[1] The silence of Keating seems to me particularly strange, for he devotes a good deal of space to King Diarmuid's reign, yet he must have been perfectly well aware of the stories then current and the many allusions in vellum MSS. to the cursing of Tara.
[2] "Féis dedheanach Teamhra do deanamh la Diarmaitt righ Ereann." Tighearnach calls it "Cena postrema."
[3] Printed for the Royal Society of Antiquaries by the late Denis Murphy, S.J., Dublin, 1896. _See_ p. 85.
[6] He is called Aedh Baclamh here, "Bacc Lonim" in the "Life." Baclamh apparently indicates some office. I have here called him only the spear-bearer.
[9] There is a poem ascribed to Ruadhan in the MS. marked H. 4. in Trinity College. O'Clery's Féilire na Naomh has a curious note on Ruadhan which runs thus: Ruadhan of Lothra, "he was of the race of Owen Mór, son of Oilioll Olum. A very old ancient book (sein leabhar ró aosta) as we have mentioned at Brigit, 1st of February, states that Ruadhan of Lothra was in manners and life like Matthew the Apostle."
[10] After this the High-kings of Ireland belonging to the northern Ui Neill resided in their own ancient palace of Aileach near Derry, and the High-kings of the southern Ui Neill families resided at the Rath near Castlepollard, or at Dún-na-sgiath ("the Fortress of the Shields") on the brink of Loch Ennell, near Mullingar. Brian Boru resided at Kincora in Clare.
[11] See O'Donovan's letter from Navan on Brugh na Bóinne.
[14] By Fothadh called "na Canóine" who persuaded Aedh Oirnide to release them from this duty.
[15] _See_ "Fragments of Irish Annals" by O'Donovan, p. 210, and his note.
[16] This story is also told in the "Three Fragments of Irish Annals," p. 9.
[18] For Molling, _see_ above, p. 209-10. The following translation is by Standish Hayes O'Grady, "Silva Gadelica," p. 422.
[19] For a description of the awful consequences of a saint's curse that make a timid lunatic out of a valliant warrior see O'Donovan's fragmentary "Annals," p. 233.
We must now, leaving verifiable history behind us, attempt a cautious step backwards from the known into the doubtful, and see what in the way of literature _is said_ to have been produced by the pagans. We know that side by side with the colleges of the clergy there flourished, perhaps in a more informal way, the purely Irish schools of the Brehons and the Bards. Unhappily however, while, thanks to the great number of the Lives of the Saints,[1] we know much about the Christian colleges, there is very little to be discovered about the bardic institutions. These were almost certainly a continuation of the schools of the druids, and represented something far more antique than even the very earliest schools of the Christians, but unlike them they were not centred in a fixed locality nor in a cluster of houses, but seem to have been peripatetic. The bardic scholars grouped themselves not round a locality but round a personality, and wherever it pleased their master to wander--and that was pretty much all round Ireland--there they followed, and the people seem to have willingly supported them.