42. It is contained in the Book of the Dun Cow, and has been translated or commented upon by Eugene O’Curry (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish), De Jubainville (Cycle Mythologique Irlandais), and Nutt (Voyage of Bran).
43. Caesar: De Bello Gallico, Book VI, chap. XVI.
44. The following translation was made by Dr. Kuno Meyer, and appears as Appendix B to Nutt’s Voyage of Bran. Three verses, here omitted, will be found later as a note to chap. XII—“The Irish Iliad”.
45. The first King of the Milesians. The name is more usually spelt Eremon.
46. The Rennes Dinnsenchus has been translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in Vol. XVI of the Revue Celtique.
47. Told in the Tripartite Life of Saint Patrick, a fifteenth-century combination of three very ancient Gaelic MSS.
48. The Hibbert Lectures for 1886. Lecture II—“The Zeus of the Insular Celts”.
49. Pronounced Baltinna.
50. Diodorus Siculus: Book II, chap. III.
51. Pronounced Sowin.
52. It has been suggested that this title is an attempt to reproduce the ancient British word for “bards”.
53. Diodorus Siculus: Book II, chap. III.
54. Hibbert Lectures, 1886. Lecture I—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
55. See Rhys: Lectures on Welsh Philology, pp. 426, 552, 653.
56. Pronounced Tooăha dae donnann.
57. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, 1886. Lecture VI—“Gods, Demons, and Heroes”.
58. Ibid.
59. De Jubainville: Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais, chap. V.
60. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique Irlandais, chap. IX.
61. From the fifteenth-century Harleian MS. in the British Museum, numbered 5280, and called the Second Battle of Moytura.
62. Harleian MS. 5280.
63. “In Munster was worshipped the goddess of prosperity, whose name was Ana, and from her are named the Two Paps of Ana over Luachair Degad.” From Coir Anmann, the Choice of Names, a sixteenth-century tract, published by Dr. Whitley Stokes in Irische Texte.
64. Attributed to Cormac, King-Bishop of Cashel.
65. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, 1886—“The Zeus of the Insular Celts”.
66. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, 1886—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
67. Pharsalia, Book I, l. 444, &c.:
68. Iliad, Book V.
69. Op. cit., Book XIV.
70. It commemorates the battle of Magh Rath.
71. The word is approximately pronounced Bive or Bibe.
72. For a full account of these beings see a paper by Mr. W. M. Hennessey in Vol. I of the Revue Celtique, entitled “The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”.
73. De Jubainville: Le Cycle Mythologique. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 154. The Coir Anmann, however, translates it “Fire of God”.
74. The Second Battle of Moytura. Harleian MS. 5280.
75. The story is told in the Book of Leinster.
76. Now called “Trinity Well”.
77. See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.
78. Book of Leinster. A paraphrase of the story will be found in O’Curry’s Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, Vol. II, p. 143.
79. See chap. XV—“The Decline and Fall of the Gods”.
80. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 331.
81. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 331.
82. See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
83. See chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
84. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, p. 524.
85. Pronounced Bove.
86. Lêr—genitive Lir.
87. Pronounced Dianket. His name is explained, both in the Choice of Names and in Cormac’s Glossary, as meaning “God of Health”.
88. Standish O’Grady: The Story of Ireland, p. 17.
89. Pronounced Luga or Loo.
90. Pronounced Lavāda.
91. Translated by O’Curry in Atlantis, Vol. III, from the Book of Lismore.
92. Chap. VIII—“The Gaelic Argonauts”.
93. Chap. VII—“The Rise of the Sun-God”.
94. Rhys: Celtic Britain, chap. VII.
95. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique, chap. V.
96. Rhys: “The Mythographical Treatment of Celtic Ethnology”, Scottish Review, Oct. 1890.
97. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique, chap. V. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 90, 91.
