Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland. Jeremiah Curtin
stars—have become, in fact, every living thing, object, agency, phenomenon, process, and power outside of man. Another party much smaller in number, who succeeded in avoiding entanglement in the struggle of preparing the world for man, left the earth. According to some myths they went beyond the sky to the upper land; according to others they sailed in boats over the ocean to the West—sailed till they went out beyond the setting sun, beyond the line where the sky touches the earth. There they are living now free from pain, disease, and death, which came into the world just before they left, but before the coming of man and through the agency of this first people.
The final voyage over the ocean of that remnant of the elemental people, the gods of America, is described with considerable detail in some myths. It is on the eve of man's appearance. The smoke that preceded his coming was rising from the ground and curling up the hillsides; the distant shout of his approach was heard as the boats moved quickly to the West.
This earliest American myth-cycle really describes a period in the beginning of which all things—and there was no thing then which was not a person—lived in company without danger to each other or trouble. This was the period of primæval innocence, of which we hear so many echoes in tradition and early literature, when that infinite variety of character and quality now manifest in the universe was still dormant and hidden, practically uncreated. This was the "golden age" of so many mythologies—the "golden age" dreamed of so often, but never seen by mortal man; a period when, in their original form and power, the panther and the deer, the wolf and the antelope, lay down together, when the rattlesnake was as harmless as the rabbit, when trees could talk and flowers sing, when both could move as nimbly as the swiftest on earth.
Such, in a sketch exceedingly meagre and imperfect, a hint rather than a sketch, is the first great cycle of American mythology—the creation-myth of the New World. From this cycle are borrowed the characters and machinery for myths of later construction and stories of inferior importance; myths relating to the action of all observed forces and phenomena; struggles of the seasons, winds, light and darkness; and stories in great number containing adventures without end of the present animals, birds, reptiles, and insects—people of the former world in their fallen state.
Some of these stories contain a certain amount of what might be termed broken myth material, while others correspond exactly to the amusing or satirical fables of literature in which beasts, birds, and plants take the place of men.
To whatever race they may belong, the earliest myths, whether of ancient record or recent collection, point with unerring indication to the same source as those of America, for the one reason that there is no other source. The personages of any given body of myths are such manifestations of force in the world around them, or the result of such manifestations, as the ancient myth-makers observed; and whether they went backwards or forwards, these were the only personages possible to them, because they were the only personages accessible to their senses or conceivable to their minds.
The primitive myth-makers, therefore, had no choice but to take that crowd of what to them were independent and unconnected forces, each being an individual person having its spring of action within itself, as the personages of their stories, in which were told the tale of all things.
Since they had passions varying like those of men, the myth-makers narrate the origin of these passions, and carried their personages back to a period of peaceful and innocent chaos, when there was no motive as yet in existence. After awhile the shock came. The motive appeared in the form of revenge for acts done through cupidity or ignorance; strife began, and never left the world of the gods till one quota of them was turned into animals, plants, heavenly bodies, everything in the universe, and the other went away unchanged to a place of happy enjoyment.
All myths have the same origin, and all run parallel up to a certain point, which may be taken as the point to which the least-developed people have risen. After this the number in the company decreases till the Aryan mythology in its highest development stands alone, containing myths and myth-conceptions of the loftiest and purest character connected with religions of Europe and Asia.
It is to the explanation of the Aryan mythology that we are to turn our efforts, and in explaining it, create a science. In this work there is no mythology that will not bear its part, for the highest forms of Aryan myth-thought have beginnings as simple as those of the lowliest race on earth. These Aryan beginnings are partly preserved, partly blurred, and partly lost; but we may come to see in various degrees, from absolute accuracy to different kinds of approximation, what the lost and blurred beginnings were, and we shall continue to find this aid till we have parted company with the last of the non-Aryan myths.
Gaelic mythology contains many myth facts which have perished elsewhere. The Gaelic language shows that the Kelts left the home of the Aryan race at a period far anterior to any of the other migrations.
The present of the verb "to be" and the pronouns would suffice to prove this without reference to the body of the language, which even in present use preserves through its whole structure remarkable traces of antiquity in that freedom of arranging word-elements which is common to all languages at an early period of growth, but which in the other forms of Aryan speech has disappeared, though still common in so many non-Aryan languages. There is not in the oldest books of Persia and India, nor in any Aryan language, dead or alive, except Gaelic, a single instance of the substantive verb with the predicate between that part which is called the root and the pronominal particle.
The Gaelic speaker of to-day, if he wishes to say "I am a man," says, "Is fear me ;" where, if he followed the usage of other Aryan languages, he would say, "Fear isme." The Sanscrit speaker in the earliest literary period had to say "Nri asmi." There was a time when in Sanscrit it was proper to put the predicate between the two parts of the verb, as it is yet in Gaelic, and say "As nri mi," instead of "Nri asmi ;" assuming, of course, that these were the correct forms of that early period.
It cannot well be less than three, and in all likelihood it is nearer four than three, thousand years since Sanscrit and all other Aryan languages, except those of the Keltic migration, lost this ancient freedom of verbal arrangement.
Gaelic mythology, removed from the home of the race before this very important linguistic change, shows survivals of that ancient time which will throw light on many myths, and aid in connecting non-Aryan with Aryan mythology; thus rendering a service which we should look for in vain elsewhere.
The reason is of ancient date why myths have come, in vulgar estimation, to be synonymous with lies ; though true myths—and there are many such—are the most comprehensive and splendid statements of truth known to man.
A myth, even when it contains a universal principle, expresses it in a special form, using with its peculiar personages the language and accessories of a particular people, time, and place; persons to whom this particular people, with the connected accidents of time and place, are familiar and dear, receive the highest enjoyment from the myth, and the truth goes with it as the soul with the body. But another people, to whom all things connected with this myth are unknown and incredible, regard it as absurd and untrue—that is, if they consider it at all. This people, however, have a myth of the same character, and perhaps containing the same principle, as that expressed in the first myth, and they are as much attached to it as the first people are to theirs. This phenomenon is repeated all over the world. And for each people in a certain state of development the myths and beliefs of their neighbors are untrue, because the personages and actions in them are not identical with their own, though expressing in most cases identical things in a different way.
It is only when we come to examine them in the light of the general principle which they contain, each in its own special form, that myths reveal the truth that is in them. When thus treated they become an object of vast interest, and a source of unceasing delight to the mind.
The time, perhaps, may not be so distant when, on the basis of correct information, the erroneous opinions on myths and mythology now held by most men will be reversed—a thing quite possible in this America of ours, where the printed word is so far reaching and so strong.
Jeremiah Curtin.
Hoopa Valley, Humboldt