winds around Rosnaree, we count fourteen generations to Nemedh and
four to Partholan, and Partholan is not the earliest. As the bards
recorded with a zeal and minuteness, so far as I can see, without
parallel, the histories of the families to which they were
adscript, so also they recorded with equal patience and care the
far-extending pedigrees of those other families--invisible indeed,
but to them more real and more awe-inspiring--who dwelt by the
sacred lakes and rivers, and in the folds of the fairy hills, and
the great raths and cairns reared for them by pious hands.

The extent, diversity, and populousness of the Irish mythological
cycles, the history of the Irish gods, and the gradual growth of
that mythology of which the Tuatha De Danan, i.e., the gods of the
historic period, were the final development, can only be rightly
apprehended by one who reads the bardic literature as it deals with
this subject. That literature, however, so far from having been
printed and published, has not even been translated, but still
moulders in the public libraries of Europe, those who, like myself,
are not professed Irish scholars, being obliged to collect their
information piece-meal from quotations and allusions of those who
have written upon the subject in the English or Latin language. For
to read the originals aright needs many years of labour, the Irish
tongue presenting at different epochs the characteristics of
distinct languages, while the peculiarities of ancient caligraphy,
in the defaced and illegible manuscripts, form of themselves quite
a large department of study. Stated succinctly, the mythological
record of the bards, with its chronological decorations, runs thus:--

AGE OF KEASAIR.