correct.  Or again, when we cross over into Connacht, the remains at Rath Croghan, near the ancient palace of the Amazonian queen, Medb, testify to similar events.  She it was who in her “Pillow Talk” with her husband Ailill declared that she had married him only because in him did she find the “strange bride-gift” which her imperious nature demanded, “a man without stinginess, without jealousy, without fear.”  It was in her desire to surpass her husband in wealth that she sent the combined armies of the south and west into Ulster to carry off a famous bull, the Brown Bull of Cooley, the only match in Ireland for one possessed by her spouse.  This raid forms the central subject of the Tain Bo Cualnge.  The motif of the tale and the kind of life described in it alike show the primitive conditions out of which it had its rise.  It belongs to a time when land was plenty for the scattered inhabitants to dwell upon, but stock to place upon it was scarce.  The possession of herds was necessary, not only for food and the provisioning of troops, but as a standard of wealth, a proof of position, and a means of exchange.  Everything was estimated, before the use of money, by its value in kine or herds.  When Medb and Ailill compare their possessions, to find out which of them is better than the other, their herds of cattle, swine, and horses are driven in, their ornaments and jewels, their garments and vats and household appliances are displayed.  The pursuit of the cattle of neighboring tribes was the prime cause of the innumerable raids which made every man’s life one of perpetual warfare, much more so than the acquisition of land or the avenging of wrongs.  Hence a motif that may seem to us insufficient and remote as the subject of a great epic arose out of the necessities of actual life.  Cattle-driving is the oldest of all occupations in Ireland.

The conditions we find described in these tales show us an open country, generally unenclosed by hedges or walls.  The chariots can drive straight across the province.  There are no towns, and the stopping places are the large farmers’ dwellings, open inns known as “houses of hospitality”, fortified by surrounding raths or earthen walls, the only private property in land, in a time when the tribe-land was common, that we hear of at this period.  Within these borders lay the pleasure grounds and gardens and the cattle-sheds for the herds, which the great landowner or chief loaned out to the smaller men in return for services rendered.  Here were trained in arts of industry and fine needlework the daughters of the chief men of the tribe and their foster-sisters, drawn from the humbler families around them.  The rivers as a rule formed the boundaries of the provinces, and the fords were constantly guarded by champions who challenged every wayfarer to single combat, if he could not show sufficient reason for crossing the borderland.  These combats were fought actually in the ford itself, and all wars began in a long series of single hand-to-hand combats between equal champions before the armies as a whole engaged each other.