] that "the Dagda Mor, after the second
battle of Moy Tura, retired to the Brugh on the Boyne, where he
died from the venom of the wounds inflicted on him by Kethlenn"--
the Fomorian amazon--"and was there interred." Even in this passage
the writer seems to have been unable to dispossess his mind quite
of the traditional belief that the Brugh was the Dagda's house.
The peculiarity of this mound, in addition to its size, is the
spaciousness of the central chamber. This was that germ which, but
for the overthrow of the bardic religion, would have developed into
a temple in the classic sense of the word. A two-fold motive would
have impelled the growing civilisation in this direction. A desire
to make the house of the god as spacious within as it was great
without, and a desire to transfer his worship, or the more esoteric
and solemn part of it, from without to within. Either the absence
of architectural knowledge, or the force of conservatism, or the
advent of the Christian missionaries, checked any further
development on these lines.
Elsewhere the tomb, instead of developing as a tumulus or barrow,
produced the effect of greatness by huge circumvallations of earth,
and massive walls of stone. Such is the temple of Ned the war-god,
called Aula Neid, the court or palace of Ned, near the Foyle in
the North. Had the ethnic civilisation of Ireland been suffered to
develop according to its own laws, it is probable that, as the
roofed central chamber of the cairn would have grown until it
filled the space occupied by the mound, so the open-walled temple
would have developed into a covered building, by the elevation of
the walls, and their gradual inclination to the centre.
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