Now all this time the periodic celebrations, the games, and
lamentations, and songs would be assuming a more solemn character.
Awe would more and more mingle with the other feelings inspired by
his name. Certain rites and a certain ritual would attend those
annual games and lamentations, which would formerly not have been
suitable, and eventually, when the hero, slowly drawing nearer
through generations, if not centuries, at last reached Tir-na-n-Og,
and was received into the family of the gods, a religious feeling
of a different nature would mingle with the more secular
celebration of his memory, and his rath or cairn would assume in
their eyes a new character.
To an ardent imaginative people the complete extinction by death of
a much-loved hero would even at first be hardly possible. That the
tomb which held his ashes should be looked upon as the house of
the hero must have been, even shortly after his interment, a
prevailing sentiment, whether expressed or not. Also, the feeling
must have been present, that the hero in whose honour they
performed the annual games, and periodically chanted the
remembrance of whose achievements, saw and heard those things that
were done in his honour. But as the celebration became greater and
more solemn, this feeling would become more strong, and as the
tomb, from a small heap of stones or low mound, grew into an
enormous and imposing rath, the belief that this was the hero's
house, in which he invisibly dwelt, could not be avoided, even
before they ceased to regard him as a disembodied hero; and after
the hero had mingled with the divine clans, and was numbered
amongst the gods, the idea that the rath was a tomb could not
logically be entertained.
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