Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/34

 Some of these stories contain a certain amount of what might be termed broken myth material, while others correspond exactly to the amusing or satirical fables of literature in which beasts, birds, and plants take the place of men.

To whatever race they may belong, the earliest myths, whether of ancient record or recent collection, point with unerring indication to the same source as those of America, for the one reason that there is no other source. The personages of any given body of myths are such manifestations of force in the world around them, or the result of such manifestations, as the ancient myth-makers observed; and whether they went backwards or forwards, these were the only personages possible to them, because they were the only personages accessible to their senses or conceivable to their minds.

The primitive myth-makers, therefore, had no choice but to take that crowd of what to them were independent and unconnected forces, each being an individual person having its spring of action within itself, as the personages of their stories, in which were told the tale of all things.

Since they had passions varying like those of men, the myth-makers narrate the origin of these