w death.

When the mortal character of the hero was forgotten, his house or temple
might be erected anywhere. The great Raths of the Boyne--a place grown
sacred from causes which we may not now learn--represented, probably,
heroes and heroines, who died and were interred in many different parts
of the country.

To recapitulate, the Dagda Mor was a divine title given to a hero named
Eocaidh, who lived many centuries before the birth of Christ, and in the
depths of the pre-historic ages. He was the mortal scion or ward of
an elder god, Elathan, and was interred in some unknown grave--marked,
perhaps, by a plain pillar stone, or small insignificant cairn.

The great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of the divine or
supernatural period of his spiritual or imagined career after death, and
was a development by steps from that small unremembered grave where once
his warriors hid the inurned ashes of the hero.

What is true of one branch of the Aryan family is true of all.
Sentiments of such universality and depth must have been common to all.
If this be so, the Olympian Zeus himself was once some rude chieftain
dwelling in Thrace or Macedonia, and his sublime temple of Doric
architecture traceable to some insignificant cairn or flagged cist in
Greece, or some earlier home of the Hellenic race, and his name not
Zeus, but another; and Kronos, that god whom he, as a living wight,
adored, and under whose protection and favour he prospered.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Early Bardic Literature, Ireland, by
Standish O'Grady

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