INDEX (continued 2)

[220] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 144-5.

[221] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 266-7. From the way they are described in many of the old Irish manuscripts, we may possibly regard the Tuatha De Danann as reflecting to some extent the characteristics of an early human population in Ireland. In other words, on an already flourishing belief in spiritual beings, known as the Sidhe, was superimposed, through anthropomorphism, an Irish folk-memory about a conquered pre-Celtic race of men who claimed descent from a mother goddess called Dana.

[222] Page 10, col. 2, ll. 6-8; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 143.

[223] Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 581 n.; and Cóir Anmann, in Ir. Texte, III, ii. 355.

[224] Kuno Meyer’s trans. in Voy. of Bran, ii. 300.

[225] Cf. Standish O’Grady, Early Bardic Literature (London, 1879), pp. 65-6.

[226] L. U.; cf. A. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, i. 157-8.

[227] Before Caeilte appears, Patrick is chanting Mass and pronouncing benediction ‘on the rath in which Finn Mac Cumall (the slain leader of the Fianna) has been: the rath of Drumderg’. This chanting and benediction act magically as a means of calling up the ghosts of the other Fianna, for, as the text continues, thereupon ‘the clerics saw Caeilte and his band draw near them; and fear fell on them before the tall men with their huge wolf-dogs that accompanied them, for they were not people of one epoch or of one time with the clergy. Then Heaven’s distinguished one, that pillar of dignity and angel on earth, Calpurn’s son Patrick, apostle of the Gael, rose and took the aspergillum to sprinkle holy water on the great men; floating over whom until that day there had been [and were now] a thousand legions of demons. Into the hills and “skalps”, into the outer borders of the region and of the country, the demons forthwith departed in all directions; after which the enormous men sat down’ (Silva Gadelica, ii. 103). Here, undoubtedly, we observe a literary method of rationalizing the ghosts of the Fianna; and their sudden and mysterious coming and personal aspects can be compared with the sudden and mysterious coming and personal aspects of the Tuatha De Danann as recorded in certain Irish manuscripts.

[228] Kuno Meyer’s trans. in Rev. Celt., x. 214-27. This tale is probably as old as the ninth or tenth century, so far as its present form is concerned, though representing very ancient traditions (Nutt, Voy. of Bran, i. 209).

[229] Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xxii. 36-40. This text is one of the earliest with references to fairy beings, and may go back to the eighth or ninth century as a literary composition, though it too represents much older traditions.

[230] E. O’Curry, Lectures on Manuscript Materials (Dublin, 1861), p. 504.

[231] In the Book of Leinster, pp. 245-6; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 269.

[232] Cf. Mesca Ulad, Hennessy’s ed., in Todd Lectures, Ser. 1 (Dublin, 1889), p. 2.

[233] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 273-6.

[234] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 273-6.

[235] Cf. Silva Gadelica, ii. 222-3.

[236] Ib., ii. 343-7.

[237] Ib., ii. 94-6.

[238] Silva Gadelica, ii. 204-20.

[239] Silva Gadelica, ii. 290-1. In many old texts mortals are not forcibly taken; but go to the fairy world through love for a fairy woman; or else to accomplish there some mission.

No doubt the most curious elements in this text are those which represent the prince and his warrior companions, fresh come from Fairyland, as in some mysterious way so changed that they must neither dismount from their horses and thus come in contact with the earth, nor allow any mortal to touch them; for to his father the king who came forward in joy to embrace him after having mourned him as dead, Laeghaire cried, ‘Approach us not to touch us!’ Some unknown magical bodily transmutation seems to have come about from their sojourn among the Tuatha De Danann, who are eternally young and unfading—a transmutation apparently quite the same as that which the ‘gentry’ are said to bring about now when one of our race is taken to live with them. And in all fairy stories no mortal ever returns from Fairyland a day older than on entering it, no matter how many years may have elapsed. The idea reminds us of the dreams of mediaeval alchemists who thought there exists, if one could only discover it, some magic potion which will so transmute every atom of the human body that death can never affect it. Probably the Christian scribe in writing down these strange words had in mind what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when she beheld him after the Resurrection:—‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father.’ The parallel would be a striking and exact one in any case, for it is recorded that Jesus after he had arisen from the dead—had come out of Hades or the invisible realm of subjectivity which, too, is Fairyland—appeared to some and not to others—some being able to recognize him and others not; and concerning the nature of Jesus’s body at the Ascension not all theologians are agreed. Some believe it to have been a physical body so purified and transmuted as to be like, or the same as, a spiritual body, and thus capable of invisibility and of entrance into the Realm of Spirit. The Scotch minister and seer used this same parallel in describing the nature and power of fairies and spirits (p. 91); hence it would seem to follow, if we admit the influence in the Irish text to be Christian, that early, like modern Christians, have, in accordance with Christianity, described the nature of the Sidhe so as to correspond with what we know it to be in the Fairy-Faith itself, both anciently and at the present day.

[240] Death of Muirchertach, Stokes’s trans., in Rev. Celt., xxiii. 397.

[241] Cf. J. Loth, Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1889), i. 38-52.

[242] Silva Gadelica, ii. 187-92.

[243] Silva Gadelica, ii. 142-4.

[244] Campbell, The Fians, pp. 79-80. In Silva Gadelica, ii. 522, it is stated that the mother of Ossian bore him whilst in the shape of a doe. The mother of Ossian in animal shape may be an example of an ancient Celtic totemistic survival.

[245] Silva Gadelica, ii. 311-24.

[246] Silva Gadelica, ii. 311-24.

[247] For an enumeration of the Tuatha De Danann chieftains and their respective territories see Silva Gadelica, ii. 225.

[248] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 285.

[249] I am personally indebted for these names to Dr. Douglas Hyde.

[250] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 284-9; cf. Rev. Celt., iii. 347.

[251] Cf. E. S. Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales (London, 1891), cc. x-xi.

[252] Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xvi. 274-5.

[253] Silva Gadelica, ii. 222 ff.; ii. 290. In another version of the second tale, referred to above (on page 295), Laeghaire and his fifty companions enter the fairy world through a dún.

[254] Sometimes, as in Da Choca’s Hostel (Rev. Celt., xxi. 157, 315), the Badb appears as a weird woman uttering prophecies. In this case the Badb watches over Cormac as his doom comes. She is described as standing on one foot, and with one eye closed (apparently in a bird’s posture), as she chanted to Cormac this prophecy:—‘I wash the harness of a king who will perish.’

[255] Synonymous names are Badb-catha, Fea, Ana. Cf. Rev. Celt., i. 35-7.

[256] Cf. Hennessy, Ancient Irish Goddess of War, in Rev. Celt., i. 32-55.

[257] Stokes, Second Battle of Moytura, in Rev. Celt., xii. 109-11.

[258] Luzel, Contes populaires de Basse Bretagne, iii. 296-311.

[259] The Celtic examples recall non-Celtic ones: the raven was sacred among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans, being looked upon as the emblem of Odin; in ancient Egypt and Rome commonly, and to a less extent in ancient Greece, gods often declared their will through birds or even took the form of birds; in Christian scriptures the Spirit of God or the Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the semblance of a dove; and it is almost a world-wide custom to symbolize the human soul under the form of a bird or butterfly. Possibly such beliefs as these are relics of a totemistic creed which in times long previous to history was as definitely held by the ancestors of the nations of antiquity, including the ancient Celts, as any totemistic creed to be found now among native Australians or North American Red Men. At all events, in the story of a bird ancestry of Conaire we seem to have a perfectly clear example of a Celtic totemistic survival—even though Dr. Frazer may not admit it as such (cf. Rev. Celt., xxii. 20, 24; xii. 242-3).

[260] Hennessy, The Ancient Irish Goddess of War, in Rev. Celt., i. 32-57.

[261] Aoibheall, who came to tell Brian Borumha of his death at Clontarf, was the family banshee of the royal house of Munster. Cf. J. H. Todd, War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill (London, 1867), p. 201.

[262] Hyde, Literary History of Ireland, p. 440.

[263] Cf. Hennessy, in Rev. Celt., i. 39-40. In place of badb, Dr. Hyde (Lit. Hist. Irl., p. 440) uses the word vulture.

[264] Hennessy, in Rev. Celt., i. 52.

[265] Chief general reference: Sir John Rhŷs, Arthurian Legend (Oxford, 1891). Chief sources: Nennius, Historia Britonum (circa 800); Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae (circa 1136); Wace, Le Roman de Brut (circa 1155); Layamon’s Brut (circa 1200); Marie de France, Lais (twelfth-thirteenth century); The Four Ancient Books of Wales (twelfth-fifteenth century), edited by W. F. Skene; The Mabinogion (based on the Red Book of Hergest, a fourteenth-century manuscript), edited by Lady Charlotte Guest, Sir John Rhŷs and J. G. Evans, and Professor J. Loth; Malory, Le Morte D’Arthur (1470); The Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, collected out of ancient manuscripts (Denbigh, 1870); Iolo Manuscripts, a selection of ancient Welsh manuscripts (Llandovery, 1848).

[266] In a Welsh poem of the twelfth century (see W. F. Skene, Four Ancient Books, Edinburgh, 1868, ii. 37, 38) wherein the war feats of Prince Geraint are described, his men, who lived and fought a long time after the period assigned to Arthur, are called the men of Arthur; and, as Sir John Rhŷs thinks, this is good evidence that the genuine Arthur was a mythical figure, one might almost be permitted to say a god, who overshadows and directs his warrior votaries, but who, never descending into the battle, is in this respect comparable with the Irish war-goddess the Badb (cf. Rhŷs, Celtic Britain, London, 1904, p. 236).

[267] Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., chap. 1.

[268] Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., pp. 24, 48. Sir John Rhŷs sees good reasons for regarding Arthur as a culture hero, because of Arthur’s traditional relation with agriculture, which most culture heroes, like Osiris, have taught their people (ib., pp. 41-3).

[269] Cf. G. Maspero, Contes populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne³ (Paris, 1906), Intro., p. 57.

[270] Sommer’s Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, iii. 1.

[271] Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 9.

[272] I am indebted to Professor J. Loth for help with this etymology.

[273] Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 22.

[274] i. 10; ii. 21^b; iii. 70; cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 60.

[275] See Williams’ Seint Greal, pp. 278, 304, 341, 617, 634, 658, 671; Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 61.

[276] Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., pp. 51, 35; and see our study, pp. 374-6.

[277] Chevalier de la Charrette (ed. by Tarbé), p. 22; Romania, xii. 467, 515; cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 54.

[278] Romania, xii. 467-8, 473-4; cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 55.

[279] Cf. Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 93-4.

[280] Romania, xii. 508; cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 54.

[281] Book XIX, c. i.

