Life
First Professor of Celtic at Jesus College, Oxford; issued Lectures
on the Origin and Growth of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom
(London: Williams & Norgate 1888), adopting the comparative method
and favouring Friedrich Max Muller’s solar theory of mythology; making
Cuchullain a sun-god; influenced the Irish Literary revival writers; gave
Hibbert Lectures in 1886 [var. 1888], examining mythology of ancient Celts
in context of nineteenth-century archaeology and anthropology. [see John
Frayne, ed. Uncollected Prose of W. B. Yeats, Vol. I, 1970, p.49].
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Works
Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic
Heathendom [1886 Hibbert Lects.] (2nd edn. 1892), xi+708pp.
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Notes
‘[Celts were remnants] of Aryans before their separation,
or during what is sometimes called their pro-ethnic period’, and
the guardians of a spirituality which stretched ‘from the grey dawn
of their pre-history onwards to our own era.’ (cited in Christopher
Morash, ‘Celticism: between Race and Culture’, [pt. 2 of] ‘The
Triple Play of Irish History’, in Irish Review (Winter-Spring
1997), pp.29-36; pp.34-35.
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Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)