The three great sources of knowledge respecting the shrouded part of
humanity are the language, the mythology, and the ancient monuments of
a country.
From the language one learns the mental and social height to which
a nation had reached at any given period in arts, habits, and
civilization, with the relation of man to man, and to the material and
visible world.
The mythology of a people reveals their relation to a spiritual and
invisible world; while the early monuments are solemn and eternal
symbols of religious faith—rituals of stone in cromlech, pillar, shrine
and tower, temples and tombs.
The written word, or literature, comes last, the fullest and highest
expression of the intellect and culture, and scientific progress of a
nation.
The Irish race were never much indebted to the written word. The
learned class, the ollamhs, dwelt apart and kept their knowledge
sacred. The people therefore lived entirely upon the traditions
of their forefathers, blended with the new doctrines taught by
Christianity; so that the popular belief became, in time, an amalgam of
the pagan myths and the Christian legend, and these two elements remain
indissolubly united to this day. The world, in fact, is a volume, a
serial rather, going on for six thousand years, but of which the Irish
peasant has scarcely yet turned the first page.
The present work deals only with the mythology, or the fantastic creed
of the Irish respecting the invisible world—strange and mystical
superstitions, brought thousands of years ago from their Aryan home,
but which still, even in the present time, affect all the modes of
thinking and acting in the daily life of the people.
Amongst the educated classes in all nations, the belief in the
supernatural, acting directly on life and constantly interfering with
the natural course of human action, is soon dissipated and gradually
disappears, for the knowledge of natural laws solves many mysteries
that were once inexplicable; yet much remains unsolved, even to the
philosopher, of the mystic relation between the material and the
spiritual world. Whilst to the masses—the uneducated—who know nothing
of the fixed eternal laws of nature, every phenomenon seems to result
from the direct action of some nonhuman power, invisible though ever
present; able to confer all benefits, yet implacable if offended, and
therefore to be propitiated.
The superstition, then, of the Irish peasant is the instinctive belief
in the existence of certain unseen agencies that influence all human
life; and with the highly sensitive organization of their race, it is
not wonderful that the people live habitually under the shadow and
dread of invisible powers which, whether working for good or evil, are
awful and mysterious to the uncultured mind that sees only the strange
results produced by certain forces, but knows nothing of approximate
causes.
Many of the Irish legends, superstitions, and ancient charms now
collected were obtained chiefly from oral communications made by the
peasantry themselves, either in Irish or in the Irish-English which
preserves so much of the expressive idiom of the antique tongue.
These narrations were taken down by competent persons skilled in both
languages, and as far as possible in the very words of the narrator; so
that much of the primitive simplicity of the style has been retained,
while the legends have a peculiar and special value as coming direct
from the national heart.
In a few years such a collection would be impossible, for the old race
is rapidly passing away to other lands, and in the vast working-world
of America, with all the new influences of light and progress, the
young generation, though still loving the land of their fathers, will
scarcely find leisure to dream over the fairy-haunted hills and lakes
and raths of ancient Ireland.
I must disclaim, however, all desire to be considered a melancholy
_Laudatrix temporis acti_. These studies of the Irish past are simply
the expression of my love for the beautiful island that gave me my
first inspiration, my quickest intellectual impulses, and the strongest
and best sympathies with genius and country possible to a woman’s
nature.