Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race

Enter a world where heroes are doomed, poets live forever, and the boundary between earth and the otherworld grows thin. This landmark collection, first published in 1911, gathers the greatest myths of Ireland and Wales into a single enchanted volume. Rolleston traces the Celts from their earliest sacred traditions through the great narrative cycles that defined their literature: the Ulster cycle, with its doomed king Conor and the Hound of Ulster, Cuchulain, whose battle-fury blazed like a flame against the shadows; the Fenian tales of Finn mac Cumhal and his son Oisín, the poet-warrior who wandered through faery hills and returned to find centuries had passed; and the strange, luminous Voyage of Maeldūn, a surreal odyssey beyond space and time that predates similar journeys by a thousand years. The Welsh material brings us Arthur and his knights seeking the Grail, the god-king whose court glows at the edge of legend. More than a compendium, this book argues that Celtic imagination shaped the very soul of European storytelling, and that its wild, dreaming spirit still haunts the modern world.