Chapter 32 would provide the work with a symmetrical conclusion. As

in the exordium the author represents Adamnán as the last in a series

of holy men to whom analogous revelations had been vouchsafed, so in

this peroration he declares the identity of the doctrine preached by

Adamnán, respecting the world to come, with the teaching of other

saints and fathers of the Church. In designing his work with this

structural completeness, the author stands alone, so far as I am aware,

until Dante comes on the scene.

The episode of Enoch and Elijah standing under the Tree of Life,

surrounded by the bird-flocks, though well told, adds nothing to the

form in which it appears in other Irish legends of the period. We have

already given reasons for supposing that it is an excrescence upon the

original design.

The reflections there made upon the sorrow experienced by the righteous

on hearing of the sorrows of Doomsday,[185] remind us of a similar

passage in Dante:

‘Se di là sempre ben per noi si dice,

Di quà che dire e far per lor si puote,

Da quei, ch’hanno al voler buona radice?’

_Purg._ xi. 31-33.

The rhapsodical description of Heaven, which concludes the work as it

now stands, is likewise a matter of ‘common form.’ It may possibly be

an amplification of several passages in the Revelation (_e.g._ xxi. 4,

etc.), though we have seen that something of the kind existed, in a

rudimentary form, in some of the _Echtra_, when describing the Sidhe of

a Dé Danann chief. The curiously close parallel in the Avesta has been

noted already.

This chapter, as before mentioned, does not form part of the version

preserved in the Lebor Brec, and although that MS. is by far the

more recent, it is quite possible that the scribe followed a version

transcribed before the addition was made.[186]

6. LATER DEVELOPMENTS

The _Fis Adamnáin_ represents the culminating point to which the

Vision of the Otherworld was brought by writers of the Irish school:

henceforth the achievements of that school are principally apparent in

the influence which they exercised upon the course which the legend

took upon the Continent, and thus, indirectly, upon the development of

European literature. Enough has been said in an earlier part of this

work to show that abundant means existed for familiarising Continental

students with any branch of letters to which the Irish schools might

be addicted, and accordingly we now find the Irish legend of the

Otherworld disseminating itself through the medium as well of works

written upon Irish soil, as of the writings of Irish scholars in

Continental foundations, and similar works composed by foreign authors

more or less under Irish influences.

The first of these productions is the last of the great _Imrama_, and

by far the most famous, though not the best from a literary point

of view.[187] Not only did the legend of St. Brendan, of Clonfert,

surnamed the Voyager (483-574), become one of the most widely diffused

and most popular tales of the Middle Ages, but it even influenced, in

some slight degree, the course of the world’s history, for its account

of a land beyond the Atlantic fired the imagination, and directed the

course, of Spanish and Portuguese navigators many centuries after its

own date.[188]

At one period of his labours, St. Brendan appears to have been seized

with that _taedium vitae_ which is apt, at times, to weigh with special

force upon diligent workers for righteousness. In his case it asserted

itself, characteristically, in that impulse which even now urges so

many of his countrymen to follow his course across the Atlantic, but on

a voyage whence there is no return, and to another world which seldom

affords a vision of Paradise, at any rate. In this frame of mind he

prayed for a land, ‘secret, hidden, secure, delightful, apart from

men’; he then fell asleep, and, in a dream, was directed to repair

to Sliabh Daidche (now Brandon Hill, in the Co. Kerry). This he did,

and there met an angel, who bade him build three ships, and commit

himself to the ocean. The building and manning of the ships, and the

early stages of the voyage, wherein the old model of the _Imrama_ is

closely followed, are interesting, but cannot be given here. One day

the voyagers landed upon the back of a sleeping whale, taking it for an

island, until the monster, awaking, bore them off across the sea.[189]

Thus they journeyed for five years, being sustained the while by food

miraculously sent to them, as to the island hermits of the earlier

_Imrama_. At length St. Brendan espied the Devil approaching them

across the waves.[190] He hailed the demon, and questioned him, who

replied that he had come to seek his punishment ‘in the deep closes of

the black, dark sea.’ This roused the Saint’s curiosity, but the Devil

told him that none might see those things and live; he was prevailed

on, however, to guide the Saint to the gate of Hell. Here Brendan saw

‘a rough, hot prison, full of stench and filth and flame,’ and ‘the

camps of poisonous demons’; here were wailing and ‘handsmiting of the

sinful folk;[191] and a gloomy, mournful life in cores of pain, in

prisons of fire, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in the cup

of eternal sorrow and death’ (tr. W. S.). The land was full of black

swamps, surrounding fiery forts, and fiery mountains, over which demons

were dragging the souls of the lost, without respite. Then follow long

and gruesome descriptions of the sufferings endured in that place;

these are of the usual type, including all the horrors of a wild and

desolate region, with inclement weather, combining the extremes of heat

and cold; foul, poisonous lakes; fierce winds; wild, rough brakes, and

mountains haunted by monsters, etc., etc. Proceeding on their way, they

visited various islands; round one of them, very lofty, they cruised

for twelve days, without finding a spot where they might land, though

they saw a noble church in it, and heard voices praising the Lord.

After visiting several islands, the Saint returned to Ireland.[192]

However, the spirit of wandering was not yet laid, and St. Brendan

set forth upon a second voyage. In this, as on the first voyage, the

Otherworld type of the lands which he visited is evident. In one

‘little, insignificant island,’ the harbour was ‘filled with devils in

the shape of dwarfs and pygmies, with their faces as black as coal.’

At length Brendan came to an island whereon was a pilgrim covered with

white hair, who directed him to the Tír Tairngire. Here he found an

old man, who bade him enter into possession of the land, for those

were ‘the plains of Paradise, and the delightful fields of the land,

radiant, famous, loveable, profitable,’ etc. ‘A land of odorous

flowers, smooth, bland. A land of many melodies, musical, shouts for

joy, unmournful’ (tr. W. S.). There were ‘health without sickness,

delight without quarrelling, union without wrangling, princedom without

dissolution, rest without idleness, freedom without labour, luminous

unity of angels, delights of Paradise, service of angels, feasting

without extinction,’ and so on, in the rhapsodical style of ch. 35

of the _Fis Adamnáin_. The old man was covered with white hair, like

a dove or sea-mew,[193] and had ‘almost the speech of an angel.’ At

the stroke of a bell tierce was celebrated, when ‘they sing thanks to

God, with their minds fixed on Him,’ a repetition of the words of the

_Fis Adamnáin_; indeed, a long passage at the conclusion of the voyage

coincides almost word for word with the _Fis_, of which, according to

Mr. Whitley Stokes, it is a copy, and not _vice versa_.[194]

The Latin narratives of St. Brendan’s voyages[195] differ widely from

the Irish account; on the whole, the Otherworld element is much less

prominent in them, though they contain several details of the kind.

Of such are the island standing on four pedestals, and an island with

a tall column on it, from which a veil or canopy like silver hung; a

volcanic isle with demon smiths at work, hammering upon their anvils

the souls of the wicked, who threw masses of glowing metal after

the ships; hermits fed with salmon by a cat, etc. There is also a

variant of the story told in the Voyage of Maelduin about the Torach

gravedigger.

The Paradise of Birds appears with a new significance. The birds are

those angels who, upon the rebellion of Lucifer, _per sè foro_, and

fell without active guilt on their part, and were relegated to this

island, there to dwell until the general Resurrection, suffering no

pain, and celebrating the canonical hours; a happier lot than that

which Dante bestows upon them in canto iii. of the _Inferno_.

The story of Brendan, it will be seen, though somewhat later than

the _Fis Adamnáin_, is but an _Imram_ of the ordinary type, though

containing several original features, and richer in incident than

most of its predecessors. However, its chief claim to consideration

rests upon the work which it effected in securing for Irish legend a

permanent place in European literature.

With the Voyage of Brendan the _Imram_ type of romance culminates, and

ceases to occupy its former important place in Irish literature.[196]

Henceforth, the Otherworld tradition, whether in Irish or foreign

hands, is continued by means of the _Fis_, the form properly its own,

from the time of Plato downwards.

In this form it inspired a work which almost rivalled the Voyage of

Brendan in the popularity it achieved, and the influence it exercised

upon later writers. This was the Vision of Tundale, written at Ratisbon

by an Irish monk, a Munster man, named Marcus, apparently about the

year 1149, in which the vision is dated. It was written in Latin, and

immediately became widely popular, being translated in the course of

its own century, and several centuries following, into the languages of

most European countries, from Sweden to Spain and Italy.[197]

This Tundale, so-called--whose proper name Professor Kuno Meyer

conjectures to be Tnúthgal or Tnúdgal (_op. cit._, p. 91)--was a knight

of Cashel, said by the author to have been ‘noble of blood, but bloody

of deeds; fair as to body, but careless about his soul. Fierce and

terrible towards the Church, for he would endure none of the poor folk

of the Lord in his sight.’ Once, when on a visit to a friend in Cork,

he fell into a fit while sitting at table; he was taken up for dead,

but was not buried, as a slight warmth was perceptible in his left

side. He remained in a trance from the fourth hour on Wednesday until

the same time on Saturday, when he recovered slowly, partook of the

Sacrament, and gave thanks to God, after which he gave all his goods to

the poor, assumed the cross, and ‘turned his back on his former life.’

It was during this trance that he beheld the vision which he related to

Marcus.

Immediately after the departure of Tundale’s soul from his body, his

conscience expressed great dread by reason of the magnitude of his

sins. Fain to re-enter his body, he could not, but flitted unsteadily,

swiftly, to and fro, weeping and weary, in fear and lamentation. Great

hordes of demons surrounded him, who welcomed him, terming his soul

‘daughter of death and enemy of God, spouse of darkness and foe of

light,’ etc. They tore his face with their talons, and taunted him

with his sins. At length he saw a light, like a star, approaching; this

was his guardian angel who bade him ‘welcome from God.’

Tundale, between fear and joy, replied, ‘A sorry case, my lord; the

pains of Hell have surrounded me, and I am in the snare of death.’

The angel answered, ‘I have ever been with thee, yet never until now

hast thou called upon me thus.’ Then, pointing to the ugliest of

the demons, he added, ‘That is the deed and the counsel [devised]

independently of me.’ However, he promised that Tundale should receive

mercy, though he must suffer somewhat first. He then bade him follow,

and retain firmly in his memory whatever he should see.

