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

Angus Og, the Beautiful, represents the Greek Eros. He was surnamed Og, or young; Mac-an-Og, or the son of youth; Mac-an-Dagda, son of the Dagda. He was represented with a harp, and attended by bright birds, his own transformed kisses, at whose singing love arose in the hearts of youths and maidens. To him and to his father the great tumulus of New Grange, 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, and removed him into Tir-na-n-Og, when he died, having been ripped by the tusks of the wild boar on the peaks of Slieve Gulban.

Lu Lamfada was the patron god of Cuculain. He was surnamed Ioldana, as the source of the sciences, and represented the Greek Apollo. The latter was argurgurotoxos [Transcriber's Note: Greek in the original], but Lu was a sling bearing god. Of Fomorian descent on the mother's side, he joined his father's people, the Tuatha De Danan, in the great war against the Fomoroh. He is principally celebrated for his oppression of the 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, Diancect, (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 the Galtee mountains, and in the hills above Lough Derg. The transformed children alluded to in Vol. I. were his grand-children. It was his goldsmith Len, who gave its ancient name to the Lakes of Killarney, Locha Lein. Here by the lake he worked, surrounded by rainbows and showers of fiery dew.

Mananan was the god of the sea, of winds and storms, and most skilled in magic lore. He was friendly to Cuculain, and was invoked by seafaring men. 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 Tuatha De Danan maybe counted literally by the hundred, each with a distinct 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 the mythological record. As will be seen, he and the earlier Partholan have a 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, and the rest of the cycle, I have not discovered, but am confident of its existence.

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

How different is this from the history and genealogy of the Greek gods which runs thus:—

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

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

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

All the nations of Europe lived at one time under the bardic and druidic system, and under that system imagined their gods and elaborated their various theogonies, yet, in no country in Europe has a bardic literature been preserved except in Ireland, for no thinking man can believe Homer to have been a product of that rude type of civilisation of which he sings. This being the case, modern philosophy, accounting for the origin of the classical deities by guesses and a priori reasonings, has almost universally adopted that explanation which I have, elsewhere, called Wordsworthian, and which derives them directly from the imagination 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 find the connection of the gods, both those who survived into the historic times, and those whom they had dethroned, with the raths and cairns perpetually and almost universally insisted upon. The scene of the destruction of the Firbolgs will be found to be a place of tombs, the metropolis of the Fomorians a place of tombs, and a place of tombs the sacred home of the Tuatha along the shores of the Boyne. Doubtless, they are represented also as dwelling in the hills, lakes, and rivers, but still the connection between the great raths and cairns and the gods is never really forgotten. When the floruit of a god has expired, he is assigned a tomb in one of the great tumuli. No one can peruse this ancient literature without seeing clearly the genesis of the Irish gods, videlicet heroes, passing, through the imagination and through the region of poetic representation, into the world of the supernatural. When a king died, his people raised his ferta, set up his stone, and engraved upon it, at least in later times, his name in ogham. They celebrated his death with funeral lamentations and funeral games, and listened to the bards chanting his prowess, his liberality, and his beauty. In the case of great warriors, these games and lamentations became periodical. It is distinctly recorded in many places, for instance in connection with Taylti, who gave her name to Taylteen and Garman, who gave her name to Loch Garman, now Wexford, and with Lu Lamfada, whose annual worship gave its name to the Kalends of August. Gradually, as his actual achievements became more remote, and the imagination of the bards, proportionately, more unrestrained, he would pass into the world of the supernatural. Even in the case of a hero so surrounded with historic light as Cuculain we find a halo, as of godhood, often settling around him. His gray warsteed had already passed into the realm of mythical representation, as a second avatar of the Liath Macha, the grey war-horse of the war-goddess Macha. This could be believed, even in the days when the imagination was controlled by the annalists and tribal heralds.

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

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

Now on the banks of the Boyne, opposite Rosnaree, there stands a tumulus, said to be the greatest in Europe. It covers acres of ground, being of proportionate height. The earth is confined by a compact stone wall about twelve feet high. The central chamber, made of huge irregular pebbles, is about twenty feet from ground to roof, communicating with the outer air by a flagged passage. Immense pebbles, drawn from the County of Antrim, stand around it, each of which, even to move at all, would require the labour of many men, assisted with mechanical appliances. It is, of course, impossible to make an accurate estimate of the 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 his death, when probably his successor had enough to do to sustain his new authority, command such labour merely to provide for himself a tomb. If this tomb were raised to the hero whose name it bears immediately after his death, and in his mundane character, he must have been such a king as never existed in Ireland, even in the late Christian times. Even Brian of the Tributes himself, could not have commanded such a sepulture, or anything like it, living though he did, probably, two thousand years later than that Eocaidh Mac Elathan, whenever he did live. There is a nodus here needing a god to solve it.

Returning now to what would most likely take place after the interment of a hero, we may well imagine that the size of his tomb would be in proportion to the love which he inspired, where no accidental causes would interfere with the gratification of that feeling. Of one of his heroes, Ossian, sings—

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

After that there would be periodical meetings in his honour, the celebration of games, solemn recitations by bards, singing his aristeia [Transcriber's Note: Greek in the original]. Gradually the new wine would burst the old bottles. The ever-active, eager-loving imagination would behold the champion grown to heroic proportions, the favourite of the gods, the performer of superhuman feats. The tomb, which was once commensurate with the love and reverence which he inspired, would seem so now no longer. The tribal bards, wandering or attending the great fairs and assemblies, would disperse among strangers and neighbours a knowledge of his renown. In the same cemetery or neighbourhood their might be other tombs of heroes now forgotten, while he, whose fame was in every bardic mouth in all that region, was honoured only with a tomb no greater than theirs. The mere king or champion, grown into a topical hero, would need a greater tomb.

