PART II (continued 3)

They entered into Hell, and saw a wild and billowy sea of fire, and the souls aflame therein, wailing, their heads above the surface. Some had fiery nails through their tongues, others through the ears, or the eyes; others, again, were being driven by demons with fiery forks. Laisrén, asking what these different torments might mean, was told that those with nails through their tongues had been less frequent in worship and praise than in blasphemy, falsehood, prying, and boasting. Here the fragment breaks off.

In his preface to the foregoing work, Professor Meyer appears to anticipate further discoveries in this field of research; however, of all the Irish Visions yet brought to light, the Fis Adamnáin excels the rest in interest and importance even more completely than the Voyage of St. Brendan excels all other members of its own class, and may be regarded as the type of its genre, in its most highly developed form.

Before proceeding to examine the contents of that Fis, we may glance at two other works by Irish ecclesiastical writers which show that a great part of the imagery and incidents contained alike in the sacred Imram and in the Fis belonged to a common stock of ideas current in the Irish eschatology of that period.

One of these is the Scél Lái Brátha (‘Tidings of Doomsday’), a homily ascribed to ‘Matthew, son of Alphæus,’ which is preserved in the Lebor na h-Udri, and was therefore written in the eleventh century at latest.[150] In it occurs the familiar distinction between the Mali sed non valde and the Mali valde, both of whom are condemned in their several degrees; the Boni sed non valde, who are finally saved by virtue of their almsgiving, and the Boni valde, who go direct to Heaven. This classification, though not expressly made in the Fis Adamnáin, lies at the root of the scheme of rewards and punishments there set forth. Indeed, Professor Zimmer points out the frequency of this division in works written by Irish authors or under Irish influences.[151] The Limbus patrum, the Limbus infantium, etc., represent similar attempts of the mediæval theologians to provide for cases which do not seem to them to be adequately dealt with by the broader distinctions. Dante, in effect, adopts an analogous fourfold arrangement; the infernal regions inside and without the City of Dis being allotted to sinners of greater or less degree of guilt, while the system of Purgatory is adapted to the respective cases of the Boni valde and the Boni sed non valde respectively.

In its descriptions of both regions of the Otherworld, the homily presents several points of resemblance to the Fis Adamnáin. ‘In no wise pleasant is the path of the sinful; they find not food nor drink, but perpetual hunger, great thirst, and bitter cold. Then they are conducted to the Devil’s house amid the sound of despair and heavy, long-drawn moaning. Piteous are the crying and wailing, the weeping and sighing, the mourning and smiting of hands of the sinners, as they are dragged towards Hell’s torments. But theirs is the weariness of remorse without avail; for their prayer is not heard there, seeing that they had not hearkened aforetime while they were in this life, body and soul dwelling together.’ Here, too, we have the simile of the closing of the locks, which are here threefold: ‘to wit, the closing of Hell upon them through ages everlasting; the closing of their eyes to the world upon which they had set their love; and the closing of the Kingdom of Heaven against them.’ The description of the torments of Hell is copious and varied. Cold, gloomy tracts, abounding in dark, fœtid lakes, alternate with regions of glowing though murky flames,[152] where the sinners stand on red-hot flagstones. Herein swarm monsters of various kinds: adders, toads, cats which rend the damned, demons who torment them and hew them with swords, and, above all, the Piast, the old serpent—‘a strange serpent,’ indeed, for he is depicted with one hundred necks, and one hundred heads on each, and five hundred teeth in every mouth; one hundred arms he has, one hundred hands on every arm, and one hundred claws on every hand.[153]

There is little attempt made to discriminate between the penalties accorded to different kinds of guilt.

Heaven is described in the same rhapsodical style as in the Fis Adamnáin, the Félire Oengusa, etc.

Another moral treatise is the Dá Brón Flatha Nime, ‘The Two Sorrows of the Kingdom of Heaven,’ i.e. the two sorrows referred to ch. 33 of the Fis Adamnáin. Here, too, Elias is represented as standing in Paradise, the Gospels in his hand, and he preaching to the birds that perch on the Tree of Life, eating its berries.[154]

5. The Fis Adamnáin

The general plan of the Fis Adamnáin is distinguished from that of the other similar writings that have come down to us by an architectonic character to which they can make no claim. The structure proper to the Imram was, in great measure, that of a framework into which a greater or less number of incidents could be fitted, according to the author’s taste, without impairing the general effect; the same, in a somewhat less degree, may be said of the Echtra, which are more nearly akin to the romance of adventure than to the epic. The early Christian writers, again, solely intent upon edification, and being for the most part men of little culture—for this species of composition, after all, was but a by-way of ecclesiastical literature—were usually content to repeat a few topics belonging to the common stock of ideas prevalent in their day, and paid but little heed to literary effect, or even to the clear conception, or orderly presentment, of their subject.[155]

Thus, in the Fis Adamnáin, we have the first serious attempt made between the Vision of Enoch and the Commedia of Dante, either to think the subject thoroughly out, or to treat it in a literary spirit: an attempt on the part of the author to construct in his own mind some distinct idea of the Otherworld, and to present his conception to his readers in a coherent form. In some respects, indeed, the construction of it is superior to that of its early predecessor, for, with due allowance made for the topographical minuteness displayed by the author of the Book of Enoch in his reproduction, in the description of Hell, of the details of his model, the Fis manifests a more complete grasp of the subject as a whole, while it gains by the omission of the voluminous discussion of things celestial and sublunary, in which the older writer indulges, and which can only encumber a work conceived with less breadth and executed with less power than Dante, and he alone, has brought to the task.

All the same, it cannot be denied that these architectonic qualities are still at a rudimentary stage, and the very fact that so moderate an exercise of constructive power should suffice to set this work, as a literary achievement, so far above all other precursors of Dante, does but enhance our appreciation of the height at which the stately edifice of his creation towers above all previous efforts.

The structural imperfections of the Fis Adamnáin are enhanced by the appearance of composite design which the work bears in its present form, being apparently made up from two distinct versions, or else having been ‘perfected’ by some redactor by the addition of other matter. The latter explanation seems to us most probable. The first twenty chapters contain a complete and consistent account of the soul’s progress from death to judgment, followed by his relegation to the place which he has merited. It is this part of the work which displays that care for construction already noticed; a great part of the details, whether of native or foreign origin, which had come to be accepted as conventional features of the Fis or sacred Imram, is here rejected, and the borrowings from the old romantic literature, though still abundant, are made duly subservient to the general design. This part, moreover, together with the peroration in chapter 32, bears testimony, by way of direct reference and otherwise, to the author’s possession of a greater erudition, and a wider culture, than were evinced by most of those who had treated of the same subject. Thus, apparently, we are entitled to conjecture that chapters 1-20, chapter 31 (probably), and chapter 32, may represent the work which originally purported, not, indeed, to have been written by Adamnán, but to contain the account of a vision seen and already related by him. If this hypothesis be correct, then the evidences of superior culture and erudition, apparent in this part of the work, and entirely consistent with what we know of Adamnán, increase the probability that it is founded upon some more or less accurate tradition of a vision actually related by him. For, to repeat what has been said on an earlier page, there is nothing but what is natural and probable in the tradition that Adamnán beheld, or composed for spiritual edification, a vision of the kind then so much in vogue, and took the occasion of a great concourse of the chief men of Ireland in order to promulgate it; while it is equally probable that a man of his culture and acquirements should have expended upon his task an originality and executive skill previously unknown, and altogether improbable that a work of one of the foremost and most famous men of his day, after being thus publicly made known, should have been left unrecorded save by the passing mention of a chronicler.

To return to the structure of the Fis: at the end of the first twenty chapters, all that was necessary, in order to complete the design, was to bring Adamnán back into Paradise, and to dismiss him with the admonition to communicate what he had seen and heard, as in chapter 31, after which the peroration in chapter 32 naturally follows, and forms a fitting conclusion to the whole. However, it would seem that the redactor, following the example frequently set by mediæval compilers, who knew not how often the half is better than the whole, and were apt to look on perfection as consisting rather in the abundance of matter than in the due disposition of it, has attempted to supplement the design of the original author by the introduction of additional details which had long ere then become matters of common form in descriptions of the Otherworld. Even so, however, it must be admitted that he has managed his transitions with more than common skill. Although the wording of chapter 20 suggests that it was the intention of the original author to represent the fate of the lost in concise but impressive terms—a plan quite in keeping with the general tone of restraint which pervades the work—it might yet have been quite consistent with his design to insert the usual description of the various torments with which the different kinds of sinners are afflicted, and such a description would follow on quite naturally in the place where it actually occurs in the existing text. But the author of this part, whether the original author or a later editor, does not rest content with such a description; he introduces what amounts to a structural alteration of the work, and that in a style wholly inconsistent with the design of the earlier part. For in that part the road has been fully traced by which the departed spirits have already reached their final habitations; now, however, their pilgrimage is resumed anew, and the familiar bridge incident appears in chapter 21, where it discharges its usual double function of an approach to the Divine Presence, and of a sieve, or winnowing fan, as it were, for separating the wheat from the chaff. Wholly consistent as this is with mediæval eschatology, it is entirely inconsistent with the general plan of the present work, whereby that separation is effected by quite other means. Minor inconsistencies occur in the purgatorial nature of several of the punishments described in this second part, for we might expect that all requirements of the kind had been fulfilled during the soul’s progress through the seven so-called Heavens. These small inconsistencies, of themselves, would count for little, and might be regarded as faults of construction on the author’s part, or as the result of the imperfect development of the purgatorial theory, which leads to similar inconsistencies in other writings of this class, where a clear distinction is not often made between a normal process of purgation in the intermediate state, and the postponement, in special cases, of the final decision; occurring as they do, they acquire a certain significance as tending to accentuate the divergence of plan in the two parts of the work.

