disinter and enshrine the bones of their saints, and subsequently
to re-enshrine them with greater art and more precious materials,
caused the ethnic worshippers of heroes to erect nobler tombs over
the inurned relics of those whom they revered, as the meanness of
the tomb was seen to misrepresent and humiliate the sublimity of
the conception. But the Christians could never have imagined their
saints to have been anything but men--a fact which caused the
retention and preservation of the relics. When the Gentiles exalted
their hero into a god, the charred bones were forgotten or ascribed
to another. The hero then became immortal in his own right; he had
feasted with Mananan and eaten his life-giving food, and would not
know death.

When the mortal character of the hero was forgotten, his house or
temple might be erected anywhere. The great Raths of the Boyne--a
place grown sacred from causes which we may not now learn--
represented, probably, heroes and heroines, who died and were
interred in many different parts of the country.

To recapitulate, the Dagda Mor was a divine title given to a hero
named Eocaidh, who lived many centuries before the birth of Christ,
and in the depths of the pre-historic ages. He was the mortal scion
or ward of an elder god, Elathan, and was interred in some unknown
grave--marked, perhaps, by a plain pillar stone, or small
insignificant cairn.

The great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of the divine or
supernatural period of his spiritual or imagined career after
death, and was a development by steps from that small unremembered
grave where once his warriors hid the inurned ashes of the hero.