The books' already published by me on this subject are portions of a work in which I propose to tell the history of Ireland through the medium of tales, epical or romantic, written with the object of bringing remote times and men vividly before the mind's eye, and within the reach of common human sympathies. The work, of which the present is the first volume, belongs to an altogether different order of historical composition, and is critical, not constructive or imagi native. Where I seem to quote, the quotations are literal translations supplied by competent scholars, and where I seem to give the effect, that effect has been gathered by me from such literal translations and may be rigidly deduced from them. Some pages and passages which have already appeared in the former series, but which would seem rather to belong to this, have been transferred and republished here.