their treatment of the supernatural. Heroic-traditional literature is made up of mythical elements, of scenes, incidents, and formulas which have done service in that account of man's dealings with and conceptions of the visible world which we call mythology. All such literature derives ultimately from an early, wholly animistic stage of culture. Small marvel, then, if in the hero-tales of every race there figure wonder-working talismans and bespelled weapons, if almost every great saga has, as part of its dramatis personæ, objects belonging to what we should now call the inanimate world. Upon these a species of life is conferred, most often by power of magic, but at times, it would seem, in virtue of the older conception which held all things to be endowed with like life. All heroic literatures do not, however, accentuate equally and similarly this magic side of their common stock. Celtic tradition is not only rich and varied beyond all others in this respect, it often thus secures its chief artistic effects. The talismans of Celtic romance, the fairy branch of Cormac, the Ga-bulg of Cuchullain, the sounding-hammer of Fionn, the treasures of the Boar Trwyth after which Prince Kilhwch sought, the glaives of light of the living folk-tale, have one and all a weird, fantastic, half-human existence, which haunts and thrills the imagination. No Celtic story-teller could have "mulled" the Nibelung-hoard as the poet of the Nibelungenlied has done. How different in this respect the twelfth century romances are from the earlier German or French sagas, how close to the Irish tales is apparent to whomsoever reads them with attention.[1]
I do not for one moment imply that the romantic literature of
- ↑ M. Renan's article "De la Poésie des Races Celtiques" (Revue des Deux Mondes, 1854, pp. 473-506) only came into my hands after the bulk of this chapter was printed, or I should hardly have dared to state in my own words those conclusions in which we agree. It may be useful to indicate those points in which I think this suggestive essay no longer represents the present state of knowledge. When M. Renan wrote, the nature of popular tradition had been little investigated in France—hence a tendency to attribute solely to the Celtic genius what is common to all popular tradition. Little or nothing was then known in France of early Irish history or literature—hence the wild, primitive character of Celtic civilization is ignored. The "bardic" literature of Wales was still assigned wholesale to the age of its alleged authors—hence
