from shipwreck, and in which there were thirty men and as many women. Now the other vessels sailed to the attack on the tower, and whilst all were stepping on the shore around the tower, the sea overwhelmed them, so that they were drowned. Not one of them escaped; and it is from the family in the keel left behind on account of its having been wrecked, the whole of Erinn has been filled with people to this day."[1]
The more a tale of this kind is touched up by historians, the less it appears what is called 'a cock-and-bull story,' and there can be no doubt that, on the whole, the Cúchulainn verses come much nearer the original than the prose versions mentioned. Still that associated with the name of Nennius supplies two most important omissions in the former: it calls the stronghold a glass tower, which was doubtless the glass fort to which Taliessin extends Arthur's fame; and in the next place it states that the guardians of the glass tower would not answer the Milesians, which has also its counterpart in Taliessin's words, when he says:[2]
'Beyond the Glass Fort, Arthur's valour they had not seen;
Three score hundreds stood on the wall:
It was hard to converse with their watchman.'
What, it may be asked, is the meaning of stories like these about expeditions into a country in or beneath the sea to steal the cauldron of the king, to carry away the cows that supplied milk for it, and the other treasures to be found there? Let it suffice for the present that I should somewhat vaguely indicate their origin. The Celts,
