chapter vii.

In chapter iii we examined anthropologically the modern; and (both there and in parts of chapters following) the historical and ancient belief in fairies in Celtic countries, and found it to be in essence animistic. Folk-imagination, social psychology, anthropomorphism generally, adequately explained by far the greater mass of the evidence presented; but the animistic background of the belief in question presented problems which the strictly anthropological sciences are unable to solve. The point has now been reached when these problems must be presented to physiology and to psychology for solution. If they can be completely solved by purely rational and physical data, then the Fairy-Faith as a whole will have to be cast aside as worthless in the eyes of science.

In our generation, however, such a casting aside is not to be the fate of the folk-religion of the Celts: the following phenomena recorded in