Celtic Mythology and Religion

CELTIC BURIAL RITES. 177
Brian Boromh a generation or two before the writer's
time, yet every event is chronicled with a minuteness
of genealogy, detail, and localisation that is quite
oblivious of the perspective of time, the long roll
of ages with their change of customs, and the uncertainty
as to the far distant past. We saw that the
Irish gods were changed to kings ;
nay, more, their
tombs can still be seen on the banks of the Boyne !
There are the barrows of the Dagda and his heroes,
and there, too, Cuchulain rests beneath his mound.
But just about his time Eochaid Aiream had introduced
the practice of simple burial beneath the earth,
and had abolished the old custom of burying the dead
" by raising great heaps of stones over their bodies."
These barrows are, mythologically considered, pre-
Celtic ; they are beyond the ken of Irish history
and myth, just as much as the Cromlechs are, which
popular archaeology accounts for as the " Beds of
Diarmat and Grainne " or " Granua's Beds " —the
beds occupied by this pair in their flight before Finn.
Considered, again archaeologically,
they belong also
to the races that preceded the Celts, as the character
of the interments and of the accompanying articles
proves. We have, however, continued reference
in the myths and tales to the burial of early Christian
times—the grave, the stone over it, and the inscription.
How little the Irish writers understood
the change of customs wrought by time is
seen in
the description by an Irish writer of the 12th century
of the burial of Patroclus at Troy ;
Achilles " built