Doubtless, they are represented also as dwelling in
the hills, lakes, and rivers, but still the connection between the
great raths and cairns and the gods is never really forgotten. When
the floruit of a god has expired, he is assigned a tomb in one of
the great tumuli. No one can peruse this ancient literature without
seeing clearly the genesis of the Irish gods, _videlicet_ heroes,
passing, through the imagination and through the region of poetic
representation, into the world of the supernatural. When a king
died, his people raised his ferta, set up his stone, and engraved
upon it, at least in later times, his name in ogham. They
celebrated his death with funeral lamentations and funeral games,
and listened to the bards chanting his prowess, his liberality, and
his beauty. In the case of great warriors, these games and
lamentations became periodical. It is distinctly recorded in many
places, for instance in connection with Taylti, who gave her name
to Taylteen and Garman, who gave her name to Loch Garman, now
Wexford, and with Lu Lamfada, whose annual worship gave its name to
the Kalends of August. Gradually, as his actual achievements became
more remote, and the imagination of the bards, proportionately,
more unrestrained, he would pass into the world of the supernatural.
Even in the case of a hero so surrounded with historic light as
Cuculain we find a halo, as of godhood, often settling around him.
His gray warsteed had already passed into the realm of mythical
representation, as a second avatar of the Liath Macha, the grey
war-horse of the war-goddess Macha.
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