"the nature of the Assemblies, or Fairs, of Ireland, and how the grave business of legislation was performed on appointed days, in the midst of others set apart for pleasure, or reserved for mercantile pursuits."
Charles O'Conor, of Belanagare, a famous authority on Irish literary antiquities, says:— "Placed in the extremity of Europe, secluded from the rest of the world, unconquered, unmixed, and never affected by the concussions of the fall of the Roman Empire, the Irish must have possessed primeval institutions, which these MSS. are the best calculated to unfold."
VII.
AN HEROIC COMBAT IN ANCIENT IRELAND.
The most interesting literary relic of ancient Ireland is, probably, the heroic poem called the "Táin Bó Chuailgne" ("The Cattle-Prey of Cooley") , which is preserved in the Leabhar na-h-Uidhri and in the "Book of Leinster." It is assigned to a period in or about the year 600, A.D.; at least one specimen of the same kind of ancient verse, in the "Dinchenchas," was written