[282] In the Lebar Brecc there is a tract describing eight Eucharistic Colours and their mystical or hidden meaning; and green is so described that we recognize in its Celtic-Christian symbolism the same essential significance as in the writings of both pagan and non-Celtic Christian mystics, thus:—‘This is what the Green denotes, when he (the priest) looks at it: that his heart and his mind be filled with great faintness and exceeding sorrow: for what is understood by it is his burial at the end of life under mould of earth; for green is the original colour of every earth, and therefore the colour of the robe of Offering is likened unto green’ (Stokes, Tripartite Life, Intro., p. 189). During the ceremonies of initiation into the Ancient Mysteries, it is supposed that the neophyte left the physical body in a trance state, and in full consciousness, which he retained afterwards, entered the subjective world and beheld all its wonders and inhabitants; and that coming out of that world he was clothed in a robe of sacred green to symbolize his own spiritual resurrection and re-birth into real life—for he had penetrated the Mystery of Death and was now an initiate. Even yet there seems to be an echo of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries in the Festival of Al-Khidr celebrated in the middle of the wheat harvest in Lower Egypt. Al-Khidr is a holy personage who, according to the belief of the people, was the Vizier of Dhu’l-Karnen, a contemporary of Abraham, and who, never having died, is still living and will continue to live until the Day of Judgement. And he is always represented ‘clad in green garments, whence probably the name’ he bears. Green is thus associated with a hero or god who is immortal and unchanging, like the Tuatha De Danann and fairy races (see Sir Norman Lockyer’s Stonehenge and Other Stone Monuments, London, 1909, p. 29). In modern Masonry, which preserves many of the ancient mystic rites, and to some extent those of initiation as anciently performed, green is the symbol of life, immutable nature, of truth, and victory. In the evergreen the Master Mason finds the emblem of hope and immortality. And the masonic authority who gives this information suggests that in all the Ancient Mysteries this symbolism was carried out—green symbolizing the birth of the world and the moral creation or resurrection of the initiate (General History, Cyclopedia, and Dictionary of Freemasonry, by Robert Macoy, 33^o, New York, 1869).

[283] Myv. Arch., i. 175. The text itself in this work is said to be copied from the Green Book—now unknown. Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg. p. 56 n.

[284] In this text, the Gwenhwyvar who is in the power of Melwas is referred to as Arthur’s second wife Gwenhwyvar, for according to the Welsh Triads (i. 59; ii. 16; iii. 109) there are three wives of Arthur all named Gwenhwyvar. As Sir John Rhŷs observes, no poet has ever availed himself of all three, for the evident reason that they would have spoilt his plot (Arth. Leg., p. 35).

[285] D. ab Gwilym’s Poetry (London, 1789), poem cxi, line 44. Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 66.

[286] Malory, Book I, c. xxv. One account of Arthur’s sword Caledvwlch or Caleburn describes it as having been made in the Isle of Avalon (Lady Ch. Guest’s Mabinogion, ii. 322 n.; also Myv. Arch., ii. 306).

[287] Malory, Book IX, c. xv; Sir John Rhŷs takes the Lady of the Lake who sends Arthur the sword and the one who aids him afterwards (though, apparently by error, two characters in Malory) as different aspects of the one lake-lady Morgen (Arth. Leg., p. 348).

[288] Merlin explained to Arthur that King Loth’s wife was Arthur’s own sister (Sommer’s Malory, i. 64-5); and King Loth is one of the rulers of the Otherworld.

[289] Book XXI, c. vi.

[290] This poem, according to Gaston Paris, was translated during the late twelfth century from a French original now lost (Romania, x. 471). Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 127.

[291] Malory, Book XII, cc. iii-x; Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., pp. 145, 164. Galahad, however, does not belong to the more ancient Arthurian romances at all, so far as scholars can determine; and, therefore, too much emphasis ought not to be placed on this episode in connexion with the character of Arthur.

[292] We should like to direct the reader’s attention to the interesting similarity shown between this old story of Kulhwch and Olwen and the fairy legend which we found living in South Wales, and now recorded by us on page 161, under the title of Einion and Olwen. As we have there suggested, the legend seems to be the remnant of a very ancient bardic tale preserved in the oral traditions of the people; and the prevalence of such bardic traditions in a part of Wales where some of the Mabinogion stories either took shape, or from where they drew folk-lore material, would make it probable that there may even be some close relationship between the Olwen of the story and the Olwen of our folk-tale. If it could be shown that there is, we should be able at once to regard both Olwens as ‘Fair-Folk’ or of the Tylwyth Teg, and the quest of Kulhwch as really a journey to the Otherworld to gain a fairy wife.

[293] We may even have in the story of Kulhwch and Olwen a symbolical or mystical account of ancient Brythonic rites of initiation, which have also directly to do with the spiritual world and its invisible inhabitants.

[294] Cf. J. Loth, Les Mabinogion (Paris, 1889), p. 252 n.

[295] Cf. J. Loth, Le Mabinogi de Kulhwch et Olwen (Saint-Brieuc, 1888), Intro., p. 7.

[296] Lady Ch. Guest’s Mabinogion (London, 1849), ii. 323 n.

[297] Cf. R. H. Fletcher, Arthurian Material in the Chronicles, in Harv. Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit., x. 20-1.

[298] Fletcher, ib., x. 29; 26.

[299] Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 7; and Rhŷs, The Welsh People³ (London, 1902), p. 105.

[300] Cf. Fletcher, op. cit., x. 43-115; from ed. by San-Marte (A. Schulz), Gottfried’s von Monmouth Hist. Reg. Brit. (Halle, 1854), Eng. trans. by A. Thompson, The British History, &c. (1718).

[301] Cf. Fletcher, op. cit., pp. 117-44.

[302] Sir Frederic Madden, Layamon’s Brut (London, 1847), ii. 384. Here the Germanic elves are by Layamon made the same in character and nature as Brythonic elves or fairies.

[303] Madden, Layamon’s Brut, ii. 144.

[304] J. Bédier’s ed., Société des anciens textes français (Paris, 1902).

[305] E. Muret’s ed., Société des anciens textes français (Paris, 1903).

[306] A. C. L. Brown, The Knight and the Lion; also, by same author, Iwain, in Harv. Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit., vii. 146, &c.

[307] Celtic Mag., xii. 555; Romania (1888); cf. Brown, ib.

[308] J. Loth, Les Romans arthuriens, in Rev. Celt., xiii. 497.

[309] Bibliotheca Normannica, iii, Die Lais der Marie de France, pp. 86-112.

[310] Cf. W. H. Schofield, The Lays of Graelent and Lanval, and the Story of Wayland, in Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass. of America, xv. 176.

[311] Cf. Schofield, The Lay of Guingamor, in Harv. Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit., v. 221-2.

[312] For editions, and fuller details of the fairy elements, see De La Warr B. Easter, A Study of the Magic Elements in the Romans d’Aventure and the Romans Bretons (Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, 1906). See also Lucy A. Paton, Studies in the Fairy Mythology of the Arthurian Romance, Radcliffe College Monograph XIII (New York, 1903).

[313] Perc., vi. 235; cf. Easter’s Dissertation, p. 42 n.

[314] Joufrois, 3179 ff.; ed. Hofmann und Muncker (Halle, 1880); cf. Easter’s Diss., pp. 40-2 n.

[315] Brun, 562 ff., 3237, 3251, 3396, 3599 ff.; ed. Paul Meyer (Paris, 1875); cf. ib., pp. 42 n., 44 n.

[316] E. Anwyl, The Four Branches of the Mabinogi, in Zeit. für Celt. Phil. (London, Paris, 1897), i. 278.

[317] Cf. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, ii. 19, 21.

[318] Black Book of Caermarthen, xvii, stanza 7, ll. 5-8. This book dates from 1154 to 1189 as a manuscript; cf. Skene, Four Anc. Books, i. 3, 372.

[319] Stanzas 19-20. This book took shape as a manuscript from the fourteenth to fifteenth century, according to Skene. Cf. Skene, Four Anc. Books, i. 3, 464.

[320] See A Fugitive Poem of Myrddin in his Grave. Red Book of Hergest, ii. Skene, ib., i. 478-81, stanza 27.

[321] Chief general references: H. D’Arbois de Jubainville, L’Épopée celtique en Irlande, Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais; Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt, The Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth. Chief sources: the Leabhar na h-Uidhre (A. D. 1100); the Book of Leinster (twelfth century); the Lais of Marie de France (twelfth to thirteenth century); the White Book of Rhyderch, Hengwrt Coll. (thirteenth to fourteenth century); the Yellow Book of Lecan (fifteenth century); the Book of Lismore (fifteenth century); the Book of Fermoy (fifteenth century); the Four Ancient Books of Wales (twelfth to fifteenth century).

[322] One of the commonest legends among all Celtic peoples is about some lost city like the Breton Is, or some lost land or island (cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., c. xv, and Celtic Folk-Lore, c. vii); and we can be quite sure that if, as some scientists now begin to think (cf. Batella, Pruebas geológicas de la existencia de la Atlántida, in Congreso internacional de Americanistas, iv., Madrid, 1882; also Meyers, Grosses Konversations-Lexikon, ii. 44, Leipzig und Wien, 1903) Atlantis once existed, its disappearance must have left from a prehistoric epoch a deep impress on folk-memory. But the Otherworld idea being in essence animistic is not to be regarded, save from a superficial point of view, as conceivably having had its origin in a lost Atlantis. The real evolutionary process, granting the disappearance of this island continent, would seem rather to have been one of localizing and anthropomorphosing very primitive Aryan and pre-Aryan beliefs about a heaven-world, such as have been current among almost all races of mankind in all stages of culture, throughout the two Americas and Polynesia as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Cf. Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 62, 48, &c.)

[323] White Book of Rhyderch, folio 291^a; cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., pp. 268-9.

[324] From Echtra Condla, in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre. Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 192-3.

[325] Cf. Eleanor Hull, The Silver Bough in Irish Legend, in Folk-Lore, xii.

[326] Cf. Eleanor Hull, op. cit., p. 431.

[327] Classical parallels to the Celtic Otherworld journeys exist in the descent of Dionysus to bring back Semele, of Orpheus to recover his beloved Eurydike, of Herakles at the command of his master Eurystheus to fetch up the three-headed Kerberos—as mentioned first in Homer’s Iliad (cf. Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 48); and chiefly in the voyage of Odysseus across the deep-flowing Ocean to the land of the departed (Homer, Odyss. xi).

[328] Servius, ad Aen., vi. 136 ff.

[329] Voy. of Bran, i, pp. 2 ff. The tale is based on seven manuscripts ranging in age from the Leabhar na h-Uidhre of about A. D. 1100 to six others belonging to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries (cf. ib., p. xvi).

