lost in their mournful habitation, their own sufferings being augmented
by the company of others in like case, and by a restless longing for
the coming of Doom to end their suspense. Herein the author recognises
a truth, the opposite of that truth contained in Hamlet’s dictum,
though not less true; for often it is less tolerable to ‘bear the ills
we have, than fly to others that we know not of,’ even though the
change may surely be for the worse.[183]
Then follows a short description of the dolorous country, which is
depicted as a waste and desolate region of the kind traversed by
Cuchulainn on his journey to the realm of Scathach, and by Árt on his
way to the Tír na n-Óg. The general character of this description is
rather Miltonic than Dantesque.[184] Many instances appear to indicate
that, to the northern spirit, the extreme of terror is suggested
rather by the hauntings of wide and desolate spaces, than by the more
realistic--we might almost say materialistic--imagination apparent in
the intensive presentation of specific and concrete sufferings, which
Dante was led to adopt, alike by his racial and personal temperament,
and by his theory of the Otherworld.
Precedents for the Devil’s abode in the depths of the infernal seas are
furnished alike by the Scriptural Leviathan, and by the _Piast_, which
haunts almost every Irish loch of any depth, as also by the lake of
fire and brimstone in Rev. xx. 10, into which Satan is to be cast at
the end of the world.
The four rivers of Hell, which likewise occur in the Voyage of the
Ui Corra and in several Continental visions, have been supposed by
some authorities to be intended as a counterpart to the four rivers
of Paradise in Genesis ii. 10 _sqq._; this, however, seems doubtful,
having regard to the absence of any mention of the suggested prototype,
neither does it appear that the Scriptural Paradise was present to the
author’s mind. It seems more probable that the number has reference
to the fourfold division of the upper world; indeed, in some later
mediæval visions, these rivers are placed in accordance with the
cardinal points. They may possibly be due to a reminiscence of the
classical Styx, Acheron, Cocytus, and Phlegethon, as in Milton (_P. L._
ii. 575 _sqq._), and Dante (_Inf._ xiv. 115 _sqq._).
The tormenting of the spirits by the eager hosts of demons that infest
the infernal lakes may be compared to the sportive malice of the fiends
in _Inf._ xxii.-xxiii.
In chapter 31 Adamnán is re-conducted, by another skilfully managed
transition, to the Land of Saints. He desired to tarry there, but like
several of his predecessors, from Plato’s Er downwards, he heard a
voice which bade him return to earth and relate what had been revealed
to him, for the instruction of his countrymen: he was then restored to
the body.