Upon seeing Tundale escape them, the demons began to blaspheme God, and

to smite one another, and finally departed, leaving a foul smell behind.

For long Tundale journeyed on in darkness, lighted only by the radiant

garments of his guide. At length they came to a glen ‘darkened with

the mist of death,’ and filled with sparks of fire. An iron covering,

six cubits thick, was on it, hotter than the sparks themselves, and a

stench issued forth that was a more grievous torment than Tundale had

ever known. A huge multitude of wretched souls were sitting on that

lid, burning, ‘till they were melted, like garlic in a pan, with the

glow thereof.’ Others were strained through the lid, like wax through a

linen cloth, and then tempered in the sparks below for a repetition of

the infliction. These were parricides and slayers of their kin.

There was a vast and hideous mountain, one side of it all sulphur and

stench, fire and darkness, the other side covered with snow, and a

piercing wind blowing. Innumerable demons, armed with burning forks and

sharp tridents, would hale the souls of them that had been false and

treacherous from snow to fire and back again. Another glen was full of

darkness and fœtor, and ‘such was its depth that none could discern the

bottom of it, though he could hear the sound of streams, and [perceive]

the stench of ordure, and the outcry and wailing of the souls that

were in torment there,’ and a mist uprose from it. A plank stretched

across between the mountains that bounded the glen, a thousand feet

long and a single foot in breadth, and such as none would dare to tread

unless driven thereto by force. Tundale saw many souls falling from the

bridge, and a priest passing over it unscathed. Those who fell into the

glen were the proud and arrogant; nevertheless the angel bade Tundale

not to fear that trial, though he must bear other torments thereafter,

and he bore him safe across. Again they went on through dark and

tortuous ways, until, weary and wretched, Tundale espied an ‘uncouth,

intolerable monster,’ greater than the mountains which they had

crossed; his eyes were like hills of flame; his mouth, wide yawning,

might contain a legion of armed men. Two giants stood therein, huge as

the pillars of a church, reaching from the lower tooth to the upper.

Flames issued from its mouth, into which crowds of souls were pressing,

driven by the scourges of throngs of demons.[198] A sound of wailing

could be heard proceeding from the monster’s belly, for many thousands

of souls were in there already.

Tundale, in dismay, asked why they approached so near; the angel told

him that his visit was not complete unless he passed through the

monster, for none but a chosen few escaped. Acheron was the monster’s

name; it devoured the covetous, and the giants standing in its jaws

were they who had been false and without conscience. After bringing

Tundale to the monster’s mouth, the angel left him alone there, when

a horde of demons surrounded him, scourged him, and drove him into

the monster’s belly. Here he found himself in company of many other

souls, who were bitten by hounds, lions and vipers, scourged by demons,

suffering the while from the extremes of heat and cold, foul stenches,

etc. Here the soul accused himself of all the sins he had ever

committed, in grief and lamentation, tearing his face with his nails.

At length Tundale found himself outside the monster, and languidly

opening his eyes saw the angel, who bore him to a broad, stormy lake,

wherein were monsters innumerable, seeking to devour the wretched

souls.[199] A bridge spanned the lake, two thousand feet long by one

palm in width, studded with iron nails.[200] The beasts sought to

swallow and chew the souls that were on the bridge, each beast being

as great as a chariot, and a fiery mist issuing from their jaws, till

it seemed as though all the lake were ablaze. Tundale saw a man

attempting to cross with a burden on his back like a sheaf of corn. He

was told that all had to cross that bridge who had stolen anything,

great or small, bearing a burden proportionate to the magnitude of the

theft. Tundale had once stolen a cow; he had, indeed, made restitution,

but only because he had been forced to do so, therefore he had to cross

the bridge, carrying a wild cow on his back. On reaching the other

side, he pointed out to the angel that his feet were all bleeding from

the spikes; this was because he had been one of ‘those whose feet are

swift to shed blood.’

They went on their way through rough and gloomy places, till they came

to a house, great as a mountain, and round like an oven, whence flames

arose to the height of a thousand feet, and souls were burning therein.

On approaching, they saw executioners standing in the flames, armed

with axes, sharp razors, scythes, sickles, augers, hooks, ‘and all

instruments beside, which might serve for wounding, flaying, beheading,

or cutting.’ Tundale begged hard to be let off, but the angel told him

that he must endure it, and handed him over to the demons, who ‘applied

to him the instruments of torment we have before mentioned until they

made small fragments of him.’ ‘In that house were much moaning and

sighing, shrieking and wailing, weeping and gnashing of teeth, sharp

fire scorching the souls.’ At length Tundale confessed that he had but

suffered his deserts, after which he found himself standing alone in a

dark place free from pain.

Upon being rejoined by the angel, Tundale asked him--as well he

might--what was the meaning of the saying, _Misericordia Domini plena

est terra_. ‘That sentence,’ replied the angel, ‘has puzzled many

before you. Now thus is my King: though He is beneficent, yet is He

wont to do justice.’ And he proceeded to expound the necessity for

constraining man to follow his duty. None were entirely free from sin,

but even the righteous were brought to see those sufferings, in order

that they might see what they had escaped, and give thanks; ‘so were

sinners brought to see the joys of Heaven, that they might grieve the

more for their loss.’[201]

Another hideous monster there was, with two feet and two wings, and

many necks, beaks, and talons. An unquenchable fire issued from his

mouth; he sat upon a lake of ice, and swallowed the wretched souls,

melting them, and dipping them into the icy lake for a renewal of

their pains.[202] The beast became pregnant with these souls, who kept

biting and tearing him like a brood of mountain vipers, until the

time for delivery came. This gruesome conception is elaborated with a

number of fantastic details. Thus were punished monks, canons, nuns,

etc., who had broken their vows, who had tongues sharp as of vipers,

and refrained not themselves from evil speaking; also they who had

defiled themselves with inordinate lust. This punishment too had to be

endured by Tundale. After it their way led them by a dark and devious

glen, descending from mountain-tops into deep abysses, their path

lighted only by the radiance of the angel. Tundale asked whither their

road led. The angel replied, ‘This is the road which leadeth unto

death.’ Tundale expressed surprise, for he had heard that that way was

broad, and that many went by it; but the angel explained that the text

referred to this life only.

After a weary journey, they came to a valley wherein were several

smithies, and a great weeping and wailing in them. The smiths seized

Tundale with their tongs, and cast him into a furnace, glowing fiery

red; many souls were in it already, and the bellows were plied beneath

‘as though they were iron on the hearth, until they were reduced to

nought, until they were turned into water.’ They were again uplifted

with the tongs, and forged into one single mass, their pain exceeding

all other pain, and they calling for death, which they could not

obtain. After which they were passed on to the other smithies in

succession.

The angel explained that all the souls whom Tundale had yet seen were

destined finally to receive mercy; it still remained for them to see

those that were in the nethermost Hell. Suddenly Tundale was seized

with a great trembling, as he became aware of an intolerable cold

and stench, dense darkness, tribulation and anguish, while he saw

the foundations of the earth sinking. Turning to question his guide

he found himself alone. He heard the wailing and howling of wretched

souls, and terrible thunderings, but could perceive no face, nor

distinguish any voice. At length he discerned a vast four-cornered

cavern, in the midst of which a huge pillar towered up; fire and

vapour rose up against the pillar, and in the midst of the flame many

thousands of demons and souls flew up like sparks, and fell back.

Tundale strove to turn away, but could not, for his feet clave to the

floor; whereat, filled with frenzy, he began to tear himself with his

nails. Demons surrounded him, threatening and reviling, but the angel

rescued him and brought him to the gate of Hell. Here, he told him,

was no light small nor great, but he could see the inhabitants without

their seeing him. Tundale looked, and saw the Prince of Darkness, black

as a raven from head to foot, with more than a thousand hands on him,

each two hundred cubits long, and every finger one hundred palms in

length, with iron nails like warriors’ spears, and toes to match; he

had a long thick tail, covered with iron spikes. He lay on an iron

hurdle over fiery gledes, a bellows on each side of him, and crowds

of demons blowing it. Every limb was covered with chains of iron and

bronze. As he lay there roasting, tossing from side to side, filled

with rage and fury, he grasped the souls in his rough, thick hands,

bruising and crushing them, as a man would crush grapes to squeeze out

the wine. With his fiery, stinking breath he scattered the souls about

Hell, and as he drew in his breath again he swallowed them down with

it, and those whom his hands could not reach he lashed with his tail.

This, the angel explained, was Lucifer, whom God had created first of

all creatures, and of the rest some were angels of darkness, and some

of the race of Adam; ever since their damnation they sought to lead

others to deny Christ, and the greater the power of each, the greater

was his punishment.

Here Tundale saw numbers of his friends and kin, whom he had ever

rejoiced to see in this world, but now beheld with pain.

On leaving Hell, they entered into a great light, and came to a wall

whereon were multitudes of men and women. Rain and wind were beating

on them, but abundant light fell on them, and no foulness was there.

These had led a ‘variegated’ life, in which good and evil were equally

commingled, therefore they were exposed to wind and rain, hunger and

thirst, until the end, when they should enter into everlasting life.

They next came to a forest, and passing through an open door therein

found themselves in a goodly plain, covered with flowers and fragrant

herbs, and the Well of Life in the midst of it; here dwelt the good who

were not yet permitted to join the heavenly host. Tundale recognised

many whom he had known, including two Irish kings, Donnchad and

Concobar, between whom a feud had subsisted, but they had repented

and become reconciled. He also saw a house of stone, without door or

window, yet all might enter in who would, and it seemed as though

the sun were in every part of it. It had no foundations, but was all

set about with precious stones. In it was a golden throne, set with

jewels, and covered with fine silk, whereon a king sat, calm and mild,

while great numbers approached him, in gladness and rejoicing, bearing

jewels and great treasures. Tundale drew near to see, for in the king

he recognised Cormac, whose subject he had been. Great numbers of

priests and deacons were about him in rich vestments, as though for

the mass. The house was hung with choice drapery, and tables were set

out, covered with vessels of gold and silver and ivory, as though for

a royal banquet, so that they who saw that house would think that even

though there had been no glory nor wealth beside, this would suffice

for delight. All present fell on their knees and repeated, _Labores

manuum tuarum manducabis; beatus es, et bene tibi erit_. Tundale

wondered to see that none of those who were serving Cormac were the

king’s own people, but the angel said that he was served by the

poor and pilgrims of the Lord whom he had relieved, so that God had

delivered unto him the everlasting kingdom by their hands.[203]

Even as they watched, the house was suddenly darkened, and all within

it were thrown to the ground, and, lifting up their hands, said,

_Domine, Deus omnipotens, sicut vis, et sicut scis, miserere servi

tui!_ Then Cormac left the house, and Tundale, following, saw him enter

into a fire up to the waist, and a hair-shirt on him from the waist

upward. Thus he spent three hours of every day; the fire being the

expiation of a breach of his marriage vow, and the hair-shirt, of the

murder of a noble that was under the protection of Patrick, and of a

false vow, all other sins being freely remitted.

