomb at Tara, in which long since his people laid the bones of Cuculain; and I think, too, that they would not like to destroy any other monument of the sameage, when they know that the history of its occupant and its own nameare preserved in the ancient literature, and that they may one day learnall that is to be known concerning it. I am sure that if the case wereput fairly to the Irish landlords and country gentlemen, they wouldneither inflict nor permit this outrage upon the antiquities of theircountry. The Irish country gentleman prides himself on his love oftrees, and entertains a very wholesome contempt for the mercantile boorwho, on purchasing an old place, chops down the best timber for themarket. And yet a tree, though cut down, may be replaced. One elm treeis as good as another, and the thinned wood, by proper treatment, willbe as dense as ever; but the ancient mound, once carted away, can neverbe replaced any more. When the study of the Irish literary records isrevived, as it certainly will be revived, the old history of each ofthese raths and cromlechs will be brought again into the light, andone new interest of a beautiful and edifying nature attached to thelandscape, and affecting wholly for good the minds of our people. 

Irishmen are often taunted with the fact that their history is yetunwritten, but that the Irish, as a nation, have been careless of theirpast is refuted by the facts which I have mentioned. A people who alonein Europe preserved, not in dry chronicles alone, but illuminated andadorned with all that fancy could suggest in ballad, and tale, and rudeepic, the history of the mound-raising period, are not justly liableto this taunt. Until very modern times, history was the one absorbingpursuit of the Irish secular intellect, the delight of the noble, andthe solace of the vile. 

At present, indeed, the apathy on this subject is, I believe, withoutparallel in the world. It would seem as if the Irish, extreme in allthings, at one time thought of nothing but their history, and, atanother, thought of everything but it. Unlike those who write onother subjects, the author of a work on Irish history has to laboursimultaneously at a two-fold task--he has to create the interest towhich he intends to address himself. 

The pre-Christian period of Irish history presents difficulties fromwhich the corresponding period in the histories of other countries isfree. The surrounding nations escape the difficulty by having nothing torecord. The Irish historian is immersed in perplexity on account of themass of material ready to his hand. The English have lost utterly allrecord of those centuries before which the Irish historian stands withdismay and hesitation, not through deficiency of materials, but throughtheir excess. Had nought but the chronicles been preserved the taskwould have been simple. We would then have had merely to determineapproximately the date of the introduction of letters, and allowing amargin on account of the bardic system and the commission of family andnational history to the keeping of rhymed and alliterated verse, fixupon some reasonable point, and set down in order, the old successionsof kings and the battles and other remarkable events. But in Irishhistory there remains, demanding treatment, that other immense mass ofliterature of an imaginative nature, illuminating with anecdote and talethe events and personages mentioned simply and without comment bythe chronicler. It is this poetic literature which constitutes thestumbling-block, as it constitutes also the glory, of early Irishhistory, for it cannot be rejected and it cannot be retained. It cannotbe rejected, because it contains historical matter which is consonantwith and illuminates the dry lists of the chronologist, and it cannotbe retained, for popular poetry is not history; and the task ofdistinguishing In such literature the fact from the fiction--where thereis certainly fact and certainly fiction--is one of the most difficult towhich the intellect can apply itself. That this difficulty has not beenhitherto surmounted by Irish writers is no just reproach. For the lastcentury, intellects of the highest attainments, trained and educatedto the last degree, have been vainly endeavouring to solve a similarquestion in the far less copious and less varied heroic literature ofGreece. Yet the labours of Wolfe, Grote, Mahaffy, Geddes, and Gladstone, have not been sufficient to set at rest the small question, whether itwas one man or two or many who composed the Iliad and Odyssey, while thereality of the achievements of Achilles and even his existence might bedenied or asserted by a scholar without general reproach. When this isthe case with regard to the great heroes of the Iliad, I fancy it willbe some time before the same problem will have been solved for the minorcharacters, and as it affects Thersites, or that eminent artist whodwelt at home in Hyla, being by far the most excellent of leathercutters. When, therefore, Greek still meets Greek in an interminable andapparently bloodless contest over the disputed body of the Iliad, andstill no end appears, surely it would be madness for any one to sit downand gaily distinguish true from false in the immense and complex massof the Irish bardic literature, having in his ears this century-lastingstruggle over a single Greek poem and a single small phase of thepre-historic life of Hellas. 

In the Irish heroic literature, the presence or absence of themarvellous supplies _no test whatsoever_ as to the general truth orfalsehood of the tale in which they appear. The marvellous is suppliedwith greater abundance in the account of the battle of Clontarf, andthe wars of the O'Briens with the Normans, than in the tale in whichis described the foundation of Emain Macha by Kimbay. Exact-thinking, scientific France has not hesitated to paint the battles of Louis XIV. With similar hues; and England, though by no means fertile in angelicinterpositions, delights to adorn the barren tracts of her more popularhistories with apocryphal anecdotes. 

How then should this heroic literature of Ireland be treated inconnection with the history of the country? The true method wouldcertainly be to print it exactly as it is without excision orcondensation. Immense it is, and immense it must remain. No men living, and no men to live, will ever so exhaust the meaning of any single taleas to render its publication unnecessary for the study of others. Theorder adopted should be that which the bards themselves deter mined, anyother would be premature, and I think no other will ever take its place. At the commencement should stand the passage from the Book of Invasions, describing the occupation of the isle by Queen Keasair and hercompanions, and along with it every discoverable tale or poem dealingwith this event and those characters. After that, all that remains ofthe cycle of which Partholan was the protagonist. Thirdly, allthat relates to Nemeth and his sons, their wars with curt Kical thebow-legged, and all that relates to the Fomoroh of the Nemedian epoch, then first moving dimly in the forefront of our history. After that, thegreat Fir-bolgic cycle, a cycle janus-faced, looking on one side to themythological period and the wars of the gods, and on the other, to theheroic, and more particularly to the Ultonian cycle. In the next place, the immense mass of bardic literature which treats of the Irish godswho, having conquered the Fir-bolgs, like the Greek gods of the age ofgold dwelt visibly in the island until the coming of the Clan Milith, out of Spain. In the sixth, the Milesian invasion, and every accessiblestatement concerning the sons and kindred of Milesius. In the seventh, the disconnected tales dealing with those local heroes whose historyis not connected with the great cycles, but who in the _fasti_ fillthe spaces between the divine period and the heroic. In the eighth, theheroic cycles, the Ultonian, the Temairian, and the Fenian, and afterthese the historic tales that, without forming cycles, accompany thecourse of history down to the extinction of Irish independence, andthe transference to aliens of all the great sources of authority in theisland. 

This great work when completed will be of that kind of which no otherEuropean nation can supply an example. Every public library in the worldwill find it necessary to procure a copy. The chronicles will thencease to be so closely and exclusively studied. Every history of ancientIreland will consist of more or less intelligent comments upon andtheories formed in connection with this great series--theories which, ingeneral, will only be formed in order to be destroyed. What the presentage demands upon the subject of antique Irish history--an exactand scientific treatment of the facts supplied by our nativeauthorities--will be demanded for ever. It will never be supplied. Thehistory of Ireland will be contained in this huge publication. In it thepoet will find endless themes of song, the philosopher strange workingsof the human mind, the archeologist a mass of information, marvellous inamount and quality, with regard to primitive ideas and habits of life, and the rationalist materials for framing a scientific history ofIreland, which will be acceptable in proportion to the readablenessof his style, and the mode in which his views may harmonize with theprevailing humour and complexion of his contemporaries. 

Such a work it is evident could not be effected by a single individual. It must be a public and national undertaking, carried out under thesupervision of the Royal Irish Academy, at the expense of the country. 

The publication of the Irish bardic remains in the way that I havementioned, is the only true and valuable method of presenting thehistory of Ireland to the notice of the world. The mode which I havemyself adopted, that other being out of the question, is open to manyobvious objections; but in the existing state of the Irish mind on thesubject, no other is possible to an individual writer. I desire tomake this heroic period once again a portion of the imagination of thecountry, and its chief characters as familiar in the minds of our peopleas they once were. As mere history, and treated in the method in whichhistory is generally written at the present day, a work dealing withthe early Irish kings and heroes would certainly not secure an audience. Those who demand such a treatment forget that there is not in thecountry an interest on the subject to which to appeal. A work treatingof early Irish kings, in the same way in which the historians ofneighbouring countries treat of their own early kings, would be, to theIrish public generally, unreadable. It might enjoy the reputationof being well written, and as such receive an honourable place inhalf-a-dozen public libraries, but it would be otherwise left severelyalone. It would never make its way through that frozen zone which, onthis subject, surrounds the Irish mind. 

On the other hand, Irishmen are as ready as others to feel an interestin a human character, having themselves the ordinary instincts, passions, and curiosities of human nature. If I can awake an interestin the career of even a single ancient Irish king, I shall establish atrain of thoughts, which will advance easily from thence to the stateof society in which he lived, and the kings and heroes who surrounded, preceded, or followed him. Attention and interest once fully aroused, concerning even one feature of this landscape of ancient history, couldbe easily widened and extended in its scope. 

Now, if nothing remained of early Irish history save the dry _fasti_ ofthe chronicles and the Brehon laws, this would, I think, be a perfectlylegitimate object of ambition, and would be consonant with my idealof what the perfect flower of historical literature should be, toilluminate a tale embodying the former by hues derived from the SenchusMor. 

But in Irish literature there has been preserved, along with the _fasti_and the laws, this immense mass of ancient ballad, tale, and epic, whoseorigin is lost in the mists of extreme antiquity, and in which have beenpreserved the characters, relationships, adventures, and achievements ofthe vast majority of the personages whose names, in a gaunt nakedness, fill the books of the chroniclers. Around each of the greater heroesthere groups itself a mass of bardic literature, varying in toneand statement, but preserving a substantial unity as to the generalcharacter and the more important achievements of the hero, and also, a fact upon which their general historical accuracy may be based withconfidence, exhibiting a knowledge of that same prior and subsequenthistory recorded in the _fasti_. The literature which groupsitself around a hero exhibits not only an unity with itself, but anacquaintance with the general course of the history of the country, andwith preceding and succeeding kings. 

The students of Irish literature do not require to be told this; forthose who are not, I would give a single instance as an illustration. 

In the battle of Gabra, fought in the third century, and in which Oscar, perhaps the greatest of all the Irish heroes heading the Fianna Eireen, contended against Cairbry of the Liffey, King of Ireland, and histroops, Cairbry on his side announces to his warriors that he wouldrather perish in this battle than suffer one of the Fianna to survive;but while he spoke--

 "Barran suddenly exclaimed-- 'Remember Mall Mucreema, remember Art. 

 "'Our ancestors fell there By force of the treachery of the Fians; Remember the hard tributes, Remember the extraordinary pride. '"

Here the poet, singing only of the events of the battle of Gabra, showsthat he was well-acquainted with all the relations subsisting for a longtime between the Fians and the Royal family. The battle of Mucreemawas fought by Cairbry's grandfather, Art, against Lewy Mac Conn and theFianna Eireen. 