A similar addition, attributable to the same motives, would appear to exist in the last three chapters of the work. As already suggested, chapter 32 would bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion; however, the mediæval compiler was commonly a simple-minded person; for him, as for ‘honest Diggory,’ the ‘old grouse in the gunroom’ possessed an infinite variety which age could not wither, nor custom stale, and, like a child or peasant, he objected to a familiar tale being omitted in its usual place, or being shorn of its proper incidents. The picture of Enoch and Elijah beside the Tree of Life in Paradise, surrounded by the bird-flocks of the righteous to whom Elijah preached the Gospel, had become one of the most familiar and picturesque features of the Irish Paradise; therefore a place must be found for it. The most obvious place would be that part of Heaven where, as it is, the birds are described as singing the hours in the Divine Presence, and there, we can hardly doubt, the original author would have inserted it, had he chosen to make use of the familiar image. However, it must, I think, be admitted that he exercised a wise discretion in omitting it, graceful and picturesque as it is; for he has constructed his scheme of Heaven after what must seem to us the most obvious and appropriate plan, though one which, strangely enough, found little favour with his compeers: he has made the enthroned Deity the centre of all, so that to have introduced a further group about a subordinate centre would have been to break into the design. We may therefore be grateful to the hypothetical redactor for appending the episode merely by way of a coda, without obtruding it into what would have been its proper place, but in which there was no room for it. In so doing, he may have desired to give the work a devout and edifying termination, and to close it, as it were, with a sacred voluntary.

We may now proceed to recapitulate some of the principal features of the Fis, even at the risk of a certain amount of repetition, in order to show at a glance the relation in which it stands to other writings of the same class, both native and foreign.

The work opens with an exordium in praise of the Creator, regarded chiefly in His capacity of Righteous Judge, and Dispenser of rewards and punishments, the aspect of Him most pertinent to the subject in hand. Already, in this formal opening, we seem to recognise the existence of a deliberate plan, whereby the present work is distinguished from others of its class, and this impression is strengthened as the author goes on to cite, by way of precedent or authority, similar revelations that had been vouchsafed to holy men of earlier date than Adamnán. These authorities have already been considered in Section 3 of the present part; apparently, however, the account of the vision which the Apostles beheld upon the death of the Virgin Mary, to which the author had access, must have been more ample than in the group of apocryphal writings to which we have referred. We may note that the revelation in question was made by the Angel of the West, the conventional region of the departed. The citation of St. Paul probably refers to the apocryphal revelation which bears the Apostle’s name, rather than to his own words in his Epistles, for these neither mention a visit to Hell, nor describe the state of the dead in either place; though, indeed, neither did such a revelation form part of St. Peter’s vision, as described in the Acts, though our author’s words appear to imply that such was the case. The mention of St. Peter’s vision affords a curious instance of the manner in which the imagery belonging to the national literature was apt to give its own colour to an Irish writer’s treatment of foreign matter. The musical properties with which the author, apparently on his own responsibility, has endowed the cords which let down the four-cornered vessel from Heaven, recall the musical stones of the Tír na n-Óg, of which further mention must be made later on.

It is noteworthy that the author, in his list of authorities, makes no mention of earlier Irish visions, or, indeed, of any source which was attributed to post-Apostolic times.

A similar vision, we are told, was vouchsafed to Adamnán on the Feast of St. John the Baptist, when his soul was parted from his body, and conducted by his guardian angel to view Heaven and Hell, with their respective inhabitants. Even such a pilgrimage was set before Dante by his guide,[156] and though Adamnán’s chronicler does not here make mention of a separate region devoted to color che son contenti, Nel fuoco, perchè speran di venire, Quando che sia, alle beate genti, we have seen that the case of these spirits was dealt with by the Irish as by the Italian writer, though the extent to which the purgatorial theory was developed between their respective epochs caused them to treat the subject with very different degrees of precision.

The selection of Adamnán’s guardian angel as psychopompos, rather than Michael, or some other of the Heavenly Host,[157] may possibly be ascribed to the preference which our author occasionally evinces of an ecclesiastical to a legendary treatment. On the other hand, we may note the analogy between the soul’s guidance through the Otherworld by his guardian angel, and the like function ascribed by the Avesta to the beautiful maiden ‘who was his own conscience,’ and was probably an allegorising development of the Fravashi, or spiritual alter ego, which was held to belong to every man.

We now begin to perceive the extent, hitherto unexampled, to which conscious design and literary form enter into our author’s method. The celestial country, indeed, is described in general terms as ‘a bright land of fair weather,’ like Magh Mell, and all other pagan Elysiums; but, as the theme develops, we perceive a wide divergence alike from the material delights of the pagan Otherworld, and the conventional amenities described in ecclesiastical legends. As befits the Heaven of a creed which makes the summum bonum to consist in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision, the Deity is represented as the centre of the whole, and all persons and accessories are grouped with direct reference to Him. In the Voyage of the Sons of Ua Corra, the Lord is introduced, seated on the Throne, and bird-flocks of angels making music to Him, and the idea as there presented might stand for a development of the Dagda myth, where the god sits beside his magic apple-trees and vat of ale, and the birds of the Tír Tairngire sing to him.[158] In the present case, however, it seems evident that the description contained in the Apocalypse was the author’s source of inspiration.[159]

Here again the author’s ecclesiastical proclivities appear in his description of the abode of the blest in a manner recalling the interior of a church, with chancel rails, and choir stalls wherein the righteous stand, like monks, in cassocks and hoods of white,[160] while the place was illumined by seven thousand angels, who stood round about instead of candles. The separation from the Throne, by means of a portico, of the saints to whom their final seats had not yet been awarded, appears to have been suggested by the use in the early churches of the narthex as the station for neophytes.[161]

The floor of Heaven, like ‘fair crystal, with the sun’s countenance upon it,’ seems to have been suggested by the ‘sea of glass, mingled with fire,’ in Rev. xv. 2, which, in turn, had been anticipated, in some sort, by the Pûitika sea in the Avesta, beside which the Tree of Life grew. The grouping of the saints about the Throne would likewise appear to be an amplification of the description in the Revelation.[162] The Apostles and the Blessed Virgin, we are told, occupy a special place, next to the Lord Himself; the Apostles on His left hand, and next to them the patriarchs and prophets, and on His right the Virgin, and next to her holy maidens, ‘and no great space between,’ a graceful and kindly touch. About them are babes and striplings, and ‘bird-choirs of the heavenly folk’; further on, others of the righteous stand ‘in ranks and lofty coronals about the Throne, circling it in brightness and bliss, their faces all towards God.’ Here we have, in essentials, the Celestial Rose of Dante’s Paradise (canto 31); the bird-choir, and, a little later, the guardian angels that keep flitting to and fro among the several companies of the righteous, remind us of the spirits which flitted in and out of the petals of the Rose like bees.

Several other passages are impressed with the author’s ecclesiastical turn of thought. The Throne stands in the south-east, probably because the direction of Jerusalem; reference is made to the nine degrees of Heaven, i.e. the Angels, Archangels, and Principalities; Powers, Virtues, and Dominations; Thrones, Cherubim, and Seraphim; the geographical distribution of the saints in accordance with the four quarters of the world—a distribution distinct from the fourfold division of mankind according to their merits, to which allusion has been made—is probably of the same character.

The sevenfold wall surrounding Heaven appears to contain a reference to the seven Heavens; the different colours of these walls may, as suggested, be a reminiscence of the walls of Ecbatana, as described by Herodotus, though it is quite possible that the idea may have occurred to the author spontaneously.

In our author’s representation of the Court of Heaven we already find, completely developed, that idea of the subject which was perpetuated long afterwards by the masters of Italian art. His picture of the enthroned Deity, with the Virgin beside Him, the Saints standing round about Him, and the celestial choirs surrounding the whole, might well be taken for the description of some painting by Fra Angelico; nor are the gem-like radiancy of the angelical painter’s works, nor the august blitheness which pervades them, entirely absent. Indeed, writings of this class are not without value as a preface to the history of sacred art, as indicating the origin of the stereotyped fashion in which the masters treated certain religious subjects—which fashion was not created by the arbitrary choice of the primitives, and perpetuated through any want of inventive power on the part of their followers, but represented their attempt to portray these subjects in accordance with the traditional form with which legend had already invested them.

One very striking image, and, so far as I know, the offspring of our author’s imagination, is the symbol whereby he has endeavoured to represent the Divine Omnipresence—‘a majestic countenance, seven times as radiant as the sun,’ gazing from out a fiery mass, and facing the spectator, from whatever side he might regard Him. The naïveté of this attempt to represent the Inconceivable reminds us of the triple orbs of iridescent fire in canto 33 of the Paradiso, whereby Dante symbolised the Trinity. For pictorial effect, however, the preference must, I think, be awarded to the Irish writer, whose image, at once quaint and grandiose, might be the subject of some design by Blake.

