119 



rather a romantic tale, than genuine history. — Keating's History, 

 vol. i. p. 361. Dublin, 1811. 



Mr. O'Reilly, in his valuable chronological account of Irish 

 Writers, informs us that Beg Mac-De, an Irish bard, who died A. D. 

 550, condemned the practice of sorcery in a poem beginning Otc h)t 

 ^ U|3C<1, " evil the practice of sorcery." He appears to have been a 

 fiavTiQ KaK(t)v, a prophet of plagues ; for in another poem " he foretels 

 the evils and destruction that were to fall on several places in Ire- 

 land." 



It may readily be admitted then, that we can conclude nothing 

 from the machinery of sorcery and enchantment employed in the. 

 Fenian tales, respecting their date. That it was antecedent to the 

 invasion of Ireland by Henry the Second, may be inferred from the 

 absence of all allusions to that event, as well as of images and ideas 

 peculiarly English. We find nothing in them relative to the Sassa- 

 nach, the Saxon, or English invader, though, in after times, that 

 name became the burden of many a doleful and indignant strain : 

 that it was subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, must be 

 concluded from the frequency of their Christian allusions. Some 

 of them may have been composed during the time of the Danish in- 

 vasions, and been intended by their praises of the heroes of old, to 

 stimulate the warriors of Ireland to expel the oppressors of their 

 country. Others, like Conloch and the Chase, could have no such 

 object. They appear to be of a character similar to that of the bal- 

 lads of Robin Hood, Will Scarlet, and Little John. Blair's observa- 

 tion, that the imagery and description belong exclusively to the 

 country in which the scene is laid, would apply to these poems much 

 more strictly than to ■ Macpherson's Ossian ; though a few of their 

 allusions may be of foreign growth, and some of their imagery was 

 most injudiciously rejected by Macpherson, as unrefined and unclassi- 