Again, in the tale of the battle of Moy Leana, in which Conn ofthe Hundred Battles, the father of this same Art, is the principalcharacter, the author of the tale mentions many times circumstancesrelating to his father, Felimy Rectmar, and his grandfather, TuhallTectmar. Such is the whole of the Irish literature, not vague, nebulous, and shifting, but following the course of the _fasti_, and regulated anddetermined by them. This argument has been used by Mr. Gladstonewith great confidence, in order to show the substantial historicaltruthfulness of the Iliad, and that it is in fact a portion of acontinuous historic sequence. 

Now this being admitted, that the course of Irish history, as laid downby the chroniclers, was familiar to the authors of the tales and heroicballads, one of two things must be admitted, either that the events andkings did succeed one another in the order mentioned by the chroniclers, or that what the chroniclers laid down was then taken as the theme ofsong by the bards, and illuminated and adorned according to their wont. 

The second of these suppositions is one which I think few will adopt. Can we believe it possible that the bards, who actually supportedthemselves by the amount of pleasure which they gave their audiences, would have forsaken those subjects which were already popular, and thosekings and heroes whose splendour and achievements must have affected, profoundly, the popular imagination, in order to invent stories toilluminate fabricated names. The thing is quite impossible. A practicewhich we can trace to the edge of that period whose historical charactermay be proved to demonstration, we may conclude to have extended oninto the period immediately preceding that. When bards illuminated withstories and marvellous circumstances the battle of Clontarf and thebattle of Moyrath, we may believe their predecessors to have done thesame for the earlier centuries. The absence of an imaginative literatureother than historical shows also that the literature must have followed, regularly, the course of the history, and was not an archaeologicalattempt to create an interest in names and events which were foundin the chronicles. It is, therefore, a reasonable conclusion that thebardic literature, where it reveals a clear sequence in the order ofevents, and where there is no antecedent improbability, supplies atrustworthy guide to the general course of our history. 

So far as the clear light of history reaches, so far may these tales beproved to be historical. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose thatthe same consonance between them and the actual course of events whichsubsisted during the period which lies in clear light, marked also thatother preceding period of which the light is no longer dry. 

The earliest manuscript of these tales is the Leabhar [Note: Leabar naHeera. ] na Huidhré, a work of the eleventh century, so that we mayfeel sure that we have them in a condition unimpaired by the revival oflearning, or any archaeological restoration or improvement. Now, of someof these there have been preserved copies in other later MSS. , whichdiffer very little from the copies preserved in the Leabhar na Huidhré, from which we may conclude that these tales had arrived at a fixedstate, and a point at which it was considered wrong to interfere withthe text. 

The feast of Bricrind is one of the tales preserved in this manuscript. The author of the tale in its present form, whenever he lived, composedit, having before him original books which he collated, using hisjudgment at times upon the materials to his hand. At one stage heobserves that the books are at variance on a certain point, namely, thatat which Cuculain, Conal the Victorious, and Laery Buada go to the lakeof Uath in order to be judged by him. Some of the books, accordingto the author, stated that on this occasion the two latter behavedunfairly, but he agreed with those books which did not state this. 

We have, therefore, a tale penned in the eleventh century, composed atsome time prior to this, and itself collected, not from oral tradition, but from books. These considerations would, therefore, render itextremely probable that the tales of the Ultonian period, with which theLeabhar na Huidhré is principally concerned, were committed to writingat a very early period. 

To strengthen still further the general historic credibility of thesetales, and to show how close to the events and heroes described musthave been the bards who originally composed them, I would urge thefollowing considerations. 

With the advent of Christianity the mound-raising period passed away. The Irish heroic tales have their source in, and draw their interestfrom, the mounds and those laid in them. It would, therefore, beextremely improbable that the bards of the Christian period, when thedays of rath and cairn had departed, would modify, to any considerableextent, the literature produced in conditions of society which hadpassed away. 

Again, with the advent of Christianity, and the hold which the new faithtook upon the finest and boldest minds in the country, it is plain thatthe golden age of bardic composition ended. The loss to the bards wasdirect, by the withdrawal of so much intellect from their ranks, andindirect, by the general substitution of other ideas for those whoseministers they themselves were. It is, therefore, probable that the ageof production and creation, with regard to the ethnic history, ceasedabout the fifth and sixth centuries, and that, about that time, menbegan to gather up into a collected form the floating literatureconnected with the pagan period. The general current of mediaevalopinion attributes the collection of tales and ballads now known as theTân-Bo-Cooalney to St. Ciaran, the great founder of the monastery ofClonmacnoise. 

But if this be the case, we are enabled to take another step in thehistory of this most valuable literature. The tales of the Leabhar naHuidhré are in prose, but prose whose source and original is poetry. Theauthor, from time to time, as if quoting an authority, breaks out withverse; and I think there is no Irish tale in existence without theserudimentary traces of a prior metrical cycle. The style and languageare quite different, and indicate two distinct epochs. The prose tale isfounded upon a metrical original, and composed in the meretricious stylethen in fashion, while the old metrical excerpts are pure and simple. This is sufficient, in a country like Ireland in those primitive times, to necessitate a considerable step into the past, if we desire to get atthe originals upon which the prose tales were founded. 

For in ancient Ireland the conservatism of the people was very great. Itis the case in all primitive societies. Individual, initiative, personal enterprise are content to work within a very small sphere. Inagriculture, laws, customs, and modes of literary composition, primitiveand simple societies are very adverse to change. 

When we see how closely the Christian compilers followed the earlyauthorities, we can well believe that in the ethnic times no mind wouldhave been sufficiently daring or sacrilegious to alter or pervert thoseepics which were in their eyes at the same time true and sacred. 

In the perusal of the Irish literature, we see that the strength ofthis conservative instinct has been of the greatest service in thepreservation of the early monuments in their purity. So much is this thecase, that in many tales the most flagrant contradictions appear, theauthor or scribe being unwilling to depart at all from that which hefound handed down. For instance, in the "Great Breach of Murthemney, "we find Laeg at one moment killed, and in the next riding blackShanglan off the field. From this conservatism and careful following ofauthority, and the _littera scripta_, or word once spoken, I concludethat the distance in time between the prose tale and the metricaloriginals was very great, and, unless under such exceptionalcircumstances as the revolution caused by the introduction ofChristianity, could not have been brought about within hundreds ofyears. Moreover, this same conservatism would have caused the talesconcerning heroes to grow very slowly once they were actually formed. All the noteworthy events of the hero's life and his characteristicsmust have formed the original of the tales concerning him, which wouldhave been composed during his life, or not long after his death. 

I have not met a single tale, whether in verse or prose, in which it isnot clearly seen that the author was not following authorities beforehim. Such traces of invention or decoration as may be met with are notsuffered to interfere with the conduct of the tale and the statement offacts. They fill empty niches and adorn vacant places. For instance, if a king is represented as crossing the sea, we find that the causesleading to this, the place whence he set out, his companions, &c. , arederived from the authorities, but the bard, at the same time, permitshimself to give what seems to him to be an eloquent or beautifuldescription of the sea, and the appearance presented by the many-oaredgalleys. And yet the last transcription or recension of the majority ofthe tales was effected in Christian times, and in an age characterisedby considerable classical attainments--a time when the imagination mighthave been expected to shake itself loose from old restraints, and freelyinvent. _A fortiori_, the more ancient bards, those of the ruder ethnictimes, would have clung still closer to authority, deriving all theirimaginative representations from preceding minstrels. There was noconscious invention at any time. Each cycle and tale grew from historicroots, and was developed from actual fact. So much may indeed be saidfor the more ancient tales, but the Ultonian cycle deals with eventswell within the historic period. 

The era of Concobar Mac Nessa and the Red Branch knights of Ulster waslong subsequent to the floruerunt of the Irish gods and their Titan-likeopponents of this latter period, the names alone can be fairly held tobe historic. What swells out the Irish chronicles to such portentousdimensions is the history of the gods and giants rationalised bymediaeval historians. Unable to ignore or excide what filled so much ofthe imagination of the country, and unable, as Christians, to believein the divinity of the Tuátha De Danan and their predecessors, theyrationalised all the pre-Milesian record. But the disappearance of thegods does not yet bring us within the penumbra of history. After thedeath of the sons of Milesius we find a long roll of kings. These wereall topical heroes, founders of nations, and believed, by the tribes andtribal confederacies which they founded, to have been in their daythe chief kings of Ireland. The point fixed upon by the accurate andsceptical Tiherna as the starting-point of trustworthy Irish history, was one long subsequent to the floruerunt of the gods; and the age ofConcobar Mac Nessa and his knights was more than two centuries laterthan that of Kimbay and the foundation of Emain Macha. The floruit ofCuculain, therefore, falls completely within the historical penumbra, and the more carefully the enormous, and in the main mutually consistentand self-supporting, historical remains dealing with this period arestudied, the more will this be believed. The minuteness, accuracy, extent, and verisimilitude of the literature, chronicles, pedigrees, &c. , relating to this period, will cause the student to wonder more andmore as he examines and collates, seeing the marvellous self-consistencyand consentaneity of such a mass of varied recorded matter. The age, indeed, breathes sublimity, and abounds with the marvellous, theromantic, and the grotesque. But as I have already stated, the presenceor absence of these qualities has no crucial significance. Love andreverence and the poetic imagination always effect such changes inthe object of their passion. They are the essential condition of thetransference of the real into the world of art. AEval, of Carriglea, thefairy queen of Munster, is one of the most important characters in thehistory of the battle of Clontarf, the character of which, and of theevents that preceded and followed its occurrence, and the chieftains andwarriors who fought on one side and the other, are identical, whetherdescribed by the bard singing, or by the monkish chronicler jotting downin plain prose the fasti for the year. The reader of these volumes canmake such deductions as he pleases, on this account, from the bardichistory of the Red Branch, and clip the wings of the tale, so that itmay with him travel pedestrian. I know there are others, like myself, who will not hesitate for once to let the fancy roam and luxuriate inthe larger spaces and freer airs of ancient song, nor fear that theirsanity will be imperilled by the shouting of semi-divine heroes, and thesight of Cuculain entering battles with the Tuátha De Danan around him. 

I hope on some future occasion to examine more minutely the characterand place in literature of the Irish bardic remains, and put forwardhere these general considerations, from which the reader may presumethat the Ultonian cycle, dealing as it does with Cuculain and hiscontemporaries, is in the main true to the facts of the time, and thathis history, and that of the other heroes who figure in these volumes, is, on the whole, and omitting the marvellous, sufficiently reliable. I would ask the reader, who may be inclined to think that the principalcharacter is too chivalrous and refined for the age, to peruse forhimself the tale named the "Great Breach of Murthemney. " He will there, and in many other tales and poems besides, see that the noble andpathetic interest which attaches to his character is substantially thesame as I have represented in these volumes. But unless the studenthas read the whole of the Ultonian cycle, he should be cautious incondemning a departure in my work from any particular version of anevent which he may have himself met. Of many minor events there are morethan one version, and many scenes and assertions which he may thinkof importance would yet, by being related, cause inconsistency andcontradiction. Of the nature of the work in which all should beintroduced I have already given my opinion. 

