You should know something of how stories of this kind are gathered together. Many were taken down by the priests of early times, but none were ever written until nearly a thousand years ago. Undoubtedly large numbers of them have been lost by the death of the only person who knew them.
It is only in the last few years that the Irish scholars have tried to gather these tales together. There are many of these collectors of Irish hero stories. Most of them, of course, are Irish, but America has furnished one man who long will be remembered because of his work along this line.
Jeremiah Curtin was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1840. He died in 1906. Into those sixty-six years he crowded the work of several ordinary men. He had a great love for the languages and history. When he graduated from Harvard, he was so well acquainted with Russian that he went to St. Petersburg, now Petrograd, as Secretary of the American Legation. While there he became interested in Russian literature and the folk stories of the people. He translated many Russian books into English and also collected a volume of their folk tales.
Many men would have been satisfied with this. Mr. Curtin was not. He became connected with the Smithsonian Institute and while there studied the folk tales of the various Indian tribes. He wrote two books of these stories.
He next took up the study of Irish folk lore. He spent a great deal of time in Ireland collecting the stories which appear in three books. Whenever he heard of some old man or woman who knew an old story, he went to that place and got the person to tell it to him, writing it down as it was told. Many times it was one he had already heard, but that could not discourage Mr. Curtin. As a result of this care his books are very valuable to the older students of folk lore.
What an interesting life this man must have led! Think of the work he must have done to learn the many languages well enough to get the stories. We think we are well educated if we can read two or three languages beside our own. Mr. Curtin, when he died, was familiar with sixty languages!
And now that we know something about how folk lore is collected, we are ready to make the acquaintance of Finn and his Fenian warriors.
THE FENIANS
The stories of the great heroes of Ireland, or Erin as it used to be called, are gathered in groups around certain men. The Fenians whom Finn MacCool commanded from the age of ten until his death, was a body of military men about whom the best known stories are told.
These Fenians might be said to correspond to our standing army. There were three groups of a thousand men each in peace times. In time of war the number could be expanded enough to take in all who wished to fight. Some people claim that Finn and his Fenians never existed. Others say that this body of men did exist from 400 years before the birth of Christ until they were destroyed in a great battle in the year 284 A. D. Whether they formed a real army or not does not spoil our enjoyment of their deeds of bravery.