Part II. of the so-called _Gospel of Nic

Grimm Library

No. 18

AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE

[Uncial: (Fis Adamnáin)]

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XVII. THE LEGEND OF SIR PERCEVAL. Studies upon its Origin,

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WESTON. Vol. I. 1906.

XVIII. AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE. By C. S. BOSWELL. 1908.

8_s._ 6_d._

An Irish Precursor of Dante

A Study on the Vision of Heaven and Hell ascribed to the

Eighth-century Irish Saint Adamnán, with Translation of the

Irish Text

By

C. S. Boswell

London

Published by David Nutt

at the Sign of the Phœnix

Long Acre

1908

TO

H. M. H. B.

CONTENTS

PAGE

PART I

1. INTRODUCTORY

Dante’s _Commedia_ preceded by a long series of Visions of the

Otherworld--The Vision a favourite subject with Irish writers of

the Middle Ages--Dante’s originality 1-4

2. THE SEER

The Irish Church at the close of the seventh century--Its

missionary activity--Irish scholars and clerics on the

Continent--The authorities for Adamnán’s life--His birth

and parentage--Meaning of his name--Enters the monastery of

Iona--Becomes abbot--Missions to Northumbria--Intercourse with

the Venerable Bede--The Paschal controversy--Adamnán adopts the

Roman usage--His labours in the cause--Wins over Ireland except

Iona--His death--His _Life of St. Colm Cille_--His treatise

_De Locis Satutis_--Miscellaneous and apocryphal writings--His

scholarship--Adamnán in the later annals--Anecdote of his

student days--The Boruma Tribute--Remitted by Árd Rí Finnachta

Fledach--Adamnán’s opposition thereto--Doubtful authenticity

of the record--Further dissensions with the Árd Rí--Death

of Finnachta--Adamnán’s legislation on behalf of the women

of Ireland--Their previous status and liability to military

service--The _Cáin Adamnáin_--Character of Adamnán--The _Fis

Adamnáin_, why associated with his name--MSS. and editions of the

_Fis Adamnáin_ 4-28

3. TRANSLATION OF THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

1. Exordium--2. Enumeration of previous revelations of the

Otherworld--3. Adamnán’s translation from the body--4-6. The Land

of Saints--7-8. The Throne of the Deity--9. The Divine Presence

enthroned, and 10. Pictured as a mystic omnipresent face--11. The

Celestial City, its seven walls and its floor; 12. Its inhabitants;

13. Its design, as of a Christian Church--14. Limbo of the

excluded--15-18. The Soul’s progress through the seven Heavens;

15. Their doors and porters; the first Heaven; 16. The second

Heaven, Purgatorial pains; 17. The third and fourth Heavens; 18.

The fifth and sixth Heavens--19. The Judgment of the Soul--20. The

fate of the damned--21. Hell, a fiery glen--22-23. The Bridge of

Doom--24. The half good, half wicked--25-29. Punishments of the

wicked described; classification of crimes and punishments--27.

The charitable but carnal--29. Fiery wall reserved until after the

Last Judgment--30. Description of Hell; impatience of the damned

for Judgment; respite on Sundays--31. Adamnán returns to Heaven;

is restored to the body, and bidden report what he has seen--32.

This the subject of his subsequent preaching; consonant with the

doctrine of the Apostles and Saints--33. Enoch, Elias, and the

Bird-flocks of Paradise--34. Peroration; L’Envoy--35. Rhapsodical

description of Heaven 28-47

PART II

1. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

Sources of the mediæval legend of the Vision of the

Otherworld--The Classical Tradition--The Otherworld in

the Greek poets--Influence of the Mysteries--The effect

of initiation on the future life--Ethical teaching of the

Mysteries--Plato’s _Vision of Er_--Plato’s opinion of the

Mysteries--Description of Elysium in the _Axiochus_--The

_Frogs_ of Aristophanes; visit to Hades by Dionysos;

light thrown on the Greek views of the Mysteries of the

next world--Plutarch’s _Vision of Thespesios_--Plutarch’s

eschatology--Rebirth theory in Plato and Plutarch--The Vision

in Latin literature--The _Somnium Scipionis_--Virgil’s

description of the Otherworld--Literary character of his

treatment--Composite nature of his eschatology--His authority

in the Middle Ages 48-67

2. THE ORIENTAL TRADITION

Dante’s attitude towards Virgil--His scheme in the

Commedia--Non-classical elements thereby necessitated--Process

of accretion in the later Jewish Church--The Chaldæan

eschatology--Visits to Hades of Ishtâr and Gisdubar--The

Chaldæan Elysium--Arali, the Chaldæan Hades--Aristocratic

conception of Elysium--The effect of the Median conquest--The

Avestan eschatology--The soul after death--The Chinvât

Bridge--Judgment--The Avestan Elysium--The Tree of Life and

the World-Sea--The bird Karshipta--the Vara of Yima--Yima

and the Indian Yama--Allegoric tendencies of the Avesta--Its

adoption of earlier animism--The question of its influence

on Judaism--Darmesteter on Neo-Platonic elements in the

Avesta--Older elements in the Avestan theory of the Otherworld;

Achæmenian, Indian and Chaldæan--The Amesha Spentas and the

Philonic emanations--Their probable connection with the

Chaldæan Spirits of Earth--Chaldæan and Persian influences

upon Jewish speculation--Oriental conceptions present in the

Vision of Adamnán: the seven Heavens, the mystical Bird, the

Tree of Life, the World-Sea, the Bridge--Rebirth theory absent

from the Avestan religion--Egypt and Neo-Judaism--The Jewish

colony in Alexandria; its culture mainly Hellenic; interchange

of ideas with the Egyptians--Egyptian cults in the Hellenic

world--Egyptian eschatology; Judgment, the ‘Eater of the Dead,’

Elysium--Purgatorial and kindred theories of the Rabbis and

early Christians--Special treatment of half good, half wicked

souls--Greek and Oriental influences on the Otherworld conceptions

of the Christian Church--Rebirth rejected by the Jews, and by the

ancient Egyptians 67-94

3. THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION

The Vision of the Otherworld a favourite subject in the Jewish

apocryphal scriptures--The _Book of Enoch_--Parallels to Christian

Visions--Care for topographical details--Dissertations as in

Dante--Purgatorial theory--Descriptions of Hell and Heaven--The

Celestial Mountain--Sheol--The Tree of Life--Judgment--The _Gospel

of Nicodemus_--The _Vision of Esdras_ in the Old Testament

Apocrypha--Another _Vision of Esdras_ in the Christian apocryphal

books--The _Vision of Isaiah_--Little information respecting the

Otherworld in the canonical books of the New Testament--Details

in the Epistles of St. Jude and St. Peter and the

Revelation--Græco-Roman speculations during the early ages of the

Church--The Sibylline books--The ‘Harrowing of Hell’ legend--Spread

of eschatological writings--The _Shepherd of Hermas_--An

anticipation of Dante and Beatrice--Its scope rather anagogical

than eschatological--The Apocalypse of St. Peter--The Revelation

of St. Paul--Their influence apparent in the _Fis Adamnáin_--The

_Transitus Mariæ_--Blending of Hebraic and Hellenic conceptions of

the Otherworld--Persistence of the moral teaching in the Mysteries;

and of the popular belief in Tartarus--The Vision legend little

affected by Pagan cults or Neo-Platonic speculation--The Vision

legend in the Western Church--Instances recorded by St. Augustine

and St. Gregory--Minor importance of the legend in the West until

developed by the Irish Church 94-113

4. THE LEGEND IN IRELAND

Relations of the Irish Church with Southern Gaul and the

East--Irish Pilgrimages to Egypt--The Egyptian _Book of Adam and

Eve_ preserved in Ireland only--Resemblances between the Irish

and Oriental monastic systems--Irish knowledge of Greek writers

and intercourse with the Greeks--The ecclesiastical conception of

the Otherworld influenced by cognate ideas in Irish literature

and mythology--Dignity of the Irish literary profession;

its classifications--Categories of the Irish historical and

romantic tales--Tolerance of the Irish clergy--Survival of

the Imram and Fis, and their influence upon the literature of

mediæval Europe--The Otherworld a favourite subject in Irish

legend--Elysian realms of the Irish Gods; of the Dagda and

Oengus Óg, of Mider, of Manannán Mac Lír--Poetic description

in the _Voyage of Bran_--Tethra, king of the dead--His

messengers to summon mortals to him--The story of Connla--The

Orpheus myth in Ireland--The _Serglige Conchulaind_--No

Tartarus in the Irish mythology--Malignant powers--Sinister

aspects of the Otherworld--The realm of Scathach--The Bridge

of the Cliff--Whether of Norse origin, or ecclesiastical, or

native--Parallels in the Avesta and among primitive peoples--The

_Adventures of Nera_--The legend in the Finn Cycle--Late

survivals--The legend in the Conn Cormac Cycle--Conn’s visits to

the Tír Tairngire--Christian redactions of Pagan stories--The

adventures of Árt in the Tír Tairngire, and the courtship

of Delbchaem--The visit of Cormac to the Tír Tairngire--The

introduction of allegory--First rudimentary ethical conceptions

in connection with the Otherworld--Whether original or due to

clerical redactors--Interpolations by the redactors--Increasing

prominence of eschatological ideas in the Christian Imrama--The

chastity ideal existing side by side with its opposite in the

Tír Tairngire--Cuchulainn and the children of Doel Dermait--The

enchanted castle and its Otherworld origin--The _Voyage of

Maelduin’s Curach_--Greek influences--Elysian islands--Infernal

elements--The ‘Miller of Hell’--Picture of Elysium--Adaptation

of the Phœnix legend to old Irish myths--Bird souls--Island

hermits--The cook of Torach--The _Voyage of the Curach of

the Ui Corra_--Eschatology in the ascendant--Influences of

Nature--Purgatorial theory introduced into the Imram--The _Voyage

of Snedgus and Mac Ríagla_--Transition from Pagan to Christian

conceptions of the Otherworld--Visions of the Otherworld in

Ireland--Visions of St. Colm Cille--St. Fursa; his Vision--Vision

of Laisrén--The _Scél Lái Brátha_--The fourfold division of human

souls--The _Dá Brón Flatha Nime_ 113-174

5. THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

Its structural and literary superiority to other Visions

before Dante--The general plan--Indications of composite

authorship--Authorities followed by the writer of the Vision--The

guide to the Otherworld--The author’s use of old Irish

imagery--His ecclesiastical treatment of the subject--Pictorial

grouping and imagery--Parallels to the Imrama--The Cockayne

idea and the ascetic idea--The state described to continue

to the Last Judgment only--Deferred Judgment of certain

spirits and their Limbo--The soul’s progress through the seven

Heavens--The Purgatorial theory--Dante parallels--Judgment--The

fate of the reprobate--Insistence on the spiritual side of

their sufferings--The further description of Hell apparently

interpolated--The Bridge incident--Fourfold division of the

souls--The punishments of the reprobate--Increasing minuteness

of these descriptions by successive Vision writers--Attempts

at classification--Dante parallels--Temporary punishment of

certain sinners--The region of the damned after the Last

Judgment--Characteristics of northern and southern writers

respectively--The four rivers of Hell--Adamnán’s message--Enoch

and Elias with the Bird-flocks about the Tree of Life--Rhapsodical

description of Heaven 174-206

6. LATER DEVELOPMENTS

Irish influences upon Continental writers--Enduring effect of

St. Brendan’s legend--The _Voyage of St. Brendan_--Old Irish

incidents preserved therein--The Paradise of Birds and the

rebel angels--Cessation of the Imram and continuance of the

Fis--The _Vision of Tundale_--Great development of Purgatorial

incidents--The Bridge episode--Hell described as the mouth of a

dragon--Description of Hell--The half righteous--Converse with

persons whom Tundale had known in life--King Cormac--Paradise--The

Tree of Life and Bird-flocks--Blending in this vision of Irish

and ecclesiastical elements--Influence of the result upon

European literature--Relations to the _Fis Adamnáin_ and to

the St. Patrick’s Purgatory legend--Dante probably acquainted

with the Vision of Tundale--Comparison between the _Vision_

and the _Commedia_--Prevalence of the Vision legend on the

Continent--Foreign Visions derived from Irish sources--The

_Vision of Drihthelm_--St. Patrick’s Purgatory--The Vision of

Owen--Doubtful origin of the legend of St. Patrick’s Purgatory--Its

popularity on the Continent--Treatment by Continental

writers--The _Vision of Alberic_--Waning influence of the Irish

school--Increased number but diminished importance of the

Otherworld stories--Lack of originality 206-241

7. CONCLUSION

Recapitulation--No theory propounded as to Dante’s indebtedness

to the Irish school--His probable acquaintance with the later

Visions of that school--Probable nature and limitations of their

influence--Tendency of each school to drop the more characteristic

traits of its predecessors--Dante’s rejection of many conventional

incidents--The literary qualities of the _Fis Adamnáin_--Irish

susceptibility to the beauties of Nature and to music--Absence of

dissertations from the _Fis Adamnáin_--Interruption of the Irish

national literature--Modern renaissance 242-249

INDEX 251

AN IRISH PRECURSOR OF DANTE

PART I

1. INTRODUCTORY

Few, if any, of the great masterpieces of literature, even of those

which bear the most unmistakable imprint of an original mind, are

‘original’ in the vulgar sense of being invented ‘all out of the

head’ of the author. Most frequently they are the development and

the sublimation of forms and subjects already current; for, as Dumas

_père_ truly said, it is mankind, and not the individual man, that

_invents_. The wagon of Thespis preceded the stage of Æschylus, while

Thespis himself had predecessors who did not even adopt the wagon. The

great dramatic schools of all periods took the greater and better part

of their themes from the myth, history, or fiction current in their

day. So it has been with most other kinds of literature, and to this

rule the _Commedia_ of Dante, though one of the most truly original

creations of the human mind, forms no exception. The main subject of

the poem, the visit of a living man, in person or in vision, to the

world of the dead, and his report of what he had seen and heard there,

belongs to a class of world-myths than which few are more widely

distributed in place or time, and none have been more fortunate in

the place won for them by the masters of literature. After occupying

an important place in several of the antique religions it afforded

subjects to the genius of Homer, Plato, and Virgil; it was then adopted

into the early Christian Church, and afterwards constituted one of the

favourite subjects in the popular literature of the Middle Ages, until,

finally, Dante exhausted the great potentialities of the theme, and

precluded all further developments.

The _Commedia_ is like a mighty river formed by the confluence of

several great tributaries, each of which is fed by innumerable springs

and streamlets, which have their rise in regions remote and most

diverse from each other, and are all tinged by the soil of the lands

through which they flow. It is with one of these tributary streams

that the following pages deal, and that not the least important among

them, for to it the Vision of the Otherworld, as current in the later

Middle Ages, owed much both of its popularity and its contents, not,

indeed, by way of direct derivation or suggestion--a view which several

circumstances forbid us to entertain--but as the result of an influence

which, in an earlier stage of culture, had determined the direction

which the Vision legend actually followed in its later developments.

The subject would appear to have possessed a special fascination for

the Irish writers at the time when Ireland was the chief intellectual

centre of Western Europe, and the constant flux and reflux of Irish

teachers and foreign students necessarily tended to spread abroad so

much, at any rate, of the compositions of the Irish schools as was in

harmony with the tastes and beliefs of Christendom at large.

By far the most important of the Apocalyptic writings which proceeded

from the Irish schools is the Vision which bears the name of St.

Adamnán, of which a translation is given in the present volume. It is

interesting to compare it with the later and greater work, and to mark

the numerous points of resemblance which may be discerned in works so

widely different. This and the like productions of a ruder, but not

ignorant nor uncultured, age, deserve no less attention than that which

we bestow upon the works of the primitive schools of art and letters,

before Giotto and his compeers had effected the release of painting

from the bonds of formalism, and had opened out the ways of Nature

and imagination, and before the immediate predecessors of Dante had

rendered possible his _dolce stil nuovo_.

At the same time it may be seen how the legend which received its

apotheosis in Dante’s immortal verse came into being upon the misty

heights of primitive myth, and after forming the theme of poets and

philosophers in classical antiquity, entered into the literature and

teaching of the early Christian Church; how the ecclesiastical legend,

as it had now become, was adopted into the Irish Church at the time of

its greatest activity, and there received the impress of the national

genius, and became blended with the national traditions; thence it

returned again to become a part of the general literature of Europe,

and received yet further elements from the newly popular romances of

chivalry, and still more from the revived classical tradition, until

the elixir of the great magician’s genius finally transmuted the

amalgam into gold to be a κτῆμα ἐς ἀεί.

To recognise these facts is not to disparage or limit the originality

of Dante’s genius; rather his true originality is thrown into higher

relief by a comparison with all other labourers in the same field

who had gone before him. Nothing but the study of these labours

will enable us to give him his due place in European literature and

thought, while such a study will explain and justify certain features

in his treatment of the theme which may be repugnant to modern

ways of thinking, but were not only justified, but necessitated,

by the beliefs and traditions universally accepted in his own day.

Dante himself always loved to acknowledge his indebtedness to his

literary progenitors, alike among the writers of antiquity and his

own contemporaries or immediate predecessors; and it seems fitting to

preserve the memory of a school of writers to whom, although he knew it

not himself, are largely due the actual character and scope of the work

by which he achieved immortality.

2. THE SEER[1]

By the close of the seventh century the Irish Church had almost reached

the period of its greatest prosperity and of its greatest influence

upon the culture of Western Europe. The Three Orders of Saints had

done their work, and although in Ireland, as throughout the rest of

Europe, Christianity had not entirely prevailed over the heathenism

of the more sequestered populations--the _pagani_--yet, through the

length and breadth of the country, the National Church was established

in close conjunction with the State, of which, indeed, it had come to

form an integral part; and wherever the Irish clergy prevailed, studies

flourished.

The missionary zeal of the Irish clergy had made known the Gospel to

the courts of barbarian princes, and to the still pagan inhabitants of

North Britain and Germany, Gaul and Burgundy, Switzerland, Styria, and

Lombardy, and even carried it to the Faroe Isles and Iceland. At home,

what sparks of antique learning yet lurked beneath the ashes to which

the fires of civilisation had smouldered down were gathered into a

focus in schools where crowds of students from the surrounding nations

found hospitality and instruction; while abroad, the foundations of

Iona, Lindisfarne, and Malmesbury, Luxeuil, St. Gall, and Bobbio,

with many more of lesser fame, stood out like citadels erected to

maintain a peaceful conquest. And from the schools of Ireland were to

issue the men who were destined, during the next two centuries, not

merely to leave their mark upon the Church as theologians and founders

of monasteries, but, further, to play an important part in moulding

the new civilisation of the Frankish Empire, to lay the foundations

of modern philosophy, and to promote the study of natural science

and literature by lucubrations, crude, indeed, as compared with the

productions of more favoured ages, but standing out conspicuous above

the level of their own time.[2]

Meanwhile, though the Three Orders of the Irish Saints had come to an

end about the middle of the seventh century, they were succeeded by

many great Churchmen, who combined with their ecclesiastical duties

a lively interest in secular politics, in which they were wont to

intervene, most commonly, no doubt, with beneficial effect, though

occasionally with results nothing less than disastrous.

One of the foremost, if not the very foremost, among the Irish clerics

of this period was St. Adamnán, the reputed seer of the Vision which

bears his name. This great prelate is a striking figure both in the

ecclesiastical and secular history of his times; but the information

we possess concerning him, though not altogether scanty, is not all of

equal value. It consists partly of the evidences furnished by his own

writings and contemporary records, partly of the further particulars

which have been preserved in the annals compiled from the tenth to the

twelfth centuries, though these, no doubt, are derived in great measure

from earlier records.

Adamnán was of high birth, as were many of the leading Irish Churchmen,

the constitution of the National Church being thoroughly aristocratic,

in accordance with the civil society upon which it was moulded. His

father was Ronán, son of Tinne, a man of chiefly rank in the territory

of Sereth, or Tír Aedha, now the barony of Tirhugh, in south-west

Donegal, and the descendant of Conall Gulbán, the founder of a famous

house, various branches of which ruled Tír Conaill from the fifth

century until the fall of the O’Donnells at the beginning of the

seventeenth century. Adamnán’s mother, Ronat by name, was of the Cinel

Enda, a sept of West Meath.[3] The date of his birth is variously

stated, but he appears to have been born between the years 624 and 627

at Drumhome, in Tír Aedha.[4] The name Adamnán is a diminutive of Adam,

but through the tendency of Irish phonetics to elide the _d_ and _m_

in certain positions, it came to be written sometimes in the confusing

forms Eunan and Onan, and has even been travestied into Theunan and

Dennan.

Adamnán entered the great monastery of Iona as a novice, probably

about the year 650, as Segine (_ob._ 652) was then abbot. There he

was distinguished for his devotion and learning, and in the year 679,

soon after the death of Abbot Failbhe, was elected to succeed him,

being ninth in descent from St. Colm Cille, the founder, to whom he

was akin. Indeed, all Adamnán’s predecessors, and his successors for

several generations, were members of the same great family. In the

government of his house and of the ecclesiastical establishments

in the neighbouring islands, he displayed the qualities of an able

administrator, as well as those of saint and scholar; nor did he

confine his activities to matters ecclesiastical, but, like most of the

Irish saints, took an active part in public events.

About the year 684, King Ecgfrid of Northumbria made a descent upon

the Irish coast, between Magh Breg, the plain north of the Liffey,

and Belach Dúinn, now Castlekieran, north-west of Kells, and carried

away many captives. In the following year he invaded the Picts of

Scotland, and was slain at Dun Nechtan. His successor, Aldfrid (the

son, according to some accounts, of an Irish mother), had been driven

into exile in early youth, and taking refuge in Ireland was educated

in the schools of that country, to which he paid a grateful tribute

in after-life. He had sojourned for a while at Iona, and there became

acquainted with Adamnán, who now took advantage of this intimacy, and

came to Aldfrid’s court to plead the cause of the captives. He was

successful in this, and had the happiness to redeem from slavery sixty

of his countrymen, whom he brought back with him on his return. This

visit produced results of great importance to the Irish Church. During

his stay in Northumbria, Adamnán contracted a close intimacy with the

Venerable Bede--who strongly censured Ecgfrid’s unprovoked, aggression

(_Hist. Eccl._ iv. 26)--upon whom he made a strong and favourable

impression, as being _vir bonus, et sapiens, et scientia scripturarum

nobilissime instructus_. Their frequent colloquies during this, and,

apparently, a second mission of Adamnán to Northumbria, about two years

later, turned upon the two main points wherein the Irish usage differed

from that of Rome: _i.e._ the form of the tonsure, which, in Ireland,

was made crescent-wise across the head, and the time of keeping Easter.

In the latter respect, Ireland retained the older computation, founded

upon the Jewish method of calculating the Passover, which had been

adopted by Rome during the disputes on the subject with the East and

with Alexandria, and was in force at the conversion of Ireland. In

463 Pope Hilarius introduced an improved system of calculation, which

ultimately was generally adopted throughout the West, though not

without a struggle in those many parts of the Continent where Irish

influence was powerful. As a matter of course, the reformed system was

brought into England by Augustine, and contributed to widen the gulf

between the English and British Churches. The south of Ireland, or part

of it, appears to have accepted the change in the year 633, but it took

nearly another century to win over the rest of the country. Bede urged

upon Adamnán the propriety of conforming to the general rule of the

Church, and his arguments wrought such conviction in his hearer that

Adamnán devoted much of the latter portion of his life to the task of

inducing his countrymen to accept the Roman usage.

Indeed, the remainder of Adamnán’s life appears to have been divided

between his abbatial duties and long and frequent visits to Ireland,

in the course of which he is said to have taken that part in secular

politics to which we shall have to recur. The greater part of this

time, however, he appears to have spent in travelling about Ireland,

occupied with his favourite scheme for bringing the time of the

Easter celebration into conformity with the general practice of the

Western Church. His efforts were generally successful; Bede, in fact

(_Hist. Eccl._ v. 15), asserts that he succeeded in winning over to

the Catholic observance ‘almost all those who were not subject to the

rule of Iona.’ In the year 700, or shortly after, he returned to Iona,

and attempted to introduce his reform into his own monastery, but in

spite of his abbatial authority and of his great personal influence, he

found the conservatism of that great stronghold of the Irish Church too

much for him, and his monks refused to admit any innovation upon the

national practice. He died on the 23rd September 704, and was buried at

Iona. His relics were brought to Ireland in 727, but are said to have

been restored to his monastery in 730.

Adamnán earned well the epithet ‘High Scholar of the Western World,’

which is conferred upon him at the opening of his Vision. His most

celebrated work was the _Life of St. Colm Cille_, written in a Latin

which is generally admitted to be far superior to that commonly in use

at his day. The work suffers from the form in which it is cast; it does

not relate the events of the Saint’s life in chronological sequence,

but is divided into three books, the first being devoted to Colm’s

prophetical revelations, the second to his miracles, and the third to

his angelical visions. Nevertheless, it gives much information of great

interest, relating as well to the life and acts of St. Colm as to the

internal life of the Irish Church, while the prefaces contain important

biographical matter. The prominence given to the miracles, visions,

and the like, associated with Colm’s name, is merely what we find in

a large proportion of the hagiology of all periods of the Church’s

history, while the narrative possesses a character of its own, and a

human interest, which preserve it from the monotony and conventionality

often prevailing in writings of this class, and establish a certain

kinship with the _Fioretti_ of St. Francis. Altogether, the _Life_

is commonly accepted as the most important extant monument of the

Celtic Church, and also one of the most notable pieces of biography,

ecclesiastical or lay, produced by the early Middle Ages.

