] were the
years of the sovereignty of Mac Ere. There was no wet or
tempestuous weather in Ireland, nor was there any unfruitful year."
Such were all the predecessors of the children of Dana--gods which
were of old times, that rest in their tombs; and the days, too, of
the Tuatha De Danan were numbered. They, too, smitten by a more
celestial light, vanished from their hills, like Ossian lamenting
over his own heroes; those others still mightier, might say:--
"Once every step which we took might be heard throughout the
firmament. Now, all have gone, they have melted into the air."
But that divine tree, though it had its branches in fairy-land, had
its roots in the soil of Erin. An unceasing translation of heroes
into Tir-na-n-og went on through time, the fairy-world of the
bards, receiving every century new inhabitants, whose humbler human
origin being forgotten, were supplied there with both wives and
children. The apotheosis of great men went forward, tirelessly; the
hero of one epoch becoming the god of the next, until the formation
of the Tuatha De Danan, who represent the gods of the historic
ages. Had the advent of exact genealogy been delayed, and the
creative imagination of the bards suffered to work on for a couple
of centuries longer, unchecked by the historical conscience,
Cuculain's human origin would, perhaps, have been forgotten, and he
would have been numbered amongst the Tuatha De Danan, probably, as
the son of Lu Lamfada and the Moreega, his patron deities.
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