headings of _Catha_, battles; _Longasa_, travels (in exile); _Imrama_, voyages (voluntary); _Tógbála_, conquests; _Tóglasi_, destructions; _Airgne_, slaughters; _Forbasa_, sieges; _Oitti_, tragic fates; _Tána_, forays; _Tochmarca_, wooings; _Uatha_, [adventures in] caves; _Eachtra_, deeds, adventures; _Sluaigheadha_, hostings or expeditions; to which are to be added _Fessa_, banquets; _Aithidi_, elopements; _Serca_, love-stories; _Tomadma_, irruptions or invasions (of recent date); _Tocomlada_, colonies; _Físi_, visions. The subjects of these tales were taken from the national history or mythology, or, oftener still may be, from that traditionary lore which forms a debatable ground between the two. Many of them were more esteemed as authorities for tribal history or genealogy than upon their purely literary merit, though in others the imaginative element is as frankly recognised as in a historical novel by Scott or Dumas. The romantic literature of Ireland reached its height about the time of the greatest activity of the Irish Church, and the sacred and secular schools did not fail to exercise a mutual influence, for the Irish clergy by no means despised these relics of Paganism: they possessed a large share of that wise tolerance which we find in many of the great clerics of the Middle Ages, who did not desire the destruction of all the associations that had twined themselves about the lives of the people, but rather to enlist them into the service of the new faith.[103] Two classes of the Irish tales were specially adapted for ecclesiastical treatment, and being thus brought into contact with the general literature of mediæval Europe, have left upon it a deep and traceable impression. These were the _Imram_, or Voyage, and the _Fis_, or Vision, species distinct in kind, but containing in practice much that was common to both; for the course of the _Imram_ lay, for the most part, among the enchanted lands of Celtic mythology, thinly disguised, in later times, by a coating of Christian eschatology; and the _Fis_, though more commonly of Christian origin, and often indited expressly for edification, was indebted to the same source for most of its _mise-en-scène_. Both types of narrative are represented among the legends which recount the adventures met with by Cuchulainn, Cormac Mac Áirt, and other ancient heroes in a purely pagan Otherworld. Starting thence and proceeding through the travel tales, similar in many respects to the foregoing, but more or less imbued with a Christian tinge, which relate the Voyages of Maelduin, of Tadg Mac Céin, of the Sons of Ua Corra, and the like, we reach, on the one hand, the Voyage of St. Brendan, one of the most picturesque and popular legends of the Middle Ages, and, on the other hand, the visions of the Irish Saints, the stories of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, and similar legends which pervaded Western Europe, and passing into Italy would appear