98. Pronounced Ecca or Eohee.
99. Gomme: Ethnology in Folklore, chap. III—“The Mythic Influence of a Conquered Race”.
100. Elton: Origins of English History, note to p. 136.
101. It has been contended that the Fenians were originally the gods or heroes of an aboriginal people in Ireland, the myths about them representing the pre-Celtic and pre-Aryan ideal, as the sagas of the Red Branch of Ulster embodied that of the Celtic Aryans. The question, however, is as yet far from being satisfactorily solved.
102. The Coronation Stone, by William Forbes Skene.
103. See History and Antiquities of Tara Hill.
104. Our authorities for the details of this war between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fir Bolgs are the opening verses of the Harleian MS. 5280, as translated by Stokes and De Jubainville, and Eugene O’Curry’s translations, in his MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History and his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, from a manuscript preserved at Trinity College, Dublin.
105. Now called Benlevi.
106. See Dr. James Fergusson: Rude Stone Monuments, pp. 177-180.
107. Lough Corrib, Its Shores and Islands, by Sir William R. Wilde, chap. VIII.
108. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique Irlandais, p. 156.
109. The principal sources of information for this chapter are the Harleian MS. 5280 entitled The Second Battle of Moytura, of which translations have been made by Dr. Whitley Stokes in the Revue Celtique and M. de Jubainville in his L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande, and Eugene O’Curry’s translation in Vol. IV. of Atlantis of the Fate of the Children of Tuirenn.
110. Pronounced Kian.
111. Pronounced Ildāna.
112. The Curlieu Hills, between Roscommon and Sligo.
113. Croagh Patrick.
114. The estuary of the Shannon.
115. This story of the Fate of the Children of Tuirenn is mentioned in the ninth-century “Cormac’s Glossary”. It is found in various Irish and Scottish MSS., including the Book of Lecan. The present re-telling is from Eugene O’Curry’s translation, published in Atlantis, Vol. IV.
116. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 390-396.
117. A part of County Louth, between the Boyne and Dundalk. The heroic cycle connects it especially with Cuchulainn. Pronounced Mŭrthemna or Mŭrhevna.
118. There is known to have been a hill called Ard Chein (Cian’s Mound) in the district of Muirthemne, and O’Curry identifies it tentatively with one now called Dromslian.
119. Pronounced Pēzar.
120. Pronounced Dobar.
121. Pronounced Asal.
122. Pronounced Irōda.
123. Pronounced Fincāra.
124. The Hill (cnoc) of Midkēna.
125. A mythical country inhabited by Fomors.
126. See chap. VI—“The Gods Arrive”.
127. Ibid.
128. See chap. VI—“The Gods Arrive”.
129. See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
130. Ibid.
131. Petrie: Hist. and Antiq. of Tara Hill.
132. The country seems to have been identified with Norway or Iceland.
133. Pronounced Midkēna.
134. The other two are “The Fate of the Children of Lêr”, told in chap. XI, and “The Fate of the Sons of Usnach”, an episode of the Heroic Cycle, related in chap. XIII.
135. This chapter is, with slight interpolations, based upon the Harleian MS. in the British Museum numbered 5280, and called the Second Battle of Moytura, or rather from translations made of it by Dr. Whitley Stokes, published in the Revue Celtique, Vol. XII, and by M. de Jubainville in his L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande.
136. I have interpolated this picturesque passage from the account of a fight between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors in the “Fate of the Children of Tuirenn”. O’Curry’s translation in Atlantis, Vol. IV.
137. This translation was made by Eugene O’Curry from an ancient vellum MS. formerly belonging to Mr. W. Monck Mason, but since sold by auction in London. See his Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, Lecture XII, p. 252.
138. See Fergusson: Rude Stone Monuments, pp. 180, &c.
139. ? Bagpipes.
140. Book of Fermoy. See Revue Celtique, Vol. I.—“The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”.
141. It may be noted that, according to Welsh legend, the ancestors of the Cymri came from Gwlâd yr Hâv, the “Land of Summer”, i.e. the Celtic Other World.
142. De Bello Gallico, Book VI, chap. XVIII.
143. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique, chap. X. Rhys: Hibbert Lectures—“The Gaulish Pantheon”.
144. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Britonum, Book I, chap. II.
