The Morrigan, who
descends from the first cycle, is now the goddess of war, and is at
first the enemy and afterwards the lover of Cuchulain. Angus, The
Dagda, Mananan the sea-god, enter not only into the sagas of the
second cycle, but into those of the third, of the cycle of Finn. And
all along to the very end of the stories, and down indeed to the
present day, the Tuatha De Danaan appear in various forms, slowly
lessening in dignity and power, until they end in the fairy folk in
whom the Irish peasants still believe. They are alive and still
powerful in the third--the Fenian--cycle of stories, some of which are
contained and adorned in this book. In their continued presence is the
only connexion which exists between the three cycles. No personages of
the first save these of the gods appear in the Heroic cycle, none of
the Heroic cycle appears in the Fenian cycle. Seventeen hundred years,
according to Irish annalists, separate the first from the second, more
than two hundred years separate the second from the beginning of the
third.
The third cycle is called Fenian because its legends tell, for the
most part, of the great deeds of the Feni or Fianna, who were the
militia employed by the High King to support his supremacy, to keep
Ireland in order, to defend the country from foreign invasion.
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