Thus was the might of the Fomorians broken, and the De Danaans ruled unopposed, their power and the works of their hands spreading throughout the length and breadth of the land. Many monuments are accredited to them by tradition, but greatest and most wonderful are the pyramids of stone at Brugh on the Boyne. Some nine miles from the sandy seashore, where the Boyne loses itself in the waves, there is a broad tongue of meadowland, shut in on three sides southward by the Boyne, and to the northeast cut off by a lesser stream that joins it. This remote and quiet headland, very famous in the annals, was in old days so surrounded by woods that it was like a quiet glade in the forest rimmed by the clear waters of the Boyne. The Mourne Mountains to the north and the lesser summits on the southern sky-line were hidden by the trees. The forest wall encircled the green meadowland, and the river fringed with blue forget-me-nots. In this quiet spot was the sacred place of the De Danaans, and three great pyramids of stone, a mile apart along the river, mark their three chief sanctuaries. The central is the greatest; two hundred thousand tons of stone heaped up, within a circular wall of stone, itself surrounded by a great outer circle of standing stones, thirty in number, like gray sentinels guarding the shrine. In the very heart of the pyramid, hushed in perpetual stillness and peace, is the inmost sanctuary, a chamber formed like a cross, domed with a lofty roof, and adorned with mysterious tracings on the rocks. Shrines like this are found in many lands, whether within the heart of the pyramids of Egypt or in the recesses of India's hills; and in all lands they have the same purpose. They are secret and holy sanctuaries, guarded well from all outward influence, where, in the mystic solitude, the valiant and great among the living may commune with the spirits of the mighty dead. The dead, though hidden, are not passed away; their souls are in perpetual nearness to ours. If we enter deep within ourselves, to the remote shrine of the heart, as they entered that secluded shrine, we may find the mysterious threshold where their world and our world meet. In the gloom and silence of those pyramid-chambers, the De Danaans thus sought the souls of their mighty ones--the Dagda, surnamed the Mighty, and Lug the Long-Armed, and Ogma of the Sunlike Face, and Angus the Young. From these luminous guardians they sought the inbreathing of wisdom, drawing into themselves the might of these mightier ones, and rising toward the power of their immortal world. And to these sacred recesses they brought the ashes of their mighty dead, as a token that they, too, had passed through the secret gateway to the Land of the Ever Young.