THE IRISH ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH
Cæsar, writing some fifty years before Christ about the Gauls and
their Druids, tells his countrymen that one of the prime articles
which they taught was that men's souls do not die--_non interire
animas_--"but passed over after death from one into another," and
their opinion is, adds Cæsar, that this doctrine "greatly tends to the
arousing of valour, all fear of death being despised."[1] A few years
later Diodorus Siculus wrote that one of their doctrines was "that
the souls of men are undying, and that after finishing their term of
existence they pass into another body," adding that at burials of the
dead some actually cast letters addressed to their departed relatives
upon the funeral pile, under the belief that the dead would read them
in the next world. Timagenes, a Greek who wrote a history of Gaul now
lost, Strabo, Valerius Maximus, Pomponius Mela, and Lucan[2] in his
"Pharsalia," all have passages upon this vivid belief of the Gauls
that the soul lived again. This doctrine must also have been current
in Britain, where the Druidic teaching was, to use Cæsar's phrase,
"discovered, and thence brought into Gaul," and it would have been
curious indeed if Ireland did not share in it.
There is, moreover, abundant evidence to show that the doctrine of
metempsychosis was perfectly familiar to the pagan Irish, as may
be seen in the stories of the births of Cuchulain, Etain, the Two
Swineherds, Conall Cearnach, Tuan Mac Cairill, and Aedh Sláne.[3]
But there is not, in our existing literature, any evidence that the
belief was ever elevated into a philosophical doctrine of general
acceptance, applicable to every one, still less that there was ever
any ethical stress laid upon the belief in rebirth. It is only the
mythological element in the belief in metempsychosis which has come
down to us, and from which we ascertain that the pagan Irish believed
that supernatural beings could become clothed in flesh and blood,
could enter into women and be born again, could take different shapes
and pass through different stages of existence, as fowls, animals, or
men. What the actual doctrinal form of the familiar idea was, or how
far it influenced the popular mind, we have no means of knowing. But
as Mr. Nutt well remarks, "early Irish religion must have possessed
some ritual, and what in default of an apter term must be styled
philosophical as well as mythological elements. Practically the latter
alone have come down to us, and that in a romantic rather than in
a strictly mythical form. Could we judge Greek religion aright if
fragments of Apollodorus or the 'Metamorphoses' were all that survived
of the literature it inspired?"[4] The most that can be said upon the
subject, then, is that the doctrine of rebirth was actually taught
with a deliberate ethical purpose--that of making men brave, since on
being slain in this life they passed into a new one--amongst the Celts
of Gaul, that it must have been familiar to the Britons between whose
Druids and those of Gaul so close a resemblance subsisted, and that the
idea of rebirth which forms part of half-a-dozen existing Irish sagas,
was perfectly familiar to the Irish Gael, although we have no evidence
that it was connected with any ritual or taught as a deliberate
doctrine.
In reconstructing from our existing literature the beliefs and religion
of our ancestors, we can only do so incompletely, and with difficulty,
from passages in the oldest sagas and other antique fragments, mostly
of pagan origin, from allusions in very early poems, from scanty
notices in the annals, and from the lives of early saints. The
relatively rapid conversion of the island to Christianity in the fifth
century, and the enthusiasm with which the new religion was received,
militated against any full transmission of pagan belief or custom. We
cannot now tell whether all the ancient Irish were imbued with the
same religious beliefs, or whether these varied--as they probably
did--from tribe to tribe. Probably all the Celtic races, even in their
most backward state, believed--so far as they had any persuasion on
the subject at all--in the immortality of the soul. Where the souls of
the dead went to, when they were not reincarnated, is not so clear.
They certainly believed in a happy Other-World, peopled by a happy
race, whither people were sometimes carried whilst still alive, and to
gain which they either traversed the sea to the north-west, or else
entered one of the Sidh [Shee] mounds, or else again dived beneath
the water.[5] In all cases, however, whatever the mode of access, the
result is much the same. A beautiful country is discovered where a
happy race free from care, sickness, and death, spend the smiling hours
in simple, sensuous pleasures.
There is a graphic description of this Elysium in the "Voyage of Bran,"
a poem evidently pagan,[6] and embodying purely pagan conceptions. A
mysterious female, an emissary from the lovely land, appears in Bran's
household one day, when the doors were closed and the house full of
chiefs and princes, and no one knew whence she came, and she chanted
to them twenty-eight quatrains describing the delights of the pleasant
country.
