ey were dear friends; and they, when their
master is in danger or under enchantment wail like human beings for
his loss or pain. It is true Cuchulain's horses weep tears of blood
when he goes forth to his last battle, foreknowing his death; but they
are immortal steeds and have divine knowledge of fate. The dogs of
Finn are only dogs, and the relation between him and them is a natural
relation, quite unlike the relation between Cuchulain and the horses
which draw his chariot. Yet Finn's dogs are not quite as other dogs.
They have something of a human soul in them. They know that in the
milk-white fawn they pursue there is an enchanted maiden, and they
defend her from the other hounds till Finn arrives. And it is told of
them that sometimes, when the moon is high, they rise from their
graves and meet and hunt together, and speak of ancient days. The
supernatural has lessened since the heroic cycle. But it is still
there in the Fenian.

Again, the Fenian cycle of tales is more influenced by Christianity
than the others are. The mythological cycle is not only fully pagan,
it is primeval. It has the vastness, the savagery, the relentlessness
of nature-myths, and what beauty there is in it is akin to terror.
Gentleness is unknown. There is only one exception to this, so far as
I know, and that is in the story of _The Children of Lir_. It is
plain, however, that the Christian ending of that sorrowful story is a
later addition to it. It is remarkably well done, and most tenderly. I
believe that the artist who did it imported into the rest of the tale
the exquisite tenderness which fills it, and yet with so much
reverence for his original that he did not make the body of the story
Christian. He kept the definite Christian element to the very end, but
he filled the whole with its tender atmosphere.

No Christianity and very little gentleness intrude into the heroic
cycle. The story of Christ once touches it, but he who put it in did
not lose the pagan atmosphere, or the wild fierceness of the manners
of the time. How it was done may be read in this book at the end of
the story of the _Vengeance of Mesgedra_. Very late in the redaction
of these stories a Christian tag was also added to the tale of the
death of Cuchulain, but it was very badly done.

When we come to the Fenian cycle there is a well-defined borderland
between them and Christianity. The bulk of the stories is plainly
pagan; their originals were frankly so. But th