Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

Ossiani: and other Early Legends
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213
county of Limerick. The warriors nearest tlie post of
danger hastened thither, and for a year and a day there
was a terrible diurnal fight on the strand between a detachment
landing from the ships and an equal number
of Fenian heroes, one great warrior generally slaying a
couple of hundred of the opposing party, and securing a
portion of the tale to himself, just as Agamemnon, or
Diomede, or Patroclus, had a book of the Iliad which
he might call his own. It all ended, as it should, in
favour of native valour and patriotism, few of the captains
of the King of the World surviving the year and day's war.
The brave young Gall, Prince of Ulster, worked himself
into such a state of fury in the fight, that he lost his
senses, and fled to tlrejonely GleiTn_na-i>(i ealt, in Kerry.
_An d there all the lunatics' in IrelancTmus t repair before
or after they pay the great debt.
Spenser had a great dislike to the custom prevalent in
his day, which sent up in summer-time the inhabitants of
the plains and valleys to the hills, where they lived, in
imitation of the Fianna, on game and the produce ot
their cattle, till their instinct warned sheep and cows of
the suitable moment to seek the shelter of the lowlands.
He complained that this usage afforded the disaffected
means of shelter and of support among these dwellers in
the " scraw-covered " shielings, and opportunities of con-
cocting designs unfriendly to the authority of his beloved
Gloriana.
It must be acknowledged that our information as to
the institution of the national militia is given by our
romantic historians alone, who have invested a real per-