And yet the last transcription or recension of the majority of the
tales was effected in Christian times, and in an age characterised
by considerable classical attainments--a time when the imagination
might have been expected to shake itself loose from old restraints,
and freely invent. _A fortiori_, the more ancient bards, those of
the ruder ethnic times, would have clung still closer to authority,
deriving all their imaginative representations from preceding
minstrels. There was no conscious invention at any time. Each cycle
and tale grew from historic roots, and was developed from actual
fact. So much may indeed be said for the more ancient tales, but
the Ultonian cycle deals with events well within the historic
period.
The era of Concobar Mac Nessa and the Red Branch knights of Ulster
was long subsequent to the floruerunt of the Irish gods and their
Titan-like opponents of this latter period, the names alone can be
fairly held to be historic. What swells out the Irish chronicles to
such portentous dimensions is the history of the gods and giants
rationalised by mediaeval historians. Unable to ignore or excide
what filled so much of the imagination of the country, and unable,
as Christians, to believe in the divinity of the Tuatha De Danan
and their predecessors, they rationalised all the pre-Milesian
record. But the disappearance of the gods does not yet bring us
within the penumbra of history. After the death of the sons of
Milesius we find a long roll of kings.
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