Every race of people has its myths and hero tales. With those of the Greeks most of us are familiar. We have heard of Hercules, Perseus, Atlas and others, ever since we started to school. The early stories of a race are always entertaining as well as instructive. For that reason our school libraries contain the folk stories of the Japanese, the Norsemen, the Russians, the English, the American Indian, the negro and many others. The one people, of whose stories Americans know little, is the Celtic race, the forefathers of the Scotch and Irish of today, and the ancestors of many of us. This book is intended to make you acquainted with the ancient heroes of the Celts.

Just as King Arthur is the early hero of the Anglo-Saxon people, so is Finn MacCool the renowned hero of the Celts. Like King Arthur he had gathered together a body of heroes, all of whom performed deeds of valor. In Scotland we find stories of this same hero, only the Scotch people call him Fingal.

Most of the stories which follow are tales of the adventures of Finn and his friend, Dermot. These tales are about events which are supposed to have taken place nearly two thousand years ago.

No doubt you wonder how we know anything about people who lived so long ago. The very name, folk stories, explains it. Folk stories are told by the folk, or people, of the country. Sometimes we find the tales written in an ancient book, but most of them come down through the centuries by one person telling the story to another.

You know that when you hear a good story, you like to tell it to little brother or sister or some playmate. That is just the way the folk stories come to us. In some countries there were bards or poets who went around and sang of the old heroes. We often read of these men in Scotch history. The most common way of preserving the stories, however, was by the father and mother telling their children of the ancient heroes. These children grew up and repeated the tales to their own families, and so the story was preserved through the ages.

There is an old Irish legend that explains this method very nicely.

Finn had a son named Ossian, of whom you will read a great deal as we go on. This son was a poet and sang the deeds of his father in verse. The story runs that before the great battle of Gowra, Ossian had fallen in love with a fairy and had gone to Fairyland to live. He lived in this land of youth for four hundred years, growing no older. At the end of that time he wanted to go back to earth and see if he could see any of his old friends. Time went so quickly in Fairyland that he did not realize how long he had been away.

His fairy wife gave him a horse to ride and warned him that he must not touch a foot to the ground. Then Ossian rode away.

He came to Erin and rode through the scenes of his adventures. He was surprised not to find any of his old friends. Not only that, he found that the men were very much smaller than those of his time. He saw six of them trying to roll a stone which his father could have moved with one hand. He grew so sorry for them that he forgot all about his wife’s orders. He got off his horse to move the stone. The instant he touched the ground he became a wrinkled and bent old man.

Then, the story tells us, the people took him to St. Patrick, and he told this Irish saint the stories of Finn and his companions.

It is a very pretty story to explain how these legends became known. Of course, it is not true, but it shows the imagination of the Irish people. They believe in fairies and witches and the powers of enchantment. You will find that this belief enters into all the stories. That is another thing about folk tales. Each person who tells them adds something to them.

No doubt you have been to parties where a game something like this was played: The players form a long row. Then the one on the end whispers something to his neighbor, this person whispers what he heard to the next player, and so on. The last player tells what has been told him. It is nearly always something entirely different from the story which started.

Folk stories grow in just that manner. The different provinces of Ireland have different versions of the stories. In some parts of the country Finn is the hero, and Dermot proves untrue to him. In another province, Dermot is the splendid man and Finn is a cruel tyrant. The stories which follow in this book are combined from those of all the provinces. This book is not a history. It is a collection of interesting stories about heroes who, possibly, never existed.

II.

You should know something of how stories of this kind are gathered together. Many were taken down by the priests of early times, but none were ever written until nearly a thousand years ago. Undoubtedly large numbers of them have been lost by the death of the only person who knew them.

It is only in the last few years that the Irish scholars have tried to gather these tales together. There are many of these collectors of Irish hero stories. Most of them, of course, are Irish, but America has furnished one man who long will be remembered because of his work along this line.

Jeremiah Curtin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1840. He died in 1906. Into those sixty-six years he crowded the work of several ordinary men. He had a great love for the languages and history. When he graduated from Harvard, he was so well acquainted with Russian that he went to St. Petersburg, now Petrograd, as Secretary of the American Legation. While there he became interested in Russian literature and the folk stories of the people. He translated many Russian books into English and also collected a volume of their folk tales.

Many men would have been satisfied with this. Mr. Curtin was not. He became connected with the Smithsonian Institute and while there studied the folk tales of the various Indian tribes. He wrote two books of these stories.

He next took up the study of Irish folk lore. He spent a great deal of time in Ireland collecting the stories which appear in three books. Whenever he heard of some old man or woman who knew an old story, he went to that place and got the person to tell it to him, writing it down as it was told. Many times it was one he had already heard, but that could not discourage Mr. Curtin. As a result of this care his books are very valuable to the older students of folk lore.

What an interesting life this man must have led! Think of the work he must have done to learn the many languages well enough to get the stories. We think we are well educated if we can read two or three languages beside our own. Mr. Curtin, when he died, was familiar with sixty languages!

And now that we know something about how folk lore is collected, we are ready to make the acquaintance of Finn and his Fenian warriors.