Page:West Irish folk-tales and romances - William Larminie.djvu/14

 x Now, that there should be any considerable divergence seems surprising when the facts are fully taken into account. Ireland is not a large country. For centuries—we do not know how many—before the Norman invasion, the inhabitants had spoken Gaelic. The absence of political unity, the ceaseless wars and forays, must all have tended to fuse the population and obliterate original differences much more than a settled state of society. Yet they exist. The differences in folk-lore are not greater than other differences. Ethnologists know that the so-called Gaelic race is really a compound one, containing in addition to the true Celtic (Aryan) element probably two that are not Aryan—a Mongolian or Finnish element, and an Iberian element. Very little attempt has hitherto been made to settle in what parts of the country these elements respectively preponderate; but that there must be some preponderance of different races in different localities is shown clearly enough by the varying physical types. It is beyond question that Donegal differs from Connaught, and that both differ from Munster; and when we find that, in spite of a coexistence of at least two thousand years in the same island, and the possession of a common language, different districts have a different folk-lore, is it extravagant to surmise that these different bodies are due to varying racial deposits?