whole of the Ultonian cycle, he should be cautious in condemning a
departure in my work from any particular version of an event which
he may have himself met. Of many minor events there are more than
one version, and many scenes and assertions which he may think of
importance would yet, by being related, cause inconsistency and
contradiction. Of the nature of the work in which all should be
introduced I have already given my opinion.

For the rest, I have related one or two great events in the life of
Cuculain in such a way as to give a description as clear and
correct as possible of his own character and history as related by
the bards, of those celebrated men and women who were his
contemporaries and of his relations with them, of the gods and
supernatural powers in whom the people then believed, and of the
state of civilisation which then prevailed. If I have done my task
well, the reader will have been supplied, without any intensity of
application on his part--a condition of the public mind upon which
no historian of this country should count--with some knowledge of
ancient Irish history, and with an interest in the subject which
may lead him to peruse for himself that ancient literature, and to
read works of a more strictly scientific nature upon the subject
than those which I have yet written. But until such an interest is
aroused, it is useless to swell the mass of valuable critical
matter, which everyone at present is very well content to leave
unread.

In the first volume, however, I have committed this error, that I
did not permit it to be seen with sufficient clearness that the
characters and chief events of the tale are absolutely historic;
and that much of the colouring, inasmuch as its source must have