Note (return) — Chapter XXIV

Love-making has a large place in the Elysium tales. Goddesses seek the love of mortals, and the mortal desires to visit Elysium because of their enticements. But the love-making of Elysium is "without sin, without crime," and this phrase may perhaps suggest the existence of ritual sex-unions at stated times for magical influence upon the fertility of the earth, these unions not being regarded as immoral, even when they trespassed on customary tribal law. In some of the stories Elysium is composed of many islands, one of which is the "island of women."1297 These women and their queen give their favours to Bran and his men or to Maelduin and his company. Similar "islands of women" occur in Märchen, still current among Celtic peoples, and actual islands were or still are called by that name—Eigg and Groagez off the Breton coast.1298 Similar islands of women are known to Chinese, Japanese, and Ainu folk-lore, to Greek mythology (Circe's and Calypso's islands), and to ancient Egyptian conceptions of the future life.1299 They were also known elsewhere,1300 and we may therefore assume that in describing such an island as part of Elysium, the Celts were using something common to universal folk-belief. But it may also owe something to actual custom, to the memory of a time when women performed their rites in seclusion, a seclusion perhaps recalled in the references to the mysterious nature of the island, its inaccessibility, and its disappearance once the mortal leaves it. To these rites men may have been admitted by favour, but perhaps to their detriment, because of their temporary partner's extreme erotic madness. This is the case in the Chinese tales of the island of women, and this, rather than home-sickness, may explain the desire of Bran, Oisin, etc., to leave Elysium. Celtic women performed orgiastic rites on islands, as has been seen.1301 All this may have originated the belief in an island of beautiful divine women as part of Elysium, while it also heightened its sensuous aspect.