[1025] For these views see Dottin, 295; Holmes, 17; Bertrand, 192-193, 268-269.

[1026] Diog. Laert. i. proem. 1. For other references see Caesar, vi. 13, 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Diod. Sic, v. 28; Lucan, i. 460; Mela, iii. 2.

[1027] Suet. Claud. 25; Mela, iii. 2.

[1028] Pliny, xxx. 1.

[1029] D'Arbois, Les Druides, 77.

[1030] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 4.

[1031] See Cicero, de Div. i. 41.

[1032] Diod. Sic. v. 28; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Hippolytus, Refut. Haer. i. 22.

[1033] Amm. Marc. xv. 9.

[1034] Caesar, vi. 14.

[1035] Diog. Laert. 6. Celtic enthusiasts see in this triple maxim something akin to the Welsh triads, which they claim to be Druidic!

[1036] Bertrand, 280.

[1037] Caesar, vi. 13.

[1038] Trip. Life, ii. 325, i. 52, ii. 402; IT i. 373; RC xxvi. 33. The title rig-file, "king poet," sometimes occurs.

[1039] Caesar, vi. 14.

[1040] Caesar, vi. 13; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.

[1041] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.

[1042] Their judicial powers were taken from them because their speech had become obscure. Perhaps they gave their judgments in archaic language.

[1043] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 5.

[1044] Caesar, vii. 33.

[1045] IT i. 213; D'Arbois, v. 186.

[1046] Dio, Orat. xlix.

[1047] LL 93.

[1048] Ancient Laws of Ireland, i. 22.

[1049] Caesar, vi. 13, 14; Windisch, Tain, line 1070 f.; IT i. 325; Arch. Rev. i. 74; Trip. Life, 99; cf. O'Curry, MC ii. 201.

[1050] Caesar, vi. 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.

[1051] Trip. Life, 284.

[1052] Lucan, i. 451.

[1053] Diod. v. 31. 4; cf. Caesar, vi. 13, 16; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.

[1054] See p. 248, supra.

[1055] RC xiv. 29; Miss Hull, 4, 23, 141; IT iii. 392, 423; Stokes, Felire, Intro. 23.

[1056] Loth, i. 56.

[1057] See my art. "Baptism (Ethnic)" in Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ii. 367 f.

[1058] Carmichael, Carm. Gadel. i. 115.

[1059] See p. 206, supra.

[1060] IT i. 215.

[1061] O'Curry, MS. Mat. 221, 641.

[1062] RC xvi. 34.

[1063] Pliny, HN xvi. 45; Trip. Life, ii. 325; Strabo, iv. 275.

[1064] RC xxii. 285; O'Curry, MC ii. 215.

[1065] Reeves' ed. of Adamnan's Life of S. Col. 237; Todd, S. Patrick, 455; Joyce, SH i. 234. For the relation of the Druidic tonsure to the peculiar tonsure of the Celtic Church, see Rhŷs, HL 213, CB{4} 72; Gougaud, Les Chretientes Celtiques, 198.

[1066] See Hyde, Lit. Hist. of Ireland, 88; Joyce, SH i. 239.

[1067] Caesar, vi. 14, ii. 10.

[1068] Suetonius, Claud. 25.

[1069] Pliny HN xxx. 1; Suet. Claud. 25.

[1070] de Caesaribus, 4, "famosae superstitiones"; cf. p. 328, infra.

[1071] Mela, iii. 2.

[1072] Mommsen, Rom. Gesch. v. 94.

[1073] Bloch (Lavisse), Hist. de France, i. 2, 176 f., 391 f.; Duruy, "Comment perit l'institution Druidique," Rev. Arch. xv. 347; de Coulanges, "Comment le Druidisme a disparu," RC iv. 44.

[1074] Les Druides, 73.

[1075] Phars. i. 453, "Ye Druids, after arms were laid aside, sought once again your barbarous ceremonials.... In remote forests do ye inhabit the deep glades."

[1076] Mela, iii. 2.

[1077] Tacit. iii. 43.

[1078] Ibid. iv. 54.

[1079] Ausonius, Prof. v. 12, xi. 17.

[1080] Nennius, 40. In the Irish version they are called "Druids." See p. 238, supra.

[1081] Pliny, xxx. 1.

[1082] Adamnan, Vita S. Col., i. 37. ii. 35, etc.; Reeves' Adamnan, 247 f.; Stokes, Three Homilies, 24 f.; Antient Laws of Ireland, i. 15; RC xvii. 142 f.; IT i. 23.

[1083] Lampridius, Alex. Sev. 60; Vopiscus, Numerienus, 14, Aurelianus, 44.

[1084] Windisch, Tain, 31, 221; cf. Meyer, Contributions to Irish Lexicog. 176 Joyce, SH i. 238.

[1085] IT i. 56.

[1086] Solinus, 35; Tac. Ann. xiv. 30.

[1087] RC xv. 326, xvi. 34, 277; Windisch, Tain, 331. In LL 75b we hear of "three Druids and three Druidesses."

[1088] See p. 69, supra; Keating, 331.

[1089] Jullian, 100; Holder, s.v. "Thucolis."

[1090] Plutarch, Vir. mul. 20.

[1091] Mela, iii. 6; Strabo, iv. 4. 6.

[1092] Reinach, RC xviii. 1 f. The fact that the rites were called Dionysiac is no reason for denying the fact that some orgiastic rites were practised. Classical writers usually reported all barbaric rites in terms of their own religion. M. D'Arbois (vi. 325) points out that Circe was not a virgin, and had not eight companions.



CHAPTER XXI.

MAGIC.

The Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical practices, many of which could be used by any one, though, on the whole, they were in the hands of the Druids, who in many aspects were little higher than the shamans of barbaric tribes. But similar magical rites were also attributed to the gods, and it is probably for this reason that the Tuatha De Danann and many of the divinities who appear in the Mabinogion are described as magicians. Kings are also spoken of as wizards, perhaps a reminiscence of the powers of the priest king. But since many of the primitive cults had been in the hands of women, and as these cults implied a large use of magic, they may have been the earliest wielders of magic, though, with increasing civilisation, men took their place as magicians. Still side by side with the magic-wielding Druids, there were classes of women who also dealt in magic, as we have seen. Their powers were feared, even by S. Patrick, who classes the "spells of women" along with those of Druids, and, in a mythic tale, by the father of Connla, who, when the youth was fascinated by a goddess, feared that he would be taken by the "spells of women" (brichta ban).[1093] In other tales women perform all such magical actions as are elsewhere ascribed to Druids.[1094] And after the Druids had passed away precisely similar actions—power over the weather, the use of incantations and amulets, shape-shifting and invisibility, etc.—were, and still are in remote Celtic regions, ascribed to witches. Much of the Druidic art, however, was also supposed to be possessed by saints and clerics, both in the past and in recent times. But women remained as magicians when the Druids had disappeared, partly because of female conservatism, partly because, even in pagan times, they had worked more or less secretly. At last the Church proscribed them and persecuted them.

Each clan, tribe, or kingdom had its Druids, who, in time of war, assisted their hosts by magic art. This is reflected back upon the groups of the mythological cycle, each of which has its Druids who play no small part in the battles fought. Though Pliny recognises the priestly functions of the Druids, he associates them largely with magic, and applies the name magus to them.[1095] In Irish ecclesiastical literature, drui is used as the translation of magus, e.g. in the case of the Egyptian magicians, while magi is used in Latin lives of saints as the equivalent of the vernacular druides.[1096] In the sagas and in popular tales Druidecht, "Druidism," stands for "magic," and slat an draoichta, "rod of Druidism," is a magic wand.[1097] The Tuatha De Danann were said to have learned "Druidism" from the four great master Druids of the region whence they had come to Ireland, and even now, in popular tales, they are often called "Druids" or "Danann Druids."[1098] Thus in Ireland at least there is clear evidence of the great magical power claimed by Druids.

That power was exercised to a great extent over the elements, some of which Druids claimed to have created. Thus the Druid Cathbad covered the plain over which Deirdre was escaping with "a great-waved sea."[1099] Druids also produced blinding snow-storms, or changed day into night—feats ascribed to them even in the Lives of Saints.[1100] Or they discharge "shower-clouds of fire" on the opposing hosts, as in the case of the Druid Mag Ruith, who made a magic fire, and flying upwards towards it, turned it upon the enemy, whose Druid in vain tried to divert it.[1101] When the Druids of Cormac dried up all the waters in the land, another Druid shot an arrow, and where it fell there issued a torrent of water.[1102] The Druid Mathgen boasted of being able to throw mountains on the enemy, and frequently Druids made trees or stones appear as armed men, dismaying the opposing host in this way. They could also fill the air with the clash of battle, or with the dread cries of eldritch things.[1103] Similar powers are ascribed to other persons. The daughters of Calatin raised themselves aloft on an enchanted wind, and discovered Cuchulainn when he was hidden away by Cathbad. Later they produced a magic mist to discomfit the hero.[1104] Such mists occur frequently in the sagas, and in one of them the Tuatha De Danann arrived in Ireland. The priestesses of Sena could rouse sea and wind by their enchantments, and, later, Celtic witches have claimed the same power.

