eating
of early Irish kings, in the same way in which the historians of
neighbouring countries treat of their own early kings, would be, to the
Irish public generally, unreadable. It might enjoy the reputation
of being well written, and as such receive an honourable place in
half-a-dozen public libraries, but it would be otherwise left severely
alone. It would never make its way through that frozen zone which, on
this subject, surrounds the Irish mind.

On the other hand, Irishmen are as ready as others to feel an interest
in a human character, having themselves the ordinary instincts,
passions, and curiosities of human nature. If I can awake an interest
in the career of even a single ancient Irish king, I shall establish a
train of thoughts, which will advance easily from thence to the state
of 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, could
be easily widened and extended in its scope.

Now, if nothing remained of early Irish history save the dry _fasti_ of
the chronicles and the Brehon laws, this would, I think, be a perfectly
legitimate object of ambition, and would be consonant with my ideal
of what the perfect flower of historical literature should be, to
illuminate a tale embodying the former by hues derived from the Senchus
Mor.

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

The students of Irish liter