's hills; and in all lands they have the same
purpose. They are secret and holy sanctuaries, guarded well from all
outward influence, where, in the mystic solitude, the valiant and great
among the living may commune with the spirits of the mighty dead. The
dead, though hidden, are not passed away; their souls are in perpetual
nearness to ours. If we enter deep within ourselves, to the remote
shrine of the heart, as they entered that secluded shrine, we may find
the mysterious threshold where their world and our world meet.

In the gloom and silence of those pyramid-chambers, the De Danaans thus
sought the souls of their mighty ones--the Dagda, surnamed the Mighty,
and Lug the Long-Armed, and Ogma of the Sunlike Face, and Angus the
Young. From these luminous guardians they sought the inbreathing of
wisdom, drawing into themselves the might of these mightier ones, and
rising toward the power of their immortal world. And to these sacred
recesses they brought the ashes of their mighty dead, as a token that
they, too, had passed through the secret gateway to the Land of the
Ever Young.

Some thirty miles to the west of Brugh, on the Boyne, a low range of
hills rises from the central plain, now bearing the name of Slieve na
Calliagh, the Witch's Hill. In the days of the great forest this was the
first large open space to the west coming from Brugh, and, like it, a
quiet and remote refuge among the woods. On the hillsides of Slieve na
Calliagh are other pyramids of stone, in all things like those of
Brugh, and with the same chambered sanctuaries, but of lesser size;
belonging, perhaps, to a later age, when the De Danaans were no longer
supreme in the land, but took their place beside newcome invaders. These
lesser shrines were also sacred places, doorways to the hidden world,
entrance-gates to the Land of the Ever Young. There also was beheld the
vision of the radiant departed; there also were fonts of baptism, basins
wrought of granite brought hither from the distant hills of Mourne or
Wicklow. As in all lands, these fonts were used in the consecration of
the new birth, from which man rises conscious of his immortality.

In harmony with this faith of theirs, our present tradition sees in the
De Danaans a still haunting impalpable presence, a race invisible yet
real, dwelling even now among our hills and valleys. When the life of
the visible world is hushed, they say, there is another life in the
hidden, where the Dagda Mor