conflicts, as well as tales of adventure among giants and spirits.

The cycle had evidently remote beginnings. When we find Diarmid and
Grainnè, like Paris and Helen, the cause of conflict and disaster; and
Diarmid, like Achilles, charmed of body, and vulnerable only on his
heel-spot, we incline to the theory that from a mid-European centre
migrating "waves" swept over prehistoric Greece, and left traces of
their mythology and folk-lore in Homer, while other "waves," sweeping
northward, bequeathed to us as a literary inheritance the Celtic
folk-tales, in which the deeds and magical attributes of remote tribal
heroes and humanised deities are co-mingled and perpetuated.

On fragments of these folk-tales the poet Macpherson reared his Ossianic
epic, in imitation of the Iliad and Paradise Lost.

The "Death of Cuchullin" is a rendering in verse of an Irish prose
translation of a fragment of the Cuchullin Cycle, which moves in the
Bronze Age period. Cuchullin, with "the light of heroes" on his
forehead, is also reminiscent of Achilles. One of the few Cuchullin
tales found in Scotland is that which relates his conflict with his son,
and bears a striking similarity to the legend of Sohrab and Rustum.
Macpherson also drew from this Cycle in composing his Ossian, and
mingled it with the other, with which it has no connection.

The third great Celtic Cycle--the Arthurian--bears close resemblances,
as Campbell, of "The West Highland Tales," has shown, to the Fian Cycle,
and had evidently a common origin. Its value as a source of literary
inspiration has been fully appreciated, but the Fian and Cuchullin
cycles still await, like virgin soil, to yield an abundant harvest for
the poets of the future.