Page:The courtship of Ferb (Leahy).djvu/21

 Among these romances the tale of The Courtship of Ferb occupies a secondary place. It may be looked upon as a preface to the Tain bo Cuailgne, and tells us of one of the many provocations which led to that Raid, which commenced just seven years after the events recorded in this tale. In the construction of this story, as well as in the manner of its telling, a straightforward and simple character is shown, which is common to most of the older Irish romances, and must strike the reader at once. Although a supernatural being, the goddess of war, appears in the course of the tale, nothing can be found of the mystical "Celtic spirit," to which such prominence is given in some modern poems, whose incidents are taken from the old romances. It need hardly be said that the introduction of a supernatural element into these old stories does not necessarily imply any craving for mysticism or magic on the part of the writers; for if the ancient Irish had a mythology at all, as they undoubtedly had, divine and semi-divine beings should appear occasionally in their tales, just as the gods and goddesses appear in Homer, or as Odin appears in the Volsunga Saga. But since, on the representations of observers of the western Irish of to-day, the idea that the Celt is necessarily mystical has got firmly rooted, the mere mention of anything supernatural, like the Druidic mist in the tale of Deirdre, is held to be an example of the Celtic love of mysticism and magic;