[225] Cf. Standish O’Grady, Early Bardic Literature (London, 1879), pp. 65-6.
[226] L. U.; cf. A. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, i. 157-8.
[227] Before Caeilte appears, Patrick is chanting Mass and pronouncing benediction ‘on the rath in which Finn Mac Cumall (the slain leader of the Fianna) has been: the rath of Drumderg’. This chanting and benediction act magically as a means of calling up the ghosts of the other Fianna, for, as the text continues, thereupon ‘the clerics saw Caeilte and his band draw near them; and fear fell on them before the tall men with their huge wolf-dogs that accompanied them, for they were not people of one epoch or of one time with the clergy. Then Heaven’s distinguished one, that pillar of dignity and angel on earth, Calpurn’s son Patrick, apostle of the Gael, rose and took the aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on the great men; floating over whom until that day there had been [and were now] a thousand legions of demons. Into the hills and “skalps”, into the outer borders of the region and of the country, the demons forthwith departed in all directions; after which the enormous men sat down’ (Silva Gadelica, ii. 103). Here, undoubtedly, we observe a literary method of rationalizing the ghosts of the Fianna; and their sudden and mysterious coming and personal aspects can be compared with the sudden and mysterious coming and personal aspects of the Tuatha De Danann as recorded in certain Irish manuscripts.
[228] Kuno Meyer’s trans. in Rev. Celt., x. 214-27. This tale is probably as old as the ninth or tenth century, so far as its present form is concerned, though representing very ancient traditions (Nutt, Voy. of Bran, i. 209).
[229] Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xxii. 36-40. This text is one of the earliest with references to fairy beings, and may go back to the eighth or ninth century as a literary composition, though it too represents much older traditions.
[230] E. O’Curry, Lectures on Manuscript Materials (Dublin, 1861), p. 504.
[231] In the Book of Leinster, pp. 245-6; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 269.
[232] Cf. Mesca Ulad, Hennessy’s ed., in Todd Lectures, Ser. 1 (Dublin, 1889), p. 2.
[233] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 273-6.
[234] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 273-6.