scholars who have, with a thirsty pleasure, recreated the ancient
literature of Ireland, and given her once more a literary name among
the nations--a name which, having risen again, will not lose but
increase its brightness.

* * * * *

As to the stories themselves, they have certain well-marked
characteristics, and in dwelling on these, I shall chiefly refer, for
illustration, to the stories in this book. Some of these
characteristic elements belong to almost all mythological tales, and
arise from human imagination, in separated lands, working in the same
or in a similar way on the doings of Nature, and impersonating them.
The form, however, in which these original ideas are cast is, in each
people, modified and varied by the animal life, the climate, the
configuration of the country, the nearness of mountain ranges and of
the sea, the existence of wide forests or vast plains, of swift rivers
and great inland waters.

The earliest tales of Ireland are crowded with the sea that wrapt the
island in its arms; and on the west and north the sea was the mighty
and mysterious Ocean, in whose far infinities lay for the Irish the
land of Immortal Youth. Between its shining shores and Ireland,
strange islands--dwelt in by dreadful or by fair and gracious
creatures, whose wonders Maeldun and Brendan visited--lay like jewels
on the green and sapphire waters. Out of this vast ocean emerged also
their fiercest enemies. Thither, beyond these islands into the
Unknown, over the waves on a fairy steed, went Oisín with Niam;
thither, in after years, sailed St Brendan, till it seemed he touched
America. In the ocean depths were fair cities and well-grassed lands