Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

[9]PREFACEThe Past may be forgotten, but it never dies. The elements whichin the most remote times have entered into a nation's compositionendure through all its history, and help to mould that history, andto stamp the character and genius of the people.The examination, therefore, of these elements, and therecognition, as far as possible, of the part they have actuallycontributed to the warp and weft of a nation's life, must be amatter of no small interest and importance to those who realisethat the present is the child of the past, and the future of thepresent; who will not regard themselves, their kinsfolk, andtheir fellow-citizens as mere transitory phantoms, hurrying fromdarkness into darkness, but who know that, in them, a vasthistoric stream of national life is passing from its distant andmysterious origin towards a future which is largely conditionedby all the past wanderings of that human stream, but whichis also, in no small degree, what they, by their courage, theirpatriotism, their knowledge, and their understanding, choose tomake it.The part played by the Celtic race as a formative influencein the history, the literature, and the art of the people inhabitingthe British Islands—a people which from that centre has spreadits dominions over so vast an area of the earth's surface—hasbeen unduly obscured in popular thought. For this the currentuse of the term “Anglo-Saxon” applied to the British peopleas a designation of race is largely responsible. Historically theterm is quite misleading. There is nothing to justify this singling