1892. Our book contains Volumes 1 and 2 of the original work. The superiority of Celtic folktales is due as much to the conditions under which they have been collected, as to any innate superiority of the folk imagination. The Celtic folktales were collected while the practice of story telling was still in full vigor, though there were every signs that its term of life was already numbered. Nowhere else was there so large and consistent a body of oral tradition about the national and mythical heroes as amongst the Gaels. Jacobs endeavored to include the best and most typical stories told by the chief masters of the Celtic folktale, Campbell, Kennedy, Hyde and Curtin, and to these he added the best tales scattered elsewhere. Handsomely illustrated.