At the same time, the author does not neglect the stores of imagery contained in the national traditions, though he does not conform blindly to his precedents; for he differs from the great majority of his predecessors and successors alike in selecting his materials from whatever source appears preferable to him, instead of heaping together a greater or less quantity of matter taken at haphazard from the common stock. The circle of fire which surrounds the midmost Heaven is a familiar object in both the celestial and the infernal regions, and is largely represented in Irish legends dealing with the Otherworld, or with occurrences of a supernatural order. Besides the striking instance in the Voyage of Maelduin, and other cases to which reference has already been made, legends of the Finn cycle mention wizard warriors who surrounded their camp every night with a rampart of fire.[163]

The crystal veil which partly hides the Throne in chapter 5 may be a modification of the veil which often enshrouds a mystical island in the Imrama; or, again, it may have been suggested by the veil hanging before a shrine in a Christian church, or by the veil of the Temple, which curtained off the Holy of Holies.

The Throne is supported by four pedestals, as was the island Paradise of Manannán Mac Lír in the Imram Braín, in imitation of which an island supported upon a pedestal, or pedestals, is introduced into most of the Christian Imrama. The pedestals beneath the throne are of precious stone, and from them sweet music proceeds, as from the precious stones which separate the several companies of the celestial choir in chapter 13. Vocal or musical stones are common in Irish legend; instances occur in the description of Magh Mell, just quoted, and elsewhere in similar circumstances, and we may compare the Lia Fáil, which would shriek when pressed by the foot of a lawful king. Parallels occur in the legends of other Celtic nations: e.g. in the Breton story of the Groach (Irish Gruagach), it is said that every step leading to the palace of that fairy lady sang like a bird when trodden on.

The very words in which the Fis attempts to express the beauty of the celestial music are those of the old romances: ‘Though one should hear no other minstrelsy besides, yet should he have his fill of melody and delight.’

The fiery arch above the Throne reminds us somewhat of the watery arch over the enchanted islands of the Imrama, in spite of all differences. Probably both were suggested by the rainbow, but it may be that the author of the present passage had in his mind the description in Rev. x. 1 of the ‘mighty angel … and a rainbow upon his head.’ In a note to the translation of this passage, we suggested that the comparison of the arch to ‘a wrought helm, or royal diadem,’ may contain a reference to the picturesque and chivalrous custom of the Irish Árdrí to wear his helmet on state occasions, reserving his crown for the day of battle.

The triple circle surrounding the Throne may be intended to symbolise the Trinity.[164] It is noteworthy that while the generality of mediæval legends describing the Otherworld give little prominence to the Triune nature of the Deity, the present Vision contains several references to the Trinity, as do the Vision of Fursa, and several of the later Visions composed by Irish writers or under Irish influences.

Our author does not fail to include among the delights of Heaven that bird-music which is so dear to Irish writers of all ages. The birds of Heaven are here presented in a twofold manner. In the first place, the ‘bird-choirs of the heavenly folk,’ who mingle with the multitudes who surround the chosen band standing about the Throne, correspond to the bird-souls whom the legends commonly place upon the Tree of Life, in attendance on Enoch and Elijah. There are also the three birds perched upon the Throne, where they sing the hours, after the usual fashion of their congeners, beginning with the birds of Magh Mell, in the Voyage of Bran, who, by the way, can only be made to discharge their pious function at the cost of an anachronism. The birds now in question would seem to occupy a middle place between the bird-choirs, of which we have just been speaking, and the great sacred bird which appears in the mythology of every race of mankind.[165] Similar birds are present in the earliest and latest stages of Irish myth, from the Dagda’s palace in the Brug na Boinne to the adaptation of the Phœnix legend which figures in the Voyage of Maelduin. Probably our author’s choice of the number three conveys another reference to the Trinity; nevertheless, three was the number alike of the birds of Oengus in the Brug na Boinne, and of the eagles seen by Maelduin.

Certain features of our author’s description of Paradise represent the final stage in the before-mentioned process of refining upon that conception of the happy Otherworld as a Land of Cockayne, which is the most conspicuous feature in the primitive Elysium of every race. In the fragrance of the heavenly land, upon which the blessed sate themselves while hearkening to the music, and in the sweet savour of the candles which illumine the city—the candles themselves being angels in that guise—the old materialistic idea appears to be refined and spiritualised almost beyond recognition; nevertheless every degree in the descent—or ascent—from the pigs and apple-trees and ale-vat of the Dagda can be distinctly traced.[166]

The present condition of the blessed, as manifested to the Seer, is intended, it is said, to last until the Day of Judgment only, when, and not before, their state will attain to its utmost perfection (ch. 6). Of like duration is the ‘restless and unstable habitation,’ ‘on hill-tops and in marshy places,’ which is allotted, in ch. 14, to those who find no place in the City, ‘after the words of Doom.’ By these, apparently, the damned are not intended, or else the present passage would be in contradiction with the following chapters, which detail their progress to, and the manner of, their final doom, while the abyss to which they are consigned answers neither in kind nor in situation to the description of a wild and desolate region adjoining the celestial city; neither can we suppose that the reprobate, in their final abode, would continue to receive the ministrations of their guardian spirits, as do the denizens of the region in question.[167] It would rather seem that they are the mixed characters upon whom, at the individual judgment immediately following death, no final sentence has been passed. The reservation of a temporary abode for suchlike occurs in the Avestan books, in certain Hebrew speculations—as shown by the reference in the Book of Enoch to the mountain Sheol in the west, and by the writings of several Rabbis—and in early Christian tradition. Several instances occur in the Irish legends already reported: e.g. in the islands where hermits, in company with the flocks of bird-souls, await the coming of Judgment, and the similar island inhabited by the men of Ross, who had been banished for justifiable homicide. The passage affords some confirmation of the view that the second part of the work is an interpolation, for in that part the sinners who are capable of redemption are dealt with in a different manner.

The veil of fire and the veil of ice, which separate this desolate region from the City, resemble the flame which surrounds the crystal mansion in the Book of Enoch, and is there said to be as hot as fire and as cold as ice.[168] The clashing together of these veils in the doorway which separates the two regions bears the appearance of a remnant of some Symplegades myth, but I am not aware that any myth of the kind exists in a form which could account for the image in question. The anguish with which the guilty are filled by the din of their collision is in keeping with that extreme susceptibility to musical sounds which is everywhere apparent. The effect of pleasure to the good and pain to the wicked proceeding from the same cause recurs in many subsequent passages.

In chs. 15-19 is traced the course along which the soul proceeds on its way from death to Judgment. The several stages of this journey are made to correspond with the seven Heavens through which the soul would naturally have to pass, each of those stages being attended with some kind of punishment or suffering, which causes intense pain to the wicked, while the good pass through it unharmed.

The theory of the Purgatorial fires, founded on 2 Peter iii. 7-13,[169] was held by the early fathers, though, at first, without defining the place or manner in which the purgation was effected. St. Augustine was the first to establish Purgatory in the intermediate state, and the doctrine was further developed by St. Gregory. The early fathers held that the good and bad alike must pass through this stage, and herein our author agrees with them; his theory, moreover, whencesoever derived, agrees closely with that held by certain of the Jewish Rabbis, who held that all, good and bad alike, must pass through the seven lodges of Hell—at least as appropriate a term as that of the seven Heavens, which our author applies to them, though the latter is better suited to cosmological requirements—with the concomitants of fire, scourging, hail-showers, the extremes of heat and cold, etc., through all of which the righteous passed unharmed;[170] all of which is reproduced in the present work. It is remarkable how little advance upon the early Chaldæan myth of the Otherworld is displayed by this part of the subject, so far as regards the machinery or material framework, so to speak, although, of course, the ideas of sin and redemption which lie at the root of the Jewish and Christian doctrines alike, constitute a fundamental difference between the two stages of thought. The resemblance between the Irish and Chaldæan narratives extends even to the porter who sat at each of the seven doors of the Chaldæan Hades, where the passenger had to leave some part of his earthly raiment; in the Fis his counterpart exists in the person of the angel who sits at the gate of each of the seven Heavens,[171] and chastises the souls as they enter.

The second of these Heavens is the only one which appears to be endowed with distinctly purgatorial functions: here the angel Abersetus ‘purges the souls of the righteous, and washes them in the [fiery river], according to the amount of guilt that cleaves to them.’ Such, in substance, had been the teaching of the Church for some ages prior to Adamnán’s day, and such, too, the teaching of some of the Rabbinical Schools—that of Shammai, for instance, which held that those in whom good and evil were mingled were cleansed by purgatorial pains; in like manner, the author of the Book of Enoch describes a fire wherein they who are capable of redemption are cleansed of their carnal lusts.[172]

The flowery spring in which the purified souls of the righteous are bathed for their solace, is a prototype, in some measure, of the flowery stream of Lethe, in which, according to Dante, the spirits whose purgation was accomplished were immersed in like manner.

Most of the trials endured in the first five Heavens have their counterparts in the general literature of the Otherworld, down to and including the Commedia.

The fiery river or moat before the gateways resembles the river of fire which encircles Heaven in the Book of Enoch, and the similar river about the infernal city in Æneid vi. 549-50.

