Blair Collection > Beside the fire

XXXVIU PREFACE.
condition as the Australian blacks or the Indians of
California are to-day.
Again, in another story we hear of a boat that sails
equally swiftly over land and sea, and goes straight to
its mark. It is so large that if all the men in the world
were to enter it there would remain place for six hundred
more ; while it is so small that it folds up into the hand
of the person who has it. But ships do not sail on land,
nor grow large and small, nor go straight to their mark ;
consequently, it is plain that we have here another
nature myth, vastly old, invented by pre-historic man,
for these ships can be nothing but the clouds which sail
over land and sea, are large enough to hold the largest
armies, and small enough to fold into the hand, and
which go straight to their mark. The meaning of this
has been forgotten for countless ages, but the story has
survived.
Again, in another tale which I found, called '* The
Bird of Sweet Music," '•' a man follows a sweet singing
bird into a cave under the ground, and finds a country
where he wanders for a year and a day, and a woman
who befriends him while there, and enables him to bring
back the bird, which turns out to be a human being..
At the end of the tale the narrator mentions quite
casually that it was his mother whom he met down there.
* A»i c éuti ceól-binii.