Athletics and manly sport . nzas of this most curi-ous poem, which refer to the barrack at Tara: — Tlie great house of tliousands of soldiers, —To generations it was widely known;A beautiful fortress of brave men;Seven hundred feet was its length. It was not filled with the foolish and ignorant,Nor over-crowded with the wily and arrogant;It was a large work to plan its divisions:8ix times five cubits was its height. The King had his place there, the King of whom the fairest wine was was a fortress, a castle, a wonder;There were three times fifty compartments in it.
Athletics and manly sport . nzas of this most curi-ous poem, which refer to the barrack at Tara: — Tlie great house of tliousands of soldiers, —To generations it was widely known;A beautiful fortress of brave men;Seven hundred feet was its length. It was not filled with the foolish and ignorant,Nor over-crowded with the wily and arrogant;It was a large work to plan its divisions:8ix times five cubits was its height. The King had his place there, the King of whom the fairest wine was was a fortress, a castle, a wonder;There were three times fifty compartments in it. Three times fifty champions with swords(No weak defence for a fortress).That was the number, among the wonders,Which occupied each compartment. The whole of this hio:hlv interestinsr poem is MILITARY ATHLETES OF IRELAND. 191 published in Dr. Petries Antiquities of Tara,a work that ought to be found in all our largeAmerican libraries. In A. D. 1024, died a poet named Cuan OLoth-chain, who had also written about the great. No. ;^ZE MACE. (See page 176. barrack at Tara. Here is the stanza relatinof toit: — I speak farther of the fortress of the champions; (Which was also called the fortress of foolish women);The house of the champions was not a weak one,With its fourteen opening doors. The best account of the Fianna Eireann isgiven by the Rev. Dr. Geoffrey Keating, in his 192 ETHICS OF BOXING AND MANLY SPORT. well-known abstract of the History of Ireland,(written in the native Gaelic, about the year1630, and translated into En^^lish about onehundred and thirty years ago). Dr. Keatino^ had before him numerous invalua-ble Irish records and books of great antiquity,many of which have since been destroyed or carriedofl* by the English conquerors, whose policy hasalways been to obliterate every record of Irelandsnational 2:reatness and ancient culture, and castdiscredit and ridicule on what could not be con-troverted. I may here quote a striking para-graph from Prof. OCu
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectgames, bookyear1890
