here; how Dermot O'Dynor met the other heroes, and how
the fourteen Fenni who had been carried off were at last recaptured,
would be too long to tell. Unlike most of these legends all comes right
in the end; Gilla Dacker and his ugly horse disappear suddenly into
space, and neither Finn himself nor any of his warriors ever see
them again.

It is impossible, I think, to read this, and to an even greater degree
some of the other stories, which have been translated by Mr. Joyce and
others, without perceiving how thoroughly impregnated with old-world and
mythological sentiment they are. An air of all but fabulous antiquity
pervades them, greater perhaps than pervades the legends of any other
north European people. We seem transplanted to a world of the most
primitive type conceivable; a world of myth and of fable, of direct
Nature interpretations, of mythology, in short, pure and simple. Even
those stories which are known to be of later origin exhibit to a greater
or less degree the same character; one which has come down to them
doubtless from earlier half-forgotten tales, of which they are merely
the final and most modern outcome.

When, too, we turn from the legends themselves to the legend-makers,
everything that we know of the position of the bards _(Ollamhs_ or
_Sennachies)_ carries out the same idea. In the earliest times they were
not merely the singers and story-tellers of their race, but to a great
degree they bore a religious or semi-religious character. Like the
Brehons or judges they were the directors and guides of the others, but
they possessed in addition a peculiarly Druidical character of sanctity,
as the inheritors and interpreters of a revelation confided to them
alone. A power the more formidable because no one, probably, had ever
ventured to define its exact character.

The Head bard or Ollamh, in the estimation of his tribesmen, stood next
in importance to the chieftain or king--higher, indeed, in some
respects; for whereas to slay a king might, or might not be criminal, to
slay an Ollamh entailed both outlawing in this life and a vaguer, but
not the less terrible, supernatural penalty in another. Occasionally, as
in the case of the Ollamh Fodla, by whom the halls of Tara are reputed
to have been built, the king was himself the bard, and so combined both
offices, but this appears to have been rare. Even as late as the
sixteenth century, refusal of praise from a bard was held to confer a
far deeper