Another work proceeding from his pen was a treatise upon the Holy

Places of Palestine. This, too, was written in Latin, and is considered

by Dr. Reeves to be superior, in point of style, to the _Life of

Colm Cille_. He was instigated to undertake this task by Arculf, a

bishop of Gaul, who had travelled in Palestine, Syria, Constantinople,

Alexandria, and other parts of the East, and on his return had been

blown out of his course, and wrecked on some coast near to Iona. Here

he was hospitably entertained by Adamnán, and in the course of a

prolonged sojourn through the stormy winter months held much learned

converse with his host, to their mutual edification. Arculf had studied

the topography and history of the places he visited with a thoroughness

almost unique at that day, and had even preserved accurate

measurements and descriptions of buildings, etc. He freely imparted the

results of his investigations to Adamnán, who was himself possessed of

the learning which could be acquired from such books as were accessible

to him.

Several ecclesiastical works--a Rule, eight Canons, etc.--are

attributed to Adamnán; there have also been preserved a poem and

several devout _opuscula_ in Irish which have been ascribed to him,

without foundation.

It would appear that he had some knowledge of Greek, and even possessed

a certain acquaintance with, at any rate, the Hebrew vocabulary,

whether at first or second hand.

It now remains to be seen what further light is cast upon Adamnán’s

character by the later annals; and here we find a mixture of _Dichtung

und Wahrheit_, and no criterion whereby we may distinguish with any

certainty between the two. The additional particulars derived from

this source, if we except a few legends of miracles and visions of the

usual type, relate for the most part to Adamnán’s political activity

during the last decade of the seventh century. One episode, however,

of Adamnán’s schooldays gives the earliest recorded fact, if a fact,

of his career. It is a mere anecdote, unsupported by evidence, yet it

contains no inherent improbability, and is worth repeating, if only

as an authentic picture of one aspect of scholastic life in ancient

Ireland, and also as affording the first glimpse, probably, of the

‘beggar-student’ who figured so conspicuously in the later Middle

Ages, and in Ireland survived as the ‘poor scholar’ almost to our own

day. The students at the Irish centres of learning--Universities, as

they have been called, not without reason--used to dwell about their

teachers in huts of wattle, provision for their maintenance, education,

and books being made by the chiefs and ecclesiastical foundations.

So great, however, were the throngs of students, native and foreign,

who flocked to these schools, that many were compelled to eke out the

public allowance by having recourse to the charity of neighbours. Among

these was Adamnán, who was one of a company, or mess, of five students

and their tutor, the younger students taking it in turn to provide for

all. One day this task procured Adamnán an adventure, which introduced

him to the future monarch, Finnachta Fledach, his future relations

with whom, if truly related by the annals, were destined to be fraught

with momentous consequences to them both and to the whole of Ireland.

Finnachta, though of royal race, had once been so poor that his whole

worldly possessions consisted of a house, a wife, an ox, and a cow. At

the time of which we speak, he possessed a following, and one day, as

he and his retinue were travelling at full gallop, they came across a

young student laden with a pitcher of milk, who, in his haste to avoid

the horses, upset the pitcher and spilt the milk. This boy was Adamnán,

bringing home the day’s provision for himself and his messmates. He set

out to run by the side of the horsemen, and kept up with them until

they reached their destination. Finnachta took notice of the boy, and,

entering into conversation with him, was so well pleased, that he not

only made good the loss, but provided the five youths and their tutor

with a house and maintenance, receiving in return from the tutor a

prophecy that he, Finnachta, should one day become monarch of Ireland,

with Adamnán for his _anamchara_, or confessor. It does not appear that

this interview was immediately productive of any further consequences

to Adamnán, who, in due course, entered the monastic life, as before

mentioned.

The next incident of importance, not already mentioned, which the

annalists relate concerning Adamnán, is at once one of the most

momentous and most obscure portions of his career--namely, his action

in connection with the Boruma tribute. This was a heavy fine, in

cattle and various precious articles, which Tuathal Techtmar, Árd-Rí

of Ireland about the end of the first century A.D., had laid upon

Leinster in perpetuity (or, according to some authorities, for forty

years) to punish a grave crime committed by the king of that province.

The intermittent exaction of this tribute was not the least among the

many causes of discord which prevented the ideal polity of Ireland,

viz. a confederation of kingdoms and principalities--an Empire we might

call it--under the overlordship of the Árd-Rí, from ever becoming

realised in a permanently efficient form. This grievance St. Moling,

with the support of several other leading prelates, determined to

remove, and, it is said, induced Finnachta (who had become Árd-Rí in

673-4, having defeated and slain in battle his predecessor Cennfaelad)

to issue a decree for its abolition. This event is commonly dated in

the year 693, but Canon O’Hanlon, on the authority of O’Flaherty’s

_Ogygia_, thinks it must be earlier, and is inclined to place it in

692, the year of Adamnán’s visit to Ireland.[5] It is recorded in a

treatise on the Boruma, printed and translated by Mr. Standish Hayes

O’Grady in his _Silva Gadelica_; it is there told in narrative form,

with dialogues in the _oratio recta_, and intermingled with many

fictitious circumstances so as to make up a story; however, the main

incidents accord with a fragment of Irish annals given by Mr. O’Grady

in the same work, and with the Irish poem formerly ascribed to Adamnán.

The means by which St. Moling induced the king to grant his request

show all the symptoms of a folk-tale. By the promise of eternal life

immediately after death, he procured Finnachta’s promise to remit the

tribute until _Luan_, which in Irish properly means Monday, but was

also and still is a frequent term for the Day of Judgment--‘Black

Monday.’ The monarch, understanding the word in its literal sense,

thought the terms easy, and gave his promise; the saint, however,

insisted upon putting his own interpretation on it, and Finnachta had

to consent to the perpetual remission of the tribute. The measure

itself was most wise and statesmanlike; nevertheless, pernicious as

the tribute was, the abolition of it touched the pride of the Ui

Néill, the ruling race of Ireland. The organisation of the Church was

based upon the clan system which prevailed in the State; religious

communities were often composed of fellow-tribesmen, ecclesiastical

dignities passed from one generation to another of the same chiefly

family, and the head of an order was practically a clerical chieftain,

sharing with the lay princes that fatal tendency to prefer local

to national interests which has been fraught with consequences to

Ireland more dire than the Boruma itself. Adamnán is represented as

possessing his full share of this family or racial pride, and joined

with the clergy of his race in offering a bitter opposition to the new

measure. The narrative of his dealings with Finnachta is more graphic

than authentic. With an authority, to say the least of it, worthy

of a Hildebrand or Innocent III., he sent a clerk to Finnachta to

summon him to instant conference. The king was then playing at chess,

and declined to budge until his game was ended. Adamnán, informed of

this, sent back word that he would chant fifty psalms while waiting,

the effect of which would be to deprive the king’s whole race of the

kingdom for ever. This was announced to the king, but he had begun

a second game, and declined to stir until it was over. Adamnán then

sent word that he would chant another fifty psalms, which should bring

on the king shortness of life; but Finnachta, now engaged in a third

game, sent the same answer as before. Then Adamnán sent word that he

would chant yet another fifty psalms, which should deprive Finnachta

of the Lord’s peace. Then Finnachta hastily arose, quitted his chess,

and repaired to Adamnán’s presence. On being asked why he came, after

ignoring all previous messages, he explained that the exclusion of his

posterity from his kingdom troubled him but little, neither did he care

for a speedy death, seeing that Moling had promised him eternal life,

but he could not bear to be excluded from the Lord’s peace. However,

though Finnachta then made personal submission to Adamnán, the decree

remained, and God would not suffer Adamnán to deprive the king of the

reward which Moling had promised him.

It is obvious that this narrative, in point of form, is fiction pure

and simple; as fictitious as the speeches in Thucydides, or the

dialogues in Herodotus or Plutarch. For this reason, and because of

the discrepancy of dates, and the uncertainty attending the whole

question of the remission of the Boruma, some authorities are inclined

to call in question the entire story of Adamnán’s relations with

Finnachta, and to relegate it to the domain of fiction. This summary

method of cutting the knot appears to be somewhat arbitrary: if a

liberal admixture of fiction be sufficient absolutely to discredit the

chronicles into which it enters, we may be called upon to disbelieve

that there is any historic basis for Livy’s _History_, or the records

of Charlemagne, for instance. In the present case it seems most

doubtful whether any means exist for determining what, if any, basis

of fact underlies the narrative, but having regard to the attention

paid by the Irish writers to the record of past and contemporary

events--which by no means implies the strict accuracy of the record--it

seems improbable that the recorded acts, in matters of great public

interest, of such notable characters as Árd-Rí Finnachta and St.

Adamnán should not represent, in substance, the parts which they

actually played in the public life of their time.

About this time another cause of discord is said to have put a further

strain upon the relations subsisting between the Saint and the Árd-Rí.

Finnachta having excluded the lands belonging to the Order of St. Colm

Cille from the privileges accorded to the foundations of SS. Patrick,

Finian, and Ciaran, Adamnán again provoked, and this time apparently

with better reason, by this fresh infringement of the dignity of Ulad,

put a curse upon the king, and foretold that his life should be short,

that he should fall by a fratricidal stroke, and that the kingdom

should pass from his race for ever; which triple prophecy was fulfilled

when Finnachta and his son Bresal were slain by a cousin in the year

693-4.

A few years after these events, according to the annals, Adamnán

acquired a more honourable distinction by means of the ecclesiastical

legislation embodied in his ‘Canons,’ and by the more famous

law, or code of laws, known as the _Cáin Adamnáin_. Each of these

was promulgated at a _Mórdáil_--‘Great Assembly’--the Diet or

States-General of Ireland. According to the more general account,

both were passed at a Mórdáil held in 697 at Tara, or, according to

others, at Ballyshannon, Derry, or Raphoe. Probably Tara was assumed

inadvertently to have been the place of meeting by some chronicler

who, bearing in mind the ancient custom, had forgotten that Tara had

been abandoned since the cursing of it by St. Ruadán. According to

the Four Masters and Tigernach, the last Feis of Tara was held in the

year 554 A.D. Or, possibly, there is a confusion between the general

Mórdáil of Éire and an ecclesiastical Synod which appears to have

been held at Tara about the time in question. In this uncertainty as

to which of the several Synods and Mórdála, held towards the close of

the seventh century, was the scene of Adamnán’s legislation, Canon

O’Hanlon suggests that the Synod of 694-5 would be the most likely

occasion of the enactment of the Canons, if it were certain that

Adamnán was present (_op. cit._ ix. 508 and 512), and that the _Cáin_

was passed at the Mórdáil of 696-7, in the reign of Árd-Rí Loingseach

mac Oengusa, according to the general account; this likewise agrees

with the treatise about to be mentioned, which, however, gives Birr as

the place of assembly. The most important article of the _Cáin_ was the

renewal of a law passed by St. Colm Cille at the Mórdáil of Druimceatt

in 590, but since fallen into desuetude, whereby women were exempted

from military service. The _Cáin Adamnáin_ is an Old Irish treatise,

probably of the tenth century, according to Professor Kuno Meyer, who

has published an edition of it, with notes, in _Anecdota Oxoniensia_

(_Mediæval and Modern Series_, pt. viii.). It is not the work of

Adamnán himself, but merely purports to give an account of the laws

which he passed, and the circumstances of his doing so. It is clearly

compounded of various elements, and it is worked up into a complete

story by dint of the employment of a number of fictitious details. It

opens with a melancholy picture of the status of women in Ireland in

Adamnán’s day, their home life being depicted as a state of abject

slavery, while they were further liable to military service. These

descriptions can only be accepted with very great limitations, for

the laws, the Church literature, and the romances of Ireland contain

abundant evidence to prove that the state of things here depicted, if

it existed at all, was not generally prevalent, the picture drawn in

the _Cáin_ being greatly exaggerated for the greater honour and glory

of Adamnán. At the same time there is no need to go to the opposite

extreme, and assume that the position accorded to women in ancient

Ireland realised in practice the theories of chivalry. It does not

follow that the author of the _Cáin_ invented the circumstances he

describes; indeed, there is evidence that a similar state of things

existed in Ireland so late as Tudor times at least, while parallels

might be found in the great cities of a much more recent date. But it

is the wont of those who treat of social and moral evils, whether as

reformers or satirists, or in a less worthy capacity--from Juvenal to

Zola, and from Salvian to Father Bernard Vaughan--to represent the

sporadic and occasional evils of society as its habitual condition.

As regards the military service of women, it appears certain that

women did, and probably were required to, serve in the wars to some

extent. Nevertheless, neither the annals nor the romances warrant the

conclusion that great troops of women swelled the Irish armies. It

seems probable that in the varied and complicated system of the Irish

land tenure, female tenants may have been obliged to render military

service _ratione tenurae_, instances of which practice occur in other

parts of Europe.

Whatever the nature or extent of the evil, it was greatly taken to

heart by Adamnán’s mother Ronat, and dutiful as her son was to her, she

counted his service as nought until he should effect the emancipation

of women. One day, as they were on a journey--Adamnán, after his usual

custom, carrying his mother on his back--they came to a battlefield,

where so great had been the slaughter that the women lay, the soles of

one touching the neck of another; but the most piteous sight of all was

a woman with her head in one place and her body in another, and her

baby lying on the breast of the corpse, with a stream of milk on one

cheek, and a stream of blood on the other. At his mother’s bidding,

Adamnán set the woman’s head upon the trunk, made the sign of the

cross with his staff, and she arose and related her experiences in the

next world between her death and resuscitation. Ronat, still further

confirmed in her purpose, imposed incredible austerities upon Adamnán

in order to coerce him into compliance. At the end of four years an

angel came to him and bade him rise, but he refused to do so until

he received a promise that women should be emancipated. He then came

forward with his proposals of reform, which offended several of the lay

princes, so that they combined to put Adamnán to death. At length terms

were agreed upon, and all parties pledged themselves that in future

women should be exempted from military service, and that no women

should be slain by men without full legal penalties being exacted. This

compact was solemnly sworn to by the contracting parties; the formula

of the oath was founded upon that whereby the kings in pagan times had

been wont to bind themselves in matters of great moment, and which

survived, with necessary modifications, for some centuries after the

introduction of Christianity. They took to witness the sun and moon,

and all the other elements of God; the Apostles, Gregory, the two

Patricks, and other Irish saints. The terms of the oath explain the

form of St. Patrick’s famous hymn.

The construction of the treatise is extremely loose; the form, in many

places, is that of the ecclesiastical legend, and the present redaction

was evidently made in the clerical interest. As a further instance

of its composite character, in c. 33 it makes a fresh start with the

words _Incipit sententia angeli Adamnano_, and relates how the angel,

after two previous punishments inflicted, came to Adamnán and smote him

on the side, bidding him go to Ireland and enact a law that no woman

should be slain with impunity. It also states that Adamnán’s law was

extended to clerical students and children, and further gives sundry

amendments of the laws relating to cases of assault, rape, slander of

chastity, etc. Women, in turn, were made liable for the crimes they

might commit; in particular, they were rendered punishable for poison,

arson, or undermining a church by the old Irish penalty of being set

adrift in a boat with a single paddle, and one vessel of meal and one

of water.

The accuracy of this treatise in point of detail hardly calls for

discussion. It is a specimen of the form in which we have received

much of our information concerning ancient Ireland; a form combining

fact and fiction in a manner which often renders it impossible to

distinguish between the two without extraneous evidence, which is

seldom to be had. Here we have as the substratum an account of

Adamnán’s actual legislation, set off with an abundance of fictitious

detail, in which a redactor has attempted to combine two different

accounts of the circumstances which brought about Adamnán’s action,

while he has added a quantity of other legislative reforms, more or

less connected with the subject, but only a part of which, if any,

can be due to Adamnán himself. Here, as in the case of the Boruma, it

is left for the most part to our subjective views of probability to

determine what amount of reliance is to be placed upon the historical

facts which form the main subject of the treatise. Despite the crudity

of the work, perhaps the evidence in favour is rather stronger in

this case, for not only is it natural to assume that the statements

of a legal nature would be tolerably in accordance with the facts,

which must have been known to many of the readers, but the ascription

of the reform to Adamnán--under the alternative name of the _lex

innocentium_--appears to have been accepted without hesitation by

several independent authorities, including the _Annals of Ulster_ and

the _Fis Adamnáin_.

The last action of Adamnán recorded by the annals, and one that seems

fairly well authenticated, is a sentence of excommunication pronounced

by him at Tara upon one Irgalach for murder. One of the annalistic

fragments preserves a report that Adamnán, at the close of his life,

was expelled from Iona by his own monks on account of his action in the

Easter controversy; this, however, appears to be without foundation,

for the fact of his death and burial at Iona seems certain. Another

rumour was that grief at the recalcitrance of his monks, for the same

reason, had brought about his death, for which no other explanation

seems needed than his seventy-seven years, mostly spent in strenuous

toil, though, of course, any vexation or distress of mind might well be

the immediate cause of death.

Our available information concerning Adamnán does not set a very vivid

picture of him before us. His own writings are of a somewhat impersonal

character, while the Irish annalists seldom bring to their portrayal

of historical persons that power of characterisation and description

constantly apparent in the romances. We have already seen Bede’s

testimony to Adamnán’s learning and high character; the Four Masters,

in their notice of Adamnán’s death (which they place in 703) refer to

that passage, and add that he was ‘tearful, penitent, given to prayer,

diligent, ascetic, temperate; for he never used to eat excepting on

Sunday and Thursday only; he made a slave of himself to these virtues;

and, moreover, he was wise and learned in the clear understanding of

the Holy Scriptures of God.’ And a few scattered notices of the kind

appear to comprise all that we have in the way of direct description.

Nevertheless, the authentic record of his actions, combined with

the more doubtful evidence of later annalists--which, at the very

least, serve to show what notion of him survived, and was transmitted

to posterity--may enable us to trace with tolerable accuracy the

more salient outlines of his character. That his was a striking and

commanding personality there is no doubt: he appears to have been

fashioned after the same type as so many of the leading Churchmen of

the Middle Ages, from Ambrose down; a type which combined a great

proficiency in learning, and a devotion to the virtues of the cloister,

with a strenuous activity which asserted itself alike in the diligent

administration of their ecclesiastical office, and in the exercise of

their influence upon secular affairs. In these last, their intervention

commonly made for righteousness, and aimed at putting a conscience into

politics, never a superfluous task. They often stood forward as the

champions of the wronged and oppressed, and in this cause, and, even

more, in defence of the claims and immunities of the Church, never

feared to encounter the temporal power; rather otherwise, in fact.

This side of Adamnán’s character appears in his mission to Northumbria

on behalf of the kidnapped Irishmen, and his alleged defence against

Finnachta of the privileges of his own order; above all, in his

amelioration of the lot of women--possibly, too, of students and

children--the records whereof, whatever the amount of historical fact

which they contain, reveal the estimation in which Adamnán was held.

At the same time, if the incident of the Boruma be either true in

fact, or true to his character, it is evident that he was as liable as

any of his great compeers, foreign or Irish--Colm Cille and Ruadán,

for instance--to allow his zeal to be enlisted in the cause of party

interest or personal sympathies, to the great public detriment. He

enjoyed a traditional reputation for filial piety, and, at least,

tribal patriotism. His recorded asceticism, however severe, does not

appear, save in some of the least credible passages of the _Cáin_, to

have been carried by him to the same lengths of self-torture, worthy of

a solitary of the Thebaid, or an Indian _yogi_, as it was by many of

the Irish saints. Indeed, his was mainly a life of action, and even

the learning for which he was famous is more apparent in the quality of

his work than in the quantity of it. The part of his career which left

the most enduring mark upon his Church and his country was the mainly

successful struggle which he carried on as the leading Irish champion

of Catholicism in the long contest, begun before his time, and only

finished by Malachi and Gelasius in the middle of the twelfth century,

between the respective partisans of national and of general usages in

the ritual of the Irish Church. That portion of his work which he left

unfinished, the submission of his own order, was completed within a

quarter of a century after his death, and the ties between the Churches

of Ireland and other countries of the West were drawn tighter by the

removal of the chief cause of separation.

The Vision which has come down to us under the name of Adamnán is not

to be included among his own works. The language and style, which

belong to a much later period, are conclusive as to this; while several

allusions in it, as that to the donation of Constantine, also point

to a later date. Dr. Whitley Stokes, indeed, considers that ‘it is

not older than the eleventh century,’ but Professor Windisch, in the

preface to his edition, demurs to this conclusion, and holds that it

was written in the tenth century, possibly even in the ninth (_Irische

Texte_, i. 167 _sqq._). Nevertheless, it is not to be classed among the

literary forgeries with which the Middle Ages teem, composed sometimes

_animo fraudandi_, sometimes, in the loose views then prevailing

as to literary property and literary fame, in order to secure the

prestige of a great name. The present work, however, never professes

to be Adamnán’s own composition. It invariably speaks of him in the

third person, terming him the ‘High Scholar of the Western World,’

and refers to his legislation at the Mórdáil, where he is said to

have first received his Vision, and to his subsequent preaching as

matters of past history. It remains, then, to be considered how this

Vision came to be associated with his name. We have seen that he

had become the hero of a saga-cycle, into which fiction had made an

entrance: whether we must class the doubtful episodes as historical

romance merely, or as facts set off by the aid of fiction. This,

however, brings us little further, for it is certain that this popular

reputation was earned by his actual achievements: again, therefore, we

are faced with the question how to distinguish fact from fiction. It

may be that the true author sought for his own teaching the authority

of so famous a saint; or he may have had before him an anonymous work,

and inserted the name of Adamnán from a like motive, or from a belief

in the fact; or, again, the work may be what it professes to be, and

may have for its basis a more or less accurate tradition of Adamnán’s

own teaching. A tradition, I venture to think, should be allowed a

certain weight where it is in conflict neither with ascertained fact

nor with probability; and here the probabilities appear to be rather

favourable than otherwise, which, perhaps, in the absence of further

evidence, is the nearest approach to a conclusion we can hope to make.

It is not a forgery; it is not a polemical work, where the author might

wish to shoot forth his darts from under the shield of some Ajax of

controversy. Neither is it a mere floating legend, ready to be tacked

on to any name indifferently; on the contrary, it is written with great

care, and with a literary and constructive skill rare at that day. It

makes no profession, and betrays no purpose, save to give the substance

of the Vision which Adamnán related to the Mórdáil, and of his

subsequent preaching. The fashion of the day renders it highly probable

that Adamnán’s teaching or preaching may have assumed this form. Then

his fame and authority, at the most active period of Irish letters,

might avail to preserve a work, thus widely published, for a longer

time than the 150 or 250 years which intervened between his death and

the composition of the Vision, even in its present form, while if

the reasons adduced in a later place (Part 11. Sec. 5, _post_) for

supposing it to be of a composite character be correct, it follows that

the latest author must have had before him--as in any case he probably

had--materials of an earlier date.

Thus the _Fis_ and the _Cáin_ appear to institute an exact parallel. We

have as the basis of the extant work, in the one case, a law enacted,

in the other, a Vision recited, by the saint, which a later writer has

worked up into literary form, while other details relating to the same

subject-matter, but entirely irrelevant, have been added later.

Two versions of the _Fis Adamnáin_ exist, in two mediæval MSS., now

in the Library of the Royal Irish Academy. Of these, the _Lebor na

h-Udri_, or ‘Book of the Dun’ (_sc._ ‘Cow’), is the oldest extant

Irish MS. which contains a collection of secular literature, being

copied about 1103 from another MS., probably about fifty years older,

which was itself compiled from various earlier writings. The other

MS., the _Lebor Brec_, ‘Speckled Book,’ was written towards the end

of the fourteenth century. Both versions have been edited and printed

by Professor Windisch in _Irische Texte_, vol. i. I believe that no

complete translation of either version has been published in a form

generally accessible, though O’Donovan made and translated extracts

from it, and Dr. Whitley Stokes has edited and translated it, with

notes, but printed fifty copies only for private distribution (Simla,

1870). I have had the advantage of referring to this edition, thanks

to the courtesy of Mr. Alfred Nutt, to whom I am indebted for several

valuable suggestions and corrections.

The following translation has been made from the L.U. version. There

is little difference in substance between the two versions, but the

L.U. is more attractive from a literary point of view, the L.B. being

somewhat overloaded in places with Latin quotations, while it wants the

concluding chapter, which the L.U. possesses.

3. TRANSLATION OF THE FIS ADAMNÁIN

1. Noble and wonderful is the Lord of the Elements, and great and

marvellous are His might and His power. For He calleth to Himself in

Heaven the charitable and merciful, the meek and considerate; but He

consigns and casts down to Hell the impious and unprofitable host

of the children of the curse. For upon the blessed He bestows the

hidden treasures and the manifold wages of Heaven, while He inflicts a

diversity of torments, in many kinds, upon the sons of death.

2. Now there are multitudes of the saints and righteous ones of the

Lord of Creation, and of the apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ,

unto whom have been revealed the secrets and the mysteries of the

Heavenly Kingdom, and the golden wages of the righteous; likewise the

divers pains of Hell, with them that are set in the midst thereof. For

unto the Apostle Peter was shown the four-cornered vessel, let down

from Heaven,[6] with four cords to it, and they with sound as sweet

as any music. Also, the Apostle Paul was caught up to Heaven,[7] and

heard the ineffable words of the angels, and the speech of them that

dwell in Heaven. Moreover, on the day of Mary’s death, all the apostles

were brought to look upon the pains and miserable punishments of the

unblest; for the Lord commanded the angels of the West[8] to open up

the earth before the face of the apostles, that they might see and

consider Hell with all its torments, even as Himself had told them,

long time before His Passion.

