Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/292

 282 Folklore and History in Ireland.

" slips." If we were dealing with a far off island we should enquire into its geographical and topographical conditions, its history, religious system or systems, and social organi- sation in general. They are equally of importance as aids to the study of one of the British Isles. Yet the very first point — geographical control — is usually ignored, though the effect of geographical conditions on the story of Ireland, and consequently on its folklore, has been deep and far reaching.

Consider for a moment Ireland's position on a map. It is not only an island, that is to say cut away from the mainland, the centres of life and cultural movements, but it is an island separated from these by another and a larger island. Obviously the first "injustice to Ireland" was that she was not placed by Nature in the situation occupied by her dominating sister. Such interference with a country's " place in the sun " cannot be rectified by centuries of protest and invective. Furthermore, climatic conditions serve to exaggerate the evil, for those very portions of the island furthest removed from influences that make for progress, by geographical influences are subjected to a more enervating climate than the districts more favourably placed. Therefore both climate and situation are factors that should be taken into careful consideration when examining the radical causation of Irish problems.

Nor is this all. If Ireland was cut off from the continental tide of cultural movement she was by that very isolation protected from early interference, and was able at one time to develop a degree of civilisation of her own far ahead of her neighbours. Yet this apparently beneficial factor has, in truth, been her undoing. There was no stimulus of conflict. She never had the steadying if drastic treatment of Roman subjugation to imbue a sense of discipline, to incite a recognition of the need and values of organisation, and to lay the foundations of national