Note 23 — Chapter XI · Folklore Philosophy

But as to Gaul generally, it is not to be assumed that the Gaulish druids and all the other Gauls held the same opinion on these questions: we have some evidence that they did not. Thus the Gauls in the neighbourhood of Massilia23, who would accept a creditor’s promise to pay up in the next world, can hardly have contemplated the possibility of any such creditor being then a bird or a moth. Should it be objected that the transformations, instanced above as Brythonic and Goidelic, were assumed only in the case of magicians and other professional or privileged persons, and that we are not told what was held to happen in the case of the rank and file of humanity, it is enough to answer that neither do we know what the druids of Gaul held to be the fate of the common people of their communities. No lever can be applied in that direction to disturb the lines of the parallel.