Proceeding on his way, Tundale saw women, and men, and elders, in

silken robes, and the countenance of each one was like the sun at

midday. Their hair was like gold, they wore golden crowns covered with

precious stones, and they sang _Alleluia_, giving praise, so that ‘if

one heard them but once, he would have no memory of the grief and care

he had known before.’ These were the saints ‘who had macerated their

bodies for God’s sake, and washed their robes in the blood of the

spotless Lamb, and turned their backs to the world, and crucified their

will in the service of God while in the body.’

He also beheld many castles, and pavilions of purple and byssus, gold

and silver, silk and other precious coverings, and in them organs and

timpans and harps, and every kind of music, were playing. Therein were

people of devotion, who had submitted their own will to God, and had

taken upon them humility and lowliness, without pride or vainglory, and

were submissive to their superiors, and found savour in spirituality,

and had bridled their tongues, not only from evil-speaking, but even

from good words.

A little further on they saw a wall, high and thick, all of silver,

and no door in it. Choirs of saints were there, clad in white raiment,

full of gladness and rejoicing, perpetually praising the Trinity.

The radiance of their apparel was like the snow of a single night

beneath the sun’s brightness. These had been faithful in wedlock, had

maintained their people after the will of God, and had distributed

their goods among the poor and the Church; to them will Christ say,

_Venite benedicti Patris mei, possidete regnum quod vobis partum est

ab origine mundi_. Another wall was of gold, and within it golden

seats innumerable, all set with precious stones--pearls and sapphires,

sardius and topaz, etc. Then they saw that, the like of which eye

had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had the heart of man conceived:

namely, the glory which God had prepared for them that loved Him. The

nine orders of angels, and the saints mingled with them, hearkened

to words exceeding sweet which none might record. In the presence of

that vision, Tundale could not only see the glory that was before him,

but also all the pain that he had left behind, for ‘to whomsoever

God giveth power to behold Himself, to him is power to see all other

creatures likewise.’ ‘From that time forth Tundale asked nothing of the

Angel, for to himself was given from God knowledge of what he desired

to know.’

He saw St. Patrick and several bishops, four of whom he had known: viz.

Celestine, Malachi (the celebrated primate of Ireland, and friend of

St. Bernard), Nemias (Gilla na Naemh Ua Muirchertach, bishop of Cloyne

and Ross), and Christian. He also saw a great tree laden with blossom,

and with fruit of every kind. Vast flocks of birds of many hues

were on the tree-tops, singing every kind of music, and no scent of

fragrant herb is known that was not about that tree. All round the tree

multitudes of men and women sat in chairs of gold and silver and ivory,

with golden crowns on their heads, and golden wands in their hands,

singing, and praising the King. This tree was the prop and stay of the

Church, and the people about it were they who had united to support and

defend the Church, turning their backs upon worldly things, and leading

a devout life.

The vision over, Tundale begged to be allowed to stay, but the Angel

told him that he must return to the body. He further bade him remember

what he had seen, that he might deliver it to the people of the world.

He engaged Tundale to eschew evil in future, and promised to protect

and counsel him.

For several reasons, it seemed advisable to relate Tundale’s vision

with some fulness of detail. In the first place, it can hardly be

that a work which so soon acquired, and long maintained, an immense

popularity throughout all Western Christendom, failed to exercise

great influence in the way of fixing, if not of determining, the views

generally held concerning the Otherworld. Further, as the work of an

Irish author, written in the centre of Europe, and almost immediately

adopted throughout the West; embodying, moreover, while continuing

and enlarging, the ideas currently held by members of the Christian

Church respecting the future life, and, at the same time, containing

many elements of distinctly Irish, and even pagan, origin, it reveals

beyond dispute the existence, the manner, and, partly, the extent of

the contribution which the legend made to the development of modern

literature, after quitting the soil upon which it had matured.

The Vision of Tundale has many points in common with the _Fis

Adamnáin_, _e.g._ the preference accorded to the martyrs and ascetics,

the special provision made for the charitable sinners, the nine

orders of Heaven, the episodes of the bridges and the Tree of Life,

etc. Like Adamnán, Tundale expressed a desire to remain in Paradise,

but was bidden return, and relate what he had seen. From a literary

point of view, the work is decidedly inferior to the _Fis_; it is

retrograde, too, in the absence of a definite scheme of the Otherworld;

historically, however, it marks a forward step in the development of

the purgatorial idea, of which, perhaps, it affords the most complete

example which religious fiction contains, prior to its final perfection

by Dante. It also prepares the way for the group of legends associated

with St. Patrick’s Purgatory, for it introduces the idea of the Seer

himself suffering the purgatorial pains, with a view to his own

redemption; Tundale’s vision, however, contains no suggestion of a

local purgatory in this world. In both these respects, he is followed

by Dante, to some extent, though the comparatively slight annoyances

endured by the latter during his ascent of the purgatorial mount--with

the exception of the fiery wall, for which there was a special

reason--were rather, so to speak, incidents of travel, necessitated by

the nature of the country through which he had to pass, than sufferings

inflicted on him for his purgation. In one respect, Marcus merits to be

raised to a bad eminence among his kind: we have marked already, in the

development of the Irish idea of the Otherworld, a growing tendency to

accumulate horrors, and to elaborate and multiply painful details; but

perhaps, in all the repulsive literature of the Christian Inferno,[204]

there is no instance equal to the present of the length to which the

mediæval imagination could go in its conception of the grotesque and

horrible, the cruel and obscene. It displays nothing of the higher

qualities which the author of the _Fis Adamnáin_ possessed: his devout

raptures, his sense of beauty, his strong moral feeling, and his pity

for the reprobate. At the same time, it shows how far Dante was from

deserving the reproach, so often made, of the wanton accumulation of

horrors; how much of the kind, in which his predecessors revelled, he

rejected, retaining only so much--and that, in all conscience, was no

little--as was necessary to enable him to represent the grim theory of

his day, in all the completeness and vividness with which it presented

itself to his imagination.

It is difficult to avoid making some comparison of the present work

with the _Commedia_, for of all the writings of its class it is,

perhaps, that which we have most reason to assume must have been known

to Dante, for not only does it seem improbable that so widely known a

work on his own subject should have escaped his notice, but there are

analogies between the two, deeper than mere similarities in detail.

Tundale, for instance, frequently applied to his angelic guide for the

interpretation of passages of Scripture which presented themselves to

his recollection, even as Dante had frequent recourse to Virgil, and

afterwards to Beatrice and Matilda, for the like purpose. So, too,

the sentences of Scripture which Tundale heard repeated in the region

of probation may be compared to the similar sentences which Dante

heard floating along the air in Purgatory. Tundale, moreover, met and

conversed in the world of shades not only with persons of his own

acquaintance and kin, as Thespesios and others had done before him,

but with a variety of historical personages of past and present times,

including semi-mythical Irish heroes like Fergus Mac Róig and Conall

Cernach, and sacred personages like St. Paul and St. Patrick. Like

Dante, too, he introduced incidents of contemporary history in which

he felt an interest, such as the strife between the princes Donnchad

and Concobar, and passed his own judgment upon the actors. The reward

bestowed upon King Cormac, in the shape of a little kingdom of his

own, is a curious instance of the same kind; it was probably due to

an excessively literal interpretation of the Scripture promises. It

recalls the aristocratic type of the more primitive Elysium. The vision

exhibits the usual agreement with Dante in the provision of a special

treatment for the ‘variegated,’ or half-and-half sinners, and the

usual contrast to him in the nature of that treatment. Marcus follows

precedents which had become inconsistent with the design of his work,

which expresses the more complete theory of Purgatory as a separate

state. Dante, apparently, was guided in his mode of dealing with this

class of persons by his own sense of moral and artistic fitness.

Marcus, in giving the name of Acheron to the flaming mouth of the

beast, betrays a slight tendency towards that importation of classical

ideas into Christian eschatology which Dante afterwards developed to

such an extent.

Coming to similarities existing between single incidents, there is, of

course, a general resemblance between the penalties, etc., enumerated

by both authors, as in the lakes of fire and ordure, the flames and

ice, the piercing winds, the scourging by demons, etc. etc.; there is

also a more special likeness in the nature of the conception, if not

in the details, between the grotesque transformations undergone by the

souls swallowed by Tundale’s monster, and the terrible metamorphoses

brought about by the serpents in cantos xxiii. and xxiv. of the

_Inferno_. Again, the demon on the ice, in Tundale’s Vision, devouring

the souls, resembles Dante’s Lucifer chewing the arch-traitors in

the icy centre of Hell. Tundale’s demon, indeed, is not Lucifer, who

is described later on as being roasted on a gridiron. We may note in

this place that the Irishman and the Italian have exchanged the ideas

commonly accepted by their respective countrymen on the subject: Dante

making the sufferings of the inmost core of Hell to consist in cold,

Marcus in heat. There are various touches besides in which the one

author reminds us of the other. Tundale’s rescue by the angel from

the demons,[205] and the strife between these in the fury of their

disappointment, present a curiously close parallel to the similar

incidents in _Inferno_ xxii. Tundale and his guide, after their rude

journey, looking down into the gulf of fire and ordure, recall Dante

and Virgil pausing in like manner upon the steep and rugged causeways

of the Inferno, to gaze into the abysses of the lower circles. As

Tundale was abandoned by his guide before entering into Hell, so

was Dante left to himself by Virgil upon reaching the Terrestrial

Paradise.[206] To Tundale, when in Heaven, it was shown that he could

look back, and view the regions through which he had passed; so Dante,

in Paradise, was bidden to look downward toward this world and its

ways.[207] Other resemblances exist, but these are the most striking.

