s, according
to the author, stated that on this occasion the two latter behaved
unfairly, but he agreed with those books which did not state this.

We have, therefore, a tale penned in the eleventh century, composed at
some time prior to this, and itself collected, not from oral tradition,
but from books. These considerations would, therefore, render it
extremely probable that the tales of the Ultonian period, with which the
Leabhar na Huidhre is principally concerned, were committed to writing
at a very early period.

To strengthen still further the general historic credibility of these
tales, and to show how close to the events and heroes described must
have been the bards who originally composed them, I would urge the
following considerations.

With the advent of Christianity the mound-raising period passed away.
The Irish heroic tales have their source in, and draw their interest
from, the mounds and those laid in them. It would, therefore, be
extremely improbable that the bards of the Christian period, when the
days of rath and cairn had departed, would modify, to any considerable
extent, the literature produced in conditions of society which had
passed away.

Again, with the advent of Christianity, and the hold which the new faith
took upon the finest and boldest minds in the country, it is plain that
the golden age of bardic composition ended. The loss to the bards was
direct, by the withdrawal of so much intellect from their ranks, and
indirect, by the general substitution of other ideas for those whose
ministers they themselves were. It is, therefore, probable that the age
of production and creation, with regard to the ethnic history, ceased
about the fifth and sixth centuries, and that, about that time, men
began to gather up into a collected form the floating literature
connected with the pagan period. The general current of mediaeval
opinion attributes the collection of tales and ballads now known as the
Tan-Bo-Cooalney to St. Ciaran, the great founder of the monastery of
Clonmacnoise.

But if this be the case, we are enabled to take another step in the
history of this most valuable literature. The tales of the Leabhar na
Huidhre are in prose, but prose whose source and original is poetry. The
author, from time to time, as if quoting an authority, breaks out with
verse; and I think there is no Irish tale in existence without these
rudimentary traces of a prior metrical cycle. The style and language
ar