a preservation of pedigrees in every family, and particularly in
the kingly houses. One of the chief objects of the triennial feis
of Tara was the revision of such records by the general assembly of
the bards, under the presidency of the Ard-Ollav of Ireland. In the
more ancient times, such records were rhymed and alliterated, and
committed to memory--a practice which, we may believe on the
authority of Caesar, treating of the Gauls, continued long after
the introduction of letters. Even at those local assemblies also,
which corresponded to great central and national feis of Tara, the
bards were accustomed to meet for that purpose. In a poem [Note:
O'Curry's Manners and Customs, Vol. I., page 543.], descriptive of
the fair [Note: On the full meaning of this word "fair," see Chap.
xiii., Vol. I.] of Garman, we see this--

"Feasts with the great feasts of Temair,
Fairs with the fairs of Emania,
Annals there are verified."

In the existing literature we see two great divisions. On the one
hand the epical, a realm of the most riotous activity of thought;
on the other, the annalistic and genealogical, bald and bare to the
last degree, a mere skeleton. They represent the two great
hemispheres of the bardic mind, the latter controlling the former.
Hence the orderly sequence of the cyclic literature; hence the
strong confining banks between which the torrent of song rolls down
through those centuries in which the bardic imagination reached its
height. The consentaneity of the annals and the literature
furnishes a trustworthy guide to the general course of history,
until its guidance is barred by _a priori_ considerations of a
weightier nature, or by the statements of writers, having sources