the "host" must have been very limited in number; and anyone who has
crawled along the sixty-foot passage into the Brugh, and who adopts this
view, must wonder a little as to how the corpses were conveyed along
that passage, and as to the reasons which must have induced some people
(prior to 1699, when the chamber was almost, if not altogether, void of
such relics)[87] to drag all those bones out again, at much personal
inconvenience. But "_ar lár in Broga_" may also mean "in the [burying-]
ground of the Brugh"; and the descriptions quoted above from the
_Dinnsenchus_ show quite clearly that the ground in which "the host of
Meath" were buried embraced a considerable tract of land, dotted over
with mounds and monuments, differing only in degree from those of a
modern cemetery.[88]

The twelfth-century commentator of Dorban's poem states:

"The nobles of the Tuatha De Danann (with the exception of seven of
them who were interred at Talten [which was the third 'Cemetery of
the Idolaters']) were buried at Brugh, _i.e._, Lugh, and Oe, son of
Ollamh, and Ogma, and Carpre, son of Etan, and Etan (the poetess)
herself, and the Dagda and his three sons (_i.e._, Aedh, and
Oengus, and Cermait), and a great many others besides of the
Tuatha De Dananns, and Firbolgs and others."[89]

But, afterwards, "the race of Heremon, _i.e._, the kings of Tara," who
used to bury at Cruachan (because that was the chief seat in their
special principality of Connaught) came to bury at Brugh. "The first
king of them that was interred at Brugh" was a certain Crimthann,
surnamed _Nianar_, the son of Lughaidh Riabh-n-derg;[90] and the reason
why Crimthann decided to abandon the burying-place of his forefathers
was "because his wife Nar was of the Tuatha Dea, and it was she