140 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



believe some things (in it), for some are delusions of demons, some are poetic 

 figments, some seem true and are not" It is curious to find some belief in 

 the Sid folk in even so orthodox a person as Eev. Geoffrey Keating, about 

 1630, where he does not understand how the euhemerists obtained tidings of 

 such early events and wonders : was it aerial demons, the Sid lovers of the 

 oldest inhabitants, who told it ? or was it engraved on ilags of stone ? 



The gods so recorded are of the Aryan type, not the grotescpue fiends of 



America and Asia, tl. _ ■ but impressive, gods of the Euphrates and the 



Nile, but supermen, like th'se of Olympus "i of the Valhalla ; -'departmental 



•t almighty, subject t<> fate, wounds, mutilation, and pain, and the joys, 



- that beset mankind. Sometimes great nature powers, 



like the Sun and the Ocean, t: ; riled at times to seek human 



aid, and were parents of men by mortal lovers and protected, 'though they 



could not al- 1 offspring or favourites, as Zeus could not 



S rpedon. 



Their tale continued written and (when at last it passed into the 



hands of credulous pedants, bent on giving Ireland a prehistoric history, at 



in invaluable quarry from win - a tents 

 ry and in king lists could be made. These waifs 



and wn ' ten or twelve centuries before the 



wia - ' the exqi the tine sturdy tales, 



full of humour and pathos, of the Jidda, but dried and mutilated husks, 

 duplicated, split up. 1 or bl ith others, set in contradictory frameworks 



- persons in the J 

 Milesian invasion 

 :;] . There ale yet persons 

 living - id mass of perverted compilation 



B ry of our land, but their time is p 

 and soon the pre-Christian annals will be ranked with the tales of Geofiry of 

 Monmouth, ind lefl i the older schools. 



Then, when we b I euhemerist fiction and rubbish* 



.tl. the founi B I the once noble 



fane of Irish mythology will stand clear to the sun. Doubtless when that 

 lie men will wonder, i>" less at thi mount which has escaped the 



destrueti"ii of over El iries than at the credulity that so long 



held, against all reason and evidence, the mass of late fiction which concealed 

 it to be the only true history of early Ireland. 



;h Tured. 

 ■biah," like the pre delu-e legend, Keating, " History," i. sect v. 



