again, and there holding his invisible court.

"Behold the _Sid_ before your eyes,
It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion."
[Note: O'Curry's Manuscript Materials of Irish History, page 505.]

"Bove Derg went to visit the Dagda at the Brugh of Mac-An-Og."
[Note: "Dream of Angus," Revue Celtique, Vol. III., page 349.]

Here also dwelt Angus Og, the son of the Dagda. In this, his spiritual
court or temple, he is represented as having entertained Oscar and
the Ossianic heroes, and thither he conducted [Note: Publications of
Ossianic Society, Vol. III., page 201.] the spirit of Diarmid, that
he might have him for ever there.

In the etymology also we see the origin of the Irish gods. A grave
in Irish is Sid, the disembodied spirit is Sidhe, and this latter
word glosses Tuatha De Danan.

The fact that the grave of a hero developed slowly into the temple
of a god, explains certain obscurities in the annals and
literature. As a hero was exalted into a god, so in turn a god sank
into a hero, or rather into the race of the giants. The elder gods,
conquered and destroyed by the younger, could no longer be regarded
as really divine, for were they not proved to be mortal? The
development of the temple from the tomb was not forgotten, the
whole country being filled with such tombs and incipient temples,
from the great Brugh on the Boyne to the smallest mound in any of
the cemeteries. Thus, when the elder gods lost their spiritual
sovereignty, and their destruction at the hands of the younger took