uffered to interfere with the conduct of the tale and the statement of
facts. They fill empty niches and adorn vacant places. For instance,
if a king is represented as crossing the sea, we find that the causes
leading to this, the place whence he set out, his companions, &c., are
derived from the authorities, but the bard, at the same time, permits
himself to give what seems to him to be an eloquent or beautiful
description of the sea, and the appearance presented by the many-oared
galleys. And yet the last transcription or recension of the majority of
the tales was effected in Christian times, and in an age characterised
by considerable classical attainments--a time when the imagination might
have been expected to shake itself loose from old restraints, and freely
invent. _A fortiori_, the more ancient bards, those of the ruder ethnic
times, would have clung still closer to authority, deriving all their
imaginative representations from preceding minstrels. There was no
conscious invention at any time. Each cycle and tale grew from historic
roots, and was developed from actual fact. So much may indeed be said
for the more ancient tales, but the Ultonian cycle deals with events
well within the historic period.

The era of Concobar Mac Nessa and the Red Branch knights of Ulster was
long subsequent to the floruerunt of the Irish gods and their Titan-like
opponents of this latter period, the names alone can be fairly held to
be historic. What swells out the Irish chronicles to such portentous
dimensions is the history of the gods and giants rationalised by
mediaeval historians. Unable to ignore or excide what filled so much of
the imagination of the country, and unable, as Christians, to believe
in the divinity of the Tuatha De Danan and their predecessors, they
rationalised all the pre-Milesian record. But the disappearance of the
gods does not yet bring us within the penumbra of history. After the
death of the sons of Milesius we find a long roll of kings. These were
all topical heroes, founders of nations, and believed, by the tribes and
tribal confederacies which they founded, to have been in their day
the chief kings of Ireland. The point fixed upon by the accurate and
sceptical Tiherna as the starting-point of trustworthy Irish history,
was one long subsequent to the floruerunt of the gods; and the age of
Concobar Mac Nessa and his knights was more than two centuries later
than that of Kimbay and the foundation of Emai