Lewis admits that
"commemorative festivals and other periodical observances, may, in
certain cases, have served to perpetuate a true tradition of some
national event."[70] And how much more surely would the memory of such
events be perpetuated by a people, to whom they had brought important
political revolutions, who are eminently tenacious of their traditions,
and who have preserved the memory of them intact for centuries in local
names and monumental sites! The sources from whence the first annalists,
or writers of Irish history, may have compiled their narratives, would,
therefore, be--1. The Books of Genealogies and Pedigrees. 2. The
Historic Tales. 3. The Books of Laws. 4. The Imaginative Tales and
Poems. 5. National Monuments, such as cromlechs and pillar stones, &c.,
which supplied the place of the brazen tablets of Roman history, the
_libri lintei_,[71] or the chronological nail.[72]

The Books of Genealogies and Pedigrees form a most important element in
Irish pagan history. For social and political reasons, the Irish Celt
preserved his genealogical tree with scrupulous precision. The rights of
property and the governing power were transmitted with patriarchal
exactitude on strict claims of primogeniture, which claims could only be
refused under certain conditions defined by law. Thus, pedigrees and
genealogies became a family necessity; but since private claims might be
doubted, and the question of authenticity involved such important
results, a responsible public officer was appointed to keep the records
by which all claims were decided. Each king had his own recorder, who
was obliged to keep a true account of his pedigree, and also of the
pedigrees of the provincial kings and of their principal chieftains. The
provincial kings had also their recorders (Ollamhs or Seanchaidhe[73]);
and in obedience to an ancient law established long before the
introduction of Christianity, all the provincial records, as well as
those of the various chieftains, were required to be furnished every
third year to the convocation at Tara, where they were compared and
corrected.

The compilers of these genealogies were persons who had been educated as
Ollamhs--none others were admissible; and their "diplomas" were obtained
after a collegiate course, which might well deter many a modern aspirant
to professorial chairs. The education of the Ollamh lasted for twelve
years; and in the course of these twelve years of "hard work," as t