The fiery wall, of which many parallels have already been cited, again appears in this place, where it may be compared, more aptly, with the City of Dis, its iron walls and towers glowing red-hot, in c. viii. of the Inferno. The fiery arch also recurs, the passage through which, and through the fiery wall, is analogous to the similar trial for the purgation of fleshly lusts in c. xxvii. of the Purgatorio. The scourging of the spirits by the angelic warders is like the punishment inflicted—though there by demons—in Inf. xviii.

The description of the whirlpool in the fiery river (ch. 18) is thoroughly Dantesque in style, though none of Dante’s infernal rivers or whirlpools exactly corresponds to it in details; equally Dantesque is the realistic touch of the angel lifting out the souls on the end of his rod, ‘hard as it were of stone.’

Hitherto all the souls, good and bad alike, have been conducted by their guardian spirits. At the door of the sixth Heaven Michael assumes his accustomed function of psychopompos for the remainder of the way. This Heaven is free from pain of any kind; apparently the author’s intention is to convey the impression of a solemn pause, before the soul is ushered into the awful presence of the Creator. The manner of his reception there recalls the corresponding scene in the Avestan account. This reception, and the Divine Judgment, are described in the briefest possible terms, but not the less impressively for that.[173] The fate of the reprobate is depicted in a manner at once terse and complete, presenting a remarkable contrast to the rambling enumeration of horrors in which most of the vision writers indulge. One circumstance, indeed, is marked by the grotesque horror characteristic of mediæval and Oriental imagery; namely, the twelve fiery dragons which swallow the guilty soul in succession, until the lowest finally lands him in the Devil’s maw, the destination reserved by Dante for the worst of sinners.[174]

Upon the whole, however, our author seems to dwell, by preference, upon the spiritual aspects of his subject. In his eyes, the essence of the punishment consists in the forfeiture of the Beatific Vision by those chi hanno perduto il ben del intelletto, a loss enhanced by the previous glimpse of it which has been vouchsafed to them. This, indeed, is a common feature of ecclesiastical pictures of the Inferno, where the idea, sufficiently obvious in itself, is sanctified by the parable of Dives and Lazarus, though there it is introduced with a special and different purpose. Commonly, however, it is used merely to intensify the sufferings of the lost by a Tantalus vision of the contrast between their own pains and the pleasures of the blest. Our author would seem to introduce it as essential for their full comprehension of the good, otherwise inconceivable, which they have forfeited by their own wilful default. Evidently he understood that in this life and the next—Dante notwithstanding—there is a maggior dolore than the remembrance, in time of sorrow, of past happiness, and that is the comprehension of the things that once might easily have been, but never have been, and never can be.

Finally, the lot of the sinner—‘the perfection of all evil, in the Devil’s own presence, throughout all ages,’—forms the exact correlative of the Beatific Vision enjoyed by the elect.

This climax leaves nothing to be desired for completeness, and it seems impossible to believe that the next ten chapters were the work of the same hand. Nevertheless, the author of this second part, whether he be the original author or a compiler, has treated his materials, trite as these are, with more than common skill.

The approach to the land of eternal pain, to which the Seer is now conveyed, leads across a desolate, fire-scathed region, on the farther side of which lies a glen, filled with ‘flame, that extends beyond the margin on either hand.’ Even this slight descriptive touch is an instance of the imaginative, or visualising, faculty which is often apparent throughout the work. This glen is spanned by the bridge which serves to separate the bad from the good, in a manner quite consistent with precedent, but entirely inconsistent with the earlier part of the present work.

The description of that incident, as here given, differs from other variants in several points of detail, and especially in the greater literary skill with which it is related; but as much has been said upon this subject as our present purpose demands. We have seen that the idea of such a bridge existed previously in Irish tradition, but the guise in which it appears in the present place leads us to suppose that the author’s immediate source of inspiration was one of the ecclesiastical legends, though we find the usual difficulty of assigning any given item to some one specific source. It is possible that the author found his immediate prototype in the writings of St. Gregory, with which he was likely to be acquainted; equally possible that the idea was derived from the traditions of the Eastern Church, with which it is probable, both on à priori grounds and from several internal indications, that he had come in contact; or, again, from some floating popular tradition, originally emanating from either of the above sources. However this may be, the present is probably the best-told version of the incident that we possess in any language; nevertheless, it fits in as badly with what follows as with what goes before. The good—both the more and the less good—pass over in safety, and the bad, of course, fall off, but there is nothing to show how either sort reach their ultimate habitations. The justified, in fact, are left to their own devices, and we hear no more of them; the reprobate, indeed, as they fall from the bridge, are received in the jaws of eight fiery dragons, which await them in the fiery gulf, but there is nothing to show by what means they are subjected to the specific torments mentioned further on, nor yet how the redeemable sinners are brought to their state of temporary punishment.

The classification of the three companies who attempt to cross the bridge is not without interest. The virtues of the righteous who pass with ease are the specially ecclesiastical virtues of martyrdom and asceticism. Immediate access to Heaven had been regarded as the peculiar reward of martyrdom so early, at least, as Tertullian, whose authority was Revelation vii. 14, 15; although in the fourfold classification in the Book of Enoch the like precedence is awarded to the martyrs.[175] The association of the mortification of the flesh with the pains of martyrdom is easily explicable.

Sinners that have been induced to see the errors of their ways and to amend, find the bridge narrow and difficult at first, but easy afterwards, while those fall off who have persevered in evil. We thus have only three of the usual four categories which frequently occur in Irish eschatology, as in the Book of Enoch: the boni valde, the boni sed non valde, and the mali valde. However, the mali sed non valde are represented, approximately, by those spirits of mingled qualities, and those sinners that are redeemed by their good works, who are dealt with specially in the sequel.

The torments meted out to evildoers are of the usual description, though represented with that increasing fulness and terror which had been perceptible for some time previously in the Irish visions, or Imrama, the result, apparently, of increased familiarity with the Continental writers of this kind, who, so early as the Apocalypses of St. Peter and St. Paul, had devoted much ingenuity to this horrible branch of their subject. We may also perceive an attempt at a more accurate classification of crimes and punishments; in this respect, too, those Apocalypses display more method than the visions of subsequent writers. The classification adopted by our author, which would seem to be his own, contains indications both of his nationality, and of his acquaintance with foreign literature. Four categories of evildoers are enumerated, in which, although they exhibit nothing of Dante’s scientific precision, a certain system is apparent, in spite of the several classes overlapping to a certain extent. In chapter 25 fratricides and sacrilegious persons are dealt with, including fraudulent Erenachs—the guardians of the Church’s temporalities—who had abused the considerable powers which the tribal constitution of the Irish Church had given them. The class described in chapter 27 comprises, for the most part, those guilty of various kinds of dishonesty or violence, though some of them, such as false judges, sorcerers, and teachers of heresy, would seem to belong rather to the two following classes, the one of which comprises renegade ecclesiastics and heresiarchs (chapter 28), while the other, and last deals with an apparently heterogeneous collection of crimes, all of which, however, will be found to involve, somehow, a breach of faith on the part of the offender.

The punishments described contain many striking points of similarity to Dante, both in their kind, and in the vivid manner in which they are portrayed. Of such are the icy cowls in chapter 26, which recall the leaden copes worn by the hypocrites in Inf. xxiii. 61 sqq. The sinners stand in black mire, like the beletta negra where stand the gloomy-minded in Inf. vii. 124.[176] The scourging by demons occurs alike in the Fis Adamnáin(chapter 26), and in the Inferno (xviii. 35). A cold wind from the north blows upon the foreheads of the damned, as in the frozen regions of Dante’s Tolommea.[177] The fiery rain, and the unavailing efforts of the sufferers to ward it off, anticipate Dante’s vivid picture.[178] With the throngs of demons in chapter 28, who assail the heresiarchs with flights of arrows, we may compare the Centaurs in Inf. xii. 56.

The pictures of the sinners fettered to fiery columns by means of fiery chains in the form of vipers (chapter 25), and of those clad in fiery mantles, are entirely Dantesque in spirit. In the punishment of those who are alternately borne up to Heaven, and then dashed down again to the depth of Hell, our author appears to typify the tumultuous distress and horrible restlessness which accompany hopeless suffering.

Two classes of sinners remain, who are dealt with in a manner wholly alien from Dante’s scheme, though in accord with the earlier teaching of the Church. Reference has been made already to those in whom good and evil bear divided sway, and who, as in the Avesta, are reserved in a place apart until the Day of Doom, when ‘judgment shall be passed between them, and their good shall quench their evil on that day, and then shall they be set in the Heaven of Life, in God’s own presence, through ages everlasting.’ This merciful solution of their case affords a strong contrast to the loathsome doom to which Dante consigns these Laodiceans.[179] One passage Dante himself might have been willing to own, had it not been so discordant with his doctrine: the picture of those charitable, but sensual, persons who are set upon islands—an echo of the Imrama—in the midst of a fiery sea, but protected from its waves by a silver bulwark, built of their own almsgiving, until Judgment, when they shall be delivered.