In folk-survivals the practice of rain-making is connected with sacred springs, and even now in rural France processions to shrines, usually connected with a holy well, are common in time of drought. Thus people and priest go to the fountain of Baranton in procession, singing hymns, and there pray for rain. The priest then dips his foot in the water, or throws some of it on the rocks.[1105] In other cases the image of a saint is carried to a well and asperged, as divine images formerly were, or the waters are beaten or thrown into the air.[1106] Another custom was that a virgin should clean out a sacred well, and formerly she had to be nude.[1107] Nudity also forms part of an old ritual used in Gaul. In time of drought the girls of the village followed the youngest virgin in a state of nudity to seek the herb belinuntia. This she uprooted, and was then led to a river and there asperged by the others. In this case the asperging imitated the falling rain, and was meant to produce it automatically. While some of these rites suggest the use of magic by the folk themselves, in others the presence of the Christian priest points to the fact that, formerly, a Druid was necessary as the rain producer. In some cases the priest has inherited through long ages the rain-making or tempest-quelling powers of the pagan priesthood, and is often besought to exercise them.[1108]

Causing invisibility by means of a spell called feth fiada, which made a person unseen or hid him in a magic mist, was also used by the Druids as well as by Christian saints. S. Patrick's hymn, called Faed Fiada, was sung by him when his enemies lay in wait, and caused a glamour in them. The incantation itself, fith-fath, is still remembered in Highland glens.[1109] In the case of S. Patrick he and his followers appeared as deer, and this power of shape-shifting was wielded both by Druids and women. The Druid Fer Fidail carried off a maiden by taking the form of a woman, and another Druid deceived Cuchulainn by taking the form of the fair Niamh.[1110] Other Druids are said to have been able to take any shape that pleased them.[1111] These powers were reflected back upon the gods and mythical personages like Taliesin or Amairgen, who appear in many forms. The priestesses of Sena could assume the form of animals, and an Irish Circe in the Rennes Dindsenchas called Dalb the Rough changed three men and their wives into swine by her spells.[1112] This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas. The children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel stepmother; Saar, the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the power of the Druid Fear Doirche when she rejected his love; and similarly Tuirrenn, mother of Oisin's hounds, was transformed into a stag-hound by the fairy mistress of her husband Iollann.[1113] In other instances in the sagas, women appear as birds.[1114] These transformation tales may be connected with totemism, for when this institution is decaying the current belief in shape-shifting is often made use of to explain descent from animals or the tabu against eating certain animals. In some of these Irish shape-shifting tales we find this tabu referred to. Thus, when the children of Lir were turned into swans, it was proclaimed that no one should kill a swan. The reason of an existing tabu seemed to be sufficiently explained when it was told that certain human beings had become swans. It is not impossible that the Druids made use of hypnotic suggestion to persuade others that they had assumed another form, as Red Indian shamans have been known to do, or even hallucinated others into the belief that their own form had been changed.

By a "drink of oblivion" Druids and other persons could make one forget even the most dearly beloved. Thus Cuchulainn was made to forget Fand, and his wife Emer to forget her jealousy.[1115] This is a reminiscence of potent drinks brewed from herbs which caused hallucinations, e.g. that of the change of shape. In other cases they were of a narcotic nature and caused a deep sleep, an instance being the draught given by Grainne to Fionn and his men.[1116] Again, the "Druidic sleep" is suggestive of hypnotism, practised in distant ages and also by present-day savages. When Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117] In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118] These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force to whom it is an hallucinatory appearance—perhaps an exaggeration of natural hypnotic powers.[1119]

Druids also made a "hedge," the airbe druad, round an army, perhaps circumambulating it and saying spells so that the attacking force might not break through. If any one could leap this "hedge," the spell was broken, but he lost his life. This was done at the battle of Cul Dremne, at which S. Columba was present and aided the heroic leaper with his prayers.[1120]

A primitive piece of sympathetic magic used still by savages is recorded in the Rennes Dindsenchas. In this story one man says spells over his spear and hurls it into his opponent's shadow, so that he falls dead.[1121] Equally primitive is the Druidic "sending" a wisp of straw over which the Druid sang spells and flung it into his victim's face, so that he became mad. A similar method is used by the Eskimo angekok. All madness was generally ascribed to such a "sending."

Several of these instances have shown the use of spells, and the Druid was believed to possess powerful incantations to discomfit an enemy or to produce other magical results. A special posture was adopted—standing on one leg, with one arm outstretched and one eye closed, perhaps to concentrate the force of the spell,[1122] but the power lay mainly in the spoken words, as we have seen in discussing Celtic formulae of prayer. Such spells were also used by the Filid, or poets, since most primitive poetry has a magical aspect. Part of the training of the bard consisted in learning traditional incantations, which, used with due ritual, produced the magic result.[1123] Some of these incantations have already come before our notice, and probably some of the verses which Caesar says the Druids would not commit to writing were of the nature of spells.[1124] The virtue of the spell lay in the spoken formula, usually introducing the name of a god or spirit, later a saint, in order to procure his intervention, through the power inherent in the name. Other charms recount an effect already produced, and this, through mimetic magic, is supposed to cause its repetition. The earliest written documents bearing upon the paganism of the insular Celts contain an appeal to "the science of Goibniu" to preserve butter, and another, for magical healing, runs, "I admire the healing which Diancecht left in his family, in order to bring health to those he succoured." These are found in an eighth or ninth century MS., and, with their appeal to pagan gods, were evidently used in Christian times.[1125] Most Druidic magic was accompanied by a spell— transformation, invisibility, power over the elements, and the discovery of hidden persons or things. In other cases spells were used in medicine or for healing wounds. Thus the Tuatha De Danann told the Fomorians that they need not oppose them, because their Druids would restore the slain to life, and when Cuchulainn was wounded we hear less of medicines than of incantations used to stanch his blood.[1126] In other cases the Druid could remove barrenness by spells.

The survival of the belief in spells among modern Celtic peoples is a convincing proof of their use in pagan times, and throws light upon their nature. In Brittany they are handed down in certain families, and are carefully guarded from the knowledge of others. The names of saints instead of the old gods are found in them, but in some cases diseases are addressed as personal beings. In the Highlands similar charms are found, and are often handed down from male to female, and from female to male. They are also in common use in Ireland. Besides healing diseases, such charms are supposed to cause fertility or bring good luck, or even to transfer the property of others to the reciter, or, in the case of darker magic, to cause death or disease.[1127] In Ireland, sorcerers could "rime either a man or beast to death," and this recalls the power of satire in the mouth of File or Druid. It raised blotches on the face of the victim, or even caused his death.[1128] Among primitive races powerful internal emotion affects the body in curious ways, and in this traditional power of the satire or "rime" we have probably an exaggerated reference to actual fact. In other cases the "curse of satire" affected nature, causing seas and rivers to sink back.[1129] The satires made by the bards of Gaul, referred to by Diodorus, may have been believed to possess similar powers.[1130] Contrariwise, the Filid, on uttering an unjust judgment, found their faces covered with blotches.[1131]

A magical sleep is often caused by music in the sagas, e.g. by the harp of Dagda, or by the branch carried by visitants from Elysium.[1132] Many "fairy" lullabies for producing sleep are even now extant in Ireland and the Highlands.[1133] As music forms a part of all primitive religion, its soothing powers would easily be magnified. In orgiastic rites it caused varying emotions until the singer and dancer fell into a deep slumber, and the tales of those who joined in a fairy dance and fell asleep, awaking to find that many years had passed, are mythic extensions of the power of music in such orgiastic cults. The music of the Filid had similar powers to that of Dagda's harp, producing laughter, tears, and a delicious slumber,[1134] and Celtic folk-tales abound in similar instances of the magic charm of music.