Of course it is not to be supposed that the continuation and

development of the Vision legend at this period of the Middle Ages was

confined to the Irish school. It was still, and had been since the

earliest days of the Church, a favourite topic with monastic homilists

and biographers of the saints.[208] However, it has not been my object

to compile a history, or a summary, of this branch of literature, but

to select those examples of it which have either carried the subject

to a further stage of development, or, by reason of their popularity,

or of their accessibility to later writers, may have served as links

in the chain of transmission. Few, indeed, out of the whole mass

possess any interest either from originality of invention, or variety

of treatment, still less from any literary merit, and it is more than

probable that the vast majority of them never passed beyond the limits

of the community to which their author belonged, until they were

brought to light by the researches of modern antiquaries.

Nevertheless, of the Continental visions which belong to this epoch,

there is one which demands further notice, as well by reason of the

exceptionally elaborate manner in which it treats the subject, as of

the recognition accorded to it by later writers. This is the Vision

of Paul, or the Descent of Paul into Hell, a Latin work known in

the South of France before the middle of the eleventh century, and

translated into Anglo-Norman by Adam de Ros, and soon afterwards into

several modern languages. We have seen that the early Church produced

a work known as the Apocalypse of St. Paul, but this, apparently, was

not known to the later Middle Ages, at any rate at first hand, though

the terms in which St. Paul’s Vision is mentioned at the opening of

the _Fis Adamnáin_ suggest that at least the tradition survived, and

several passages in mediæval visions bear a strong resemblance to the

earlier work. It is probably to the eleventh-century vision that Dante

refers in _Inferno_ ii. 28 _sqq._;[209] evidently he does not refer to

the Apostle’s own words exclusively, for St. Paul in his Epistles makes

no mention of a visit to Hell, though it is also possible that Dante

had no other authority for this than the floating tradition.

In this Vision St. Paul was conducted by Michael to Hell, on the

threshold whereof stood a fiery tree, from the branches of which were

suspended by the tongue, leg, neck, or other peccant member, those who

had been guilty of rapacity, or had given false judgment _por confundre

la gente_. Near this was a fiery furnace, whereof _li feus est plus

neirs que mors_, and in it were plunged they who had loved not God.

They then came to a great and turbid river in which devils, in form of

lions, swam about like fishes. The river was spanned by a bridge, the

width of a single hair,[210] which had to be crossed in order to reach

God’s presence. The wicked fell off into the mouth of Beelzebub, which

stood wide open, vomiting flame, ready to receive them. Upon issuing

thence, all black and charred, they were plunged into the river, where

they stood immersed to different depths--to the knees, navel, eyes,

eyebrows, crown, etc.--in proportion to the degree of their guilt.[211]

These were hypocrites, adulterers, envious persons who had exulted in

the sight of others’ sorrow--_por ceo sunt ore dolereux_, etc. Those

who had made war upon the Church were submerged entirely. Faithless

virgins who had violated their vow of chastity, and had destroyed

their children, were clad in black garments smeared with pitch and

sulphur, and aflame, while they endured the embraces of serpents and

dragons.[212] Corrupt judges, who had abused the widow and orphan,

burnt like brushwood amid walls of ice. Priests who had known the law

of God, but failed to keep it, wore heavy collars about their necks.

St. Paul, like Tundale, exclaimed, and asked why man should be born

for such misery; but Michael replied that beneath those depths a still

greater depth remained. This was a well, covered, and sealed with seven

seals, whence proceeded such a stench that St. Paul started back.

Here were imprisoned such as had denied the articles of the Christian

faith.[213] These called upon St. Paul, St. Michael, _and the ‘twelve

peers,’_ to pray for them, and that so loudly that their cry reached to

Heaven; but God Himself replied that no pardon was possible for those

that had rebelled against Him; howbeit, He was prevailed upon by the

prayers of the Saints to grant them the usual Sunday respite, which was

made to last from none on Saturday to prime on Monday.

The authorship of this Vision is unknown, so that there is no saying

whether or not it was composed under the influence of the Irish

Visions. The date and other circumstances would admit of this, and

it has much in common with them; notably, the manner in which the

familiar bridge episode is treated is very similar to that of the _Fis

Adamnáin_; nevertheless, the greater part of it might quite as well

have been derived from other sources, and it bears at least as strong

a resemblance to the Apocalypses of St. Peter and St. Paul; like them,

but to a greater extent, it aims at the recompense of specific crimes

by the appropriate punishments. However, there is a considerable group

of Visions, the authors of which, though foreigners, have confessedly

drawn from Irish sources. This series dates back at least as far as

the time of Bede, to whom, likewise, we are indebted for the earliest

account of the visions of St. Fursa, and for several particulars of

the life of Adamnán. For Bede has recorded a vision seen by Drihthelm,

a Northumbrian monk, who related it to one Haemgils, then a hermit in

Ireland, from whom Bede received it.[214] The soul of Drihthelm, on

parting from the body, was taken in charge by an angel, who brought

him to a great valley in the north-east, which was Purgatory. One side

of the valley was covered with flames, the other with ice, with the

usual accompaniments of hail and snowstorms, filth, evil spirits, etc.

They afterwards came to a great pit and a fiery plain, where they saw

globes of fire rising and sinking, and in them the souls of men were

imprisoned.[215] Here Drihthelm was assailed by demons armed with fiery

forks, but the angel rescued him. They finally reached a wall in the

south-east,[216] wherein was no opening. They were conveyed to the top

of it, whence they could see a wide, flowery plain, and the light on

it was brighter than the sun at noon. People in shining raiment were

walking there; these were the _boni sed non valde_, who were to dwell

there until Judgment. Beyond this could be descried a yet brighter

region, whence fragrant odours and the singing of the saintly choirs

were borne to them. This narrative, commonplace as it is, proves the

early date of several features of some of the principal visions, which

were composed at a much later period.

By far the most famous of the present group of visions are those

associated with St. Patrick’s Purgatory, which attained to a popularity

which almost surpassed that of the Vision of Tundale or the Voyage of

St. Brendan.

It would seem that the earliest known version of this legend is the

vision seen in 1153 by the knight Owen, and written soon after the

middle of the twelfth century by Henry of Saltrey, a monk in the

Benedictine monastery of Huntingdon, who received the story from

Gilbert, Abbot of Louth. Owen was an Irishman in the service of King

Stephen, from whom he received knighthood. Like Tundale, he was a brave

soldier, but in the course of an ungoverned life had been guilty of

rapine, lust, sacrilege, and other crimes. In the course of time he

repented, and returned to Ireland, where he heard of an old tradition,

to the effect that once St. Patrick, when his preaching had failed to

move a pagan audience, wrought their conversion by causing a chasm to

open, through which the next world became visible to them. Tradition

gave out an island in Loch Derg, in the County Donegal, as the scene

of this miracle, and there a religious house was established. Owen

presented himself to the Abbot, and prevailed on him to allow him to

enter the cavern, which he did after being duly prepared by fasting

and prayer. He was conducted by a party of monks along a dark passage,

and then through a brightly lighted cloister. After this he was

left to himself, when he was assailed by a party of demons, from

whom he escaped by pronouncing the name of the Lord. Like Fursa, he

was exposed to repeated attempts of the kind, but always extricated

himself without need of angelic succour. He traversed various plains

set apart for the purgation of different offences. Among other

torments, mostly of the conventional kind, which seem to presuppose an

acquaintance with the visions already related, he beheld sinners of

various kinds suspended from trees by the members that had offended.

Others were plunged in molten metal to a depth corresponding to the

gravity of their offences,[217] while demons tore them with hooks

whenever they attempted to raise themselves therefrom.[218] Others

were congealed in ice,[219] buried in fiery trenches,[220] buffeted

by violent winds,[221] gnawed by serpents,[222] etc. Although the

Purgatory of Owen resembles the Inferno of Dante in so many respects,

it differs from it, and, indeed, from most of its predecessors, in not

distinguishing between the various crimes that are chastised there.

One instance of an idea common to the author and to Dante is very

suggestive: Owen passed several figures lying on the ground crucified,

like Dante’s Caiaphas.[223] Like Dante and Tundale, Owen recognised

several of his friends.

He came to the mouth of Hell, which here, again, assumes the form of

a demon’s wide-opened mouth, into which, each time he draws in his

breath, swarms of souls are drawn in with it, to be again puffed out as

he respires--an image already occurring in the Vision of Esdras before

referred to. There, too, was the usual bridge, spanning a foul flood,

wherein condemned spirits wallowed. At the far end of it was a crystal

wall, and in it a gate of gold and jewels, which led to the Terrestrial

Paradise, the halting-place of the spirits that were cleansed of sin,

and awaiting their final perfection; while, to render this anticipation

of Dante yet more striking, a multitude of these passed before Owen,

chanting psalms. Two archbishops met him, and conducted him to the

top of a mountain, whence he obtained a Pisgah view of the gate of

Paradise, ‘like gold refining in a glowing furnace.’ Then, with a flash

of fire from Heaven, the vision ended.

