Moreover, through all this literature sounds a high clear note of
chivalry, in this contrasting favourably with the Iliad, where no
man foregoes an advantage. Cuculain having slain the sons of Neara,
"thought it unworthy of him to take possession of their chariot and
horses." [Note: P. 155; vol. i.] Goll Mac Morna, in the Fenian or
Ossianic cycle, declares to Conn Cedcathah [Note: Conn of the
hundred battles.] that from his youth up he never attacked an enemy
by night or under any disadvantage, and many times we read of
heroes preferring to die rather than outrage their geisa. [Note:
Certain vows taken with their arms on being knighted.]

A noble literature indeed it is, having too this strange interest,
that though mainly characterised by a great plainness and
simplicity of thought, and, in the earlier stages, of expression,
we feel, oftentimes, a sudden weirdness, a strange glamour shoots
across the poem when the tale seems to open for a moment into
mysterious depths, druidic secrets veiled by time, unsunned caves
of thought, indicating a still deeper range of feeling, a still
lower and wider reach of imagination. A youth came once to the
Fianna Eireen encamped at Locha Lein [Note: The Lakes of
Killarney.], leading a hound dazzling white, like snow. It was the
same, the bard simply states, that was once a yew tree, flourishing
fifty summers in the woods of Ioroway. Elsewhere, he is said to
have been more terrible than the sun upon his flaming wheels. What
meant this yew tree and the hound? Stray allusions I have met, but
no history. The spirit of Coelte, visiting one far removed in time
from the great captain of the Fianna, with a different name and
different history, cries:--

"I was with thee, with Finn"--