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

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

To an ardent imaginative people the complete extinction by death of a much-loved hero would even at first be hardly possible. That the tomb which held his ashes should be looked upon as the house of the hero must have 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, and periodically chanted the remembrance of whose achievements, saw and heard those things that were done in his honour. But as the celebration became 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 an enormous and imposing rath, the belief that this was the hero's house, in which he invisibly dwelt, could not be avoided, even before they ceased to regard him as a disembodied hero; and after the hero had mingled with the divine clans, and was numbered amongst the gods, the idea that the rath was a tomb could not logically be entertained. As a god, was he not one of those who had eaten of the food provided by Mananan, and therefore never died. The rath would then become his house or temple. As matter of fact, the bardic writings teem with this idea. From reason and probability, we would with some certainty conclude that the great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of some Irish god; but that it was so, we know as a fact. The father and king of the gods is alluded to as dwelling there, going out from thence, and returning again, 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," Revue Celtique, Vol. III., page 349.]

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

In the etymology also we see the origin of the Irish gods. A grave in Irish is Sid, the disembodied spirit is Sidhe, and this latter word glosses Tuatha De Danan.

The fact that the grave of a hero developed slowly into the temple of a god, explains certain obscurities in the annals and literature. As a 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 and destroyed by the younger, could no longer be regarded as really divine, for were they not proved to be mortal? The development of the temple from the tomb was not forgotten, the whole country being filled with such tombs and incipient temples, from the great Brugh on the Boyne to the smallest mound in any of the cemeteries. Thus, when the elder gods lost their spiritual sovereignty, and their destruction at the hands of the younger took the form of great battles, then as the god was forced to 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 the national imagination and in the classical literature and received history, he was a giant of the olden time, slain by the gods, and interred 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 Tuatha De Danan as devils, and proceeded to rationalise the divine record as the ethnic bards had rationalised the history of the early gods; the Tuatha De Danan, shorn of immortality, became ancient heroes who had lived their day and died, and the greater raths, no longer the houses of the gods, figure in that literature irrationally rational, as their tombs. Thus we are gravely informed [Note: Annals of Four Masters.] that "the Dagda Mor, after the second battle of Moy Tura, retired to the Brugh on the Boyne, where he died from the venom of the wounds inflicted on him by Kethlenn"—the Fomorian amazon—"and was there interred." Even in this passage the writer seems to have been unable to dispossess his mind quite of the traditional belief that the Brugh was the Dagda's house.

The peculiarity of this mound, in addition to its size, is the spaciousness of the central chamber. This was that germ which, but for the overthrow of the bardic religion, would have developed into a temple in the classic sense of the word. A two-fold motive would have impelled the growing civilisation in this direction. A desire to make the house of the god as spacious within as it was great without, and a desire to transfer his worship, or the more esoteric and solemn part of it, from without to within. Either the absence of architectural knowledge, or the 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, and massive walls of stone. Such is the temple of Ned the war-god, called Aula Neid, the court or palace of Ned, near the Foyle in the North. Had the ethnic civilisation of Ireland been suffered to develop according to its own laws, it is probable that, as the roofed central chamber of the cairn 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 the centre.

The bee-hive houses of the monks, the early churches, and the round towers are a development of that architecture which constructed the central chambers of the raths. In this fact lies, too, the explanation of the cyclopean style of building which characterizes our most ancient buildings. The cromlech alone, formed in very ancient times the central chamber of the cairn; it is found in the centre of the raths on Moy Tura, belonging to the stone age and that of the Firbolgs. When the cromlech fell into disuse, the arched chamber above the ashes of the hero was constructed with enormous stones, as a substitute for the majestic appearance presented by the massive slab and supporting pillars of the more ancient cromlech, and the early stone buildings preserved the same characteristic to a certain extent.

The same sentiment which caused the mediaeval Christians to disinter and enshrine the bones of their saints, and subsequently to re-enshrine them with greater art and more precious materials, caused the ethnic worshippers of heroes to erect nobler tombs over the inurned relics of those whom they revered, as the meanness of the tomb was seen to misrepresent and humiliate the sublimity of the conception. But the Christians could never have imagined their saints to have been anything but men—a fact which caused the retention and preservation of the relics. When the Gentiles exalted their hero into a god, the charred bones were forgotten or ascribed to another. The hero then became immortal in his own right; he had feasted with Mananan and eaten his life-giving food, and would not know death.

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

To recapitulate, the Dagda Mor was a divine title given to a hero named Eocaidh, who lived many centuries before the birth of Christ, and in the depths of the pre-historic ages. He was the mortal scion or ward of an 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 or supernatural period of his spiritual or imagined career after death, and was a development by steps from that small unremembered grave where once his 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 chieftain dwelling in Thrace or Macedonia, and his sublime temple of Doric architecture traceable to some insignificant cairn or flagged cist in Greece, or some earlier home of the Hellenic race, and his name not Zeus, but another; and Kronos, that god whom he, as a living wight, adored, and under whose protection and favour he prospered.

THE END