Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

36 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race
Gaelic and Cymric peoples kindled the imagination of a host
of Continental poets. True, the Celt did not himself create any
great architectural work of literature, just as he did not create
a stable or imposing national polity. His thinking and feeling
were essentially lyrical and concrete. Each object or aspect of
life impressed him vividly and stirred him profoundly; he was
sensitive, impressionable to the last degree, but did not see things
in their larger and more far-reaching relations. He had little gift
for the establishment or institutions, for the service of principles;
but he was, and is, an indispensable and never-failing assertor of
humanity as against the tyranny of principles, the coldness and
barrenness of institutions. The institutions of royalty and of civic
patriotism are both very capable of being fossilised into barren
formulae, and thus of fettering instead of inspiring the soul. But
the Celt has always been a rebel against anything that has not in it
the breath of life, against any unspiritual and purely external form
of domination. It is too true that he has been over-eager to enjoy
the fine fruits of life without the long and patient preparation for
the harvest, but he has done and will still do infinite service to the
modern world in insisting that the true fruit of life is a spiritual
reality, never without pain and loss to be obscured or forgotten
amid the vast mechanism of a material civilisation.
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CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF
THE CELTS
Ireland and the Celtic Religion