A.D. 410-493.

The valor of Fergus and Cuculain, the rich imaginative life of Find and
Ossin, were the flower of heroic centuries. Strong men had fought for
generations before Concobar reigned at Emain of Maca. Poets had sung
their deeds of valor, and the loves of fair women, and the magical
beauty of the world, through hardly changing ages. The heroes of fame
were but the best fruit in the garden of the nation's life. So ripe was
that life, more than two thousand years ago, that it is hard to say what
they did not know, of the things which make for amenity and comity. The
colors of the picture are everywhere rich, yet perfectly harmonized.

The earliest forms of Irish writing seem to have come from the Baltic
runes, and these, in their turn, from an old Greek script of twenty-five
hundred years ago. The runes spread as far as the Orkneys, and there
they were well within the horizon of Ireland's knowledge. Nothing would
be more natural than the keeping of written records in Erin for three
or four hundred years before Cuculain's birth, nineteen hundred
years ago.

The arts of life were very perfect; the gold-work of that time is
unsurpassed--has never been surpassed. At a far earlier time there were
beautifully moulded and decorated gold-bronze spears, that show what
richness of feeling and imagination, what just taste and fine skill were
there. All our knowledge goes to show that the suitor of Credé has drawn
a true picture of her house and the generous social life belonging to
it. We know, too, that the great dining-hall of Tara has been faithfully
celebrated by the bards; the picture of the king in his scarlet cloak is
representative of the whole epoch.