Cuculain we find a halo, as of godhood, often settling around him.
His gray warsteed had already passed into the realm of mythical
representation, as a second avatar of the Liath Macha, the grey
war-horse of the war-goddess Macha. This could be believed, even
in the days when the imagination was controlled by the annalists
and tribal heralds.

The gods of the Irish were their deified ancestors. They were not
the offspring of the poetic imagination, personifying the various
aspects of nature. Traces, indeed, we find of their influence over
the operations of nature, but they are, upon the whole, slight and
unimportant. From nature they extract her secrets by their
necromantic and magical labours, but nature is as yet too great to
be governed and impelled by them. The Irish Apollo had not yet
entered into the sun.

Like every country upon which imperial Rome did not leave the
impress of her genius, Ireland, in these ethnic times, attained
only a partial unity. The chief king indeed presided at Tara, and
enjoyed the reputation and emoluments flowing to him on that
account, but, upon the whole, no Irish king exercised more than a
local sovereignty; they were all reguli, petty kings, and their
direct authority was small. This being the case, it would appear to
me that in the more ancient times the death of a king would not be
an event which would disturb a very extensive district, and that,
though his tomb might be considerable, it would not be gigantic.

Now on the banks of the Boyne, opposite Rosnaree, there stands a
tumulus, said to be the greatest in Europe. It covers acres of
ground, being of proportionate height. The earth is confined by a