Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

3o8 Fictions of the Irish Celts.
who succoured the Wexford men, obHged them, by a kind
of moral pressure, to proceed to Scotland, where the
children of the Irish ladies enjoyed ascendency over the
rest. The Picts, according to the same authority, were
the offspring of these people, and their country was
called Caledonia, from Cathluan, the young chief of the
tale. The western Highlands and Islands being colonized
by other Irish tribes, got the name of x\lba.
A high antiquity must be assigned to some of the
Irish fictions, both in prose and poetry. We have men-
tioned some poems attributed to Oisin, preserved in
the Book of Leinster, written in the early part of the
twelfth century. The poems were copies in a dialect
antiquated even then. The Tain-bo-Cuailgne * was
copied into the " Book of the Dun Cow" by Maolmuire,
a monk of Clonmacnois, whose death occurred in 1107 ;
and the tale, in its construction and orthography, was
less familiar to the scholars of the time than the first
book printed by Caxton would be to a student of this
day, whose favourite researches were bounded by the
London journals. Moreover, there is a significant
absence of religious rites, or reverence for beings higher
than the hill folk—the men and women fairies residing
in caverns, and favouring or persecuting the worthies of
the epic according to circumstances.
* The Cattle Raid of Cuailgne.