imagination was controlled by the
annalists and tribal heralds.

The gods of the Irish were their deified ancestors. They were not the
offspring of the poetic imagination, personifying the various aspects of
nature. Traces, indeed, we find of their influence over the operations
of nature, but they are, upon the whole, slight and unimportant.
From nature they extract her secrets by their necromantic and magical
labours, but nature is as yet too great to be governed and impelled by
them. The Irish Apollo had not yet entered into the sun.

Like every country upon which imperial Rome did not leave the impress
of her genius, Ireland, in these ethnic times, attained only a
partial unity. The chief king indeed presided at Tara, and enjoyed the
reputation and emoluments flowing to him on that account, but, upon the
whole, no Irish king exercised more than a local sovereignty; they were
all reguli, petty kings, and their direct authority was small. This
being the case, it would appear to me that in the more ancient times
the death of a king would not be an event which would disturb a very
extensive district, and that, though his tomb might be considerable, it
would not be gigantic.

Now on the banks of the Boyne, opposite Rosnaree, there stands a
tumulus, said to be the greatest in Europe. It covers acres of ground,
being of proportionate height. The earth is confined by a compact stone
wall about twelve feet high. The central chamber, made of huge irregular
pebbles, is about twenty feet from ground to roof, communicating with
the outer air by a flagged passage. Immense pebbles, drawn from the
County of Antrim, stand around it, each of which, even to move at
all, would require the labour of many men, assisted with mechanical
appliances. It is, of course, impossible to make an accurate estimate of
the expenditure of labour necessary for the construction of such a work,
but it would seem to me to require thousands of men working for years.
Can we imagine that a petty king of those times could, after his
death, when probably his successor had enough to do to sustain his new
authority, command such labour merely to provide for himself a tomb. If
this tomb were raised to the hero whose name it bears immediately after
his death, and in his mundane character, he must have been such a king
as never existed in Ireland, even in the late Christian times.
Even Brian of the Tributes himself, could not have commanded such a
sepulture, or