For the rest, I have related one or two great events in the life ofCuculain in such a way as to give a description as clear and correct aspossible of his own character and history as related by the bards, ofthose celebrated men and women who were his contemporaries and of hisrelations with them, of the gods and supernatural powers in whom thepeople then believed, and of the state of civilisation which thenprevailed. If I have done my task well, the reader will have beensupplied, without any intensity of application on his part--a conditionof the public mind upon which no historian of this country shouldcount--with some knowledge of ancient Irish history, and with aninterest in the subject which may lead him to peruse for himself thatancient literature, and to read works of a more strictly scientificnature upon the subject than those which I have yet written. But untilsuch an interest is aroused, it is useless to swell the mass of valuablecritical matter, which everyone at present is very well content to leaveunread. 

In the first volume, however, I have committed this error, that I didnot permit it to be seen with sufficient clearness that the charactersand chief events of the tale are absolutely historic; and that muchof the colouring, inasmuch as its source must have been the centuriesimmediately succeeding the floruerunt of those characters, is alsoreliable as history, while the remainder is true to the times and thestate of society which then obtained. The story seems to progress toomuch in the air, too little in time and space, and seems to be moreof the nature of legend and romance than of actual historic fact seenthrough an imaginative medium. Such is the history of Concobar Mac Nessaand his knights--historic fact seen through the eyes of a loving wonder. 

Indeed, I must confess that the blaze of bardic light which illuminatesthose centuries at first so dazzled the eye and disturbed the judgment, that I saw only the literature, only the epic and dramatic interest, anddid not see as I should the distinctly historical character of the agearound which that literature revolves, wrongly deeming that a literatureso noble, and dealing with events so remote, must have originatedmainly or altogether in the imagination. All the borders of the epicrepresentation at which, in the first volume, I have aimed, seem tomelt, and wander away vaguely on every side into space and time. I havenow taken care to remedy that defect, supplying to the unset picture theclear historical frame to which it is entitled. I will also request thereader, when the two volumes may diverge in tone or statement, toattach greater importance to the second, as the result of wider and morecareful reading and more matured reflection. 

A great English poet, himself a severe student, pronounced the earlyhistory of his own country to be a mere scuffling of kites and crows, asindeed are all wars which lack the sacred bard, and the sacred bard isabsent where the kites and crows pick out his eyes. That the Irish kingsand heroes should succeed one another, surrounded by a blaze of bardiclight, in which both themselves and all those who were contemporaneouswith them are seen clearly and distinctly, was natural in a countrywhere in each little realm or sub-kingdom the ard-ollav was equal indignity to the king, which is proved by the equivalence of their cries. The dawn of English history is in the seventh century--a late dawn, darkand sombre, without a ray of cheerful sunshine; that of Ireland datesreliably from a point before the commencement of the Christian eraluminous with that light which never was on sea or land--throngedwith heroic forms of men and women--terrible with the presence of thesupernatural and its over-arching power. 

Educated Irishmen are ignorant of, and indifferent to, their history;yet from the hold of that history they cannot shake themselves free. Itstill haunts the imagination, like Mordecai at Haman's gate, a causeof continual annoyance and vexation. An Irishman can no more releasehimself from his history than he can absolve himself from social anddomestic duties. He may outrage it, but he cannot placidly ignore. Hence the uneasy, impatient feeling with which the subject is generallyregarded. 

I think that I do not exaggerate when I say that the majority ofeducated Irishmen would feel grateful to the man who informed them thatthe history of their country was valueless and unworthy of study, thatthe pre-Christian history was a myth, the post-Christian mere annals, the mediaeval a scuffling of kites and crows, and the modern alonedeserving of some slight consideration. That writer will be in Irelandmost praised who sets latest the commencement of our history. Withoutstudy he will be pronounced sober and rational before the critic opensthe book. So anxious is the Irish mind to see that effaced which it isconscious of having neglected. 

There are two compositions which affect an interest comparable to thatwhich Ireland claims for her bardic literature, One is the Ossian ofMacPherson, the other the Nibelungen Lied. 

If we are to suppose Macpherson faithfully to have written down, printed, and published the floating disconnected poems which he foundlingering in the Scotch highlands, how small, comparatively, would betheir value as indications of antique thought and feeling, reduced thenfor the first time to writing, sixteen hundred years after the time ofOssian and his heroes, in a country not the home of those heroes, anddestitute of the regular bardic organisation. The Ossianic tales andpoems still told and sung by the Irish peasantry at the present day inthe country of Ossian and Oscar, would be, if collected even now, quiteas valuable, if not more so. Truer to the antique these latter are, for in them the cycles are not blended. The Red Branch heroes are notconfused with Ossian's Fianna. 

But MacPherson's Ossian is not a translation. In the publications of theIrish Ossianic poetry we see what that poetry really was--rude, homely, plain-spoken, leagues removed from the nebulous sublimity of MacPherson. 

With regard to the other, the Germans, who naturally desire to referits composition to as remote a date as possible, and who arguing fromno scientific data, but only style, ascribe the authorship of theNibelungen to a poet living in the latter part of the twelfth century. Be it remembered, that the poem does not purport to be a collection ofthe scattered fragments of a cycle, but an original composition, thenactually imagined and written. It does not even purport to deal with theethnic times. _Its heroes are Christian heroes. They attend Mass. _ Thepoem is not true, even to the leading features of the late period ofhistory in which it is placed, if it have any habitat in the world ofhistory at all. Attila, who died A. D. 450, and Theodoric, who did notdie until the succeeding century, meet as coevals. 

Turn we now from the sole boast of Germany to one out of a hundred inthe Irish bardic literature. The Tân-bo-Cooalney was transcribed intothe Leabhar na Huidhré in the eleventh century a manuscript whose datehas been established by the consentaneity of Irish, French, and Germanscholarship. Mark, it was transcribed, not composed. The scribe recordsthe fact:--

 "Ego qui scripsi hanc historian aut vero fabulam, quibusdam fidem in hac historiâ aut fabulâ non commodo. "

The Tân-bo-Cooalney was therefore _transcribed_ by an ancient penman tothe parchment of a still existing manuscript, in the century beforethat in which the German epic is presumed, from style only, and in theopinion of Germans, to have been _composed_. 

The same scribe adds this comment with regard to its contents:--

 "Qaedam autem poetica figmenta, quaedam ad delectationem stultorum. "

Such scorn could not have been felt by one living in an age of bardicproduction. That independence and originality of thought, which causedMilton to despise the poets of the Restoration, are impossible inthe simple stages of civilisation. The scribe who appended this veryinteresting comment to the subject of his own handiwork must have beenremoved by centuries from the date of its compilation. That the talewas, in his time, an ancient one, is therefore rendered extremelyprobable, the scribe himself indicating how completely out of sympathyhe is with this form of literature, its antiquity and peculiararchaeological interest being, doubtless, the cause of thetranscription. 

Again, a close study of its contents, as of the contents of all theIrish historic tales, proves that in its present form, wheneverthat form was superadded, it is but a representation in prose of apre-existing metrical original. Under this head I have already made someremarks, which, I shall request the reader to re-peruse [Note: Pages 23to 27]

Once more, it deals with a particular event in Irish history, and withdistinct and definite kings, heroes, and bards, who flourished inthe epoch of which it treats. In the synchronisms of Tiherna, in themetrical chronology of Flann, in all the various historical compositionsproduced in various parts of the country, the main features and leadingcharacters of the Tân-bo-Cooalney suffer no material change, while theminor divergencies show that the chronology of the annals and annalisticpoems were not drawn from the tale, but owe their origin to othersources. Moreover, this epic is but a portion of the great Ultonian orRed Branch cycle, all the parts of which pre-suppose and support oneanother; and that cycle is itself a portion of the history of Ireland, and pre-supposes other preceding and succeeding cyles, preceding andsucceeding kings. The event of which this epic treats occurred at thetime of the Incarnation, and its characters are the leading Irish kingsand warriors of that date. Such is the Tân-bo-Cooalney. 

This being so, how have the English literary classes recognised, orhow treated, our claim to the possession of an antique literature ofpeculiar historical interest, and by reason of that antiquity, a matterof concern to all Aryan nations? The conquest has not more constitutedthe English Parliament guardian and trustee of Ireland, for purposes oflegislation and government, than it has vested the welfare and fameof our literature and antiquities in the hands of English scholarship. London is the headquarters of the intellectualism and of the literaryand historical culture of the Empire. It is the sole dispenser of fame. It alone influences the mind of the country and guides thought andsentiment. It can make and mar reputations. What it scorns or ignores, the world, too, ignores and scorns. How then has the native literatureof Ireland been treated by the representatives of English scholarshipand literary culture? Mr. Carlyle is the first man of letters of theday, his the highest name as a critic upon, and historian of, thepast life of Europe. Let us hear him upon this subject, admittedly ofEuropean importance. 

Miscellaneous Essays, Vol. III. , page 136. "Not only as the oldestTradition of Modern Europe does it--the Nibelungen--possess a highantiquarian interest, but farther, and even in the shape we now seeit under, unless the epics of the son of Fingal had some sort ofauthenticity, it is our oldest poem also. "

Poor Ireland, with her hundred ancient epics, standing at the door ofthe temple of fame, or, indeed, quite behind the vestibule out of theway! To see the Swabian enter in, crowned, to a flourish of somewhatbarbarous music, was indeed bad enough, but Mr. MacPherson!

They manage these things rather better in France, _vide passim_ "LaRévue Celtique. "

Of the literary value of the bardic literature I fear to write at all, lest I should not know how to make an end. Rude indeed it is, butgreat. Like the central chamber of that huge tumulus [Note: New Grangeanciently Cnobgha, and now also Knowth. ] on the Boyne, overarched withmassive unhewn rocks, its very ruggedness strikes an awe which theorderly arrangement of smaller and more reasonable thoughts, cut smoothby instruments inherited from classic times, fails so often to inspire. The labour of the Attic chisel may be seen since its invention in everyother literary workshop of Europe, and seen in every other laboratory ofthought the transmitted divine fire of the Hebrew. The bardic literatureof Erin stands alone, as distinctively and genuinely Irish as the raceitself, or the natural aspects of the island. Rude indeed it is, butlike the hills which its authors tenanted with gods, holding dells[Note: Those sacred hills will generally be found to have thischaracter. ] of the most perfect beauty, springs of the most touchingpathos. On page 33, Vol. I. , will be seen a poem [Note: Publicationsof Ossianic Society, page 303, Vol. IV. ] by Fionn upon the spring-time, made, as the old unknown historian says, to prove his poetic powers--apoem whose antique language relegates it to a period long prior to thetales of the Leabhar na Huidhré, one which, if we were to meet sideby side with the "Ode to Night, " by Alcman, in the Greek anthology, wewould not be surprised; or those lines on page 203, Vol. I. , the song ofCuculain, forsaken by his people, watching the frontier of his country--

 "Alone in defence of the Ultonians, Solitary keeping ward over the province"

or the death [Note: Publications of Ossianic Society, Vol. I. ] of Oscar, on pages 34 and 35, Vol. I. , an excerpt condensed from the Battle ofGabra. Innumerable such tender and thrilling passages. 