3. Finally, to Adamnán ua Thinne, the High Scholar of the Western

World, were revealed the things which are here recorded; for his

soul departed from out his body on the feast of John Baptist, and

was conveyed to the celestial realm, where the heavenly angels are,

and to Hell, with its rabble rout. For no sooner had the soul issued

from out the body, than there appeared to it the angel that had been

its guardian while in the flesh, and bore it away with him to view,

firstly, the Kingdom of Heaven.

4. Now the first land to which they come is the Land of Saints. A

bright land of fair weather is that country. In it are diverse and

wondrous companies, clad in cassocks of white linen, with hoods of

radiant white upon their heads. The saints of the Eastern world form

a company apart in the East of the Land of Saints; the saints of the

Western world are to the West of the same land; the saints of the

Northern world and of the South, in their great concourse, are to the

South and North. For every one that is in the Land of Saints may freely

listen to the music, and may contemplate the vault,[9] wherein are the

nine classes of Heaven, after their rank and order.

5. For one spell, then, the saints keep singing marvellous music in

praise of God; for another, they are listening to the music of the

heavenly host; for the saints have no other need than to listen to the

music that they hear, and to contemplate the radiance that they see,

and to sate themselves with the fragrance that there is in that land.

The wonderful Lord is face to face with them, in the South-east,[10]

and a crystal veil between; to the South is a golden portico, and

through it they discern the form and adumbration of the people of

Heaven. No veil, however, nor cloud is between the Host of Heaven and

the Host of the Saints, but those are ever manifest and present unto

these, in a place that is over against them. A circle of fire surrounds

this place, yet do they all pass in and out, and it does scathe to

none.

6. Now, the Twelve Apostles and Mary the pure Virgin form a band

apart, about the mighty Lord. Next to the Apostles are the Patriarchs

and Prophets, and the disciples of Jesus. On the other side are holy

Virgins, at Mary’s right hand, and with no great space between. Babes

and striplings are about them on every side, and the bird-choirs of the

heavenly folk, making their minstrelsy. And amid these companies, bands

of angels, guardians of the souls, do perpetual suit and service in the

Royal presence. No man is there in this present life who may describe

those assemblies, or who may tell of the very manner of them. And the

bands and companies which are in the land of saints abide continually

in even such great glory as aforesaid, until the great Parliament[11]

of Doom, when the righteous Judge, on the Day of Judgment, shall

dispose them in their stations and abiding places, where they shall

contemplate God’s countenance, with no veil nor shadow between, through

ages everlasting.

7. But great and vast as are the splendour and the radiance in the

Land of Saints, even as hath been said, more vast, a thousand times,

the splendour which is in the region of the Heavenly Host, about the

Lord’s own throne. This throne is fashioned like unto a canopied

chair,[12] and beneath it are four columns of precious stone. Though

one should have no minstrelsy at all, save the harmonious music of

those four columns, yet would he have his fill of melody and delight.

Three stately birds are perched upon that chair, in front of the King,

their minds intent upon the Creator throughout all ages, for that is

their vocation. They celebrate the eight [canonical] hours, praising

and adoring the Lord, and the Archangels accompany them. For the birds

and the Archangels lead the music, and then the Heavenly Host, with the

Saints and Virgins, make response.

8. Over the head of the Glorious One that sitteth upon the royal throne

is a great arch, like unto a wrought helmet, or a regal diadem:[13] and

the eye which should behold it would forthwith melt away. Three circles

are round about it, separating it from the host, and by no explanation

may the nature of them be known. Six thousand thousands, in guise of

horses and of birds, surround the fiery chair, which still burns on,

without end or term.

9. Now to describe the mighty Lord that is upon that throne is not for

any, unless Himself should do so, or should so direct the heavenly

dignitaries. For none could tell of his vehemence and might, His

glow[14] and splendour, His brightness and loveliness, His liberality

and steadfastness, nor of the multitude of His Angels and Archangels,

which chant their songs to Him. His messengers keep going to and from

Him, ever and anon, with brief messages to each assemblage, telling

to the one host of His mildness and mercy, and to the other of His

sternness and harshness.

10. Whoso should stand facing about him, East and West, South and

North, would behold on each side of him a majestic countenance, seven

times as radiant as the sun. No human form thereto, with head or foot,

may be discerned, but a fiery mass, burning on for ever, while one and

all are filled with awe and trembling before Him. Heaven and earth are

filled full with the light of Him, and a radiance as of a royal star

encircles Him.[15] Three thousand different songs are chanted by each

several choir about Him, and sweeter than all the varied music of the

world is each individual song of them.

11. Furthermore, in this wise is the fashion of that city, wherein that

throne is set. Seven crystal walls of various hue surround it, each

wall higher than the wall that is before it.[16] The floor, moreover,

and the lowest base of that city, is of fair crystal, with the sun’s

countenance upon it(?), shot with blue, and purple, and green, and

every hue beside.

12. A gentle folk, most mild, most kindly, lacking in no goodly

quality, are they that dwell within that city; for none come there,

and none abide there ever, save holy youths, and pilgrims zealous for

God. But as for their array and ordinance, hard is it to understand

how it is contrived, for none turns back nor side to other, but the

unspeakable power of God has set, and keeps, them face to face,

in ranks and lofty coronels, all round the throne, circling it in

brightness and bliss, their faces all towards God.

13. There is a chancel rail[17] of silver between each two choirs,

cunningly wrought upon with red gold and silver, and choice rows

of precious stones, variegated with diverse gems, and against that

lattice are seats and canopies[18] of carbuncle. Between every two

chief companies are three precious stones, softly vocal with sweet

melody, and the upper halves of them are lighted lamps. Seven thousand

angels, as it were great candles, shine and illumine that city round

about; seven thousand others in the midst thereof are aflame for ever,

throughout the royal city. The men of all the world, if gathered into

one place, many as they are, would derive sustenance enough from the

sweet savour of any one of those candles.

14. Now, such of the world’s inhabitants as attain not to that city

after their life is spent, and to whom a dwelling-place therein is

allotted after the Words of Doom shall have been spoken, find a

restless and unstable habitation, until the coming of Judgment, on

heights and hill-tops, and in marshy places. Even so fare those hordes

and companies, with the guardian angel of every soul in their midst,

serving and tending them. In the main doorway of the city they are

confronted by a veil of fire and a veil of ice, smiting perpetually

one against the other. The noise and din of these veils, as they

clash together, are heard throughout the world, and the seed of Adam,

should they hear that din, would be seized thereat with trembling

and intolerable dismay. Faint and dazed are the wicked at that din;

howbeit, on the side of the Heavenly Host, nought is heard of that rude

discord, save a very little only, and that sweeter than any music.

15. Awful is that city, and wonderful to describe; for a little out

of much is that which we have told concerning its various orders, and

the wonders of it. Seldom indeed may a spirit, after its converse and

co-habitation with the body, in slumber and repose, in freedom and

luxury, win its way to the throne of the Creator, unguided of the

angels; for hard of essay are the seven Heavens, nor is any one of them

easier than the rest. Six guarded doors confront all those of mortal

race who reach the Kingdom. There sits a porter and warder of the

Heavenly Host, keeping guard over each door. At the door of that Heaven

which is nearest on the hither side sits the Archangel Michael, and

with him two youths,[19] with iron rods in their laps to scourge and

smite the sinners as they pass through this the first grief and torment

of the path they have to tread.

16. At the door of the next Heaven, the Archangel Ariel is warder, and

with him two youths,[20] with fiery scourges in their hands, wherewith

they scourge the wicked across the face and eyes. A river of fire, its

surface an ever-burning flame, lies before that door. Abersetus is the

angel’s name who keeps watch over that river, and purges the souls of

the righteous, and washes them in the stream, according to the amount

of guilt that cleaves to them, until they become pure and shining as

is the radiance of the stars. Hard by is a pleasant spring, flowery

and fragrant, to cleanse and solace the souls of the righteous, though

it annoys and scalds the souls of the guilty, and does away nought

from them, but it is increase of pain and torment that comes upon them

there. Sinners arise from out of it in grief and immeasurable sadness,

but the righteous proceed with joy and great delight to the door of the

third Heaven.

17. Above this, a fiery furnace keeps ever burning, its flames reaching

a height of twelve thousand cubits; through it the righteous pass

in the twinkling of an eye, but the souls of sinners are baked and

scorched therein for twelve years, and then their guardian angel

conveys them to the fourth door. About the entrance door of the fourth

Heaven is a fiery stream, like the foregoing. It is surrounded by a

wall of fire, in breadth twelve thousand measured cubits, through which

the souls of the righteous pass as though it were not there, while

the souls of the sinful tarry therein, amid pain and tribulation, for

another twelve years, until their guardian angel bears them to the door

of the fifth Heaven.

18. In that place is a fiery river, which is unlike all other rivers,

for in the midst of it is a strange kind of whirlpool, wherein the

souls of the wicked keep turning round and round, and there they abide

for the space of sixteen years; the righteous, however, win through it

straightway, without any hindrance. So soon as the due time cometh for

the sinners to be released thereout, the angel strikes the water with a

rod, hard as though it were of stone, and uplifts the spirits with the

end of that rod. Then Michael bears them up to the door of the sixth

Heaven; but no pain nor torment is meted out to the spirits at that

door, but there they are illumined with the lustre and the brilliancy

of precious stones. Then Michael cometh to the Angel of the Trinity,

and one on either side they usher the soul into the presence of God.

19. Infinite and beyond all telling is the welcome wherewith the Lord

and the Heavenly Host then receive the soul, if he be a pure and

righteous soul; if, however, he be an unrighteous and unprofitable

soul, harsh and ungentle is the reception of him by the Mighty Lord.

For He saith to the Heavenly Angels, ‘Take, O Heavenly Angels, this

unprofitable soul, and deliver him into the hand of Lucifer, that he

may plunge him and utterly extinguish him in Hell’s profound, through

ages everlasting.’

20. Thereupon that wretched soul is parted, fearfully, sternly,

awfully, from sight of the Heavenly Kingdom, and of God’s countenance.

Then utters he a groan, heavier than any groan, as he comes into the

Devil’s presence, after beholding the bliss of the Kingdom of Heaven.

He is then deprived of the guidance of the Archangels, in whose company

he had come unto Heaven. Twelve fiery dragons swallow up every spirit,

one after the other, until the lowest dragon lands him in the Devil’s

maw. There doth he experience the consummation of all evil, in the

Devil’s own presence, throughout all ages.

21. After that his guardian angel had revealed to Adamnán’s spirit

these visions of the Heavenly Kingdom, and of the first progress of

every soul after parting from its body, he brought him to visit the

nethermost Hell, with all its pains, and its crosses, and its torments.

Now, the first region whereunto he came was a land burnt black, waste

and scorched, but with no punishment at all therein. A glen, filled

with fire, was on the further side of it; huge the flame of it,

extending beyond the margin on either hand. Black its base, red the

middle, and the upper part thereof. Eight serpents were in it, with

eyes like coals of fire.

22. An enormous bridge spans the glen, reaching from one bank to the

other; high the middle of it, but lower its two extremities. Three

companies seek to pass over it, but not all succeed. One company find

the bridge to be of ample width, from beginning to end, until they win

across the fiery glen, safe and sound, fearless and undismayed. The

second company, when entering upon it, find it narrow at first, but

broad afterwards, until they, in like manner, fare across that same

glen, after great peril. But for the last company the bridge is broad

at first, but strait and narrow thereafter, until they fall from the

midst of it into that same perilous glen, into the throats of those

eight red-hot serpents, that have their dwelling-place in the glen.

23. Now the folk to whom that path was easy were the chaste, the

penitent, the diligent, they who had zealously borne a bloody testimony

to God. The band who found the path narrow at first, but afterwards

broad, were they who had hardly been constrained to do God’s will, but

had afterwards converted their constraint into the willing service of

God. They, however, to whom this way was broad at first, but strait

thereafter, were sinners who had listened to the precepts in God’s

word, and after having heard, fulfilled them not.

24. Furthermore, vast multitudes abide beyond, feeble and powerless,

upon the shore of perpetual pain, in the land of utter darkness. Every

other hour the pain ebbs away from them, and the next hour it returns

upon them again. Now these are they in whom good and evil were equally

balanced, and on the Day of Doom, judgment shall be passed between

them, and their good shall quench their evil on that day; and then

shall they be brought to the Haven of Life, in God’s own presence,

through ages everlasting.

25. Another great company is there, near to the last-named group, and

monstrous their torment. And this is their plight: they are fettered

to fiery columns, a sea of fire about them up to their chins, and

about their middle fiery chains, in the shape of vipers. Their faces

are aflame with agony. They who are tormented thus are sinners,

fratricides,[21] ravagers of God’s Church, and merciless Erenachs,[22]

who, in presence of the relics of the Saints, had been set over the

Church’s tithes and oblations,[23] and had alienated these riches to

their private store, away from the Lord’s guests and needy ones.

26. Great multitudes there are, standing in blackest mire up to their

girdles. Short cowls of ice are on them. Without rest or intermission,

through all time, their girdles are perpetually scorching them with

alternate cold and heat. Demon hosts surround them, with fiery

clubs[24] in their hands, striking them over the head, though they

struggle against them continually. These wretches all have their

foreheads to the North, and a rough, sharp wind blowing full upon their

foreheads, in addition to every other woe. Red showers of fire are

raining on them, every night and every day, and they cannot ward them

off, but must needs endure them throughout all ages, wailing and making

moan.

27. Some of them have streams of fire in the hollows of their visages;

some, fiery nails through their tongues; others, through their heads,

from side to side. They who are so punished are thieves and liars,

and they who have practised treachery, reviling robbery and rapine;

judges of false judgment and contentious persons; women who have dealt

in poison and spells, reivers,[25] and learned men who have practised

heresy. Another great throng is set upon islands, in the midst of the

fiery sea. About them is a silver wall [built] of the raiment and the

alms [which they had bestowed]. These are they who have practised

mercy without zeal,[26] and have remained in loose living, and in the

bonds of their sin, until the hour of their death; but their alms are

a bulwark unto them, amid the fiery sea, until the Judgment, and after

Judgment they shall be brought into the Haven of Life.

28. Another great multitude is there, clad in red and fiery mantles

down to their middle.[27] Their trembling and their outcries make

themselves heard, even unto the firmament. An unspeakable throng of

demons is throttling them, holding in leash the while raw-hided,

stinking hounds, which they incite to devour and consume them. Red

glowing chains[28] are constantly ablaze about their necks. Every

alternate hour they are borne up to the firmament, and the next hour

they are dashed down into Hell’s profound. Now they that are punished

in this wise are the regulars who have transgressed their rule,[29] and

become loathers of piety; also, impostors who have deceived and seduced

the multitude, and have undertaken miracles and wonders which they are

not able to perform. Moreover, the children that are tearing the men

in orders, are they who were committed to them for amendment, but they

amended them not, neither reproved them for their sins.

29. Thereafter, is another vast company; East and West they go,

unresting, across the fiery flagstones, at war with demon hosts.

Innumerable showers of red-hot arrows are rained upon them by the

demons. Running, they go on without stop or stay, making for a black

lake and a black river, that they may quench those arrows therein. A

weeping and wailing, truly miserable and piteous, do the sinners make

in those waters, for in them they only meet with augmentation of their

pain. Now they that are punished thus are cheating artificers, weavers,

and merchants; judges that judged falsely, both Jews, and others

likewise; impious kings, Erenachs of lewd and crooked ways, adulterous

women, and the panders that destroyed them by their evil practices.

Beyond the land of torment is a fiery wall; seven times more horrible

and cruel is it than the land of pain itself. Howbeit, no soul dwells

therein till Judgment, but it is the province of the demons only, until

the Day of Judgment.

30. At that time, woe unto him that shall dwell amid those pains, in

company with the Devil’s own tribe! Woe unto him that is not ware of

that tribe! Woe unto him over whom a vile and savage demon is set in

dominion! Woe unto him that shall be hearkening unto the spirits,

making moan and complaining unto the Lord, for the speedy coming of

the Day of Judgment, that they may know whether they shall find any

remission of their doom; for they get no respite ever, save only for

three hours on every Sunday. Woe unto him unto whom that land shall

be for a lasting inheritance, even for ever and ever! For this is the

nature of it: Mountains, caverns, and thorny brakes; plains, bare and

parched, with stagnant, serpent-haunted lochs. The soil is rough and

sandy, very rugged, icebound. Broad fiery flagstones bestrew the plain.

Great seas are there, with horrible abysses, wherein is the Devil’s

constant habitation and abiding-place. Four mighty rivers cross the

middle of it: a river of fire, a river of snow, a river of poison, a

river of black, murky water. In these wallow eager hosts of demons,

after making their holiday and their delight in tormenting the souls.

31. What time the holy companies of the Heavenly Host are singing the

eight hours with harmonious melody, praising the Lord with cheerfulness

and great gladness, then do the souls of the wicked utter piteous and

weary wailings, as they are buffeted unceasingly by the demon hordes.

Such then are the pains and torments which his guardian angel revealed

to the spirit of Adamnán, after his journey towards the Heavenly

Kingdom. After which he was borne in the twinkling of an eye through

the golden forecourt,[30] and through the crystal veil, to the Land of

Saints, whereunto he had been brought at first, after his departure

from the body. But when he bethought him to rest and tarry in that

land, he heard, through the veil, the angel’s voice enjoining him to

return again into that body whence he had departed, and to rehearse in

courts and assemblies, and in the great congregations of laymen and

of clerics, the rewards of Heaven and the pains of Hell, even as his

guardian angel had revealed them unto him.

32. This, then, was the doctrine that Adamnán continually taught to

the congregations, from that time forth, so long as he remained in

life. This, too, is what he preached in the great assemblies of the

men of Éire,[31] wherein the Constitution of Adamnán was imposed upon

the Gaels, and the women were emancipated by Adamnán and by Finnachta

Fledach,[32] King of Éire, and the princes of Éire, of one accord.

Such, too, were the tidings which Patrick, son of Calpurnius, at the

Gospel-dawn, was ever wont to proclaim--to wit, the rewards of Heaven

and the pains of Hell--to all them that would believe in the Lord,

through his teaching, and would accept his guidance of their souls.[33]

That, too, is the doctrine most constantly taught by Peter and Paul,

and the [other] apostles likewise, to wit, the enumeration of the

rewards and pains which had been revealed to them in like manner. And

so did Silvester, Abbot of Rome, teach Constantine, son of Helen, High

King of the World, in the General Synod when he offered Rome to Paul

and to Peter.[34] Even so did Fabian, successor to Peter, teach Philip,

son of Gordian, the King of Rome, whereby he believed in the Lord, and

many thousands beside believed in that hour.[35] For he was the first

King of Rome that believed in the Saviour, Jesus Christ.

33. And these are the tidings which Elias declares continually unto the

souls of the righteous, under the Tree of Life, which is in Paradise.

So soon as Elias opens his book in order to instruct the spirits,

the souls of the righteous, in form of bright white birds, repair to

him from every side. Then he tells them, first, of the wages of the

righteous, the joys and delights of the Heavenly Realm, and right glad

thereat are all the throng. After that he tells them of the pains and

torments of Hell, and the woes of Doomsday; and easy it is to mark the

look of sorrow that is upon his face, and upon the face of Enoch; and

these are the two sorrows of the Heavenly Kingdom. Then Elias shuts

his book, and thereupon the birds make exceeding great lamentation,

straining their wings against their bodies till streams of blood issue

from them, in dismay of the woes of Hell and of the Day of Doom.

34. Now, seeing that they who make this moan are the Saints to whom

have been allotted everlasting mansions in the Heavenly Realm, how much

more fitting were it for the men that are yet on earth to ponder, even

with tears of blood, upon the Judgment Day, and upon the pains of Hell.

For at that time will the Lord render due recompense to every one on

earth; that is to say, rewards to the righteous, and punishments to the

guilty. And at that very time shall the guilty be set in the abyss of

everlasting pain, and the book of the Word of God shall then be closed,

under the curse of the Judge of Doom, for ever. But the saints and the

righteous, the charitable and the merciful, shall be borne to the right

hand of God, to a lasting habitation in the Kingdom of Heaven, there to

abide without age or death, end or term, for ever and ever.

35. This, then, is the manner of that City: A Kingdom without pride,

or vanity, or falsehood, or outrage, or deceit, or pretence,[36] or

blushing, or shame, or reproach, or insult, or envy, or arrogance,

or pestilence, or disease, or poverty, or nakedness, or death, or

extinction, or hail, or snow, or wind, or rain, or din, or thunder,

or darkness, or cold,--a noble, admirable, ethereal realm, endowed

with the wisdom,[37] and radiance, and fragrance of a plenteous land,

wherein is the enjoyment of every excellence.

FINIT--AMEN--FINIT.

PART II

1. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION

The legend which forms the ground-plan of the Vision of Adamnán and of

the _Commedia_ of Dante, can claim a pedigree of great antiquity that

may be traced back along several widely divergent lines. The principal

of these may be grouped roughly under the heads of the Classical

Tradition, the Eastern Tradition, the Ecclesiastical Tradition,

resulting from the fusion in the early Christian Church of Hellenic and

Oriental schools of thought; and the Irish Tradition, which last does

not so much represent an entirely independent growth of the legend, as

a new departure, whereby the Ecclesiastical Tradition, transplanted

to Ireland, and there coming into contact with certain cognate ideas

which were prominent in the native mythology and romantic literature,

acquired a fresh development, and reappeared in several forms which

became the most popular exponents of the mediæval theories of the

Otherworld, until the revival of classical learning, in the twelfth and

following centuries, enabled Dante to carry the leading idea, common to

all forms alike, to its culmination.

The Classical Tradition was preserved in the Middle Ages chiefly

through the sixth book of Virgil’s _Æneid_, which relates the visit of

Æneas to Hades; but this episode was itself suggested by the similar

adventure of Odysseus, told in the eleventh book of the _Odyssey_. The

fundamental conception, a visit paid to the Otherworld by a living man,

appears in many of the Greek myths: _e.g._ in the journey to Hades of

Demeter, in the course of her search after her daughter Persephone,

stolen away by Pluto; of Orpheus in quest of Eurydice; of Theseus and

Peirithoos in their attempt to abduct Persephone; of Herakles, Castor

and Pollux, and others. Like most of the myths that have contrived to

‘make their fortune’ by virtue of their strong appeal to the human

imagination, these legends, when the myth-making age had long departed

from the Hellenic peoples, and the age of creative imagination had

given place to one of literary culture, passed into the domain of

literature pure and simple. As such they entered upon a new life in the

writings of the Latin authors; for even in Virgil the literary aspect

of the legend predominates, though not to the exclusion of its more

serious elements. This merely literary character is yet more apparent

in the treatment of the legend by the tragic poets, and by Lucan and

Claudian, while Apuleius, the Perrault of antiquity, found in it a

theme for the play of his graceful fancy.

The early descriptions of the Otherworld, being originally myths

of spontaneous growth, and not composed to be the vehicles of

instruction or edification, contain little of eschatological or

ethical significance,[38] the few stock examples which they give

of the penalties attached to guilt being rather instances of the

private vengeance of Zeus upon those who had rebelled against him,

or had outraged the dignity of some member of the divine family of

which he was the head. In these accounts the abode of the departed

appears as a dreary region, wherein they lead a shadowy and undesirable

existence;[39] and although, side by side with this conception, another

theory subsisted, assigning to the happy dead a serene existence in

the Elysian plain, or in the enchanted isle of Leuke, this belief did

not go beyond the notion, vaguely, however beautifully, expressed,

of a bright and happy region of perpetual calm, where death or decay

or care was unknown, and the departed spirits dwelt in flowery and

fragrant meadows, beneath blossoming trees, beside calm seas or

smoothly flowing streams, while soft breezes were perpetually blowing.

The Greek poets, from Homer downwards, contain innumerable references

to this Elysium,[40] but although we sometimes find a hint, as in

Pindar and some of the tragic poets, that these joys are reserved for

those who have deserved them by a righteous life on earth, the later

instances show scarcely any advance upon the earlier in the direction

of a systematic eschatology, and consequently brought the Vision legend

little, if any, further on its way.[41]

Our legend, however, received fuller development in another school of

Hellenic thought. Simultaneously with the mythology of the Greeks,

and on one side distinct from it, though on the other side closely

connected with it, existed a tradition of a more essentially religious

character; religion being distinguished from philosophical speculation

on the one hand, and myth and legend on the other. Hence, apparently,

proceeded the Neo-platonising tendency in Greek philosophy--to adopt

the familiar and convenient name, though the thing is older than the

Neo-Platonists, or than Plato himself--the tendency to regard the old

myths as a repository of the ‘Wisdom of the Ancients,’ and to disengage

from the husk of fable the moral and scientific truths which it was

supposed to contain. In so doing, the philosophic schools were not

merely attempting to read their own notions into the traditions of

antiquity, but were also, to some extent, endeavouring to develop germs

which already existed in the best and most serious thought of their

own and earlier times. This side of the Hellenic religion would appear

to have existed in its purest and most highly developed form in the

Mysteries, especially those practised at Eleusis, and at other places

in which the Eleusinian rites prevailed.

