We can but obscurely image to ourselves the thoughts and deeds of the earliest dwellers in our island.  We know that they were skilled in many arts of peace and inured to the shock of war.  The sky spread above them as over us, and all around them was the green gloom of the forests, the whiteness of lakes and rivers, the rough purple of the heather.  The great happenings of life, childhood and age and death, were for them what they are for us, yet their blood flowed warmer than ours.  Browned by wind and sun, wet by the rain and the early dew of the morning, they delighted in the vigor of the prime.  Their love for kindred, for their friends and lovers, was as ours; and when friends and kindred passed into the darkness, they still kept touch with their souls in the invisible Beyond.

[Illustration:  River Erne, Belleek.]

The vision of our days is darkened by too much poring over earthly things; but the men of old, like many of our simpler races now, looked confidently and with intent faith across the threshold.  For them the dead did not depart—­hidden but from their eyes, while very near to their souls.  Those in the beyond were still linked to those on earth; all together made one undivided life, neither in the visible world alone nor in the hidden world alone, but in both; each according to their destinies and duties.  The men of old were immeasurably strong in this sense of immortality—­a sense based not on faith but on knowledge; on a living touch with those who had gone before.  They knew both over-world and under-world, because they held their souls open to the knowledge of both, and did not set their hearts on earthly things alone.  A strong life close to the life of the natural world, a death that was no separation, the same human hearts as ours,—­further we need not go in imagining that far-off time.

A third people was presently added to these two, at an epoch fixed by tradition some four thousand years ago.  A vivid picture of their coming has been handed down to us, and this picture we shall reproduce, as many circumstances and particulars of our knowledge drawn from other sources concur to show that our old legend is near to the truth, both in time and happenings.

The name these newcomers bore was Tuata De Danaan, the De Danaan tribes; they were golden-haired and full of knowledge, and their coming was heavy with destiny for the dark races of Fomor and Firbolg.  Even to-day, mysterious whispers of the De Danaans linger among the remote valleys and hillsides of our island, and truth is hidden in every legend of their deeds.  They have borne a constant repute for magical knowledge, and the first tradition of their coming not only echoes that repute, but shows how first they came by it.

The De Danaans came from the north; from what land, we shall presently inquire.  They landed somewhere on the northeast coast of our island, says the tradition; the coast of Antrim was doubtless the place of their arrival, and we have our choice between Larne and the estuary of the Foyle.  All between, lofty cliffs face a dark and angry sea, where no one not familiar with the coast would willingly approach; their later course in the island makes it very probable that they came to the Foyle.