--- title: Firbolgs and Third Cycle of the Fomoroh. — Early Bardic Literature, Ireland. · full text with trees · page 3 description: Firbolgs and Third Cycle of the Fomoroh., «Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.» by Standish O'Grady: the whole chapter, every sentence with its dependency tree and pragmatics. It begins: 1525 B.C. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/page/3/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [tales](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/) / [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/) / Firbolgs and Third Cycle of the Fomoroh. # Firbolgs and Third Cycle of the Fomoroh. · page 3 [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/) [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/page/2/) **3** Ere long again, owing to the bardic fraternity, who, though coming from Innishowen or Cape Clear, formed a single community, the topical hero would, in some cases, where his character was such as would excite deeper reverence and greater fame, grow into a national hero, and a still nobler tomb be required, in order that the visible memorial might prove commensurate with the imaginative conception.[134](../../134/ "tree and pragmatics") Now all this time the periodic celebrations, the games, and lamentations, and songs would be assuming a more solemn character.[135](../../135/ "tree and pragmatics") Awe would more and more mingle with the other feelings inspired by his name.[136](../../136/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[137](../../137/ "tree and pragmatics") To an ardent imaginative people the complete extinction by death of a much-loved hero would even at first be hardly possible.[138](../../138/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[139](../../139/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[140](../../140/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[141](../../141/ "tree and pragmatics") As a god, was he not one of those who had eaten of the food provided by Mananan, and therefore never died.[142](../../142/ "tree and pragmatics") The rath would then become his house or temple.[143](../../143/ "tree and pragmatics") As matter of fact, the bardic writings teem with this idea.[144](../../144/ "tree and pragmatics") From reason and probability, we would with some certainty conclude that the great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of some Irish god; but that it was so, we know as a fact.[145](../../145/ "tree and pragmatics") The father and king of the gods is alluded to as dwelling there, going out from thence, and returning again, and there holding his invisible court.[146](../../146/ "tree and pragmatics") "Behold the \_Sid\_ before your eyes, It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion."[147](../../147/ "tree and pragmatics") \[Note: O'Curry's Manuscript Materials of Irish History, page 505.\][148](../../148/ "tree and pragmatics") "Bove Derg went to visit the Dagda at the Brugh of Mac-An-Og."[149](../../149/ "tree and pragmatics") \[Note: "Dream of Angus," Revue Celtique, Vol. III., page 349.\][150](../../150/ "tree and pragmatics") Here also dwelt Angus Og, the son of the Dagda.[151](../../151/ "tree and pragmatics") In this, his spiritual court or temple, he is represented as having entertained Oscar and the Ossianic heroes, and thither he conducted \[Note: Publications of Ossianic Society, Vol. III., page 201.\] the spirit of Diarmid, that he might have him for ever there.[152](../../152/ "tree and pragmatics") In the etymology also we see the origin of the Irish gods.[153](../../153/ "tree and pragmatics") A grave in Irish is Sid, the disembodied spirit is Sidhe, and this latter word glosses Tuatha De Danan.[154](../../154/ "tree and pragmatics") The fact that the grave of a hero developed slowly into the temple of a god, explains certain obscurities in the annals and literature.[155](../../155/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[156](../../156/ "tree and pragmatics") 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?[157](../../157/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[158](../../158/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[159](../../159/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[160](../../160/ "tree and pragmatics") Such was the great Mac Erc, King of Fir-bolgs.[161](../../161/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[162](../../162/ "tree and pragmatics") Thus we are gravely informed \[Note: Annals of Four Masters.\] 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."[163](../../163/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[164](../../164/ "tree and pragmatics") The peculiarity of this mound, in addition to its size, is the spaciousness of the central chamber.[165](../../165/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[166](../../166/ "tree and pragmatics") A two-fold motive would have impelled the growing civilisation in this direction.[167](../../167/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[168](../../168/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[169](../../169/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[170](../../170/ "tree and pragmatics") Such is the temple of Ned the war-god, called Aula Neid, the court or palace of Ned, near the Foyle in the North.[171](../../171/ "tree and pragmatics") 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.[172](../../172/ "tree and pragmatics") The bee-hive houses of the monks, the early churches, and the round towers are a development of that architecture which constructed the central chambers of the raths.[173](../../173/ "tree and pragmatics") In this fact lies, too, the explanation of the cyclopean style of building which characterizes our most ancient buildings.[174](../../174/ "tree and pragmatics") The cromlech alone, formed in very ancient times the central chamber of the cairn; it is found in the centre of the raths on Moy Tura, belonging to the stone age and that of the Firbolgs.[175](../../175/ "tree and pragmatics") When the cromlech fell into disuse, the arched chamber above the ashes of the hero was constructed with enormous stones, as a substitute for the majestic appearance presented by the massive slab and supporting pillars of the more ancient cromlech, and the early stone buildings preserved the same characteristic to a certain extent.[176](../../176/ "tree and pragmatics") The same sentiment which caused the mediaeval Christians to disinter and enshrine the bones of their saints, and subsequently to re-enshrine them with greater art and more precious materials, caused the ethnic worshippers of heroes to erect nobler tombs over the inurned relics of those whom they revered, as the meanness of the tomb was seen to misrepresent and humiliate the sublimity of the conception.[177](../../177/ "tree and pragmatics") But the Christians could never have imagined their saints to have been anything but men--a fact which caused the retention and preservation of the relics.[178](../../178/ "tree and pragmatics") When the Gentiles exalted their hero into a god, the charred bones were forgotten or ascribed to another.[179](../../179/ "tree and pragmatics") The hero then became immortal in his own right; he had feasted with Mananan and eaten his life-giving food, and would not know death.[180](../../180/ "tree and pragmatics") When the mortal character of the hero was forgotten, his house or temple might be erected anywhere.[181](../../181/ "tree and pragmatics") The great Raths of the Boyne--a place grown sacred from causes which we may not now learn--represented, probably, heroes and heroines, who died and were interred in many different parts of the country.[182](../../182/ "tree and pragmatics") To recapitulate, the Dagda Mor was a divine title given to a hero named Eocaidh, who lived many centuries before the birth of Christ, and in the depths of the pre-historic ages.[183](../../183/ "tree and pragmatics") He was the mortal scion or ward of an elder god, Elathan, and was interred in some unknown grave--marked, perhaps, by a plain pillar stone, or small insignificant cairn.[184](../../184/ "tree and pragmatics") The great tumulus of New Grange was the temple of the divine or supernatural period of his spiritual or imagined career after death, and was a development by steps from that small unremembered grave where once his warriors hid the inurned ashes of the hero.[185](../../185/ "tree and pragmatics") What is true of one branch of the Aryan family is true of all.[186](../../186/ "tree and pragmatics") Sentiments of such universality and depth must have been common to all.[187](../../187/ "tree and pragmatics") If this be so, the Olympian Zeus himself was once some rude chieftain dwelling in Thrace or Macedonia, and his sublime temple of Doric architecture traceable to some insignificant cairn or flagged cist in Greece, or some earlier home of the Hellenic race, and his name not Zeus, but another; and Kronos, that god whom he, as a living wight, adored, and under whose protection and favour he prospered.[188](../../188/ "tree and pragmatics") [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/) [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/page/2/) **3** - ← previous: [page 2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/10/page/2/) - ↑ back to [Early Bardic Literature, Ireland.](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg8109/)