Note 154 — PART II (continued 3)

David Fitzgerald, loc. cit., pp. 192-3, where he cites from Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers, a passage of the Vedas: ‘Two birds sit on the top of the imperishable açvattha, one eating its figs, and the other looking on.’ He also cites from the Félire Oengusa: ‘A great tree that was in the Eastern world, and the heathens used to worship it, so that the Christians fasted against all the Saints of Europe that the tree might fall, et statim cecidit.’ This passage contrasts curiously with the terms in which the ‘great tree’ is described in other Irish writings. The Félire also speaks of Elijah, Gospel in hand, preaching to the spirits under the Tree of Life in Paradise, while the bird-flocks come to eat the berries of it, which are sweeter than honey and headier than wine; just as the ale of the Tír Tairngire is described as headier than the ale of Éire.

The human souls in the form of birds are a variant of a belief of world-wide extent. In Lithuania and the neighbouring countries the belief still exists, or existed lately, that the souls of dead children return as birds. Nearer to the present instance is the Mohammedan belief that the martyrs for Islam feast on the fruits of Paradise in the shape of beautiful green birds.