Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/180

168 believe that the men of old were actively seeking for the earthly paradise where existed "givers of life" that could confer all sorts of benefits on man. We know further that these givers of life, gold, precious stones, pearls, plants, actually exist in many parts of the world. If men were seeking for them, they must in certain cases have found them. So it is legitimate to examine the early settlements of civilised men in various parts of the world to see if there be any signs that they were determined in their movements by the desire to obtain possession of givers of life. To begin with the first example that was mentioned, that of Ireland. The Celts imagined that there was an earthly paradise over the seas that was full of wealth. But what was the place where they had settled, Ireland itself, but a region that must in early times have been full of givers of life in the shape of gold, pearls, and other substances? Although the matter is not yet capable of exact proof, there is good reason to believe that the first civilised people who arrived there, the kitchen-midden people and the dolmen-builders, were seeking for gold and pearls as well as other substances. They settled also in Devon and