was beside and in connection with the mounds and cairns that this
history was elaborated, and elaborated concerning them and
concerning the heroes to whom they were sacred.

On the plain of Tara, beside the little stream Nemanna, itself
famous as that which first turned a mill-wheel in Ireland, there
lies a barrow, not itself very conspicuous in the midst of others,
all named and illustrious in the ancient literature of the country.
The ancient hero there interred is to the student of the Irish
bardic literature a figure as familiar and clearly seen as any
personage in the Biographia Britannica. We know the name he bore as
a boy and the name he bore as a man. We know the names of his
father and his grandfather, and of the father of his grandfather,
of his mother, and the father and mother of his mother, and the
pedigrees and histories of each of these. We know the name of his
nurse, and of his children, and of his wife, and the character of
his wife, and of the father and mother of his wife, and where they
lived and were buried. We know all the striking events of his
boyhood and manhood, the names of his horses and his weapons, his
own character and his friends, male and female. We know his
battles, and the names of those whom he slew in battle, and how he
was himself slain, and by whose hands. We know his physical and
spiritual characteristics, the device upon his shield, and how that
was originated, carved, and painted, by whom. We know the colour of
his hair, the date of his birth and of his death, and his
relations, in time and otherwise, with the remainder of the princes
and warriors with whom, in that mound-raising period of our
history, he was connected, in hostility or friendship; and all this
enshrined in ancient song, the transmitted traditions of the people
who raised that barrow, and who laid within it sorrowing their