Most questions relating to the Greek mysteries, their place of origin,

the date of their introduction, the relation of one school to another,

the rites practised therein, and the nature of the instruction imparted

to the neophytes, have given rise to many debates, and some of them

can hardly yet be regarded as entirely settled. Happily, our subject

does not call for discussion of these contested points, all that we are

concerned with being the significance of the mysteries to the spiritual

life of Greece at the time of their highest development. The general

result of investigation would seem to make it probable that the Greeks,

from a very early period, practised certain rites in honour of Demeter,

and that these rites were connected with agriculture, and with the

means whereby the unseen powers presiding over it might be rendered

propitious. These rites, as in many barbarous nations, were held to

confer certain privileges upon the participants, who could only obtain

access thereto by a secret initiation; and when the ideas of death and

renovation, which arose naturally out of the subject, proceeded by an

easy transition--partly by an inherent principle of growth, and partly

through the introduction of foreign elements[42]--to questionings

concerning man’s fate after death, the same rites were regarded as

efficacious in ameliorating his condition in the unseen world. At the

same time, as the doctrine of the effect of conduct upon the future

life gained ground, this side of the question likewise came within the

purview of the mystical schools, and an ethical as well as a theurgic

efficacy was ascribed to the initiation rite. This important step in

advance would appear to have been taken in the sixth century B.C. at

latest, when the theories of the Orphic-Pythagorean school became

widely diffused. M. Foucart, as we have seen in the last note, holds

that this movement was due to the Egyptian researches carried on by

the early Greek philosophers in the course of their travels; Rohde, on

the other hand, regards it as a strictly national movement, and denies

the late adoption of any alien faith of a highly developed character.

In any case, it is certain that the theories of which Pythagoras was

the most famous exponent assumed great prominence at this time. The

leading principle of these was the doctrine of the soul’s rebirth on

earth, in another body, after undergoing a process of purification in

the Otherworld. It was one of the primary objects of the mysteries to

ensure that the soul’s progress through the intermediate state should

be as easy, and the conditions of its rebirth as favourable, as could

be effected by the due performance of the mystical rites; and while the

great progress of ethics, which with the early philosophers went hand

and hand with philosophical speculation, effected a fuller recognition

of moral conduct in this life as one of the means most conducive to the

desired end, preference was still given, even among the righteous, to

those who had undergone the initiation ceremony.[43]

Professor Gardner even traces the Hades theory from the mystic rites

(_loc. cit._); probably this derivation would only apply to that

theory in its more fully developed form. He holds that the Orphic cult

‘occupies the background of religious life’ in Greece; that it was an

enthusiastic type of religion, and capable of ready association with

the ideals of such moral and political revivalists as Pythagoras and

Empedocles. According to this authority, there were two foci of the

Orphic cult: at Eleusis, and in the rites of Dionysos. M. Foucart,

it will be remembered, denies any connection between Eleusis and the

Orphic mysteries; in which contention he would appear to be supported

by Plato, who speaks slightingly of the latter, while several passages

in his writings testify to his respect for the mysteries of Eleusis.

Certainly the two were respectively connected, originally, with the

worship of two separate and widely different divinities, although,

both having to do with the earth as the source and the renewer of

life, they soon tended towards certain common developments. Perhaps we

may not greatly err if we assume that the Orphic mysteries, in their

most perfected form, were more especially concerned with the orgiastic

ritual and with the doctrine of reincarnation, now reduced to a

philosophical system, while in the Eleusinian school ritual became more

closely connected with personal morality, thus assuming an aspect more

strictly ‘religious,’ in the modern sense of the word.

M. Foucart, indeed, holds that the instruction imparted in the

Eleusinian mysteries was _essentiellement pratique; elle avait pour

objet de mettre l’homme en état de se tirer d’affaire lorsqu’il

arrivait dans la demeure d’Hades_ (_op. cit._, p. 63). By ‘practical’

M. Foucart would appear to refer exclusively to those automatic or

quasi-mechanical effects which are supposed, all the world over,

to result from the due performance of certain rites. However, the

testimony of the Greeks themselves, as appears from the examples

about to be cited in connection with our own subject, and from other

evidences that have come down to us, appears to be conclusive as to the

value attributed to the Eleusinian mysteries, at any rate, as an agent

of moral reformation. Sir W. M. Ramsay[44] distinguishes between the

mysteries which had in view the proficiency and advancement of morals,

and the mysteries which were of an exclusively ritual and orgiastic

nature, associating the former kind with Eleusis, and places where

kindred rites were celebrated. In support of this contention, he cites

a number of passages occurring in Greek writers from the fourth century

B.C. onwards, whence it plainly appears that the Greeks regarded a

moral regeneration as a natural concomitant of initiation into the

mysteries, and even as a condition of happiness in the future life.[45]

It is in connection with the mysteries, as representing the moral

and spiritual side of the Greek religion, whencesoever derived, that

the Vision legend becomes impressed with an epideictic character and

develops those elements which had barely existed in germ in the popular

mythology.

In the Dialogues of Plato, the legend already appears as a vehicle of

religious instruction. Plato, indeed, merely gives literary form to

theories which had existed for at least two centuries before his time,

but as he is the first to employ the Vision legend in this connection,

and as it is in his hands that it first assumes its final type,

essentially identical with that of its successors in the Christian

Church, it is convenient to make him a point of departure.

In the tenth book of his _Republic_ (pp. 614 _sqq._) Plato records

the narrative of one Er, an Armenian, concerning his experiences in

the world of spirits. This Er had been killed in battle, and brought

away with the rest of the slain, but was restored to life. His soul,

upon issuing from the body, had been conveyed to a certain spiritual

(δαιμόνιον) place, where there were two openings leading down below

the earth, and two others leading up into heaven, over against one

another. Between these openings judges were stationed, who dismissed

the souls of the righteous to heaven by the upper and right-hand way,

having first impressed upon their foreheads the decree of absolution,

and despatched the wicked downward by the left-hand path, branded

behind with the record of their misdeeds. The judges commanded Er to

see and hear all that passed, that he might become the messenger of it

all to mankind. The souls of the departed, after a progress lasting

a thousand years, returned by the second openings from the celestial

and subterranean regions respectively. The return of the one company

was marked by joy and gladness, by reason of the delights which they

had enjoyed, and the spectacles of inconceivable beauty through which

they had passed, in the course of their heavenly journey; they then

entered for a while into a smiling meadow, there to hold converse with

others of the just, both those whom they had known while in the body,

and others whom they then met for the first time. The other company

appeared all parched and dusty from their journey, weeping and dismayed

at the remembrance of all they had seen and suffered during their

passage beneath the earth, for there each sinner was requited tenfold

for all the crimes that he had committed. Among these guilty ones,

special mention is made of homicides: of those who had betrayed cities

or armies, and brought them into captivity; of those who had committed

impiety towards the gods, or inflicted violence upon their parents;

all of whom were singled out for eximious penalties. Some indeed, such

as bloody tyrants, and certain private persons who were stained with

enormous crimes, lost their return entirely; these were dragged back

by wild-looking, fire-scathed men, fettered hand and foot, beaten down

and flayed, carded with carding-combs, and finally cast down into

Tartarus. With the exception, however, of this last and worst class

of criminals, the punishments allotted to all were but of temporary

duration, and the ‘souls of a day’ entered upon ‘another period of

mortal, death-fraught existence’ under conditions imposed by ‘the

Destinies, daughters of Necessity.’

This account agrees in principle, though not in detail, with _Phædo_,

p. 14. In the _Phædrus_, Plato speaks of the Eleusinian mysteries as a

means of salvation, and that, apparently, by means of the reformation

effected through a conscientious adherence to the instructions there

imparted to the initiate, rather than by any thaumaturgic virtues

inherent in the rites themselves; the true mystics, in his eyes, being

those whom he terms, in the passage of the _Phædo_ cited above, οἱ

φιλοσοφίᾳ ἱκανῶς καθηράμενοι.

In the _Axiochos_, a dialogue once ascribed to Plato, but written since

his time, Socrates is made to describe the abode of the righteous

as a country of flowery meadows beside clear streams, and full of

fruit-bearing trees. The light is full and radiant, the air soft and

pleasant, free from extremes of heat and cold. Fit places are provided

for philosophical discourse, and there are theatres where poets may

recite their verses. The most honourable place is allotted to the

initiated, who celebrate the sacred mysteries. This description,

which exhibits a naïve adaptation of the most primitive Elysium to

the intellectual requirements of a highly civilised society, is

interesting merely as affording additional evidence as to the Athenian

belief concerning the rewards of the righteous in a future life,

and the intimate connection between initiation into the mysteries,

righteousness of life, and bliss in the life to come.

In this connection, perhaps, we ought not to pass over the Hades

journey of Dionysos, as portrayed in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes,

for, burlesque as it is, it repeatedly expresses views concerning the

Otherworld coinciding closely, in substance, with the description

contained in Plato’s Vision of Er. The _Frogs_ being prior in date

to the _Republic_, this coincidence affords an independent testimony

to the representative character of Plato’s eschatological theories,

the more so as Aristophanes, in his comedy, would naturally treat his

subject in a form that he knew to be familiar to the audience. In this

play, reference is made to a true Inferno for punishment of the graver

sins. In ll. 145-151, Herakles affirms that they who had violated the

laws of hospitality, beaten their mother, smitten their father on the

cheek, perjured themselves, etc. etc., are condemned to wallow in a

morass of mud and ordure, like the wrathful, the gloomy-minded, and the

flatterers, whom Dante consigns to a similar doom in Cantos 7 and 18 of

the _Inferno_.[46] On the other hand, ‘happy bands of men and women’

inhabit myrtle groves, ‘in the midst of fairest light’ (ll. 155-7),

in the dingles of well-flowering meadows (347-8), and fields blooming

with roses (448-9), in the enjoyment of dance and song and feast (369

_sqq._). These are they who have been initiated into the mysteries (l.

158); nor does this imply a merely ritual initiation, as may not only

be inferred from a comparison with the passages from Plato, quoted

above, and with the testimonies to the like effect cited by Sir W. M.

Ramsay, but, further, appears from the words of the beatified mystics

themselves: ‘For us alone the sun shines, and the light is cheerful;

for us, who are initiate, and have followed the way of righteousness

in all our dealings, alike with strangers and with our own folk’ (ll.

454-9).

Four centuries later, Plutarch takes up the tale. His treatise ‘On the

tardy vengeance of God’ describes the vision of one Soleus, similar in

character to that of Plato’s Er, but, in many of its circumstances,

approximating far more closely to the Christian visions. This Soleus

had led a life of extreme wickedness, stained with all manner of

vice and debauchery; he had been violent, unjust, and fraudulent in

his dealings, and had squandered his patrimony by his extravagance.

Beginning, it would seem, to realise his condition, he sent to the

oracle of Amphilochus to inquire whether the remainder of his life

should be better than the earlier part: the oracle replied that it

should be better with him after his death. Sometime after this he fell

down a precipice, and was taken up for dead; but three days later,

having been carried out for burial, he came to himself just as he

was being lowered into the grave, and sat up. Thenceforth he became

a reformed character, and the remainder of his life was as exemplary

for virtue as the earlier part had been for wickedness. He explained

the reason of this conversion to his friends, by the story of his

experiences during his temporary demise. His first sensation was as of

a steersman swept into the sea by a sudden squall. Upon emerging, he

could discern, at first, nothing but stars of great magnitude, and very

far apart, emitting radiant beams, upon which the soul rode as though

in a chariot. Looking downward, he descried little fiery bubbles rising

through the yielding air, which, bursting, released aerial forms of men

and women, some of which mounted straight upward, with great velocity,

while others whirled and span rapidly about in all directions. Among

these latter he recognised several of his acquaintance, and tried

to accost them, but they all avoided him. He was more successful

with those spirits who mounted upright, among whom he recognised a

kinsman who had died young. This spirit saluted him by the name of

Thespesios, or Divine, saying that he must have come thither by order

of the gods, seeing that he was manifestly alive, for the spirits of

the dead neither cast shadows nor open and shut their eyelids.[47]

Under his kinsman’s guidance, Thespesios noted the various kinds of

souls, and observed that while all were of transparent substance, some

emitted a pure untroubled light, ‘like the full moon in her greatest

resplendence,’ others being marked with long streaks, and others,

again, repulsive with black splotches, like those on the skins of

vipers. His guide accounted for this diversity by expounding the laws

which regulate the condition of departed spirits. Adrasteia, daughter

of Zeus and Necessity, was charged with a general superintendence

over the punishments awarded to the guilty, and none of any rank or

kind might escape her vengeance; but guilt is of various degrees, so

Adrasteia deputed the chastisement of offences, after their several

kinds, to three Furies, or avenging spirits. The first of these, Poine,

is the minister of temporal penalties, whereby minor sinners are purged

of their guilt by their sufferings in this life. Those whose guilt

is not to be purged so easily are delivered over, after death, to

Dike, or avenging Justice, to be chastened in manner after described;

while the absolutely incurable are abandoned to Erinnys, who, after

pursuing them in their unavailing flight through countless torments,

plunges them, at last, into an abyss of unspeakable horror. The souls

which Dike takes in hand she first exposes naked to the gaze of their

kin, in order, if these were virtuous, that the guilty soul may be

stricken with the greater shame, or, if they too had been wicked, that

their mutual remorse may be augmented by the sight of one another’s

disgrace and sufferings. She then afflicts them with sufferings ‘as

far surpassing in sharpness and severity all torments of the body, as

reality surpasses an empty dream.’ These punishments leave upon the

soul stripes and scars which correspond to the gravity of the offences,

and gradually disappear as the soul recovers its proper temperament;

though certain souls, incapable of thorough reformation, are compelled

to complete their expiation by inhabiting the bodies of brutes for a

term. After this, the spirit conveyed Thespesios across a vast expanse

over which he was borne upon a ray of light, as easily and swiftly as

though upborne by an eagle, until he came to a yawning, unfathomable

chasm. Here the force which had hitherto sustained him failed; his

further course was stayed, and he, and several others in like case,

were left hovering about the mouth of the cavern, like birds that

desired to enter in, but dared not. The interior of the chasm was all

green with trees and grass, and adorned with flowers of every hue,

which emitted a fragrance sweeter than is the fragrance of wine to

them that love it, and amid all these dwelt the souls of the blest in

the utmost mirth and good fellowship. Ere long, Thespesios was carried

hence and brought to the place of punishment, and among the guilty he

recognised certain of his own kin. Here his kindly spirit guide quitted

him, and he was taken in charge by several grisly sprites, who thrust

him forward and made him observe the torments that were inflicted on

the wicked. In the enumeration of these, a quite Dantesque intention

‘to make the punishment fit the crime’ is apparent. For instance,

certain who had cloaked a vicious life with fine professions were

turned inside out, and compelled to wriggle onward in this guise;

hypocrites were flayed and gashed, so as to reveal their inner nature;

deadly enemies were twined together, and gnawed one another, as Ugolino

gnawed the Archbishop of Pisa in the _Inferno_. Furthermore, there were

three lakes--one of molten gold, one of lead, exceeding cold, and one

of iron; demons armed with tongs, like smiths, plunged the souls of the

avaricious into the lake of molten gold until they were heated through

and through; then into the leaden lake until they were congealed like

hail; and, finally, into the iron lake, where they were broken to

pieces; after which they were reintegrated, for a repetition of their

punishment. But most wretched was the case of them whose crimes had

communicated a taint to their posterity; for when they deemed that the

Divine justice had wrought its utmost upon them, they were met by the

scarred and distorted souls of their descendants, who, when their

parents in grief and shame tried to shirk away from them, would seize

and cling to them, sometimes, even in clusters like bees or bats, and

would hale them back to renewed torments. Finally, the souls who were

destined to return to earth in other bodies were wrought and forged

like iron to fit them for their new state.

Plutarch’s eschatology displays more system than is to be found in

his predecessors, or even in many of the Christian visions; however,

neither by Plutarch nor by Plato is the doctrine of the metempsychosis

made to fit in quite perfectly with that of a state of eternal rewards

and punishments which co-exists with it. Moreover, the purgatorial

scheme, though highly elaborated, is conceived entirely with reference

to the preparation of the soul for a renewed existence upon earth.

In following up the Greek development of the Vision legend to its

completest exposition in Plutarch, we have passed by the Latin

contributions to the subject, earlier than the Vision of Thespesios in

point of date, though not in manner of treatment. A generation before

the birth of Virgil, Cicero, in his _Somnium Scipionis_, had utilised

the Vision as a vehicle of instruction; he, however, took natural

philosophy for his theme, not eschatology.

Virgil, indeed, alone of Roman writers, made any contribution of real

importance to the development of the Vision legend in literature,

though that contribution is the flower and consummation of the legend

as it appears in the purely classical tradition. For Virgil, saturated

with the Hellenic culture, while remaining intensely Roman in his

political views and national sentiment, remains free from any tincture

of Oriental ideas. Earlier than Plutarch by more than a century, his

treatment of the subject is more modern in style and spirit, although,

in his pictures of the other world, he repeats and combines the ideas

which the ancients had held concerning it. His topography of the other

world and of the approaches thereto agrees so closely with the humorous

account in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, which, evidently, he has no

intention of copying, as to make it clear that both poets followed, in

the main, a generally accepted tradition. So, too, in his descriptions

of the Elysian Fields and of Tartarus, Virgil simply reproduces in

substance the many similar descriptions which occur in the Greek poets

and philosophers; and although he perfects these with many exquisite

touches of his own, such original contributions of his belong rather

to the domain of art than of eschatology. To take one instance, his

enumeration of those righteous ones who are admitted to the seats of

the blest, including, as it does,

Inventas aut qui vitam excoluere per artes,

Quique sui memores alios fecere merendo (_Æn._ vi. 663-4),

could only have been written in an age of self-conscious culture.

In his eschatology he is no less conservative than in his descriptions;

witness the judgment of the dead by Minos (431 _sqq._) and Rhadamanthus

(567-9); the Fate of the Giants (580 _sqq._), and other great

offenders against the persons of the gods (601 _sqq._), etc. etc.

Like Plutarch, he inflicts heavier penalties upon those who have

not expiated their guilt in this life (569). Moreover, he adopts,

without being able to reconcile, the two conflicting theories held

by his Grecian predecessors, and succeeds no better than Plato and

his followers in fusing into a consistent scheme the theory of

perpetual rewards and punishments, and the collateral theory of the

metempsychosis. In his treatment of the whole subject he betrays

the influence of several of the later schools of Greek philosophy,

and appears as a disciple of the Pythagoreans and Stoics as well as

of Plato. At the same time, he displays his modernity alike in this

eclectic and combining method, and in his general design, which is

mainly artistic and literary; the Vision legend is not introduced

with any hortatory or epideictic purpose, but, as in the earlier

epic, forms merely a part of the general machinery of the poem, the

several pictures and descriptive incidents of the Otherworld serving

as frescoes and statues and gargoyles to adorn the main body of the

edifice. An instance of this occurs in the picturesque grouping of the

monsters and personified abstractions about the gates of Hades (_Æn._

vi. 273-294), which is conceived in a purely artistic spirit, no less

than similar descriptions in Ariosto, Spenser, and Milton--we might

almost add the Rape of the Lock. The same may be said of the City of

Dis (548 _sqq._). In such passages as these, Virgil indulges the Roman

love of classification which appears in that tendency of the national

religion to apportion all phases of nature and humanity among countless

‘departmental deities,’ ridiculed by several of the early Christian

fathers, and notably by St. Augustine.[48]

In short, Virgil pressed into his service ideas, beliefs, and

speculations drawn alike from the popular creeds and traditions, and

from the philosophers of his own and earlier times. These he blended

with consummate art into one harmonious whole, uniting antiquity of

matter with modernity of treatment; and this completeness, aided by

the combination of circumstances which led him to be regarded, in after

times, as at once the epitome and the consummation of the Wisdom of

the Ancients, and as, moreover, the divinely inspired herald of the

coming transition from Paganism to Christianity, fitted him, at a time

when the higher achievements of the human intellect had to be sought

in classical antiquity, to become the _duce_, _maestro_, _guida_, that

Dante found in him.

2. THE ORIENTAL TRADITION

To Dante, Virgil appeared as the _sacer vates_ in every sense of the

term. As a poet, he towered above all other masters of the craft with

whom Dante was acquainted; the testimony of ages had concurred in

pronouncing him to be the repository and the exponent of the wisdom and

learning of the ancient world, the only secular wisdom and learning

to which the Middle Ages could turn for instruction and guidance. His

fourth Eclogue had led the Church to acclaim him as one of those pagan

seers to whom, jointly with the Sibyls, a share in the preparation for

the Gospel had been committed by Divine appointment, while the sixth

Æneid directly associated him with the Sibyls themselves; finally,

his great poem expressed the very spirit of that Roman Empire, of

which the theory at least constituted the basis and framework of the

ecclesiastical and civil polity of Christendom.

However, the task which Dante had set himself was nothing less,

according to his own affirmation,[49] than to expound the scheme of

Divine Providence with respect to ‘man, in so far as by his merit

or demerit, by virtue of freewill, he is liable to remunerative or

punitive Justice’;[50] and by the moving picture of ‘the condition

of souls after death,’[51] ‘to withdraw those living in the present

life from the state of misery, and to conduct them unto the state of

bliss.’[52] Having no desire to innovate upon the accepted beliefs, but

rather to expound them in their utmost completeness, and in accordance

with the fulness of knowledge, he naturally, and necessarily, availed

himself of the materials preserved in Christian legend and popular

tradition. These materials, in great measure, were the product of a

fusion in the primitive Church of the speculations of the Hellenistic

schools with an abundant heritage of analogous conceptions, which had

been bequeathed to it by the earlier dispensation.

Long before the Christian era, a gradual process of accretion had been

going on within the Jewish Church. In the days of their freedom, the

people of Israel had addicted themselves but little to speculations

concerning the Otherworld; during the captivity, however, they had

come into contact with the richer mythology of the conquering nations,

and after the return they fell under the influence of the various

schools of philosophy, whose teaching, coloured with a theosophic tinge

of continually increasing depth, permeated Syria in common with all

other lands in which the Hellenistic culture prevailed. These various

influences combined to produce a more spiritual type of religion, and

a more elaborate eschatology, than had originally entered into the

national faith of Israel.

The legend of a Vision of the Otherworld, in the East as in Hellas,

had gradually developed from the most primitive beginnings, the first

appearance of it occurring at a very early stage of popular tradition.

The sacred books of Assyria, which themselves embodied much of the

mythology of the earlier Accadian race, record the descent into

Hades of the goddess Ishtâr, in quest of the waters of life, and of

the national hero Gisdubar, who, like Odysseus and Æneas, had gone

thither seeking counsel from the shades of his ancestors. The abodes

of the dead are approached through seven successive gates, guarded by

monsters, and at each sits a porter who strips the souls that enter of

some part of their raiment, until, after passing the last gate, they

enter the world of shades as naked as when they came into the world

they have just left. Gisdubar, who had been conveyed to the regions of

the dead by a ferry, wherein we see the prototype of Charon’s boat,

was met on his arrival by monsters, between man and scorpion in shape,

who directed him to the abode of the blest, situate ‘at the mouth of

the rivers.’ He accordingly reached a grove by the sea-shore, at the

estuary of a river, which was the Waters of Death. The trees in this

grove were laden with precious stones, and guarded by two maidens, who

shut the door against Gisdubar, because he bore the marks of the Divine

wrath upon him. The Chaldean Elysium is described as a mountain lying

beneath a sky of silver, and bearing crops without need of tillage.

Here the souls of heroes and great men dwell for ever, reclining

on couches, and drinking the waters of life.[53] These waters are

represented in the story of the descent of Ishtâr as proceeding from

under a golden throne, set in the midst of Hades, whereon sat the

Spirits of Earth. In the grove of Eridu stood a Tree of Life, which

appears to have been a World Tree, like Yggdrasil, and at the same time

to have possessed the property of restoring life and strength to the

individual. This tree was guarded by cherubim, whose heads were like

the heads of hawks or eagles. From this Elysium a way led to Arali, the

abode of the dead in general.

That abode is described as ‘a gloomy realm beneath the earth, wherein

the spirits of the dead flit about in darkness, with dust and mud for

their food and drink.’[54] No hint is there of reward or punishment;

the same dreary lot awaits the evil and the good alike so soon as they

have quitted the light of day. The only attempt at a differential

treatment is found in that aristocratic conception of Elysium which

provides a place there for heroes and great men alone; a conception

which the ancient inhabitants of Chaldæa shared with many races of very

different type and origin, including several of the peoples of Central

America and Polynesia, and, apparently, the early Aryans of Europe. In

fact, the whole Chaldæan theory of the future life is very rudimentary,

notwithstanding the great proficiency in several departments of culture

to which the Accadian and Assyrian races had attained.

The Median conquest of Assyria and Babylon introduced the Hebrew exiles

to the Zoroastrian religion, with its mythology richer than any which

the Semitic or Pre-Semitic races had evolved, and taught them an

eschatology more elaborate than their own. The Avesta inculcated an

ethic of high morality, and taught a very systematic theory of rewards

and punishments in the future life. The experiences of the soul after

death are described with great minuteness and copiousness of detail.

For three nights after death the soul sits by the head of the body,

and all this time, if a righteous soul, experiences the consciousness

of a delight as great as any that the whole living world together are

capable of enjoying. At the end of this time it becomes aware of a

sweet-scented wind blowing from the south, and feels a pleasant sense

of being borne into a place of fragrant trees and verdure. The evil

soul, on the contrary, experiences a corresponding amount of misery

during its vigil, at the close of which it is assailed by a foul wind

from the north. Its vigil ended, every soul, good or bad, had to cross

the narrow Chinvât Bridge (_cinvata peretush_, the ‘Accountant’s

Bridge’), where good and evil spirits struggled for possession of

it, as did the angels and devils for the soul of Goethe’s Faust, and

as Michael and Satan contended for Moses, according to the tradition

referred to in the Book of Jude (ver. 9). On reaching the bridge head,

the soul of ‘good thoughts, good deeds, good words, and good religion’

was met by a lovely maiden, who was his own conscience. By her he was

conducted to the place of Judgment,[55] and there a book was opened

wherein had been kept a record of all the good and evil he had wrought

in life. Upon his righteousness being admitted, he was received with

acclamation by the celestial powers, and a place was allotted to him

among their golden seats.[56] The Avestan Elysium is described as a

holy mountain, its summit clothed with everlasting light, whither

‘come neither night nor darkness, no cold wind and no hot wind, no

deathful sickness, no uncleanness made by the Daêvas [demons], and the

clouds cannot reach up to it.’ At the foot of the mountain was a vast

sea, a _mar del essere_, in the midst of which grew the White Haôma

(Indian _Soma_), the Tree of Life. ‘The waters stand there boiling,

boiling up in the heart of the sea Pûitika, and when cleansed therein

they run back from the sea Pûitika to the tree _boura-kasha_, towards

the well-watered tree, whereon grow the seeds of my plants of every

kind.’[57] A godlike bird sits on that tree; when he flies off a

thousand branches grow out of it, and when he alights upon it he breaks

off a thousand branches.[58] Of this mystical bird, the Bundehesh, one

of the later of the sacred books, says, ‘The bird Karshipta dwells

in the heavens; were he living on the earth, he would be the king of

birds. He brought the Religion into the Var of Yima, and recites the

Avesta in the language of birds.’[59] With this we may compare the

angel described in Rev. xiv. 6 as an _angel di Dio_, flying ‘in the

midst of Heaven, bearing the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them

that dwell on the earth.’