We now turn to the use of amulets among the Celts. Some of these were symbolic and intended to bring the wearer under the protection of the god whom they symbolised. As has been seen, a Celtic god had as his symbol a wheel, probably representing the sun, and numerous small wheel discs made of different materials have been found in Gaul and Britain.[1135] These were evidently worn as amulets, while in other cases they were offered to river divinities, since many are met with in river beds or fords. Their use as protective amulets is shown by a stele representing a person wearing a necklace to which is attached one of these wheels. In Irish texts a Druid is called Mag Ruith, explained as magus rotarum, because he made his Druidical observations by wheels.[1136] This may point to the use of such amulets in Ireland. A curious amulet, connected with the Druids, became famous in Roman times and is described by Pliny. This was the "serpents' egg," formed from the foam produced by serpents twining themselves together. The serpents threw the "egg" into the air, and he who sought it had to catch it in his cloak before it fell, and flee to a running stream, beyond which the serpents, like the witches pursuing Tam o' Shanter, could not follow him. This "egg" was believed to cause its owner to obtain access to kings or to gain lawsuits, and a Roman citizen was put to death in the reign of Claudius for bringing such an amulet into court. Pliny had seen this "egg." It was about the size of an apple, with a cartilaginous skin covered with discs.[1137] Probably it was a fossil echinus, such as has been found in Gaulish tombs.[1138] Such "eggs" were doubtless connected with the cult of the serpent, or some old myth of an egg produced by serpents may have been made use of to account for their formation. This is the more likely, as rings or beads of glass found in tumuli in Wales, Cornwall, and the Highlands are called "serpents' glass" (glain naidr), and are believed to be formed in the same way as the "egg." These, as well as old spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in the Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, e.g. against the bite of a serpent, and are highly prized by their owners.[1139]

Pliny speaks also of the Celtic belief in the magical virtues of coral, either worn as an amulet or taken in powder as a medicine, while it has been proved that the Celts during a limited period of their history placed it on weapons and utensils, doubtless as an amulet.[1140] Other amulets—white marble balls, quartz pebbles, models of the tooth of the boar, or pieces of amber, have been found buried with the dead.[1141] Little figures of the boar, the horse, and the bull, with a ring for suspending them to a necklet, were worn as amulets or images of these divine animals, and phallic amulets were also worn, perhaps as a protection against the evil eye.[1142]

A cult of stones was probably connected with the belief in the magical power of certain stones, like the Lia Fail, which shrieked aloud when Conn knocked against it. His Druids explained that the number of the shrieks equalled the number of his descendants who should be kings of Erin.[1143] This is an aetiological myth accounting for the use of this fetich-stone at coronations. Other stones, probably the object of a cult or possessing magical virtues, were used at the installation of chiefs, who stood on them and vowed to follow in the steps of their predecessors, a pair of feet being carved on the stone to represent those of the first chief.[1144] Other stones had more musical virtues—the "conspicuous stone" of Elysium from which arose a hundred strains, and the melodious stone of Loch Laig. Such beliefs existed into Christian times. S. Columba's stone altar floated on the waves, and on it a leper had crossed in the wake of the saint's coracle to Erin. But the same stone was that on which, long before, the hero Fionn had slipped.[1145]

Connected with the cult of stones are magical observances at fixed rocks or boulders, regarded probably as the abode of a spirit. These observances are in origin pre-Celtic, but were practised by the Celts. Girls slide down a stone to obtain a lover, pregnant women to obtain an easy delivery, or contact with such stones causes barren women to have children or gives vitality to the feeble. A small offering is usually left on the stone.[1146] Similar rites are practised at megalithic monuments, and here again the custom is obviously pre-Celtic in origin. In this case the spirits of the dead must have been expected to assist the purposes of the rites, or even to incarnate themselves in the children born as a result of barren women resorting to these stones.[1147] Sometimes when the purpose of the stones has been forgotten and some other legendary origin attributed to them, the custom adapts itself to the legend. In Ireland many dolmens are known, not as places of sepulture, but as "Diarmaid and Grainne's beds"—the places where these eloping lovers slept. Hence they have powers of fruitfulness and are visited by women who desire children. The rite is thus one of sympathetic magic.

Holed dolmens or naturally pierced blocks are used for the magical cure of sickness both in Brittany and Cornwall, the patient being passed through the hole.[1148] Similar rites are used with trees, a slit being often made in the trunk of a sapling, and a sickly child passed through it. The slit is then closed and bound, and if it joins together at the end of a certain time, this is a proof that the child will recover.[1149] In these rites the spirit in stone or tree was supposed to assist the process of healing, or the disease was transferred to them, or, again, there was the idea of a new birth with consequent renewed life, the act imitating the process of birth. These rites are not confined to Celtic regions, but belong to that universal use of magic in which the Celts freely participated.

Since Christian writers firmly believed in the magical powers of the Druids, aided however by the devil, they taught that Christian saints had miraculously overcome them with their own weapons. S. Patrick dispelled snow-storms and darkness raised by Druids, or destroyed Druids who had brought down fire from heaven. Similar deeds are attributed to S. Columba and others.[1150] The moral victory of the Cross was later regarded also as a magical victory. Hence also lives of Celtic saints are full of miracles which are simply a reproduction of Druidic magic—controlling the elements, healing, carrying live coals without hurt, causing confusion by their curses, producing invisibility or shape-shifting, making the ice-cold waters of a river hot by standing in them at their devotions, or walking unscathed through the fiercest storms.[1151] They were soon regarded as more expert magicians than the Druids themselves. They may have laid claim to magical powers, or perhaps they used a natural shrewdness in such a way as to suggest magic. But all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my Druid"—the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they were imbued with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S. Columba sent a white stone to King Brude at Inverness for the cure of his Druid Broichan, who drank the water poured over it, and was healed.[1152] Soon similar virtues were ascribed to the relics of the saints themselves, and at a later time, when most Scotsmen ceased to believe in the saints, they thought that the ministers of the kirk had powers like those of pagan Druid and Catholic saint. Ministers were levitated, or shone with a celestial light, or had clairvoyant gifts, or, with dire results, cursed the ungodly or the benighted prelatist. They prophesied, used trance-utterance, and exercised gifts of healing. Angels ministered to them, as when Samuel Rutherford, having fallen into a well when a child, was pulled out by an angel.[1153] The substratum of primitive belief survives all changes of creed, and the folk impartially attributed magical powers to pagan Druid, Celtic saints, old crones and witches, and Presbyterian ministers.

FOOTNOTES:

[1093] IT i. 56; D'Arbois, v. 387.

[1094] See, e.g., "The Death of Muirchertach," RC xxiii. 394.

[1095] HN xxx. 4, 13.

[1096] Zimmer, Gloss. Hibern. 183; Reeves, Adamnan, 260.

[1097] Kennedy, 175; cf. IT i. 220.

[1098] See RC xii. 52 f.; D'Arbois, v. 403-404; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 505; Kennedy, 75, 196, 258.

[1099] D'Arbois, v. 277.

[1100] Stokes, Three Middle Irish Homilies, 24; IT iii. 325.

[1101] RC xii. 83; Miss Hull, 215; D'Arbois, v. 424; O'Curry, MC ii. 215.

[1102] Keating, 341; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 271.

[1103] RC xii. 81.

[1104] Miss Hull, 240 f.

[1105] Maury, 14.

[1106] Sebillot, ii. 226 f., i. 101, ii. 225; Berenger-Feraud, Superstitions et Survivances, iii. 169 f.; Stat. Account, viii. 52.

[1107] Rev. des Trad. 1893, 613; Sebillot, ii. 224.

[1108] Berenger-Feraud, iii. 218 f.; Sebillot, i. 100, 109; RC ii. 484; Frazer, Golden Bough{2}, i. 67.

[1109] D'Arbois, v. 387; IT i. 52; Dixon, Gairloch, 165; Carmichael, Carm. Gad. ii. 25.

[1110] RC xvi. 152; Miss Hull, 243.

[1111] D'Arbois, v. 133; IT ii. 373.

[1112] Mela, iii. 6; RC xv. 471.

[1113] Joyce, OCR 1 f.; Kennedy, 235.

[1114] Bird-women pursued by Cuchulainn; D'Arbois, v. 178; for other instances see O'Curry, MS. Mat. 426; Miss Hull, 82.

[1115] D'Arbois, v. 215.

[1116] Joyce, OCR 279.

[1117] Ibid. 86.

[1118] RC xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, Vita S. Kent. c. 1.

[1119] RC xv. 446.

[1120] O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Scrip. ii. 142; Stokes, Lives of Saints, xxviii.

[1121] RC xv. 444.

[1122] See p. 251, supra.

[1123] O'Curry, MS. Mat. 240.

[1124] See pp. 248, 304, supra; Caesar, vi. 14.

[1125] Zimmer, Gloss. Hiber. 271. Other Irish incantations, appealing to the saints, are found in the Codex Regularum at Klosternenburg (RC ii. 112).

[1126] Leahy, i. 137; Kennedy, 301.

[1127] Sauve, RC vi. 67 f.; Carmichael, Carm. Gadel., passim; CM xii. 38; Joyce, SH i. 629 f.; Camden, Britannia, iv. 488; Scot, Discovery of Witchcraft, iii. 15.

[1128] For examples see O'Curry, MS. Met. 248; D'Arbois, ii. 190; RC xii. 71, xxiv. 279; Stokes, TIG xxxvi. f.

[1129] Windisch, Tain, line 3467.

[1130] Diod. Sic. v. 31.

[1131] D'Arbois, i. 271.

