"
He then goes on to discuss how far the incidents in the stories can be
accepted as they were accepted by Irish historical writers of the
eleventh century as authentic history:--
"Fortunately there is little need for me to discuss the credibility or
otherwise of the historic records concerning Finn, his family, and his
band of warriors. They may be accepted or rejected according to
individual bent of mind without really modifying our view of the
literature. For when we turn to the romances, whether in prose or verse,
we find that, although the history is professedly the same as that of
the Annals, firstly, we are transported to a world entirely romantic, in
which divine and semi-divine beings, ungainly monsters and giants, play a
prominent part, in which men and women change shapes with animals, in
which the lives of the heroes are miraculously prolonged--in short, we
find ourselves in a land of Faery; secondly, we find that the historic
conditions in which the heroes are represented as living do not, for the
most part, answer to anything we know or can surmise of the third
century. For Finn and his warriors are perpetually on the watch to guard
Ireland against the attacks of over-sea raiders, styled Lochlannac by
the narrators, and by them undoubtedly thought of as Norsemen. But the
latter, as is well known, only came to Ireland at the close of the
eighth century, and the heroic period of their invasions extended for
about a century, from 825 to 925; to be followed by a period of
comparative settlement during the tenth century, until at the opening of
the eleventh century the battle of Clontarf, fought by Brian, the great
South Irish chieftain, marked the break-up of the separate Teutonic
organisations and the absorption of the Teutons into the fabric of Irish
life.
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