Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

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I04 Old Irish Religions.
pursued by the river Boyne.
This Dagda became King of
the Fairies, when his people were defeated by the warlike
Milesians ;
and the Tuatha, as Professor Rhys says,
" formed an invisible world of their own," in hills and
mounds.
In the Book of Balliniote, Fintan, who lived before the
Flood, describing his adventures, said
" After them the Tuatha De arrived
Concealed in their dark clouds
I ate my food with them,
Though at such a remote period."
Mrs. Bryant, in Celtic Irela7id, observes :— " Tradition
assigns to the Tuatha generally an immortal life in the
midst of the hills, and beneath the seas. Thence they
issue to mingle freely with the mortal sons of men, practising
those individual arts in which they were great of
yore, when they won Erin from the Firbolgs by ' science,'
and when the Milesians won Erin from them by valour.
That there really was a people whom the legends of the
Tuatha shadow forth is probable, but it is almost certain
that all the tales about them are poetical myths."
Elsewhere we note the Tuath Crosses, with illustrations
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as that Cross at Monasterboice, of processions, doves, gods,
snakes, &c. One Irish author, Vallencey, has said, " The
Church Festivals themselves, in our Christian Calendar,
are but the direct transfers from the Tuath de Danaan
ritual. Their very names in Irish are identically the same
as those by which they were distinguished
by that earlier
race." That writer assuredly did not regard the Tuatha
as myths.
Fiech, St. Patrick's disciple, sang
" That Tuaths of Erin prophesied
That new times of peace would come."
Magic Draoideachta—was attributed to the Irish Tuatha,
and gave them the traditional reputation for wisdom.