life, or not long after his death.

I have not met a single tale, whether in verse or prose, in which
it is not clearly seen that the author was not following
authorities before him. Such traces of invention or decoration as
may be met with are not suffered to interfere with the conduct of
the tale and the statement of facts. They fill empty niches and
adorn vacant places. For instance, if a king is represented as
crossing the sea, we find that the causes leading to this, the
place whence he set out, his companions, &c., are derived from the
authorities, but the bard, at the same time, permits himself to
give what seems to him to be an eloquent or beautiful description
of the sea, and the appearance presented by the many-oared galleys.
And yet the last transcription or recension of the majority of the
tales was effected in Christian times, and in an age characterised
by considerable classical attainments--a time when the imagination
might have been expected to shake itself loose from old restraints,
and freely invent. _A fortiori_, the more ancient bards, those of
the ruder ethnic times, would have clung still closer to authority,
deriving all their imaginative representations from preceding
minstrels. There was no conscious invention at any time. Each cycle
and tale grew from historic roots, and was developed from actual
fact. So much may indeed be said for the more ancient tales, but
the Ultonian cycle deals with events well within the historic
period.

The era of Concobar Mac Nessa and the Red Branch knights of Ulster
was long subsequent to the floruerunt of the Irish gods and their
Titan-like opponents of this latter period, the names alone can be
fairly held to be historic. What swells out the Irish chronicles to