[330] This tale exists in several manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; i. e. Book of Ballymote, and Yellow Book of Lecan, as edited and translated by Stokes, in Irische Texte, III. i. 183-229; cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 190 ff.; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 326-33.

[331] The fountain is a sacred fountain containing the sacred salmon; and the nine hazels are the sacred hazels of inspiration and poetry. These passages are among the most mystical in Irish literature. Cf. pp. 432-3.

[332] Cf. Stokes’s trans. in Irische Texte (Leipzig, 1891), III. i. 211-16.

[333] The Greeks saw in Hermes the symbol of the Logos. Like Manannan, he conducted the souls of men to the Otherworld of the gods, and then brought them back to the human world. Hermes ‘holds a rod in his hands, beautiful, golden, wherewith he spellbinds the eyes of men whomsoever he would, and wakes them again from sleep’—in initiations; while Manannan and the fairy beings lure mortals to the fairy world through sleep produced by the music of the Silver Branch.—Hippolytus on the Naasenes (from the Hebrew Nachash, meaning a ‘Serpent’), a Gnostic school; cf. G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, pp. 198, 201. Or again, ‘the Caduceus, or Rod of Mercury (Hermes), and the Thyrsus in the Greek Mysteries, which conducted the soul from life to death, and from death to life, figured forth the serpentine power in man, and the path whereby it would carry the “man” aloft to the height, if he would but cause the “Waters of the Jordan” to “flow upwards”.’—G. R. S. Mead. ib., p. 185.

[334] Cf. Hennessy’s ed. in Todd Lectures, ser. I. i. 9.

[335] Among the early ecclesiastical manuscripts of the so-called Prophecies. See E. O’Curry, Lectures, p. 383.

[336] Cf. Eleanor Hull, op. cit., pp. 439-40.

[337] Now in three versions based on the L. U. MS. Our version is collated from O’Curry’s translation in Atlantis, i. 362-92, ii. 98-124, as revised by Kuno Meyer, Voy. of Bran, i. 152 ff.; and from Jubainville’s translation in L’Ép. celt. en Irl., pp. 170-216.

[338] As Alfred Nutt pointed out, ‘There is no parallel to the position or to the sentiments of Fand in the post-classic literature of Western Europe until we come to Guinevere and Isolt, Ninian and Orgueilleuse’ (Voy. of Bran, i. 156 n.).

[339] See poem Tir na nog (Land of Youth), by Michael Comyn, composed or collected about the year 1749. Ed. by Bryan O’Looney, in Trans. Ossianic Soc., iv. 234-70.

[340] Laeghaire, who also came back from Fairyland on a fairy horse, and fifty warriors with him each likewise mounted, to say good-bye for ever to the king and people of Connaught, were warned as they set out for this world not to dismount if they wished to return to their fairy wives. The warning was strictly observed, and thus they were able to go back to the Sidhe-world (see p. 295).

[341] Cf. Bibliotheca Normannica, iii, Die Lais der Marie de France, pp. 86-112.

[342] Cf. Stokes’s trans., in Rev. Celt., ix. 453-95, x. 50-95. Most of the tale comes from the L. U. MS.; cf. L’Ép. celt. en Irl., pp. 449-500.

[343] Silva Gadelica, ii. 385-401. The MS. text, Echira Thaidg mheic Chéin, or ‘The Adventure of Cian’s son Teigue’, is found in the Book of Lismore.

[344] Summarized and quoted from translation by R. I. Best, in Ériu, iii. 150-73. The text is found in the Book of Fermoy (pp. 139-45), a fifteenth-century codex in the Royal Irish Academy.

[345] Folios 113-15, trans. O’Beirne Crow, Journ. Kilkenny Archae. Soc. (1870-1), pp. 371-448; cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 260-1.

[346] Cf. Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales, i. 264-6, 276, &c.

[347] Cf. Silva Gadelica, ii. 301 ff., from Additional MS. 34119, dating from 1765, in British Museum.

[348] Giolla an Fhiugha, or ‘The Lad of the Ferrule’, trans. by Douglas Hyde, in Irish Texts Society, London, 1899.

[349] Cf. Meyer and Nutt, Voy. of Bran, i. 147, 228, 230, 235; 161.

[350] The bulk of the text comes from the Book of Fermoy. Cf. Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xiv. 59, 49, 53, &c.

[351] J. Loth, L’Émigration bretonne en Armorique (Paris, 1883), pp. 139-40.

[352] Ed. and trans. by W. Stokes, Calcutta, 1866. This Vision has been erroneously ascribed to the celebrated Abbot of Iona, who died in 703; but Professor Zimmer has regarded it as a ninth-century composition; cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 219 ff.

[353] Cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 195 ff.

[354] See J. G. Campbell, The Fians, pp. 260-7.

[355] The Literary Movement in Ireland, in Ideals in Ireland, ed. by Lady Gregory (London, 1901), p. 95.

[356] Cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 331.

[357] General reference: Essay upon the Irish Vision of the happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, by Alfred Nutt in Kuno Meyer’s Voyage of Bran. Chief sources: Leabhar na h-Uidhre; Book of Leinster; Four Ancient Books of Wales; Mabinogion; Silva Gadelica; Barddas, a collection of Welsh manuscripts made about 1560; and the Annals of the Four Masters, compiled in the first half of the seventeenth century.

[358] Cf. Plato, Republic, x; Phaedo; Phaedrus, &c.; Iamblichus, Concerning the Mysteries of Egypt, Chaldaea, Assyria; Plutarch, Mysteries of Isis (De Iside et Osiride).

[359] He says:—‘I, for my part, suspect that the spirit was implanted in them (rational creatures, men) from without’ (De Principiis, Book I, c. vii. 4);... ‘the cause of each one’s actions is a pre-existing one; and then every one, according to his deserts, is made by God either a vessel unto honour or dishonour’ (ib., Book III, c. i. 20). ‘Whence we are of opinion that, seeing the soul, as we have frequently said, is immortal and eternal, it is possible that, in the many and endless periods of duration in the immeasurable and different worlds, it may descend from the highest good to the lowest evil, or be restored from the lowest evil to the highest good’ (ib., Book III, c. i, 21);... ‘every one has the reason in himself, why he has been placed in this or that rank in life’ (ib., Book III, c. v, 4).

[360] Cf. Bergier, Origène, in Dict. de Théologie, v. 69.

[361] Holy Bible, Revised Version, St. Matt. xi. 14-15; cf. St. Matt. xvii. 10-13, St. Mark ix. 13, St. Luke vii. 27, St. John i. 21.

[362] Tertullian’s conclusion is as follows:—‘These substances (“soul and body”) are, in fact, the natural property of each individual; whilst “the spirit and power” (cf. Mal. iv. 5) are bestowed as external gifts by the grace of God, and so may be transferred to another person according to the purpose and will of the Almighty, as was anciently the case with respect to the spirit of Moses’ (cf. Num. xii. 2).—De Anima c. xxxv; cf. trans, in Ante-Nicene Christian Library (Edinburgh, 1870), xv. 496-7.

[363] Origen says:—‘But that there should be certain doctrines not made known to the multitude, which are [revealed] after the exoteric ones have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others esoteric’ (Origen against Celsus, Book I, c. vii).

[364] How Tertullian almost literally accepted the re-birth doctrine is shown in his Apology, chapter xlviii, concerning the resurrection of the body. It is the corrupted form of the doctrine, viz. transmigration of human souls into animal bodies, which he therein, as well as in his De Anima and elsewhere, chiefly and logically combats, as Origen also combated it. He first shows why a human soul must return into a human body in accordance with natural analogy, every creature being after its own kind always; and then, because the purpose of the Resurrection is the judgement, that the soul must return into its own body. And he concludes:—‘It is surely more worthy of belief that a man will be restored from a man, any given person from any given person, but still a man; so that the same kind of soul may be reinstated in the same mode of existence, even if not into the same outward form’ (The Apology of Tertullian for the Christians; cf. trans. by T. H. Bindley, Oxford, 1890, pp. 137-9).

[365] British Museum MS. Add. 5114, vellum—a Coptic manuscript in the dialect of Upper Egypt. Its undetermined date is placed by Woide at latest about the end of the fourth century. It was evidently copied by one scribe from an older manuscript, the original probably having been the Apocalypse of Sophia, by Valentius, the learned Gnostic who lived in Egypt for thirty years during the second century. See the translation of the Schwartze’s parallel Latin version of Pistis Sophia and its introduction, both by G. R. S. Mead (London, 1896).

[366] The chief passages are as follows, Jesus being the speaker:—‘Moreover, in the region of the soul of the rulers, destined to receive it, I found the soul of the prophet Elias, in the aeons of the sphere, and I took him, and receiving his soul also, I brought it to the virgin of light, and she gave it to her receivers; they brought it to the sphere of the rulers, and cast it into the womb of Elizabeth. Wherefore the power of the little Iaô, who is in the midst, and the soul of Elias the prophet, are united with the body of John the Baptist. For this cause have ye been in doubt aforetime, when I said unto you, “John said, I am not the Christ”; and ye said unto me, “It is written in the Scripture, that when the Christ shall come, Elias will come before him, and prepare his way.” And I, when ye had said this unto me, replied unto you, “Elias verily is come, and hath prepared all things, according as it is written; and they have done unto him whatsoever they would.” And when I perceived that ye did not understand that I had spoken concerning the soul of Elias united with John the Baptist, I answered you openly and face to face with the words, “If ye will receive it, John the Baptist is Elias who, I said, was for to come”’ (Pistis Sophia, Book I, 12-13, Mead’s translation).

[367] ‘The Saviour answered and said unto his disciples:—“Preach ye unto the whole world, saying unto men, ‘Strive together that ye may receive the mysteries of light in this time of stress, and enter into the kingdom of light. Put not off from day to day, and from cycle to cycle, in the belief that ye will succeed in obtaining the mysteries when ye return to the world in another cycle’”’ (Pistis Sophia, Book II, 317, Mead’s translation).

[368] Cf. Bergier, Manichéisme, in Dict. de Théol., iv. 211-13.

[369] The Refutation of Irenaeus, until quite recently, has been the chief source of much of our knowledge concerning Gnosticism. It was written during the second century at Lyons, by Irenaeus, a bishop of Gaul, far from any direct contact with the still flourishing Gnosticism. But now with the discovery of genuine manuscripts of Gnostic works: (1) the Askew Codex, vellum, British Museum, London, containing the Pistis Sophia (see above, p. 361 n.) and extracts from the Books of the Saviour; (2) the Bruce Codex (two MSS.), papyrus, Bodleian Library, Oxford, containing the fragmentary Book of the Great Logos, an unknown treatise, and fragments; and (3) the Akhmīm Codex (discovered in 1896), papyrus, Egyptian Museum, Berlin, containing The Gospel of Mary (or Apocryphon of John), The Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and The Acts of Peter, we are able to check from original sources the Fathers in many of their writings and canons concerning Gnostic ‘heresies’; and find that Irenaeus, the last refuge of Christian haeresiologists, has so condensed and paraphrased his sources that we cannot depend upon him at all for a consistent exposition of Gnostic doctrines, which with more or less prejudice he is trying to refute. It is true that the age of these manuscripts has not been satisfactorily determined; in fact most of them have not yet been carefully studied. Very probably, however, as appears to be the case with the Pistis Sophia, they have been copied from manuscripts which were contemporary with or earlier than the time of Irenaeus, and hence may be regarded as good authority in determining Gnostic teachings. (Cf. all of above note with G. R. S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten, London, 1900, pp. 147, 151-3.)

