²¹Binchy, D.A. "The Fair of Tailtiu and the Feast of Tara." Ériu, vol. 18, 1958, p. 134.

The author's summation regarding the Feast of Tara: "The historical Feast of Tara was a primitive fertility rite culminating in the apotheosis of the sacred king. It was last held by Diarmait mac Cerbaill in 560, after which it was discarded as a relic of paganism. More than three centuries later, however, the pseudo-historians resurrected it in the form of a 'constitutional organ' of the 'high-kingship'. and we can actually trace the expansion of the legendary Feast of Tara until by Keating's day it has eclipsed the Fair of Tailtiu in importance and become the equivalent of a 'national assembly' or 'Parliament'. In this strange guise it continues to haunt our textbooks and examination papers. Together with Óenach Tailten it offers a cautionary example of the triumph of legend over history. The fact that both now figure among the 'national institutions' of medieval Ireland is a signal tribute to the ingenuity of our pseudo-historians of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries who created the myth of the 'high-kingship' as the apex of an imaginary Irish politeia."