Excerpt from The Fireside Stories of Ireland Beings of superhuman power, both in human and bestial forms, abound, some good and others evil in their nature, thus testifying to the worship of inferior divinities and of animals. Morality was not an essential feature of the original narratives, but it is as curious as agreeable to mark the trifling extent of the evil element throughout. Perhaps some improvement was effected in the tales as they passed from the pagan to the christian story tellers. Some indeed of an unedifying character have remained even to our own times, but such as these will not be found in our collection. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.