The countless legions of the ‘Tain,’
Those hands of mine have turned and slain: 
Their men and steeds before me died,
Their flocks and herds on either side,
Though numerous were the hosts that came
From Croghan’s Rath of fatal fame.

Though less than half the foes I led,
Before me soon my foes lay dead: 
Never to gory battle pressed,
Never was nursed on Bamba’s breast,
Never from sons of kings there came
A hero of more glorious fame.[52]

28.  This poem is now published for the first time in its complete state.

29.  Autumn; strictly the last night in October. (See O’Curry’s “Sick Bed of Cuchullin,” “Atlantis,” i., p. 370).

30.  Culann was the name of Conor MacNessa’s smith, and it was from him that Setanta derived the name of Cu-Chulainn, or Culann’s Hound.

31.  Iorrus Domnann, now Erris, in the county of Mayo.  It derived its name ("Bay of the Domnanns,” or “Deep-diggers,”) from the party of the Firbolgs, so called, having settled there, under their chiefs Genann and Rudhraighe. (See “The Fate of the Children of Lir,” by O’Curry, Atlantis, iv., p. 123; Dr. Reeve’s “Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba,” note 6, p. 31; O’Flaherty’s “Ogygia,” p. 280; and Hardiman’s “West Connaught,” by O’Flaherty, published by the Irish Archaeological Society.)

32.  The name of Scatha, the Amazonian instructress of Ferdiah and Cuchullin, is still preserved in Dun Sciath, in the island of Skye, where great Cuchullin’s name and glory yet linger.  The Cuchullin Mountains, named after him, “those thunder-smitten, jagged, Cuchullin peaks of Skye,” the grandest mountain range in Great Britain, attract to that remote island of the Hebrides many worshippers of the sublime and beautiful in nature, whose enjoyments would be largely enhanced if they knew the heroic legends which are connected with the glorious scenes they have travelled so far to witness.  Cuchullin is one of the foremost characters in MacPherson’s “Ossian,” but the quasi-translator of Gaelic poems places him more than two centuries later than the period at which he really lived. (Lady Ferguson’s “The Irish before the Conquest,” pp. 57, 58.)

33.  For a description of this mysterious instrument, see Dr. Todd’s “Additional Notes to the Irish version of Nennius,” p. 12.

34.  On the use of mail armour by the ancient Irish, see Dr. O’Donovan’s “Introduction and Notes to the Battle of Magh-Rath,” edited for the Archaeological Society.

35.  For an interesting account of this sovereign, so famous in Irish story, see O’Curry’s “Lectures,” pp. 33, 34.  Her Father, according to the chronology of the “Four Masters,” is supposed to have reigned as monarch of Erin about a century before the Christian era.  “Of all the children of the monarch Eochaidh Fiedloch,” says O’Donovan (cited in O’Mahony’s translation of Keating’s “History,” p. 276) “by far the most celebrated was Meadbh or Mab, who is still remembered as the fairy queen of the Irish, the ‘Queen Mab’ of Spenser.”