Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

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poem to the sun was famous ;
Lughaidh, whose poem of
the death of his wife Fail is of great antiquity ; Adhna,
once chief poet of Ireland ;
Corothruadh, Fingin, &c.
Fergus Finbheoil, /^z/V ///jr, was a Fenian Bard.
IrelancTs Mirror, 1804, speaks of Henessey, a living seer,
as the Orpheus of his country. Amergin, brother of Hcbcr,
was the earliest of Milesian poets. Sir Philip Sydney
praised the Irish Bards three centuries ago. One. in
Munster, stopped by his power the corn's growth
;
and the
satire of another caused a shortness of life. Such rh^nnes
were not to be patronized by the Anglo-Normans, in the
Statute of 1367. One Bard directed his harp, a shell of
wine, and his ancestor's shield to be buried with him. In
rhapsody, some would see the images of coming events i")ass
before them, and so declare them in song. He was surely
useful who rhymed susceptible rats to death.
The Irish war odes were called Rosg-catha, the Eye of
Battle. Was it for such songs that Irish-Danes were cruel
to Bards
.? O'Reilly had a chronological account of 400
Irish writers. As Froude truly remarks, " Each celebrated
minstrel sang his stories in his own way, adding to them,
shaping them, colouring them, as suited his peculiar genius."
It was Heeren who said of the early Greek bards, " The
gift of song came to them from the gods." Villemarque
held that Irish Bards were " really the historians of the
race."
Walker's Irish Bards affirms that the
" Order of the
Bards continued for many succeeding ages invariably the
same." Even Buchanan found " many of their ancient
customs yet remain ;
yea, there is almost nothing changed
of them in Ireland, but only ceremonies and rites of religion."
Borlase wrote, " The last place we read of them in
the British dominions is Ireland." Blair added, " Long
after the Order of the Druids was extinct, and the national