With the advent of Christianity the mound-raising period passed
away. The Irish heroic tales have their source in, and draw their
interest from, the mounds and those laid in them. It would,
therefore, be extremely improbable that the bards of the Christian
period, when the days of rath and cairn had departed, would modify,
to any considerable extent, the literature produced in conditions
of society which had passed away.
Again, with the advent of Christianity, and the hold which the new
faith took upon the finest and boldest minds in the country, it is
plain that the golden age of bardic composition ended. The loss to
the bards was direct, by the withdrawal of so much intellect from
their ranks, and indirect, by the general substitution of other
ideas for those whose ministers they themselves were. It is,
therefore, probable that the age of production and creation, with
regard to the ethnic history, ceased about the fifth and sixth
centuries, and that, about that time, men began to gather up into a
collected form the floating literature connected with the pagan
period. The general current of mediaeval opinion attributes the
collection of tales and ballads now known as the Tan-Bo-Cooalney to
St. Ciaran, the great founder of the monastery of Clonmacnoise.
But if this be the case, we are enabled to take another step in the
history of this most valuable literature. The tales of the Leabhar
na Huidhre are in prose, but prose whose source and original is
poetry.
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