Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/20

 Even the Russian stories, which are much more definite than the Magyar, and which have a good number of local myth-heroes, are less definite than the Gaelic. "In a certain State in a certain kingdom there was, or there lived, there was a man," is a very frequent formula; and so on through all Europe. The actor is often unspecified, and the place unknown. If he goes anywhere, he simply travels across forty-nine kingdoms or beyond thrice nine lands. But in the Irish tales he is always a person of known condition in a specified place.

This is a very interesting characteristic; since in all the mythologies which are intact, such as those of America, the myth is a story in which the characters are persons as definite as if they were actual neighbors of the people who tell the stories and listen to them. This alone would seem to prove that the Gaelic mythology, so far as it is preserved in Ireland, is better preserved than the mythology of any other European country.

A mythology in the time of its greatest vigor puts its imprint on the whole region to which it belongs; the hills, rivers, mountains, plains, villages, trees, rocks, springs, and plants are all made sacred. The country of the mythology becomes, in the fullest sense of the word, a "holy land."