[15] O'Curry, who, like his great compeer O'Donovan, naturally took the De Danann to be a real race of men, comically calls these goddesses "three of the noble non-professional druidesses of the Tuatha De Danann." ("M. and C.," vol. ii. p. 187). We have seen how the Irish Nennius calls the three queens of the De Danann goddesses also.
[16] The "g" of Brigit was pronounced in Old Irish so that the word rhymed to English _spiggit_. In later times the "g" became aspirated and silent, the "t" turned into "d," and the word is now pronounced "B'reed," and in English very often "Bride," which is an improvement on the hideous Brid-get.
[17] H. 2, 16, col. 119. Quoted by Stokes, "Old Irish Glossaries," p. xxxv.
[18] See the word "Hindelba" in the Glossary which is thus explained, "_i.e._, the names of the altars or of those idols from the thing which they used to make (?) on them, namely, the _delba_ or images of everything which they used to worship or of the beings which they used to adore, as, for instance, the form or figure of the sun on the altar." Again, the word "Hidoss" is explained as coming from "the Greek εἶδος which is found in Latin, from which the word _idolum_, namely, the shapes or images [_arrachta_] of the idols [or elements] which the Pagans used formerly to make."
The ramifications of early Irish literary history and its claims to antiquity are so multiple, intricate, and inter-connected, that it is difficult for any one who has not made a close study of it to form a conception of the extent it covers and the various districts it embraces. The early literature of Ireland is so bound up with the early history, and the history so bound up and associated with tribal names, memorial sites, patronymics, and topographical nomenclature, that it presents a kind of heterogeneous whole, that which is recognised history running into and resting upon suspected or often even evident myth, while tribal patronymics and national genealogies abut upon both, and the whole is propped and supported by legions of place-names still there to testify, as it were, to the truth of all.
We have already glanced at some of the marks left by the mysterious De Danann race upon our nomenclature. Mounds, raths, and tumuli, called after them, dot all Ireland. It is the same with the early Milesians. It is the same with the men of the great pseudo-historic cycle of story-telling, that of Cuchulain and the Red Branch, not to speak of minor cycles. There is never a camping-ground of Mève's army on their march a century B.C. from Rathcroghan in Roscommon to the plain of Mochruime in Louth, and never a skirmish fought by them that has not given its name to some plain or camping-ground or ford. Passing from the heroes of the Red Branch to the history of Finn mac Cool and the Fenians, we find the same thing. Finn's seat, the Hill of the Fenians, Diarmuid and Gráinne's bed, and many other names derived from them or incidents connected with them, are equally widely scattered.