And it is no wonder.

The mysterious giant forms of the mythological period, removed by divinity from the sympathy of men; the vast heroic figures of Cuchulain and his fellows and foes, their close relation to supernatural beings and their doings, are far apart from the more natural humanity of Cormac and Finn, of Dermot and Goll, of Oisin and Oscar, of Keelta, and last of Conan, the coward, boaster and venomous tongue, whom all the Fenians mocked and yet endured.

They are a very human band of fighting men, and though many of them, like Oisin and Finn and Dermot, have adventures in fairyland, they preserve in these their ordinary human nature.

The Connacht peasant has no difficulty in following Finn into the cave of Slieve Cullinn, where the witch turned him into a withered old man, for the village where he lives has traditions of the same kind; the love affairs of Finn, of Dermot and Grania, and of many others, are quite in harmony with a hundred stories, and with the temper, of Irish lovers.

A closer, a simpler humanity than that of the other cycles pervades the Fenian cycle, a greater chivalry, a greater courtesy, and a greater tenderness.