Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

76 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[95]the Celts had no world-myth. The spectacle of the universe withall its vast and mysterious phenomena in heaven and on earthhas aroused, first the imagination, afterwards the speculativereason, in every people which is capable of either. The Celtshad both in abundance, yet, except for that one phrase about the“indestructibility” of the world handed down to us by Strabo, weknow nothing of their early imaginings or their reasonings onthis subject. Ireland possesses a copious legendary literature. Allof this, no doubt, assumed its present form in Christian times;yet so much essential paganism has been allowed to remain init that it would be strange if Christian influences had led to theexcision of everything in these ancient texts that pointed to a non-Christian conception of the origin of things—if Christian editorsand transmitters had never given us even the least glimmer of theexistence of such a conception. Yet the fact is that they do notgive it; there is nothing in the most ancient legendary literature ofthe Irish Gaels, which is the oldest Celtic literature in existence,corresponding to the Babylonian conquest of Chaos, or the wildNorse myth of the making of Midgard out of the corpse of Ymir,or the Egyptian creation of the universe out of the primeval Waterby Thoth, the Word of God, or even to the primitive folkloreconceptions found in almost every savage tribe. That the Druidshad some doctrine on this subject it is impossible to doubt. But,by resolutely confining it to the initiated and forbidding all layspeculation on the subject, they seem to have completely stifledthe mythmaking instinct in regard to questions of cosmogonyamong the people at large, and ensured that when their own orderperished, their teaching, whatever it was, should die with them.In the early Irish accounts, therefore, of the beginnings ofthings, we find that it is not with the World that the narratorsmake their start—it is simply with their own country, withIreland. It was the practice, indeed, to prefix to these narrativesof early invasions and colonisations the Scriptural account of themaking of the world and man, and this shows that something of