The wonderful imaginative power of the Celtic mind is never more
strikingly displayed than in the legends and fanciful tales which people
of the humbler walks of life seldom tire of telling. Go where you will in
Ireland, the story-teller is there, and on slight provocation will repeat
his narrative; amplifying, explaining, embellishing, till from a single
fact a connected history is evolved, giving motives, particulars, action,
and result, the whole surrounded by a rosy wealth of rustic imagery and
told with dramatic force an actor might envy. The following chapters
comprise an effort to present this phase of unwritten Celtic literature,
the material having been collected during a recent lengthy visit, in the
course of which every county in the island was traversed from end to end,
and constant association had with the peasant tenantry. As, however, in
perusing a drama each reader for himself supplies stage-action, so, in the
following pages, he is requested to imagine the charms of gesticulation
and intonation, for no pen can do justice to a story told by Irish lips
amid Irish surroundings.
[Illustration: "She 'll get all me Turf"]