Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

T98 Fictions of the Irish Celts.
but his life also was fully occupied at the proper busi-
ness of his chieftaincy, or in the battle or chase. The
grazier had his land and his cattle to look after, and
queens, chieftainesses, and graziers' wives found the
hours too short for the well administering of their house-
holds. A late dinner or early supper put an end to the
daily cares, and the poets in the early times, and the
prose storj'-teller later on, helped men and women to
forget their own cares for two or three hours by their
Tvondrous recitals. Would it have been a wise measure
on the part of the story-teller to relate a narrative having
the same relation to the state of existing society as the
modern novel has to our owti ? Not at all. If he drew
a faithful picture of the common life of the time, he
would find his noble audience yawning or going to
sleep.
Every one had come to be interested or electrified
every one's expectations were enhanced by those of his
neighbours. So the grand, the terrible, the deeply
affecting, and occasionally the ludicrous, must be pre-
sented. The earliest subjects of our old bards were
the real events of days then ancient, the exploits of the
ancestors of the noble chiefs or kings before them, all of
course magnified by the glowing medium of romance
and poetry through which they were presented.
When the stories lost their first poetic garb, they were
not left to the greater or less skill of the prose stor)'-
;