Chapter I. The Celts In Ancient History : EARLIEST REFERENCES IN the chronicles of the classical nations for about five hundred years previous to the Christian era there are frequent references to a people associated with these nations, sometimes in peace, sometimes in war, and evidently occupying a position of great strength and influence...
Chapter Ii. The Religion Of The Celts : Ireland and the Celtic Religion WE have said that the Irish among the Celtic peoples possess the unique interest of having carried into the light of modern historical research many of the features of a native Celtic civilisation. There is, however, one thing which they did not carry across the gulf...
Chapter Vii. The Voyage Of Maldun : BESIDES the legends which cluster round great heroic names, and have, or at least pretend to have, the character of history, there are many others, great and small, which tell of adventures lying purely in regions of romance) and out of earthly space and time. As a specimen of these I give here...
Chapter V. Tales Of The Ultonian Cycle : The Curse of Macha THE centre of interest in Irish legend now shifts from Tara to Ulster, and a multitude of heroic tales gather round the Ulster king Conor mac Nessa, round Cuchulain, [pronounced "Koohoolin."] his great vassal, and the Red Branch Order of chivalry, which had its seat in Em...
Preface : THE Past may be forgotten, but it never dies. The elements which in the most remote times have entered into a nation's composition endure through all its history, and help to mould that history, and to stamp the character and genius of the people. The examination, therefore, of these elements...
Chapter Viii. Myths And Tales Of The Cymry : BARDIC PHILOSOPHY THE absence in early Celtic literature of any world-myth, or any philosophic account of the origin and constitution of things, was noticed at the opening of our third chapter. In Gaelic literature there is, as far as I know, nothing which even pretends to represent early Celtic...
Chapter Iv. The Early Milesian Kings : The Danaans after the Milesian Conquest THE kings and heroes of the Milesian race now fill the foreground of the stage in Irish legendary history. But, as we have indicated, the Danaan divinities are by no means forgotten. The fairyland in which they dwell is ordinarily inaccessible to mortals, yet...
Chapter Iii. The Irish Invasion Myths : THE CELTIC COSMOGONY AMONG those secret doctrines about the "nature of things" which, as Ciesar tells us, the Druida never would commit to writing, was there any-thing in the nature of a cosmogony, any account of the origin of the world and of man? There surely was. It would be strange indeed if;...
Chapter Vi. Tales Of The Ossianic Cycle : The Fianna of Erin AS the tales of the Ultonian Cycle duster round the heroic figure of the Hound of Cullan, so do those of the Ossianic Cycle round that of Finn mac Cumhal, [pronounced "mac Cool"] whose son Oisin [pronounced "Usheen"] (or Ossian, as Macpherson called him in the pretended...
