Note 4 — Chapter XI · Folklore Philosophy

Here it will be noticed, that though the fatal wounding of Ỻew, at any rate visibly, means his being changed into the form of an eagle, it is treated as his death. When the Mabinogion were edited in their present form in a later atmosphere, this sort of phraseology was not natural to the editor, and he shows it when he comes to relate how Gwydion punished Blodeuweđ, as follows:—Gwydion, having overtaken her in her flight, is made to say, ‘I shall not kill thee (Ny lađaf i di): I shall do what is worse for thee, and that is to let thee go in the form of a bird.’ He let her go in fact in the form of an owl. According to the analogy of the other part of the story this meant his having killed her: it was her death, and the words ‘I shall not kill thee’ are presumably not to be regarded as belonging to the original story. To come back to the eagle, later Welsh literature, re-echoing probably an ancient notion, speaks of a nephew of Arthur, called Eliwlod, appearing to Arthur as an eagle seated likewise among the branches of an oak. He claims acquaintance and kinship with Arthur, but he has to explain to him that he has died: they have a dialogue4 in the course of which the eagle gives Arthur some serious Christian advice. But we have in this sort of idea doubtless the kind of origin to which one might expect to trace the prophesying eagle, such as Geoffrey mentions more than once: see his Historia, ii. 9 and xii. 185. Add to these instances of transformation the belief prevalent in Cornwall almost to our own day, that Arthur himself, instead of dying, was merely changed by magic into a raven, a form in which he still goes about; so that a Cornishman will not wittingly fire at a raven6. This sort of transformation is not to be severed from instances supplied by Irish literature, such as the story of Tuan mac Cairill, related in the Book of the Dun Cow, fo. 15a–16b. Tuan relates to St. Finnen of Magbile, in the sixth century, the early history of Ireland from the time of Partholan down, which he was enabled to do because he had lived through it all, passing from one form to another without losing his memory. First of all he was a man, and when old age had come upon him he was transformed into a stag of the forest. For a while he was youthful and vigorous; but again old age overtook him, and he next became a wild boar. When old age and decrepitude overcame him next he was renewed in the form of a powerful bird, called in the original seig. The next renewal was in the form of a salmon: here the manuscript fails us. The form of a salmon was also the one taken by the woman Liban when she was overwhelmed by the flood, which became the body of water known as Lough Neagh: her handmaid at the same time became an otter (fo. 40b). There was an ancient belief that the soul leaves the body like a bird flying out of the mouth of the man or woman dying, and this maybe said to approach the favourite Celtic notion illustrated by the transformations here instanced, to which may be added the case of the Children of Lir, pp. 93, 549, changed by the stroke of their wicked stepmother’s wand into swans, on Lough Erne. The story has, in the course of ages, modified itself into a belief that the swans haunting that beautiful water at all seasons of the year, are the souls of holy women who fell victims to the repeated visitations of the pagan Norsemen, when Ireland was at their cruel mercy7. The Christian form which the Irish peasant has given the legend does not touch its relevancy here. Perhaps one might venture to generalize, that in these islands great men and women were believed to continue their existence in the form of eagles, hawks or ravens, swans or owls. But what became of the souls of the obscurer majority of the people? For an answer to this perhaps we can only fall back on the Psyche butterfly, which may here be illustrated by the fact that Cornish tradition applies the term ‘pisky’ both to the fairies and to moths, believed in Cornwall by many to be departed souls8. So in Ireland: a certain reverend gentleman named Joseph Ferguson, writing in 1810 a statistical account of the parish of Ballymoyer, in the county of Armagh, states that one day a girl chasing a butterfly was chid by her companions, who said to her: ‘That may be the soul of your grandmother9.’ This idea, to survive, has modified itself into a belief less objectionably pagan, that a butterfly hovering near a corpse is a sign of its everlasting happiness.