Into fleet oreads, sporting visibly."

This is pretty, but untrue. In all the ancient Irish literature we
find the connection of the gods, both those who survived into the
historic times, and those whom they had dethroned, with the raths
and cairns perpetually and almost universally insisted upon. The
scene of the destruction of the Firbolgs will be found to be a
place of tombs, the metropolis of the Fomorians a place of tombs,
and a place of tombs the sacred home of the Tuatha along the shores
of the Boyne. Doubtless, they are represented also as dwelling in
the hills, lakes, and rivers, but still the connection between the
great raths and cairns and the gods is never really forgotten. When
the floruit of a god has expired, he is assigned a tomb in one of
the great tumuli. No one can peruse this ancient literature without
seeing clearly the genesis of the Irish gods, _videlicet_ heroes,
passing, through the imagination and through the region of poetic
representation, into the world of the supernatural. When a king
died, his people raised his ferta, set up his stone, and engraved
upon it, at least in later times, his name in ogham. They
celebrated his death with funeral lamentations and funeral games,
and listened to the bards chanting his prowess, his liberality, and
his beauty. In the case of great warriors, these games and
lamentations became periodical. It is distinctly recorded in many
places, for instance in connection with Taylti, who gave her name
to Taylteen and Garman, who gave her name to Loch Garman, now
Wexford, and with Lu Lamfada, whose annual worship gave its name to
the Kalends of August. Gradually, as his actual achievements became
more remote, and the imagination of the bards, proportionately,
more unrestrained, he would pass into the world of the supernatural.
Even in the case of a hero so surrounded with historic light as