Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/66

44 There runs moreover throughout these stories a vein of rude and gross buffoonery which contrasts strongly with the character assigned to the Tuatha de Danann in the heroic sagas.

The true character of this mysterious race may now seem evident, and their substantial identity with the fairy of living peasant lore require no further demonstration. But I must quote one passage which shows that the ancient Irish not only possessed a mythology, but also an organised ritual, and that this ritual was of an agricultural sacrificial nature. Tradition ascribes to Patrick the destruction of Cromm Cruaich and his twelve fellow idols which stood on the plains of Mag Slecht.

Here is what Irish mythic legend has to tell of the worship paid to the Cromm:

Such then are the Irish Tuatha de Danann, beings worshipped at the outset with bloody sacrifices in return for the increase of flock and herd and vegetable growth; associated in the oldest mythological tales with the origin and welfare of agriculture; figuring in the oldest heroic tales as lords of a wonderland of inexhaustible delights, unfading youth, and insatiable love; still the objects of peasant reverence and dread; called to this very day, as they were called centuries ago, and still retaining much of the hierarchical organisation and material equipment due to their incorporation in the higher imaginative literature of the race.

The chain of development which can be followed in Ireland can only be surmised in England; but the Irish analogy allows, I think, the conclusion that the fairy of English romance has the same origin as the Tuatha de