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 and
achievements must have affected, profoundly, the popular
imagination, in order to invent stories to illuminate fabricated
names. The thing is quite impossible. A practice which we can trace
to the edge of that period whose historical character may be proved
to demonstration, we may conclude to have extended on into the