Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland. Jeremiah Curtin
and social condition of the people.
There is no country in Europe so special in its conditions as Ireland, none in which hitherto there has been in some things a more resolute conservatism, coupled with such a frivolous surrender of the chief mental possession of the people, cherished during so many centuries of time—a frivolous surrender of the possession which beyond all others distinguishes a nation; for the character and mould of a nation's thought are found in its language as nowhere else, and the position of a nation in the scale of humanity is determined irrevocably by its thought.
Owing to this conservatism of a part of the people, for which science should be grateful, there are still some myth tales left in Ireland, as well, if not better, preserved than any in the remotest corners of eastern and northern Europe.
Since all mental training in Ireland is directed by powers both foreign and hostile to everything Gaelic, the moment a man leaves the sphere of that class which uses Gaelic as an every-day language and which clings to the ancient ideas of the people, everything which he left behind seems to him valueless, senseless, and vulgar; consequently he takes no care to retain it either in whole or in part. Hence the clean sweep of myth tales in one part of the country—the greater part, occupied by a majority of the people; while they are still preserved in other and remoter districts, inhabited by men who for the scholar and the student of mankind are by far the most interesting in Ireland.
Though in some countries of Europe the languages of the earlier inhabitants, and notably those of the Western Slavs, are forced into inferior political positions, no language has been treated with such cruelty and insult by its enemies and with such treasonable indifference by the majority of the people to whom it belongs as the Gaelic. In modern times no language of Aryan stock has been driven first from public use, and then dropped from the worship of God and the life of the fireside, but the Gaelic alone. On the European mainland myth tales continue to be told in the language of the country to which they belong, the language in which they have been told for centuries; and if these tales become blurred and less distinct, they become so in proportion as the conditions for their existence disappear: but they are not cut down as a forest is felled by the axe.
This, it seems to me, explains the peculiar condition of myth tales in Ireland, so well preserved where the Gaelic language is still living, and swept away completely where the language has perished.
A notable characteristic of Irish tales is the definiteness of names and places in a majority of them. In the Irish myths we are told who the characters are, what their condition of life is, and where they lived and acted; the heroes and their fields of action are brought before us with as much definiteness as if they were persons of to-day or yesterday. This is a characteristic much less frequently met with in middle and eastern Europe. In the Magyar stories the usual formula is, "Where there was or where there was not, there was in the world." Even the Russian stories, which are much more definite than the Magyar, and which have a good number of local myth-heroes, are less definite than the Gaelic. "In a certain State in a certain kingdom there was, or there lived, there was a man," is a very frequent formula; and so on through all Europe. The actor is often unspecified, and the place unknown. If he goes anywhere, he simply travels across forty-nine kingdoms or beyond thrice nine lands. But in the Irish tales he is always a person of known condition in a specified place.
This is a very interesting characteristic; since in all the mythologies which are intact, such as those of America, the myth is a story in which the characters are persons as definite as if they were actual neighbors of the people who tell the stories and listen to them. This alone would seem to prove that the Gaelic mythology, so far as it is preserved in Ireland, is better preserved than the mythology of any other European country.
A mythology in the time of its greatest vigor puts its imprint on the whole region to which it belongs; the hills, rivers, mountains, plains, villages, trees, rocks, springs, and plants are all made sacred. The country of the mythology becomes, in the fullest sense of the word, a "holy land."
When by invasion and the superposition of strange races, by change of religion or other causes, myths are lost, or nothing retained save the argument, the statement of the myth, and that but in part, then all precision and details with reference to persons and places vanish, they become indefinite, are in some kingdom, some place—nowhere in particular.
A myth tale may be considered a thing of value from three different points of view, and consequently for three different classes of readers. To one class it is valuable for its wonderful story and the way in which this story is told. So that a beautiful tale has a value for most men, irrespective of its scientific worth, and considered apart altogether from how well or ill the primitive character of its personages is preserved; just as a paragraph in a given language may be valuable to the general reader, irrespective of the form or philological value of its words.
To a second class of readers a tale is interesting for the social or antiquarian data which it preserves, or for purposes of comparison with tales of another race.
To a third, and very small class as yet, a tale is valuable for the myth material which it contains—for the amount of its contribution to the history of the human mind.
The first class of readers will, it seems to me, accord a high value to Gaelic tales, and when a sufficient number of them is presented to the world, they will receive their proper rank among the myth tales of Europe.
The second class of readers will find a large amount of interesting material in Gaelic myth tales, and they will know how to find what they want without further comment.
To students of mythology, forming the third—the most restricted, but in the eye of science the most important—class of readers, some remarks concerning mythology, myth, and myth tale may not be out of place nor unwelcome.
First, as to the origin of the term "mythology."
There are two nouns in the Greek language which have a long and interesting history behind them; these are mythos and logos. Originally they had the same power in ordinary speech; for in Homer's time they were used indifferently, sometimes one being taken, and sometimes the other, with the meaning that "word" has in our language.
Strictly speaking, there was of course a difference from the very beginning, which, though slight enough to be disregarded in ordinary use, or by poets, was sure to be developed in proportion as men felt the need of making precise distinctions.
Logos grew to mean the inward constitution as well as the outward form of thought, and consequently became the expression of exact thought—which is exact because it corresponds to universal and unchanging principles—and reached its highest exaltation in becoming not only the reason in man, but the reason in the universe—the Divine Logos, the thought of God, the Son of God, God himself. Thus we have in the Gospel of Saint John, "In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Mythos meant, in the widest sense, everything uttered by the mouth of man—a word, an account of something, a story as understood by the narrator.
In Attic Greek mythos signified a prehistoric story of the Greeks; with Aristotle it was the plot of a tragedy, which is the Attic meaning with a narrower application; for the tragedies were all taken from the prehistoric stories of Greece, and the prehistoric stories of Greece were narratives of divinities and heroes, that is, forces and principles of Nature; though this was not known to the Greeks of that time.
When mythos received its most definite as well as its most important application as a story of prehistoric Greece, its fate was settled; for these stories, on account of being understood neither in their origin nor true character, fell into discredit among the Greeks themselves before the Christian era. After the Christian era they found a lower deep still: they were not only fables, but wicked and harmful fables—the lies and absurdities of a false religion.
Logos and mythos, two words with such a long history, words starting with the same value, but reaching results diametrically opposite—one becoming during its career the reason of the universe, everything; the other, a fiction, nothing—gave