Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 3 (Celtic and Slavic).djvu/324

 CHAPTER XV PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY

PART from the occasional Christianizing of myths or the interpolation of Christian passages in order to make the legends less objectionable, the Irish scribes frequently created new situations or invented tales in which mythical personages were brought into contact with saints and missionaries, as many examples have shown. In doing this they not only accepted the pagan stories or utilized their conceptions, but sometimes almost contrasted Christianity unfavorably with the older religion.

The idea of the immortality or rebirth of the gods survived with the tales in which it was embodied and was sometimes utilized for a definite purpose. The fable of the coming of Cessair, Noah's granddaughter, to Ireland before the flood was the invention of a Christian writer and contradicted those passages which said that no one had ever been in Ireland previous to the deluge. All her company perished save Finntain, and he was said to have survived until the sixth century of our era.$1$ The reason for imagining such a long-lived personage is obvious; in no other way could Cessair's coming, or that of Partholan and of the other folk who reached Ireland, have been known. Poems were ascribed to Finntain in which he recounted the events seen in his long life until at last he accepted the new faith.$2$

Even at this early period, however, there was a story of another long-lived personage with incidents derived from pagan myths. Long life, excessive as Finntain's was, might have been suggested from Genesis, but the successive