To all great nations their history presents itself under the aspectof poetry; a drama exciting pity and terror; an epic with unbrokencontinuity, and a wide range of thought, when the intellect is satisfiedwith coherence and unity, and the imagination by extent and diversity. Such is the bardic history of Ireland, but with this literary defect. Aperfect epic is only possible when the critical spirit begins to bein the ascendant, for with the critical spirit comes that distrust andapathy towards the spontaneous literature of early times, which permitsome great poet so to shape and alter the old materials as to constructa harmonious and internally consistent tale, observing throughout asense of proportion and a due relation of the parts. Such a clippingand alteration of the authorities would have seemed sacrilege to earlierbards. In mediaeval Ireland there was, indeed, a subtle spirit ofcriticism; but under its influence, being as it was of scholasticorigin, no great singing men appeared, re-fashioning the old rude epics;and yet, the very shortcomings of the Irish tales, from a literary pointof view, increase their importance from a historical. Of poetry, asdistinguised from metrical composition, these ancient bards knew little. The bardic literature, profoundly poetic though it be, in the eyes ofour ancestors was history, and never was anything else. As history itwas originally composed, and as history bound in the chains of metre, that it might not be lost or dissipated passing through the mindsof men, and as history it was translated into prose and committedto parchment. Accordingly, no tale is without its defects as poetry, possessing therefore necessarily, a corresponding value as history. But that there was in the country, in very early times, a high and rarepoetic culture of the lyric kind, native in its character, ethnic inorigin, unaffected by scholastic culture which, as we know, took adifferent direction; that one exquisite poem, in which the fatherof Ossian praises the beauty of the springtime in anapaestic [Note:Cettemain | cain ree! | ro sair | an cuct | "He, Fionn MacCool, learnedthe three compositions which distinguish the poets, the TEINM LAEGHA, the IMUS OF OSNA, and the DICEDUE DICCENAIB, and it was then Fionncomposed this poem to prove his poetry. " In which of these three formsof metre the Ode to the spring-time is written I know not. Its formthroughout is distinctly anapaestic. --S. O'G. ] verse, would, even thoughit stood alone, both by the fact of its composition and the fact of itspreservation, fully prove. 

Much and careful study, indeed, it requires, if we would compel theseancient epics to yield up their greatness or their beauty, or even theirlogical coherence and imaginative unity--broken, scattered portions asthey all are of that one enormous epic, the bardic history of Ireland. At the best we read without the key. The magic of the names is gone, or can only be partially recovered by the most tender and sympatheticstudy. Indeed, without reading all or many, we will not understandthe superficial meaning of even one. For instance, in one of the manyhistories of Cuculain's many battles, we read this--

"It was said that Lu Mac AEthleen was assisting him. "

This at first seems meaningless, the bard seeing no necessity forthrowing further light on the subject; but, as we wander through thebardic literature, gradually the conception of this Lu grows upon themind--the destroyer of the sons of Turann--the implacably filial--theexpulsor of the Fomoroh--the source of all the sciences--the god of theTuátha De Danan--the protector and guardian of Cuculain--Lu Lamfáda, son of Cian, son of Diancéct, son of Esric, son of Dela, son of Ned thewar-god, whose tomb or temple, Aula Neid, may still be seen beside theFoyle. This enormous and seemingly chaotic mass of literature is foundat all times to possess an inner harmony, a consistency and logicalunity, to be apprehended only by careful study. 

So read, the sublimity strikes through the rude representation. Astonished at himself, the student, who at first thinks that he haschanced upon a crowd of barbarians, ere long finds himself in the augustpresence of demi-gods and heroes. 

A noble moral tone pervades the whole. Courage, affection, and truth arenative to all who live in this world. Under the dramatic image ofOssian wrangling with the Talkend, [Note: St. Patrick, on account ofthe tonsured crown. ] the bards, themselves vainly fighting against theChristian life, a hundred times repeat through the lips of Ossian like arefrain--

 "We, the Fianna of Erin, never uttered falsehood, Lying was never attributed to us; By courage and the strength of our hands We used to come out of every difficulty. "

Again: Fergus, the bard, inciting Oscar to his last battle--in that poemcalled the Rosc Catha of Oscar:--

 "Place thy hand on thy gentle forehead Oscar, who never lied. "[Note: Publications of Ossianic Society, p. 159; vol. I. ]

And again, elsewhere in the Ossianic poetry:--

 "Oscar, who never wronged bard or woman. "

Strange to say, too, they inculcated chastity (see p. 257; vol. I. ), anallusion taken from the "youthful adventures of Cuculain, " Leabhar naHuidhré. 

The following ancient rann contains the four qualifications of a bard:--

 "Purity of hand, bright, without wounding, Purity of mouth, without poisonous satire, Purity of learning, without reproach, Purity, as a husband, in wedlock. "

Moreover, through all this literature sounds a high clear note ofchivalry, in this contrasting favourably with the Iliad, where no manforegoes an advantage. Cuculain having slain the sons of Neara, "thoughtit unworthy of him to take possession of their chariot and horses. "[Note: P. 155; vol. I. ] Goll Mac Morna, in the Fenian or Ossianic cycle, declares to Conn Cedcathah [Note: Conn of the hundred battles. ] thatfrom his youth up he never attacked an enemy by night or under anydisadvantage, and many times we read of heroes preferring to die ratherthan outrage their geisa. [Note: Certain vows taken with their arms onbeing knighted. ]

A noble literature indeed it is, having too this strange interest, that though mainly characterised by a great plainness and simplicity ofthought, and, in the earlier stages, of expression, we feel, oftentimes, a sudden weirdness, a strange glamour shoots across the poem when thetale seems to open for a moment into mysterious depths, druidic secretsveiled by time, unsunned caves of thought, indicating a still deeperrange of feeling, a still lower and wider reach of imagination. A youthcame once to the Fianna Eireen encamped at Locha Lein [Note: The Lakesof Killarney. ], leading a hound dazzling white, like snow. It was thesame, the bard simply states, that was once a yew tree, flourishingfifty summers in the woods of Ioroway. Elsewhere, he is said to havebeen more terrible than the sun upon his flaming wheels. What meant thisyew tree and the hound? Stray allusions I have met, but no history. The spirit of Coelté, visiting one far removed in time from the greatcaptain of the Fianna, with a different name and different history, cries:--

 "I was with thee, with Finn"--

giving no explanation. 

To MacPherson, however, I will do this justice, that he had the meritto perceive, even in the debased and floating ballads of the highlands, traces of some past greatness and sublimity of thought, and tounderstand, he, for the first time, how much more they meant than whatmet the ear. But he saw, too, that the historical origin of the ballads, and the position in time and place of the heroes whom they praised, hadbeen lost in that colony removed since the time of St. Columba from itsold connection with the mother country. Thus released from the curb ofhistory, he gave free rein to the imagination, and in the conventionalliterary language of sublimity, gave full expression to the feelingsthat arose within him, as to him, pondering over those ballads, theirgigantesque element developed into a greatness and solemnity, and theirvagueness and indeterminateness into that misty immensity and weirdobscurity which, as constituent factors in a poem, not as back-ground, form one of the elements of the false sublime. Either not seeing theliterary necessity of definiteness, or having no such abundant andordered literature as we possess, upon which to draw for details, and being too conscientious to invent facts, however he might inventlanguage, he published his epics of Ossian--false indeed to theoriginal, but true to himself, and to the feelings excited by meditationupon them. This done, he had not sufficient courage to publish alsothe rude, homely, and often vulgar ballads--a step which, in that hardcritical age, would have been to expose himself and his country to swiftcontempt. The thought of the great lexicographer riding rough-shodover the poor mountain songs which he loved, and the fame which he hadalready acquired, deterred and dissuaded him, if he had ever any suchintention, until the opportunity was past. 

MacPherson feared English public opinion, and fearing lied. He declaredthat to be a translation which was original work, thus relegatinghimself for ever to a dubious renown, and depriving his country ofthe honest fame of having preserved through centuries, by mere oraltransmission, a portion, at least, of the antique Irish literature. Tothe magnanimity of his own heroes he could not attain:--

 "Oscar, Oscar, who feared not armies-- Oscar, who never lied. "

Of some such error as MacPherson's I have myself, with less excuse, beenguilty, in chapters xi. And xii. , Vol. I. , where I attempt to givesome conception of the character of the Ossianic cycle. The age and theheroes around whom that cycle revolves have, in the history of Ireland, a definite position in time; their battles, characters, severalachievements, relationships, and pedigrees; their Dûns, andtrysting-places, and tombs; their wives, musicians, and bards; theirtributes, and sufferings, and triumphs; their internecine and otherwars--are all fully and clearly described in the Ossianic cycle. Theystill remain demanding adequate treatment, when we arrive at the age ofConn [Note: See page 20. ], Art, and Cormac, kings of Tara in the secondand third centuries of the Christian era. All have been forgotten forthe sake of a vague representation of the more sublime aspects of thecycle, and the meretricious seductions of a form of composition easy towrite and easy to read, and to which the unwary or unwise often awardpraise to which it has no claim. 

On the other hand, chapter xi. Purports only to be a representation ofthe feelings excited by this literature, and for every assertion thereis authority in the cycle. Chapter xii. , however, is a translation fromthe original. Every idea which it contains, except one, has been takenfrom different parts of the Ossianic poems, and all together expressthegraver attitude of the mind of Ossian towards the new faith. That idea, occurring in a separate paragraph in the middle of the page, thoughprevalent as a sentiment throughout all the conversations of Ossian withSt. Patrick, has been, as it stands, taken from a meditation on life bySt. Columbanus, one of the early Irish Saints--a meditation which, for subtle thought, for musical resigned sadness, tender broodingreflection, and exquisite Latin, is one of the masterpieces of mediaevalcomposition. 

To the casual reader of the bardic literature the preservation of anordered historical sequence, amidst that riotous wealth of imaginativeenergy, may appear an impossibility. Can we believe that forestineluxuriance not to have overgrown all highways, that flood ofsuperabundant song not have submerged all landmarks? Be the cause whatit may, the fact remains that they did not. The landmarks of historystand clear and fixed, each in its own place unremoved; and through thatforest-growth the highways of history run on beneath over-arching, notinterfering, boughs. The age of the predominance of Ulster does notclash with the age of the predominance of Tara; the Temairian kings arenot mixed with the contemporary Fians. The chaos of the Nibelungen isnot found here, nor the confusion of the Scotch ballads blending all theages into one. 

