Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland

The three great sources of knowledge respecting the shrouded part of humanity are the language, the mythology, and the ancient monuments of a country. From the language one learns the mental and social height to which a nation had reached at any given period in arts, habits, and civilization, with the relation of man to man, and to the material and visible world. The mythology of a people reveals their relation to a spiritual and invisible world; while the early monuments are solemn and eternal symbols of religious faith---rituals of stone in cromlech, pillar, shrine and tower, temples and tombs. The written word, or literature, comes last, the fullest and highest expression of the intellect and culture, and scientific progress of a nation