[1132] RC xii. 109; Nutt-Meyer, i. 2; D'Arbois, v. 445.

[1133] Petrie, Ancient Music of Ireland, i. 73; The Gael, i. 235 (fairy lullaby of MacLeod of MacLeod).

[1134] O'Curry, MS. Mat. 255.

[1135] Archaeologia, xxxix. 509; Proc. Soc. Ant. iii. 92; Gaidoz, Le Dieu Gaul. du Soleil, 60 f.

[1136] IT iii. 409; but see Rhŷs, HL 215.

[1137] Pliny, HN xxix. 3. 54.

[1138] Rev. Arch. i. 227, xxxiii. 283.

[1139] Hoare, Modern Wiltshire, 56; Camden, Britannia, 815; Hazlitt, 194; Campbell, Witchcraft, 84. In the Highlands spindle-whorls are thought to have been perforated by the adder, which then passes through the hole to rid itself of its old skin.

[1140] Pliny, xxxii. 2. 24; Reinach, RC xx. 13 f.

[1141] Rev. Arch. i. 227; Greenwell, British Barrows, 165; Elton, 66; Renel, 95f., 194f.

[1142] Reinach, BF 286, 289, 362.

[1143] O'Curry, MS Mat. 387. See a paper by Hartland, "The Voice of the Stone of Destiny," Folk-lore Journal, xiv. 1903.

[1144] Petrie, Trans. Royal Irish Acad. xviii. pt. 2.

[1145] O'Curry, MS. Mat. 393 f.

[1146] Sebillot, i. 334 f.

[1147] Trollope, Brittany, ii. 229; Berenger-Feraud, Superstitions et Survivances, i. 529 f.; Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, iii. 580, 689, 841 f.

[1148] Rev. des Trad. 1894, 494; Berenger-Feraud, i. 529, ii. 367; Elworthy, Evil Eye, 70.

[1149] Berenger-Feraud, i. 523; Elworthy, 69, 106; Reinach, L'Anthropologie, iv. 33.

[1150] Kennedy, 324; Adamnan, Vita S. Col. ii. 35.

[1151] Life of S. Fechin of Fore, RC xii. 333; Life of S. Kieran, O'Grady, ii. 13; Amra Cholumbchille, RC xx. 41; Life of S. Moling, RC xxvii. 293; and other lives passim. See also Plummer, Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae.

[1152] Adamnan, ii. 34. This pebble was long preserved, but mysteriously disappeared when the person who sought it was doomed to die.

[1153] Wodrow, Analecta, passim; Walker, Six Saints of the Covenant, ed. by Dr. Hay Fleming.



CHAPTER XXII.

THE STATE OF THE DEAD.

Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have doubted the existence of a future state, but their conceptions of it have differed greatly. But of all the races of antiquity, outside Egypt, the Celts seem to have cherished the most ardent belief in the world beyond the grave, and to have been preoccupied with its joys. Their belief, so far as we know it, was extremely vivid, and its chief characteristic was life in the body after death, in another region.[1154] This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a doctrine by the Druids, made it the admiration of classical onlookers. But besides this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a distant past, that the dead lived on in the grave—the two conceptions being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of belief in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul could exist apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that they believed in a future existence of the soul as a shade. This belief is certainly found in some late Welsh poems, where the ghosts are described as wandering in the Caledonian forest, but these can hardly be made use of as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may be gathered from classical observers, from archaeology and from Irish texts.

Caesar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another (ab aliis ... ad alios) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live again, the soul passing into another body. Hence at the burial of the dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile, believing that the dead would read them in the next world."[1156] Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal.[1157] These passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite one common original, but Caesar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The real point of connection was the insistence of both upon immortality, the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality via a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or believing in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be struck with the vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon conduct. The only thing like it of which they knew was the Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at in this light, Caesar's words need not convey the idea of transmigration, and it is possible that he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these writers meant that the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly have added the passages regarding debts being paid in the other world, or letters conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit the dead there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of the soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic, may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.

This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, in orbe alio) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is but the centre of a long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic warrior had no fear of death.[1158] Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its rich and varied existence. Classical writers, of course, may have known of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths telling of the rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and Mela,[1159] speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela appears to copy Caesar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on to the next world.

This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus, when Cuchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black ... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses are equally corporeal.[1160] Similar descriptions of the dead who return are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich, who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and clad in his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the Tain.[1161] Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions of the "Dead Debtor" folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as a living person in corporeal form.[1162] Equally substantial and corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine folk of the sid or of Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in the texts. To the Celts, gods, side, and the dead, all alike had a bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways differed from the earthly body.

The archaeological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots, utensils, ornaments, and coins.[1163] Some of the interments undoubtedly point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons, without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body, pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied behind the back.[1164] All this suggests, taken in connection with classical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was life in the body, and that it was a replica of this life, with the same affections, needs, and energies. Certain passages in Irish texts also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented their attack.[1165] Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead husbands.[1166]

The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before burial. It appears from such practices as binding the dead with cords, or laying heavy stones or a mound of earth on the grave, probably to prevent their egress, or feeding the dead with sacrificial food at the grave, or from the belief that the dead come forth not as spirits, but in the body from the grave. This primitive conception, of which the belief in a subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long survived among various races, e.g. the Scandinavians, who believed in the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while they also had their conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the Slavs, side by side with Christian conceptions.[1167] It also survived among the Celts, though another belief in the orbis alius had arisen. This can be shown from modern and ancient folk-belief and custom.

In numerous Celtic folk-tales the dead rise in the body, not as ghosts, from the grave, which is sometimes described as a house in which they live. They perform their ordinary occupations in house or field; they eat with the living, or avenge themselves upon them; if scourged, blood is drawn from their bodies; and, in one curious Breton tale, a dead husband visits his wife in bed and she then has a child by him, because, as he said, "sa compte d'enfants" was not yet complete.[1168] In other stories a corpse becomes animated and speaks or acts in presence of the living, or from the tomb itself when it is disturbed.[1169] The earliest literary example of such a tale is the tenth century "Adventures of Nera," based on older sources. In this Nera goes to tie a withy to the foot of a man who has been hung. The corpse begs a drink, and then forces Nera to carry him to a house, where he kills two sleepers.[1170] All such stories, showing as they do that a corpse is really living, must in essence be of great antiquity. Another common belief, found over the Celtic area, is that the dead rise from the grave, not as ghosts, when they will, and that they appear en masse on the night of All Saints, and join the living.[1171]

As a result of such beliefs, various customs are found in use, apparently to permit of the corpse having freedom of movement, contrary to the older custom of preventing its egress from the grave. In the west of Ireland the feet of the corpse are left free, and the nails are drawn from the coffin at the grave. In the Hebrides the threads of the shroud are cut or the bindings of feet, hands, and face are raised when the body is placed in the coffin, and in Brittany the arms and feet are left free when the corpse is dressed.[1172] The reason is said to be that the spirit may have less trouble in getting to the spirit world, but it is obvious that a more material view preceded and still underlies this later gloss. Many stories are told illustrating these customs, and the earlier belief, Christianised, appears in the tale of a woman who haunted her friends because they had made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of Purgatory burnt her knees.[1173]

Earlier customs recorded among the Celts also point to the existence of this primitive belief influencing actual custom. Nicander says that the Celts went by night to the tombs of great men to obtain oracles, so much did they believe that they were still living there.[1174] In Ireland, oracles were also sought by sleeping on funeral cairns, and it was to the grave of Fergus that two bards resorted in order to obtain from him the lost story of the Tain. We have also seen how, in Ireland, armed heroes exerted a sinister influence upon enemies from their graves, which may thus have been regarded as their homes—a belief also underlying the Welsh story of Bran's head.

Where was the world of the dead situated? M. Reinach has shown, by a careful comparison of the different uses of the word orbis, that Lucan's words do not necessarily mean "another world," but "another region," i.e. of this world.[1175] If the Celts cherished so firmly the belief that the dead lived on in the grave, a belief in an underworld of the dead was bound in course of time to have been evolved as part of their creed. To it all graves and tumuli would give access. Classical observers apparently held that the Celtic future state was like their own in being an underworld region, since they speak of the dead Celts as inferi, or as going ad Manes, and Plutarch makes Camma speak of descending to her dead husband.[1176] What differentiated it from their own gloomy underworld was its exuberant life and immortality. This aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had descended,[1177] probably a myth of their coming forth from his subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful life.

Several writers, notably M. D'Arbois, assume that the orbis alius of the dead was the Celtic island Elysium. But that Elysium never appears in the tales as a land of the dead. It is a land of gods and deathless folk who are not those who have passed from this world by death. Mortals may reach it by favour, but only while still in life. It might be argued that Elysium was regarded in pagan times as the land of the dead, but after Christian eschatological views prevailed, it became a kind of fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being carefully examined, they show that Elysium had always been a place distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a tendency to confuse the two.