It is not imaginative strength that produces confusion, but imaginativeweakness. The strong imagination which perceives definitely and realisesvividly will not tolerate that obscurity so dear to all those whoworship the eidola of the cave. Of each of these ages, the primaryimpressions were made in the bardic mind during the life-time of theheroes who gave to the epoch its character; and a strong impression madein such a mind could not have been easily dissipated or obscured. For itmust be remembered, that the bardic literature of Ireland was committedto the custody of guardians whose character we ought not to forget. Thebards were not the people, but a class. They were not so much a classas an organisation and fraternity acknowledging the authority of oneelected chief. They were not loose wanderers, but a power in the State, having duties and privileges. The ard-ollav ranked next to the king, andhis eric was kingly. Thus there was an educated body of public opinionentrusted with the preservation of the literature and history of thecountry, and capable of repressing the aberrations of individuals. 

But the question arises, Did they so repress such perversions of historyas their wandering undisciplined members might commit? Too much, ofcourse, must not reasonably be expected. It was an age of creativethought, and such thought is difficult to control; but that one of theprime objects and prime works of the bards, as an organisation, was topreserve a record of a certain class of historical facts is certain. Thesuccession of the kings and of the great princely families was one ofthese. The tribal system, with the necessity of affinity as a ground ofcitizenship, demanded such a preservation of pedigrees in every family, and particularly in the kingly houses. One of the chief objects of thetriennial feis of Tara was the revision of such records by the generalassembly of the bards, under the presidency of the Ard-Ollav of Ireland. In the more ancient times, such records were rhymed and alliterated, andcommitted to memory--a practice which, we may believe on the authorityof Caesar, treating of the Gauls, continued long after the introductionof letters. Even at those local assemblies also, which corresponded togreat central and national feis of Tara, the bards were accustomed tomeet for that purpose. In a poem [Note: O'Curry's Manners and Customs, Vol. I. , page 543. ], descriptive of the fair [Note: On the full meaningof this word "fair, " see Chap. Xiii. , Vol. I. ] of Garman, we see this--

 "Feasts with the great feasts of Temair, Fairs with the fairs of Emania, Annals there are verified. "

In the existing literature we see two great divisions. On the one handthe epical, a realm of the most riotous activity of thought; on theother, the annalistic and genealogical, bald and bare to the lastdegree, a mere skeleton. They represent the two great hemispheres ofthe bardic mind, the latter controlling the former. Hence the orderlysequence of the cyclic literature; hence the strong confining banksbetween which the torrent of song rolls down through those centuries inwhich the bardic imagination reached its height. The consentaneityof the annals and the literature furnishes a trustworthy guide to thegeneral course of history, until its guidance is barred by _a priori_considerations of a weightier nature, or by the statements of writers, having sources of information not open to us. For instance, thestream of Irish history must, for philosophical reasons, be no furthertraceable than to that point at which it issues from the enchanted landof the Tuátha De Danan. At the limit at which the gods appear, menand history must disappear; while on the other hand, the statement ofTiherna, that the foundation of Emain Alacha by Kimbay is the firstcertain date in Irish history, renders it undesirable to attach morehistorical reality of characters, adorning the ages prior to B. C. 299, than we could to such characters as Romulus in Roman, or Theseus inAthenian history. 

I desire here to record my complete and emphatic dissent from theopinions advanced by a writer in Hermathena on the subject of the Oghaminscriptions, and the introduction into this country of the art ofwriting. A cypher, i. E. , an alphabet derived from a pre-existingalphabet, the Ogham may or may not have been. I advance no opinion uponthat, but an invention of the Christian time it most assuredly was not. No sympathetic and careful student of the Irish bardic literature canpossibly come to such a conclusion. The bardic poems relating tothe heroes of the ethnic times are filled with allusions to Oghaminscriptions on stone, and contain some references to books of timber;but in my own reading I have not met with a single passage in thatliterature alluding to books of parchment and to rounded letters. 

If the Ogham was derived from the Roman characters introduced byChristian missionaries, then these characters would be the more ancient, and Ogham the more modern; books and Roman characters would be the morepoetical, and inscriptions on stone and timber in the Ogham charactersthe more prosaic. The bards relating the lives and deeds of the ancientheroes, would have ascribed to their times parchment books and the Romancharacters, not stone and wood, and the Ogham. 

In these compositions, whenever they were reduced to the form in whichwe find them to-day, the ethnic character of the times and the ethniccharacter of the heroes are clearly and universally observed. Theancient, the remote, the archaic clings to this literature. As Homerdoes not allude to writing, though all scholars agree that he lived ina lettered age, so the old bards do not allude to parchment andRoman characters, though the Irish epics, as distinguished from theircomponent parts, reached their fixed state and their final developmentin times subsequent to the introduction of Christianity. 

When and how a knowledge of letters reached this island we know not. From the analogy of Gaul, we may conclude that they were known for sometime prior to their use by the bards. Caesar tells us that the Gaulishbards and druids did not employ letters for the preservation of theirlore, but trusted to memory, assisted, doubtless, as in this country, bythe mechanical and musical aid of verse. Whether the Ogham was a nativealphabet or a derivative from another, it was at first employed only toa limited extent. Its chief use was to preserve the name of buried kingsand heroes in the stone that was set above their tombs. It was, perhaps, invented, and certainly became fashionable on this account, straightstrokes being more easily cut in stone than rounded or uncialcharacters. For the same reason it was generally employed by those whoinscribed timber tablets, which formed the primitive book, ere theydiscovered or learned how to use pen, ink, and parchment. The use ofOgham was partially practised in the Christian period for sepulturalpurposes, being venerable and sacred from time. Hence the discovery ofOgham-inscribed stones in Christian cemeteries. On the other hand, the fact that the majority of these stones are discovered in raths andforts, i. E. , the tombs of our Pagan ancestors, corroborates the factimplied in all the bardic literature, that the characters employed inthe ethnic times were Oghamic, and affords another proof of the closeconservative spirit of the bards in their transcription, compilation, orreformation of the old epics. 

The full force of the concurrent authority of the bardic literature tothe above effect can only be felt by one who has read that literaturewith care. He will find in all the epics no trace of original invention, but always a studied and conscientious following of authority. Thisbeing so, he will conclude that the universal ascription of Ogham, andOgham only, to the ethnic times, arises solely from the fact that suchwas the alphabet then employed. 

If letters were unknown in those times, the example of Homer shows howunlikely the later poets would have been to outrage so violently thewhole spirit of the heroic literature. If rounded letters were thenused, why the universal ascription of the late invented Ogham which, as we know from the cemeteries and other sources, was unpopular in theChristian age. 

Cryptic, too, it was not. The very passages quoted in Hermathena tosupport this opinion, so far from doing so prove actually the reverse. When Cuculain came down into Meath on his first [Note: Vol. I. , page155. ] foray, he found, on the lawn of the Dûn of the sons of Nectan, apillar stone with this inscription in Ogham--"Let no one pass without anoffer of a challenge of single combat. " The inscription was, of course, intended for all to read. Should there be any bardic passage in whichOgham inscriptions are alluded to as if an obscure form of writing, thenatural explanation is, that this kind of writing was passing or hadpassed into desuetude at the time that particular passage was composed;but I have never met with any such. The ancient bard, who, in theTân-bo-Cooalney, describes the slaughter of Cailitin and his sons byCuculain, states that there was an inscription to that effect, writtenin Ogham, upon the stone over their tomb, beginning thus--"Takenotice"--evidently intended for all to read. The tomb, by the way, was arath--again showing the ethnic character of the alphabet. 

In the Annals of the Four Masters, at the date 1499 B. C. , we read thesewords:--

"THE FLEET OF THE SONS OF MILITH CAME TO IRELAND TO TAKE IT FROM THETUÁTHA DE DANAN, " i. E. , the gods of the ethnic Irish. 

Without pausing to enquire into the reasonableness of the date, it willsuffice now to state that at this point the bardic history of Irelandcleaves asunder into two great divisions--the mythological or divine onthe one hand, and the historical or heroic-historical on the other. The first is an enchanted land--the world of the Tuátha De Danan--thecountry of the gods. There we see Mananan with his mountain-sunderingsword, the Fray-garta; there Lu Lamfada, the deliverer, pondering overhis mysteries; there Bove Derg and his fatal [Note: Every feast to whichhe came ended in blood. He was present at the death of Conairey Mor, Chap. Xxxiii. , Vol. I. ] swine-herd, Lir and his ill-starred children, Mac Mánar and his harp shedding death from its stricken wires, Angus Og, the beautiful, and he who was called the mighty father, Eochaidht [Note:Ay-o-chee, written Yeoha in Vol. I. ] Mac Elathan, a land populous withthose who had partaken of the feast of Goibneen, and whom, therefore, weapons could not slay, who had eaten [Note: In early Greek literaturethe province of history has been already separated from that of poetry. The ancient bardic lore and primaeval traditions were refined to suitthe new and sensitive poetic taste. No commentator has been able toexplain the nature of ambrosia. In the genuine bardic times, no suchvague euphuism would have been tolerated as that of Homer on thissubject. The nature of Olympian ambrosia would have been told inlanguage as clear as that in which Homer describes the preparation ofthat Pramnian bowl for which Nestor and Machaon waited while Hecamedewas grating over it the goat's milk cheese, or that in which the Irishbards described the ambrosia of the Tuátha De Danan, which, indeed, wasno more poetic and awe-inspiring than plain bacon prepared by Manananfrom his herd of enchanted pigs, living invisible like himself in theplains of Tir-na-n-Og, the land of the ever-young. On the other hand, there is a vagueness about the Feed Fia which would seem to indicate thegrowth of a more awe-stricken mood in describing things supernatural. The Faed Fia of the Greek gods has been refined by Homer into "muchdarkness, " which, from an artistic point of view, one can hardly helpimagining that Homer nodded as he wrote. ] at the the table of Mananan, and would never grow old, who had invented for themselves the Faed Fia, and might not be seen of the gross eyes of men; there steeds like Anvarrcrossing the wet sea like a firm plain; there ships whose rudder was thewill, and whose sails and oars the wish, of those they bore [Note: Cf. The barks of the Phoenicians in the Odyssey. ]; there hounds like thatone of Ioroway, and spears like fiery flying serpents. These are theTuátha De Danan [Note: A mystery still hangs over this three-formedname. The full expression, Tuátha De Danan, is that generally employed, less frequently Tuátha De, and sometimes, but not often, Tuátha. Tuáthaalso means people. In mediaeval times the name lost its sublime meaning, and came to mean merely "fairy, " no greater significance, indeed, attaching to the invisible people of the island after Christianity haddestroyed their godhood. ], fairy princes, Tuátha; gods, De; of Dana, Danan, otherwise Ana and the Moreega, or great queen; mater [Note:Cormac's Glossary] deorum Hibernensium--"well she used to cherish [Note:Scholiast noting same Glossary. ] the gods. " Limitless, this divinepopulation, dwelling in all the seas and estuaries, river and lakes, mountains and fairy dells, in that enchanted Erin which was theirs. 

