border wars with Munster; the remainder of the south to
the mouth of the Shannon composed MUNSTER; the present
county of Clare and all west of the Shannon north to
Sligo, and part of Cavan, going with CONNAUGHT. The chief
seats of power, in those several divisions, were TARA,
for federal purposes; EMANIA, near Armagh, for Ulster;
LEIGHLIN, for Leinster; CASHEL, for Munster; and CRUCHAIN,
(now Rathcrogan, in Roscommon,) for Connaught.

How the common people lived within these external divisions
of power it is not so easy to describe. All histories
tell us a great deal of kings, and battles, and
conspiracies, but very little of the daily domestic life
of the people. In this respect the history of Erin is
much the same as the rest; but some leading facts we do
know. Their religion, in Pagan times, was what the moderns
call _Druidism_, but what they called it themselves we
now know not. It was probably the same religion anciently
professed by Tyre and Sidon, by Carthage and her colonies
in Spain; the same religion which the Romans have described
as existing in great part of Gaul, and by their accounts,
we learn the awful fact, that it sanctioned, nay, demanded,
human sacrifices. From the few traces of its doctrines
which Christian zeal has permitted to survive in the old
Irish language, we see that _Belus_ or "Crom," the god
of fire, typified by the sun, was its chief divinity--that
two great festivals were held in his honour on days
answering to the first of May and last of October. There
were also particular gods of poets, champions, artificers
and mariners, just as among the Romans and Greeks. Sacred