Distinct from the Elysium of the Gods, and from the abode of the dead,

is Yima’s Heaven of Light, a _Vara_, or _hortus conclusus_, which is

a reduplication of the realm over which he presided in the Golden

Age, before this world was created.[60] The Vara was constructed by

‘the fair Yima, the good shepherd,’ at the command of ‘the Maker,

Ahura Mazda,’ in view of the destruction that was to come upon the

material world, which had become corrupt, so that he might preserve

therein the seeds of men and all other living beings, of plants, ‘and

of red blazing fires,’ in order that the earth might be replenished.

Within this Vara Yima made a reservoir, the banks of which furnished

an unfailing supply of food, and were the haunt of birds. To this

happy region, as we have seen, the mystical bird Karshipta brought

the Avesta, and preached it to the denizens, whose life was one of

perpetual mirth and gladness, exempt from heat and cold, sickness, old

age, and death; ‘and there [was] no hump-backed, none bulged forward,

there; no impotent, no lunatic; no one malicious, no liar; no one

spiteful, none jealous; no one with decayed tooth, no leprous to be

pent up, nor any of the brands wherewith Angra Mainya stamps the bodies

of mortals.’[61]

It is impossible not to be struck with the resemblance which this

passage bears to chapter 35 of the _Fis Adamnáin_. This resemblance

must be purely accidental, but it is none the less worthy to be noted;

for there is reason to suspect that a careful record of the similitudes

and coincidences which so frequently occur where imitation or direct

derivation is impossible, might tend to discourage the arbitrary

assumption that derivation must needs exist, in cases where it may be

possible, but is not proved.

It will be noted that Yima’s Vara is not represented in the _Vendîdâd_

as the abode of the dead, or connected in any way with the Otherworld;

it there appears rather as a Platonic ideal world, containing the

forms, types, or ideas after which the material world is to be

created, or, rather, restored. Yima, too, far from being one of the

principal gods, appears only as a subordinate Demiourgos, subject to

‘the Maker,’ Ahura Mazda. Hence it might seem to be foreign to our

subject; in reality, however, it is not so. However the legend may

have been explained by later philosophic speculations--probably under

Greek influences, as to which later--there is no doubt that in its

original form it was meant for a picture of the world of the happy

dead. Internal evidence of itself might convince us of this. The whole

conception of a supernatural country, inhabited by human beings who

lead a happy life amid conditions which reproduce the present world,

but under a brighter and serener aspect--a country, moreover, which

reproduces a traditionary golden age--is entirely in accord with the

familiar Elysium of the Aryan peoples. But more than this, in the

ancient Persian mythology Yima is identical with the Indian Yama, the

ruler of the departed, who crossed the rivers, leading the fathers

after him, and now presides over the spirits of the dead in a land

beyond the sunset. Here, in a land of soft winds and cool rains,

traversed by perennial streams of milk and honey, and illumined by

unfailing light, he sits under the Tree of Life, drinking the Soma (the

Persian Haôma) from its branches, and surrounded by the souls of the

righteous, all whose desires are there accomplished.

The Persian religion, in the stage at which it is preserved in

the Avesta, spiritualised much of the primitive Aryan mythology,

allegorising many of its deities into personifications of good and

evil principles and qualities. This notwithstanding, many of the more

primitive elements of the older religion were retained, and were

reinforced with a number of animistic beliefs derived from the Turanian

peoples; and when the Zoroastrian religion experienced that process

of corruption which commonly affects all ‘Religions of the Book,’ in

greater or less degree, these lower and more ancient elements asserted

themselves, so that the practical side of the religion consisted in

great measure of Shamanistic practices designed to propitiate an

innumerable host of good and evil spirits.[62]

The question how far the eschatological conceptions of the later

Judaism may have been affected by contact with Zoroastrianism

obviously depends, in great measure, upon the date to be assigned to

the first appearance in the Persian religion of the foregoing theories

concerning the future life. The Avesta consists of several books of

different character and of different dates. Darmesteter[63] holds that

it was compiled, in its present form, during the first and second

centuries of our era, although a great part of the material embodied

was of much earlier date. He further considers that the Zoroastrian

belief received its ultimate form under the influence of the schools of

Greek philosophy, with which the Persians were in close contact in the

centuries following the conquests of Alexander, and more particularly,

that the final redaction of the Avesta was indebted for its more

spiritual and philosophic elements to ‘Neo-Platonism, that is to say,

that philosophic compound inspired by the spirit of Plato, which

permeated all the speculations of the centuries before Christ, and long

after, and which finds its first and most influential exponent in Philo

Judæus. In Philo is found, as far as I know, the first exact parallel

to the Avestan doctrine,’ etc. (p. lv.).

The pronouncements of such a scholar as Darmesteter upon any _matter of

fact_ belonging to a department of learning of which he was so weighty

an authority can only be accepted by us without reserve. At the same

time, it may be permissible to consider how far the above inferences

are supported by the author’s own arguments, or rather, the extent

to which those inferences may be held to apply. It is certain that

the Hellenic, or Hellenistic, philosophies exercised great influence

throughout the more civilised parts of Asia during the existence

of the Alexandrian Empire, and for long after its dissolution. It

will be observed, however, that Darmesteter, while assuming that the

Avesta was moulded by those Platonic doctrines ‘which pervaded all

the speculations of the centuries before Christ,’ goes on to say that

this speculation ‘finds its first … exponent in Philo Judæus.’ Now,

Philo Judæus flourished in the middle of the first century of our era,

and the other most celebrated founders, or rather precursors, of the

Neo-Platonic school were of later date; Plutarch of Chæronea belonging

to the latter part of the same century, Numenius to the second century

A.D. If, then, ‘in Philo is found … the first exact parallel to the

Avestan doctrine,’ it might conceivably be argued with regard to

those parts, at any rate, of the Avestan doctrine to which the author

ascribes a Neo-Platonic origin on the strength of their resemblance

to the system of Philo, that such resemblance should be explained by

a quite opposite derivation theory.[64] The further question also

presents itself, whether the views of Philo and his school obtained so

rapid an acceptance in the East, beyond the bounds of the Roman Empire,

as greatly to affect the substance of so ancient and important a creed

as Zoroastrianism, as expounded in a recension of the sacred books of

that religion made almost immediately after Philo’s death, if not then

actually in progress.

It is enough to suggest these questions, without attempting their

solution; we are only concerned to see whether Darmesteter’s theory, if

correct, is incompatible with the existence in the earlier form of the

Avestan religion of elements which may reasonably be presumed to have

affected the development of our legend through Hebrew channels.

Darmesteter himself does not attempt to set up any hard and fast theory

on the subject. In his own words: ‘Without pressing conclusions too

hard as to facts and dates, this much can be safely inferred … that

Platonic doctrines had found their way to Persia in the first centuries

of the Christian era’ (_loc. cit._). In particular, he traces Platonic

influences in the spiritual and allegorical manner in which the

creations of the old Aryan mythology are dealt with in the Avesta, and

in the prevalence of a similar tone in the Avestan cosmology. The most

notable instances of this mode of thought occur in the Var of Yima,

which is practically a Platonic world of Ideas,[65] and in the Amesha

Spentas, or Bountiful Immortals, who, we are told, first assume the

character in which they now appear in the Avesta under the influence of

Neo-Platonic theories.[66]

At the same time, Darmesteter points out that the ancient Achæmenian

religion already possessed the fundamental doctrine of the conflict

between the powers of good and evil, and the final triumph of the good,

and of those that had adhered to it. The duration of the universe is

already divided into four periods of 3000 years each,[67] in the last

of which Ahriman was to be subdued, and men were to ‘live happily,

needing no food, and casting no shadow.’[68] He further states, as we

have seen, that the Avesta was compiled from various works of different

dates; these would necessarily embody much matter of older date than

themselves--very much older, we are warranted in believing, alike

by the analogy of other religions, and by the nature of many of the

beliefs preserved in the Avesta. In speaking of the books of which

the Avesta is composed, Darmesteter gives it as his opinion that ‘the

Vendîdâd may be taken as the best specimen of the text imbued with the

pre-Alexandrian spirit’;[69] and it is precisely the Vendîdâd that

contains the greater part, though not all, of the doctrines concerning

the Otherworld, of which an abstract has been given above.

We are thus warranted in assuming that the Persians had developed a

tolerably complete theory of the Otherworld, and of the rewards and

punishments there meted out in recompense for man’s conduct in this

life, at a date early enough to influence Hebrew thought, before either

nation had come under Hellenic influences.

In some respects, Darmesteter’s conclusions even favour this

presumption, for if we can attribute to Neo-Platonic influences the

ideal character which Yima’s Vara bears in the Vendîdâd, we can

understand at how recent a date the Vara came to be divested of the

character of an Elysium, or abode of the happy dead, such as is the

realm of Yama, of which, in other respects, it is so complete a

counterpart.

In this connection, it should also be noted that the Avestan doctrine

of the Otherworld gives no place to the theory of Rebirth, which is a

principal article of the Platonic and Pythagorean schools, and might

have been expected to occupy a prominent place in the Zoroastrian

eschatology, had this been moulded to any great extent by Greek

philosophy. In holding the finality of man’s lot after death, the

Persian doctrine agrees with that of the Jews, and, apparently, of the

Chaldæans.

However much, moreover, the elaborate dæmonic system contained in

the Avesta may be indebted to Neo-Platonism for its more spiritual

elements, it is neither certain nor probable that the substance of it

can be derived from the same source. The eschatology of the Avesta

contains much that cannot be referred to Neo-Platonic ideas, even

if it must be admitted that these were widely enough accepted, in

a sufficiently systematised form, at the date when the Avesta was

completed, while many parts of it exhibit both Indian and Chaldæan

analogies. It is enough, in this place, merely to refer to the Tree of

Life and the Waters of Life, to both of which Indian, and yet closer

Chaldæan, parallels exist; the mystical bird Karshipta, which is an

Indian myth; the Elysium of the Gods, which is little more than an

improvement on the Chaldæan Elysium; Mount Elborz, as the Persian

Holy Mountain, corresponding to the Indian Mount Meru; the World Sea,

which renews and purifies all created things, and is akin to the

ocean out of which a new world was churned by the Hindu gods. The

Var of Yima, as we have already seen, is the same as Yama’s blissful

realm. The divine beings which appear in the Avesta in the guise of

personified abstractions, are the deities of Aryan mythology travestied

presumably, according to the hypothesis, under Neo-Platonic influences.

So, apparently, the Amesha Spentas, whatever tincture of philosophic

culture they may have acquired through contact with Hellenistic

thought, were originally identical with the ‘Seven Magnificent

Deities,’ who were the Chaldæan Gods of the Elements. We have already

seen that the Seven Spirits of Earth were said to have their seats

on golden thrones in the midst of the Chaldæan Elysium, even as the

Amesha Spentas in the Avestan Heaven. Indeed, it is not necessary to

have recourse to Neo-Platonism to account for the vast hierarchies of

good and evil spirits which are found in the Avesta, and still more in

the books of the Rabbis. The Chaldæan mythology, of which both Jews

and Persians had undergone the influence long before their contact

with Hellenistic culture, was abundantly supplied in this respect.

Besides the seven principal deities (to whom, according to Lenormant,

seven malignant deities were opposed), Professor Sayce[70] alludes

to 50 great gods, 300 spirits of heaven, and 300 spirits of earth,

beside countless minor spirits of many kinds; while the later Assyrian

authorities, he says, raised the number of _great_ gods of heaven and

earth to 65,000.

Now the district occupied by the Jews during the captivity had been

a focus of the religion of Chaldæa, both in the Accado-Sumerian and

in the Semitic periods, and afterwards became an important part of

the Persian empire. The canonical books and the Apocrypha of the Old

Testament alike prove that close relations subsisted between the Jews

and both their Persian and Assyrian rulers, and exhibit traces of the

influence exercised by the latter upon the Jewish writers. Thus it

appears no rash assumption, that it is to these sources we must ascribe

the substance, at least, of those doctrines enunciated by the later

Jewish writers, for which there is no authority in the earlier writings

of their nation, but which correspond to ideas already existing among

nations with which they lived in close and intimate contact.

We have been discoursing at somewhat tedious length upon points which

may not appear to be directly relevant to our subject, seeing that the

Vision legend receives no development later than the very primitive

legends of Ishtâr and Gisdubar. Nevertheless, it is in the Chaldæan and

Persian religions that we find many of the notions and images which

furnished material to Jewish and Christian authors alike, when, under

Hellenistic influences, they took up the Vision legend as a vehicle

of instruction. Many of these conceptions continued to subsist in all

subsequent versions of the legend, even in its latest forms. It is now

time to take stock of what we have gained, and to note what features

of the Vision of Adamnán, though immediately derived by the author, as

we shall see later on, from the tradition current in the Church from

the earliest days of Christianity, or before it, correspond to similar

conceptions which exist in the Oriental tradition, while they are not

represented in the classical tradition, or, if in some cases they

may be found there, it is in a form which presents fewer and fainter

analogies to the later developments.

In the first place, the earliest Chaldæan legends already exhibit the

rudiments of that sevenfold division of the Heavens which was generally

adopted by Jewish and Christian writers alike, and ultimately received

the sanction of the scholastic divines. The science, if it can be

so called, of numbers is one of the most fertile of the many fields

which a perverted ingenuity has devoted to the assiduous cultivation

of tares, and hardly any number has been accredited with a greater

variety of significance than the number seven, by reason, doubtless,

of the primitive astronomical theory of the seven planets. Dante,

indeed, raised the number of heavens to ten, in accordance with the

astronomical system that had come to be adopted in his day, on the

authority of the ancient cosmologists, introduced to the mediæval

students through Arab channels; to the original seven planetary heavens

he added three others--the Heaven of fixed stars, the crystalline

Heaven, and the Empyrean. We may remark, in passing, that the Samoan

cosmology agrees with Dante in this tenfold division of the Heavens.

In the Chaldæan mythology this conception of a sevenfold division

occurs in germ only, but the Seven Magnificent Deities--the precursors

of the seven Amesha Spentas, and the seven Archangels of the Hebrew and

Christian divines--who preside over the several powers of nature, lend

themselves easily to the attribution of separate territories in the

celestial domain. The beginning of this phase is apparent in the seven

portals, each guarded by a porter, through which Ishtâr had to pass on

her way to the abode of the gods and of the dead, even as the spirit

of Adamnán had to pass through seven ‘Heavens,’ so-called, the door of

each being kept by an angelic warder; while the symbolism embodied in

the gradual spoliation of Ishtâr of her earthly raiment is analogous

to the gradual purgation of the soul from its earthly stains in the

Christian legend.

The idea of a Tree of Life growing in the spirit world is of wide

diffusion, and appears at an early date in the mythologies of the

Aryans, Semites, and Turanians alike, and the Hebrews in particular

needed not to have recourse for it to the mythology of either the

Chaldæans or Persians. Nevertheless several of the Rabbinical legends,

as, for instance, that of the journey of Seth to Paradise in the

Legend of the Death of Adam, deal with the subject, associating

with it the Waters of Life, in a manner less in agreement with the

Scriptural account than with the Chaldæan myth, which must have been

made familiar to the Jews during the captivity, not merely by oral

and written tradition but through the medium of the pictorial art

which would meet their eyes on every side, and in which this was a

favourite subject. In Christian legend, moreover, the Tree of Life in

Paradise is constantly introduced in connection with a mystical bird,

or birds, as in Adamnán’s Vision. The frequency of this association

may be explained in part by the great popularity in early Christian

symbolism of the Phœnix legend, in connection with the palm-tree and

the Tree of Life; nevertheless the birds of Christian legend differ in

several conspicuous respects from the traditional notion of the Phœnix,

and approach far more closely to the Karshipta, the sacred bird of the

Persians, adopted by them from the old Indo-Aryan mythology. This bird,

as we have seen, perched upon the sacred tree in Heaven, and he brought

the Avesta to the Var of Yima and preached it there, even as the birds

of Adamnán and other Christian writers sang the Hours in Paradise;

where, moreover, they are constantly associated with the preaching

of the Gospel by Enoch and Elias, who themselves exhibit some faint

analogies to Yima.

The World Sea at the foot of the Holy Mountain in the Avestan Paradise,

wherein all things defiled are cleansed and made new, reminds us of

that Crystal Sea which appears in the literature of the Christian

Church, and, in particular, is introduced with such magnificent effect

in the Book of the Revelation.[71]

The Avestan eschatology already contains the idea, unassociated with

that doctrine of rebirth by which it is accompanied in the philosophies

of India and Hellas alike, of a special temporary provision for the

souls of those mingled characters who are not yet fitted for an

eternity of either bliss or bale--an idea in accordance with the

teaching of the later Hebrew and the Christian divines, including the

author of the _Fis Adamnáin_; and as in their writings, so in the

Avesta, is that provisional state made to last until the destruction

of the corrupt world and the final reign of the good principle.

The guardian angel which the Jewish and Christian divines agree in

assigning to each individual soul, resembles, if it does not wholly

coincide with, the Fravashi of the Persians, which would seem to have

been a kind of spiritual double of the man, distinct, apparently, from

his own soul, yet not so entirely separate from him as if it had been a

higher spirit intrusted with the charge of him.

Thus the Jewish writers of the centuries immediately preceding our era

found ready to their hands a rich store of traditions relating to the

lot of man in the Otherworld, formed by the combination of Oriental

dogmas with the classical tradition in the forms in which this was

preserved in the Hellenistic schools of Asia. Before, however, we

proceed to trace the manner in which these blended traditions entered

into subsequent versions of the legend, it may not be superfluous to

ask what, if any, contributions were made by the remaining great centre

of ancient religion and culture, Egypt.

To this question it is difficult to reply with certainty. While one of

the great centres of the Neo-Judaic learning was the School of Babylon,

set in the very focus of the ancient Oriental creeds, minor centres

existed in every city of Syria and Asia Minor, in each one of which

a thriving Jewish colony applied itself eagerly to the absorption of

Hellenistic ideas and culture; but the centre, _par excellence_, of

Jewish learning in the West was the flourishing and cultured Jewish

community at Alexandria. However, the intellectual life of this school

drew its nutriment from Greece, and the whole tone and character of

its speculative philosophy, as of its literary culture, so far as

it was not Hebraic, was Hellenistic, not Egyptian, and possibly more

Hellenistic than Hebraic. At one time it was customary to refer the

mystical speculations of the philosophic schools, Pagan, Jewish, and

Christian alike, of the centuries in question, to the ‘wisdom of the

Egyptians,’ and to regard Alexandria as the mart, so to speak, where

ideas of Egyptian growth were exchanged for others of kindred nature

imported from Greece and Asia. It has now long been recognised that

this theory is true to a very limited extent only, and that Alexandria

was, in the main, a Grecian city, and indebted to Greece for the

origins of its learning and culture, whatever new developments these

assumed in the fertile soil to which they had been transplanted.

During the rule of the Ptolemies, and, afterwards, of the Romans,

the prevailing attitude of the Greek colonists was not altogether

unlike that of the English in India; they held themselves as a class

apart, and intermixed but little with the native population, for whose

religion and institutions they would seem to have often manifested

a contempt, in which, doubtless, ignorance had its share. At the

same time, we might err in the opposite direction by concluding that

Egyptian ideas wholly failed to influence those who lived and wrote

in such close proximity to the chief centres of Egyptian life. Even

in our own day, the philosophy of the Upanishads, and the teaching of

the Buddha, in however distorted a form, have crossed the pale which

divides East from West, and the pale between Egypt and Hellas was far

more pervious. Both nations professed a complex polytheism, with so

great a resemblance between the two pantheons, that even before the

time of Herodotus certain deities in the one had come to be regarded

as identical with their counterparts in the other;[72] the traditions

of the Greeks claimed an Egyptian origin for several of the national

gods and heroes; a belief that the Hellenic religion was indebted for

some of its more esoteric elements to the same source was expressed

by Plato, and had been held by his successors, and we have seen that

some of the most authoritative modern scholars accept this opinion

as well founded, however much they may differ as to the amount of

the debt. These circumstances would necessarily predispose the more

inquiring minds among the Alexandrian Greeks and Hellenised Hebrews, in

an age when speculation concerning the hidden things of life, and of

the life after death, was a subject of paramount interest, to examine

the theories which had been held on that subject by the nations, the

orgiastic and magical side of whose religions was offering just then

so powerful an attraction to the vulgar of the Hellenic world. Nor

are we without direct evidence of contact between the two systems of

thought. Ptolemy I. (abdicated 285 B.C.), acting partly under the

inspiration of Timotheus, an authority on the Eleusinian mysteries,

attempted to fuse the Greek and Egyptian cults into one eclectic

system.[73] The poet Callimachus, who held the post of librarian

(_c._ 260-240 B.C.) to Ptolemy Philadelphus and his son Euergetes,

acquired for the Alexandrian library Egyptian as well as Greek and

Hebrew books; and his successor in office, Eratosthenes, the astronomer

and geometrician, was also addicted to Egyptian studies. Indeed, the

Plutarchian treatise ‘On Isis and Osiris’ is one instance out of many

of the interest felt by cultivated Greeks in Egyptian beliefs, which

had long taken their place as parts of the popular cult in many places

in Greece and Asia.[74] On the other hand, the initiation of even a few

cultured Egyptians into Hellenic learning would suffice to further an

interchange of ideas between the two races.

In any case, the Egyptian eschatology offers many points of resemblance

to certain of the later Jewish beliefs, and to Christian doctrine.

Among these is a belief in the judgment to be passed on every soul

after death, whereby the wicked were condemned to be devoured by the

‘Eater of the Dead,’ while the righteous were led through a series of

perilous adventures to a region of perpetual happiness, where, in a

place surrounded by a wall of steel, they led an existence which is the

reproduction of a happy life on earth, conceived in the usual terms of

a pagan Elysium, with a due allowance of even the grosser pleasures.[75]

This resemblance extends to several points of detail. Among the trials

through which the soul must pass are enumerated rivers and atmospheres

of fire, and the assaults of demons and monsters; it is even affirmed,

in agreement with the teaching of certain Jewish Rabbis, and of the

early Christian divines, that all departed souls, good and bad alike,

must undergo these trials, but the good passed through them speedily,

and without pain. This, we have seen, is the teaching of the _Fis

Adamnáin_, and occurs, as we shall see, in other of the Christian

Visions.

Indeed, the Rabbinical schools developed the Purgatorial theory to a

considerable extent. Thus, we find mention of seven lodges of Hell, one

below another, through which the soul had to pass successively, being

tormented on its way by fire, scourging, showers of hail, exposure to

alternate heat and cold, etc., until all its guilt was purged away.

This process finds its exact counterpart in the _Fis Adamnáin_, save

that the Rabbis called the seven stages or lodges Hells, instead of

Heavens, with at least equal propriety. The fundamental conception, and

also the nature of the sufferings endured by the dead in the course of

their purgation, are capable of being referred either to an Egyptian

or a Hellenic origin, though probably the latter assumption would be

correct; the seven successive lodges are evidently the amplification of

a Rabbinical tradition borrowed from the Chaldæan mythology.

As to the ultimate fate of the wicked, opinions were divided; some

of the Rabbis taught the final redemption of all, after undergoing

the necessary Purgatorial discipline; the school of Shammai held that

at the Judgment mankind would be divided into three categories--the

good, the bad, and those of mixed character, and that the last would

be cleansed by Purgatorial sufferings.[76] The germs of this threefold

division are contained both in the Avestan and the Platonic doctrines.

The Kabbalists even had an inkling of the Treasury of Merits of the

Saints, to whom they accorded the privilege of covering with their

garments, and bringing up to Heaven with themselves, those sinners who

had repented before death, but too late to make expiation. Here, too,

we have a conception which recurs in the _Fis Adamnáin_ and elsewhere,

namely, the special provision for tardy penitents, though in the

Christian Visions the mode of their redemption is different.