But they have not started into existence suddenly, like the gods ofRome, nor is their genealogy confined to a single generation like thoseof Greece. Behind them extends a long line of ancestors, and a historyreaching into the remotest depths of the past. As the Greek godsdethroned the Titans, so the Irish gods drove out or subjected thegiants of the Fir-bolgs; but in the Irish mythology, we find both godsand giants descended from other ancient races of deities, called theClanna Nemedh and the Fomoroh, and these a branch of a divine cycle; yetmore ancient the race of Partholan, while Partholan himself is not theeldest. 

The history of the Italian gods is completely lost. For all that theearly Roman literature tells us of their origin, they may have beeneither self-created or eternal. Rome was a seedling shaken from someold perished civilisation. The Romans created their own empire, but theyinherited their gods. They supply no example of an Aryan nation evolvingits own mythology and religion. Regal Rome, as we know from Niebuhr, wasnot the root from which our Rome sprang, but an old imperial city, fromwhose ashes sprang that Rome we all know so well. The mythology of theLatin writers came to them full-grown. 

The gods of Greece were a creation of the Greek mind, indeed; but oftheir ancestry, i. E. , of their development from more ancient divinetribes, we know little. Like Pallas, they all but start into existencesuddenly full-grown. Between the huge physical entities of the Greektheogonists and the Olympian gods, there intervenes but a singlegeneration. For this loss of the Grecian mythology, and thissubstitution of Nox and Chaos for the remote ancestors of the Olympians, we have to thank the early Greek philosophers, and the general diffusionof a rude scientific knowledge, imparting a physical complexion to themythological memory of the Greeks. 

In the theogony of the ancient inhabitants of this country, we have anexample of a slowly-growing, slowly-changing mythology, such as no othernation in the world can supply. The ancestry of the Irish gods is notbounded by a single generation or by twenty. The Tuátha De Danan of theancient Irish are the final outcome and last development of a mythologywhich we can see advancing step by step, one divine tribe pushing outanother, one family of gods swallowing up another, or perishing underthe hands of time and change, to make room for another. From AngusOg, the god of youth and love and beauty, whose fit home was the woodyslopes of the Boyne, where it winds around Rosnaree, we count fourteengenerations to Nemedh and four to Partholan, and Partholan is not theearliest. As the bards recorded with a zeal and minuteness, so far as Ican see, without parallel, the histories of the families to which theywere adscript, so also they recorded with equal patience and care thefar-extending pedigrees of those other families--invisible indeed, butto them more real and more awe-inspiring--who dwelt by the sacred lakesand rivers, and in the folds of the fairy hills, and the great raths andcairns reared for them by pious hands. 

The extent, diversity, and populousness of the Irish mythologicalcycles, the history of the Irish gods, and the gradual growth of thatmythology of which the Tuátha De Danan, i. E. , the gods of the historicperiod, were the final development, can only be rightly apprehended byone who reads the bardic literature as it deals with this subject. Thatliterature, however, so far from having been printed and published, hasnot even been translated, but still moulders in the public libraries ofEurope, those who, like myself, are not professed Irish scholars, beingobliged to collect their information piece-meal from quotations andallusions of those who have written upon the subject in the English orLatin language. For to read the originals aright needs many yearsof labour, the Irish tongue presenting at different epochs thecharacteristics of distinct languages, while the peculiarities ofancient caligraphy, in the defaced and illegible manuscripts, form ofthemselves quite a large department of study. Stated succinctly, themythological record of the bards, with its chronological decorations, runs thus:--

AGE OF KEASAIR. 

2379 B. C. The gods of the KEASAIRIAN cycle, Bith, Lara, and Fintann, and their wives, KEASAIR, Barran and Balba; their sacred places, CarnKeshra, Keasair's tomb or temple, on the banks of the Boyle, Ard Laranon the Wexford Coast, Fert Fintann on the shores of Lough Derg. 

About the same time Lot Luaimenich, Lot of the Lower Shannon, an ancientsylvan deity. 

AGE OF PARTHOLAN AND THE EARLIEST FOMORIAN GODS. 

2057 B. C. A new spiritual dynasty, of which PARTHOLAN was father andking. Though their worship was extended over Ireland, which is shown bythe many different places connected with their history, yet the hillof Tallaght, ten miles from Dublin, was where they were chiefly adored. Here to the present day are the mounds and barrows raised in honour ofthe deified heroes of this cycle, PARTHOLAN himself, his wife Delgna, his sons, Rury, Slaney, and Laighlinni, and among others, the father ofIrish hospitality, bearing the expressive name of Beer. Now first appearthe Fomoroh giant princes, under the leadership of curt Kical, son ofNiul, son of Garf, son of U-Mor--a divine cycle intervening betweenKEASAIR and PARTHOLAN, but not of sufficient importance to secure aseparate chapter and distinct place in the annals. Battles now betweenthe Clan Partholan and the Fomoroh, on the plain of Ith, beside theriver Finn, Co. Donegal, so called from Ith [Note: See Vol. I, p. 60], son of Brogan, the most ancient of the heroes, slain here by the TuáthaDe Danan, but more anciently known by some lost Fomorian name; also atIorrus Domnan, now Erris, Co. Mayo, where Kical and his Fomorians firstreached Ireland. These battles are a parable--objective representationsof a fact in the mental history of the ancient Irish--typifying theinvisible war waged between Partholanian and Fomorian deities for thespiritual sovereignty of the Gael. 

AGE OF THE NEMEDIAN GODS AND SECOND CYCLE OF THE FOMORIANS. 

1700 B. C. Age of the NEMEDIAN divinities, a later branch of thePARTHOLANIAN _vide post_ NEMEDIAN pedigree. NEMEDH, his wife Maca (firstappearance of Macha, the war goddess, who gave her name to Armagh, i. E. , Ard Macha, the Height of Macha), Iarbanel; Fergus, the Red-sided, andStarn, sons of Nemedh; Beothah, son of Iarbanel; Erglann, son of Beoan, son of Starn; Siméon Brac, son of Starn; Ibath, son of Beothach; BritanMael, son of Fergus. This must be remembered, that not one of thealmost countless names that figure in the Irish mythology is of fancifulorigin. They all represent antique heroes and heroines, their namesbeing preserved in connection with those monuments which were raised forpurposes of sepulture or cult. 

Wars now between the Clanna Nemedh and the second cycle of the Fomoroh, led this time by Faebar and More, sons of Dela, and Coning, son ofFaebar; battles at Ros Freachan, now Rosreahan, barony of Murresk, Co. Mayo, at Slieve Blahma [Note: Slieve Blahma, now Slieve Bloom, amountain range famous in our mythology; one of the peaks, Ard Erin, sacred to Eiré, a goddess of the Tuátha De Danan, who has given her nameto the island. The sites of all these mythological battles, where theyare not placed in the haunted mountains, will be found to be a placeof raths and cromlechs. ] and Murbolg, in Dalaradia (Murbolg, i. E. , thestronghold of the giants, ) also at Tor Coning, now Tory Island. 

FIRBOLGS AND THIRD CYCLE OF THE FOMOROH. 

1525 B. C. Age of the FIRBOLGS and third cycle of the Fomorians, oncegods, but expulsed from their sovereignty by the Tuátha De Danan, afterwhich they loom through the heroic literature as giants of the eldertime, overthrown by the gods. From the FIRBOLGS were descended, orclaimed to have descended, the Connaught warriors who fought with QueenMeave against Cuculain, also the Clan Humor, appearing in the SecondVolume, also the heroes of Ossian, the Fianna Eireen. Even in the timeof Keating, Irish families traced thither their pedigrees. The greatchiefs of the FIR-BOLGIC dynasty were the five sons of Dela, Gann, Genann, Sengann, Rury, and Slaney, with their wives Fuad, Edain, Anust, Cnucha, and Libra; also their last and most potent king, EOCAIDH MACERC, son of Ragnal, son of Genann, whose tomb or temple may be seento-day at Ballysadare, Co. Sligo, on the edge of the sea. 

The Fomorians of this age were ruled over by Baler Beimenna and his wifeKethlenn. Their grandson was Lu Lamáda, one of the noblest of the Irishgods. 

The last of the mythological cycles is that of the Tuátha De Danan, whose character, attributes, and history will, I hope, be renderedinteresting and intelligible in my account of Cuculain and the RedBranch of Ulster. 

Irish history has suffered from rationalism almost more than fromneglect and ignorance. The conjectures of the present century arefounded upon mediaeval attempts to reduce to verisimilitude andhistorical probability what was by its nature quite incapable of suchtreatment. The mythology of the Irish nation, being relieved of themarvellous and sublime, was set down with circumstantial dates as aportion of the country's history by the literary men of the middle ages. Unable to excide from the national narrative those mythological beingswho filled so great a place in the imagination of the times, and unable, as Christians, to describe them in their true character as gods, or, aspatriots, in the character which they believed them to possess, namely, demons, they rationalized the whole of the mythological period withnames, dates, and ordered generations, putting men for gods, flesh andblood for that invisible might, till the page bristled with names anddates, thus formulating, as annals, what was really the theogony andmythology of their country. The error of the mediaeval historians isshared by the not wiser moderns. In the generations of the gods we seemto see prehistoric racial divisions and large branches of the Aryanfamily, an error which results from a neglect of the bardic literature, and a consequently misdirected study of the annals. 

As history, the pre-Milesian record contains but a limited supply ofobjective truths; but as theogony, and the history of the Irish gods, these much abused chronicles are as true as the roll of the kings ofEngland. 

These divine nations, with their many successive generations anddynasties, constitute a single family; they are all inter-connected andspring from common sources, and where the literature permits us to seemore clearly, the earlier races exhibit a common character. Like a humanclan, the elements of this divine family grew and died, and shed forthseedlings which, in time, over-grew and killed the parent stock. Greatnames became obscure and passed away, and new ones grew and becamegreat. Gods, worshipped by the whole nation, declined and becametopical, and minor deities expanding, became national. Gods lost theirimmortality, and were remembered as giants of the old time--mighty men, which were of yore, men of renown. 

