Page:Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland (Curtin).djvu/38

 A myth, even when it contains a universal principle, expresses it in a special form, using with its peculiar personages the language and accessories of a particular people, time, and place; persons to whom this particular people, with the connected accidents of time and place, are familiar and dear, receive the highest enjoyment from the myth, and the truth goes with it as the soul with the body. But another people, to whom all things connected with this myth are unknown and incredible, regard it as absurd and untrue,—that is, if they consider it at all. This people, however, have a myth of the same character, and perhaps containing the same principle, as that expressed in the first myth, and they are as much attached to it as the first people are to theirs. This phenomenon is repeated all over the world. And for each people in a certain state of development the myths and beliefs of their neighbors are untrue, because the personages and actions in them are not identical with their own, though expressing in most cases identical things in a different way.

It is only when we come to examine them in the light of the general principle which they contain, each in its own special form, that myths reveal the truth that is in them. When thus treated they