Many unprejudiced scholars are now unwilling to admit the rulings of the Church Councils which determined what was orthodox and what heretical doctrines among the Gnostic-Christians, because many of their dogmatic decisions were based upon the unscholarly Refutation of Irenaeus and upon other equally unreliable evidence. The data which have accumulated in the hands of scholars about early Christian thought and Gnosticism are now much more complete and trustworthy than the similar data were upon which the Council of Constantinople in 553 based its decision with respect to the doctrine of re-birth; and the truth coming to be recognized seems to be that the Gnostics rather than the Church Fathers, who adopted from them what doctrines they liked, condemning those they did not like, should henceforth be regarded as the first Christian theologians, and mystics. If this view of the very difficult and complex matter be accepted, then modern Christianity itself ought to be allowed to resume what thus appears to have been its original position—so long obscured by the well-meaning, but, nevertheless, ill-advised ecclesiastical councils—as the synthesizer of pagan religions and philosophies. Some such view has been accepted by many eminent Christian theologians since Origen: i. e. the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More, openly advocated the re-birth doctrine in the seventeenth century; and in later times it has been preached from Christian pulpits by such men as Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks.

[370] See A. Bertrand, La Religion des Gaulois, les Druides et le Druidisme (Paris, 1897); H. Jennings, The Rosicrucians (London, 1887); the Work of Paracelsus; H. Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (Paris, 1567); H. P. Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, and the Secret Doctrine (London, 1888); and Hermetic Works, by Anna Kingsford and E. Maitland (London, 1885).

[371] Cf. Bergier, Purgatoire, in Dict. de Théol., v. 409. A Celt, a professed faithful and fervent adherent of the Church of Rome, whom I met in the Morbihan where he now lives, told me that he believes thoroughly in the doctrine of re-birth, and that it is according to his opinion the proper and logical interpretation of the doctrine of Purgatory; and he added that there are priests in his Church who have told him that their personal interpretation of the purgatorial doctrine is the same. Thus some Roman Catholics do not deny the re-birth doctrine. And such conversations as this with Catholic Celts in Ireland and Brittany lead me to believe that to a larger extent than has been suspected the old Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth may have been one of the chief foundations for the modern Roman Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory, whose origin is not clearly indicated in any theological works. For us this probability is important as well as interesting, and especially so when we remember the profound influence which the Celtic St. Patrick’s Purgatory certainly exerted on the Church during the Middle Ages when the doctrine of Purgatory was taking definite shape (see our chapter x).

[372] Barddas (Llandovery, 1862) is ‘a collection (by Iolo Morganwg, a Bard) of original documents, illustrative of the theology, wisdom, and usage of the Bardo-Druidic System of the Isle of Britain’. The original manuscripts are said to have been in the possession of Llywelyn Sion, a Bard of Glamorgan, about 1560. Barddas shows considerable Christian influence, yet in its essential teachings is sufficiently distinct. Though of late composition, Barddas seems to represent the traditional bardic doctrines as they had been handed down orally for an unknown period of time, it having been forbidden in earlier times to commit such doctrines to writing. We are well aware also of the adverse criticisms passed upon these documents; but since no one questions their Celtic origin—whether it be ancient or more modern—we are content to use them.

[373] Barddas, i, 189-91.

[374] Barddas, i, 177.

[375] Preface to Barddas, xlii.

[376] One of the greatest errors formerly made by European Sanskrit scholars and published broadcast throughout the West, so that now it is popularly accepted there as true, is that Nirvana, the goal of Indian philosophy and religion, means annihilation. It does mean annihilation (evolutionary transmutation of lower into higher), but only of all those forces or elements which constitute man as an animal. The error arose from interpreting exoterically instead of esoterically, and was a natural result of that system of western scholarship which sees and often cares only to examine external aspects. Native Indian scholars who have advised us in this difficult problem prefer to translate Nirvana as ‘Self-realization’, i. e. a state of supernormal consciousness (to be acquired through the evolution of the individual), as much superior to the normal human consciousness as the normal human consciousness is superior to the consciousness existing in the brute kingdom.

[377] De Bel. Gal., lib. vi. 14. 5; vi. 18. 1.

[378] Book V, 31. 4.

[379] De Situ Orbis, iii. c. 2: ‘One point alone of the Druids’ teaching has become generally known among the common people (in order that they should be braver in war), that souls are eternal and there is a second life among the shades.’

[380] i. 449-62.

[381] Lucan, i. 457-8; i. 458-62.

[382] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 345, 347 ff.

[383] Folk-Lore, xii. 64, &c.; also cf. Eleanor Hull, The Cuchullin Saga in Irish Literature (London, 1898), Intro., p. 23, &c.

[384] What is probably the oldest form of a tale concerning Conchobhar’s birth makes Conchobhar ‘the son of a god who incarnated himself in the same way as did Lug and Etain’ (cf. Voy. of Bran, ii. 73).

[385] See Leabhar na h-Uidhre, 101^b; and Book of Leinster, 123^b:—‘Cúchulainn mc dea dechtiri.’

[386] We have already mentioned the belief that gods having their abode in the sun could leave it to assume bodies here on earth and become culture heroes and great teachers (see p. 309).

[387] From Wooing of Emer in Leabhar na h-Uidhre; cf. Voy. of Bran, ii. 97.

[388] L’Épopée celt. en Irl., p. 11.

[389] Cf. Voy. of Bran, ii. p. 74 ff.

[390] In the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, 133^a-134^b; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 336-43; cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 49-52; cf. O’Curry, Manners and Customs, iii. 175.

[391] Cf. Stokes’s ed. Annals of Tigernach, Third Frag. in Rev. Celt. xvii. 178. In the piece called Tucait baile Mongâin in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, p. 134, col. 2, ‘Mongan is seen living with his wife the year of the death of Ciaran mac int Shair, and of Tuathal Mael-Garb, that is to say in 544,’ following the Chronicum Scotorum, Hennessy’s ed., pp. 48-9. As D’Arbois de Jubainville adds, the Irish chronicles of this epoch are only approximate in their dates. Thus, while the Four Masters (i. 243) makes the death of Mongan A. D. 620, the Annals of Ulster makes it A. D. 625, the Chronicum Scotorum A. D. 625, the Annals of Clonmacnoise, A. D. 624, and Egerton MS. 1782 A. D. 615 (cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 137-9).

[392] J. O’Donovan, Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters (Dublin, 1856), i. 121.

[393] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 336-43; O’Curry, Manners and Customs iii. 175; L. U., 133^a-134^b; and Voy. of Bran, i. 52.

[394] Voy. of Bran, i. 44-5; from The Conception of Mongan.

[395] Meyer’s version, Voy. of Bran, i. 73-4.

[396] Cf. Voy. of Bran, i. 137.

[397] Voy. of Bran, i. 22-8, quatrains 48-59, &c.

[398] In L. U.; cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., pp. 311-22; and Voy. of Bran, ii. 47-53.

[399] In the Irish conception of re-birth there is no change of sex: Lug is re-born as a boy, in Cuchulainn; Finn as Mongan; Etain as a girl. But it seems that Etain as a mortal had no consciousness of her previous divine existence, while Cuchulainn and Mongan knew their non-human origin and pre-existence.

[400] Some time after this, according to one part of the tale, Eochaid stormed Midir’s fairy palace—for the purpose localized in Ireland—and won Etain back, but the fairies cast a curse on his race for this, and Conaire, his grandson, fell a victim to it. Such a recovering of Etain by Eochaid may vaguely suggest a re-birth of Etain, through the power exerted by Eochaid, who, being a king, is to be regarded in his non-human nature as one of the Tuatha De Danann himself, like Midir his rival.

[401] Cf. The Gilla decair, in Silva Gadelica, pp. 300-3.

[402] Cf. Voy. of Bran, ii. 76 ff. The Christian scribe’s version fills up the space between Tuan’s death and re-birth by making him pass eighty years as a stag, twenty as a wild boar, one hundred as an eagle, and twenty as a salmon (ib., p. 79). In this particular example, the uninitiated scribe (evidently having failed to grasp an important aspect of the re-birth doctrine as this was esoterically explained in the Mysteries, namely, that between death and re-birth, while the conscious Ego is resident in the Otherworld, the physical atoms of the discarded human body may transmigrate through various plant and animal bodies) appears to set forth as Celtic an erroneous doctrine of the transmigration of the conscious Ego itself (see p. 513 n.). In other texts, for example in the song which Amairgen (considered the Gaelic equivalent or even original of the Brythonic Taliessin) sang as he, with the conquering Sons of Mil, set foot on Ireland, there are similar transformations, attributed to certain heroes like Taliessin (see the Mabinogion) and Tuan mac Cairill during their disembodied states after death and until re-birth. But these transformations seem to echo poetically, and often rationally, a very mystical Celtic pantheism, in which Man, regarded as having evolved upwards through all forms and conditions of existence, is at one with all creation:—

And Amairgen also says:—‘I am,’ [Taliessin] ‘I have been’ (Book of Invasions; cf. Voy. of Bran, ii. 91-2; cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 549; cf. Skene, Four Ancient Books, i. 276 ff.).

In later times, especially among non-bardic poets, there has been a similar tendency to misinterpret this primitive mystical Celtic pantheism into the corrupt form of the re-birth doctrine, namely transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies. Dr. Douglas Hyde has sent to me the following evidence:—‘I have a poem, consisting of nearly one hundred stanzas, about a pig who ate an Irish manuscript, and who by eating it recovered human speech for twenty-four hours and gave his master an account of his previous embodiments. He had been a right-hand man of Cromwell, a weaver in France, a subject of the Grand Signor, &c. The poem might be about one hundred or one hundred and fifty years old.’ It is probable that the poet who composed this poem intended to add a touch of modern Irish humour by making use of the pig. We should, nevertheless, bear in mind that the pig (or, as is more commonly the rule, the wild boar) holds a very curious and prominent position in the ancient mythology of Ireland, and of Wales as well. It was regarded as a magical animal (cf. p. 451 n.); and, apparently, was also a Druid symbol, whose meaning we have lost. Possibly the poet may have been aware of this. If so, he does not necessarily imply transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies; but is merely employing symbolism.

