Page:Beside the Fire - Douglas Hyde.djvu/17

Rh After this come Lady Wilde's volumes;—her "Ancient Legends," and her recently published "Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages," in both of which books she gives us a large amount of narrative matter in a folk-lore dress; but, like her predecessors, she disdains to quote an authority, and scorns to give us the least inkling as to where such-and-such a legend, or cure, or superstition comes from, from whom it was obtained, who were her informants, whether peasant or other, in what parishes or counties the superstition or legend obtains, and all the other collateral information which the modern folk-lorist is sure to expect. Her entire ignorance of Irish, through the medium of which alone such tales and superstitions can properly, if at all, be collected, is apparent every time she introduces an Irish word. She astonishes us Irish speakers with such striking observations as this—"Peasants in Ireland wishing you good luck, say in Irish, 'The blessing of Bel and the blessing of Samhain be with you,' that is, of the sun and of the moon." It