Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/32

 in fact, every living thing, object, agency, phenomenon, process, and power outside of man. Another party much smaller in number, who succeeded in avoiding entanglement in the struggle of preparing the world for man, left the earth. According to some myths they went beyond the sky to the upper land; according to others they sailed in boats over the ocean to the West,—sailed till they went out beyond the setting sun, beyond the line where the sky touches the earth. There they are living now free from pain, disease, and death, which came into the world just before they left, but before the coming of man and through the agency of this first people.

The final voyage over the ocean of that remnant of the elemental people, the gods of America, is described with considerable detail in some myths. It is on the eve of man's appearance. The smoke that preceded his coming was rising from the ground and curling up the hillsides; the distant shout of his approach was heard as the boats moved quickly to the West.

This earliest American myth-cycle really describes a period in the beginning of which all things—and there was no thing then which was not a person—lived in company without danger to each