Having once worked the gods, first into universal history, and then into the history of Ireland, it was an easy matter to supply them with dates of birth and death, local habitations, and places of burial. We are told with precision exactly how long Nuada, the Dagda, Lugh, and the others reigned at Tara. The barrows by the Boyne provided them with comfortable tombs. Their enemies, the Fomors, became real invaders who were beaten in real battles. Thus it was thought to make plain prose of their divinities. It is only fair, however, to these early euhemerists to say that they have their modern disciples. There are many writers, of recognized authority upon their subjects, who, in dealing with the history of Ireland or the composition of the British race, claim to find real peoples in the tribes mentioned in Gaelic myth. Unfortunately, the only point they agree upon is the accepted one—that the “Milesians” were Aryan Celts. They are divided upon the question of the “Fir Bolgs”, in whom some see the pre-Aryan tribes, while others, led astray by the name, regard them as Belgic Gauls; and over the really mythological races they run wild. In the Tuatha Dé Danann are variously found Gaels, Picts, Danes, Scandinavians, Ligurians, and Finns, while the Fomors rest under the suspicion of having been Iberians, Moors, Romans, Finns, Goths, or Teutons. As for the people of Partholon and Nemed, they have even been explained as men of the Palæolithic Age. This chaos of opinion was fortunately avoided by the native annalists, who had no particular views upon the question of race, except that everybody came from “Spain”. Of course there were dissenters from this prevailing mania for euhemerization. As late as the tenth century, a poet called Eochaid O’Flynn, writing of the Tuatha Dé Danann, at first seems to hesitate whether to ascribe humanity or divinity to them, and at last frankly avows their godhead. In his poem, preserved in the Book of Ballymote,[264] he says:— “Though they came to learned Erinn Without buoyant, adventurous ships, No man in creation knew Whether they were of the earth or of the sky. “If they were diabolical demons, They came from that woeful expulsion;[265] If they were of a race of tribes and nations, If they were human, they were of the race of Beothach.” Then he enumerates them in due succession, and ends by declaring:— “Though I have treated of these deities in their order, Yet I have not adored them”.