These two conceptions, though not peculiar to the Irish Church, having been often promulgated, in various forms, by Jewish and Christian doctors alike, are characteristic of that leaning towards mercy, which, in one form or other, often appears in Irish ecclesiastical legends.[180]

Our author declares that the state of the blest and of the reprobate alike, as revealed to him, is provisional only, and that after the Last Judgment the happiness of the righteous will be infinitely augmented, and the sufferings of the evil intensified in proportion,[181] when they shall be consigned to the fiery wall, which until then is inhabited by the demons only.[182]

Chapter 30 gives a vivid representation of the mental sufferings of the lost in their mournful habitation, their own sufferings being augmented by the company of others in like case, and by a restless longing for the coming of Doom to end their suspense. Herein the author recognises a truth, the opposite of that truth contained in Hamlet’s dictum, though not less true; for often it is less tolerable to ‘bear the ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of,’ even though the change may surely be for the worse.[183]

Then follows a short description of the dolorous country, which is depicted as a waste and desolate region of the kind traversed by Cuchulainn on his journey to the realm of Scathach, and by Árt on his way to the Tír na n-Óg. The general character of this description is rather Miltonic than Dantesque.[184] Many instances appear to indicate that, to the northern spirit, the extreme of terror is suggested rather by the hauntings of wide and desolate spaces, than by the more realistic—we might almost say materialistic—imagination apparent in the intensive presentation of specific and concrete sufferings, which Dante was led to adopt, alike by his racial and personal temperament, and by his theory of the Otherworld.

Precedents for the Devil’s abode in the depths of the infernal seas are furnished alike by the Scriptural Leviathan, and by the Piast, which haunts almost every Irish loch of any depth, as also by the lake of fire and brimstone in Rev. xx. 10, into which Satan is to be cast at the end of the world.

The four rivers of Hell, which likewise occur in the Voyage of the Ui Corra and in several Continental visions, have been supposed by some authorities to be intended as a counterpart to the four rivers of Paradise in Genesis ii. 10 sqq.; this, however, seems doubtful, having regard to the absence of any mention of the suggested prototype, neither does it appear that the Scriptural Paradise was present to the author’s mind. It seems more probable that the number has reference to the fourfold division of the upper world; indeed, in some later mediæval visions, these rivers are placed in accordance with the cardinal points. They may possibly be due to a reminiscence of the classical Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon, as in Milton (P. L. ii. 575 sqq.), and Dante (Inf. xiv. 115 sqq.).

The tormenting of the spirits by the eager hosts of demons that infest the infernal lakes may be compared to the sportive malice of the fiends in Inf. xxii.-xxiii.

In chapter 31 Adamnán is re-conducted, by another skilfully managed transition, to the Land of Saints. He desired to tarry there, but like several of his predecessors, from Plato’s Er downwards, he heard a voice which bade him return to earth and relate what had been revealed to him, for the instruction of his countrymen: he was then restored to the body.

Chapter 32 would provide the work with a symmetrical conclusion. As in the exordium the author represents Adamnán as the last in a series of holy men to whom analogous revelations had been vouchsafed, so in this peroration he declares the identity of the doctrine preached by Adamnán, respecting the world to come, with the teaching of other saints and fathers of the Church. In designing his work with this structural completeness, the author stands alone, so far as I am aware, until Dante comes on the scene.

The episode of Enoch and Elijah standing under the Tree of Life, surrounded by the bird-flocks, though well told, adds nothing to the form in which it appears in other Irish legends of the period. We have already given reasons for supposing that it is an excrescence upon the original design.

The reflections there made upon the sorrow experienced by the righteous on hearing of the sorrows of Doomsday,[185] remind us of a similar passage in Dante:

The rhapsodical description of Heaven, which concludes the work as it now stands, is likewise a matter of ‘common form.’ It may possibly be an amplification of several passages in the Revelation (e.g. xxi. 4, etc.), though we have seen that something of the kind existed, in a rudimentary form, in some of the Echtra, when describing the Sidhe of a Dé Danann chief. The curiously close parallel in the Avesta has been noted already.

This chapter, as before mentioned, does not form part of the version preserved in the Lebor Brec, and although that MS. is by far the more recent, it is quite possible that the scribe followed a version transcribed before the addition was made.[186]

6. Later Developments

The Fis Adamnáin represents the culminating point to which the Vision of the Otherworld was brought by writers of the Irish school: henceforth the achievements of that school are principally apparent in the influence which they exercised upon the course which the legend took upon the Continent, and thus, indirectly, upon the development of European literature. Enough has been said in an earlier part of this work to show that abundant means existed for familiarising Continental students with any branch of letters to which the Irish schools might be addicted, and accordingly we now find the Irish legend of the Otherworld disseminating itself through the medium as well of works written upon Irish soil, as of the writings of Irish scholars in Continental foundations, and similar works composed by foreign authors more or less under Irish influences.

The first of these productions is the last of the great Imrama, and by far the most famous, though not the best from a literary point of view.[187] Not only did the legend of St. Brendan, of Clonfert, surnamed the Voyager (483-574), become one of the most widely diffused and most popular tales of the Middle Ages, but it even influenced, in some slight degree, the course of the world’s history, for its account of a land beyond the Atlantic fired the imagination, and directed the course, of Spanish and Portuguese navigators many centuries after its own date.[188]

At one period of his labours, St. Brendan appears to have been seized with that taedium vitae which is apt, at times, to weigh with special force upon diligent workers for righteousness. In his case it asserted itself, characteristically, in that impulse which even now urges so many of his countrymen to follow his course across the Atlantic, but on a voyage whence there is no return, and to another world which seldom affords a vision of Paradise, at any rate. In this frame of mind he prayed for a land, ‘secret, hidden, secure, delightful, apart from men’; he then fell asleep, and, in a dream, was directed to repair to Sliabh Daidche (now Brandon Hill, in the Co. Kerry). This he did, and there met an angel, who bade him build three ships, and commit himself to the ocean. The building and manning of the ships, and the early stages of the voyage, wherein the old model of the Imrama is closely followed, are interesting, but cannot be given here. One day the voyagers landed upon the back of a sleeping whale, taking it for an island, until the monster, awaking, bore them off across the sea.[189] Thus they journeyed for five years, being sustained the while by food miraculously sent to them, as to the island hermits of the earlier Imrama. At length St. Brendan espied the Devil approaching them across the waves.[190] He hailed the demon, and questioned him, who replied that he had come to seek his punishment ‘in the deep closes of the black, dark sea.’ This roused the Saint’s curiosity, but the Devil told him that none might see those things and live; he was prevailed on, however, to guide the Saint to the gate of Hell. Here Brendan saw ‘a rough, hot prison, full of stench and filth and flame,’ and ‘the camps of poisonous demons’; here were wailing and ‘handsmiting of the sinful folk;[191] and a gloomy, mournful life in cores of pain, in prisons of fire, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup of eternal sorrow and death’ (tr. W. S.). The land was full of black swamps, surrounding fiery forts, and fiery mountains, over which demons were dragging the souls of the lost, without respite. Then follow long and gruesome descriptions of the sufferings endured in that place; these are of the usual type, including all the horrors of a wild and desolate region, with inclement weather, combining the extremes of heat and cold; foul, poisonous lakes; fierce winds; wild, rough brakes, and mountains haunted by monsters, etc., etc. Proceeding on their way, they visited various islands; round one of them, very lofty, they cruised for twelve days, without finding a spot where they might land, though they saw a noble church in it, and heard voices praising the Lord. After visiting several islands, the Saint returned to Ireland.[192]

However, the spirit of wandering was not yet laid, and St. Brendan set forth upon a second voyage. In this, as on the first voyage, the Otherworld type of the lands which he visited is evident. In one ‘little, insignificant island,’ the harbour was ‘filled with devils in the shape of dwarfs and pygmies, with their faces as black as coal.’ At length Brendan came to an island whereon was a pilgrim covered with white hair, who directed him to the Tír Tairngire. Here he found an old man, who bade him enter into possession of the land, for those were ‘the plains of Paradise, and the delightful fields of the land, radiant, famous, loveable, profitable,’ etc. ‘A land of odorous flowers, smooth, bland. A land of many melodies, musical, shouts for joy, unmournful’ (tr. W. S.). There were ‘health without sickness, delight without quarrelling, union without wrangling, princedom without dissolution, rest without idleness, freedom without labour, luminous unity of angels, delights of Paradise, service of angels, feasting without extinction,’ and so on, in the rhapsodical style of ch. 35 of the Fis Adamnáin. The old man was covered with white hair, like a dove or sea-mew,[193] and had ‘almost the speech of an angel.’ At the stroke of a bell tierce was celebrated, when ‘they sing thanks to God, with their minds fixed on Him,’ a repetition of the words of the Fis Adamnáin; indeed, a long passage at the conclusion of the voyage coincides almost word for word with the Fis, of which, according to Mr. Whitley Stokes, it is a copy, and not vice versa.[194]

The Latin narratives of St. Brendan’s voyages[195] differ widely from the Irish account; on the whole, the Otherworld element is much less prominent in them, though they contain several details of the kind. Of such are the island standing on four pedestals, and an island with a tall column on it, from which a veil or canopy like silver hung; a volcanic isle with demon smiths at work, hammering upon their anvils the souls of the wicked, who threw masses of glowing metal after the ships; hermits fed with salmon by a cat, etc. There is also a variant of the story told in the Voyage of Maelduin about the Torach gravedigger.

The Paradise of Birds appears with a new significance. The birds are those angels who, upon the rebellion of Lucifer, per sè foro, and fell without active guilt on their part, and were relegated to this island, there to dwell until the general Resurrection, suffering no pain, and celebrating the canonical hours; a happier lot than that which Dante bestows upon them in canto iii. of the Inferno.

