Then she added a prophecy in which she foretold the approaching end of the divine age, and the beginning of a new one in which summers would be flowerless and cows milkless and women shameless and men strengthless, in which there would be trees without fruit and seas without fish, when old men would give false judgments and legislators make unjust laws, when warriors would betray one another, and men would be thieves, and there would be no more virtue left in the world. ----- Footnote 135: This chapter is, with slight interpolations, based upon the Harleian MS. in the British Museum numbered 5280, and called the _Second Battle of Moytura_, or rather from translations made of it by Dr. Whitley Stokes, published in the _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XII, and by M. de Jubainville in his _L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande_. Footnote 136: I have interpolated this picturesque passage from the account of a fight between the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Fomors in the “Fate of the Children of Tuirenn”. O’Curry’s translation in _Atlantis_, Vol. IV. Footnote 137: This translation was made by Eugene O’Curry from an ancient vellum MS. formerly belonging to Mr. W. Monck Mason, but since sold by auction in London. See his _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, Lecture XII, p. 252. Footnote 138: See Fergusson: _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 180, &c. Footnote 139: ? Bagpipes. Footnote 140: _Book of Fermoy._ See _Revue Celtique_, Vol. I.—“The Ancient Irish Goddess of War”. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER X THE CONQUEST OF THE GODS BY MORTALS Of what Badb had in mind when she uttered this prophecy we have no record. But it was true. The twilight of the Irish gods was at hand. A new race was coming across the sea to dispute the ownership of Ireland with the people of the goddess Danu. And these new-comers were not divinities like themselves, but men like ourselves, ancestors of the Gaels.