 "The gods which were of old time rest in their tombs, "

sang the Egyptians, consciously ascribing mortality even to gods. Such was Mac Ere, King of Fir-bolgs. His temple [Note: Strand nearBallysadare, Co. Sligo], beside the sea at Iorrus Domnan [Note:Keating--evidently quoting a bardic historian], became his tomb. Dailythe salt tide embraces the feet of the great tumulus, regal amongst itssmaller comrades, where the last king of Fir-bolgs was worshipped byhis people. "Good [Note: Temple--vide post. ] were the years of thesovereignty of Mac Ere. There was no wet or tempestuous weatherin Ireland, nor was there any unfruitful year. " Such were all thepredecessors of the children of Dana--gods which were of old times, that rest in their tombs; and the days, too, of the Tuátha De Danan werenumbered. They, too, smitten by a more celestial light, vanished fromtheir hills, like Ossian lamenting over his own heroes; those othersstill mightier, might say:--

 "Once every step which we took might be heard throughout the firmament. Now, all have gone, they have melted into the air. "

But that divine tree, though it had its branches in fairy-land, hadits roots in the soil of Erin. An unceasing translation of heroesinto Tir-na-n-og went on through time, the fairy-world of the bards, receiving every century new inhabitants, whose humbler human originbeing forgotten, were supplied there with both wives and children. Theapotheosis of great men went forward, tirelessly; the hero of one epochbecoming the god of the next, until the formation of the Tuátha DeDanan, who represent the gods of the historic ages. Had the advent ofexact genealogy been delayed, and the creative imagination of the bardssuffered to work on for a couple of centuries longer, unchecked by thehistorical conscience, Cuculain's human origin would, perhaps, have beenforgotten, and he would have been numbered amongst the Tuátha De Danan, probably, as the son of Lu Lamfáda and the Moreega, his patron deities. It was, indeed, a favourite fancy of the bards that not Sualtam, butLu Lamfáda himself, was his father; this, however, in a spiritual orsupernatural sense, for his age was far removed from that of the TuáthaDe Danan, and falling well within the scope of the historic period. Even as late as the time of Alexander, the Greeks could believe a greatcontemporary warrior to be of divine origin, and the son of Zeus. 

When the Irish bards began to elaborate a general history of theircountry, they naturally commenced with the enumeration of the eldergods. I at one time suspected that the long pedigrees running betweenthose several divisions of the mythological period were the invention ofmediaeval historians, anxious to spin out the national record, that itmight reach to Shinar and the dispersion. Not only, however, was suchfabrication completely foreign to the genius of the literature, but inthe fragments of those early divine cycles, we see that each of thesepersonages was at one time the centre of a literature, and holds adefinite place as regards those who went before and came after. These pedigrees, as I said before, have no historical meaning, beingpre-Milesian, and therefore absolutely prehistoric; but as the genealogyof the gods, and as representing the successive generations of thatinvisible family, whose history not one or ten bards, but the wholebardic and druidic organisation of the island, delighted to record, collate, and verify--those pedigrees are as reliable as that of any ofthe regal clans. They represent accurately the mythological panorama, asit unrolled itself slowly through the centuries before theimagination and spirit of our ancestors accurately that divinedrama, millennium--lasting, with its exits and entrances of gods. Millennium-lasting, and more so, for it is plain that one divinegeneration represents on the average a much greater space of time thana generation of mortal men. The former probably represents the periodwhich would elapse before a hero would become so divine, that is, soconsecrated in the imagination of the country, as to be received intothe family of the gods. Cuculain died in the era of the Incarnation, three hundred years, if not more, before the country even began to beChristianised, yet he is never spoken of as anything but a great hero, from which one of two things would follow, either that the apotheosis ofheroes needed the lapse of centuries, or that, during the first, second, third, and fourth centuries, the historical conscience was soenlightened, and a positive definite knowledge of the past so universal, that the translation of heroes into the divine clans could no longertake place. The latter is indeed the more correct view; but thereader will, I think, agree with me that the divine generations, takengenerally, represent more than the average space of man's life. To whatremote unimagined distances of time those earlier cycles extend has beenshown by an examination of the tombs of the lower Moy Tura. The ancientheroes there interred were those who, as Fir-bolgs, preceded the reignof the Tuáth De Danan, coming long after the Clanna Nemedh in the divinecycle, who were themselves preceded by the children of Partholan, whowere subsequent to the Queen Keasair. Such then being the position inthe divine cycle of the Fir-bolgs, an examination of the Firbolgicraths on Moy Tura has revealed only implements of stone, provingdemonstratively that the early divine cycles originated before thebronze age in Ireland, whenever that commenced. Those heroes who, asFir-bolgs, received divine honours, lived in the age of stone. So far isit from being the case, that the mythological record has been extendedand unduly stretched, to enable the monkish historians to connect theIrish pedigrees with those of the Mosaic record, that it has, I believe, been contracted for this purpose. 

The reader will be now prepared to peruse with some interest andunderstanding one or two of the mythological pedigrees. To these I haveat times appended the dates, as given in the chronicles, to show how theearly historians rationalised the pre-historic record. 

Angus Og, the Beautiful, represents the Greek Eros. He was surnamedOg, or young; Mac-an-Og, or the son of youth; Mac-an-Dagda, son of theDagda. He was represented with a harp, and attended by bright birds, his own transformed kisses, at whose singing love arose in the heartsof youths and maidens. To him and to his father the great tumulus of NewGrange, upon the Boyne, was sacred. 

 "I visited the Royal Brugh that stands By the dark-rolling waters of the Boyne, Where Angus Og magnificently dwells. "

He was the patron god of Diarmid, the Paris of Ossian's Fianna, andremoved him into Tir-na-n-Og, when he died, having been ripped by thetusks of the wild boar on the peaks of Slieve Gulban. 

Lu Lamfáda was the patron god of Cuculain. He was surnamed Ioldana, asthe source of the sciences, and represented the Greek Apollo. The latterwas argurgurotoxos [Transcriber's Note: Greek in the original], but Luwas a sling bearing god. Of Fomorian descent on the mother's side, he joined his father's people, the Tuátha De Danan, in the great waragainst the Fomoroh. He is principally celebrated for his oppression ofthe sons of Turann, in vengeance for the murder of his father. 

 ANGUS OG, (circa 1500 B. C. ) LU LAMFADA, (circa 1500 B. C. ) son of son of THE DAGDA, (Zeus) Cian, son of son of Elathan, Diancéct, (god the healer) son of son of Dela, Esric, son of son of Ned, Dela, son of son of Indaei, Ned, son of son of Indaei, son of ALLDAEI. 

Amongst other Irish gods was Bove Derg, who dwelt invisible in theGaltee mountains, and in the hills above Lough Derg. The transformedchildren alluded to in Vol. I. Were his grand-children. It was hisgoldsmith Len, who gave its ancient name to the Lakes of Killarney, Locha Lein. Here by the lake he worked, surrounded by rainbows andshowers of fiery dew. 

Mananan was the god of the sea, of winds and storms, and most skilledin magic lore. He was friendly to Cuculain, and was invoked by seafaringmen. He was called the Far Shee of the promontories. 

 BOVE DERG (circa 1500 B. C. ) MANANAN (circa 1500 B. C. ) son of son of Eocaidh Garf, Alloid, son of son of Duach Temen, Elathan, son of son of Bras, Dela, son of son of Dela, Ned, son of son of Ned, Indaei, son of son of Indaei, son of ALLDAEI. 

The Tuátha De Danan maybe counted literally by the hundred, each with adistinct history, and all descended from Alldaei. 

From Alldaei the pedigree runs back thus:--

 Alldaei son of Tath, son of Tabarn, son of Enna, son of Baath, son of Ebat, son of Betah, son of Iarbanel, son of NEMEDH (circa 1700 B. C. )

Nemedh, as I have said, forms one of the great epochs in themythological record. As will be seen, he and the earlier Partholan havea common source:--

 NEMEDH son of Sera, son of Pamp, son of Tath, PARTHOLAN (2000 B. C. ) son of son of Sera, son of Sru, son of Esru, son of Pramant. 

The connection between Keasair, the earliest of the Irish gods, andthe rest of the cycle, I have not discovered, but am confident of itsexistence. 

How this divine cycle can be expunged from the history of Ireland I amat a loss to see. The account which a nation renders of itself must, andalways does, stand at the head of every history. 

How different is this from the history and genealogy of the Greek godswhich runs thus:--

 The Olympian gods, Titans, Physical entities, Nox, Chaos, &c. 

The Greek gods, undoubtedly, had a long ancestry extending into thedepths of the past, but the sudden advent of civilisation broke upthe bardic system before the historians could become philosophical, orphilosophers interested in antiquities. 

But the Irish history corrects our view with regard to other mattersconnected with the gods of the Aryan nations of Europe also. 

All the nations of Europe lived at one time under the bardic and druidicsystem, and under that system imagined their gods and elaborated theirvarious theogonies, yet, in no country in Europe has a bardic literaturebeen preserved except in Ireland, for no thinking man can believe Homerto have been a product of that rude type of civilisation of which hesings. This being the case, modern philosophy, accounting for the originof the classical deities by guesses and _a priori_ reasonings, hasalmost universally adopted that explanation which I have, elsewhere, called Wordsworthian, and which derives them directly from theimagination personifying the aspects of nature. 

 "In that fair clime, the lonely herdsman, stretched On the soft grass through half a summer's day, With music lulled his indolent repose, And in some fit of weariness if he, When his own breath was silent, chanced to hear A distant strain far sweeter than the sounds Which his poor skill could make, his fancy fetched, Even from the blazing chariot of the sun, A beardless youth who touched a golden lute And filled the illumined groves with ravishment-- *** "Sunbeams upon distant hills, Gliding apace with shadows in their train, Might, with small help from fancy, be transformed Into fleet oreads, sporting visibly. "

This is pretty, but untrue. In all the ancient Irish literature we findthe connection of the gods, both those who survived into the historictimes, and those whom they had dethroned, with the raths and cairnsperpetually and almost universally insisted upon. The scene of thedestruction of the Firbolgs will be found to be a place of tombs, themetropolis of the Fomorians a place of tombs, and a place of tombs thesacred home of the Tuátha along the shores of the Boyne. Doubtless, theyare represented also as dwelling in the hills, lakes, and rivers, butstill the connection between the great raths and cairns and the godsis never really forgotten. When the floruit of a god has expired, heis assigned a tomb in one of the great tumuli. No one can peruse thisancient literature without seeing clearly the genesis of the Irish gods, _videlicet_ heroes, passing, through the imagination and through theregion of poetic representation, into the world of the supernatural. When a king died, his people raised his ferta, set up his stone, andengraved upon it, at least in later times, his name in ogham. Theycelebrated his death with funeral lamentations and funeral games, andlistened to the bards chanting his prowess, his liberality, and hisbeauty. In the case of great warriors, these games and lamentationsbecame periodical. It is distinctly recorded in many places, forinstance in connection with Taylti, who gave her name to Taylteen andGarman, who gave her name to Loch Garman, now Wexford, and with LuLamfáda, whose annual worship gave its name to the Kalends of August. Gradually, as his actual achievements became more remote, and theimagination of the bards, proportionately, more unrestrained, he wouldpass into the world of the supernatural. Even in the case of a heroso surrounded with historic light as Cuculain we find a halo, as ofgodhood, often settling around him. His gray warsteed had already passedinto the realm of mythical representation, as a second avatar of theLiath Macha, the grey war-horse of the war-goddess Macha. This could bebelieved, even in the days when the imagination was controlled by theannalists and tribal heralds. 