Nothing certain is known concerning the origin of this legend, though

it evidently existed long before Henry of Saltrey’s day. As we have

seen, it was accounted for by a legend connecting it with the Apostle

of Ireland; it is referred to by Joscelin, also a twelfth-century

writer, in his _Life of St. Patrick_, but there is no mention of it

in any of the earlier writings concerning that Saint. Indeed, some

chroniclers refer it to one Patrick, a hermit of the neighbourhood,

and this origin is given in the popular story of Fortunatus; and it

is unlikely that popular tradition would have had recourse to some

obscure and even hypothetical Saint, if the connection with the Apostle

had been generally recognised. Probably, the island may have been

the scene of some local pagan cult, taken over, with the necessary

modifications, by the Christian community established there, in

something the same manner as St. Brigid’s fire at Kildare. From the

resemblance which the practices there observed bore to those connected

with the Cave of Trophonius and the Eleusinian Mysteries, it seems

not unlikely that if the origin of the rites could be traced, some

analogies might be established between the ancient worship of Ireland,

and some of the more obscure Greek cults. However this may be, the

legend of St. Patrick’s Purgatory soon achieved an almost unexampled

popularity, and was speedily adopted into the popular fictions of

most European countries. Marie de France, in the early part of the

thirteenth century, made it the subject of a long poem, and was closely

followed by several Anglo-Norman writers, while it is recorded in the

learned collections of Jean de Vitry, Vincent de Beauvais, and Caesar

of Heisterbach, and by several of the leading chroniclers, such as

Giraldus Cambrensis, Matthew Paris, and Froissart. Meanwhile, the

island in Loch Derg became one of the recognised holy places to which

pilgrims even from remote parts of Europe, such as Italy, Hungary,

etc., resorted for the purpose of procuring the remission of past sins,

by undergoing the purgatorial discipline in this life, and the English

archives still contain records of certificates given by Edward III. and

Richard II. to several illustrious foreigners, testifying to their due

accomplishment of the pilgrimage and its attendant rites.[224] I do not

know to what authority it was intended that these certificates should

commend the recipients.

The institution never received the formal sanction, nor even the

approbation, of the Church, and in the year 1497 the purgatorial cavern

was closed by order of Pope Alexander vi. For some time to come,

however, the tradition lived on in various forms: in hagiology, as

in the _Aurea Legenda_ of Jacobus de Voragine; in such specimens of

popular literature as the story of Fortunatus; in Tassoni’s burlesque

poem, _La Secchia Rapita_, and in the tragedy of Calderon, to which it

furnished both title and subject. The two points in connection with it

that concern us, are the facts that the legend continued the Irish

school of the _Fis_, and that it achieved a popularity so widespread

and so enduring as to render it almost certain that it must, at least,

have come to Dante’s knowledge.

A few years before the Vision of Owen, a somewhat similar work had

been produced in Italy--the Vision of Alberic, the son of a Campanian

noble, and a monk of the famous Benedictine monastery of Monte Cassino.

For the most part, this vision is constructed on the conventional

lines, but in several of its details it is in such close agreement with

Dante’s _Inferno_ as to call for some remark.[225] The commencement,

indeed, appears to be original. At the age of ten, Alberic fell into

a trance, which lasted for nine days. While in this state he was

visited by a dove, which put its bill within his mouth, and carried

him to St. Peter, who, in company with two angels, conveyed him to

the nether world. On his way thither he passed through the _Limbus

infantium_, which also is an unusual feature in works of this class.

Among the penalties of Hell which bear a more or less close resemblance

to Dante’s _Inferno_, are a valley where the unchaste stood in fire

and ice to a greater or less depth according to the gravity of their

offence; tyrants and infanticides were enclosed in masses of fire;

homicides were plunged in a lake of fire, like blood; breakers of

ecclesiastical vows were gnawed by serpents. One purgatorial infliction

resembles the punishment of suicides in _Inferno_ xiii.: the souls in

question were hunted by a demon, mounted on a dragon, through plains

full of thorns and briars, where they left scraps of their clothes and

flesh upon the thorns, until, being lightened of their superfluous

flesh, they escaped, and were thus purged. Several familiar features

reappear, and are, in some measure, reduplicated; thus, besides the

bridge, there is a red-hot ladder, which the wicked have to ascend

until they drop off; Hell’s mouth again appears as the mouth of a

serpent, drawing in and ejecting the souls with his breath, to which

are added a dog and a lion, who, by their breath, blow the souls to

their allotted stations. Alberic, like several of his predecessors, and

also like Dante, is assailed by demons armed with hooks. He crossed the

bridge to the Terrestrial Paradise, where the purified spirits dwell

until the Beatific Vision shall be revealed to them after Judgment.

This place is a flowery plain, from out of which rises the Mountain

of Paradise, surrounded by a wall, over which Alberic was permitted

to look, though he might neither enter, nor repeat what he saw there.

Alberic, too, received St. Peter’s instructions in cosmology--of a very

crude description--and as to the virtues of a monastic life, etc.; he

was then bidden to return and relate his vision.

As the influence of the Irish school upon European letters waned, and

gradually spent itself, a deterioration in the Vision literature became

apparent; it lost what little method and symmetry that school had

introduced into it, and reverted to the primitive amorphous type; we

can no longer trace any indication of original thought or invention;

little, even, of vividness or picturesque description is left. Not

that this deterioration of quality is attended by any diminution of

quantity: on the contrary, several causes combined to render the output

greater than ever. The rapid revival of ecclesiastical literature led,

as one of its results, to increased activity in this long-worked field,

and improved communications enabled the inmates of each monastery to

study and imitate the works of their fellows in other countries and

provinces. Moreover, the anticipation of a speedy end of this world,

which prevailed towards the close of the tenth century, directed the

trend of religious thought towards the world to come, and even after

the cause had ceased to be operative, the effect remained. Then came

the reform of several monastic orders, and the establishment of the

friars, resulting in a renewed activity in preaching and teaching,

which would naturally quicken the demand for subjects so well adapted

to moving exhortation and edification; while the rise of pictorial

art, which found attractive subjects in visions of Judgment, and

representations of the Divine Glory, at once fostered, and was fostered

by, the prevalence of those same subjects in popular literature. At the

same time, the rise of a literature in the vernacular tongues would

naturally co-operate with the development of a genuine theology to

diminish the importance of the Visions of the Otherworld as works of

imagination or vehicles of instruction, and to relegate them to the

domain of the homilist and fabliast.

Accordingly, the literature of the Middle Ages teems with stories

dealing with the Otherworld, and the lot of departed souls therein.

Some of them occur in the lives of Saints and Martyrs; others describe

a visit to Heaven or Hell, made either in vision, or _in propria

persona_, or else record some traveller’s temporary return from the

bourne, charged with a message for the living. Many were composed

with some particular end in view, in order to convey a warning to some

notorious sinner, or to instruct by the edifying fate of some one

remarkable for virtue or vice; often, again, with the practical object

of exacting restitution or reparation from the sinner or his heirs.

The subject was equally popular in sacred and profane literature,

appearing in homily and apologue, folk-tale and fabliau, in poems

serious and comic, tending to edification and otherwise.

In all this there was little enough of originality, or intrinsic merit

of any kind, save only when some aspect of the subject happened to fall

into the hands of a skilled _raconteur_. Nevertheless, it all served

to keep the subject present to the public mind, and thus to afford

that degree of preparation, which always appears necessary alike for

the production and reception of any great and novel work of art, and

likewise to amass a considerable store of material, ready for any hand

capable of dealing with it. At length, in Dante, the one poet arose

whose genius was sufficient to extricate from this heap of trivialities

the great dogmas of the Christian faith which lay at the bottom, and,

by his matchless constructive power, to give form and substance to

the theme, to illustrate it with all that his age could afford of

philosophy and learning, to animate it with the spirit of devotion and

sublime human passion, and to enrich it with all the resources of the

poetical imagination.[226]

7. CONCLUSION

In the foregoing pages it has been attempted to trace, from its

various sources, the progress of the legend which culminated in

Dante’s _Commedia_. It did not form a part of this design to collect

the corresponding traditions which abound in the folklore of many

times and peoples, nor even to give an exhaustive account of the forms

which the legend assumed in the several fields which have come within

our purview; rather to confine our examination to those examples

which may be regarded as its sources, or may have contributed to its

transmission, or determined the form which it assumed in later stages

of its development. We have seen that Dante’s poem had been led up

to by a long series of predecessors, like it in theme, if in nothing

else, and that it had already approved its fitness for a place in

the world’s literature, by the success which it had achieved, in

countless forms, among peoples of widely diverse stages of culture. We

have also seen how the Irish Church, in its palmy days, developed a

highly characteristic treatment of the theme, and while following, in

the main, the accepted traditions of the mediæval Church, introduced

certain modifications of a strongly individual and national type. Of

this class the Vision of Adamnán has been selected for a specimen,

as representing the highest level attained by the school to which it

belonged, and as being the most important contribution made to the

growth of the legend within the Christian Church prior to the advent of

Dante.

I have purposely abstained from offering a conjecture as to any

possible indebtedness on the part of Dante to the Visions of the Irish

school, and to the _Fis Adamnáin_ in particular, further than as these,

by reviving, transmitting, and popularising the theme, placed ready

to his hand the subject which was, of all others, best adapted to

his genius, and, at the same time, best calculated to appeal to the

public of his day. The various topics into which this examination has

compelled the writer to enter--Dante literature, Celtic tradition,

folklore, mythology--are all favourite subjects with that type of

theorist who is wont to accompany a small modicum of the bread of fact

with an intolerable deal of the sack of hypothesis, to the no small

detriment of critical sobriety, so that one who approaches the subject

with no preconceived theory of his own to prove--unless, like those

present at a revival meeting, he be set a-prophesying by contagion--is

apt to become almost as sick of these shadows as was the Lady of

Shalott of those in her magic glass. I have therefore endeavoured to

present the author of the _Fis Adamnáin_ merely as a ‘precursor’ of

Dante, without attempting to prove him Dante’s ‘progenitor.’ All the

same, I do not think I am transgressing these limits by suggesting the

almost certainty that so omnivorous a reader as Dante must have been

acquainted with works so generally known at and prior to his day as the

Voyages of St. Brendan, the Vision of Tundale, and the legends of St.

Patrick’s Purgatory, all of which were more or less influenced by the

_Fis Adamnáin_, and were productions of the same school. There is no

ground to imagine that Dante was acquainted with the _Fis Adamnáin_,

nor can that supposition be entertained unless it can be shown that

there existed in his day a translation of it into Latin, or one of the

Romance languages, to which he might have had access. Indeed, pending

the results of future research, it is impossible to put forward any

work, or group of works, as the model which Dante followed. Probably

no such model will ever be discovered, for the simple reason that none

such ever existed. It is true that Dante availed himself freely of all

that the previous Vision literature could give him, just as he drew

copiously from every source at his command. But for the Latin classics,

and Virgil in particular; but for the Latin Fathers, Augustine, Jerome,

and Gregory; the Schoolmen, from Erigena to Thomas Aquinas; the Romance

poets of France and Italy, it is certain that Dante’s work, as we

have it, could never have come into being. So much may be claimed

for the Visions of the Irish school, and, apparently, no more, but

even this much is enough to entitle them to a place in the history of

modern literature. Indeed, independently of any such relation of cause

and effect between the two, the writings of the Irish school would

still constitute an interesting study, both as the fruits obtained by

previous labours in the same field under widely different conditions,

and even more for the light which they cast upon what is still one of

the darkest places in the intellectual life of Europe.