The story of Brendan, it will be seen, though somewhat later than the Fis Adamnáin, is but an Imram of the ordinary type, though containing several original features, and richer in incident than most of its predecessors. However, its chief claim to consideration rests upon the work which it effected in securing for Irish legend a permanent place in European literature.

With the Voyage of Brendan the Imram type of romance culminates, and ceases to occupy its former important place in Irish literature.[196] Henceforth, the Otherworld tradition, whether in Irish or foreign hands, is continued by means of the Fis, the form properly its own, from the time of Plato downwards.

In this form it inspired a work which almost rivalled the Voyage of Brendan in the popularity it achieved, and the influence it exercised upon later writers. This was the Vision of Tundale, written at Ratisbon by an Irish monk, a Munster man, named Marcus, apparently about the year 1149, in which the vision is dated. It was written in Latin, and immediately became widely popular, being translated in the course of its own century, and several centuries following, into the languages of most European countries, from Sweden to Spain and Italy.[197]

This Tundale, so-called—whose proper name Professor Kuno Meyer conjectures to be Tnúthgal or Tnúdgal (op. cit., p. 91)—was a knight of Cashel, said by the author to have been ‘noble of blood, but bloody of deeds; fair as to body, but careless about his soul. Fierce and terrible towards the Church, for he would endure none of the poor folk of the Lord in his sight.’ Once, when on a visit to a friend in Cork, he fell into a fit while sitting at table; he was taken up for dead, but was not buried, as a slight warmth was perceptible in his left side. He remained in a trance from the fourth hour on Wednesday until the same time on Saturday, when he recovered slowly, partook of the Sacrament, and gave thanks to God, after which he gave all his goods to the poor, assumed the cross, and ‘turned his back on his former life.’ It was during this trance that he beheld the vision which he related to Marcus.

Immediately after the departure of Tundale’s soul from his body, his conscience expressed great dread by reason of the magnitude of his sins. Fain to re-enter his body, he could not, but flitted unsteadily, swiftly, to and fro, weeping and weary, in fear and lamentation. Great hordes of demons surrounded him, who welcomed him, terming his soul ‘daughter of death and enemy of God, spouse of darkness and foe of light,’ etc. They tore his face with their talons, and taunted him with his sins. At length he saw a light, like a star, approaching; this was his guardian angel who bade him ‘welcome from God.’

Tundale, between fear and joy, replied, ‘A sorry case, my lord; the pains of Hell have surrounded me, and I am in the snare of death.’

The angel answered, ‘I have ever been with thee, yet never until now hast thou called upon me thus.’ Then, pointing to the ugliest of the demons, he added, ‘That is the deed and the counsel [devised] independently of me.’ However, he promised that Tundale should receive mercy, though he must suffer somewhat first. He then bade him follow, and retain firmly in his memory whatever he should see.

Upon seeing Tundale escape them, the demons began to blaspheme God, and to smite one another, and finally departed, leaving a foul smell behind.

For long Tundale journeyed on in darkness, lighted only by the radiant garments of his guide. At length they came to a glen ‘darkened with the mist of death,’ and filled with sparks of fire. An iron covering, six cubits thick, was on it, hotter than the sparks themselves, and a stench issued forth that was a more grievous torment than Tundale had ever known. A huge multitude of wretched souls were sitting on that lid, burning, ‘till they were melted, like garlic in a pan, with the glow thereof.’ Others were strained through the lid, like wax through a linen cloth, and then tempered in the sparks below for a repetition of the infliction. These were parricides and slayers of their kin.

There was a vast and hideous mountain, one side of it all sulphur and stench, fire and darkness, the other side covered with snow, and a piercing wind blowing. Innumerable demons, armed with burning forks and sharp tridents, would hale the souls of them that had been false and treacherous from snow to fire and back again. Another glen was full of darkness and fœtor, and ‘such was its depth that none could discern the bottom of it, though he could hear the sound of streams, and [perceive] the stench of ordure, and the outcry and wailing of the souls that were in torment there,’ and a mist uprose from it. A plank stretched across between the mountains that bounded the glen, a thousand feet long and a single foot in breadth, and such as none would dare to tread unless driven thereto by force. Tundale saw many souls falling from the bridge, and a priest passing over it unscathed. Those who fell into the glen were the proud and arrogant; nevertheless the angel bade Tundale not to fear that trial, though he must bear other torments thereafter, and he bore him safe across. Again they went on through dark and tortuous ways, until, weary and wretched, Tundale espied an ‘uncouth, intolerable monster,’ greater than the mountains which they had crossed; his eyes were like hills of flame; his mouth, wide yawning, might contain a legion of armed men. Two giants stood therein, huge as the pillars of a church, reaching from the lower tooth to the upper. Flames issued from its mouth, into which crowds of souls were pressing, driven by the scourges of throngs of demons.[198] A sound of wailing could be heard proceeding from the monster’s belly, for many thousands of souls were in there already.

Tundale, in dismay, asked why they approached so near; the angel told him that his visit was not complete unless he passed through the monster, for none but a chosen few escaped. Acheron was the monster’s name; it devoured the covetous, and the giants standing in its jaws were they who had been false and without conscience. After bringing Tundale to the monster’s mouth, the angel left him alone there, when a horde of demons surrounded him, scourged him, and drove him into the monster’s belly. Here he found himself in company of many other souls, who were bitten by hounds, lions and vipers, scourged by demons, suffering the while from the extremes of heat and cold, foul stenches, etc. Here the soul accused himself of all the sins he had ever committed, in grief and lamentation, tearing his face with his nails.

At length Tundale found himself outside the monster, and languidly opening his eyes saw the angel, who bore him to a broad, stormy lake, wherein were monsters innumerable, seeking to devour the wretched souls.[199] A bridge spanned the lake, two thousand feet long by one palm in width, studded with iron nails.[200] The beasts sought to swallow and chew the souls that were on the bridge, each beast being as great as a chariot, and a fiery mist issuing from their jaws, till it seemed as though all the lake were ablaze. Tundale saw a man attempting to cross with a burden on his back like a sheaf of corn. He was told that all had to cross that bridge who had stolen anything, great or small, bearing a burden proportionate to the magnitude of the theft. Tundale had once stolen a cow; he had, indeed, made restitution, but only because he had been forced to do so, therefore he had to cross the bridge, carrying a wild cow on his back. On reaching the other side, he pointed out to the angel that his feet were all bleeding from the spikes; this was because he had been one of ‘those whose feet are swift to shed blood.’

They went on their way through rough and gloomy places, till they came to a house, great as a mountain, and round like an oven, whence flames arose to the height of a thousand feet, and souls were burning therein. On approaching, they saw executioners standing in the flames, armed with axes, sharp razors, scythes, sickles, augers, hooks, ‘and all instruments beside, which might serve for wounding, flaying, beheading, or cutting.’ Tundale begged hard to be let off, but the angel told him that he must endure it, and handed him over to the demons, who ‘applied to him the instruments of torment we have before mentioned until they made small fragments of him.’ ‘In that house were much moaning and sighing, shrieking and wailing, weeping and gnashing of teeth, sharp fire scorching the souls.’ At length Tundale confessed that he had but suffered his deserts, after which he found himself standing alone in a dark place free from pain.

Upon being rejoined by the angel, Tundale asked him—as well he might—what was the meaning of the saying, Misericordia Domini plena est terra. ‘That sentence,’ replied the angel, ‘has puzzled many before you. Now thus is my King: though He is beneficent, yet is He wont to do justice.’ And he proceeded to expound the necessity for constraining man to follow his duty. None were entirely free from sin, but even the righteous were brought to see those sufferings, in order that they might see what they had escaped, and give thanks; ‘so were sinners brought to see the joys of Heaven, that they might grieve the more for their loss.’[201]

Another hideous monster there was, with two feet and two wings, and many necks, beaks, and talons. An unquenchable fire issued from his mouth; he sat upon a lake of ice, and swallowed the wretched souls, melting them, and dipping them into the icy lake for a renewal of their pains.[202] The beast became pregnant with these souls, who kept biting and tearing him like a brood of mountain vipers, until the time for delivery came. This gruesome conception is elaborated with a number of fantastic details. Thus were punished monks, canons, nuns, etc., who had broken their vows, who had tongues sharp as of vipers, and refrained not themselves from evil speaking; also they who had defiled themselves with inordinate lust. This punishment too had to be endured by Tundale. After it their way led them by a dark and devious glen, descending from mountain-tops into deep abysses, their path lighted only by the radiance of the angel. Tundale asked whither their road led. The angel replied, ‘This is the road which leadeth unto death.’ Tundale expressed surprise, for he had heard that that way was broad, and that many went by it; but the angel explained that the text referred to this life only.

After a weary journey, they came to a valley wherein were several smithies, and a great weeping and wailing in them. The smiths seized Tundale with their tongs, and cast him into a furnace, glowing fiery red; many souls were in it already, and the bellows were plied beneath ‘as though they were iron on the hearth, until they were reduced to nought, until they were turned into water.’ They were again uplifted with the tongs, and forged into one single mass, their pain exceeding all other pain, and they calling for death, which they could not obtain. After which they were passed on to the other smithies in succession.