If there was a genuine Celtic belief in an island of the dead, it could have been no more than a local one, else Caesar would not have spoken as he does of the Celtic Dispater. Such a local belief now exists on the Breton coast, but it is mainly concerned with the souls of the drowned.[1178] A similar local belief may explain the story told by Procopius, who says that Brittia (Britain), an island lying off the mouth of the Rhine, is divided from north to south by a wall beyond which is a noxious region. This is a distorted reminiscence of the Roman wall, which would appear to run in this direction if Ptolemy's map, in which Scotland lies at right angles to England, had been consulted. Thither fishermen from the opposite coast are compelled to ferry over at dead of night the shades of the dead, unseen to them, but marshalled by a mysterious leader.[1179] Procopius may have mingled some local belief with the current tradition that Ulysses' island of the shades lay in the north, or in the west.[1180] In any case his story makes of the gloomy land of the shades a very different region from the blissful Elysium of the Celts and from their joyous orbis alius, nor is it certain that he is referring to a Celtic people.

Traces of the idea of an underworld of the dead exist in Breton folk-belief. The dead must travel across a subterranean ocean, and though there is scarcely any tradition regarding what happens on landing, M. Sebillot thinks that formerly "there existed in the subterranean world a sort of centralisation of the different states of the dead." If so, this must have been founded on pagan belief. The interior of the earth is also believed to be the abode of fabulous beings, of giants, and of fantastic animals, and there is also a subterranean fairy world. In all this we may see a survival of the older belief, modified by Christian teaching, since the Bretons suppose that purgatory and hell are beneath the earth and accessible from its surface.[1181]

Some British folk-lore brought to Greece by Demetrius and reported by Plutarch might seem to suggest that certain persons—the mighty dead—were privileged to pass to the island Elysium. Some islands near Britain were called after gods and heroes, and the inhabitants of one of these were regarded as sacrosanct by the Britons, like the priestesses of Sena. They were visited by Demetrius, who was told that the storms which arose during his visit were caused by the passing away of some of the "mighty" or of the "great souls." It may have been meant that such mighty ones passed to the more distant islands, but this is certainly not stated. In another island, Kronos was imprisoned, watched over by Briareus, and guarded by demons.[1182] Plutarch refers to these islands in another work, repeating the story of Kronos, and saying that his island is mild and fragrant, that people live there waiting on the god who sometimes appears to them and prevents their departing. Meanwhile they are happy and know no care, spending their time in sacrificing and hymn-singing or in studying legends and philosophy.

Plutarch has obviously mingled Celtic Elysium beliefs with the classical conception of the Druids.[1183] In Elysium there is no care, and favoured mortals who pass there are generally prevented from returning to earth. The reference to Kronos may also be based partly on myths of Celtic gods of Elysium, partly on tales of heroes who departed to mysterious islands or to the hollow hills where they lie asleep, but whence they will one day return to benefit their people. So Arthur passed to Avalon, but in other tales he and his warriors are asleep beneath Craig-y-Ddinas, just as Fionn and his men rest within this or that hill in the Highlands. Similar legends are told of other Celtic heroes, and they witness to the belief that great men who had died would return in the hour of their people's need. In time they were thought not to have died at all, but to be merely sleeping and waiting for their hour.[1184] The belief is based on the idea that the dead are alive in grave or barrow, or in a spacious land below the earth, or that dead warriors can menace their foes from the tomb.

Thus neither in old sagas, nor in Maerchen, nor in popular tradition, is the island Elysium a world of the dead. For the most part the pagan eschatology has been merged in that of Christianity, while the Elysium belief has remained intact and still survives in a whole series of beautiful tales.

The world of the dead was in all respects a replica of this world, but it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief—a survival of the older conception of the bodily state of the dead—they resume their tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings. Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their customary dress. Like the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed and clothe the dead in the other world.[1185] If the world of the dead was subterranean,—a theory supported by current folk-belief,[1186]—the Earth-goddess or the Earth-god, who had been first the earth itself, then a being living below its surface and causing fertility, could not have become the divinity of the dead until the multitude of single graves or barrows, in each of which the dead lived, had become a wide subterranean region of the dead. This divinity was the source of life and growth; hence he or she was regarded as the progenitor of mankind, who had come forth from the underworld and would return there at death. It is not impossible that the Breton conception of Ankou, death personified, is a reminiscence of the Celtic Dispater. He watches over all things beyond the grave, and carries off the dead to his kingdom. But if so he has been altered for the worse by mediaeval ideas of "Death the skeleton".[1187] He is a grisly god of death, whereas the Celtic Dis was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed a happy immortality. They were not cold phantasms, but alive and endowed with corporeal form and able to enjoy the things of a better existence, and clad in the beautiful raiment and gaudy ornaments which were loved so much on earth. Hence Celtic warriors did not fear death, and suicide was extremely common, while Spanish Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others celebrated the birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with joy.[1188] Lucan's words are thus the truest expression of Celtic eschatology—"In another region the spirit animates the members; death, if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring life."

There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since the hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor, it may have been held, as many other races have believed, that cowards would miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of the Irish Christian visions of the other-world and in existing folk-belief, certain characteristics of hell may not be derived from Christian eschatology, e.g. the sufferings of the dead from cold.[1189] This might point to an old belief in a cold region whither some of the dead were banished. In the Adventures of S. Columba's Clerics, hell is reached by a bridge over a glen of fire,[1190] and a narrow bridge leading to the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here it may be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such Christian writings as the Dialogues of S. Gregory the Great.[1191] It might be contended that the Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory of retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor is there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in which Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till "the day of Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the Lord," does not refer to such a judgment.[1192] If an ethical blindness be attributed to the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of retribution, it should be remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from suggesting an ethical Deity.

FOOTNOTES:

[1154] Skene, i. 370.

[1155] Caesar, vi. 14, 19.

[1156] Diod. Sic. v, 28.

[1157] Val. Max. vi. 6. 10.

[1158] Phars. i. 455 f.

[1159] Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2.

[1160] Miss Hull, 275.

[1161] Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293.

[1162] Larminie, 155; Hyde, Beside the Fire, 21, 153; CM xiii. 21; Campbell, WHT, ii. 21; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xii.

[1163] Von Sacken, Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt; Greenwell, British Barrows; RC x. 234; Antiquary, xxxvii. 125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.; Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times.

[1164] L'Anthropologie, vi. 586; Greenwell, op. cit. 119.

[1165] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, Annals, i. 145, 180; RC xv. 28. In one case the enemy disinter the body of the king of Connaught, and rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a victory. This nearly coincides with the dire results following the disinterment of Bran's head (O'Donovan, i. 145; cf. p. 242, supra).

[1166] LU 130a; RC xxiv. 185; O'Curry, MC i. p. cccxxx; Campbell, WHT iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.

[1167] Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 167, 417-418, 420; and see my Childhood of Fiction, 103 f.

[1168] Larminie, 31; Le Braz{2}, ii. 146, 159, 161, 184, 257 (the role of the dead husband is usually taken by a lutin or follet, Luzel, Veillees Bretons, 79); Rev. des Trad. Pop. ii. 267; Ann. de Bretagne, viii. 514.

[1169] Le Braz{2}, i. 313. Cf. also an incident in the Voyage of Maelduin.

[1170] RC x. 214f. Cf. Kennedy, 162; Le Braz{2}, i. 217, for variants.

[1171] Curtin, Tales, 156; see p. 170, supra.

[1172] Curtin, Tales, 156; Campbell, Superstitions, 241; Folk-Lore, xiii. 60; Le Braz{2}, i. 213.

[1173] Folk-Lore, ii. 26; Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 166.

[1174] Tertullian, de Anima, 21.

[1175] Reinach, RC xxii. 447.

[1176] Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. Virt. mul 20.

[1177] See p. 229, supra.

[1178] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many local beliefs (cf. Sebillot, ii. 149).

[1179] Procop. De Bello Goth. vi. 20.

[1180] Claudian, In Rufin. i. 123.

[1181] Sebillot, i. 418 f.

[1182] de Defectu Orac. 18. An occasional name for Britain in the Mabinogion is "the island of the Mighty" (Loth, i. 69, et passim). To the storm incident and the passing of the mighty, there is a curious parallel in Fijian belief. A clap of thunder was explained as "the noise of a spirit, we being near the place in which spirits plunge to enter the other world, and a chief in the neighbourhood having just died" (Williams, Fiji, i. 204).

[1183] de Facie Lun[oe], 26.

[1184] See Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, 209; Macdougall, Folk and Hero Tales, 73, 263; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxx. Mortals sometimes penetrated to the presence of these heroes, who awoke. If the visitor had the courage to tell them that the hour had not yet come, they fell asleep again, and he escaped. In Brittany, rocky clefts are believed to be the entrance to the world of the dead, like the cave of Lough Dearg. Similar stories were probably told of these in pagan times, though they are now adapted to Christian beliefs in purgatory or hell.

