New-York tribune., 1905-06-04

446. Imported by Charles scribner's Sons.
Having, as he frankly Acknowledges fallen
under the spell of the so-caIled "Celtic renais-
sance" Mr.. Squire has been impelIed to make
a laudable and undoubtedly interesting effort to
reconstruct the mythology of ireland and Eng
land out of the scattered material far gath
cred by Celtic scholars from the scanty records
available we'll from the tales and legends
handed down by word of mouth in Gaelic speak
ing communities. How much better and more
authoritative a work he could have produced
had he himself been familiar with Gaelic and
so been able to verify his conclusions. by refer
ence to the original sources, upon translatiOns
of which he has been forced to rely. is ques-
ton that can be answered only when some more
thoroughly equipped scholar is moved to sim
liar undertaking. In the mean time Mr. Squire
is entitled to a generous measure of credit
for his pioneer excursion and for the ve-y
thorough and apparently discriminating way III
which he has fitted together the fragmentary
legendary lore of Great Britain into a fairly
consistent mythology.
Since the records of the Gaelic Goidelic.
legends are far more complete than the Brit
ish or BrythOnic the author begins with the
stories of the gods and demigods of Ireland
establishing first, well as may be, the my
thoIogy of the Gauls of the first invasion BY
referring to this he is the better able to bu1id
nm and to piece out the mythology of the Gauls
of the second invasion from the less coherent
and more corrupted traditions of English folk
lore and so-calIed history. In both England and
Ireland he makes clear, history and mythology
have become strangely tangled and it is a task
requiring extreme ingenuity and nice scholar
ship to separate fact. or what stands for fact
from the fiction that stood for the religious be-
lief Of leader
heroic mould would appear to whom the falter-
ing bards and unveracious chronclers would as
sign the attributes and accomplishments OF some
divinity whose name, perhaps, he bore or came
in time to bear. 1t was an easy matter for later
singers to confuse the hero with the god the
god with the hero adding to the story of each
the deeds of the other.
Then too. with the coming of Christianity to
the islands, the Church found itself confronted
with the old pagan myths which had so grown
into the life of the race that it would have been
futile to attempt to uproOt them 1t was easier
gradually to dethrone the earlier dfvinities and
to reduce them to the rank of mortals- And so,
in time. the glorious gods of the older days were
soberly masked and marshalled as kings OF Ire
land and England; and the remoter the period
assigned to them, the reader were the pious
chroniclers with dates to fasten them firmly in
their new places 1t was often found conve-
nient. when some particular star of the pagan
galaxy refused to dim its lustre, boldly to admit
if to the Christian armament by the simple proc
ess of canonization. Thus did Bright, the Gae-
lie goddess of fire, poetry and the hearth. the
wife of Bress, one of the kings of the Tuatha
de Danaan. or Gaelic Olympians become st
Bridget of blessed memory and many added
and refining attributes. So also, with many
others Spain" was adopted as euphemism
for the Celtic Hades, or Elysium, the original
dwelling place of the gods. and so the doughty
Mile or Milesius himself a god, is made a NOR
tai and actually conquers the divinities OF the
Tuatha de Danaan.
The author follows Professor Rhys in his
analysis of the Arthurian legend This is, In
their view one of the most conspicuous exam
pies of the confounding of a real and a merely
mythical parsonage. Zone of these was dt-
vine Arthur a god less widely wor-
whom an ex voto inscription found in South
eastern France calls Mercurus Artaius. The
other was a human Arthur. who held among
the Britons the post which. under Roman donf-
nation had been called Comes Britannia
. Historical elements doubtless colored
the tales of Arthur and his companions. but
they are none the less as essentially mythic as
those told of their Gaelic analOgues-the Red
Branch Heroes OF Ulster and the FeniahA
Arthur's position supreme war leader
LTr,yNfG n