It is thus difficult to assign with certainty to the Egyptian religion

any specific article of the eschatology of the later Jewish and

early Christian writers; nevertheless, it does not follow that their

contact with that religion was without effect in determining the shape

which their eschatology actually assumed. It must be remembered that

speculations of the kind which characterised the Orphic, Platonic,

Pythagorean, and Neo-Platonic schools were not the only forms in which

Greek thought entered into the intellectual evolution of that age. In

the prevailing welter of Eastern creeds and Western philosophies, all

the principal philosophic schools of Greece were represented, and, in

particular, the Stoics and Epicureans exercised an influence both wide

and deep.[77] If, then, the class of ideas to which it is convenient to

give the general name, Neo-Platonic, obtained so complete an ascendency

in the evolution of Judaic and Christian eschatology, the presumption

is that this result was largely owing to the affinity of Neo-Platonism

with the Oriental creeds with whose doctrines and mythology Neo-Judaic

speculation was so deeply imbued; and if, moreover, this speculation

differed from Neo-Platonism in certain fundamental points wherein it

agreed with the Oriental doctrines, the presumption is no less strong

that it owed its original trend in this direction to the forces by

which it was moulded in pre-Hellenistic times, and that such trend

would be confirmed by subsequent contact with any school of thought

in which similar views were prevalent.[78] The most important point

wherein the eschatology of the orthodox Rabbinical schools differed

from that of the Greek mythical philosophies was the rejection by the

former of the doctrine of rebirth, which predominated, though not to

the absolute exclusion of the doctrine of finality, in the teaching of

the mystical schools from the seventh century B.C. at latest.

In this respect, as we have seen, the philosophy no less than the

religion of the Jews was mainly in accord with the views held by

the Chaldæans, both Accadian and Semitic, and taught by the Avesta.

In this view they would be further confirmed if, in the Alexandrian

period, they fell under the influence of the native Egyptian religion,

as distinguished from the later syncretism wherein that religion had

become blended with allegories and orgiastic rites pertaining to

Asiatic myths and Greek theosophy. Egypt, indeed, was formerly regarded

as the very home of the doctrine of rebirth; it would appear, however,

that the doctrine of the ancient Egyptian religion was of a directly

contrary import. The idea of transformation, indeed, was familiar to

it, but this is a different thing from transmigration, and Mr. Le Page

Renouf states most emphatically that although the beatified spirit

received powers which enabled him to visit any part of the universe in

any form, the sentence pronounced at the judgment was final, and the

soul was neither purged nor punished by a renewed life on earth.[79]

This contradiction between the doctrine of rebirth which prevailed in

the Greek mysteries, and the Egyptian dogma of the eternity of man’s

lot after judgment, lends support to the contention, referred to in the

previous section, that the ethical and eschatological sides of Greek

religion were in great part of native development, however much the

mystical schools may have been indebted to foreign influences in their

origin.

Having thus got rid of a discussion which, however tedious, appeared

necessary in order to make us understand whence and of what kind

were the non-Hellenic and non-Scriptural elements which entered into

subsequent developments of the Vision Legend, we now come to the

concrete forms which that legend assumed in the Jewish and the early

Christian Churches. In tracing the progress of the legend in these two

Churches, it seems convenient to deal with the whole subject together

in the following section, for not only do the principal Jewish examples

which have reached us contain additions made to them in Christian

times, but the versions belonging respectively to the two eras are

practically homogeneous, alike in their fundamental doctrines, and, for

the most part, in their method of treatment.

3. THE ECCLESIASTICAL TRADITION

A Vision of the Otherworld was a favourite subject with the writers of

the apocryphal books of the Jews. In the oldest of these, the so-called

Book of Enoch, which is also the oldest non-pagan book of this class

that has come down to us, the subject is treated at greater length and

with more elaborate detail than in any other contribution to the Vision

legend prior to the _Commedia_. The last quarter of the second century

B.C. has been assigned as the most probable date of the greater part

of it, though in its present form it evidently contains post-Christian

additions. Quoted in the Epistle of St. Jude (vv. 14-15), and known

to the early Christians, it was long believed to have disappeared

at a subsequent date, and was only recovered in recent times in an

Ethiopian version, from which it has been repeatedly translated with

commentaries.[80]

It relates, with copious detail, how the seer was caught up by a

vehement wind and upraised to Heaven, where he was taken in charge

by the Archangel Michael, who revealed to him Hell and Paradise, the

mysteries of nature and of revelation, and the life to come. In the

general scope of his work the author anticipates Dante in several

particulars which are not common to the Vision writers in general. He

pays much attention to topographical detail in his descriptions of

Hell, for which he takes the Valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, as his

model; but although the accuracy of his description has been attested

by several travellers who have surveyed the valley, he is far from

manifesting the precision and visualising power of the Florentine. Like

Dante, moreover, he discusses various points of theology, and delivers

long dissertations upon natural philosophy and the physical scheme of

the universe. Here, too, he is vague and indistinct, as also in his

description of the future state of the lost, wherein he displays none

of Dante’s symmetry and orderly arrangement. We may note several points

of detail wherein the _Vision of Enoch_ resembles the _Fis Adamnáin_ or

other of the Christian Visions. The Archangel Michael already appears

as the guide to the other world (c. 71); the infernal regions are swept

by whirlwinds and traversed by rivers of fire, in one of which the

fallen spirits are immersed until the carnal lusts of all such as are

capable of redemption are burnt away (c. 67), though there is also a

place wherein the wicked are bound and punished eternally (c. 22).

Heaven is described as a city of crystal surrounded by a crystal wall,

a river of vibrating fire flowing round about it (c. 13).

Upon entering in, Enoch came to a spacious mansion, built of crystal

and with a crystal floor, surrounded by a flame as hot as fire and as

cold as ice.[81] After this, he came to another mansion, resembling

the first, but surpassing it in all respects. Rivers of fire issued

from out of it; in the midst of it a throne was set, whereon One sat

in glory, clad in a robe brighter than the sun, and whiter than the

snow (c. 14). Further, Enoch was instructed at length by his guide as

to the significance of many parts of the Old Testament record, and

was taken to view the several heavens, the heavenly bodies, and the

universe in general, the nature and motions of which were explained to

him by the Archangel. He was conducted to Sheol, the temporary abode of

departed souls until Judgment, which is situated in the West (c. 17),

and was shown a mountain which was reserved for the life that shall be

after God’s coming. Hereon stood the Tree of Life, which was to afford

sustenance to the righteous of its fruit and fragrance (cc. 24-5). In a

second vision, the last things and other divine mysteries were revealed

to him by means of parables. In his Vision of Judgment he beheld,

first, the spirits of the guilty stars condemned; after them, the

unfaithful shepherds that misled the sheep, and then the wicked sheep

themselves; after which he beheld a mansion greater than the former,

supported on ivory pillars, wherein were assembled the sheep that were

saved (c. 89).

Here we find the Vision legend brought to a high stage of development,

and containing many features which recur throughout the whole course of

the Vision literature. In several of these traces of an Oriental origin

are apparent. Similar creations of the Rabbinical imagination occur

in various writings belonging to the earlier centuries of our era,

which, though composed in Christian times, and in some cases claiming

a place among the sacred books of the Christian Church, embody Jewish

traditions. Of such was the tradition current in those centuries, and

quoted in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus (Part II. c. 19), relating

how Adam, when at the point of death, despatched Seth to the gate of

Paradise in quest of the oil of the Tree of Life, or ‘Tree of Mercy,’

wherein, as before noted, we have a variant of Ishtâr’s visit to Hades

in quest of the Waters of Life.

The Fourth Book of Esdras, as it is numbered in the Vulgate, the

Second in the Authorised Version, though included in the Biblical Old

Testament Apocrypha, was nevertheless composed in Christian times and

to some extent under Christian influences, being written probably in

the third quarter of the first century A.D., though by some it is dated

so late as the first quarter of the third century. The Vision of Esdras

therein contained is apocalyptic in character, being a prophecy of

the end of the world, the speedy coming of which was generally looked

for. It is therefore not properly an instance of our legend, but it

calls for mention in this place, as it contains certain conceptions

derived through Hebrew tradition from Chaldæan or Persian sources, and

transmitted to the eschatological literature of the Christian Church.

The angel Uriel[82] showed to Esdras a great multitude assembled

on Mount Sion, and told him that these were ‘they that have put off

the mortal clothing and have put on the immortal, and have confessed

the name of God; now are they crowned, and receive palms.’ Several

earlier passages furnish good examples of Persian or Babylonian myths

converted, so to speak, and since adopted into the conventional imagery

of Christian eschatology. ‘They shall have the Tree of Life for an

ointment of sweet savour’; ‘I have sanctified and prepared for them

twelve trees laden with divers fruits, and as many fountains flowing

with milk and honey, and seven mighty mountains whereon there grow

roses and lilies.’[83]

The name of Esdras is also attached to one of the apocryphal books

of the early Christian Church, the _Vision of Esdras_, which relates

how Esdras was led by Michael, Gabriel, and thirty-four other angels

through the realms of darkness, wherein the punishments meted out to

the wicked are revealed to him, and then to Paradise, where he sees

Enoch and Elias, Peter, Paul, Moses, the Evangelists and Patriarchs,

and all the righteous, assembled beneath the Tree of Life.

Another vision of Christian composition, but likewise fathered upon

an Old Testament prophet, is the _Vision of Isaiah_, the second part

of which, written in the third century A.D., relates a visit of that

prophet to the seven Heavens.

However, at an earlier date than that of the works just named, the

subject had already formed the theme of writings professedly Christian

in aim and origin. The spread of Christianity, which, of its very

nature, kept men’s thoughts bent upon the contemplation of the future

life, was naturally attended by an increased production of works

descriptive of the other world and of man’s lot therein. No very great

contributions to the subject are made by the Canonical Scriptures,

which vouchsafe us but little direct information concerning the future

life. St. Paul, indeed, relates how he was caught up to the third

Heaven, and there ‘heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful

for a man to utter’;[84] but no intimation concerning his experiences

there are given us, and although the passage quoted doubtless accounted

for his subsequent inclusion among those to whom the next world had

been revealed, all details of his vision are due to the legendary

narratives referred to hereafter. St. Jude (Ep. v. 6) refers to the

rebellious angels who are kept ‘in everlasting chains under darkness

unto the judgment of the great day’; and St. Peter (II. iii. 7-12),

speaks of a general purification by fire, but neither reveals anything

concerning the state of man in the life to come. Even the Revelation of

St. John, while standing far above the level of all other apocalyptic

writings, as in other respects, so in the grandeur of conception and

beauty of execution wherewith the author describes the celestial

kingdom, would appear to have made but slight impression, save by an

added richness of imagery, upon the subsequent course of the Vision

legend. This, possibly, may be because the author treats his subject

from the millennary point of view, taking for his theme rather the

tribulations which were coming upon the world, and the establishment of

a new heaven and a new earth in place of the old, than the condition

of individual souls after death, or the places of their eternal abode.

At the same time, he makes use of some of that Oriental imagery which

had already obtained a place in the Hebrew writings, canonical and

apocryphal alike, and thereby contributed to its naturalisation in the

eschatological writings of the Church.[85]

The earlier centuries of our era were for the Græco-Roman world a

period not merely of a general feeling of unrest, consequent upon the

collapse of the older religions, and the social changes resulting

from a long series of revolutions, but also of vigorous attempts at

reconstruction, in which both the ends aimed at, and the methods

adopted for their attainment--preaching, teaching, asceticism,

mystic symbolism, etc.--were closely akin to those of the Christian

propaganda; indeed, it was no uncommon thing for a seeker in religion,

drifting about from one sect or cult to another, to take Christianity

in his way, thus keeping open an additional channel by which Pagan and

Christian ideas were brought to bear upon one another. Throughout all

these ages speculations were rife, for which was claimed the authority

of Orpheus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Heraclitus, or some other of the

ancient mystics or philosophers, and all of these, conjoined with

the similar beliefs held by the later Stoics in many varying forms,

tended to foster the Church’s expectation of the approaching end of the

world. This theory derived further support from the great authority

ascribed to the so-called Sibylline books, a long series of forgeries

extending, probably, from the end of the second century B.C. to the

fourth century of our era, if not later, containing a chaotic mass of

prophecies and oracles, to which Judaism, Christianity, and Hellenic

mysticism had all added their quota, and in which the proximate

destruction of the world by fire, and the renewal of things, is a

constantly recurring idea.

Another of the many causes which kept men’s minds directed towards the

Otherworld was the legend, current in the Church from the earliest

times, and surviving far into the Middle Ages,[86] of the ‘Harrowing

of Hell’ by Our Lord in the interval between the Burial and the

Resurrection. One of the earliest versions of this legend occurs in

Part II. of the so-called _Gospel of Nicodemus_, Greek text, which

relates how He ‘raised many of the dead, who appeared unto many in

Jerusalem,’ and then described Christ’s descent into Hades, which

had been preceded by a visit of St. John Baptist, who came to the

Old Testament prophets, among whom Enoch and Elijah are especially

mentioned, and expounded to them the Christian Revelation.

From the contemplation of the end of the world to speculation

concerning the world to come, and the state of the departed spirits

there, was but a step. Accordingly, as is but natural, many of the

teeming crop of apocryphal Gospels, Acts, and Revelations which sprang

up during the earlier ages of the Church are composed with a distinctly

eschatological purpose.

Midway between these apocryphal writings and the canonical books of

the New Testament stands the _Shepherd of Hermas_, which is commonly

placed among the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, and was formerly

ascribed to that Hermas to whom St. Paul sends greeting in his Epistle

to the Romans (xvi. 14), but is now regarded as a production of the

latter part of the second century, being the work, possibly, of Hermas,

brother of Pius, who occupied the see of Rome from 140 to 155 A.D.[87]

From an early date this work enjoyed a high repute in the Eastern

Church, being admitted by some writers, including the author of the

Canon of Muratori, to a place among the canonical books. Whether we

regard its general plan, or the machinery by which it is carried out,

it occupies a place by itself among the Christian Visions of the

Otherworld, and is peculiarly interesting to the Dante student as

affording a remarkably early instance, possibly an unique instance in

ecclesiastical literature, of that idea, perceived by Plato, and lying

at the root of the _Commedia_--to wit, the elevation of the human

spirit, through the highest form of human love, to the perception of

Divine truth.

In the opening of his narrative, Hermas tells how he had been

acquainted, in his earliest life, with a young slave girl, the property

of one by whom he himself had been brought up. Subsequently, this girl

was sold by her master in Rome, but Hermas met her again in after-life,

and conceived for her a fraternal affection, which ultimately, as one

day he saw her bathing in the Tiber, ripened into love, and he desired

her for his wife, ‘both for her beauty and for her disposition.’ Some

time after, as he was walking in a lonely place, ‘musing on these

thoughts, he began to honour this creature of God, thinking with

himself how noble and beautiful she was.’[88] While musing thus, he

was caught up by the spirit, and borne beyond a rocky place impassable

to man. Falling upon his knees he began to confess his sins, when he

saw the heavens open, and the object of his desire appear therein and

greet him. In reply to his questioning, she explained that she had been

brought thither that she might accuse him before the Lord on account

of the thoughts he had entertained concerning her, though these would

scarcely appear to have been such as to merit the reproaches she

bestowed on Hermas by reason of them. So Hermas thought, and maybe

the damsel thought so too, for after hearing his reply she smiled

upon him as she vanished. Thereupon the heavens closed, but, after a

while, Hermas saw before him a chair of whitest wool, in which an old

woman took her seat, having a book in her hand. She accosted Hermas,

and imparted to him certain moral admonitions, but these were mostly

confined in their application to himself and to the government of his

family.

Other visions were subsequently vouchsafed to Hermas, making four in

all; the third of these contained a revelation of the building up

of the Church Triumphant, and the fourth announced the tribulations

which were to come upon the Church, and the final salvation of those

who should endure unto the end. The second part of the work consists

of ‘Commands,’[89] and the third of ‘Similitudes,’ all imparted to

Hermas by Divine revelation. Certain of the similitudes contain visions

wherein Hermas was shown the _corrective_ punishment of sinners, the

edification of the Church Triumphant, and the various classes into

which the guilty and the righteous are divided, together with the

diverse manner in which these fare respectively. All this, however, is

intended rather for an allegory of the soul’s progress through this

world, than for a picture of its state in the world to come; in fine,

the vision is more closely akin to the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ than to

the _Commedia_, though it deserves a place in our series, alike as

containing a curious anticipation of the most highly developed form

to which the legend afterwards attained, and as connecting the legend

with the familiar notion of the later Jewish and the early Christian

Churches, that when the other oracles of paganism were silenced, the

Sibyls were left to proclaim the advent of the Messiah, and the trials

and triumph of His Church. For it is impossible not to recognise in

the old woman with a book in her hand, in the first vision of Hermas,

the traits of an ancient Sibyl; and for such, indeed, Hermas took

her, until she told him that she was a personification of the Church.

The simple affection, not wanting in elevation, which the hero of the

opening story felt for the heroine--one at least being of the servile

class--is interesting as affording a glimpse of that kindly social

life of which there are many evidences during the first centuries of

the Empire, in all grades of society, from the aristocratic circles of

Pliny and Thrasea down to the slave community itself, however much

it is apt to be thrown into the background by the tyranny and crime,

vulgar ostentation and base lusts, that occupied the front of the scene

during that period.

Several of the apocryphal books show a great advance in the theory

of retributive justice in the future life. The so-called _Apocalypse

of St. Peter_ is known to have existed in Syria and Egypt before the

middle of the second century, and to have been admitted by several of

the Fathers into the Canon, side by side with the Book of Revelation.

Paradise is here described in much the same manner as the Greek

Elysium--as a radiant place, full of flowers, fruit, and sweet odours,

etc. The pains of Hell are set out with a more than common minuteness,

and with a greater attention to a kind of _lex talionis_, so to speak,

whereby the nature of the punishment is analogous to that of the crime,

than is found in most of the Christian descriptions prior to Dante.

Hell is represented as a place full of lakes of fire and burning mud,

over which those who had blasphemed ‘the way of righteousness’ are

suspended by their tongues, and adulterers by the hair, while in them

wallow the perverters of righteousness. Blasphemers gnawed their lips,

and had red-hot iron over their eyes; false witnesses had tongues of

fire in their mouths, which they kept on chewing; rich misers, in

filthy rags, rolled upon red-hot pebbles, sharper than sword or spit;

usurers stood up to their knees in pitch, blood, and boiling mire;

those guilty of unnatural crimes were hurled from a cliff and driven up

again, to be again cast down.

A similar vision of the Otherworld, though differing in plan and in

many details, is contained in the _Revelation of St. Paul_, written

about the year 380 A.D. Apparently the author of the _Fis Adamnáin_ had

this work in his mind when referring in ch. 2 to the Revelation that

had been vouchsafed to St. Paul, for the Apostle’s own mention of his

Vision of the Third Heaven contains no description of the Otherworld.

Moreover, it is impossible not to be struck by the resemblance between

the Irish author’s description of the manner in which the souls were

received upon their arrival at the seventh Heaven (ch. 19), and the

corresponding account in the _Apocalypse of St. Paul_: ‘And the good

angels who had received the soul of the righteous man saluted it, as

being well known to them,’ etc.[90] And so of the judgments passed upon

the sinners in like manner. There are also several details given by the

apocryphal writer concerning the pains of Hell, which are repeated in

a closely similar form in the _Fis Adamnáin_: _e.g._ the immersion of

some of the wicked in a murky river, the imprisonment of others in a

brazen wall wrapt in flames, etc.

The theme was treated, with more or less fulness, by several writers

of the Eastern Church, but our task does not involve the enumeration

of all the forms in which it appeared, and the versions already

quoted would seem to be those which treated it most elaborately, and

exercised the greatest influence upon later developments. Indeed the

two Visions last mentioned, being specially referred to by the author

of the _Fis Adamnáin_ among the instances of revelations formerly

vouchsafed to holy men, may be regarded as landmarks showing the course

of the tradition. For the same reason, some mention should be made

here of another of those instances, alluded to by the author in the

same place, though it really belongs rather to the apocalyptic than

to the Otherworld class of writings, namely, the group of apocryphal

books dealing with what is known as the _Transitus Mariæ_. The oldest

of these, the _Falling Asleep of Mary_, by John, Archbishop of

Thessalonica at the end of the seventh century, was formerly ascribed

to St. John the Evangelist, and Tischendorf thinks that it was really

derived from a treatise bearing the name of St. John, and written

in the fourth century at latest, which enjoyed a wide popularity in

both East and West, and was translated into several languages. The

several versions differ much in matters of detail, but the substance is

practically the same.[91]

It relates how it was the Virgin’s practice to frequent the Holy

Sepulchre, there to pray alone, until at length it was announced to

her in a vision that the time of her earthly life was accomplished.

Thereupon the apostles were all caught up from the most remote parts of

the earth, where they then were, even those who were dead being raised

from their graves and brought to Bethlehem, whence they proceeded to

the Virgin’s house in Jerusalem in time to be present at her death, and

to receive her benediction. They laid her in a new tomb in Gethsemane,

and witnessed her assumption, at which time the Heavenly Host appeared

to them, and the Holy Spirit prophesied to them concerning the last

things.

In the descriptions of the Otherworld contained in the foregoing

visions, the imagery employed evinces a blending of Hebraic traditions

with materials obtained from Hellenic sources. The elements

attributable to the latter source pertain rather to the popular faith

and to the doctrines taught in the ancient mysteries--which, most

likely, were fundamentally identical--than to the speculations of the

Neo-Platonic schools, or to the cults which had been adopted from the

East. This, indeed, is what might have been looked for, from the fact

that Christianity received its earliest and most numerous recruits

from the people at large,[92] among whom the old beliefs continued to

exist. The moral teaching which, as mentioned in an earlier section,

was an important feature of the Eleusinian mysteries, retained its

importance long after Greece had ceased to be the centre of Hellenic

thought throughout the countries which had come under the sway of

Hellenic civilisation. In the last century of the Roman Republic Cicero

lauds the mysteries, which, by their refining influences, had civilised

minds previously rustical and savage, had imparted the true principles

of life, and had taught the way, not only to live with joy, but to die

with better hope.[93] In the first century of the Empire, Plutarch

reminds his wife of the instruction they had shared at their initiation

into the mysteries.[94] Indeed, at that period, it would seem to have

been looked upon as an impiety to withhold oneself from initiation,

that might even be visited with a criminal prosecution. The experiences

of Demonax, as related by Lucian, furnish a case in point.

Equally great, at least, was the vitality retained by the popular

belief in the Stygian river, and the pains of Tartarus that awaited

the wicked. There is evidence to show that in the classical and

post-classical ages of Greece it was accepted as an article of the

national creed. Its persistence at a later date is attested by the

vehemence of the onslaught which Lucretius made upon it, for, with due

allowance for exaggeration, he could scarcely regard it as an incubus,

an ever-present terror, weighing down and darkening men’s lives, an

Upas-tree which it was philosophy’s noblest work to uproot, unless it

had met with very general and very convinced acceptance in his day.

Seneca, indeed, states that in his time the belief was rejected even

by children, and herein he is corroborated by other writers; we must

conclude, however, that the children in question were exceptionally

enlightened--the Roman prototypes of Macaulay’s schoolboy--for in the

same century Plutarch, and in the following century Lucian, attests the

vigorous survival of the old doctrine.[95]

On the whole we may say that in the descriptions of Paradise, with the

Tree of Life, the companies of Old Testament worthies, etc., Hebrew

ideas generally predominated, while the Greek Tartarus furnished most

of the ideas of the Christian Hell. These ideas, however, did not

include the doctrine of rebirth, which was so prominent a feature in

the Greek mystic cults. Indeed, the literature of the Vision of the

Otherworld appears to have belonged, in the main, to the orthodox

portion of the Church, avoiding, on the one hand, everything pertaining

to the popular cults of Isis, Serapis, Mithra, the Magna Mater, and

other fashionable Oriental deities, and, on the other hand, taking

from Hellenic beliefs only such as were in harmony with the general

character of the Christian faith, little attracted by the Neo-Platonic

theories of emanations, æons, and the like, which did so much to mould

the Gnostic and other heresies.

It would seem that the Vision of the Otherworld never acquired the

same importance in the Western Church as in the East; nevertheless,

several of the Western fathers report similar cases, many of which,

it is probable, already existed in popular tradition. One of these,

related by St. Augustine, tells how a certain Curina, a native of

Hippo, died, but, as the condition of his body suggested that he was

merely in a trance, his friends delayed the burial for some days. At

length, however, the funeral was about to take place, when the corpse

returned to life, and told his friends that he had really died, but, as

he was being brought up for judgment, it was discovered that the Angel

of Death had mistaken him for another Curina, a blacksmith, who dwelt

in the same neighbourhood. Accordingly, after being favoured with a

vision of Paradise, our Curina was dismissed with a caution to mend his

ways, and present himself to St. Augustine for baptism, both of which

commands he obeyed.

The correspondence of St. Gregory the Great contains several instances

of a similar kind. One of these preserves the experiences of a man of

Constantinople, Stephen by name, which were much the same as those

of Curina, he having received the fatal summons in place of another

Stephen, who too was a blacksmith. Stephen, like Curina, was restored

to the body, after receiving a vision, in his case, of Hell.

A fundamental difference is apparent between the Visions just

recorded, and those composed in the Eastern Church, these constituting

a specific form of composition of which the primary object was to

present a picture of the next world, while the Western fathers

would appear merely to have introduced, by way of apologue, a

current religious folk-tale. If a folk-tale, it was probably widely

diffused, for both the above stories are evidently versions of one

original--the scene of the first being placed at Hippo, of the second

at Constantinople. Both have much in common with Plutarch’s story of

Thespesios, and nothing is more probable than that all were variants

of a folk-tale current in antiquity--long before Plato, as likely as

not, for he too introduces the story of Er as a floating tradition--and

receiving at the hands of Plutarch and the Christian fathers

embellishments proper to their respective creeds. Moreover, in both

stories the persons who ought to have died were blacksmiths, members of

a trade which, by an obvious association of ideas, has always appeared

in popular mythology in a somewhat sinister light. The blunder of the

Angel of Death in bringing the wrong person up for judgment, is one

of the motives which frequently recur in the innumerable comic tales

of Hell and Judgment which enjoyed much favour in the Middle Ages,

and some of which are enshrined in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ for the

delectation of late-born men.

