Blair Collection > Beside the fire

PREFACE
"yRISH and Scotch Gaelic folk-stories are, as a living
form of literature, by this time pretty nearly a thing
of the past. They have been trampled in the common
ruin under the feet of the Zeitgeist, happily not before a
large harvest has been reaped in Scotland, but, unfor-
tunately, before anything worth mentioning has been
done in Ireland to gather in the crop which grew luxu-
riantly a few years ago. Until quite recently there
existed in our midst millions of men and women who,
when their day's work was over, sought and found
mental recreation in a domain to which few indeed of
us who read books are permitted to enter. Man, all the
world over, when he is tired of the actualities of life,
seeks to unbend his mind with the creations of fancy.
We who can read betake ourselves to our favourite
novelist, and as we peruse his fictions, we can almost
see our author erasing this, heightening that, and laying
on such-and-such a touch for effect. His book is the
product of his individual brain, and some of us or of our
contemporaries have been present at its genesis.
h