"There is a distant isle
Around which sea-horses glisten,
A fair course against the white-swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.[7]
Feet of white bronze under it,
Glittering through beautiful ages.
Lovely land throughout the world's age
On which the many blossoms drop.
An ancient tree there is with blossoms
On which birds call to the Hours.
'Tis in harmony, it is their wont
To call together every Hour.
* * * * *
Unknown is wailing or treachery
In the familiar cultivated land,
There is nothing rough or harsh,
But sweet music striking on the ear.
Without grief, without sorrow, without death,
Without any sickness, without debility,
That is the sign of Emain,
Uncommon, an equal marvel.
A beauty of a wondrous land
Whose aspects are lovely,
Whose view is a fair country,
Incomparable in its haze.
* * * *
The sea washes the wave against the land,
Hair of crystal drops from its mane.
Wealth, treasures of every hue,
Are in the gentle land, a beauty of freshness,
Listening to sweet music,
Drinking the best of wine.
Golden chariots on the sea plain
Rising with the tide to the sun,
Chariots of silver in the plain of sports
And of unblemished bronze.
* * * * *
At sunrise there will come
A fair man illumining level lands,
He rides upon the fair sea-washed plain,
He stirs the ocean till it is blood.
* * * * *
Then they row to the conspicuous stone
From which arise a hundred strains.
It sings a strain unto the host
Through long ages, it is not sad,
Its music swells with choruses of hundreds.
They look for neither decay nor death.
There will come happiness with health
To the land against which laughter peals.
Into Imchiuin [the very calm place] at every season,
Will come everlasting joy.
It is a day of lasting weather
That showers [down] silver on the land,
A pure-white cliff in the verge of the sea
Which from the sun receives its heat."
Manannán, the Irish Neptune, driving in a chariot across the sea,
which to him was a flowery plain, meets Bran thereafter, and chants to
him twenty-eight more verses about the lovely land of Moy Mell, "the
Pleasant Plain," which the unknown lady had described, and they are
couched in the same strain.
"Though [but] one rider is seen
In Moy Mell of many powers,
There are many steeds on its surface
Although thou seest them not.
* * * * *
A beautiful game, most delightful
They play [sitting] at the luxurious wine,
Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime.
* * * * *
A wood with blossom and fruit,
On which is the vine's veritable fragrance;
A wood without decay, without defect,
On which are leaves of golden hue."
Then, prophesying of the death of Mongan, he sang--
"He will drink a drink from Loch Ló,
While he looks at the stream of blood;
The white hosts will take him under a wheel of clouds,
To the gathering where there is no sorrow."
I know of few things in literature comparable to this lovely
description, at once so mystic and so sensuous, of the joys of the
other world. To my mind it breathes the very essence of Celtic glamour,
and is shot through and through with the Celtic love of form, beauty,
landscape, company, and the society of woman. How exquisite the idea of
being transported from this world to an isle around which sea-horses
glisten, where from trees covered with blossoms the birds call in
harmony to the Hours, a land whose haze is incomparable! What a touch!
Where hair of crystal drops from the mane of the wave as it washes
against the land; where the chariots of silver and of bronze assemble
on the plain of sports, in the country against which laughter peals,
and the day of lasting weather showers silver on the land. And then to
play sitting at the luxurious wine--
"Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime!"
I verily believe there is no Gael alive even now who would not in his
heart of hearts let drift by him the Elysiums of Virgil, Dante, and
Milton to grasp at the Moy Mell of the unknown Irish pagan.
In another perhaps equally ancient story, that of the elopement of
Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles,[8] with a lady who is a
denizen of this mysterious land, we find the unknown visitor giving
nearly the same account of it as that given to Bran.
"Whence hast thou come, O Lady?" said the Druid.
"I have come," said she, "from the lands of the living in which there
is neither death, nor sin, nor strife;[9] we enjoy perpetual feasts
without anxiety, and benevolence without contention. A large Sidh
[_Shee_, "fairy-mound"] is where we dwell, so that it is hence we are
called the Sidh [Shee] people."
The Druids appear, as I have already remarked, to have acted as
intermediaries between the inhabitants of the other world and of
this, and in the story of Connla one of them chants against the lady
so that her voice was not heard, and he drives her away through his
incantation. She comes back, however, at the end of a month, and again
summons the prince.