145. Contained in the Book of Leinster and other ancient manuscripts.
146. Now called the Kenmare River.
147. This poem and the three following ones, all attributed to Amergin, are said to be the oldest Irish literary records.
148. Book of Taliesin, poem VIII, in Skene’s Four Ancient Books of Wales, Vol. I, p. 276.
149. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique. See also the Transactions of the Ossianic Society, Vol. V.
150. Translated by Professor Owen Connellan in Vol. V of the Transactions of the Ossianic Society.
151. The original versions of this and the following charm are from De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique Irlandais, the later from Professor Owen Connellan’s translations in Vol. V of the Transactions of the Ossianic Society. “Some of these poems”, explains the Professor, “have been glossed by writers or commentators of the Middle Ages, without which it would be almost impossible now for any Irish scholar to interpret them; and it is proper to remark that the translation accompanying them is more in accordance with this gloss than with the original text.”
152. De Jubainville: Cycle Mythologique Irlandais, p. 269.
153. See chap. IV—“The Religion of the Ancient Britons and Druidism”.
154. Tennyson: Idylls of the King: The Passing of Arthur.
155. See Wood-Martin: Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, Vol I, pp. 213-215.
156. The following verses are taken from Dr. Kuno Meyer’s translation of the romance entitled The Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal, published in Mr. Nutt’s Grimm Library, Vol. IV.
157. The Plain of Sports.
158. The Happy Plain.
159. Pronounced Shee Finneha.
160. Pronounced Shee Bove.
161. Pronounced Shee Assaroe.
162. Pronounced Finnvar.
163. Pronounced Far-shee.
164. O’Curry: Lectures on the MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History, Appendix, p. 505.
165. See Fergusson: Rude Stone Monuments, pp. 200-213.
166. O’Curry: MS. Materials, p. 505.
167. Fergusson: Rude Stone Monuments, p. 209.
168. This story is contained in the Book of Leinster.
169. Pronounced Ilbrec.
170. This story, called the Dream of Angus, will be found translated into English by Dr. Edward Müller in Vol. III. of the Revue Celtique, from an eighteenth-century MS. in the British Museum.
171. Pronounced Aive.
172. Pronounced Aiva.
173. Pronounced Alva.
174. Now called “North Channel”.
175. The Peninsula of Erris, in Mayo.
176. A small island off Benmullet.
177. See chap. XIV—“Finn and the Fenians”.
178. An island off the coast of Mayo. Its lonely crane was one of the “Wonders of Ireland”, and is still an object of folk-belief.
179. Pronounced Kemoc.
180. This famous story of the Fate of the Children of Lêr is not found in any MS. earlier than the beginning of the seventeenth century. A translation of it has been published by Eugene O’Curry in Atlantis, Vol. IV, from which the present abridgment is made.
181. Pronounced Dara.
182. A poetical name for Ireland.
183. Translated by O’Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, Lecture IX, p. 192, 193.
184. Iliad, Book XX.
185. The story of Mider’s revenge and Conairé’s death is told in the romance Bruidhen Dá Derga, “The Destruction of Da Derga’s Fort”, translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes, Eugene O’Curry, and Professor Zimmer from the original text.
186.
187. Nutt: Voyage of Bran, p. 164.
188. See chap. XI—“The Gods in Exile”.
189. Pronounced Maive.
190. The story of the Tragical Death of King Conchobar, translated by Eugene O’Curry from the Book of Leinster, will be found in the appendix to his MS. Materials of Irish History, and (more accessible) in Miss Hull’s Cuchullin Saga.
191. The name is best pronounced Cŭhoolin or Cuchullin (ch as in German).
192. The descent of the principal Red Branch Heroes from the Tuatha Dé Danann is given in a table in Miss Hull’s Introduction to her Cuchullin Saga.
193. Conchobar is called a terrestrial god of the Ultonians in the Book of the Dun Cow, and Dechtiré is termed a goddess in the Book of Leinster.
194. He is last heard of as chief cook to Conairé the Great, a mythical king of Ireland.