period immediately preceding that. When bards illuminated with
stories and marvellous circumstances the battle of Clontarf and the
battle of Moyrath, we may believe their predecessors to have done
the same for the earlier centuries. The absence of an imaginative
literature other than historical shows also that the literature
must have followed, regularly, the course of the history, and was
not an archaeological attempt to create an interest in names and
events which were found in the chronicles. It is, therefore, a
reasonable conclusion that the bardic literature, where it reveals
a clear sequence in the order of events, and where there is no
antecedent improbability, supplies a trustworthy guide to the
general course of our history.

So far as the clear light of history reaches, so far may these
tales be proved to be historical. It is, therefore, reasonable to
suppose that the same consonance between them and the actual course
of events which subsisted during the period which lies in clear
light, marked also that other preceding period of which the light
is no longer dry.

The earliest manuscript of these tales is the Leabhar [Note: Leabar
na Heera.] na Huidhre, a work of the eleventh century, so that we
may feel sure that we have them in a condition unimpaired by the
revival of learning, or any archaeological restoration or
improvement. Now, of some of these there have been preserved copies
in other later MSS., which differ very little from the copies
preserved in the Leabhar na Huidhre, from which we may conclude
that these tales had arrived at a fixed state, and a point at which
it was considered wrong to interfere with the text.