"'Tis no lofty seat," she chanted, "upon which sits Connla amid
short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death; the ever-living ones invite
thee to be the ruler over the men of Tethra."
Conn of the Hundred Battles, who had overheard her speech, cried, "Call
me the Druid; I see her tongue has been allowed her to-day [again]."
But she invisible to all save the prince replied to him--
"O Conn of the Hundred Battles, druidism is not loved, for little
has it progressed to honour on the great Righteous Strand, with its
numerous, wondrous, various families."
After that she again invites the prince to follow her, saying--
"There is another land which it were well to seek.
I see the bright sun is descending, though far off we shall reach it
ere night.
'Tis the land that cheers the mind of every one that turns to me.
There is no race in it save only women and maidens."
The prince is overcome with longing. He leaps into her well-balanced,
gleaming boat of pearl. Those who were left behind upon the strand "saw
them dimly, as far as the sight of their eyes could reach. They sailed
the sea away from them, and from that day to this have not been seen,
and it is unknown where they went to."
In the fine story of Cuchulain's sick-bed,[10] in which though the
language of the text is not so ancient, the conceptions are equally
pagan, the deserted wife of Manannán, the Irish Neptune, falls in love
with the human warrior, and invites him to the other-world to herself,
through the medium of an ambassadress. Cuchulain sends his charioteer
Laeg along with this mysterious ambassadress, that he may bring him
word again, to what kind of land he is invited. Laeg, when he returns,
repeats a glowing account of its beauty, which coincides closely with
those given by the ladies who summoned Bran and Connla.
"There are at the western door,
In the place where the sun goes down,
A stud of steeds of the best of breeds
Of the grey and the golden brown.
There wave by the eastern door
Three crystal-crimson trees,
Whence the warbling bird all day is heard
On the wings of the perfumed breeze.
And before the central door
Is another, of gifts untold.
All silvern-bright in the warm sunlight,
Its branches gleam like gold."[11]
* * * * *
In the saga of the Wooing of Etain we meet with what is substantially
the same description. She is the wife of one of the Tuatha De Danann,
is reborn as a mortal, and weds the king of Ireland. Her former
husband, Midir, still loves her, follows her, and tries to win her
back. She is unwilling, and he chants to her this description of the
land to which he would lure her.
"Come back to me, lady, to love and to shine
In the land that was thine in the long-ago,
Where of primrose hue is the golden hair
And the limbs are as fair as the wreathèd snow.
To the lakes of delight that no storm may curl,
Where the teeth are as pearl, the eyes as sloes,
Which alight, whenever they choose to seek,
On the bloom of a cheek where the foxglove glows.
Each brake is alive with the flowers of spring,
Whence the merles sing in their shy retreat;
Though sweet be the meadows of Innisfail,
Our beautiful vale is far more sweet.
Though pleasant the mead be of Innisfail,
More pleasant the ale of that land of mine,
A land of beauty, a land of truth,
Where youth shall never grow old or pine.
Fair rivers brighten the vale divine,--
There are choicest of wine and of mead therein.
And heroes handsome and women fair
Are in dalliance there without stain or sin.
From thence we see, though we be not seen,
We know what has been and shall be again,
And the cloud that was raised by the first man's fall,
Has concealed us all from the eyes of men.
Then come with me, lady, to joys untold,
And a circlet of gold on thy head shall be,
Banquets of milk and of wine most rare,
Thou shalt share, O lady, and share with me."[12]
The casual Christian allusion in the penultimate verse need not lead
us astray, nor does it detract from the essentially pagan character
of the rest, for throughout almost the whole of Irish literature the
more distinctly or ferociously pagan any piece is, the more certain
it is to have a Christian allusion added at the end as a make-weight.
There is great ingenuity displayed in thus turning the pagan legend
into a Christian homily by the addition of two lines suggesting that
if men were not sinful, this beautiful pagan world and the beautiful
forms that inhabited it would be visible to the human ken. This was
sufficient to disarm any hostility to the legend on the part of the
Church.
From what we have said it is evident that the ancient Irish pagans
believed in the possibility of rebirth, and founded many of their
mythical sagas on the doctrine of metempsychosis, and that they had
a highly ornate and fully-developed belief in a happy other-world or
Elysium, to which living beings were sometimes carried off without
going through the forms of death. But it is impossible to say whether
rebirth with life in another world, for those whom the gods favoured,
was taught as a doctrine or had any ethical significance attached to it
by the druids of Ireland, as it most undoubtedly had by their cousins
the druids of Gaul.
