Legendary fictions of the Irish Celts

PREFACE.
Though the subject of this volume seems Hght and
frivolous enough, it might be preceded, and accom
panied, and concluded by grave and tiresome disserta-
tions ; and if our hopes were limited to its perusal by
readers of an archaeological turn, we would freely ex-
haust all the philosophy of fiction in our possession upon
them. But from our early 5fouth we have felt the
deepest interest in the stories and legends which are
peculiar to the Irish, or which they possess in common
with all the Indo-European races, and our dearest wish
is that their memory should not fade from the minds of
the people. They have existed in one form or other from
long before the Christian era, and have been mainly pre-
served by oral tradition among the unlettered.
Taking into consideration the diminishing of our
population by want and emigration, and the general
diffusion of book-learning, such as it is, and the growing
taste for the rubbishy tales of the penny and halfpenny
journals, we have in these latter times been haunted with
the horrid thought that the memory of the tales heard
in boyhood would be irrecoverably lost. To prevent an