Flainn, an Irish antiquary of the 10th century, has a poem about the battle of Moytura, which gives the framework of the later prose tale; whilst a passage in Cormac’s glossary (Cormac was slain in 918) shows that a prose tale, substantially the same in character as the existing one, must have been extant at least fifty years before the date of Eochaidh’s poem. In the face of all these facts, Dr. O’Rorke gravely maintains that a battle, fought in 1398 between the O’Connors and the MacDonoughs, “was the source of all the high-sounding traditions connected with the place.”[1] Perhaps an even more remarkable instance of his way of treating the most patent facts connected with pre-Christian Ireland may be found in his account of the battle of Cooldruman, the famous fight in which the Ulster clans, at the instigation of their kinsman, St. Columba, invaded Connaught and routed the Connaughtmen. The Four Masters have preserved an ancient verse, professedly Columba’s invocation before the battle, in which the Saint calls upon Christ, as “his Druid”, to side with his kinsmen. The obvious inference from this passage is that the Druid must have been a revered personage, and his power recognised as a mighty one, for the greatest of Irish saints to use the word in addressing Christ. To Dr. O’Rorke it only suggests the doubt that Druidism ever existed in Ireland as a specific organised religion.[2]
In one sense, indeed, Dr. Rorke stands on the same level as the older Irish antiquaries; they accepted as literal truth what they found in the early annals, he rejects it as literal truth, but never seems to think that it has a meaning and an importance of its own, and that, if this meaning can be properly ascertained, more light will be thrown upon the Irish race and upon Irish culture than if the date and sequence of all the petty chiefs that ever held sway in that island since man first dwelt in it could be found out.[3]
