Excerpt from Irish Literature: Volumes I and II The Gaelic populations have ever been deeply absorbed in legendary fancies and mythical creations, and only through the study of such prehistoric literature can we understand the true national character of these peoples. The mythical heroes which a race creates for itself, the aspirations which it embodies and illustrates, the senti ments which it immortalizes in story and in ballad, will help us to understand the real character of the race better than it could be expounded to us by any collection of the best authenticated statistics. Fe could not really know the history of Greece without the Homeric poems, and we cannot understand the history of Ireland without studv ing the legends and poems which have preserved for our time the aspirations and the ideals of prehistoric Erin. According to the accepted belief of prehistoric days, Ire land was occupied Or colonized in the early past first by an invasion, or perhaps it might better be called a settlement, from the Far East, and afterward by an adventurous visi tation from the shores of Greece. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.