PRINCE— SLAV AND CELT. 191 



entirely the spirit of ancient Welsh poetry. In spite of this fact, the 

 Welsh and Bretons still love grief as much 'as any Irishman, but 

 differ widely from the Irish Celt in lacking humor, a lack which 

 is shared by the gloomy temper of the Scotch Gaels. The Slav, 

 on the other hand, does not lack humor entirely, — witness such 

 modern wits as the exquisite Russian Czechov and the Polish 

 authoress Eugenja Zmijevska, but this quality is commonly re- 

 garded as an evidence of lightmindedness and absence of mental 

 poise. The vast mass of Slavs are temperamental extremists, either 

 bathed in a delicious gloom, or else given over for brief periods to 

 slapstick wit and mad dances which, very temporarily, draw the 

 sad Slav out of his habitual introspection. A perfect parallel to 

 these ebullitions may be seen in the wild riot of Irish, Scotch and 

 Brenton jigs and reels, a form of music not much countenanced at 

 present by the artificially sobered Welsh. 



Old Slavonic literature*' is full of tales of mythical heroes who 

 performed deeds of daring and feats of supernatural strength, 

 strongly reminiscent of the Irish Finn McCoul. Such hero-tales 

 are of course common to all the Indo-European peoples and are 

 not a point of particular resemblance between Slavs and Celts. 



It is interesting that both the easternmost and westernmost 

 divisions of the peoples who speak Indo-European still retain the 

 ancient strain of unworldliness and mysticism which so noticeably 

 characterizes the religious devotees of the nations who still use the 

 oriental forms of Indo-European. The stern practicality of the 

 Teuton which has spread abroad through all the Germanic speaking 

 lands and appears in a special form among the Latin speaking 

 Franks is bounded east and west by a cloud of " unreal " thinkers 

 who turn with delight to pessimism and reject success as a mere 

 material benefit. Upon neither the Slav nor the Celt has the sun 

 of success ever risen, because both Slav and Celt contemn success. 

 There was a brief period, while Russia was an empire outwardly 

 mighty under largely Germanic direction but rotten at the core 

 with Slavonic apathy, when it appeared as if there might have been 

 an intellectual union between Russia and the lesser Salvonic peoples. 



6Cf. I. Porfirieff, "History of Russian Literature" (in Russian), Part 

 I, pp. 49 fif. 



