32 Mr. Petrie on the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill. 



Passing over a long series of monarchs, of whom nothing very important is 

 recorded in connexion with this subject, the attention is next arrested by the 

 notices in the annals respecting the reign of Tuathal Teachtmar, or Tuathal 

 the Acceptable. Of this remarkable epoch in Irish history the following brief 

 notices are given in the Annals of Tighearnach. 



128. Piacha pinoolaio interfectus est in 128. Fiacha Findolaidh was slain at Temur, 



Temoria, vel a TTIuij bolj ut alii aiunt, o or, as others say, at Jffog-/i6o/^, by Elim Mac Con- 



eiim rriac Conpach, .i. o jiij Ulao, qui ceci- rach, that is, by the King of Ulster, who [after- 



dit hi each la Uuachol Ceachcmap a noigal wards] fell in a battle by Tuathal Teachtmar in 



a achaip. revenge of his father. 



130. CuachalCeachcmopre^raatij^, aranw 130. Tuathal Teachtmar reigned thirty years. 



XXX. Ip hte cecna po naipc 6opurh Caijen He is the first who exacted the Borumh (Boarian 



ajup ip pip po lacao ap cup. mulct) of Leinster, and it is to him it was first 



paid. 



160. Uu achat Ceachcmap occisus la 160. Tuathal Teachtmar was slain by Mai Mac 



TTlal TTIac Rochpame, 6a Ri n-Ulao oc lino Rochraidhe, King of Ulster, at Linn-an-gabunn 



an jabuno int)ail apaioe. in Dalaradia. 



In these notices there is nothing likely to be untrue ; but the Annals of the 

 Four Masters, besides their usual difference in dates, add to the simple facts of 

 Tighearnach some particulars from the Bardic poems not so easy to be credited ; 

 and, as in the case of OUamh Fodhla, already noticed, the modern historians, as 

 Keating, Lynch, O'Flaherty, and O'Conor, have collected so much minute his- 

 torical details as must excite considerable doubts in the minds of unprejudiced 

 readers, until their claims to authenticity shall be tested by a severe critical exa- 

 mination. The reign of Tuathal Teachtmar is the great epoch at which, accord- 

 ing to Charles O'Conor, the history of Ireland becomes as well minute as accu- 

 rate ; and, indeed, it must be confessed that it presents but little inconsistent 

 with the laws of historical probability : but as it would be wandering too far from 

 the object of this inquiry to examine those details, except as far as they imme- 

 diately relate to Tara, it is only necessary to cite the following particulars from 

 the Bardic history, as given by the historians already referred to. 



1. That Tuathal, after having obtained possession of the crown, proclaimed 

 a convention at Tara, to which the princes and nobility of the kingdom 

 repaired, and at which they all swore by their heathen deities, the sun, moon, 

 and all the other celestial and terrestrial divinities, that they and their posterity 



