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Greece. But a Homer was wanting to make them his own, by recast- 

 ing them in a new mould, and sending them from the mint of genius 

 and taste, stamped with the image and superscription of the God of 

 Song. As they passed from one age to another, they would neces- 

 sarily undergo some alterations, and if any of them were of very 

 ancient date, they must have been modernized in their language to 

 render them intelligible ; for, as Mr. O'Reilly informs us, " Eochaid 

 O'Flin, a celebrated poet and historian, who died A. D. 984, wrote 

 some poems which are still extant, accompanied with a copious gloss, 

 without which they could not be understood." Subjects of antiquity are 

 always grateful to eminent poets. The more remote the age, the more 

 favourable to the excursions of imagination. Heroic deeds become 

 more heroic and venerable from years, and the mind turns with 

 delight to visions of past glory, as if she felt warmed and animated 

 by their splendor. The Irish bards were never forgetful of the 

 deeds of their fathers. We learn from the above mentioned autho- 

 rity, that Cuan O'Lochain, " the most learned and celebrated anti- 

 quary and historian of Ireland," in the beginning of the eleventh cen- 

 tury, wrote a poem " on the splendor of the royal palace of Tarah, 

 in the time of Cormac Mac-Art, monarch of Ireland, A. D. 250.'' 

 Flann Mainistreach, who flourished about the middle of the same 

 century, wrote " on the deaths of the most remarkable of the Tuatha 

 De-Danans, and the places where they died." Giolla na Naomh 

 O^Dunn, about the middle of the succeeding century, wrote a poem 

 of 128 verses, " giving an account of the chief tribes descended from 

 the three Collas, sons of Cairbre LifFeachair, monarch of Ireland, 

 who was killed at the battle of Gabhra, A. D. 296," in which battle 

 Oscar, the son of Oisin, fell. After the English invasion, the bards 

 found a subject of more immediate interest for the exercise of their 

 art. Angus Roe O'Dali/, who died in 1350, invoked O'Molloy, 



