As a hero was exalted into a god, so in turn a god sank
into a hero, or rather into the race of the giants. The elder gods,
conquered and destroyed by the younger, could no longer be regarded
as really divine, for were they not proved to be mortal? The
development of the temple from the tomb was not forgotten, the
whole country being filled with such tombs and incipient temples,
from the great Brugh on the Boyne to the smallest mound in any of
the cemeteries. Thus, when the elder gods lost their spiritual
sovereignty, and their destruction at the hands of the younger took
the form of great battles, then as the god was forced to become a
giant, so his temple was remembered to be a tomb. Doubtless, in his
own territory, divine honours were still paid him; but in the
national imagination and in the classical literature and received
history, he was a giant of the olden time, slain by the gods, and
interred in the rath which bore his name. Such was the great Mac
Erc, King of Fir-bolgs.
Again, when the mediaeval Christians ceased to regard the Tuatha De
Danan as devils, and proceeded to rationalise the divine record as
the ethnic bards had rationalised the history of the early gods;
the Tuatha De Danan, shorn of immortality, became ancient heroes
who had lived their day and died, and the greater raths, no longer
the houses of the gods, figure in that literature irrationally
rational, as their tombs. Thus we are gravely informed [Note:
Annals of Four Masters.
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