We have had occasion to remark before upon several particulars wherein

the analogy between the _Fis Adamnáin_--and, to a less extent, others

of the Irish Visions--and the _Commedia_ would appear to go deeper

than can be explained by their common subject, and their use in common

of the same general stock of ideas. However, it does not appear that

the influence exercised by the Irish school mainly consisted in the

introduction of novel ideas and incidents, though even these were not

entirely absent. Indeed, throughout the history of the Vision legend,

we may observe a continual tendency to drop any national or personal

characteristics which it may have acquired at a previous stage of

its evolution. For instance, we have seen to how great an extent the

popular Christian eschatology was modelled upon the classical Elysium

and Tartarus, yet even the earlier Church works upon the subject

contain no such references to classical personages and traditions as

were employed so copiously by Dante, and, in a slight and tentative

manner, by certain of his predecessors. The same may be said of the

Oriental myths which formed part of the Hebrew contributions to

the subject. So, in proportion as the late mediæval visions of the

Otherworld recede in date from those of the Irish school, they tend to

drop more and more of the structure and imagery which were peculiarly

characteristic of the latter, as owing great part of their form or

colour to the Irish national traditions. This process is carried still

further by Dante, who rejected many of the most familiar incidents of

the earlier visions: _e.g._ the bridge, the open mouth of the dragon

as symbolising Hell, Enoch and Elijah beside the Tree of Life, and the

bird-flocks about them, the special provisions for various kinds of the

half-righteous, etc.

Thus, while exercising a secondary influence by further enriching the

stock of material already in existence, the main function of the Irish

Visions was to set a literary fashion, so to speak, whereby the Vision

of the Otherworld came to be regarded as the most natural vehicle for

conveying men’s thoughts and imaginations, as in other ages the epic,

the drama, the dialogue, the pamphlet, the novel, and other forms of

composition, have been specially affected for the like purpose.

It remains to say a few words respecting the literary merits of the

_Fis Adamnáin_. Obviously there can be no rivalry, or even comparison,

in this respect, between it and the poem which stands high among the

supreme achievements of the human intellect. Noteworthy, rather, is

the degree of excellence to which the earlier writer attains, when we

consider what was the state of vernacular literature in the Europe of

his day. His style, like the style of most Irish writers of the best

period, is simple, picturesque, and forcible; the language is terse

and pregnant, without being bald or meagre. There are certain writings

of every age, differing much in merit, from which, as we read them, we

seem to be hearing the author’s voice proceeding; where this is so, the

style can hardly be other than good of its kind, however simple, and

even rude, it may be, and however little it may owe to technical skill.

This characteristic, I think, the work in question possesses; but this

is an evanescent quality which must needs disappear in translation,

especially such a translation as the present, where the aim has chiefly

been at literal accuracy.

Mention has been made already of the advantages which this Vision

possesses over most others of its class, by reason of its superiority

in construction, which is manifested alike in the general design

of the work, and in the superior grouping and visual presentment of

certain portions, such as the description of Heaven, and the righteous

assembled about the Throne. Our author, too, compares favourably with

his fellows as regards his general cast of thought, as particularly in

the stress which he lays upon the spiritual or emotional side of the

sufferings of the lost, and the grave pity with which the contemplation

of their fate repeatedly inspires him--a feeling wonderfully absent

from the generality of his class.

Other characteristics are shared by him with the Irish romantic

writers. One characteristic was common to both of them: there was

_life_ in what they wrote; the scene of their narrative became a

veritable _Tír na mbeo_. They possessed, moreover, that sensibility

to natural beauty, which is often, but most erroneously, assumed to

be the peculiar property of modern times. They were keenly alive to

the amenities of woods and meadows, flowers and birds, to the charm

of colour, of brightness and light of every kind. Above all, they

delighted in melodious sound, whether the music of strings or of the

human voice, the note of birds and bees, the wind in the leaves, or the

sound of falling water. Like Byron, they knew that ‘there’s music in

all things, if men had ears.’ Nor did this delight in Nature consist in

sensuous pleasure merely. They too were aware of ‘a something yet more

deeply interfused’; it was ‘the light of setting suns’ across the ocean

that wooed the Ui Corra to their quest of the Unknown; St. Brendan

yearned for that retreat, ‘secret, hidden, secure, delightful, apart

from men,’ which the ocean solitudes alone appeared to promise him.

This national susceptibility to beauty constantly asserts itself in

our author, in manner appropriate to his theme. He also manifests the

no less national capacity for vivid and picturesque description, and

this without being led into redundancy, or straining after effect, the

leading characteristic of his narrative being a simple earnestness

which is often very effective. It is needless to dwell upon individual

descriptions, most of which have been dealt with in their place. It is

enough just to refer in particular to the description of Heaven, of

the Throne, and the celestial choirs; the naïve but striking symbol

of Omnipresence; the waste and desolate places of Hell in c. 30; the

various kinds of penalties in cc. 25-29; the picture of the generous

but carnally minded souls protected from the fiery sea by a rampart of

the alms they had bestowed.

In two respects our author differs both from Dante and from several

writers of his own school. His work contains no dissertations upon

theology, morals, nor natural science; neither does he hold intercourse

in the world of spirits with his own contemporaries, or with historical

or mythical personages; hence we do not find in it even an anticipation

of the dramatic episodes, or the endless procession of lifelike

characters which render the _Commedia_ a veritable microcosm. We are

tempted to speculate upon the results which might have been obtained,

had our author brought to the treatment of his subject the dramatic

force, the vivid portraiture, and the narrative power, which are

displayed in the great romantic cycles of Irish story.

Soon after the time when our author wrote, the development of the

national literature, and, indeed, all other forms of national

development, were brought, by pressure of circumstances, to a stand.

Often since then the subjects and characters of Irish tradition have

furnished themes for masterpieces of European literature, but these

intellectual triumphs have been like the victories which Irish arms

have won for others, and under banners not their own. It is only in

our own day that any serious and well-directed attempt has been made

to resume the interrupted work upon truly national lines. Even within

the last few years the results obtained, and the promise shown, warrant

a belief that success may prove more speedy and complete than could

have been deemed possible a single decade ago; and with success may

come--who knows?--an infusion into modern literature of a new spirit

and new methods, of which it stands so grievously in need. Καλὸν γὰρ τὸ

ἆθλον, καὶ ἡ ἐλπὶς μεγάλη.

[Uncial: U ċríoċ annso, Buiḋeacas le Dia.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] For further particulars of the life of Adamnán, see Dr. Reeves’s

introduction to his _Adamnán’s Life of St. Columba_, Dublin, 1857

(Irish Archæological Society); Dr. Healy’s _Ireland’s Ancient Schools

and Scholars_; Canon John O’Hanlon’s _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vol.

i.

[2] Mr. Alfred Nutt has suggested that the above passage appears to

claim for the Irish scholars and clerics a monopoly of the educational

and missionary work of the age to the exclusion of the eminent

Anglo-Saxons who were labouring with success and distinction in the

same field. I had no intention to disparage either the original genius

nor the learning of Bede and Aldhelm, Caedmon and Cynewulf, Winifred

and Alcuin, nor their missionary and scholastic work, both at home and

in the Frankish Empire; only to point out that the position acquired

by the Irish scholars and clerics enabled them speedily to disseminate

through Western Europe the works of their compatriots. By recalling the

names of a few of the most eminent Irishmen who enjoyed a Continental

fame during the Middle Ages, we may perceive how wide was the area, and

how long the duration, of their influence.

Clement was the chief of a group of Irish scholars who took a leading

part in the educational reforms promoted by Charlemagne. Alcuin,

Clement’s great English rival at the Frankish Court, had been educated

at Clonmacnois. Joannes Scotus Erigena, in the reign of Charles the

Bald, founded the scholastic philosophy, and by his translation of the

pseudo-Areopagite, and his studies of the Neo-Platonists, bridged over

the chasm between ancient and modern thought. Dungal, in the first

half of the ninth century, was the first astronomer of his age; at

the mandate of Lothair, King of Lombardy, he founded a school which

afterwards developed into the University of Pavia, with branches

in several other cities, and laboured with success at the task of

civilising the Lombards. Add to these Dicuil, a geographer of the same

date, the most accurate topographer of the early Middle Ages; Firghil,

or Virgilius, Archbishop of Salzburg, who taught the rotundity of the

earth and the existence of antipodes; Sedulius, the ninth-century

grammarian; St. Donatus, Bishop of Fiesole (fl. _c._ 840), traveller,

topographer, and Scripture commentator; Marianus Scotus, one of the

leading chroniclers of the eleventh century; and many others, who

laboured with distinction in France, Italy, Germany, England, and

Flanders, down to the thirteenth century, when Frederick II., Emperor,

summoned Petrus Hibernicus to the University of Naples, where he

counted among his theological pupils no less a personage than Thomas

Aquinas.

[3] There was also a Tír Enda, between L. Foyle and L. Swilly.

[4] Tigernach gives the date as 624, which Dr. Reeves is inclined

to accept, _op. cit._ Introduction, xl-xli. Lanigan is in favour of

627, which agrees with the reputed age of Adamnán, 77, at the time of

his death. Possibly the latter date is correct, the difference being

explicable by the different system of chronology adopted by Tigernach.

[5] _Lives of the Irish Saints_, vi. 708; and see _Ibid._, ix. 505.

[6] Acts x. 11.

[7] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4. Cp. also Galat. i. 12, 16; Ephes. i. 3; and the

_Apocryphal Acts of Paul_, Ante-Nicene Library, vol. xvi.

[8] With the ancient Irish, the abode of the departed was beyond the

Atlantic, towards the setting sun; so, in the Hindu mythology, Yama,

King of the Dead, crossed the stream towards the sunset, first showing

the way by which all men were to follow him. This natural idea has been

shared by many barbarous races.