The gods of the Irish were their deified ancestors. They were not theoffspring of the poetic imagination, personifying the various aspects ofnature. Traces, indeed, we find of their influence over the operationsof nature, but they are, upon the whole, slight and unimportant. From nature they extract her secrets by their necromantic and magicallabours, but nature is as yet too great to be governed and impelled bythem. The Irish Apollo had not yet entered into the sun. 

Like every country upon which imperial Rome did not leave the impressof her genius, Ireland, in these ethnic times, attained only apartial unity. The chief king indeed presided at Tara, and enjoyed thereputation and emoluments flowing to him on that account, but, upon thewhole, no Irish king exercised more than a local sovereignty; they wereall reguli, petty kings, and their direct authority was small. Thisbeing the case, it would appear to me that in the more ancient timesthe death of a king would not be an event which would disturb a veryextensive district, and that, though his tomb might be considerable, itwould not be gigantic. 

Now on the banks of the Boyne, opposite Rosnaree, there stands atumulus, said to be the greatest in Europe. It covers acres of ground, being of proportionate height. The earth is confined by a compact stonewall about twelve feet high. The central chamber, made of huge irregularpebbles, is about twenty feet from ground to roof, communicating withthe outer air by a flagged passage. Immense pebbles, drawn from theCounty of Antrim, stand around it, each of which, even to move atall, would require the labour of many men, assisted with mechanicalappliances. It is, of course, impossible to make an accurate estimate ofthe expenditure of labour necessary for the construction of such a work, but it would seem to me to require thousands of men working for years. Can we imagine that a petty king of those times could, after hisdeath, when probably his successor had enough to do to sustain his newauthority, command such labour merely to provide for himself a tomb. Ifthis tomb were raised to the hero whose name it bears immediately afterhis death, and in his mundane character, he must have been such a kingas never existed in Ireland, even in the late Christian times. Even Brian of the Tributes himself, could not have commanded such asepulture, or anything like it, living though he did, probably, twothousand years later than that Eocaidh Mac Elathan, whenever he didlive. There is a _nodus_ here needing a god to solve it. 

Returning now to what would most likely take place after the intermentof a hero, we may well imagine that the size of his tomb would be inproportion to the love which he inspired, where no accidental causeswould interfere with the gratification of that feeling. Of one of hisheroes, Ossian, sings--

 "We made his cairn great and high Like a king's. "

After that there would be periodical meetings in his honour, thecelebration of games, solemn recitations by bards, singing his aristeia[Transcriber's Note: Greek in the original]. Gradually the new winewould burst the old bottles. The ever-active, eager-loving imaginationwould behold the champion grown to heroic proportions, the favourite ofthe gods, the performer of superhuman feats. The tomb, which was oncecommensurate with the love and reverence which he inspired, would seemso now no longer. The tribal bards, wandering or attending the greatfairs and assemblies, would disperse among strangers and neighbours aknowledge of his renown. In the same cemetery or neighbourhood theirmight be other tombs of heroes now forgotten, while he, whose fame wasin every bardic mouth in all that region, was honoured only with a tombno greater than theirs. The mere king or champion, grown into a topicalhero, would need a greater tomb. 

Ere long again, owing to the bardic fraternity, who, though coming fromInnishowen or Cape Clear, formed a single community, the topical herowould, in some cases, where his character was such as would excitedeeper reverence and greater fame, grow into a national hero, and astill nobler tomb be required, in order that the visible memorial mightprove commensurate with the imaginative conception. 

Now all this time the periodic celebrations, the games, andlamentations, and songs would be assuming a more solemn character. Awewould more and more mingle with the other feelings inspired by his name. Certain rites and a certain ritual would attend those annual gamesand lamentations, which would formerly not have been suitable, andeventually, when the hero, slowly drawing nearer through generations, if not centuries, at last reached Tir-na-n-Og, and was received intothe family of the gods, a religious feeling of a different nature wouldmingle with the more secular celebration of his memory, and his rath orcairn would assume in their eyes a new character. 

To an ardent imaginative people the complete extinction by death of amuch-loved hero would even at first be hardly possible. That the tombwhich held his ashes should be looked upon as the house of the hero musthave been, even shortly after his interment, a prevailing sentiment, whether expressed or not. Also, the feeling must have been present, that the hero in whose honour they performed the annual games, andperiodically chanted the remembrance of whose achievements, saw andheard those things that were done in his honour. But as the celebrationbecame greater and more solemn, this feeling would become more strong, and as the tomb, from a small heap of stones or low mound, grew into anenormous and imposing rath, the belief that this was the hero's house, in which he invisibly dwelt, could not be avoided, even before theyceased to regard him as a disembodied hero; and after the hero hadmingled with the divine clans, and was numbered amongst the gods, theidea that the rath was a tomb could not logically be entertained. Asa god, was he not one of those who had eaten of the food provided byMananan, and therefore never died. The rath would then become his houseor temple. As matter of fact, the bardic writings teem with this idea. From reason and probability, we would with some certainty conclude thatthe great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of some Irish god; butthat it was so, we know as a fact. The father and king of the godsis alluded to as dwelling there, going out from thence, and returningagain, and there holding his invisible court. 

 "Behold the _Sid_ before your eyes, It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion. "[Note: O'Curry's Manuscript Materials of Irish History, page 505. ]

 "Bove Derg went to visit the Dagda at the Brugh of Mac-An-Og. "[Note: "Dream of Angus, " Révue Celtique, Vol. III. , page 349. ]

Here also dwelt Angus Og, the son of the Dagda. In this, his spiritualcourt or temple, he is represented as having entertained Oscar andthe Ossianic heroes, and thither he conducted [Note: Publications ofOssianic Society, Vol. III. , page 201. ] the spirit of Diarmid, that hemight have him for ever there. 

In the etymology also we see the origin of the Irish gods. A grave inIrish is Sid, the disembodied spirit is Sidhe, and this latter wordglosses Tuátha De Danan. 

The fact that the grave of a hero developed slowly into the temple ofa god, explains certain obscurities in the annals and literature. Asa hero was exalted into a god, so in turn a god sank into a hero, or rather into the race of the giants. The elder gods, conquered anddestroyed by the younger, could no longer be regarded as really divine, for were they not proved to be mortal? The development of the templefrom the tomb was not forgotten, the whole country being filled withsuch tombs and incipient temples, from the great Brugh on the Boyne tothe smallest mound in any of the cemeteries. Thus, when the elder godslost their spiritual sovereignty, and their destruction at the hands ofthe younger took the form of great battles, then as the god was forcedto become a giant, so his temple was remembered to be a tomb. Doubtless, in his own territory, divine honours were still paid him; but in thenational imagination and in the classical literature and receivedhistory, he was a giant of the olden time, slain by the gods, andinterred in the rath which bore his name. Such was the great Mac Erc, King of Fir-bolgs. 

Again, when the mediaeval Christians ceased to regard the Tuátha DeDanan as devils, and proceeded to rationalise the divine record as theethnic bards had rationalised the history of the early gods; the TuáthaDe Danan, shorn of immortality, became ancient heroes who had livedtheir day and died, and the greater raths, no longer the houses of thegods, figure in that literature irrationally rational, as their tombs. Thus we are gravely informed [Note: Annals of Four Masters. ] that "theDagda Mor, after the second battle of Moy Tura, retired to the Brugh onthe Boyne, where he died from the venom of the wounds inflicted on himby Kethlenn"--the Fomorian amazon--"and was there interred. " Even inthis passage the writer seems to have been unable to dispossess his mindquite of the traditional belief that the Brugh was the Dagda's house. 

The peculiarity of this mound, in addition to its size, is thespaciousness of the central chamber. This was that germ which, but forthe overthrow of the bardic religion, would have developed into a templein the classic sense of the word. A two-fold motive would have impelledthe growing civilisation in this direction. A desire to make the houseof the god as spacious within as it was great without, and a desire totransfer his worship, or the more esoteric and solemn part of it, fromwithout to within. Either the absence of architectural knowledge, orthe force of conservatism, or the advent of the Christian missionaries, checked any further development on these lines. 

Elsewhere the tomb, instead of developing as a tumulus or barrow, produced the effect of greatness by huge circumvallations of earth, andmassive walls of stone. Such is the temple of Ned the war-god, calledAula Neid, the court or palace of Ned, near the Foyle in the North. Hadthe ethnic civilisation of Ireland been suffered to develop according toits own laws, it is probable that, as the roofed central chamber of thecairn would have grown until it filled the space occupied by the mound, so the open-walled temple would have developed into a covered building, by the elevation of the walls, and their gradual inclination to thecentre. 

The bee-hive houses of the monks, the early churches, and the roundtowers are a development of that architecture which constructed thecentral chambers of the raths. In this fact lies, too, the explanationof the cyclopean style of building which characterizes our most ancientbuildings. The cromlech alone, formed in very ancient times the centralchamber of the cairn; it is found in the centre of the raths on MoyTura, belonging to the stone age and that of the Firbolgs. When thecromlech fell into disuse, the arched chamber above the ashes of thehero was constructed with enormous stones, as a substitute for themajestic appearance presented by the massive slab and supporting pillarsof the more ancient cromlech, and the early stone buildings preservedthe same characteristic to a certain extent. 

The same sentiment which caused the mediaeval Christians to disinter andenshrine the bones of their saints, and subsequently to re-enshrinethem with greater art and more precious materials, caused the ethnicworshippers of heroes to erect nobler tombs over the inurned relicsof those whom they revered, as the meanness of the tomb was seen tomisrepresent and humiliate the sublimity of the conception. But theChristians could never have imagined their saints to have been anythingbut men--a fact which caused the retention and preservation of therelics. When the Gentiles exalted their hero into a god, the charredbones were forgotten or ascribed to another. The hero then becameimmortal in his own right; he had feasted with Mananan and eaten hislife-giving food, and would not know death. 

When the mortal character of the hero was forgotten, his house or templemight be erected anywhere. The great Raths of the Boyne--a place grownsacred from causes which we may not now learn--represented, probably, heroes and heroines, who died and were interred in many different partsof the country. 

To recapitulate, the Dagda Mor was a divine title given to a hero namedEocaidh, who lived many centuries before the birth of Christ, and in thedepths of the pre-historic ages. He was the mortal scion or ward ofan elder god, Elathan, and was interred in some unknown grave--marked, perhaps, by a plain pillar stone, or small insignificant cairn. 

The great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of the divine orsupernatural period of his spiritual or imagined career after death, andwas a development by steps from that small unremembered grave where oncehis warriors hid the inurned ashes of the hero. 

What is true of one branch of the Aryan family is true of all. Sentiments of such universality and depth must have been common to all. If this be so, the Olympian Zeus himself was once some rude chieftaindwelling in Thrace or Macedonia, and his sublime temple of Doricarchitecture traceable to some insignificant cairn or flagged cist inGreece, or some earlier home of the Hellenic race, and his name notZeus, but another; and Kronos, that god whom he, as a living wight, adored, and under whose protection and favour he prospered.