of Clontarf, and
the wars of the O'Briens with the Normans, than in the tale in which
is 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 angelic
interpositions, delights to adorn the barren tracts of her more popular
histories with apocryphal anecdotes.

How then should this heroic literature of Ireland be treated in
connection with the history of the country? The true method would
certainly be to print it exactly as it is without excision or
condensation. 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 tale
as to render its publication unnecessary for the study of others. The
order adopted should be that which the bards themselves deter mined, any
other 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 her
companions, and along with it every discoverable tale or poem dealing
with this event and those characters. After that, all that remains of
the cycle of which Partholan was the protagonist. Thirdly, all
that relates to Nemeth and his sons, their wars with curt Kical the
bow-legged, and all that relates to the Fomoroh of the Nemedian epoch,
then first moving dimly in the forefront of our history. After that, the
great Fir-bolgic cycle, a cycle janus-faced, looking on one side to the
mythological period and the wars of the gods, and on the other, to the
heroic, and more particularly to the Ultonian cycle. In the next place,
the immense mass of bardic literature which treats of the Irish gods
who, having conquered the Fir-bolgs, like the Greek gods of the age of
gold dwelt visibly in the island until the coming of the Clan Milith,
out of Spain. In the sixth, the Milesian invasion, and every accessible
statement concerning the sons and kindred of Milesius. In the seventh,
the disconnected tales dealing with those local heroes whose history
is not connected with the great cycles, but who in the _fasti_ fill
the spaces between the divine period and the heroic. In the eighth, the
heroic cycles, the Ultonian, the Temairian, and the Fenian, and after
these the historic tales that, without forming cycles, accompany the
course of history down to the extinct