[9] Vault; [Uncial: inna luinge], genitive of [Uncial: long], = ship.

_Qy._ here = ‘nave’?

[10] South-east, possibly because that is the direction of Jerusalem,

the Holy City.

[11] The word used is [Uncial: Mórdáil], the name of the Irish National

Assembly, or States-General. See _ante_, Sec. 2.

[12] Or, ‘a chair highly wrought,’ [Uncial: Inna ċaṫair ċumtaċta].

[13] The comparison of the arch above the head of the Heavenly King

to a wrought helmet or a regal diadem, may have been suggested by the

picturesque and chivalrous custom of the Irish kings recorded in the

ancient Irish poem upon the Fair of Carman, whence it appears that

their head-dress on ordinary state occasions was a wrought helmet, the

royal crown being reserved for the day of battle.

[14] ‘Glow,’ [Uncial: derge], lit. ‘redness,’ which, Mr. Whitley Stokes

suggests, ‘symbolises divine love, creative power, royalty.’ If so,

cp. Dante’s description of a ‘goodly crimson’ as ‘questo nobilissimo

colore.’

[15] Or, _qy._ ‘comet’?

[16] Compare the description of the seven walls of Ecbatana, of

different hue, in Herodotus, Book I.

[17] So Windisch trans. [Uncial: Crand caingil], = _cancelli_.

[18] ‘Seats,’ or _qy._ stalls; the author appears to have in mind

the construction of a Christian church. Cp. note to ch. 31 _post._

‘Canopies,’ lit. ‘crowns.’

[19] Or ‘virgins,’ W. S.

[20] See last note.

[21] Or ‘parricides,’ [Uncial: fingalaċ], which O’Donovan translates

both as ‘a fratricide, one who has killed a tribesman,’ and

‘parricidal’ (Supplement to O’Reilly’s Dictionary).

[22] The Erenach, or [Uncial: aircindeċ], was the official guardian of

Church temporalities.

[23] [Uncial: Dánaib], which signifies ‘gifts,’ ‘arts,’ etc.

[24] [Uncial: pluic], which W. S. trans, ‘maces,’ or ‘clubs.’

[25] ‘Reivers,’ [Uncial: aiṫdibergaig], which W. S. trans. ‘men who

mark themselves to the Devil,’ but expresses doubt on the subject, and

cites authorities which seem to imply the sense of rapine or plunder.

[26] Or ‘without remission, but they,’ etc.

[27] [Uncial: Co lár], which W. S. trans. ‘down to the ground.’

[28] [Uncial: Roṫa], so Windisch from [Uncial: ruṫ]; W. S. trans,

‘wheels’ from [Uncial: roṫ].

[29] Or, ‘the ordained who have broken their vows.’

[30] [Uncial: Erdam], which, Mr. Whitley Stokes says, was the name

used by the Irish ecclesiastical writers as equivalent to the Greek

_pronaos_ or _narthex_. See notes 1 and 2 to Ch. 13, _ante_.

[31] Cp. _ante_, Sec. 2.

[32] The Mórdáil at which these laws were passed was apparently held

in the year 697, while Finnachta Fledach had been assassinated in 695.

This anachronism affords yet further evidence of the comparatively late

composition of our version of the Vision.

[33] [Uncial: Anmċairdine], ‘soul-friendship’; [Uncial: anmċara],

‘soul-friend,’ is the Irish name for a father-confessor.

[34] Professor Bryce considers that the first extant mention of the

Donation of Constantine is contained in the letter of Pope Hadrian 1.

to Charlemagne, dated A.D. 777 (_Holy Roman Empire_, ch. vii. p. 112

note, 4th ed.). If so, the allusion is couched in very general and

obscure terms. Döllinger, who dates the letter in question 775, holds

that it refers not to what is commonly understood by the Donation of

Constantine, but to gifts of land in various parts of Italy, afterwards

seized by the Lombards. The forgery of the Donation would appear to be

later than 750, but prior to 774, as it refers to the state of things

existing before the first Frankish settlement in Italy, which took

place in 774. In any case, it is later than the time of Adamnán.

[35] Philip succeeded to Gordian III. in 224, but was not his son,

being an Arab. He favoured the Christians, and corresponded with

Origen, whence arose a report, countenanced by Eusebius, that he had

embraced Christianity, but for this there is no authority.

[36] [Uncial: Taiṫleċ], so W. S.

[37] [Uncial: Suṫi]. So Windisch, though W. S. trans. ‘fruitfulness

(?).’

[38] Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his _Essay on the Irish Vision of the Happy

Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth_, appended to Prof. Kuno

Meyer’s _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, 1895-7, points out that in

Greece and Ireland alone of Aryan nations the Elysium legend existed

devoid of any eschatological belief (i. 329).

[39] See _Odyssey_, xi. 36 _sqq._; 222, 391 _sqq._; 488 _sqq._ This

gloomy impression is little mitigated by mention of the ‘Asphodelian

meadow’ in which the dead reside (_Od._ xi. 539; xxiv. 13).

[40] See, in particular, Homer, _Odyssey_, iv. 563; Hesiod, _Works and

Days_, 110, 166; Pindar, _Olympiad_, ii. 68, 120, which last, perhaps,

contains the most finished picture of the Elysium drawn by the earlier

poets.

[41] It would be possible to cull from the Greek writers a great wealth

of allusions to the Otherworld; not only, however, do exigencies

of space forbid this, but they are hardly pertinent to the present

subject, for the reasons mentioned in the text. Still less need we

enter into the burlesque descriptions of an Otherworld, conceived as a

Land of Cockayne, several of which are preserved in fragments of the

comic poets.

[42] The Greeks themselves referred to a foreign origin most of their

mystical rites, and the deities worshipped therein. No doubt it is

often the case that peoples who observe in foreign nations practices

akin to those existing among themselves, are apt to derive these from

the former; nevertheless it appears certain that while the cults which

formed the basis of the mysteries existed, in a primitive form, in the

indigenous Greek religion, they received a great impetus, at several

distinct periods, through the importation of similar myths and rites

from abroad. Thus M. Paul Foucart (_Recherches sur l’origine et la

nature des Mystères d’Eleusis_, p. 75) accepts the Greek theory of

the Egyptian origin of the Demeter cult and the Eleusinian rites at

a date prior to the eleventh century B.C. These rites, he assumes,

were purely agricultural at first, but at a later day (seventh century

B.C.) became associated with the doctrine of a future life (pp.

75-9). He further holds that this doctrine was itself brought from

Egypt by the philosophers, Pythagoras and others, who are reported

by tradition to have travelled thither for instruction (p. 83). This

latter part of M. Foucart’s theory presents certain difficulties. The

name of Pythagoras is commonly associated with the Orphic mysteries,

to which M. Foucart denies any connection with Eleusis, while the

conception of a future life which prevailed both in the Orphic and

Eleusinian mysteries and in the teaching of Pythagoras, differed in

important points from the Egyptian doctrine, as will be pointed out in

a later place. Professor Rohde likewise holds that while the Dionysiac

mysteries existed in Greece in pre-Homeric times as a minor and local

cult, the Dionysos-Zagreus rites, which formed the basis of the Orphic

mysteries, were imported from Thrace at an early date; probably, Mr.

Nutt suggests (_op. cit._, ii. 141), during the period of change which

followed upon the Dorian invasion. Thrace, apparently, derived the

Zagreus myth from Phrygia. Prof. Percy Gardner (_Contemporary Review_,

March 1895) is also inclined to accept the Greek traditions as to the

derivation of many of their mystical rites and cults from Asiatic

sources, differing herein from Prof. Dieterich, who holds that these

were native developments. For a discussion by Mr. Alfred Nutt of these

various theories see _op. cit._, 1. ch. xi.

[43] The best authorities appear to be agreed that there are no grounds

for the views once held that the mysteries contained either some

esoteric creed of a religion purer than that held by the multitude, and

jealously guarded from the latter, or, according to others, a system of

occult philosophy or theosophy.

[44] See his article, ‘Mysteries,’ in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ ed.

9, vol. xvii.

[45] Sir W. M. Ramsay further mentions a Rhodian inscription of the

fifth century B.C., which required the candidates for initiation at the

temple of Lindus to bring a pure heart and a conscience free from crime

(_loc. cit._).

[46] This may possibly represent the conception originally prevailing

in the mystic schools concerning the future life of mankind in general.

(See Mr. Nutt hereon, _op. cit._, i. 256.) If so, redemption from such

a lot would be one of the most important objects to be compassed by

the theurgic effects of initiation, until the growth of moral ideas in

connection with the mysteries converted this ‘place of filth and gloom’

into a place of punishment for the wicked.

[47] In like manner, the spirits were amazed to see that Dante’s

body cast a shadow, as the souls of the dead did not (_Purg._, iii.

88 _sq._), and that he breathed (_ib._, ii. 67-9). According to the

old Persian belief, the souls of the beatified dead were to cast no

shadows. See Sec. 2, _post._

[48] See Books iv. and vi. of his _De Civitate Dei_.

[49] See Dante’s Tenth Epistle, addressed to Can Grande della Scala,

_Oxford Dante_, pp. 414 _sqq._

[50] _Op. cit._, p. 416, ll. 173-5.

[51] _Ib._, l. 169.

[52] _Ib._, p. 417, l. 268.

[53] Lenormant, _Origines de l’Histoire_, vol. ii., cited by Ragozin,

_Chaldæa_, p. 276, which work gives a compendious account of the

subject. For fuller particulars see Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887,

Lectures iv. and v., and his article ‘Chaldæa’ in the _Encyclopædia

Britannica_, ed. 9, vol. iii.

[54] Sayce, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1887, p. 364.

[55] ‘She makes the soul of the righteous one go up above the

Hara-berezaiti (Mount Elborz), above the Kinvad bridge she places it,

in the presence of the heavenly gods themselves.’--_Vendîdâd_, xix. 30;

in Darmesteter’s translation, _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. 219; and

see Ragozin, _Media_, c. iv.

