Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/241

Rh archaic side of Aryan civilisation, the Tain bó Cuailgne is only inferior to the Iliad or the Odyssey.”

This is one way of looking at the remains of early Irish mythic and saga literature, and, if it be the correct one, it is not easy to over-estimate the importance of this literature to the folk-lorist in general, and in especial to students of British folk-lore. For if we hold that the beliefs and customs of archaic Ireland are to a large extent preserved in the early literature, it is natural to assume that these beliefs and customs were also shared by the inhabitants of archaic Britain, and it is an equally natural assumption that some of these beliefs and customs are still enshrined in the folk-lore current in the islands. This series of assumptions underlies a number of works which have been written of late years, notably Professor Rhys’s Hibbert Lectures, of which I gave a full account in the above-cited article, and the papers by Mr. G. L. Gomme, which have appeared in these pages. With certain modifications and reservations, I hold that these assumptions are sound and legitimate, and that, better than any other hypothesis, they fit in with all the facts at present known to us. It cannot be denied, however, that they are open to attack from various sides. In the first place, there is the preliminary question whether there is an Aryan race-group and consequently an “Aryan epic tradition” at all. If the Aryan speech was imposed by one race upon other and different races, may not the complex of myths and customs which we are accustomed to call Aryan, be likewise the exclusive property of one race, and have been accepted with the Aryan speech by the inferior races whom the Aryans dominated, and upon whom they impressed their civilisation, whether that civilisation be regarded as a special product of the Aryans or as taken over by them from older, presumably Eastern, civilisations? Putting this consideration aside, we have further to face the hypothesis that the inhabitants of