Still we continue to inquire, receiving from him no
adequate response, Who were those ancient chieftains and warriors
for whom an affectionate people raised those strange tombs? What
life did they lead? What deeds perform? How did their personality
affect the minds of their people and posterity? How did our
ancestors look upon those great tombs, certainly not reared to be
forgotten, and how did they--those huge monumental pebbles and
swelling raths--enter into and affect the civilisation or religion
of the times?
We see the cromlech with its massive slab and immense supporting
pillars, but we vainly endeavour to imagine for whom it was first
erected, and how that greater than cyclopean house affected the
minds of those who made it, or those who were reared in its
neighbourhood or within reach of its influence. We see the stone
cist with its great smooth flags, the rocky cairn, and huge barrow
and massive walled cathair, but the interest which they invariably
excite is only aroused to subside again unsatisfied. From this
department of European antiquities the historian retires baffled,
and the dry savant is alone master of the field, but a field which,
as cultivated by him alone, remains barren or fertile only in
things the reverse of exhilarating. An antiquarian museum is more
melancholy than a tomb.
But there is one country in Europe in which, by virtue of a
marvellous strength and tenacity of the historical intellect, and
of filial devotedness to the memory of their ancestors, there have
been preserved down into the early phases of mediaeval civilisation,
and then committed to the sure guardianship of manuscript, the hymns,
ballads, stories, and chronicles, the names, pedigrees, achievements,
and even characters, of those ancient kings and warriors over whom
those massive cromlechs were erected and great cairns piled.
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