Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/18

 Owing to this conservatism of a part of the people, for which science should be grateful, there are still some myth tales left in Ireland, as well, if not better, preserved than any in the remotest corners of eastern and northern Europe.

Since all mental training in Ireland is directed by powers both foreign and hostile to everything Gaelic, the moment a man leaves the sphere of that class which uses Gaelic as an every-day language and which clings to the ancient ideas of the people, everything which he left behind seems to him valueless, senseless, and vulgar; consequently he takes no care to retain it either in whole or in part. Hence the clean sweep of myth tales in one part of the country,—the greater part, occupied by a majority of the people; while they are still preserved in other and remoter districts, inhabited by men who for the scholar and the student of mankind are by far the most interesting in Ireland.

Though in some countries of Europe the languages of the earlier inhabitants, and notably those of the Western Slavs, are forced into inferior political positions, no language has been treated with such cruelty and insult by its enemies and with such treasonable indifference by the majority of the people to whom it belongs as the Gaelic.