[403] See Taliessin in the Mabinogion, and the Book of Taliessin in Skene’s Four Ancient Books, i. 523 ff.; cf. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, ii. 84, and Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 548, 551.

[404] Cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 548-50.

[405] Cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 259; and Arth. Leg., p. 252.

[406] Loth, Les Mabinogion, Kulhwch et Olwen, p. 187 n.

[407] Le Morte D’Arthur, Book XXI, c. vii.

[408] See works on Egyptian mythology and religion, by Maspero; also Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 84, &c.

[409] F. L. Griffith, Stories of the High-priests of Memphis (Oxford, 1900), c. iii. The text of this story is written on the back of two Greek documents, bearing the date of the seventh year of the Emperor Claudius (A. D. 46-7), not before published.

[410] It is interesting to compare with this episode the episodes of how the magic of St. Patrick prevailed over the magic of the Druids when the old and the new religions met in warfare on the Hill of Tara, in the presence of the high king of Ireland and his court.

[411] E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (London, 1904), p. 3.

[412] Prescott, Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru.

[413] W. Crooke, The Legends of Krishna, in Folk-Lore, xi. 2-3 ff.

[414] Laws of Manu, vii. 8, trans, by G. Bühler.

[415] A. B. Cook, European Sky-God, in Folk-Lore, xv. 301-4.

[416] Cf. Lucian, Somn., 17, &c. See Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 13; also Tertullian, De Anima, c. xxviii, where Pythagoras is described as having previously been Aethalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman Pyrrhus.

[417] Cf. Huc, Souvenirs d’un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet, i. 279 ff.

[418] The doctrine of kingly rule by divine right was substituted after the conversion of the Roman Empire for the very ancient belief that the emperor was a god incarnate (not necessarily reincarnate); and the same christianized aspect of a pre-Christian doctrine stands behind the English kingship at the present day.

[419] A curious parallel to this Irish doctrine that through re-birth one suffers for the sins committed in a previous earth-life is found in the Christian scriptures, where in asking Jesus about a man born blind, ‘Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind?’ the disciple exhibits what must have been a popular Jewish belief in re-birth quite like the Celtic one. See St. John ix. 1-2. Though the Rabbis admitted the possibility of ante-natal sin in thought, this passage seems to point unmistakably to a Jewish re-birth doctrine.

[420] It is interesting to note in connexion with these two complementary ideas what has been written by Mr. Standish O’Grady concerning strange phenomena witnessed at the time of Charles Parnell’s funeral:—‘While his followers were committing Charles Parnell’s remains to the earth, the sky was bright with strange lights and flames. Only a coincidence possibly; and yet persons not superstitious have maintained that there is some mysterious sympathy between the human soul and the elements.... Those strange flames recalled to my memory what is told of similar phenomena said to have been witnessed when tidings of the death of the great Christian Saint, Columba, overran the north-west of Europe, as perhaps truer than I had imagined.’—Ireland: Her Story, pp. 211-12.

[421] Cf. M. Lenihan, Limerick; its History and Antiquities (Dublin, 1866), p. 725.

[422] I take this to mean, somewhat as in the similar case of Dechtire, the mother of Cuchulainn (see p. 369, above), that the kind of soul or character which will be reincarnated in the child is determined by the psychic prenatal conditions which a mother consciously or unconsciously may set up. If this interpretation, as it seems to be, is correct, we have in this Welsh belief a surprising comprehension of scientific laws on the part of the ancient Welsh Druids—from whom the doctrine comes—which equals, and surpasses in its subtlety, the latest discoveries of our own psychological embryology, criminology, and so-called laws of heredity.

[423] The reader is referred to the Rev. T. M. Morgan’s latest publication, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Newchurch, Carmarthenshire (Carmarthen, 1910), pp. 155-6.

[424] I found, however, that the original re-birth doctrine has been either misinterpreted or else corrupted—after Dr. Tylor’s theory—into transmigration into animal bodies among certain Cornish miners in the St. Just region.

[425] The primitive character of the Incarnation doctrine is clear: Origen, in refuting a Jewish accusation against Christians, apparently the natural outgrowth of deep-seated hatred and religious prejudice on the part of the Jews, that Jesus Christ was born through the adultery of the Virgin with a certain soldier named Panthera, argues ‘that every soul, for certain mysterious reasons (I speak now according to the opinions of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus frequently names), is introduced into a body, and introduced according to its deserts and former actions’. And, according to Origen’s argument, to assign to Jesus Christ a birth more disgraceful than any other is absurd, because ‘He who sends souls down into the bodies of men’ would not have thus ‘degraded Him who was to dare such mighty acts, and to teach so many men, and to reform so many from the mass of wickedness in the world’. And Origen adds:—‘It is probable, therefore, that this soul also which conferred more benefit by its residence in the flesh than that of many men (to avoid prejudice, I do not say “all”), stood in need of a body not only superior to others, but invested with all excellence’ (Origen against Celsus, Book I, c. xxxii).

It is interesting to compare with Origen’s theology the following passage from the Pistis Sophia, wherein Jesus in the alleged esoteric discourse to his disciples refers to the pre-existence of their souls:—‘I took them from the hands of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light, according to the command of the first mystery. These powers, therefore, I cast into the wombs of your mothers, when I came into the world, and they are those which are in your bodies this day’ (Pistis Sophia, i. II, Mead’s translation).

[426] Cf. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, ii. 27 ff., 45 ff., 54 ff., 98-102.

[427] Cf. ib., p. 105.

[428] In this chapter, largely the result of my own special research and observations in Celtic archaeology, I wish to acknowledge the very valuable suggestions offered to me by Professor J. Loth, both in his lectures and personally.

[429] See David MacRitchie, Fians, Fairies, and Picts; also his Testimony of Tradition.

[430] Myers, in the Survival of the Human Personality (ii. 55-6), shows that ‘the departed spirit, long after death, seems pre-occupied with the spot where his bones are laid’. Among contemporary uncultured races there exists a theory parallel to this one arrived at through careful scientific research, namely, that ghosts haunt graves and monuments connected with the dead: according to the Australian Arunta the ‘double’ hovers near its body until the body is reduced to dust, the spirit or soul of the deceased having separated from this ‘double’ or ghost at the time of death or soon afterwards (Spenser and Gillen, Nat. Tribes of Cent. Aust.).

[431] See Les Grottes, t. i; Les Menhirs, Les Dolmens, Les Tumulus, and Cultes et observances mégalithiques, t. iv.

[432] On April 17, 1909, at Carnac, in a natural fissure in the body of the finest menhir at the head of the Alignement of Kermario, I found quite by chance, while making a very careful examination of the geological structure of the menhir, a Roman Catholic coin (or medal) of St. Peter. The place in the menhir where this coin was discovered is on the south side about fifteen inches above the surface of the ground. The menhir is very tall and smoothly rounded, and there is no possible way for the coin to have fallen into the fissure by accident. Nor is there any probability that the coin was placed there without a serious purpose; and it is an object such as only an adult would possess. An examination of the link remaining on the coin, which no doubt formerly connected it with a necklace or string of prayer-beads, shows that it has been purposely opened so as to free it at the time it was deposited in the stone. Had the coin been accidentally torn away from a chain or string of prayer-beads the link would have presented a different sort of opening. But it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that by any sort of chance the coin could have reached the place where I found it. I showed the coin to M. Z. Le Rouzic, of the Carnac Museum, and he considers it, as I do, as evidence or proof of a cult rendered to stones here in Brittany. The coin must have been secretly placed in the menhir by some pious peasant as a direct ex voto for some favour received or demanded. The coin is somewhat discoloured, and has probably been some years in the stone, though it cannot be very old. And the offering of a coin to the spirit residing in a menhir is parallel to throwing coins, pins, or other objects into sacred fountains, which, as we know, is an undisputed practice.

[433] Cf. A. C. Kruijt, Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel; quoted in Crawley’s Idea of the Soul, p. 133.

[434] Cf. Weidemann, Ancient Egyptian Doct. Immortality, p. 21.

[435] Cf. Mahé, Essai.

[436] Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 143 ff., 169, 172.

[437] Marett, The Threshold of Religion, c. i.

[438] Mahé, Essai, p. 230.

[439] A famous controversy exists as to whether the Coronation Stone now in Westminster Abbey is the Lia Fáil, or whether the pillar-stone still at Tara is the Lia Fáil. See article by E. S. Hartland in Folk-Lore, xiv. 28-60.

[440] These ‘idols’ probably were not true images, but simply unshaped stone pillars planted on end in the earth; and ought, therefore, more properly to be designated fetishes.

[441] Stokes, in Rev. Celt., i. 260; Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 200-1.

[442] Very much first-class evidence suggests that the menhir was regarded by the primitive Celts both as an abode of a god or as a seat of divine power, and as a phallic symbol (cf. Jubainville, Le culte des menhirs dans le monde celtique, in Rev. Celt., xxvii. 313). As a phallic symbol, the menhir must have been inseparably related to a Celtic sun-cult; because among all ancient peoples where phallic worship has prevailed, the sun has been venerated as the supreme masculine force in external nature from which all life proceeds, while the phallus has been venerated as the corresponding force in human nature.

[443] Silva Gadelica, ii. 137.

[444] Professor J. Loth says:—‘Étymologiquement, le mot est composé de CROM, courbe, arque, formant creux, convexe, et de LLECH, pierre plate’ (Rev. Celt., xv. 223, Dolmen, Leach-Derch, Peulvan, Menhir, Cromlech). In Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland, instead of the peculiarly Breton word dolmen (composed of dol [for tol == tavl], meaning table, and of men [Middle Breton maen], meaning stone) the word cromlech is used. Cromlech is the Welsh equivalent for the Breton dolmen, but Breton archaeologists use cromlech to describe a circle formed by menhirs.

[445] Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 193-4.

[446] Ib., p. 192; from Sans-Marte’s edition, pp. 108-9, 361.

[447] Ib., p. 193.

[448] Ib., pp. 194-5; cf. Bibliotheca of Diodorus Siculus, ii. c. 47.

[449] Edith F. Carey, Channel Island Folklore (Guernsey, 1909).

[450] Mahé, Essai, p. 198.

[451] Mahé, Essai, pp. 287-9.

[452] The place for holding a gorsedd for modern Welsh initiations, under the authority of which the Eisteddfod is conducted, must also be within a circle of stones, ‘face to face with the sun and the eye of light, as there is no power to hold a gorsedd under cover or at night, but only where and as long as the sun is visible in the heavens’ (Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 208-9; from Iolo MSS., p. 50).

