rical or heroic-historical on the other.
The first is an enchanted land--the world of the Tuatha De Danan--the
country of the gods. There we see Mananan with his mountain-sundering
sword, the Fray-garta; there Lu Lamfada, the deliverer, pondering over
his mysteries; there Bove Derg and his fatal [Note: Every feast to which
he came ended in blood. He was present at the death of Conairey Mor,
Chap. xxxiii., Vol. I.] swine-herd, Lir and his ill-starred children,
Mac Manar and his harp shedding death from its stricken wires, Angus Og,
the beautiful, and he who was called the mighty father, Eochaidht [Note:
Ay-o-chee, written Yeoha in Vol. I.] Mac Elathan, a land populous with
those who had partaken of the feast of Goibneen, and whom, therefore,
weapons could not slay, who had eaten [Note: In early Greek literature
the province of history has been already separated from that of poetry.
The ancient bardic lore and primaeval traditions were refined to suit
the new and sensitive poetic taste. No commentator has been able to
explain the nature of ambrosia. In the genuine bardic times, no such
vague euphuism would have been tolerated as that of Homer on this
subject. The nature of Olympian ambrosia would have been told in
language as clear as that in which Homer describes the preparation of
that Pramnian bowl for which Nestor and Machaon waited while Hecamede
was grating over it the goat's milk cheese, or that in which the Irish
bards described the ambrosia of the Tuatha De Danan, which, indeed, was
no more poetic and awe-inspiring than plain bacon prepared by Mananan
from his herd of enchanted pigs, living invisible like himself in the
plains of Tir-na-n-Og, the land of the ever-young. On the other hand,
there is a vagueness about the Feed Fia which would seem to indicate the
growth of a more awe-stricken mood in describing things supernatural.
The Faed Fia of the Greek gods has been refined by Homer into "much
darkness," which, from an artistic point of view, one can hardly help
imagining that Homer nodded as he wrote.] at the the table of Mananan,
and would never grow old, who had invented for themselves the Faed Fia,
and might not be seen of the gross eyes of men; there steeds like Anvarr
crossing the wet sea like a firm plain; there ships whose rudder was the
will, and whose sails and oars the wish, of those they bore [Note: Cf.
The barks of the Phoenicians in the Odyssey.]; there hounds like that
one of Ioroway, and spears li