193).

_Remarks_.--Conn the hundred-fighter had the head-kingship of Ireland
123-157 A.D., according to the _Annals of the Four Masters_, i. 105. On
the day of his birth the five great roads from Tara to all parts of
Ireland were completed: one of them from Dublin is still used.
Connaught is said to have been named after him, but this is scarcely
consonant with Joyce's identification with Ptolemy's _Nagnatai_ (_Irish
Local Names_, i. 75). But there can be little doubt of Conn's existence
as a powerful ruler in Ireland in the second century. The historic
existence of Connla seems also to be authenticated by the reference to
him as Conly, the eldest son of Conn, in the Annals of Clonmacnoise. As
Conn was succeeded by his third son, Art Enear, Connla was either slain
or disappeared during his father's lifetime. Under these circumstances
it is not unlikely that our legend grew up within the century after
Conn--_i.e._, during the latter half of the second century.

As regards the present form of it, Prof. Zimmer (_l.c._ 261-2) places
it in the seventh century. It has clearly been touched up by a
Christian hand who introduced the reference to the day of judgment and
to the waning power of the Druids. But nothing turns upon this
interpolation, so that it is likely that even the present form of the
legend is pre-Christian-_i.e._ for Ireland, pre-Patrician, before the
fifth century.

The tale of Connla is thus the earliest fairy tale of modern Europe.
Besides this interest it contains an early account of one of the most
characteristic Celtic conceptions, that of the earthly Paradise, the
Isle of Youth, _Tir-nan-Og_. This has impressed itself on the European
imagination; in the Arthuriad it is represented by the Vale of Avalon,
and as represented in the various Celtic visions of the future life, it
forms one of the main sources of Dante's _Divina Commedia_. It is
possible too, I think, that the Homeric Hesperides and the Fortunate
Isles of the ancients had a Celtic origin (as is well known, the early
place-names of Europe are predominantly Celtic). I have found, I
believe, a reference to the conception in one of the earliest passages
in the classics dealing with the Druids. Lucan, in his _Pharsalia_ (i.
450-8), addresses them in these high terms of reverence:

Et vos barbaricos ritus, moremque sinistrum,
Sacrorum, Druidae, positis repetistis ab armis,
Solis nosse Deos et coeli numera vobis
Aut solis nescire datum; n