[1185] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xl, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail, Folk-Lore, vi. 170.

[1186] See p. 338, supra, and Logan, Scottish Gael, ii. 374; Folk-Lore, viii. 208, 253.

[1187] Le Braz{2}, i. 96, 127, 136f., and Intro, xlv.

[1188] Philostratus, Apoll. of Tyana, v. 4; Val. Max. ii. 6. 12.

[1189] Le Braz{1}, ii. 91; Curtin, Tales, 146. The punishment of suffering from ice and snow appears in the Apocalypse of Paul and in later Christian accounts of hell.

[1190] RC xxvi. 153.

[1191] Bk. iv. ch. 36.

[1192] Erdathe, according to D'Arbois, means (1) "the day in which the dead will resume his colour," from dath, "colour"; (2) "the agreeable day," from data, "agreeable" (D'Arbois, i. 185; cf. Les Druides, 135).



CHAPTER XXIII.

REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION.

In Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or heroes, and, probably because this belief was obnoxious to Christian scribes, while some MSS. tell of it in the case of certain heroic personages, in others these same heroes are said to have been born naturally. There is no textual evidence that it was attributed to ordinary mortals, and it is possible that, if classical observers did not misunderstand the Celtic doctrine of the future life, their references to rebirth may be based on mythical tales regarding gods or heroes. We shall study these tales as they are found in Irish texts.

In the mythological cycle, as has been seen, Etain, in insect form, fell into a cup of wine. She was swallowed by Etar, and in due time was reborn as a child, who was eventually married by Eochaid Airem, but recognized and carried off by her divine spouse Mider. Etain, however, had quite forgotten her former existence as a goddess.[1193]

In one version of Cuchulainn's birth story Dechtire and her women fly away as birds, but are discovered at last by her brother Conchobar in a strange house, where Dechtire gives birth to a child, of whom the god Lug is apparently the father. In another version the birds are not Dechtire and her women, for she accompanies Conchobar as his charioteer. They arrive at the house, the mistress of which gives birth to a child, which Dechtire brings up. It dies, and on her return from the burial Dechtire swallows a small animal when drinking. Lug appears to her by night, and tells her that he was the child, and that now she was with child by him (i.e. he was the animal swallowed by her). When he was born he would be called Setanta, who was later named Cuchulainn. Cuchulainn, in this version, is thus a rebirth of Lug, as well as his father.[1194]

In the Tale of the Two Swineherds, Friuch and Rucht are herds of the gods Ochall and Bodb. They quarrel, and their fighting in various animal shapes is fully described. Finally they become two worms, which are swallowed by two cows; these then give birth to the Whitehorn and to the Black Bull of Cuailgne, the animals which were the cause of the Tain. The swineherds were probably themselves gods in the older versions of this tale.[1195]

Other stories relate the rebirth of heroes. Conchobar is variously said to be son of Nessa by her husband Cathbad, or by her lover Fachtna. But in the latter version an incident is found which points to a third account. Nessa brings Cathbad a draught from a river, but in it are two worms which he forces her to swallow. She gives birth to a son, in each of whose hands is a worm, and he is called Conchobar, after the name of the river into which he fell soon after his birth. The incident closes with the words, "It was from these worms that she became pregnant, say some."[1196] Possibly the divinity of the river had taken the form of the worms and was reborn as Conchobar. We may compare the story of the birth of Conall Cernach. His mother was childless, until a Druid sang spells over a well in which she bathed, and drank of its waters. With the draught she swallowed a worm, "and the worm was in the hand of the boy as he lay in his mother's womb; and he pierced the hand and consumed it."[1197]

The personality of Fionn is also connected with the rebirth idea. In one story, Mongan, a seventh-century king, had a dispute with his poet regarding the death of the hero Fothad. The Fian Caoilte returns from the dead to prove Mongan right, and he says, "We were with thee, with Fionn." Mongan bids him be silent, because he did not wish his identity with Fionn to be made known. "Mongan, however, was Fionn, though he would not let it be told."[1198] In another story Mongan is son of Manannan, who had prophesied of this event. Manannan appeared to the wife of Fiachna when he was fighting the Saxons, and told her that unless she yielded herself to him her husband would be slain. On hearing this she agreed, and next day the god appeared fighting with Fiachna's forces and routed the slain. "So that this Mongan is a son of Manannan mac Lir, though he is called Mongan son of Fiachna."[1199] In a third version Manannan makes the bargain with Fiachna, and in his form sleeps with the woman. Simultaneously with Mongan's birth, Fiachna's attendant had a son who became Mongan's servant, and a warrior's wife bears a daughter who became his wife. Manannan took Mongan to the Land of Promise and kept him there until he was sixteen.[1200] Many magical powers and the faculty of shape-shifting are attributed to Mongan, and in some stories he is brought into connection with the sid.[1201] Probably a myth told how he went to Elysium instead of dying, for he comes from "the Land of Living Heart" to speak with S. Columba, who took him to see heaven. But he would not satisfy the saints' curiosity regarding Elysium, and suddenly vanished, probably returning there.[1202]

This twofold account of Mongan's birth is curious. Perhaps the idea that he was a rebirth of Fionn may have been suggested by the fact that his father was called Fiachna Finn, while it is probable that some old myth of a son of Manannan's called Mongan was attached to the personality of the historic Mongan.

About the era of Mongan, King Diarmaid had two wives, one of whom was barren. S. Finnen gave her holy water to drink, and she brought forth a lamb; then, after a second draught, a trout, and finally, after a third, Aed Slane, who became high king of Ireland in 594. This is a Christianised version of the story of Conall Cernach's birth.[1203]

In Welsh mythology the story of Taliesin affords an example of rebirth. After the transformation combat of the goddess Cerridwen and Gwion, resembling that of the swine-herds, Gwion becomes a grain of wheat, which Cerridwen in the form of a hen swallows, with the result that he is reborn of her as Taliesin.[1204]

Most of these stories no longer exist in their primitive form, and various ideas are found in them—conception by magical means, divine descent through the amour of a divinity and a mortal, and rebirth.

As to the first, the help of magician or priest is often invoked in savage society and even in European folk-custom in case of barrenness. Prayers, charms, potions, or food are the means used to induce conception, but perhaps at one time these were thought to cause it of themselves. In many tales the swallowing of a seed, fruit, insect, etc., results in the birth of a hero or heroine, and it is probable that these stories embody actual belief in such a possibility. If the stories of Conall Cernach and Aed Slane are not attenuated instances of rebirth, say, of the divinity of a well, they are examples of this belief. The gift of fruitfulness is bestowed by Druid and saint, but in the story of Conall it is rather the swallowing of the worm than the Druid's incantation that causes conception, and is the real motif of the tale.

Where the rebirth of a divinity occurs as the result of the swallowing of a small animal, it is evident that the god has first taken this form. The Celt, believing in conception by swallowing some object, and in shape-shifting, combined his information, and so produced a third idea, that a god could take the form of a small animal, which, when swallowed, became his rebirth.[1205] If, as the visits of barren women to dolmens and megalithic monuments suggest, the Celts believed in the possibility of the spirit of a dead man entering a woman and being born of her or at least aiding conception,—a belief held by other races,[1206]—this may have given rise to myths regarding the rebirth of gods by human mothers. At all events this latter Celtic belief is paralleled by the American Indian myths, e.g. of the Thlinkeet god Yehl who transformed himself now into a pebble, now into a blade of grass, and, being thus swallowed by women, was reborn.

In the stories of Etain and of Lud, reborn as Setanta, this idea of divine transformation and rebirth occurs. A similar idea may underlie the tale of Fionn and Mongan. As to the tales of Gwion and the Swineherds, the latter the servants of gods, and perhaps themselves regarded once as divinities, who in their rebirth as bulls are certainly divine animals, they present some features which require further consideration. The previous transformations in both cases belong to the Transformation Combat formula of many Maerchen, and obviously were not part of the original form of the myths. In all such Maerchen the antagonists are males, hence the rebirth incident could not form part of them. In the Welsh tale of Gwion and in the corresponding Taliesin poem, the ingenious fusion of the Maerchen formula with an existing myth of rebirth must have taken place at an early date.[1207] This is also true of The Two Swineherds, but in this case, since the myth told how two gods took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to the usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn. The fusion is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a remembrance of their former transformations,[1208] just as Mongan knows of his former existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such remembrance. Etain had forgotten her former existence, and Cuchulainn does not appear to know that he is a rebirth of Lug.

