Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/19

 In modern times no language of Aryan stock has been driven first from public use, and then dropped from the worship of God and the life of the fireside, but the Gaelic alone. On the European mainland myth tales continue to be told in the language of the country to which they belong, the language in which they have been told for centuries; and if these tales become blurred and less distinct, they become so in proportion as the conditions for their existence disappear: but they are not cut down as a forest is felled by the axe.

This, it seems to me, explains the peculiar condition of myth tales in Ireland, so well preserved where the Gaelic language is still living, and swept away completely where the language has perished.

A notable characteristic of Irish tales is the definiteness of names and places in a majority of them. In the Irish myths we are told who the characters are, what their condition of life is, and where they lived and acted; the heroes and their fields of action are brought before us with as much definiteness as if they were persons of to-day or yesterday. This is a characteristic much less frequently met with in middle and eastern Europe. In the Magyar stories the usual formula is, "Where there was or where there was not, there was in the world."