reate
the old foundations of life, not as they existed in that splendid
misunderstanding of the eighteenth century, but as they must always
exist when the finest minds and Ned the beggar and Seaghan the fool
think about the same thing, although they may not think the same thought
about it.

IX

When I asked the little boy who had shown me the pathway up the Hill of
Allen if he knew stories of Finn and Oisin, he said he did not, but that
he had often heard his grandfather telling them to his mother in Irish.
He did not know Irish, but he was learning it at school, and all the
little boys he knew were learning it. In a little while he will know
enough stories of Finn and Oisin to tell them to his children some day.
It is the owners of the land whose children might never have known what
would give them so much happiness. But now they can read this book to
their children, and it will make Slieve-na-man, Allen, and Benbulben,
the great mountain that showed itself before me every day through all my
childhood and was yet unpeopled, and half the country-sides of south and
west, as populous with memories as are Dundealgan and Emain Macha and
Muirthemne; and after a while somebody may even take them to some famous
place and say, "This land where your fathers lived proudly and finely
should be dear and dear and again dear"; and perhaps when many names
have grown musical to their ears, a more imaginative love will have
taught them a better service.

X

I need say nothing about the translation and arrangement of this book
except that it is worthy to be put beside "Cuchulain of Muirthemne."
Such books should not be commended by written words but by spoken words,
were that possible, for the written words commending a book, wherein
something is done supremely well, remain, to sound in the ears of a
later generation, like the foolish sound of church bells from the tower
of a church when every pew is full.

W.B. YEATS.

CONTENTS

PART I. THE GODS

Book I. The Coming of the Tuatha de Danaan

Chap. I. The Fight with the Firbolgs
II. The Reign of Bres

Book II. Lugh of the Long Hand

Chap. I. The Coming of Lugh
II. The Sons of Tuireann
III. The Great Battle of Magh Tuireadh
IV. The Hidden House of Lugh

Book III. The Coming of the Gael

Chap. I. The Landing
II. The Battle of Tailltin

Book IV. The Ever-Living Living One