Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Old Irish
Relis'ions.
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"To separate the fabulous from the probable, and the
probable from the true, will require no ordinary share of
penetration and persevering industry." We have certainly
to remember, as one has said, that " mythic history, mythic
theology, mythic science, are alike records, not of facts, but
beliefs." Andrew Lang properly calls our attention to
language, as embodying thought, being so liable to misconception
and misinterpretation. Names, connected with
myths, have been so variously read and explained by
scholars, that outsiders may well be puzzled.
How rapidly a myth grows, and is greedily accepted,
because of the wish it may be true, is exemplified in the
pretty story, immortalized by music, of Jessie of Lucknow,
who, in the siege, heard her deliverers, in the remote distance,
playing " The Campbells are coming." There never was,
however, a Jessie Brown tliere at that time ; and, as one
adds, Jessie has herself '' been sent to join William Tell and
the other dethroned gods and goddesses."
In the Hibbert Lectures, Professor Rhys observes, " The
Greek myth, which distressed the thoughtful and pious
minds, like that of Socrates, was a survival, like the other
scandalous tales about the gods, from the time when the
ancestors of the Greeks were savages." May it not rather
have been derived by Homer, through the trading Phoenicians,
from the older mythologies of India and^Egypt,
with altered names and scenes to suit the poet's day^'and
clime ?
It would scarcely do to say with Thierry, " In legend
alone rests real history— for legend is living tradition, and
three times out of four it is truer than what we call
History."
According to Froude, " Legends grew as nursery
tales grow now.—There is reason to believe that religious
theogonies and heroic tales of every nation that has left
a record of itself, are but practical accounts of the first