⁴⁵Pepper, Elizabeth, and John Wilcock. Magical and Mystical Sites: Europe and the British Isles. Harper & Row, 1977, pp. 258-9.

George Petrie noted that such depictions of ancient practices were written "...as derived from bardic traditions, and their knowledge of the customs still prevalent among the Irish kings and great lords in their own times. That these ancient customs were indeed preserved to the times of the writers of the poems, has been already shewn from the statement of the poet Cuan O'Lochain ; and it can scarcely be doubted that they were perpetuated though on a limited scale, in the household of every chief, not only in Ireland, but also in the Highlands of Scotland, as late even as the sixteenth century." (Petrie, George. "On the History and Antiquities of Tara Hill." The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 18, 1839, p. 211.)