The angel explained that all the souls whom Tundale had yet seen were destined finally to receive mercy; it still remained for them to see those that were in the nethermost Hell. Suddenly Tundale was seized with a great trembling, as he became aware of an intolerable cold and stench, dense darkness, tribulation and anguish, while he saw the foundations of the earth sinking. Turning to question his guide he found himself alone. He heard the wailing and howling of wretched souls, and terrible thunderings, but could perceive no face, nor distinguish any voice. At length he discerned a vast four-cornered cavern, in the midst of which a huge pillar towered up; fire and vapour rose up against the pillar, and in the midst of the flame many thousands of demons and souls flew up like sparks, and fell back. Tundale strove to turn away, but could not, for his feet clave to the floor; whereat, filled with frenzy, he began to tear himself with his nails. Demons surrounded him, threatening and reviling, but the angel rescued him and brought him to the gate of Hell. Here, he told him, was no light small nor great, but he could see the inhabitants without their seeing him. Tundale looked, and saw the Prince of Darkness, black as a raven from head to foot, with more than a thousand hands on him, each two hundred cubits long, and every finger one hundred palms in length, with iron nails like warriors’ spears, and toes to match; he had a long thick tail, covered with iron spikes. He lay on an iron hurdle over fiery gledes, a bellows on each side of him, and crowds of demons blowing it. Every limb was covered with chains of iron and bronze. As he lay there roasting, tossing from side to side, filled with rage and fury, he grasped the souls in his rough, thick hands, bruising and crushing them, as a man would crush grapes to squeeze out the wine. With his fiery, stinking breath he scattered the souls about Hell, and as he drew in his breath again he swallowed them down with it, and those whom his hands could not reach he lashed with his tail. This, the angel explained, was Lucifer, whom God had created first of all creatures, and of the rest some were angels of darkness, and some of the race of Adam; ever since their damnation they sought to lead others to deny Christ, and the greater the power of each, the greater was his punishment.

Here Tundale saw numbers of his friends and kin, whom he had ever rejoiced to see in this world, but now beheld with pain.

On leaving Hell, they entered into a great light, and came to a wall whereon were multitudes of men and women. Rain and wind were beating on them, but abundant light fell on them, and no foulness was there. These had led a ‘variegated’ life, in which good and evil were equally commingled, therefore they were exposed to wind and rain, hunger and thirst, until the end, when they should enter into everlasting life.

They next came to a forest, and passing through an open door therein found themselves in a goodly plain, covered with flowers and fragrant herbs, and the Well of Life in the midst of it; here dwelt the good who were not yet permitted to join the heavenly host. Tundale recognised many whom he had known, including two Irish kings, Donnchad and Concobar, between whom a feud had subsisted, but they had repented and become reconciled. He also saw a house of stone, without door or window, yet all might enter in who would, and it seemed as though the sun were in every part of it. It had no foundations, but was all set about with precious stones. In it was a golden throne, set with jewels, and covered with fine silk, whereon a king sat, calm and mild, while great numbers approached him, in gladness and rejoicing, bearing jewels and great treasures. Tundale drew near to see, for in the king he recognised Cormac, whose subject he had been. Great numbers of priests and deacons were about him in rich vestments, as though for the mass. The house was hung with choice drapery, and tables were set out, covered with vessels of gold and silver and ivory, as though for a royal banquet, so that they who saw that house would think that even though there had been no glory nor wealth beside, this would suffice for delight. All present fell on their knees and repeated, Labores manuum tuarum manducabis; beatus es, et bene tibi erit. Tundale wondered to see that none of those who were serving Cormac were the king’s own people, but the angel said that he was served by the poor and pilgrims of the Lord whom he had relieved, so that God had delivered unto him the everlasting kingdom by their hands.[203]

Even as they watched, the house was suddenly darkened, and all within it were thrown to the ground, and, lifting up their hands, said, Domine, Deus omnipotens, sicut vis, et sicut scis, miserere servi tui! Then Cormac left the house, and Tundale, following, saw him enter into a fire up to the waist, and a hair-shirt on him from the waist upward. Thus he spent three hours of every day; the fire being the expiation of a breach of his marriage vow, and the hair-shirt, of the murder of a noble that was under the protection of Patrick, and of a false vow, all other sins being freely remitted.

Proceeding on his way, Tundale saw women, and men, and elders, in silken robes, and the countenance of each one was like the sun at midday. Their hair was like gold, they wore golden crowns covered with precious stones, and they sang Alleluia, giving praise, so that ‘if one heard them but once, he would have no memory of the grief and care he had known before.’ These were the saints ‘who had macerated their bodies for God’s sake, and washed their robes in the blood of the spotless Lamb, and turned their backs to the world, and crucified their will in the service of God while in the body.’

He also beheld many castles, and pavilions of purple and byssus, gold and silver, silk and other precious coverings, and in them organs and timpans and harps, and every kind of music, were playing. Therein were people of devotion, who had submitted their own will to God, and had taken upon them humility and lowliness, without pride or vainglory, and were submissive to their superiors, and found savour in spirituality, and had bridled their tongues, not only from evil-speaking, but even from good words.

A little further on they saw a wall, high and thick, all of silver, and no door in it. Choirs of saints were there, clad in white raiment, full of gladness and rejoicing, perpetually praising the Trinity. The radiance of their apparel was like the snow of a single night beneath the sun’s brightness. These had been faithful in wedlock, had maintained their people after the will of God, and had distributed their goods among the poor and the Church; to them will Christ say, Venite benedicti Patris mei, possidete regnum quod vobis partum est ab origine mundi. Another wall was of gold, and within it golden seats innumerable, all set with precious stones—pearls and sapphires, sardius and topaz, etc. Then they saw that, the like of which eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had the heart of man conceived: namely, the glory which God had prepared for them that loved Him. The nine orders of angels, and the saints mingled with them, hearkened to words exceeding sweet which none might record. In the presence of that vision, Tundale could not only see the glory that was before him, but also all the pain that he had left behind, for ‘to whomsoever God giveth power to behold Himself, to him is power to see all other creatures likewise.’ ‘From that time forth Tundale asked nothing of the Angel, for to himself was given from God knowledge of what he desired to know.’

He saw St. Patrick and several bishops, four of whom he had known: viz. Celestine, Malachi (the celebrated primate of Ireland, and friend of St. Bernard), Nemias (Gilla na Naemh Ua Muirchertach, bishop of Cloyne and Ross), and Christian. He also saw a great tree laden with blossom, and with fruit of every kind. Vast flocks of birds of many hues were on the tree-tops, singing every kind of music, and no scent of fragrant herb is known that was not about that tree. All round the tree multitudes of men and women sat in chairs of gold and silver and ivory, with golden crowns on their heads, and golden wands in their hands, singing, and praising the King. This tree was the prop and stay of the Church, and the people about it were they who had united to support and defend the Church, turning their backs upon worldly things, and leading a devout life.

The vision over, Tundale begged to be allowed to stay, but the Angel told him that he must return to the body. He further bade him remember what he had seen, that he might deliver it to the people of the world. He engaged Tundale to eschew evil in future, and promised to protect and counsel him.

For several reasons, it seemed advisable to relate Tundale’s vision with some fulness of detail. In the first place, it can hardly be that a work which so soon acquired, and long maintained, an immense popularity throughout all Western Christendom, failed to exercise great influence in the way of fixing, if not of determining, the views generally held concerning the Otherworld. Further, as the work of an Irish author, written in the centre of Europe, and almost immediately adopted throughout the West; embodying, moreover, while continuing and enlarging, the ideas currently held by members of the Christian Church respecting the future life, and, at the same time, containing many elements of distinctly Irish, and even pagan, origin, it reveals beyond dispute the existence, the manner, and, partly, the extent of the contribution which the legend made to the development of modern literature, after quitting the soil upon which it had matured.

The Vision of Tundale has many points in common with the Fis Adamnáin, e.g. the preference accorded to the martyrs and ascetics, the special provision made for the charitable sinners, the nine orders of Heaven, the episodes of the bridges and the Tree of Life, etc. Like Adamnán, Tundale expressed a desire to remain in Paradise, but was bidden return, and relate what he had seen. From a literary point of view, the work is decidedly inferior to the Fis; it is retrograde, too, in the absence of a definite scheme of the Otherworld; historically, however, it marks a forward step in the development of the purgatorial idea, of which, perhaps, it affords the most complete example which religious fiction contains, prior to its final perfection by Dante. It also prepares the way for the group of legends associated with St. Patrick’s Purgatory, for it introduces the idea of the Seer himself suffering the purgatorial pains, with a view to his own redemption; Tundale’s vision, however, contains no suggestion of a local purgatory in this world. In both these respects, he is followed by Dante, to some extent, though the comparatively slight annoyances endured by the latter during his ascent of the purgatorial mount—with the exception of the fiery wall, for which there was a special reason—were rather, so to speak, incidents of travel, necessitated by the nature of the country through which he had to pass, than sufferings inflicted on him for his purgation. In one respect, Marcus merits to be raised to a bad eminence among his kind: we have marked already, in the development of the Irish idea of the Otherworld, a growing tendency to accumulate horrors, and to elaborate and multiply painful details; but perhaps, in all the repulsive literature of the Christian Inferno,[204] there is no instance equal to the present of the length to which the mediæval imagination could go in its conception of the grotesque and horrible, the cruel and obscene. It displays nothing of the higher qualities which the author of the Fis Adamnáin possessed: his devout raptures, his sense of beauty, his strong moral feeling, and his pity for the reprobate. At the same time, it shows how far Dante was from deserving the reproach, so often made, of the wanton accumulation of horrors; how much of the kind, in which his predecessors revelled, he rejected, retaining only so much—and that, in all conscience, was no little—as was necessary to enable him to represent the grim theory of his day, in all the completeness and vividness with which it presented itself to his imagination.