[453] Recently before the Oxford Anthropological Society, Dr. Murray argued that the satyrs of Greek drama may originally have been masked initiators in Greek initiations. (Cf. The Oxford Magazine, February 3, 1910, p. 173.)

[454] Edith F. Carey, op. cit.

[455] Mahé, Essai, pp. 126-9.

[456] Mahé, Essai, pp. 126-9.

[457] Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 339.

[458] Edith F. Carey, op. cit.

[459] Montelius’ Les Temps préhistoriques en Suède, par S. Reinach, p. 126. (Paris, 1895).

[460] H. Schliemann, Mycenae (London, 1878), p. 213.

[461] Walhouse, in Journ. Anthrop. Inst., vii. 21. These Dravidians are slightly taller than the pure Negritos, their probable ancestors; and Indian tradition considers them to be the builders of the Indian dolmens, just as Celtic tradition considers fairies and corrigans (often described as dark or even black-skinned dwarfs) to be the builders of dolmens and megaliths among the Celts. Apparently, in such folk-traditions, which correctly or incorrectly regard fairies, corrigans, or Dravidians as the builders of ancient stone monuments, there has been preserved a folk-memory of early races of men who may have been Negritos (pygmy blacks). These races, through a natural anthropomorphic process, came to be identified with the spirits of the dead and with other spiritual beings to whom the monuments were dedicated and at which they were worshipped. Here, again, the Pygmy Theory is seen at its true relative value: it is subordinate to the fundamental animism of the Fairy-Faith.

[462] J. Déchelette, Manuel d’Archéologie préhistorique (Paris, 1908), i. 468, 302, 308, 311, 576, 610, &c.

[463] This famous chambered tumulus ‘measures nearly 700 feet in circumference, or about 225 feet in diameter, and between 40 and 50 feet in height’ (G. Coffey, in Rl. Ir. Acad. Trans. [Dublin, 1892], xxx. 68).

[464] G. Coffey, in Rl. Ir. Acad. Trans., xxx. 73-92.

[465] Fol. 190 b; trans. O’Curry, Lectures, p. 505.

[466] Mr. Coffey quotes from the Senchus-na-Relec, in L. U., this significant passage:—‘The nobles of the Tuatha De Danann were used to bury at Brugh (i. e. the Dagda with his three sons; also Lugaidh, and Oe, and Ollam, and Ogma, and Etan the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of Etan)’ (G. Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 77). The manuscript, however, being late and directly under Christian influence, echoes but imperfectly very ancient Celtic tradition: the immortal god-race are therein rationalized by the transcribers, and made subject to death.

[467] W. C. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland (London, 1897), ii. 346 n.

[468] As translated in the Silva Gadelica, ii. 109-11.

[469] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.

[470] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.

[471] Ib., ii. 347 n.

[472] A good example of a saint’s stone bed can be seen now at Glendalough, the stone bed of St. Kevin, high above a rocky shore of the lake.

[473] Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS., by Michael O’Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and translated by Douglas Hyde.

[474] Coffey, op. cit., xxv. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS. by Michael O’Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and trans. by Douglas Hyde.

[475] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 347 n.

[476] O’Donovan, Four Masters, i. 22 n.

[477] Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 148-50.

[478] Cf. O’Curry, Manners and Customs, ii. 122; iii. 5, 74, 122; Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., pp. 150, 150 n.; Jubainville, Essai d’un Catalogue, p. 244.

[479] Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 194.

[480] Math ab Mathonwy’s Irish counterpart is Math mac Umóir, the magician (Book of Leinster, f. 9^b; cf. Rhŷs, Trans. Third Inter. Cong. Hist. Religions, Oxford, 1908, ii. 211).

[481] Rhŷs, ib., pp. 225-6; cf. R. B. Mabinogion, p. 60; Triads, i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90. A fortified hill-top now known as Pen y Gaer, or ‘Hill of the Fortress’, on the western side of the Conway, on a mountain within sight of the railway station of Tal y Cafn, Carnarvonshire, is regarded by Sir John Rhŷs as the site of a long-forgotten cult of Math the Ancient. (Rhŷs, ib., p. 225).

[482] This stone basin, now in the centre of the inner chamber, seems originally to have stood in the east recess, the largest and most richly inscribed. It is 4 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches across, and 1 foot thick. (Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 14, 21).

[483] Cf. W. M. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh (London, 1883), p. 201.

[484] All of the chief megaliths of this type, together with the chief alignements, which I have personally inspected—with the aid of a compass—in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, are definitely aligned east and west. It cannot be said, however, that all megalithic monuments throughout Celtic countries show definite orientation (see Déchelette’s Manuel d’Archéologie).

[485] L. P. McCarty, The Great Pyramid Jeezeh (San Francisco, 1907), p. 402.

[486] Jubainville, Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 28.

[487] Maspero, Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne,³ p. 74 n.

[488] Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 426.

[489] W. H. Prescott, Conquest of Peru, i, c. 3.

[490] Rochefort, Iles Antilles, p. 365; cf. Tylor, P. C.,⁴ ii. 424.

[491] Colebrooke, Essays, vols. i, iv, v; cf. Tylor, P. C.,⁴ 425.

[492] Illus. Hist. and Pract. of Thugs (London, 1837), p. 46; cf. Tylor, P. C.,⁴ ii. 425.

[493] Augustin, de Serm. Dom. in Monte, ii. 5; cf. Tylor, P. C.,⁴ ii. 427-8.

[494] Ezek. viii. 16. The popular opinion that Christians face the east in prayer, or have altars eastward because Jerusalem is eastward, does not fit in with facts.

[495] Cf. Lenormant, Chaldean Magic, p. 88; also Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 48-9.

[496] Though not a Mason, the writer draws his knowledge from Masons of the highest rank, and from published works by Masons like Mr. Carty’s The Great Pyramid Jeezeh.

[497] Cf. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, ii. 347 n.

[498] C. Piazzi Smyth, Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (London, 1890).

[499] Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, pp. 169, 222.

[500] C. Piazzi Smyth, op. cit.

[501] In 1770, when New Grange apparently was not covered with a growth of trees as now, Governor Pownall visited it and described it as like a pyramid in general outline: ‘The pyramid in its present state’ is ‘but a ruin of what it was’ (Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 13).

[502] Le Dr. G. de C., Locmariaquer et Gavr’inis (Vannes, 1876), p. 18.

[503] According to Le Dr. G. de C., op. cit., p. 18.

[504] Mr. Coffey says of similar details in Irish tumuli:—‘In the construction of such chambers it is usual to find a sort of sill or low stone placed across the entrance into the main chamber, and at the openings into the smaller chambers or recesses; such stones also occur laid at intervals across the bottom of the passages. This forms a marked feature in the construction at Dowth, and in the cairns on the Loughcrew Hills, but is wholly absent at New Grange’ (op. cit., xxx. 15). New Grange, however, has suffered more or less from vandalism, and originally may have contained similar stone sills.

[505] Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, p. 216.

[506] Maspero, op. cit., p. 69 n., &c. The world-wide anthropomorphic tendency to construct tombs for the gods and for the dead after the plan of earthly dwellings is as evident in the excavations at Mycenae as in ancient Egypt and in Celtic lands.

[507] Cf. Bruns, Canones apostolorum et conciliorum saeculorum, ii. 133.

[508] Cf. F. Maassen, Concilia aevi merovingici, p. 133.

[509] Cf. Boretius, Capitularia regum Francorum, i. 59; for each of the above references cf. Jubainville, Le culte des menhirs dans le monde celtique, in Rev. Celt., xxvii. 317.

[510] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 427.

[511] See Villemarqué sur Bretagne.

[512] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 326; quoted from De Glor. Conf., c. 2.

[513] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 326; quoted from De Glor. Conf., c. 2.

[514] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 326; quoted from Goth., lib. ii.

[515] A. W. Moore, in Folk-Lore, v. 212-29.

[516] Cf. Rhŷs, Arthurian Legend, p. 247.

[517] Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, iii. 729.

[518] Stokes, Tripartite Life of Patrick, pp. 99-101.

[519] Ib., text, pp. 123, 323, and Intro., p. 159.

[520] Book II, 69-70; see our study, p. 267.

[521] Rennes Dinnshenchas, Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xv. 457.

[522] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 323.

[523] The Celts may have viewed the mistletoe on the sacred oak as the seat of the tree’s life, because in the winter sleep of the leafless oak the mistletoe still maintains its own foliage and fruit, and like the heart of a sleeper continues pulsing with vitality. The mistletoe thus being regarded as the heart-centre of the divine spirit in the oak-tree was cut with a golden sickle by the arch-druid clad in pure white robes, amid great religious solemnity, and became a vicarious sacrifice or atonement for the worshippers of the tree god. (Cf. Frazer, G. B.,² iii. 447 ff.)

[524] Pliny, Nat. Hist., xvi. 95; cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 218.

[525] Dissert., viii; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219.

[526] Meineke’s ed., xii. 5, 1; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219. The oak-tree is pre-eminently the holy tree of Europe. Not only Celts, but Slavs, worshipped amid its groves. To the Germans it was their chief god; the ancient Italians honoured it above all other trees; the original image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been a natural oak-tree. So at Dodona, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in a sacred oak. Cf. Frazer, G. B.,² iii. 346 ff.

[527] Cf. Mahé, Essai, pp. 333-4; quotation from Hist. du Maine, i. 17.

[528] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 334; quoted from Lib. VII, indict. i, epist. 5.

[529] Stokes, Tripartite Life, p. 409.

[530] Cf. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Older Faiths in Ireland, i. 305.

[531] W. Gregor, Notes on Beltene Cakes, in Folk-Lore, vi. 5.

[532] Temple, Legends of the Panjab, in Folk-Lore, x. 406.

[533] Lefèvre, Le Culte des Morts chez les Latins, in Rev. Trad. Pop., ix. 195-209.

[534] See Folk-Lore, vi. 192.

[535] The term ‘People of Peace’ seems, however, to have originated from confounding sid, ‘fairy abode,’ and síd, ‘peace.’

[536] Cf. Le Cycle Myth. Irl., p. 102.

[537] The crocodile as the mystic symbol of Sîtou provides one key to unlock the mysteries of what eminent Egyptologists have erroneously called animal worship, erroneously because they have interpreted literally what can only be interpreted symbolically. The crocodile is called the ‘son of Sîtou’ in the Papyrus magique, Harris, pl. vi, ll. 8-9 (cf. Maspero, Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte Ancienne,[539] Intro., p. 56); and as the waters seem to swallow the sun as it sinks below the horizon, so the crocodile, as Sîtou representing the waters, swallows the Children of Osiris, as the Egyptians called themselves. On the other hand, Osiris is typified by the white bull, in many nations the sun emblem, white being the emblem of purity and light, while the powers of the bull represent the masculinity of the sun, which impregnates all nature, always thought of as feminine, with life germs.

