Note 38 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION

“Ireland being ‘the last resort of lost causes,’ preserved record of a European ‘culture’ as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology.”—Westropp, Thos. J., Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128.