[1] "De Bello Gallico," vi. 14.
[2] See "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. pp. 107-111, where all these
passages have been lucidly collected by Mr. Nutt.
[3] All of these have been studied by Mr. Nutt, chap. xiv.
[4] Vol. ii. p. 121.
[5] In a large collection of nearly sixty folk-lore stories taken down
in Irish from the lips of the peasantry, I find about five contain
allusions to the belief in another world full of life under water,
and about four in a life in the inside of the hills. The Hy Brasil
type--that of finding the dead living again on an ocean island--is, so
far as I have yet collected, quite unrepresented amongst them. An old
Irish expression for dying is going "to the army of the dead," used
by Déirdre in her lament, and I find a variant of it so late as the
beginning of this century, in a poem by Raftery, a blind musician of
the county Mayo, who tells his countrymen to remember that they must
go "to the meadow of the dead." _See_ Raftery's "Aithreachas," in my
"Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 266.
[6] Admirably translated by Kuno Meyer, who says "there are a large
number of [word] forms in the 'Voyage of Bran,' as old as any to be
found in the Wurzburg Glosses," and these Professor Thurneysen ascribes
unhesitatingly to the seventh century. Zimmer also agrees that the
piece is not later than the seventh century, that is, was first written
down in the seventh century, but this is no criterion of the date of
the original composition.
[7] I give Kuno Meyer's translation: in the original--
"Fil inis i n-eterchéin
Immataitnet gabra rein
Rith find fris tóibgel tondat
Ceitheóir cossa foslongat."
In modern Irish the first two lines would run
"[Go] bhfuil inis i n-idir-chéin
Urn a dtaithnigeann gabhra réin."
_Réin_ being the genitive of _rian_, "the sea," which, according to M.
d'Arbois, the Gaels brought with them as a reminiscence of the Rhine,
see above p. 10.
[8] Preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. compiled from older
ones about the year 1100. See for this story "Gaelic Journal," vol. ii.
p. 306.
[9] "_Dodeochadsa for in ben a tirib beó áit inna bi bás na peccad na
imorbus, i.e._ [go], ndeachas-sa ar san bhean ó tíribh na mbeó, áit ann
nach mbionn bás ná peacadh ná immarbhádh."
[10] Also contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. transcribed about
the year 1100.
[11] Literally: "There are at the western door, in the place where the
sun goes down, a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another
crimson brown. There are at the eastern door three ancient trees of
crimson crystal, from which incessantly sing soft-toned birds. There is
a tree in front of the court, it cannot be matched in harmony, a tree
of silver against which the sun shines, like unto gold is its great
sheen."
[12] A Befind in raga lim / I tír n-ingnad hifil rind / Is barr
sobairche folt and / Is dath snechtu chorp coind. Literally: "O lady
fair wouldst thou come with me to the wondrous land that is ours, where
the hair is as the blossom of the primrose, where the tender body is as
fair as snow. There shall be no grief there nor sorrow; white are the
teeth there, black are the eyebrows, a delight to the eye is the number
of our host, and on every cheek is the hue of the foxglove.
"The crimson of the foxglove is in every brake, delightful to the eye
[there] the blackbird's eggs. Although pleasant to behold are the
plains of Innisfail, after frequenting the Great Plain rarely wouldst
thou [remember them]. Though heady to thee the ale of Innisfail,
headier the ale of the great land, a beauty of a land, the land I speak
of. Youth never grows there into old age. Warm, sweet streams traverse
the country with choicest mead and choicest wine, handsome persons [are
there], without blemish, conception without sin, without stain.
"We see every one on every side, and no one seeth us; the cloud of
Adam's wrong-doing has concealed us from being numbered. O lady, if
thou comest to my brave land, it is a crown of gold shall be upon thy
head, fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou
have with me then, fair lady."
_Apropos_ of the Irish liking for swine's flesh, Stanihurst tells a
good story: "'No meat,' says he, 'they fansie so much as porke, and
the fatter the better. One of John O'Nel's [Shane O'Neill's] household
demanded of his fellow whether beefe were better than porke. 'That,'
quoth the other, 'is as intricate a question as to ask whether thou art
better than O'Nell.'"