[538] Cf. Maspero, op. cit., Intro., p. 49.

[539] Cf. Borlase, Dolmens of Ireland, iii. 854.

[540] Cf. Lefèvre, Rev. Trad. Pop., ix. 195-209.

[541] J. G. Campbell collected in Scotland two versions of a parallel episode, but concerning Loch Lurgan. In both versions the flight begins by Fionn’s foster-mother carrying Fionn, and in both, when she is tired, Fionn carries her and runs so fast that when the loch is reached only her shanks are left. These he throws out on the loch, and hence its name Loch Lurgan, ‘Lake of the Shanks.’ (The Fians, pp. 18-19).

[542] During the seventeenth century, the English government, acting through its Dublin representatives, ordered this original Cave or Purgatory to be demolished; and with the temporary suppression of the ceremonies which resulted and the consequent abandonment of the island, the Cave, which may have been filled up, has been lost.

[543] Thomas Wright, St. Patrick’s Purgatory (London, 1844), pp. 67-8.

[544] Wright, op. cit., p. 69.

[545] In the face of all the legends told of pilgrims who have been in Patrick’s Purgatory, it seems that either through religious frenzy like that produced in Protestant revivals, or else through some strange influence due to the cave itself after the preliminary disciplines, some of the pilgrims have had most unusual psychic experiences. Those who have experienced fasting and a rigorous life for a prescribed period affirm that there results a changed condition, physical, mental, and spiritual, so that it is very probable that the Christian pilgrims to the Purgatory, like the pagan pilgrims who ‘fasted on’ the Tuatha De Danann in New Grange, were in good condition to receive impressions of a psychical nature such as the Society for Psychical Research is beginning to believe are by no means rare to people susceptible to them. Neophytes seeking initiation among the ancients had to undergo even more rigorous preparations than these; for they were expected while entranced to leave their physical bodies and in reality enter the purgatorial state, as we shall presently have occasion to point out.

[546] Wright, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 62 ff.

[547] L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States (Oxford, 1907), iii. 126-98, &c.

[548] Cf. Athenaeus, 614 A; Aristoph., Nubes, 508; and Harper’s Dict. Class. Lit. and Antiq., p. 1615.

[549] Cf. O. Seyffert, Dict. Class. Antiquities, trans. (London, 1895), Mithras.

[550] Brasseur, Mexique, iii. 20, &c.; Tylor, P. C.,⁴ ii. 45.

[551] Cf. Hutton Webster, Primitive Secret Societies (New York, 1908), p. 38, and passim.

[552] In the ancient Greek world the annual celebration of the Mysteries drew great concourses of people from all regions round the Mediterranean; to the modern Breton world the chief religious Pardons are annual events of such supreme importance that, after preparing plenty of food for the pilgrimage, the whole family of a pious peasant of Lower Brittany will desert farm and work dressed in their beautiful and best costumes for one of these Pardons, the most picturesque, the most inspiring, and the highest folk-festivals still preserved by the Roman Church; while to Roman Catholics in all countries a pilgrimage to Lough Derg is the sacred event of a lifetime.

In the Breton Pardons, as in the purgatorial rites, we seem to see the survivals of very ancient Celtic Mysteries strikingly like the Mysteries of Eleusis. The greatest of the Pardons, the Pardon of St. Anne d’Auray, will serve as a basis for comparison; and while in some respects it has had a recent and definitely historical origin (or revival), this origin seems on the evidence of archaeology to have been a restoration, an expansion, and chiefly a Christianization of prehistoric rites then already partly fallen into decay. Such rites remained latent in the folk-memory, and were originally celebrated in honour of the sacred fountain, and probably also of Isis and the child, whose terra-cotta image was ploughed up in a neighbouring field by the famous peasant Nicolas, and naturally regarded by him and all who saw it as of St. Anne and the Holy Child. Thus, in the Pardon of St. Anne d’Auray, which extends over three days, there is a torch-light procession at night under ecclesiastical sanction; as in the Ceres Mysteries, wherein the neophytes with torches kindled sought all night long for Proserpine. There are purification rites, not especially under ecclesiastical sanction, at the holy fountain now dedicated to St. Anne, like the purification rites of the Eleusinian worshippers at the sea-shore and their visit to a holy well. There are mystery plays, recently instituted, as in Greek initiation ceremonies; sacred processions, led by priests, bearing the image of St. Anne and other images, comparable to Greek sacred processions in which the god Iacchos was borne on the way to Eleusis. The all-night services in the dimly-lighted church of St. Anne, with the special masses in honour of the Christian saints and for the dead, are parallel to the midnight ceremonies of the Greeks in their caves of initiation and to the libations to the gods and to the spirits of the departed at Greek initiations. Finally, in the Greek mysteries there seems to have been some sort of expository sermon or exhortation to the assembled neophytes quite comparable to the special appeal made to the faithful Catholics assembled in the magnificent church of St. Anne d’Auray by the bishops and high ecclesiastics of Brittany. (For these Classical parallels compare Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, iii, passim.)

[553] Cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 411, &c.

[554] O’Curry, Lectures, pp. 586-7.

[555] There is this very significant legend on record about the Cave of Cruachan:—‘Magh Mucrime, now, pigs of magic came out of the cave of Cruachain, and that is Ireland’s gate of Hell.’ And ‘Out of it, also, came the Red Birds that withered up everything in Erin that their breath would touch, till the Ulstermen slew them with their slings.’ (B. of Leinster, p. 288a; Stokes’s trans., in Rev. Celt., xiii. 449; cf. Silva Gadelica, ii. 353.)

[556] Forbes, Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern (Edinburgh, 1874), pp. 285, 345.

[557] Cf. Wright, St. Patrick’s Purgatory, pp. 81-2.

[558] Cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 24; also Bergier, Dict. de Théol., v. 405.

[559] Cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 32. But there is some disagreement in this matter of dates: Petrus Damianus, Vita S. Odilonis, in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, January 1, records a legend of how the Abbot Odilon decreed that November 2, the day after All Saints’ Day, should be set apart for services for the departed (cf. Tylor, Prim. Cult.,⁴ ii. 37 n.).

[560] Cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 1 n.

[561] Part II, sec. 4; c. 4, par. 8; cf. Bergier, Dict. de Théol., iv. 322.

[562] P. 11^a, l. 19; in Stokes’s Tripartite Life, Intro., p. 194.

[563] Enchiridion, chap. cx; Testament of St. Ephrem (ed. Vatican), ii. 230, 236; Euseb., de Vita Constant., liv. iv, c. lx. 556, c. lxx. 562; cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 30-1.

[564] St. Ambroise, de Obitu Theodosii, ii. 1197; cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 31 n.

[565] Cf. Godescard, Vies des Saints, xi. 31-2.

[566] I am indebted to Mr. William McDougall, M.A., Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford, for having read through and criticized the first draft of this section; and while he is in no way responsible for the views set forth herein, nevertheless his suggestions for the improvement of their scientific framework have been of very great value. I must also express my obligation to him for having suggested through his Oxford lectures a good share of the important material interwoven into chapter xii touching the vitalistic view of evolution.

[567] Cf. C. Du Prel, Philosophy of Mysticism (London, 1889), i. 7, 11.

[568] T. Ribot, The Diseases of Personality; cf. J. L. Nevius, Demon Possession (London, 1897), pp. 234-5.

[569] Proc. S. P. R. (London), v. 167; cf. A. Lang, Making of Religion, p. 64.

[570] W. James, Confidences of a ‘Psychical Researcher’, in American Magazine (October 1909).

[571] A. Lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense (London, 1896), p. 35.

[572] According to Professor Freud, the well-known neurologist of Vienna, external stimuli are not admitted to the dream-consciousness in the same manner that they would be admitted to the waking-consciousness, but they are disguised and altered in particular ways (cf. S. Freud, Die Traumdeutung, 2nd ed., Vienna, 1909; and S. Ferenczi, The Psychological Analysis of Dreams, in Amer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 318, &c.).

[573] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 135.

[574] G. F. Stout, Mr. F. W. Myers on ‘Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death’, in Hibbert Journal, ii, No. 1 (London, October 1903), p. 56.

[575] F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London, 1903), i. 131.

[576] R. L. Stevenson, Across the Plains, chapter on Dreams.

[577] Stout, op. cit., p. 54.

[578] Freud, op. cit.; Ferenczi, op. cit.; E. Jones, Freud’s Theory of Dreams, in Amer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 283-308.

[579] Freud, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, in Amer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 203.

[580] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 33.

[581] Myers, op. cit., i. 134.

[582] Fechner, Zentralblatt für Anthropologie, p. 774; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 92.

[583] Haddock, Somnolism and Psychism, p. 213; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 93.

[584] Perty, Mystische Erscheinungen, i. 305; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 63.

[585] Kerner, Seherin v. Prevorst, p. 196; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 65.

[586] Chardel, Essai de Psychologie, p. 344; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 64.

[587] Cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 88-9.

[588] Myers, op. cit., chapter vi.

[589] Stout, op. cit., pp. 64, 61-2.

[590] Lang, Mr. Myers’s Theory of ‘The Subliminal Self’, in Hibbert Journal, ii, No. 3 (April 1904), p. 530.

[591] The peculiar and often unique characteristics of the fairy-folk of any given fairy-faith, as we have pointed out in chapter iii (pp. 233, 282), are to be regarded as being merely anthropomorphically coloured reflections of the social life or environment of the particular ethnic group who hold the particular fairy-faith; and, as Mr. Lang here suggests, when they are stripped of these superficial characteristics, which are due to such social psychology, they become ghosts of the dead or other spiritual beings.

Our own researches lead us to the conviction that behind the purely mythical aspect of these fairy-faiths there exists a substantial substratum of real phenomena not yet satisfactorily explained by science; that such phenomena have been in the past and are at the present time the chief source of the belief in fairies, that they are the foundation underlying all fairy mythologies. We need only refer to the following phenomena observed among Celtic and other peoples, and attributed by them to ‘fairy’ or ‘spirit’ agency: (1) music which competent percipients believe to be of non-human origin, and hence by the Celts called ‘fairy’ music, whether this be vocal or instrumental in sound; (2) the movement of objects without known cause; (3) rappings and other noises called ‘supernatural’ (cf. pp. 81 n., 481-4, 488; also pp. 47, 57, 61, 67, 71, 72, 74, 88, 94, 98, 101, 120, 124, 125, 131, 132, 134, 139, 148, 156, 172, 181, 187, 213, 218, 220, &c.).

