"There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles, High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and when he saw them he asked for them; and the two tablets were brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dúnlang, son of Enna, at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said "'The apple tree of noble Aillinn, The yew of Baile--small inheritance-- Though they are introduced into poems Unlearned people do not understand them.' "and Ailbhé, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred Battles] said too "'What I liken Lumluine to Is to the Yew of Baile's rath, What I liken the other to Is to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.'" So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields--unlike most--its chief value when rationalised, for as O'Curry remarks, it was apparently invented to account for some inscribed tablets in the reign of King Art in the second century, which had--as we ourselves have seen in the case of so many leaves of very old manuscripts at this day--become fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably together and could not be separated. Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened, according to the "Four Masters," in the year 241, when the tablets were burnt. Hence one of two things must be the case; the story must either have originated _before_ that date to account for the sticking together of the tablets, or else some one must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must, without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his own head, as to how there were _once on a time_ two tablets made of trees which _once_ grew on two tombs which were _once_ fastened together before Art, son of Conn, and which were soon afterwards unfortunately burnt. A supposition which, considering there were then, _ex hypothesi_, no adhering tablets to prompt the invention, appears at first sight improbable. * * * * *