in the cycle of tales which follow after them They were always at war with a fierce and savage people called Fomorians, whom they finally defeated and the strife between them may mythically represent the ancient war between the good and evil principles in the world.

In the next cycle we draw nearer to history, and are in the world not of myth but of legend. It is possible that some true history may be hidden underneath its sagas, that some of its personages may be historical, but we cannot tell. The events are supposed to occur about the time of the birth of Christ, and seventeen hundred years after those of the mythical period. This is the cycle which collects its wars and sorrows and splendours around the dominating figure of Cuchulain, and is called the Heroic or the Red Branch or the Ultonian cycle. Several sagas tell of the birth, the life, and the death of Cuchulain, and among them is the longest and the most important—the Táin—the Cattle Raid of Cooley.

Others are concerned with the great King Conor mac Nessa, and the most known and beautiful of these is the sorrowful tale of Deirdré. There are many others of the various heroes and noble women who belonged to the courts of Conor and of his enemy Queen Maev of Connaght. TheCarving of mac Datho's Boar, the story of Etain and Midir, and the Vengeance of Mesgedra, contained in this book belong to these miscellaneous tales unconnected with the main saga of Cuchulain.

The second cycle is linked to the first, not by history or race, but by the fact that the great personages in the first have now become the gods who intervene in the affairs of the wars and heroes of the second. They take part in them as the gods do in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lugh, the Long-Handed, the great Counsellor of the Tuatha De Danaan, is now a god, and is the real father of Cuchulain, heals him of his wounds in the Battle of the Ford, warns him of his coming death, and receives him into the immortal land. The Morrigan, who descends from the first cycle, is now the goddess of war, and is at first the enemy and afterwards the lover of Cuchulain. Angus, The Dagda, Mananan the sea-god, enter not only into the sagas of the second cycle, but into those of the third, of the cycle of Finn. And all along to the very end of the stories, and down indeed to the present day, the Tuatha De Danaan appear in various forms, slowly lessening in dignity and power, until they end in the fairy folk in whom the Irish peasants still believe. They are alive and still powerful in the third—the Fenian—cycle of stories, some of which are contained and adorned in this book. In their continued presence is the only connexion which exists between the three cycles. No personages of the first save these of the gods appear in the Heroic cycle, none of the Heroic cycle appears in the Fenian cycle. Seventeen hundred years, according to Irish annalists, separate the first from the second, more than two hundred years separate the second from the beginning of the third.

The third cycle is called Fenian because its legends tell, for the most part, of the great deeds of the Féni or Fianna, who were the militia employed by the High King to support his supremacy, to keep Ireland in order, to defend the country from foreign invasion. They were, it seems, finally organized by Cormac mac Art, 227 A.D.(?) the grandson of Conn the Hundred Fighter. But they had loosely existed before in the time of Conn and his son Art, and like all mercenary bodies of this kind were sometimes at war with the kings who employed them. Finally, at the battle of Gowra, they and their power were quite destroyed. Long before this destruction, they were led in the reign of Cormac by Finn the son of Cumhal, and it is around Finn and Oisín the son of Finn, that most of the romances of the Fenian cycle are gathered. Others which tell of the battles and deeds of Conn and Art and Cormac and Cairbre of the Liffey, Cormac's son, are more or less linked on to the Fenians. On the whole, Finn and his warriors, each of a distinct character, warlike skill and renown, are the main personages of the cycle, and though Finn is not the greatest warrior, he is their head and master because he is the wisest; and this masterdom by knowledge is for the first time an element in Irish stories.

If the tales of the first cycle are mythological and of the second heroic, these are romantic. The gods have lost their dreadful, even their savage character, and have become the Fairies, full often of gentleness, grace, and humour. The mysterious dwelling places of the gods in the sea, in unknown lands, in the wandering air, are now in palaces under the green hills of Ireland, or by the banks of swift clear rivers, like the palace of Angus near the Boyne, or across the seas in Tir-na-n-Óg, the land of immortal youth, whither Niam brings Oisín to live with her in love, as Morgan le Fay brought Ogier the Dane to her fairyland. The land of the Immortals in the heroic cycle, to which, in the story of Etain and Midir in this book, Midir brings back Etain after she has sojourned for a time on earth, is quite different in conception from the Land of Youth over the far seas where delightfulness of life and love is perfect. This, in its conception of an unknown world where is immortal youth, where stormless skies, happy hunting, strange adventure, gentle manners dwell, where love is free and time is unmarked, is pure romance. So are the adventures of Finn against enchanters, as in the story of the Birth of Oisín, of Dermot in the Country under the Seas, in the story of the Pursuit of the Gilla Dacar, of the wild love-tale of Dermot and Grania, flying for many years over all Ireland from the wrath of Finn, and of a host of other tales of enchantments and battle, and love, and hunting, and feasts, and discoveries, and journeys, invasions, courtships, and solemn mournings. No doubt the romantic atmosphere has been deepened in these tales by additions made to them by successive generations of bardic singers and storytellers, but for all that the original elements in the stories are romantic as they are not in the previous cycles.

Again, these Fenian tales are more popular than the others. Douglas Hyde has dwelt on this distinction. "For 1200 years at least, they have been," he says, "intimately bound up with the thought and feelings of the whole Gaelic race in Ireland and Scotland." Even at the present day new forms are given to the tales in the cottage homes of Ireland. And it is no wonder. The mysterious giant forms of the mythological period, removed by divinity from the sympathy of men; the vast heroic figures of Cuchulain and his fellows and foes, their close relation to supernatural beings and their doings, are far apart from the more natural humanity of Cormac and Finn, of Dermot and Goll, of Oisín and Oscar, of Keelta, and last of Conan, the coward, boaster and venomous tongue, whom all the Fenians mocked and yet endured. They are a very human band of fighting men, and though many of them, like Oisín and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in these their ordinary human nature. The Connacht peasant has no difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, of Dermot and Grania, and of many others, are quite in harmony with a hundred stories, and with the temper, of Irish lovers. A closer, a simpler humanity than that of the other cycles pervades the Fenian cycle, a greater chivalry, a greater courtesy, and a greater tenderness. We have left the primeval savagery behind, the multitudinous slaughtering, the crude passions of the earlier men and women; we are nearer to civilization, nearer to the common temper and character of the Irish people. No one can doubt this who will compare the Vengeance of Mesgedra with the Chase of the Gilla Dacar.

The elaborate courtesy with which Finn and his chief warriors