Elsewhere, however, in another of his epistles, St. Gregory records

a vision which conforms more closely to the literary type. A certain

soldier fell into a trance, and saw a bridge spanning a foul, smoky,

stinking river, beyond which fair meadows lay, fresh and flowery,

and goodly companies of folk walking therein clad in white apparel.

Over the bridge a procession of the dead were passing, of whom the

righteous crossed successfully, and joined the companies that were

already in the _prata beata_ that lay beyond; the wicked fell into

the river. Then the soldier recognised the aforesaid Stephen, who had

since died finally, and was now endeavouring to cross the bridge; his

foot slipped, and as he was hanging over the edge, certain grisly

forms seized upon him, and endeavoured to drag him down, while white

and radiant beings strove to bear him up. The issue is left undecided.

The explanation of this incident was that Stephen had been liberal

in almsgiving, but was addicted to sins of the flesh. Here we have a

connecting link, passing on to the Irish school the bridge incident,

belonging to Oriental myth, having first appeared in Chinvât bridge

of the Avesta. St. Gregory likewise perpetuates the ‘tug of war’ for

possession of the doubtful soul, which also first appears in the

Persian books. Like St. Gregory, Adamnán’s chronicler shows the parlous

state of the kindly but carnal souls, though his robuster charity

pronounces decidedly for their ultimate redemption (_F. A._, c. 27).

In the land beyond the river were many fair mansions; one of these was

then in course of construction, being built of golden bricks, which

were the good works of the destined occupant; and they who brought the

bricks were the persons whom he had befriended.

St. Gregory also relates the case of one Peter, a Spanish monk, who

had died and gone to Hell, where he saw the torments of the wicked,

and among them many who had lived in this world in greatness and high

repute, and were then hanging in the flames. Peter was about to be

thrown in himself, when an angel rescued him and sent him back to the

body, with a caution.

It is certain that the earlier Middle Ages, as well as the later,

possessed many stories dealing with the Otherworld, alike in form

of the folk-tale and of the religious apologue. Probably, too, an

examination of the ecclesiastical writers of the period would disclose

examples of the treatment of the legend as a distinct class of literary

composition, like the foregoing instances. Nevertheless, no important

contribution to the subject appears to have been made, nor any new

departure taken, until the legend entered upon a fresh course on Irish

soil.

4. THE LEGEND IN IRELAND

While the Christian Church of Teutonic England owed its existence,

in the main, to the missionary enterprise of Rome, the much older

Celtic Churches, and notably the Church of Ireland, were more closely

connected with Gaul and the East. It was to Gaul that Ireland was

mainly indebted for its original conversion, and the intercourse

between the two countries remained close and unbroken. But the Church

in the south of Gaul--and it was the south alone that preserved any

considerable culture, or displayed missionary activity, in the earlier

Middle Ages--had from the very first been closely in touch with the

Churches in the East. The great monastery of Lerins, in which St.

Patrick is said to have studied, was founded from Egypt, and for many

centuries the Egyptian Church continued to manifest a lively interest

in Gallic matters. Indeed, not only Lerins, but Marseilles, Lyons, and

other parts of Southern Gaul maintained a constant intercourse with

both Egypt and Syria, with the natural result that many institutions of

the Gallic Church, despite its increasing subjection to Rome, dating

from the year 244, bore the impress of Oriental influences.[96] Hence

the close relations with Gaul maintained by the Irish churchmen and

scholars necessarily brought them into contact with their Egyptian and

Syrian brethren, and with the ideas and practices which prevailed in

their respective Churches.

Nor was Ireland’s connection with the East confined to the intermediary

of Gaul. Irish pilgrimages to Egypt continued until the end of the

eighth century, and Dicuil records a topographical exploration of

that country made by two Irishmen, Fidelis and his companion.[97]

Documentary evidence is yet extant, proving that even homekeeping

Irishmen were not debarred from all acquaintance with the East. The

Saltair na Rann[98] contains an Irish version of the _Book of Adam and

Eve_, a work written in Egypt in the fifth or sixth century, of which

no mention outside of Ireland is known. Adamnán’s work, _De Locis

Sanctis_, already referred to, contains an account of the monastery

on Mount Thabor, which might stand for the description of an Irish

monastic community of his day. Indeed, the whole system both of the

anchoretic and the cœnobitic life in Ireland corresponds closely to

that which prevailed in Egypt and Syria; the monastic communities,

consisting of groups of detached huts or bee-hive cells, enclosed

within a general wall, the structure of the cells, and of the other

earliest examples of Irish ecclesiastical architecture, all suggest

a Syrian origin; and Dr. G. T. Stokes holds that ‘the Irish schools

were most probably modelled after the forms and rules of the Egyptian

Lauras.’[99]

But it was not only Egyptian and Syrian influences to which Ireland was

subjected by its intercourse with Southern Gaul. The civilisation of

that country was essentially Greek, and so remained for many centuries

after the Christian era; and this circumstance no doubt contributed to

the well-known survival of Greek learning in the Irish schools, long

after it had almost perished in the rest of Western Europe. It is not

to be supposed that this learning was characterised by accuracy of

scholarship, or by a wide acquaintance with classical literature; but

neither was it always restricted to a mere smattering of the language,

or to passages and quotations picked up at second-hand. Johannes Scotus

Erigena translated the works of the pseudo-Areopagite; Dicuil and

Firghil (Virgilius, Bishop of Salzburg), studied the Greek books of

science; Homer, Aristotle, and other classical authors were known to

some of the Irish writers; several of the Irish divines were acquainted

with the Greek fathers and other theological works. Nor were the Greeks

in person unknown to Ireland. Many Greek clerics had taken refuge

there during the Iconoclast persecution, and left traces which were

recognisable in Ussher’s day; and the old poem on the Fair of Carman

makes mention of the Greek merchants who resorted thither.

It is thus apparent that the Irish writers possessed ample means of

becoming acquainted with the traditions, both oral and written, of the

Greek and Eastern Churches. The knowledge thus acquired extended to the

Apocalyptic Visions referred to in the preceding section, as is proved

by internal evidence furnished by the Irish Visions, both by way of

direct reference, and by the nature of their contents. It remains to

see how far the predilection which the Irish writers manifested for

this class of literature, and the special characteristics which it

assumed in their hands, may have been determined by their familiarity

with analogous ideas already existing in their national literature.

At the period in question, the traditional literature of Ireland

would appear to have entered into the national life to no less a

degree than in Greece itself. Indeed, in certain respects, it was

still more closely interwoven with the habits of the people and the

framework of society than in Greece, for the literary profession

was provided for by a public endowment, something like that of an

established National Church, and its professors constituted a body

organised by law, and occupying a recognised position in the State.

One of the most marked characteristics of early Irish civilisation,

in its every branch, was an exaggerated tendency towards symmetrical

classification and multiplicity of detail. This tendency extended

to the social system, and the earliest records of ancient Ireland

that have come down to us show that society was arranged according

to a very elaborate scheme of ranks and classes,[100] among which

the literary profession was remarkable alike for the number of its

members, and for the consideration in which they were held. It was

divided into several distinct orders, each of which was specially

addicted to its own department of study, and of these the place of

greatest honour and dignity belonged to the Filid, who combined with

other functions the special duty of preserving and transmitting the

national traditions.[101] The order of the Filid was further subdivided

into seven ranks or degrees, graduated according to the attainments

which their respective members were required to possess. For all,

however, a knowledge of the romantic literature of their country was

an indispensable qualification--the Árd-Ollamh, the chief of the

order, being required to know two hundred and fifty _prím-scéla_,

or principal stories, and one hundred of secondary importance; and

so on in a descending scale through the inferior degrees of the

literary hierarchy. These tales, in turn, were likewise grouped,

with all the precision of a scientific classification, according to

their subject-matter.[102] Two lists are extant giving the titles of

the several kinds; the elder, preserved in the Book of Leinster, is

ascribed by M. d’Arbois de Jubainville to the seventh century, or, at

latest, the beginning of the eighth century. They are classed under the

headings of _Catha_, battles; _Longasa_, travels (in exile); _Imrama_,

voyages (voluntary); _Tógbála_, conquests; _Tóglasi_, destructions;

_Airgne_, slaughters; _Forbasa_, sieges; _Oitti_, tragic fates;

_Tána_, forays; _Tochmarca_, wooings; _Uatha_, [adventures in] caves;

_Eachtra_, deeds, adventures; _Sluaigheadha_, hostings or expeditions;

to which are to be added _Fessa_, banquets; _Aithidi_, elopements;

_Serca_, love-stories; _Tomadma_, irruptions or invasions (of recent

date); _Tocomlada_, colonies; _Físi_, visions. The subjects of these

tales were taken from the national history or mythology, or, oftener

still may be, from that traditionary lore which forms a debatable

ground between the two. Many of them were more esteemed as authorities

for tribal history or genealogy than upon their purely literary merit,

though in others the imaginative element is as frankly recognised as in

a historical novel by Scott or Dumas.

The romantic literature of Ireland reached its height about the time of

the greatest activity of the Irish Church, and the sacred and secular

schools did not fail to exercise a mutual influence, for the Irish

clergy by no means despised these relics of Paganism: they possessed

a large share of that wise tolerance which we find in many of the

great clerics of the Middle Ages, who did not desire the destruction

of all the associations that had twined themselves about the lives

of the people, but rather to enlist them into the service of the new

faith.[103] Two classes of the Irish tales were specially adapted for

ecclesiastical treatment, and being thus brought into contact with

the general literature of mediæval Europe, have left upon it a deep

and traceable impression. These were the _Imram_, or Voyage, and the

_Fis_, or Vision, species distinct in kind, but containing in practice

much that was common to both; for the course of the _Imram_ lay, for

the most part, among the enchanted lands of Celtic mythology, thinly

disguised, in later times, by a coating of Christian eschatology; and

the _Fis_, though more commonly of Christian origin, and often indited

expressly for edification, was indebted to the same source for most of

its _mise-en-scène_. Both types of narrative are represented among the

legends which recount the adventures met with by Cuchulainn, Cormac Mac

Áirt, and other ancient heroes in a purely pagan Otherworld. Starting

thence and proceeding through the travel tales, similar in many

respects to the foregoing, but more or less imbued with a Christian

tinge, which relate the Voyages of Maelduin, of Tadg Mac Céin, of the

Sons of Ua Corra, and the like, we reach, on the one hand, the Voyage

of St. Brendan, one of the most picturesque and popular legends of

the Middle Ages, and, on the other hand, the visions of the Irish

Saints, the stories of St. Patrick’s Purgatory, and similar legends

which pervaded Western Europe, and passing into Italy would appear

to have led up to the story of the wicked Marquis of Brandenburg, and

the opening of the _Tesoretto_ of Brunetto Latini, which last, again,

suggested to Dante the opening passages of the _Commedia_.

A visit to the Otherworld was one of the most frequent subjects of

Irish legend. Not that the region visited is always so described;

sometimes it is termed the realm of the Dagda, one of the most

primitive culture-deities in the Irish mythology, and, at the same

time, the counterpart of Yama and Yima;[104] sometimes, the island

paradise of Manannán Mac Lír, the Sea-God; at others, the palace of

Mider or of Oengus, both of whom shared with Lug many of the attributes

of the Greek Apollo. Very often it is merely the rath, or island, or

subaqueous abode, of some enchantress or fairy lady, but even then some

detail of the story will almost always make it clear that the spot is

to be identified with the land of departed spirits, although, in some

instances, the authors may have been no more aware than Ariosto in

describing the garden of Alcina, or, indeed, than Homer in his islands

of the Phæacians, of Circe and of Calypso, that all their imaginary

scenes alike had one common origin, the region where the κλυτὰ ἔθνεα

νεκρῶν have their dwelling.[105]

The conception which the Irish formed of their Happy Otherworld

resembled in substance the ideas which most other nations held upon

the subject; but their descriptions of it are frequently remarkable

for a poetry, a vivid sense of beauty--in short, for a _gusto_,

which are far less common. For all that, however, they do not always

reject the grosser--it would, perhaps, be more just to call them

the simpler--pleasures which would naturally appeal to the healthy

imaginations of a people addicted to a vigorous and somewhat rude way

of life. Thus in the subterranean palace of the Dagda (afterwards

usurped by his son, Oengus Óg), which was situate within the Brug na

Boinne, and is described as a place of unceasing delight, whither

death or sickness never came, the god sat beneath three fragrant

apple-trees, always laden with ripe fruit, beside an inexhaustible vat

of beer; two pigs were there, one alive and the other ready roasted,

turn and turn about, and a caldron brought by the Dé Danann from Murias

(‘Sealand’), which was never empty of food, and from which none ever

rose unsatisfied, for it gave to each one a portion corresponding to

his rightful claims. These gross enjoyments recur even in the truly

poetic lines which Mider sings to Béfind (or Etain), wife of King

Eochaid Airem, in the story of the Brudin Da Derga,[106] tempting her

to follow him to his realm of Magh Mór. This he describes as a wondrous

land, traversed by warm sweet streams; the people thereof are handsome,

without a blemish, conceived without sin or lust; their bodies are

like the snow, white of skin and black of brow, their hair like tufts

of primrose, their cheeks like the foxglove, and their eyes like the

blackbird’s eggs. But by way of additional attraction Mider promises

the lady a cap of gold for her head, fresh pork, soft new milk, wine

and mead of the choicest, and ale ‘headier than the ale of Ireland.’

We learn elsewhere that Mider also possessed a magic caldron[107]

like that of the Dagda, and three cows which never ran dry. So, too,

Manannán Mac Lír possessed among other highly desirable chattels seven

pigs that would suffice to feed all the world, and seven cows whose

milk would fill seven tubs, whence all the people of the world might

drink their fill. It is interesting to observe how this side of the

Irish Paradise received a twofold development; on the one hand, being

subjected to a refining process, as we shall see when considering the

_Fis Adamnáin_; on the other, developing into a veritable Cockayne, in

such humorous writings as the _Vision of Mac Conglinne_.[108]

Perhaps the fullest and most poetic account of the Tír Tairngire is

that contained in two poems of great beauty, which occur in the _Voyage

of Bran, Son of Febal_, before cited.[109] It must suffice, in this

place, to translate such portions as bear more immediately upon our

subject.

A lovely maiden appears to Bran, bearing in her hand an apple branch

with twigs of silver and golden fruit upon it; this she places in his

hand, and sings:--

‘An isle there is afar; round it sea-horses are flashing;

a free stretch, against which white-sided surges swell; four

pedestals sustain it. A delight of the eye, a glorious array,

are the hosts that disport them in the heroes’ chariot strife,

in the Southern plain of Findarggat (silver-white). Of white

bronze are the pedestals beneath it; throughout the glorious

ages, throughout the ages of the world, shines the lovely land,

over-snowed with many blossoms. There is a stately tree in

bloom; the birds chant responsive to the [canonical] hours;

at every hour they sing in harmony. Jewels of every hue are

gleaming throughout the soft-voiced plain; perpetuity of joy,

with linked melody, is in the Southern plain of Silvercloud. No

wailing is known, nor guile, in the land of perpetual tilth;

nothing rough nor harsh, but only sweet music, strikes the

ear. No sorrow, no gloom, no death, no sickness at all, nor

feebleness,--that is the token of Emain, no rival to it exists.

The beauty of the wondrous land, lovely of aspect, a land fair

to look upon--never its like was found. Shouldst thou next look

on Airctec, bestrewn with dragon-stones and crystals; Ocean

strews upon the land crystal tresses from his mane. Moorlands,

thickets of every hue, in [the land of] Calm; the beauty of

freshness, the hearing of music in its sweetness, the drinking

of wine the brightest. In Magh Réin [Plain of the Sea] the

golden chariots come at flood-tide to meet the sun; in Magh Mon

[Plain of Games] are chariots of silver and of bronze, without

a blemish. A herd of horses like yellow gold is there on the

strand; another herd, of purple hue; after them, yet another

herd, of the hue of a pure grey pearl. At the sun’s uprising

a fair man will come, who illumines the level lands; he rides

over the fair plain whereon the sea beats, he tempers the ocean

till it is [as] blood. The host will come across the pure sea;

they show themselves, rowing towards the land; then they row

to a flat rock, well in view, whence a hundred songs arise.

It chants melody to the hosts, so that sorrow is not therein;

the music swells from the choirs of hundreds, who look not

for return or death. Emain of many forms by the sea, it may

be near, it may be far; therein are women, many thousands, in

chequered array, and the pure sea round about it. When he has

heard the music’s sound, the note of the birds in Imchiúin, a

little band of ladies will come down from the height to the

field of games, whereon he stands. Freedom with health shall

come to the land on which laughter is poured forth; ’tis on

Imchiúin, at every season, that length of life with joy shall

come. A day of serenity unending scatters silver on the land;

a pure white cliff is on the seaboard range, drawing the sun’s

heat from him. The multitude race their horses along Magh Mon,

a glorious sport, not languid; in the chequered lea-land, all

beauty excelling (?), they look not for return nor death.’

We may see at a glance how thoroughly pagan is the conception of the

happy region here depicted, though assuredly lacking neither in beauty

nor refinement, in which respects the Tír Tairngire need fear no

comparison with the Elysium of the Greek poets, which it so strongly

resembles. It is equally evident that the lord of this Island Paradise,

Manannán Mac Lír, is the Tuatha Dé Danann counterpart of the Fomorian

Tethra, king of the dead, who sends his messengers in the guise of

beautiful women--ἄγγελοι in all literalness--to call his subjects unto

him in his realm beyond the ocean. Indeed, Tethra himself appears

in a legend, exactly parallel to the foregoing in design, though of

more primitive structure, which relates the passing of Connla, son of

the famous Árd-Rí, Conn of the Hundred Battles. Connla, like Bran,

was visited by a beautiful damsel, who promised to confer upon him a

continuance of youth and beauty which should never fail or fade until

the Judgment. She then gave him an apple and left him. The virtue of

this apple was such that it afforded Connla nutriment enough for a

month, at the end of which time the damsel returned, and told him that

the ever-living ones had sent for him, having chosen him to become one

of the folk of Tethra, there to dwell for ever, in the companies of his

forefathers, in the midst of his acquaintance and friends.[110] And

Connla followed her to the sea-shore, where a ship of glass awaited

them, in which they embarked, while Conn followed them to the shore,

weeping, and watched them until they were out of sight.

By far the greater number of the visits which the heroes and heroines

of Irish tradition pay to the Otherworld are variations upon the same

theme: a supernatural visitant, smitten with love for chief or maiden,

induces him or her, by persuasion, guile, or force, to follow to fairy

rath or oversea Elysium; a theme which has survived to our own day in

the common legend of the _Leanamhán Sidhe_, or Fairy Lover. The story

of Mider and Etain, or Eithne, above referred to, is an instance of

this kind, Mider having won Etain of her husband, King Eochaid Airem,

at a game of chess. In many cases where a hero’s wife is thus abducted

the loss is but temporary, the husband, a more martial and more

successful Orpheus, winning back his Eurydice by force or stratagem.

To this also the modern Irish fairy tales contain many parallels. So

numerous are the examples of this type, that it is both impossible

and unnecessary to discuss them _seriatim_; it is enough to select

from each of the great tale cycles such instances as may best show the

persistence of the theme, and of the original Irish notions concerning

the Otherworld, some of which coloured the versions in which the legend

appeared in Christian times. The Elysian abodes of the Dagda, of Oengus

Óg, of Mider, and of Manannán Mac Lír, which have been described

already, pertain to the mythological cycle of Irish legend; similar

visits to the abodes of the Tuatha Dé Danann are recorded in many

stories belonging to the greatest of the heroic cycles, namely, the

Ultonian cycle.

One of the best and longest of these stories is the _Serglige

Conchulaind_[111] or Sick-bed of Cuchulainn, the principal hero of

the cycle in question. We have room only for a brief abstract of this

story, giving the details which relate more particularly to our subject.

Once, in dream, Cuchulainn was visited by two ladies of great beauty,

who, without vouchsafing any explanation of their conduct, kept smiting

him with whips as he lay until they left him speechless, in which

state he remained for nearly a year. At the end of that time Emer,

Cuchulainn’s wife, and those with her, saw one day a young man sitting

by his bedside, singing how he was Oengus, and the dream-ladies were

Fand and Liban, his sisters, of whom Fand, wife of Manannán Mac Lír,

having been deserted by her husband, had conceived a great love for

Cuchulainn, and promised that if he would visit her in the Tír Sorcha

(Land of Light), she would make him whole, and give him gold and silver

and wine _go leór_. Before complying with this message, Cuchulainn

sent Loeg, his charioteer, to inspect and report. Loeg returned with a

glowing account of the Tír Sorcha. He had been conducted to the house

of Labraid Luathlam-ar-Claideb--Quick Hand on Sword--husband of Liban,

where Fand was then residing. The rath was situate in the midst of ‘a

pure lake, whither companies of women resort’; before the door stood

three stately trees, pure purple, and the bird-flock singing upon the

branches of them without ceasing, ‘and in the eastern doorway of the

_lios_ a tree--not paltry the music thereon--of silver, on which the

sun shines with exceeding radiance, like gold.’ Within was the usual

good cheer, including an inexhaustible vat of mead. Tempted by this

account Cuchulainn repaired thither himself, and found that all Loeg

had said was true, and more. The beautiful Fand consented to be his, on

condition that he would aid her people in war against a rival god-clan;

this done, he brought her back to Ireland. The upshot of it all was

that Emer, whom Cuchulainn had always loved most fondly until Fand’s

spell was on him, became jealous of her rival, and sought to kill her.

Cuchulainn objected to this, but Emer’s devotion revived the unquenched

embers of his flame for her. At the same time, Manannán had found that

‘what our contempts do often hurl from us we wish it ours again,’ and

the piece concludes with the return of all to their _premiers amours_.

The Otherworld of the ancient Irish possessed no Tartarus. Malignant

powers, indeed, there were in plenty; not to speak of a multitude of

hags and witches, giants and ogres, goblins and spectres, the divine

personages themselves often display a very sinister side of their

character, while not uncommonly a brilliant chief or radiant lady

of the Tuatha Dé Danann would be brother or sister to a hideous and

savage hag or giant.[112] In like manner, the Irish Wonderland (Tír

na n-Iongnadh) could show, alongside of its enchanted raths and

Elysian pleasances, scenes of a widely different kind; seas and lakes

haunted by terrible monsters, weird forests, and gloomy, perilous

glens, although, it is true, this side of the picture is treated much

less fully than the other. Nevertheless, there is no strict line of

demarcation between the two, which exist side by side, as might the

desert and fertile regions of the same country.

One of the nearest approximations to the gloomy Hades of the early

Greeks is found in the realm of Scathach (The Shadowy) whither

Cuchulainn was sent by the wizard Forgall Monach, his prospective

father-in-law, in the hope of getting rid of him, but on pretext

of completing his military education--an instance of the universal

article of primitive belief that the ultimate arcana of knowledge

are only to be won from the powers of death and darkness.[113] The

approach to Scathach’s country lay across a plain, to the one half

of which the feet of whoso attempted to cross it would adhere, while

in the other half the ground would rise and impale the passenger on

the grass blades, like spear points, which grew thereon. Cuchulainn

was guided across the plain by the familiar agency of a wheel and an

apple, given him by a young man whom he found dwelling in a fairy rath,

at the outset of his journey, and who thus discharged the office of

_psychopompos_, which in one form or other--Sibyl, Michael, Virgil,

hag or damsel--almost always appears to be indispensable. The way

then led through a narrow glen, peopled by monsters, and over high

and perilous mountain passes. Finally, to reach his goal, he had to

cross the ‘Bridge of the Cliff,’ an enchanted bridge, low at the two

ends and high at the middle, of such kind that, so soon as one stepped

upon either end, the other would rise and throw him back. This, Miss

Hull says (_op. cit._, p. 291), is the earliest occurrence in Irish

legend of the bridge episode, which, as we have seen, had previously

been a prominent feature in pictures of the Otherworld, and afterwards

appears with almost equal frequency in the chivalrous literature of

the Middle Ages. Miss Hull suggests that the idea, in the present

case, is borrowed from the Norse; this, of course, is quite possible,

having regard to the prominence in Northern myth of the Bridge of

Giöll, crossed by Hermödr on his journey to the Shades in quest of the

dead Balder; while the Wonderland depicted in the Erik Saga and in the

Story of Gorm is likewise approached by a bridge.[114] However, without

entering into the difficult question of the epoch at which the Balder

myth assumed its present shape, or of the respective dates of the

Norse and Irish legends in their original forms, the hypothesis hardly

seems necessary to account for the introduction of so obvious and so

widespread an incident into the Cuchulainn legend, where, moreover, the

Bridge of the Cliff differs widely from the Rainbow bridge of Giöll

and from the more commonplace bridges of the Norse Sagas. As Miss Hull

herself observes, the idea recurs in another branch of Celtic story,

the Arthurian legend,[115] and ‘belongs to the Hell doctrine of nearly

all Oriental religions’ (_loc. cit._) Several of these we have already

examined, and have seen how the same idea passed into the eschatology

of the Western Church. Neither is it confined to the cultured races,

from Vedic India to Iceland; it occurs also among such primitive

nations as the Inoits of Aleutia and the Bagadas of the Nilghiris. From

them to Addison’s _Vision of Mirza_ is a long step in every sense.[116]

Another story connected with the same cycle, the _Echtra Nerai_,

Adventures of Nera, otherwise called the _Táin Bo Aingen_, Cattle

raid of Aingen,[117] may receive mention here as presenting a feature

which frequently recurs in the ecclesiastical visions, while the main

outlines of the story are preserved in modern folk-tales. As Ailill,

king of Connacht, was keeping the Samhain festival in his rath of

Cruachan, he offered to give his gold-hilted sword to any one who

should dare to put a withe on the foot of a newly hanged man, who was

swinging outside. Nera accepted the challenge, and after several vain

attempts (the withe springing off of its own accord) succeeded. The

corpse then spoke, and asked Nera for a drink, and Nera obligingly took

the corpse on his shoulders, and offered to take him to a house which

appeared hard by, standing amid a lake of fire. The corpse declined

this offer, which is hardly to be wondered at, and the rest of the

story follows the conventional lines of the ordinary folk-tale, but we

have here the moat of fire, as in the _Fis Adamnáin_ and elsewhere.

