Mythic Ireland
by Michael DamesThames and Hundson, Ltd: London: 1992.
(pp. 372)
Deep in the heart of what is now called the European region was born an ancient people what Dr. Richard Griggs calls a "bedrock nation"- the Celts. More than six thousand years after forming their common identity we now find the Celts living at the edges of the continent as Celtic-Goths in central Spain, Bretons in western France, as Kernow in the southwest of England, Welsh in Wales, the people of the Island of Man and the Irish in Ireland. Seemingly the heart of the Celtic peoples now spread across the western shores of Europe, the Irish, are now one of the more than 130 indigenous nations on top of which thirty some odd European states have been formed.
Dames traces Irish mythology through the turning and twisting of place names, medieval manuscripts, contemporary folklore, modern Irish literature. He shows the vitality of Irish traditional knowledge and its powerful "insight into the original nature of human dwelling on earth."
Of Irish traditional knowledge Dames says: "From the inhabitants of Lough Gur one learns that myth, even in its decline, is best known from the inside. To wear the stories makes for an understanding denied to objectivity, and opens the way towards dozens of holy wells and Marian shrines, Finn’s seats, and sea coves remembered for supernatural landings." The revelations of Mythic Ireland restore one’s knowledge of magic.