of life is already numbered. The
more the reason why they should be collected and put on record while
there is yet time. On the whole, the industry of the collectors of
Celtic folk-lore is to be commended, as may be seen from the survey of
it I have prefixed to the Notes and References at the end of the
volume. Among these, I would call attention to the study of the legend
of Beth Gellert, the origin of which, I believe, I have settled.

While I have endeavoured to render the language of the tales simple and
free from bookish artifice, I have not felt at liberty to retell the
tales in the English way. I have not scrupled to retain a Celtic turn
of speech, and here and there a Celtic word, which I have _not_
explained within brackets--a practice to be abhorred of all good men. A
few words unknown to the reader only add effectiveness and local colour
to a narrative, as Mr. Kipling well knows.

One characteristic of the Celtic folk-lore I have endeavoured to
represent in my selection, because it is nearly unique at the present
day in Europe. Nowhere else is there so large and consistent a body of
oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the
Gaels. Only the _byline_, or hero-songs of Russia, equal in extent the
amount of knowledge about the heroes of the past that still exists
among the Gaelic-speaking peasantry of Scotland and Ireland. And the
Irish tales and ballads have this peculiarity, that some of them have
been extant, and can be traced, for well nigh a thousand years. I have
selected as a specimen of this class the Story of Deirdre, collected
among the Scotch peasantry a few years ago, into which I have been able
to insert a passage taken from an Irish vellum of the twelfth century.
I could have more than filled this volume with similar oral traditions
about Finn (the Fingal of Macpherson's "Ossian"). But the story of
Finn, as told by the Gaelic peasantry of to-day, deserves a volume by
itself, while the adventures of the Ultonian hero, Cuchulain, could
easily fill another.

I have endeavoured to include in this volume the best and most typical
stories told by the chief masters of the Celtic folk-tale, Campbell,
Kennedy, Hyde, and Curtin, and to these I have added the best tales
scattered elsewhere. By this means I hope I have put together a volume,
containing both the best, and the best known folk-tales of the Celts. I
have only been enabled to do this by the courtesy of those who owned