Visits to the enchanted abodes of the Tuatha Dé Danann--to the

Otherworld, that is--are common in the tales belonging to the third

great group of heroic tales, second in importance to the Cuchulainn

cycle above, namely, the Finn cycle, in which occurs the most

celebrated of them all--the visit of Oísin to Niamh Cinn Óir, which so

late as the eighteenth century inspired Michael Comyn with his fine

poem, the _Laoi Oisín ar dTír na n-óg_. Still, the tales of this cycle,

however ancient their materials, would appear to have undergone a

sogmewhat modernising influence, comparatively speaking, in receiving

artistic shape, in which last respect they betray more signs of a

deliberately literary treatment than their predecessors, while in their

treatment of the Otherworld they do not appear to have contributed

materially to the evolution of the legend.

Distinct from the Finn cycle, though dealing in part with the persons

and events of the period to which Finn has been assigned by tradition,

is a group of highly picturesque tales relating to the dynasty of Conn

Ced-cathach (of the Hundred Battles) Árd Rí of Ireland, according to

tradition, in the second century A.D. In the Conn cycle the Otherworld

legend figures prominently, the monarch himself, his sons Árt and

Connla, and his grandson Cormac, all having journeyed thither. These

tales, moreover, furnish certain links which connect the _Echtra_ with

the _Imram_ and _Fis_.

It is said to have been Conn’s daily wont to make the circuit of Temair

(Tara), in company of his Druids and poets, to see that none of the

Tuatha Dé Danann, or Daoine Sidhe, alighted thereon. One day, while

so engaged, he trod upon a flagstone, which shrieked so loud as to be

heard all over Temair and Magh Breg. Conn asked his chief Druid for an

explanation of this wonder, but the Druid required a respite of fifty

days before he could give it. At the end of that time the king and his

suite again repaired to the spot, and the Druid declared that the name

of the flag was Fál, and that it had been brought from Inis Fáil by the

Tuatha Dé Danann to remain at Temair for ever, and any year the Árd

Rí of Éire failed to look upon it, dearth would be on the land.[118]

And suddenly a mist fell upon them, and from out of the mist was heard

the sound of a horseman, who cast three darts at them. ‘Whosoever aims

at Conn in Temair will be violating the king’s majesty,’ exclaimed

the Druid; whereupon the horseman came forward and, greeting Conn,

invited him to his home. Conn followed, and soon reached a fair plain

in which stood a royal rath, and a great tree, as it were of gold, in

the doorway.[119] On entering, he saw a lovely damsel, a golden diadem

on her head, standing by a silver vat hooped with gold, full of red

ale, and a golden can and cup upon it. Beside it was a royal throne,

whereon sat a Scál (champion) of majestic stature, and of a beauty

never seen at Temair. Conn asked him who he was: he replied, ‘No living

champion am I, but one of Adam’s sons returned from death; I am Lugh

Mac Ceithlenn,[120] and I am come to reveal to thee the life of thine

own sovereignty, and the sovereignty of every king who shall be after

thee in Éire.’--‘And the maiden who was present to them in the house

was the sovereignty of Éire for ever.’ Then were revealed to Conn the

names of all the kings of his race who should succeed to him in Éire, a

cup of ale being borne to the name of each. The scene, which suggests

the similar revelation made to Macbeth in the witches’ cavern, closes

with a prophecy of St. Patrick--whom God should honour, and who should

kindle a torch that would illumine Éire from sea to sea--and of the

later races of kings that should rule over Ireland.

Here we have another instance of Christian embroidery upon a thoroughly

Pagan stuff; however, the identification of the Dé Danann Lugh as a son

of Adam returned from the dead was true in a fuller sense than the

author, probably, was aware.

Another visit of Conn to the Tír na n-Óg is related in a tale known as

the _Echtra Áirt_, or Adventures of Árt.[121] The Leanamhán Sidhe, who

figures in this story, bears a more sinister aspect than do most of her

order in Irish legend, and possesses affinities to the witch-lady or

Lamia. She was Bécuma Cneisgel (B. White-skin), wife of the Dé Danann

chief Labrad Luathlam-ar-Claideb (Swift Hand on Sword), and having been

found guilty of infidelity, had been banished from the Tír Tairngire.

Finding a curach on the shore, she stepped in; this ‘trim skiff’ of the

Wonderland ‘asked no aid of sail or oar,’ and Bécuma, ‘leaving it to

the heaving of wind over sea,’ reached Benn Edair, the Hill of Howth.

Here she found Conn, who had retired thither to mourn the recent death

of his wife, and introduced herself to him as Delbchaem (Fair-form),

daughter of Morgan (Sea-born), come to Ireland from the Tír Tairngire

for love of Conn’s son Árt. However, it was ultimately settled that she

should marry Conn himself, and she returned with him to Temair, having

first obtained a pledge from the king, according to the rules of Irish

chivalry, that he would grant her the boon she might ask of him, which

proved to be the banishment of Árt for a year. Henceforth, all went

wrong with the country; the land yielded neither corn nor milk, and

the Druids, on being consulted, affirmed that by reason of Bécuma’s

wickedness the land was under a curse, which could only be removed by

sacrificing the son of a sinless couple, and mingling his blood with

the soil of Temair. Conn set forth in quest of such a youth; at Benn

Edair he found a curach which bore him across the sea, through herds

of strange sea-monsters of fearsome aspect, while the waves rose and

the firmament trembled, until he came to a strange isle, ‘having fair

fragrant apple-trees, and many wells of wine, most beautiful, and a

fair bright wood, adorned with clustering hazel-nuts, surrounding those

wells, with lovely golden yellow nuts, and little bees, ever beautiful,

hovering over the fruits, which were dropping their blossoms and their

leaves into the wells’ (tr. Best, _loc. cit._). Hard by was a goodly

house, the dwelling of Daire Degamra; the thatch was of birds’ wings,

white, and yellow, and blue; the doors were of crystal, and the posts

of bronze. Inside was a crystal throne, whereon sat Segda Saerlabrad,

son of Daire. Conn was made welcome; his feet were washed by an

invisible hand, which likewise guided him to the hearth, wherefrom a

flame started up of its own accord. Tables laden with various kinds of

meat were set before him by invisible attendants, and a drinking horn

was set thereon. There was a vat, finely wrought, of blue crystal, and

three golden hoops about it, wherein Daire bade him bathe. Then he was

bidden fall to; but it was _geis_ to him to eat alone, whereas the

inmates told him that it was equally _geis_ to them to eat save alone;

however, Segda, to oblige the guest, consented to eat with him. Next

morning Conn asked permission to take Segda back with him, having heard

that he was that son of a sinless couple of whom he was in quest. His

parents admitted that this was so, for they had never come together

save at his conception, and so it had been with their own parents.

Conn did not divulge why he needed the youth; nevertheless, his parents

refused to let him go, but Segda proving resolute not to deny the king,

they consented, putting him under the protection of Conn, and Árt and

Finn, and the ‘men of art,’ for his safe return. The _dénouement_,

showing how Segda was preserved from sacrifice, is too long to relate

here, having nothing to do with our subject.

The story then goes on to Árt, whose adventures are the ostensible

subject of it. Bécuma behaved like the typical stepmother of the

folk-tale. In order to procure his absence from Ireland, she challenged

him to chess, and on winning--by foul play, being aided by spiritual

agencies at her command--put a _geis_ on him not to return to Ireland

without the before-mentioned Delbchaem, daughter of Morgan, who dwelt

in an isle in the sea. Árt, like his father, set out in a curach,

and reached an island wherein was a dún similar to that of Daire.

In it was a company of fair women, and among them Crede Firalaind

(Truly-beautiful). Árt was welcomed and feasted; he told his tale, and

Crede told him that his coming had long been decreed; she gave him a

‘variegated mantle, with adornments of gold from Arabia,’ and three

kisses, and showed him a crystal bower, wherein was an inexhaustible

vat, which straightway became full again, however often emptied. Here

Árt stayed a fortnight, and upon his leaving, Crede instructed him as

to the way he had to follow. This way was wild and difficult, full of

the dangers and obstacles which commonly waylay the hero of romance,

though they only call for mention here as constituting, with the realm

of Scathach before described, as near an approach to a Tartarus

myth as Irish legend contains. The terrors which Árt had to traverse

included stretches of ocean filled with sea-monsters that had to be

fought and overcome; a wood, where it was as though spear-points of

battle were under the feet, like leaves of the forest; a venomous icy

mountain, with a glen full of toads which lay in wait for passers-by;

an icy river, with a narrow bridge over, defended by a giant whom no

weapons would harm, fire burn, nor water drown. Of course, all ended

as it should, but the remainder of the story casts no light upon the

Otherworld.

One of the best-known stories belonging to this cycle is that

which relates the adventures of Cormac, son of Árt, in the Tír

Tairngire.[122] At the dawn of a May morning Cormac was walking on the

ramparts of Temair, when he espied a dignified, grey-haired warrior

approaching him, bearing on his shoulder a branch of silver and three

golden apples on it; and the music which those apples made when shaken

would lull to rest sick folk, and wounded men, and women in the pains

of childbirth. After the two had exchanged greetings, Cormac asked the

stranger whence he had come. ‘From a land,’ he replied, ‘where there

is nought save truth, and there is neither envy, nor jealousy, nor

hate, nor haughtiness’ (tr. W. S.). They plighted their friendship,

and Cormac begged for the musical branch, which the other gave him,

exacting in return the promise of three boons which he should crave.

A year later the warrior returned, and claimed his first boon, which

was none other than Cormac’s own daughter Ailbe. Though loath, Cormac

submitted, bound by his promise,[123] and stilled the lamentations of

his household by shaking the branch, and casting them into a profound

sleep. After a month the warrior returned, and demanded Conn’s son,

and, finally, his wife. Cormac still felt himself bound to comply,

but he started off in pursuit, followed by all his people. Upon their

passing beyond the walls a dense mist fell upon them, and Cormac

found himself in the plain alone. Before him stood a great dún, with

a stockade of bronze about it, and within it a house of silver. The

thatch of this house was the wings of white birds. It was half thatched

only, and troops of fairy horsemen kept bringing other wings to

complete it, but the wind was always carrying them away. After this,

he saw a man feeding a fire with a great oak-tree, entire, and as soon

as one was consumed he would replace it with another. Then he came to

an enclosure also ramparted with bronze, and four houses therein; one

of these was a great palace, ‘with its beams of bronze, its wattling

of silver, and its thatch the wings of white birds. Then he sees in

the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and

the hosts in turn a-drinking its waters. Nine hazels of Buan grow over

the well, the purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the

five salmon which are in the fountain sever them and send their husks

floating down the stream. Now the sound of the falling of those streams

is more melodious than any music that men sing’ (W. S. _loc. cit._).

In the house Cormac found a warrior of exceeding beauty, both in face

and figure, and a maiden, ‘the loveliest of the world’s women,’ with

a helmet of gold on her yellow hair. Her feet, Cormac noticed, were

washed by invisible hands, and within a partition was a bath, heated

without visible agency, and Cormac bathed there. In the afternoon a man

came in, bearing in one hand an axe and in the other a log of wood, and

followed by a pig. At the warrior’s bidding, the man kindled a fire

with the log, killed the pig, and put him in a caldron on the fire to

boil. After a while the damsel bade him turn the pig, but he replied

that it was useless, for that pig would never be done until a truth had

been told for every quarter. Thereupon each one told some truth; the

man how he had obtained the log and the pig, the properties of which

were such that after the log had been burnt out at night, and the pig

eaten, the pig would be found alive in the morning, and the log whole;

and one quarter of the pig was cooked. The warrior told how there was

a field outside the lios, which was found, at ploughing time, to be

ready ploughed, harrowed, and sown with wheat; at harvest time, ready

stacked, and so on, and they had been eating of that wheat ever since,

and it none the less; and another quarter was done. The girl said that

she had a herd of seven cows, whose milk sufficed for all the people of

the Tír Tairngire, and seven sheep whose wool furnished the garments of

them; and the third quarter was cooked. Then Cormac related the reason

of his coming, and the pig was cooked entirely. When Cormac’s portion

was set before him, he said that he never ate unless there were fifty

men in his company. Then the warrior sang a strain which sent him to

sleep, and on waking he beheld fifty men, and with them his wife, son,

and daughter. So they set to upon the food and ale in all mirth and

gladness. And a silver cup was placed in the warrior’s hand, who, as

Cormac admired the workmanship of it, told him that there was something

yet more wonderful about it, for when three lies were told under it

it would break into three pieces, while the utterance of three truths

would make it whole again. He then told three lies, and the cup broke,

even as he had said; then, to restore it, he declared that neither

had Cormac’s wife nor daughter seen a man, nor his son a woman, since

they had left him, and in proof that his words were true, the cup came

together, perfect as before. So Cormac received again his wife and son

and daughter; and with them the cup, that he might discern between

truth and falsehood in his judgments, and the bell-branch for music and

delight. And the warrior declared that he was Manannán Mac Lír, who

had allured Conn to the Tír Tairngire that he might behold the wonder

of it. And the men who had brought the wings to complete the thatch of

the house were ‘the men of art in Ireland, collecting cattle and wealth

which passed away into nothing’; the man burning oak-trees was a young

lord, paying out of his own husbandry for all that he consumed; the

fountain was the Fountain of Knowledge, and the five streams issuing

thereout the five senses, ‘And no man will have knowledge who drinketh

not a draught out of the fountain itself, and out of the streams. The

folk of many arts are those who drink of them both’ (W. S. _loc. cit._).

The foregoing group of stories from the Conn cycle probably represent

a very ancient legend, several of them being manifest variants of a

single original, which at some period became connected in turn with the

successive members of the dynasty. This is apparent even in several

minute points of detail: _e.g._ Conn’s first wife, for whom he mourned,

and Cormac’s wife, taken from him by Manannán, were both named Ethne

Taebfada (Long-side). The group represents a stage in the theory of

the Otherworld in advance of previous conceptions;[124] and although

the ideas which it contains fall far short of an eschatology, properly

so called, they yet contain materials which later writers were able to

employ in that sense. We can discern here the rudiments of an ethical

theory of the Otherworld. In the story of Connla, the land of Tethra

appears as a happy place whither the souls of famous chieftains and

warriors are borne across the sea, as Achilles was rapt away to the

isle of Leuke; and even this aristocratic Elysium--parallels to which

abound from Polynesia to Greece, and from Greece to America--contains

in germ a certain ethical idea. The favour of the immortals is reserved

for chieftains famous for their birth and qualities, and thus the

process is begun which first designates as a ‘gentleman’ the scion of

a noble _gens_, and then goes on to require in such an one qualities

worthy of his origin, and to

‘Loke who that is most vertuous alway,

Privë and apert, and most entendeth ay

To do the gentil dedes that he can,

And take him for the gretest gentilman.’

Thus, in the Adventures of Cormac, Manannán describes the Tír

Tairngire as ‘a land where there is naught save truth, and there is

neither envy nor jealousy, hate nor haughtiness’; a description which

is applied in a greatly amplified form to Heaven, at the close of the

_Fis Adamnáin_, and in other Christian writings. It reminds us of

a passage already cited from the Avesta, descriptive of the Var of

Yima. Indeed, in Ireland as in Irân, ‘everything that maketh a lie’

is excluded from the ideal country, even as we have seen a want of

fidelity to plighted faith to be the vice most inconsistent with the

character of a king.

In the episode of Segda Saerlabrad, and again in the Adventures of

Cormac, occurs that idea of chastity in connection with the Tír

Tairngire to which, in its more developed form in the _Voyage of

Bran_, we shall have to refer. This group, moreover, is marked by

a tendency to conscious allegory which is foreign to the previous

cycles. The maiden whom Conn finds in the dún is a personification of

the sovereignty of Éire; and the dún visited by Cormac is a veritable

‘House of the Interpreter.’ The ethical significance of the wonders

seen by Cormac on the way thither, and there expounded to him, is

entirely symbolical of the life of this world, wherein the story

resembles not merely the _Shepherd of Hermas_ and the _Pilgrim’s

Progress_, but the _Tablet of Cebes_ and the _Choice of Herakles_ among

the Greeks, and countless moral apologues, Oriental and mediæval.

The Dé Danann chieftains, seated on their crystal thrones beside the

marvellous tree and the vat of ale, are an advance upon the Dagda,

seated beside his vat of ale and apple-trees, and display the legend in

a stage at which it is ready to coalesce with, and give native colour

to, the Hebraic imagery of the Throne and its Occupant.

The pleasantly told little apologue of the Fountain of Knowledge

and its five streams, which are the five senses, interprets a very

primitive Irish legend in the light of a simple but not shallow

philosophy.

The Irish heroic tales having passed through the hands of Christian

redactors, the question occurs whether we must ascribe to them any

ethical element that occurs therein. Although it is hard to pronounce

with certainty, where they contain no express reference to the

Christian faith, it would be rash, and probably a mistake, to reply in

the affirmative in all cases. Certain ethical ideas there must have

been in pre-Christian Ireland, and the places and the mode in which we

find them are often those in which they might most naturally appear. In

the instances referred to, there is nothing inconsistent with a system

of ethics far more primitive than that to which the ancient Irish

might conceivably have attained. Moreover, there is nothing about the

passages in question suggestive of an interpolation; they arise quite

naturally out of the narrative, and in one striking instance, that of

Segda Saerlabrad, are expressly bound up with the pagan idea of human

sacrifice in a manner that no Christian writer could or would have

invented. Neither does it seem likely that an ecclesiastical writer

who should make such interpolations in the interest of the Christian

religion would make no mention of that religion in connection with

them. The very tales in question show in what a clumsy and perfunctory

manner such interpolations were made, when it was found expedient

to bring an ancient legend into agreement with Christian doctrine.

Instances of this are furnished by the prophecies of Manannán Mac Lír

in the _Voyage of Bran_, and the reference to the Judgment in the

Adventures of Connla. The last-named story further contains a prophecy

of the coming of the law which shall destroy Druidism and its charms

‘upon the lips of black lying demons.’

As previously mentioned, there exists in these same stories a

connection between the Echtra and Imram classes of tales. In several of

them the hero departs in his curach in quest of a Wonderland that lies

oversea,[125] passing in the course of his voyage through the herds

of sea-monsters which beset the heroes of the Imrama, and beholding

marvels and visiting enchanted islands entirely similar to those which

occur in the latter.

In the Imrama proper we may note in an ascending scale the gradual

preponderance of Christian ideas, and the assimilation of the old

Irish conception of the Otherworld to a genuine eschatology. Some of

them, such as the _Voyage of Bran_, and Cuchulainn’s quest of the sons

of Doel Dermait, relate a purely pagan legend, though the clerical

redactors have sought to dissociate them from the paganism which was

scarcely forgotten in their day by the interpolation of a Christian

prophecy, or the like, as in Christian Rome the statues of the Olympian

deities were converted into the effigies of Christian saints by the

apposition of a nimbus to their heads. Then come a group written

from a Christian point of view, and enforcing a lesson in Christian

morals, although the framework of the story and most of the episodes

are derived from the older literature:[126] such are the Voyages of

Maelduin, of the sons of Ua Corra, and of Snedgus and Mac Ríagla.

Finally, there are the purely ecclesiastical Imrama, included in the

acts of one or other of the saints, of which class the Voyage of St.

Brendan is in every way the most important example.

We have been induced somewhat to anticipate the earliest of the Imrama,

and to give the greater part of the description of Manannán’s Elysium

contained in the Voyage of Bran, in order to present in a single view

the different forms in which the Otherworld was conceived by the

ancient Irish. The story goes on to relate how, the maiden’s song

ended, the branch leapt back again into her hand, and she vanished;

but the glamour was on Bran, and he set forth in his curach across

the sea. Here he meets Manannán Mac Lír, traversing the sea in his

chariot like a veritable Poseidon.[127] The god accosts Bran, and

sings to him a song concerning his Elysian realm beyond the sea. His

description adds but little to that contained in the maiden’s song;

one touch, however, we may note, by reason of its frequent occurrence

in subsequent writings. He speaks of a ‘charming delightful game,’ at

which the denizens play over their wine, ‘men and gentle women beneath

a bush, without sin, without transgression.’ This passage has been

accredited to Christian transcribers; however, the remarks previously

offered in relation to such interpolations in general would seem to

apply to the present case. The very poetical description of the Tír

Tairngire contained in this tale, while thoroughly in accord with the

more primitive legends, though amplified and drawn by a more masterly

hand, is marked by a refinement of imagination and execution more than

sufficient to account for the occurrence of the idea in question,

without any air of incongruity with the rest of the description.[128]

We may add that it seems most unlikely that a Christian scribe would,

if he could, introduce a touch of the kind, when he has not found it

necessary, in this and other legends where the old Irish conception

of the Otherworld has undergone an euhemerising and Christianising

process, to delete the episodes of enchanted dúns and islands where the

wayfarer is refreshed with delights akin to those of the Mohammedan

Paradise.[129] Manannán’s song in the present tale contains a palpable

interpolation of the usual kind, in the form of several stanzas

prophetic of the coming of Christ.

Another Imram belongs to the Cuchulainn cycle, and in its original form

was probably older than any other story of this class that has come

down to us, but it is only preserved in a later redaction. Cuchulainn

having overcome in battle the king of the Ui Maine, the king put a

spell on him that he should know no peace until he had ascertained why

the children of Doel Dermait had left their country. Cuchulainn could

find no one to tell him this, and became a prey to unrest. At length

he had occasion to fight a duel with the king of Alba’s son, whom he

vanquished and would have slain, but that the prince begged his life,

which Cuchulainn granted him on condition that he would solve the

riddle. This the prince could not do himself, but he promised to take

Cuchulainn to those who could. Cuchulainn accepted these terms, and

embarked on board the prince’s ship with his charioteer Loeg and his

comrade Lugaid. They first came to a fair island, wherein was a dún

surrounded by a wall of silver and a stockade of bronze upon it. They

received a cordial welcome, but upon propounding their question were

directed to another island, where dwelt Achtlann, daughter of Doel

Dermait and wife of Condla Coel Corrbacc, a kind of marine Enceladus,

who used to lie all across his island, and at every breath he drew

would send a great wave along the sea with the wind of it. Achtlann

guided them to a third island, where two great giants bore joint rule,

Corpre Cundail, a kinsman of Doel Dermait, and Eochaid Glas Corpre. The

former challenged Cuchulainn to fight, and, being overcome, treated

him hospitably, and told him of Doel Dermait’s children, who were held

captive in that island by Eochaid. Next day Cuchulainn attacked Eochaid

in his ‘Place of Torture,’ the Glenn; but the giant was so tall that

Cuchulainn could only reach him by jumping on to the rim of his shield,

from which Eochaid kept blowing him off each time. Cuchulainn, however,

by dint of one of those gymnastic feats for which he was famous, leapt

into the air over the giant and slew him from above. He then released

the captives, who straightway bathed in the giant’s blood, and being

thus healed of their tortures and sufferings, were enabled to return to

their own country. In this story, which assuredly bears small imprint

of Christian influences, we probably have the earliest form of that

episode of the release of the captives of some giant or wizard, which

recurs in the Graal romances, and is one of the most frequent incidents

of the romantic tales of chivalry.[130] Its meaning is clear, the

release of the dead from the powers of the lower world, a feat which

is no less frequently accomplished by different means, in mediæval

stories, by a saint or jongleur, according as the scope of the work is

religious or comic.

The earliest of the Christian Imrama that we possess is _The Voyage of

Maelduin’s Curach_, the composition of which Professor Zimmer refers

to the eighth century at latest, though it contains interpolations

which Mr. Nutt considers to have been made at the end of the tenth

century.[131] It relates a voyage undertaken by Maelduin, a young noble

of the Eoghanachta, in order to find the murderer of his father who

had been slain by a marauder of Leix. The tale is a remarkably fine

one of its kind, and its simple and picturesque prose is by no means

improved upon by Tennyson’s poem, the subject of which it suggested.

It is long, and contains a great variety of incidents, some of which,

it is very possible, may not belong to the original Celtic stock,

but may be due to classical sources. Certain it is that a great part

of them belong to that class of ‘ferlies’ which old writers used to

place in _terræ incognitæ_, and have their analogues in the writings

of Herodotus and Aelian, and, Mr. Stokes says, Megasthenes, to whom

we may add Lucian and Sinbad. The majority of them, however, are

variants, and often developments, of topics common in Irish legend. We

must content ourselves with giving a brief summary of those episodes

which most illustrate the development of the Otherworld legend in Irish

ecclesiastical literature.

As usual, the narrative mainly consists of the visits paid by the

wanderer to a number of enchanted islands, which are mostly of the

usual Wonderland pattern, though the present description of them

contains, in most cases, certain distinctive features of its own. The

wanderers are entertained in stately dúns, with walls and palisades of

the precious metals or of crystal; they are regaled with magic food;

there is the usual Calypso episode, etc. etc. One island is raised

above the sea upon a pedestal; in another is a river of fire; one is

encompassed with a wall of water; over another a stream rises on one

side and descends on the other, forming an arch like a rainbow; upon

another is a tall column with a mystical veil depending from it and

enshrouding the island,--all of which recall features of the Paradise

described in the _Fis Adamnáin_.