Every race of people has its myths and hero tales. With those of the
Greeks most of us are familiar. We have heard of Hercules, Perseus,
Atlas and others, ever since we started to school. The early stories of
a race are always entertaining as well as instructive. For that reason
our school libraries contain the folk stories of the Japanese, the
Norsemen, the Russians, the English, the American Indian, the negro and
many others. The one people, of whose stories Americans know little, is
the Celtic race, the forefathers of the Scotch and Irish of today, and
the ancestors of many of us. This book is intended to make you
acquainted with the ancient heroes of the Celts.
Just as King Arthur is the early hero of the Anglo-Saxon people, so is
Finn MacCool the renowned hero of the Celts. Like King Arthur he had
gathered together a body of heroes, all of whom performed deeds of
valor. In Scotland we find stories of this same hero, only the Scotch
people call him Fingal.
Most of the stories which follow are tales of the adventures of Finn and
his friend, Dermot. These tales are about events which are supposed to
have taken place nearly two thousand years ago.
No doubt you wonder how we know anything about people who lived so long
ago. The very name, folk stories, explains it. Folk stories are told by
the folk, or people, of the country. Sometimes we find the tales written
in an ancient book, but most of them come down through the centuries by
one person telling the story to another.
You know that when you hear a good story, you like to tell it to little
brother or sister or some playmate. That is just the way the folk
stories come to us. In some countries there were bards or poets who went
around and sang of the old heroes. We often read of these men in Scotch
history. The most common way of preserving the stories, however, was by
the father and mother telling their children of the ancient heroes.
These children grew up and repeated the tales to their own families, and
so the story was preserved through the ages.
There is an old Irish legend that explains this method very nicely.
Finn had a son named Ossian, of whom you will read a great deal as we go
on. This son was a poet and sang the deeds of his father in verse. The
story runs that before the great battle of Gowra, Ossian had fallen in
love with a fairy and had gone to Fairyland to live. He lived in this
land of youth for four hundred years, growing no older. At the end of
that time he wanted to go back to earth and see if he could see any of
his old friends. Time went so quickly in Fairyland that he did not
realize how long he had been away.
His fairy wife gave him a horse to ride and warned him that he must not
touch a foot to the ground. Then Ossian rode away.
He came to Erin and rode through the scenes of his adventures. He was
surprised not to find any of his old friends. Not only that, he found
that the men were very much smaller than those of his time. He saw six
of them trying to roll a stone which his father could have moved with
one hand. He grew so sorry for them that he forgot all about his wife’s
orders. He got off his horse to move the stone. The instant he touched
the ground he became a wrinkled and bent old man.
Then, the story tells us, the people took him to St. Patrick, and he
told this Irish saint the stories of Finn and his companions.
It is a very pretty story to explain how these legends became known. Of
course, it is not true, but it shows the imagination of the Irish
people. They believe in fairies and witches and the powers of
enchantment. You will find that this belief enters into all the stories.
That is another thing about folk tales. Each person who tells them adds
something to them.
No doubt you have been to parties where a game something like this was
played: The players form a long row. Then the one on the end whispers
something to his neighbor, this person whispers what he heard to the
next player, and so on. The last player tells what has been told him. It
is nearly always something entirely different from the story which
started.
Folk stories grow in just that manner. The different provinces of
Ireland have different versions of the stories. In some parts of the
country Finn is the hero, and Dermot proves untrue to him. In another
province, Dermot is the splendid man and Finn is a cruel tyrant. The
stories which follow in this book are combined from those of all the
provinces. This book is not a history. It is a collection of interesting
stories about heroes who, possibly, never existed.