It is difficult to avoid making some comparison of the present work with the Commedia, for of all the writings of its class it is, perhaps, that which we have most reason to assume must have been known to Dante, for not only does it seem improbable that so widely known a work on his own subject should have escaped his notice, but there are analogies between the two, deeper than mere similarities in detail. Tundale, for instance, frequently applied to his angelic guide for the interpretation of passages of Scripture which presented themselves to his recollection, even as Dante had frequent recourse to Virgil, and afterwards to Beatrice and Matilda, for the like purpose. So, too, the sentences of Scripture which Tundale heard repeated in the region of probation may be compared to the similar sentences which Dante heard floating along the air in Purgatory. Tundale, moreover, met and conversed in the world of shades not only with persons of his own acquaintance and kin, as Thespesios and others had done before him, but with a variety of historical personages of past and present times, including semi-mythical Irish heroes like Fergus Mac Róig and Conall Cernach, and sacred personages like St. Paul and St. Patrick. Like Dante, too, he introduced incidents of contemporary history in which he felt an interest, such as the strife between the princes Donnchad and Concobar, and passed his own judgment upon the actors. The reward bestowed upon King Cormac, in the shape of a little kingdom of his own, is a curious instance of the same kind; it was probably due to an excessively literal interpretation of the Scripture promises. It recalls the aristocratic type of the more primitive Elysium. The vision exhibits the usual agreement with Dante in the provision of a special treatment for the ‘variegated,’ or half-and-half sinners, and the usual contrast to him in the nature of that treatment. Marcus follows precedents which had become inconsistent with the design of his work, which expresses the more complete theory of Purgatory as a separate state. Dante, apparently, was guided in his mode of dealing with this class of persons by his own sense of moral and artistic fitness. Marcus, in giving the name of Acheron to the flaming mouth of the beast, betrays a slight tendency towards that importation of classical ideas into Christian eschatology which Dante afterwards developed to such an extent.

Coming to similarities existing between single incidents, there is, of course, a general resemblance between the penalties, etc., enumerated by both authors, as in the lakes of fire and ordure, the flames and ice, the piercing winds, the scourging by demons, etc. etc.; there is also a more special likeness in the nature of the conception, if not in the details, between the grotesque transformations undergone by the souls swallowed by Tundale’s monster, and the terrible metamorphoses brought about by the serpents in cantos xxiii. and xxiv. of the Inferno. Again, the demon on the ice, in Tundale’s Vision, devouring the souls, resembles Dante’s Lucifer chewing the arch-traitors in the icy centre of Hell. Tundale’s demon, indeed, is not Lucifer, who is described later on as being roasted on a gridiron. We may note in this place that the Irishman and the Italian have exchanged the ideas commonly accepted by their respective countrymen on the subject: Dante making the sufferings of the inmost core of Hell to consist in cold, Marcus in heat. There are various touches besides in which the one author reminds us of the other. Tundale’s rescue by the angel from the demons,[205] and the strife between these in the fury of their disappointment, present a curiously close parallel to the similar incidents in Inferno xxii. Tundale and his guide, after their rude journey, looking down into the gulf of fire and ordure, recall Dante and Virgil pausing in like manner upon the steep and rugged causeways of the Inferno, to gaze into the abysses of the lower circles. As Tundale was abandoned by his guide before entering into Hell, so was Dante left to himself by Virgil upon reaching the Terrestrial Paradise.[206] To Tundale, when in Heaven, it was shown that he could look back, and view the regions through which he had passed; so Dante, in Paradise, was bidden to look downward toward this world and its ways.[207] Other resemblances exist, but these are the most striking.

Of course it is not to be supposed that the continuation and development of the Vision legend at this period of the Middle Ages was confined to the Irish school. It was still, and had been since the earliest days of the Church, a favourite topic with monastic homilists and biographers of the saints.[208] However, it has not been my object to compile a history, or a summary, of this branch of literature, but to select those examples of it which have either carried the subject to a further stage of development, or, by reason of their popularity, or of their accessibility to later writers, may have served as links in the chain of transmission. Few, indeed, out of the whole mass possess any interest either from originality of invention, or variety of treatment, still less from any literary merit, and it is more than probable that the vast majority of them never passed beyond the limits of the community to which their author belonged, until they were brought to light by the researches of modern antiquaries.

Nevertheless, of the Continental visions which belong to this epoch, there is one which demands further notice, as well by reason of the exceptionally elaborate manner in which it treats the subject, as of the recognition accorded to it by later writers. This is the Vision of Paul, or the Descent of Paul into Hell, a Latin work known in the South of France before the middle of the eleventh century, and translated into Anglo-Norman by Adam de Ros, and soon afterwards into several modern languages. We have seen that the early Church produced a work known as the Apocalypse of St. Paul, but this, apparently, was not known to the later Middle Ages, at any rate at first hand, though the terms in which St. Paul’s Vision is mentioned at the opening of the Fis Adamnáin suggest that at least the tradition survived, and several passages in mediæval visions bear a strong resemblance to the earlier work. It is probably to the eleventh-century vision that Dante refers in Inferno ii. 28 sqq.;[209] evidently he does not refer to the Apostle’s own words exclusively, for St. Paul in his Epistles makes no mention of a visit to Hell, though it is also possible that Dante had no other authority for this than the floating tradition.

In this Vision St. Paul was conducted by Michael to Hell, on the threshold whereof stood a fiery tree, from the branches of which were suspended by the tongue, leg, neck, or other peccant member, those who had been guilty of rapacity, or had given false judgment por confundre la gente. Near this was a fiery furnace, whereof li feus est plus neirs que mors, and in it were plunged they who had loved not God. They then came to a great and turbid river in which devils, in form of lions, swam about like fishes. The river was spanned by a bridge, the width of a single hair,[210] which had to be crossed in order to reach God’s presence. The wicked fell off into the mouth of Beelzebub, which stood wide open, vomiting flame, ready to receive them. Upon issuing thence, all black and charred, they were plunged into the river, where they stood immersed to different depths—to the knees, navel, eyes, eyebrows, crown, etc.—in proportion to the degree of their guilt.[211] These were hypocrites, adulterers, envious persons who had exulted in the sight of others’ sorrow—por ceo sunt ore dolereux, etc. Those who had made war upon the Church were submerged entirely. Faithless virgins who had violated their vow of chastity, and had destroyed their children, were clad in black garments smeared with pitch and sulphur, and aflame, while they endured the embraces of serpents and dragons.[212] Corrupt judges, who had abused the widow and orphan, burnt like brushwood amid walls of ice. Priests who had known the law of God, but failed to keep it, wore heavy collars about their necks.

St. Paul, like Tundale, exclaimed, and asked why man should be born for such misery; but Michael replied that beneath those depths a still greater depth remained. This was a well, covered, and sealed with seven seals, whence proceeded such a stench that St. Paul started back. Here were imprisoned such as had denied the articles of the Christian faith.[213] These called upon St. Paul, St. Michael, and the ‘twelve peers,’ to pray for them, and that so loudly that their cry reached to Heaven; but God Himself replied that no pardon was possible for those that had rebelled against Him; howbeit, He was prevailed upon by the prayers of the Saints to grant them the usual Sunday respite, which was made to last from none on Saturday to prime on Monday.

The authorship of this Vision is unknown, so that there is no saying whether or not it was composed under the influence of the Irish Visions. The date and other circumstances would admit of this, and it has much in common with them; notably, the manner in which the familiar bridge episode is treated is very similar to that of the Fis Adamnáin; nevertheless, the greater part of it might quite as well have been derived from other sources, and it bears at least as strong a resemblance to the Apocalypses of St. Peter and St. Paul; like them, but to a greater extent, it aims at the recompense of specific crimes by the appropriate punishments. However, there is a considerable group of Visions, the authors of which, though foreigners, have confessedly drawn from Irish sources. This series dates back at least as far as the time of Bede, to whom, likewise, we are indebted for the earliest account of the visions of St. Fursa, and for several particulars of the life of Adamnán. For Bede has recorded a vision seen by Drihthelm, a Northumbrian monk, who related it to one Haemgils, then a hermit in Ireland, from whom Bede received it.[214] The soul of Drihthelm, on parting from the body, was taken in charge by an angel, who brought him to a great valley in the north-east, which was Purgatory. One side of the valley was covered with flames, the other with ice, with the usual accompaniments of hail and snowstorms, filth, evil spirits, etc. They afterwards came to a great pit and a fiery plain, where they saw globes of fire rising and sinking, and in them the souls of men were imprisoned.[215] Here Drihthelm was assailed by demons armed with fiery forks, but the angel rescued him. They finally reached a wall in the south-east,[216] wherein was no opening. They were conveyed to the top of it, whence they could see a wide, flowery plain, and the light on it was brighter than the sun at noon. People in shining raiment were walking there; these were the boni sed non valde, who were to dwell there until Judgment. Beyond this could be descried a yet brighter region, whence fragrant odours and the singing of the saintly choirs were borne to them. This narrative, commonplace as it is, proves the early date of several features of some of the principal visions, which were composed at a much later period.