[36] A Cantanzaro, dans la Calabre, la cathédrale fut le théâtre de scènes de désordre extraordinaires. Le nouvel archevêque avait dernièrement manifesté l'intention de mettre un terme à certaines coutumes qu'il considérait comme entachées de paganisme. Ses instructions ayant été méprisées, il frappa d'interdit pour trois jours un édifice religieux. La population jura de se venger et, lorsque le nouvel archevêque fit son entrée dans la cathédrale, le jour de Pâques pour célébrer la grand' messe, la foule, furieuse, manifesta bruyamment contre lui. Comme on craignait que sa personne fût l'objet de violences, le clergé le fit sortir en hâte par une porte de derrière. Les troupes durent être réquisitionnées pour faire évacuer le cathédrale.--_La Dernière Heure_, April, 1914. [37] There is a story told of a certain Gilbert de Stone, a fourteenth century legend-monger, who was appealed to by the monks of Holywell in Flintshire for a life of their patron saint. On being told that no materials for such a work existed the _litterateur_ was quite unconcerned, and undertook without hesitation to compose a most excellent legend after the manner of Thomas à Becket. [38] "Ireland being 'the last resort of lost causes,' preserved record of a European 'culture' as primitive as that of the South Seas, and therefore invaluable for the history of human advance; elsewhere its existence is only to be established from hints and equivocal survivals. Our early tales are no artificial fiction, but fragmentary beliefs of the pagan period equally valuable for topography and for mythology."--Westropp, Thos. J., _Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy_, vol. xxxiv. sec. C, No. 8, p. 128. CHAPTER II THE MAGIC OF WORDS "As the palimpsest of language is held up to the light and looked at more closely, it is found to be full of older forms beneath the later writing. Again and again has the most ancient speech conformed to the new grammar, until this becomes the merest surface test; it supplies only the latest likeness. Our mountains and rivers talk in the primeval mother tongue whilst the language of men is remoulded by every passing wave of change. The language of mythology and typology is almost as permanent as the names of the hills and streams."--GERALD MASSEY.