The relation of Lug to Cuchulainn deserves further inquiry. While the god is reborn he is also existing as Lug, just as having been swallowed as a worm by Dechtire, he appears in his divine form and tells her he will be born of her. In the Tain he appears fighting for Cuchulainn, whom he there calls his son. There are thus two aspects of the hero's relationship to Lug; in one he is a rebirth of the god, in the other he is his son, as indeed he seems to represent himself in The Wooing of Emer, and as he is called by Laborcham just before his death.[1209] In one of the birth-stories he is clearly Lug's son by Dechtire. But both versions may simply be different aspects of one belief, namely, that a god could be reborn as a mortal and yet continue his divine existence, because all birth is a kind of rebirth. The men of Ulster sought a wife for Cuchulainn, "knowing that his rebirth would be of himself," i.e. his son would be himself even while he continued to exist as his father. Examples of such a belief occur elsewhere, e.g. in the Laws of Manu, where the husband is said to be reborn of his wife, and in ancient Egypt, where the gods were called "self-begotten," because each was father to the son who was his true image or himself. Likeness implied identity, in primitive belief. Thus the belief in mortal descent from the gods among the Celts may have involved the theory of a divine avatar. The god became father of a mortal by a woman, and part of himself passed over to the child, who was thus the god himself.

Conchobar was also a rebirth of a god, but he was named from the river whence his mother had drawn water containing the worms which she swallowed. This may point to a lost version in which he was the son of a river-god by Nessa. This was quite in accordance with Celtic belief, as is shown by such names as Dubrogenos, from dubron, "water," and genos, "born of"; Divogenos, Divogena, "son or daughter of a god," possibly a river-god, since deivos is a frequent river name; and Rhenogenus, "son of the Rhine."[1210] The persons who first bore these names were believed to have been begotten by divinities. Mongan's descent from Manannan, god of the sea, is made perfectly clear, and the Welsh name Morgen = Morigenos, "son of the sea," probably points to a similar tale now lost. Other Celtic names are frequently pregnant with meaning, and tell of a once-existing rich mythology of divine amours with mortals. They show descent from deities—Camulogenus (son of Camulos), Esugenos (son of Esus), Boduogenus (son of Bodva); or from tree-spirits—Dergen (son of the oak), Vernogenus (son of the alder); or from divine animals—Arthgen (son of the bear), Urogenus (son of the urus).[1211] What was once an epithet describing divine filiation became later a personal name. So in Greece names like Apollogenes, Diogenes, and Hermogenes, had once been epithets of heroes born of Apollo, Zeus, and Hermes.

Thus it was a vital Celtic belief that divinities might unite with mortals and beget children. Heroes enticed away to Elysium enjoyed the love of its goddesses—Cuchulainn that of Fand; Connla, Bran, and Oisin that of unnamed divinities. So, too, the goddess Morrigan offered herself to Cuchulainn. The Christian Celts of the fifth century retained this belief, though in a somewhat altered form. S. Augustine and others describe the shaggy demons called dusii by the Gauls, who sought the couches of women in order to gratify their desires.[1212] The dusii are akin to the incubi and fauni, and do not appear to represent the higher gods reduced to the form of demons by Christianity, but rather a species of lesser divinities, once the object of popular devotion.

These beliefs are also connected with the Celtic notions of transformation and transmigration—the one signifying the assuming of another shape for a time, the other the passing over of the soul or the personality into another body, perhaps one actually existing, but more usually by actual rebirth. As has been seen, this power of transformation was claimed by the Druids and by other persons, or attributed to them, and they were not likely to minimise their powers, and would probably boast of them on all occasions. Such boasts are put into the mouths of the Irish Amairgen and the Welsh Taliesin. As the Milesians were approaching Ireland, Amairgen sang verses which were perhaps part of a ritual chant:

"I am the wind which blows over the sea, I am the wave of the ocean, I am the bull of seven battles, I am the eagle on the rock... I am a boar for courage, I am a salmon in the water, etc."[1213]

Professor Rhŷs points out that some of these verses need not mean actual transformation, but mere likeness, through "a primitive formation of predicate without the aid of a particle corresponding to such a word as 'like.'"[1214] Enough, however, remains to show the claim of the magician. Taliesin, in many poems, makes similar claims, and says, "I have been in a multitude of shapes before I assumed a consistent form"—that of a sword, a tear, a star, an eagle, etc. Then he was created, without father or mother.[1215] Similar pretensions are common to the medicine-man everywhere. But from another point of view they may be mere poetic extravagances such as are common in Celtic poetry.[1216] Thus Cuchulainn says: "I was a hound strong for combat ... their little champion ... the casket of every secret for the maidens," or, in another place, "I am the bark buffeted from wave to wave ... the ship after the losing of its rudder ... the little apple on the top of the tree that little thought of its falling."[1217] These are metaphoric descriptions of a comparatively simple kind. The full-blown bombast appears in the Colloquy of the Two Sages, where Nede and Fercertne exhaust language in describing themselves to each other.[1218] Other Welsh bards besides Taliesin make similar boasts to his, and Dr. Skene thinks that their claims "may have been mere bombast."[1219] Still some current belief in shape-shifting, or even in rebirth, underlies some of these boastings and gives point to them. Amairgen's "I am" this or that, suggests the inherent power of transformation; Taliesin's "I have been," the actual transformations. Such assertions do not involve "the powerful pantheistic doctrine which is at once the glory and error of Irish philosophy," as M. D'Arbois claims,[1220] else are savage medicine-men, boastful of their shape-shifting powers, philosophic pantheists. The poems are merely highly developed forms of primitive beliefs in shape-shifting, such as are found among all savages and barbaric folk, but expressed in the boastful language in which the Celt delighted.

How were the successive shape-shiftings effected? To answer this we shall first look at the story of Tuan Mac Caraill, who survived from the days of Partholan to those of S. Finnen. He was a decrepit man at the coming of Nemed, and one night, having lain down to sleep, he awoke as a stag, and lived in this form to old age. In the same way he became a boar, a hawk, and a salmon, which was caught and eaten by Cairell's wife, of whom he was born as Tuan, with a perfect recollection of his different forms.[1221]

This story, the invention of a ninth or tenth century Christian scribe to account for the current knowledge of the many invasions of Ireland,[1222] must have been based on pagan myths of a similar kind, involving successive transformations and a final rebirth. Such a myth may have been told of Taliesin, recounting his transformations and his final rebirth, the former being replaced at a later time by the episode of the Transformation Combat, involving no great lapse of time. Such a series of successive shapes—of every beast, a dragon, a wolf, a stag, a salmon, a seal, a swan—were ascribed to Mongan and foretold by Manannan, and Mongan refers to some of them in his colloquy with S. Columba—"when I was a deer ... a salmon ... a seal ... a roving wolf ... a man."[1223] Perhaps the complete story was that of a fabulous hero in human form, who assumed different shapes, and was finally reborn. But the transformation of an old man, or an old animal, into new youthful and vigorous forms might be regarded as a kind of transmigration—an extension of the transformation idea, but involving no metempsychosis, no passing of the soul into another body by rebirth. Actual transmigration or rebirth occurs only at the end of the series, and, as in the case of Etain, Lug, etc., the pre-existent person is born of a woman after being swallowed by her. Possibly the transformation belief has reacted on the other, and obscured a belief in actual metempsychosis as a result of the soul of an ancestor passing into a woman and being reborn as her next child. Add to this that the soul is often thought of as a tiny animal, and we see how a point d'appui for the more materialistic belief was afforded. The insect or worms of the rebirth stories may have been once forms of the soul. It is easy also to see how, a theory of conception by swallowing various objects being already in existence, it might be thought possible that eating a salmon—a transformed man—would cause his rebirth from the eater.

The Celts may have had no consistent belief on this subject, the general idea of the future life being of a different kind. Or perhaps the various beliefs in transformation, transmigration, rebirth, and conception by unusual means, are too inextricably mingled to be separated. The nucleus of the tales seems to be the possibility of rebirth, and the belief that the soul was still clad in a bodily form after death and was itself a material thing. But otherwise some of them are not distinctively Celtic, and have been influenced by old Maerchen formulae of successive changes adopted by or forced upon some person, who is finally reborn. This formulae is already old in the fourteenth century B.C. Egyptian story of the Two Brothers.

