e not told. Their method of cooking the game which they hunted was one
well known to all primitive peoples. Holes were dug in the ground; in
them red-hot stones were placed, and on the stones was laid venison
wrapped in sedge. All was then covered over, and in due time the meat
was done to a turn. Meanwhile the heroes engaged in an elaborate
toilette before sitting down to eat. Their beds were composed of
alternate layers of brushwood, moss, and rushes. The Fians were divided
into _Catha_ of three thousand men, each with its commander, and
officers to each hundred, each fifty, and each nine, a system not unlike
that of the ancient Peruvians. Each candidate for admission to the band
had to undergo the most trying ordeals, rivalling in severity those of
the American Indians, and not improbably genuine though exaggerated
reminiscences of actual tests of endurance and agility. Once admitted he
had to observe certain _geasa_ or "tabus," e.g. not to choose his wife
for her dowry like other Celts, but solely for her good manners, not to
offer violence to a woman, not to flee when attacked before less than
nine warriors, and the like.

All this may represent some genuine tradition with respect to a warrior
band, with many exaggerations in details and numbers. Some of its
outstanding heroes may have had names derived from or corresponding to
those of the heroes of an existing saga. But as time went on they became
as unhistorical as their ideal prototypes; round their names
crystallised floating myths and tales; things which had been told of the
saga heroes were told of them; their names were given to the personages
of existing folk-tales. This might explain the great divergence between
the "historical" and the romantic aspects of the saga as it now exists.
Yet we cannot fail to see that what is claimed as historical is full of
exaggeration, and, in spite of the pleading of Dr. Hyde and other
patriots, little historic fact can be found in it. Even if this exists,
it is the least important part of the saga. What is important is that
part--nine-tenths of the whole--which "is not true because it cannot be
true." It belongs to the region of the supernatural and the unreal. But
personages, nine-tenths of whose actions belong to this region, must
bear the same character themselves, and for that reason are all the more
interesting, especially when we remember that the Celts firmly believed
in them and in their exploits. A Fionn myth aros