Our new imaginative stories are now told in nurseries, listened to at evening when the children assemble in the fire-light to hear tales from their parents, and eagerly read by boys at school.

A fresh world of story-telling has been opened to the imagination of the young.
This could not have been done in the right way if it had not been for the previous work of Celtic scholars in Ireland, and particularly on the Continent, in France and Germany.

Having mastered medieval Irish, they have translated with careful accuracy many of the ancient tales, omitting and changing nothing; they have edited them critically, collating and comparing them with one another, and with other forms of the same stories.

We have now in English, French, and German the exact representation of the originals with exhaustive commentaries.
When this necessary work was finished--and it was absolutely necessary--it had two important results on all work of the kind Mr Rolleston has performed in this book--on the imaginative recasting and modernizing of the ancient tales.

First, it made it lawful and easy for the modern artist--in sculpture, painting, poetry, or imaginative prose--to use the stories as he pleased in order to give pleasure to the modern world.