Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/29

 worship their own earthly and natural ancestors under the guise of beasts, birds, reptiles, and plants, these ancestors when alive having received the names of beasts, birds, reptiles, and plants because they resembled them in some way, and after being dead two or three generations were confounded by their descendants with the creatures or plants after which they were named. So the people who began by worshipping the ghosts of ordinary human beings, their own fathers, fell to worshipping wild beasts, snakes, birds, and insects, from which they thought themselves descended by the ordinary process of fleshly generation. To fill out the whole list, men, if their ancestors came from the East, were descended from the sun; if from a mountain, the mountain was their ancestor; if from beyond the sea, they were descended from the sea.

This theory is discussed with as much seriousness as if it had foundation or proof in the world, as if it had ascertained facts on which to rest; and on the basis of this theory it is shown that the ghost of a savage chief grows, through accretions of respect and awe, to be an ethnic god of incalculable power.

Now, what is a myth?

The oldest myth, or rather cycle of myths, in