Barony of Kiltartan, I have heard a great number of the stories from
beggars, pipers, travelling men, and such pleasant company. But others I
have heard in the Workhouse, or to the north of Galway Bay, in
Connemara, or on its southern coast, in Burren. I might, perhaps, better
have called the little book Myths in the Making.

A sociable people given to conversation and belief; no books in the
house, no history taught in the schools; it is likely that must have
been the way of it in old Greece, when the king of highly civilised
Crete was turned by tradition into a murderous tyrant owning a monster
and a labyrinth. It was the way of it in old France too, one thinks,
when Charlemagne's height grew to eight feet, and his years were counted
by centuries: "He is three hundred years old, and when will he weary of
war?" Anyhow, it has been the way of modern Ireland--the Ireland I
know--and when I hear myth turned into history, or history into myth, I
see in our stonebreakers and cattle drivers Greek husbandmen or ancient
vinedressers of the Loire.

I noticed some time ago, when listening to many legends of the Fianna,
that is about Finn, their leader, the most exaggerated of the tales have
gathered; and I believe the reason is that he, being the greatest of the
"Big Men," the heroic race, has been most often in the mouths of the
people. They have talked of him by their fire-sides for two thousand
years or so; at first earlier myths gathered around him, and then from
time to time any unusual feats of skill or cunning shown off on one or
another countryside, till many of the stories make him at the last
grotesque, little more than a clown. So in Bible History, while lesser
kings keep their dignity, great Solomon's wit is outwitted by the
riddles of some countryman; and Lucifer himself, known in Kiltartan as
"the proudest of the angels, thinking himself equal with God," has been