G FROM
CONG TO CROSS]

IV

Here, however, we are close up to an important point of controversy.
The mythologists claim tradition as theirs. It does not, they assert,
give us the history but the mythology of our race. It tells us not of
the men but of the gods. In explaining how this comes about, however,
they have fallen into errors which it is not only necessary to correct
but which are fundamental in their effects. We shall be better able
later on to discuss the extremely important question of the
position of the prehistoric tradition amidst historic life and
surroundings, if we try to understand what the mythologists have done
and not done in their attempts to claim exclusive property in the
folk-tale. They have entirely denied or ignored all history contained
in the folk-tale, and they have proceeded upon the assumption, the
bald assumption not accompanied by any kind of proof, that the
folk-tale contains nothing but the remnants of a once prevalent system
of mythology. They ignore all the proofs brought forward by
folklorists to the contrary, such proofs, for instance, as Mr.
Knowles, Sir Richard Temple and others have produced concerning the
Hindu folk-tale. What is not true of the Hindu folk-tale cannot be
true of its Celtic or Teutonic or Scandinavian parallel, and yet in
the most recent study of Celtic tradition, Mr. Squire takes its mythic
origin for granted, and works through his ingenious statement without
let or hindrance from other points of view. But even his
thorough-going methods compel him to stop short at certain points, and
to admit that he has come across historic fact. Thus he agrees that
the Fir-Bolgs "were not really gods but the pre-Aryan race which the
Gaels, when they landed in Ireland, found already in occupation,"[148]
and yet when he treats of the fight of the Fir-Bolgs with the Tuatha
de Danann, and is confronted with Sir William Wilde's proofs that the
monuments on the plain of Moytura are in agreement with the traditions
concerning them, and point to the account of the battle being
historical,[149] all that Mr. Squire can admit is that "certainly the
coincidences are curious." He disposes of them on the ground that the
"people of the goddess Danu are too obviously mythical to make it
worth while to seek any standing ground for them in the world of
reality." That standing ground might be found connected with the
Tuatha de Danann in many places, but Mr. Squire will have it that it
is