[592] It is our hope that this book will help to lessen the marked deficiency of recorded testimony concerning ‘fairy’ beings and ‘fairy’ phenomena observed by reliable percipients. We have endeavoured to demonstrate that genuine ‘fairy’ phenomena and genuine ‘spirit’ phenomena are in most cases identical. Hence we believe that if ‘spirit’ phenomena are worthy of the attention of science, equally so are ‘fairy’ phenomena. The fairy-belief in its typical or conventional aspects (apart from the animism which we discovered at the base of the belief) is, as was pointed out in our anthropological examination of the evidence (pp. 281-2), due to a very complex social psychology. In this chapter we have eliminated all social psychology, as not being the essential factor in the Fairy-Faith. Therefore, from our point of view, Mr. Lang’s implied explanation of the typical fairy-visions, that they are due to ‘suggestion acting on the subconscious self’, does not apply to the rarer kind of fairy visions which form part of our x-quantity (see pp. 60-6, 83-4, &c.). If it does, then it also applies to all non-Celtic visions of spirits, in ancient and in modern times; and the animistic hypothesis now accepted by most psychical researchers, namely, that discarnate intelligences exist independent of the percipient, must be set aside in favour of the non-animistic hypothesis. If, on the other hand, it be admitted that ‘fairy’ phenomena are, as we maintain, essentially the same as ‘spirit’ phenomena, then the belief in fairies ceases to be purely mythical, and ‘fairy’ visions by a Celtic seer who is physically and psychically sound do not seem to arise from that seer’s suggestion acting on his own subconsciousness; but certain types of ‘fairy’ visions undoubtedly do arise from suggestion, coming from a ‘fairy’ or other intelligence, acting on the conscious or subconscious content of the percipient’s mind (cf. pp. 484-7).

[593] Lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 208, 35.

[594] Sir Oliver Lodge, Psychical Research, in Harper’s Mag., August 1908 (New York and London).

[595] Sir Oliver Lodge, The Survival of Man (London, 1909), p. 339.

[596] James, op. cit., pp. 587-9.

[597] Readers are referred to such authoritative works as the Phantasms of the Living (London, 1886), by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore; to the Report on the Census of Hallucinations of Modern Spiritualism, by Professor Sidgwick’s Committee; to the Naturalisation of the Supernatural (New York and London, 1908), by F. Podmore; to the Survival of the Human Personality, by F. W. H. Myers; and other like works, all of which originate from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (London).

[598] C. Flammarion, Mysterious Psychic Forces, pp. 441, 431.

[599] Sir Wm. Crookes, Notes of an Enquiry into Phenomena called Spiritual, during the years 1870-73 (London), Part III, p. 87.

[600] See Quart. Journ. Science (July 1871).

[601] Cf. Lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense, p. 281; and for other cases of objects moved without contact see ib., pp. 50, 52, 53, 58, 122 ff. See also F. Podmore’s article on Poltergeists, in Proceedings S. P. R., xii. 45-115; and his Naturalisation of the Supernatural, chapter vii.

[602] Sir Wm. Crookes, op. cit., Part III, p. 100.

[603] Ib., p. 94.

[604] Lang, Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 60, 81, 139, &c.

[605] Using as a basis the data of Professor Sidgwick’s Committee and the results earlier obtained by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (see Phantasms of the Living), Mr. William McDougall shows concisely the probability of an apparition appearing within twelve hours of the death of the individual whom it represents. He says:—‘... of all recognized apparitions of living persons, only one in 19,000 may be expected to be a death-coincidence of this sort. But the census shows that of 1,300 recognized apparitions of living persons 30 are death-coincidences, and that is equivalent to 440 in 19,000. Hence, of recognized hallucinations, those coincident with death are 440 times more numerous than we should expect, if no causal relation obtained.’ And Mr. McDougall concludes: ‘... since good evidence of telepathic communication has been experimentally obtained, the least improbable explanation of these death-apparitions is that the dying person exerts upon his distant friend some telepathic influence which generates an hallucinatory perception of himself’ (Hallucinations, in Ency. Brit., 11th ed., xii. 863).

[606] Myers, op. cit., ii. 65, 45 ff., 49 ff., &c.

[607] Nevius, Demon Possession, Introduction, pp. iv, vii; pp. 240-2, 144-5. In accordance with all such phenomena, psychical researchers have logically called spirits manifesting themselves through the body of a living person possessing spirits. And as in the case of Chinese demon-possession, the phenomena of mediumship often result in the moral derangement, insanity, or even suicide on the part of ‘mediums’ who so unwisely exhibit it without special preparation or no preparation at all, and too often in complete ignorance of a possible gradual undermining of their psychic life, will-power, and even physical health. All of this seems to offer direct and certain evidence to sustain Christians and non-Christians in their condemnation of all forms of necromancy or calling up of spirits. The following statement will make our position towards mediumship of the most common kind clear:

In Druidism, for one example, disciples for training in magical sciences are said to have spent twenty years in severe study and special psychical training before deemed fit to be called Druids and thus to control daemons, ghosts, or all invisible entities capable of possessing living men and women. And even now in India and elsewhere there is reported to be still the same ancient course of severe disciplinary training for candidates seeking magical powers. But in modern Spiritualism conditions are altogether different in most cases, and ‘mediums’ instead of controlling with an iron will, as a magician does, spirits which become manifest in séances, surrender entirely their will-power and whole personality to them.

[608] Cf. Sigmund Freud, The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, in Amer. Journ. Psych., xxi, No. 2 (April 1910).

[609] The fact that all matter is capable of assuming a gaseous or invisible state furnishes good scientific reasons for postulating the actual existence of intelligent beings possessed of an invisible yet physical body. There may well be on and about our planet many distinct invisible organic life-forms undiscovered by zoologists. To deny such a possibility would be unscientific.

[610] Cf. Communication adressée au D^r J. Dupré, p. 382 of an essay on La Métempsycose basée sur les Principes de la Biologie et du Magnétisme physiologique, in Le Hasard (Paris, 1909), by P. C. Revel. Cases of regeneration among the aged are known, and these show how the subliminal life-forces try to renew the physical body when it is worn out (cf. Revel, ib., p. 372).

[611] Cf. Revel, op. cit., p. 295 ff.

[612] If scientists discover, as they probably will in time, what they call the secret of life, they will not have discovered the secret of life at all. What they will have discovered will be the physical conditions under which life manifests itself. In other words, science will most likely soon be able to set up artificially in a laboratory such physical conditions as exist in nature naturally, and by means of which life is able to manifest itself through matter. Life will still be as great a mystery as it is to-day; though short-sighted materialists are certain to announce to an eager world that the final problem of the universe has been solved and that life is merely the resultant of a subtle chemical compound.

[613] Professor Freud, after long and careful study, arrived at the following conclusion:—‘The child has his sexual impulse and activities from the beginning, he brings them with him into the world, and from these the so-called normal sexuality of adults emerges by a significant development through manifold stages.’ And Dr. Sanford Bell, in an earlier writing entitled A Preliminary Study of the Emotions of Love between the Sexes (see Amer. Journ. Psych., 1902), came to a similar conclusion (cf. Freud, op. cit., pp. 207-8).

[614] Cf. Hans Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism (London, 1908); and Henri Bergson, L’Évolution créatrice (Paris, 1908).

[615] This Celtic view of non-personal immortality completely fits in with all the voluminous data of psychical research: after forty years of scientific research into psychics there are no proofs yet adduced that the human personality as a self-sufficient unit of consciousness survives indefinitely the death of its body. Granted that it does survive as a ghost for an undetermined period, generally to be counted in years, during which time it seems to be gradually fading out or disintegrating, there is no reliable evidence anywhere to show that a personality as such has manifested through a ‘medium’ or otherwise after an interval of one thousand years, or even of five hundred years. We have, in fact, no knowledge of the survival of a human personality one hundred years after, and probably there are no good examples of such a survival twenty-five years after the death of the body. Such an eminent psychical researcher as William James recognized this drift of the data of psychics, and when he died he held the conviction that there is no personal immortality (see p. 505 n. following).

[616] Though not inclined toward the vitalistic view of human evolution, M. Th. Ribot very closely approaches the Celtic view of the Ego (or individuality) as being the principle which gives unity to different personalities, but he does not have in mind personalities in the sense implied by the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth:—‘The Ego subjectively considered consists of a sum of conscious states’ (comparable to personalities).... ‘In brief, the Ego may be considered in two ways: either in its actual form, and then it is the sum of existing conscious states; or, in its continuity with the past, and then it is formed by the memory according to the process outlined above. It would seem, according to this view, that the identity of the Ego depended entirely upon the memory. But such a conception is only partial. Beneath the unstable compound phenomenon in all its protean phases of growth, degeneration, and reproduction, there is a something that remains: and this something is the undefined consciousness, the product of all the vital processes, constituting bodily perception and what is expressed in one word—the cœnæsthesis.’ (The Diseases of Memory, pp. 107-8).

William James, the greatest psychologist of our epoch, after a long and faithful life consecrated to the search after a true understanding of human consciousness, finally arrived at substantially the same conviction as Fechner did, that there is no personal immortality, but that the personality ‘is but a temporary and partial separation and circumscription of a part of a larger whole, into which it is reabsorbed at death’ (W. McDougall, In Memory of William James, in Proc. S. P. R., Part LXII, vol. xxv, p. 28). He thus virtually accepted the mystic’s view that the personality after the death of the body is absorbed into a higher power, which, to our mind, is comparable with the Ego conceived as the unifying principle behind personalities. In one of his last writings, James explained his belief in such a manner as to make it coincide at certain points with the view held by modern Celtic mystics which has been presented above; the difference being that, unlike these mystics, James was not prepared to say (though he raised the question) whether or not behind the ‘mother-sea’ of consciousness there is, as Fechner believed, a hierarchy of consciousnesses (themselves subordinate to still higher consciousnesses, and comparable with so many Egos or Individualities) which send out emanations as temporary human personalities. The organic psychical forms (if we may use such an expression) of such temporary human personalities would have to be regarded from James’s point of view as being built up out of the psychical elements constituting the ‘mother-sea’ of consciousness, just as the human body is built up out of the physical elements in the realm of matter:—‘Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other’s foghorns. But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality’ (used as synonymous with personality and not in our distinct sense) ‘builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our “normal” consciousness’ (the personality as we distinguish it from the Ego or individuality) ‘is circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond break in, showing the otherwise unverifiable common connexion. Not only psychic research, but metaphysical philosophy and speculative biology are led in their own ways to look with favour on some such “pan-psychic” view of the universe as this.’ (W. James, The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher, in The American Magazine, October 1909). Again, James wrote:—‘The drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious.’ (A Pluralistic Universe, New York, 1909, p. 309.)

[617] W. James, Varieties of Religious Experience (London, 1902), pp. 511, 236 n.

[618] M. Th. Ribot, in Diseases of Memory (London, 1882), pp. 82-98 ff., gives numerous examples of such loss and recovery of memory.