Such Celtic stories as these may have been known to classical authors, and have influenced their statements regarding eschatology. Yet it can hardly be said that the tales themselves bear witness to a general transmigration doctrine current among the Celts, since the stories concern divine or heroic personages. Still the belief may have had a certain currency among them, based on primitive theories of soul life. Evidence that it existed side by side with the more general doctrines of the future life may be found in old or existing folk-belief. In some cases the dead have an animal form, as in the Voyage of Maelduin, where birds on an island are said to be souls, or in the legend of S. Maelsuthain, whose pupils appear to him after death as birds.[1224] The bird form of the soul after death is still a current belief in the Hebrides. Butterflies in Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France bats or butterflies, are believed to be souls of the dead.[1225] King Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been changed into the form of a raven, and in mediaeval Wales souls of the wicked appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels, or hares, or serve their term of penitence as cows or bulls, or remain as crows till the day of judgment.[1226] Unbaptized infants become birds; drowned sailors appear as beasts or birds; and the souls of girls deceived by lovers haunt them as hares.[1227]

These show that the idea of transmigration may not have been foreign to the Celtic mind, and it may have arisen from the idea that men assumed their totem animal's shape at death. Some tales of shape-shifting are probably due to totemism, and it is to be noted that in Kerry peasants will not eat hares because they contain the souls of their grandmothers.[1228] On the other hand, some of these survivals may mean no more than that the soul itself has already an animal form, in which it would naturally be seen after death. In Celtic folk-belief the soul is seen leaving the body in sleep as a bee, butterfly, gnat, mouse, or mannikin.[1229] Such a belief is found among most savage races, and might easily be mistaken for transmigration, or also assist the formation of the idea of transmigration. Though the folk-survivals show that transmigration was not necessarily alleged of all the dead, it may have been a sufficiently vital belief to colour the mythology, as we see from the existing tales, adulterated though these may have been.

The general belief has its roots in primitive ideas regarding life and its propagation—ideas which some hold to be un-Celtic and un-Aryan. But Aryans were "primitive" at some period of their history, and it would be curious if, while still in a barbarous condition, they had forgotten their old beliefs. In any case, if they adopted similar beliefs from non-Aryan people, this points to no great superiority on their part. Such beliefs originated the idea of rebirth and transmigration.[1230] Nevertheless this was not a characteristically Celtic eschatological belief; that we find in the theory that the dead lived on in the body or assumed a body in another region, probably underground.

FOOTNOTES:

[1193] For textual details see Zimmer, Zeit. fuer Vergl. Sprach. xxviii. 585 f. The tale is obviously archaic. For a translation see Leahy, i. 8 f.

[1194] IT i. 134 f.; D'Arbois, v. 22. There is a suggestion in one of the versions of another story, in which Setanta is child of Conchobar and his sister Dechtire.

[1195] IT iii. 245; RC xv. 465; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 69.

[1196] Stowe MS. 992, RC vi. 174; IT ii. 210; D'Arbois, v. 3f.

[1197] IT iii. 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter (RC xxii. 18).

[1198] Nutt-Meyer, i. 45 f., text and translation.

[1199] Ibid. 42 f.

[1200] Ibid. 58. The simultaneous birth formula occurs in many Maerchen, though that of the future wife is not common.

[1201] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52, 57, 85, 87.

[1202] ZCP ii. 316 f. Here Mongan comes directly from Elysium, as does Oisin before meeting S. Patrick.

[1203] IT iii. 345; O'Grady, ii. 88. Cf. Rees, 331.

[1204] Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. 116, supra.

[1205] In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form.

[1206] See my Religion: Its Origin and Forms, 76-77.

[1207] Skene, i. 532. After relating various shapes in which he has been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received, and that he rested in her womb as a child. The reference in this early poem from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of the Maerchen formula with a myth of rebirth was already well known. See also Guest, iii. 362, for verses in which the transformations during the combat are exaggerated.

[1208] Skene, i. 276, 532.

[1209] Miss Hull, 67; D'Arbois, v. 331.

[1210] For various forms of geno-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes, US 110.

[1211] For all these names see Holder, s.v.

[1212] S. Aug. de Civ. Dei, xv. 23; Isidore, Orat. viii. 2. 103. Dusios may be connected with Lithuanian dvaese, "spirit," and perhaps with [Greek: Thehos] (Holder, s.v.). D'Arbois sees in the dusii water-spirits, and compares river-names like Dhuys, Duseva, Dusius (vi. 182; RC xix. 251). The word may be connected with Irish duis, glossed "noble" (Stokes, TIG 76). The Bretons still believe in fairies called duz, and our word dizzy may be connected with dusios, and would then have once signified the madness following on the amour, like Greek [Greek: nympholeptos], or "the inconvenience of their succubi," described by Kirk in his Secret Commonwealth of the Elves.

[1213] LL 12b; TOS v. 234.

[1214] Rhŷs, HL 549.

[1215] Skene, i. 276, 309, etc.

[1216] Sigerson, Bards of the Gael, 379.

[1217] Miss Hull, 288; Hyde, Lit. Hist. of Ireland, 300.

[1218] RC xxvi. 21.

[1219] Skene, ii. 506.

[1220] D'Arbois, ii. 246, where he also derives Erigena's pantheism from Celtic beliefs, such as he supposes to be exemplified by these poems.

[1221] LU 15a; D'Arbois, ii. 47 f.; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 294 f.

[1222] Another method of accounting for this knowledge was to imagine a long-lived personage like Fintan who survived for 5000 years. D'Arbois, ii. ch. 4. Here there was no transformation or rebirth.

[1223] Nutt-Meyer, i. 24; ZCP ii. 316.

[1224] O'Curry, MS. Mat. 78.

[1225] Wood-Martin, Pagan Ireland, 140; Choice Notes, 61; Monnier, 143; Maury, 272.

[1226] Choice Notes, 69; Rees, 92; Le Braz{2}, ii. 82, 86, 307; Rev. des Trad. Pop. xii. 394.

[1227] Le Braz{2}, ii. 80; Folk-lore Jour. v. 189.

[1228] Folk-Lore, iv. 352.

[1229] Carmichael, Carm. Gadel. ii. 334; Rhŷs, CFL 602; Le Braz{2}, i. 179, 191, 200.

[1230] Mr. Nutt, Voyage of Bran, derived the origin of the rebirth conception from orgiastic cults.



CHAPTER XXIV.

ELYSIUM.

The Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of religion, mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series of Irish and Welsh tales. We do not know that a similar conception existed among the continental Celts, but, considering the likeness of their beliefs in other matters to those of the insular Celts, there is a strong probability that it did. There are four typical presentations of the Elysium conception. In Ireland, while the gods were believed to have retired within the hills or sid, it is not unlikely that some of them had always been supposed to live in these or in a subterranean world, and it is therefore possible that what may be called the subterranean or sid type of Elysium is old. But other types also appear—that of a western island Elysium, of a world below the waters, and of a world co-extensive with this and entered by a mist.

The names of the Irish Elysium are sometimes of a general character—Mag Mor, "the Great Plain"; Mag Mell, "the Pleasant Plain"; Tir n'Aill, "the Other-world"; Tir na m-Beo, "the Land of the Living"; Tir na n-Og, "the Land of Youth"; and Tir Tairngiri, "the Land of Promise"—possibly of Christian origin. Local names are Tir fa Tonn, "Land under Waves"; I-Bresail and the Land of Falga, names of the island Elysium. The last denotes the Isle of Man as Elysium, and it may have been so regarded by Goidels in Britain at an early time.[1231] To this period may belong the tales of Cuchulainn's raid on Falga, carried at a later time to Ireland. Tir Tairngiri is also identified with the Isle of Man.[1232]

A brief resume of the principal Elysium tales is necessary as a preliminary to a discussion of the problems which they involve, though it can give but little idea of the beauty and romanticism of the tales themselves. These, if not actually composed in pagan times, are based upon story-germs current before the coming of Christianity to Ireland.

1. The sid Elysium.—In the story of Etain, when Mider discovered her in her rebirth, he described the land whither he would carry her, its music and its fair people, its warm streams, its choice mead and wine. There is eternal youth, and love is blameless. It is within Mider's sid, and Etain accompanies him there. In the sequel King Eochaid's Druid discovers the sid, which is captured by the king, who then regains Etain.[1233] Other tales refer to the sid in similar terms, and describe its treasures, its food and drink better than those of earth. It is in most respects similar to the island Elysium, save that it is localised on earth.

2. The island Elysium.—The story of the voyage of Bran is found fragmentarily in the eleventh century LU, and complete in the fourteenth and sixteenth century MSS. It tells how Bran heard mysterious music when asleep. On waking he found a silver branch with blossoms, and next day there appeared a mysterious woman singing the glory of the land overseas, its music, its wonderful tree, its freedom from pain and death. It is one of thrice fifty islands to the west of Erin, and there she dwells with thousands of "motley women." Before she disappears the branch leaps into her hand. Bran set sail with his comrades and met Manannan crossing the sea in his chariot. The god told him that the sea was a flowery plain, Mag Mell, and that all around, unseen to Bran, were people playing and drinking "without sin." He bade him sail on to the Land of Women. Then the voyagers went on and reached the Isle of Joy, where one of their number remained behind. At last they came to the Land of Women, and we hear of their welcome, the dreamlike lapse of time, the food and drink which had for each the taste he desired. Finally the tale recounts their home-sickness, the warning they received not to set foot on Erin, how one of their number leaped ashore and turned to ashes, how Bran from his boat told of his wanderings and then disappeared for ever.[1234]