ature do not require to be told this; for
those who are not, I would give a single instance as an illustration.

In the battle of Gabra, fought in the third century, and in which Oscar,
perhaps the greatest of all the Irish heroes heading the Fianna Eireen,
contended against Cairbry of the Liffey, King of Ireland, and his
troops, Cairbry on his side announces to his warriors that he would
rather perish in this battle than suffer one of the Fianna to survive;
but while he spoke--

"Barran suddenly exclaimed--
'Remember Mall Mucreema, remember Art.

"'Our ancestors fell there
By force of the treachery of the Fians;
Remember the hard tributes,
Remember the extraordinary pride.'"

Here the poet, singing only of the events of the battle of Gabra, shows
that he was well-acquainted with all the relations subsisting for a long
time between the Fians and the Royal family. The battle of Mucreema
was fought by Cairbry's grandfather, Art, against Lewy Mac Conn and the
Fianna Eireen.

Again, in the tale of the battle of Moy Leana, in which Conn of
the Hundred Battles, the father of this same Art, is the principal
character, the author of the tale mentions many times circumstances
relating to his father, Felimy Rectmar, and his grandfather, Tuhall
Tectmar. Such is the whole of the Irish literature, not vague, nebulous,
and shifting, but following the course of the _fasti_, and regulated and
determined by them. This argument has been used by Mr. Gladstone
with great confidence, in order to show the substantial historical
truthfulness of the Iliad, and that it is in fact a portion of a
continuous historic sequence.

Now this being admitted, that the course of Irish history, as laid down
by the chroniclers, was familiar to the authors of the tales and heroic
ballads, one of two things must be admitted, either that the events and
kings did succeed one another in the order mentioned by the chroniclers,
or that what the chroniclers laid down was then taken as the theme of
song by the bards, and illuminated and adorned according to their wont.

The second of these suppositions is one which I think few will adopt.
Can we believe it possible that the bards, who actually supported
themselves by the amount of pleasure which they gave their audiences,
would have forsaken those subjects which were already popular, and those
kings and heroes whose splendour an