[56] In the Avesta we meet with an idea which is prominent in Jewish

and Christian examples of the Vision legend. If, at the balance of any

soul’s account, when his good and evil deeds were weighed one against

the other, the scales were equally poised, he was reserved for the last

Judgment in a place set apart for his like.

[57] _Vendîdâd_, p. 55.

[58] _Loc. cit._, footnote.

[59] _Vendîdâd_, p. 20, note. A similar bird occurs frequently in the

Hindu mythology. The Accadian ‘divine storm-bird’ stole the lightning

from heaven, and was thereby enabled to impart to man the knowledge

of fire, and of divination by lightning flashes.--Sayce, _Hibbert

Lectures_, 1887, 293-4. The Babylonian Semites identified this bird

with their culture-god Zu, who, in form of a bird, robbed the gods

of the ‘tablets of destiny’ (_op. cit._, 295-7). All the world over,

the part of Prometheus has been played by a supernatural bird, such

as Yehl, the crane, of the Thlinkeets; Pundgel, the eagle-hawk, of

Australia, etc.

[60] _Vendîdâd_, vi. 15-16.

[61] _Op. cit._, p. 17.

[62] Speaking of the effects which the conquest of Babylon by the

Persians produced upon the religion of the latter, Professor Dill

remarks: ‘The conquerors, as so often happens, were to some extent

subdued by the vanquished. Syncretism set in; the deities of the

two races were reconciled and identified. The magical arts and the

astrolatry of the valley of the Euphrates imposed themselves on the

purer Mazdean faith and never released their hold, although they failed

to check its development as a moral system.’--_Roman Society from Nero

to Marcus Aurelius_, 1904, p. 587, where the author cites Cumont,

_Monuments relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra_, and Gasquet, _Le culte de

Mithra_.

[63] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, sec. v.

[64] The cult of Mithra, which, in the earlier ages of the Empire,

extended not only over the Mediterranean littoral, but throughout

all Europe so far as the Roman legions went, even to Yorkshire and

the forests of Pannonia, was full of symbolism, the meaning and even

the nomenclature of which are only to be explained by the Persian

religion, in which the cult originated, although it came to receive an

interpretation consonant with the Neo-Platonic theories.

[65] He further suggests that the original notion of the Var as a place

of refuge for the seeds of things from a coming destruction is borrowed

from the Judaic account of Noah. This would seem to be a very strained

inference from a slight analogy. The Biblical account finds much closer

parallels not only in the Chaldæan traditions, but in the Vedic account

of Manu and the Rishis being saved from the deluge in an ark containing

the seeds of things, not to speak of deluge myths in the East and in

the West, as the Thlinkeets, the Natchez, and other tribes of North

America; the Muyscas and Orinoco Indians of South America; the Samoans,

Tahitans, etc.

[66] He assumes that Vohu Mano (Good Thought) is the Neo-Platonic

Logos, and if so, that the other Amesha Spentas are of post-Alexandrian

development, and he goes on to find parallels for them too in the rest

of the seven emanations enumerated by Philo. However, even if the

parallels are so close as to compel the conclusion that the character

and functions ascribed to the Amesha Spentas in their latest form

are due to Neo-Platonic influences--and even this is not shown very

convincingly--it by no means follows that the very conception of the

seven celestial powers is due to the same source.

[67] We have here, in Persia, an anticipation of the Neo-Platonic æons

before the time of Plato himself--a conception which can hardly be

referred to the earlier theory of the kind propounded by Hesiod.

[68] _Vendîdâd_, Introduction, p. liv, and see p. lxi. For the dead

casting no shadow, cp. Plutarch’s Vision of Thespesios.

[69] _Op. cit._, p. lxv.

[70] Article ‘Chaldæa,’ in _Encyclopædia Britannica_, vol. iii.

[71] Revelation xv. 2, and cf. _Fis Adamnáin_, ch. II.

[72] Herodotus, _Euterpe_, ii. 156.

[73] Dill, _op. cit._, p. 561.

[74] Athenian colonists were settled in the Nile delta in the seventh

century B.C. at latest, and at an even earlier date intercourse had

been maintained between Greece and Egypt by the medium of Greek traders

to the Nile, and Greek mercenaries in the Egyptian service. The cult of

Isis was introduced into Attica, at the Peiraios, in the fourth century

B.C. (Foucart, _Associations réligieuses_, etc., p. 83), and extended

over the Grecian islands and the mainlands of Greece and Ionia.

[75] Budge, _Book of the Dead_, 1901, 1. lxv., and _Ib._ lxvii. _sqq._

Le Page Renouf, _Hibbert Lectures_, 1879, pp. 180-1.

[76] According to one Rabbi Leo, the wicked are tortured by fire and

otherwise, some without hope of remission, others for a time only.--E.

Cowper, _Apocryphal Gospels_, Introduction, lxviii.

[77] At a somewhat later date, the doctrine of the end of the world

by fire, held by many of the Stoics who, in the first century of the

Empire, represented the best and most serious side of Pagan thought,

would appear to have encouraged the bent of Christian teaching in that

direction rather by familiarising the subject to men’s minds than by

the contribution of any new matter.

[78] The speculative writings of the Rabbis belong to a time when the

Jewish schools of learning had fallen under the spell of Hellenism. So

preponderating was the influence of the latter that Professor Percy

Gardner appears inclined to trace the entire Hades theory to the Orphic

rites, and suggests a ‘great probability that the Christian doctrine of

the Descent into Hades, together with the imagery in which the future

world was presented to the early Christian imagination, was derived

neither from a Christian nor a Jewish, nor even a Hellenic source,

but from the mystical lore of Dionysos and Orpheus.’--_Contemporary

Review_, March 1895. So Mr. Alfred Nutt, speaking of the Elysium of the

Christian apocryphal writers, considers that the ‘source must be sought

for not in Jewish but in Greek conceptions,’ and that the Christian

Heaven derives immediately from the Hellenic one.--_Voyage of Bran_,

i. 256, and see ch. xi. generally. With all respect to these eminent

authorities, I would submit that it would be going too far absolutely

to exclude from those parts of late Jewish and early Christian

eschatology which deal with the theory of Hades, including the Descent

thither, and with the description of Elysium, all indebtedness to the

Oriental creeds which have contributed so much to that eschatology

in other respects. With this reservation, we may readily agree with

Mr. Nutt that ‘Christian eschatology, as so much else of Christian

doctrine, is emphatically a product of the fertilising influence of

Hellenic philosophy and religion upon Eastern thought and fancy’

(_op. cit._, p. 281); only contending that Eastern thought and fancy

contributed much of the raw material.

[79] Le Page Renouf, _op. cit._, p. 183.

[80] _The Book of Enoch_, translated from Dillman’s text, with notes,

by Charles. Oxford, 1893. See also _The Book of Enoch_, trans.

Lawrence. Oxford, 1821.

[81] Cp. the veil of fire and veil of ice in the doorway of Adamnán’s

celestial city.--_F. A._ 14.

[82] 2 Esdras iv.

[83] _L.c._ ii. 12, 18-19; and cp. Isaiah xxv. 6; Revelation xxii. 2.

[84] 2 Cor. xii. 2-4; and cp. Galatians i. 12, 16; Ephesians i. 3.

[85] _E.g._ in Revelation ii. 7. ‘To him that overcometh will I give to

eat of the Tree of Life, which is in Paradise’; and xxii. 2, ‘In the

midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there

the Tree of Life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her

fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of

the nations’; also the Throne and One seated thereon in ch. iv., xx.

11; the sea of glass mingled with fire in ch. xv.; the city built of

precious stones, etc.

[86] _Vide_ Dante, _Inferno_, canto iv.

[87] The fact that the work was most in repute in the Eastern Church,

and that several of the leading Western fathers wrote of it in

disparaging terms, may possibly be held to militate to some extent

against this ascription.

[88] This passage, so thoroughly Dantesque, reminds us curiously of

chapters 9 and 12 of the _Vita Nuova_. Indeed, the little episode might

almost be termed a painting of Dante and Beatrice executed by one of

the primitives. In like manner, the passage that ensues recalls the

reproaches which Beatrice addressed to Dante on meeting him in the

Earthly Paradise at the close of the _Purgatorio_.

[89] Herein the plan of the work accords to some extent with that of

the _Book of Enoch_.

[90] _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_, vol. xvi. p. 480.

[91] Two Latin versions, together with the account of the pseudo-John,

are translated in vol. xvi. of the _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_.

[92] Using the word ‘people’ in its wider sense, not as equivalent to

the _popolaccio_, for there were persons of rank and culture among

the early converts, but as distinguished from those who were in high

station, or were remarkable for learning.

[93] _De Legibus_, II. xiv. 36.

[94] See Plutarch’s Consolatory Epistle to his Wife.

[95] Plutarch: _On Superstition, On the Tardy Vengeance of God, On the

Impracticability of a Happy Life on Epicurean Principles._ Lucian:

_Philopseudes, De Luctu_.

[96] See _Ireland and the Celtic Church_, by Dr. G. T. Stokes; ed. 5,

1900, pp. 169-174.

[97] _Op. cit._, p. 229, and cp. pp. 215-16.

[98] Edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes in _Anecdota Oxoniensia_, _Mediæval

and Modern Series_, vol. i., part 3.

[99] G. T. Stokes, _op. cit._, pp. 228-9. For other points of

resemblance and instance of communication between the Irish and the

Eastern Churches, cited by the learned author, see pp. 105 _n._, 173-4,

186-7, 229, and Lecture x., _passim_.

[100] This classification, in theory at least, regulated the structure

of society from top to bottom. There were four ranks of kings, from the

_Árd Rí_, High King, or Emperor, of all Ireland, to the _Rí Tuatha_,

King of a Tribal Territory. The territories themselves were divided

according to a descending scale, analogous to the English division into

county, hundred, tithing, etc. There were six grades of princes under

the king, classified according to the extent of their lands. Society

was divided into nobles, freemen, and serfs, and each of these classes

was subdivided into a great number of minor grades. The family was

traced to the seventeenth degree, and was grouped into six classes,

whose rights and liabilities in matters of inheritance, in the receipt

or payment of fines and damages, etc., are defined with the utmost

minuteness. The land tenure, and the dues to be paid in respect of each

kind; the circumstances of crimes and civil injuries, and the fines or

damages to be paid for each; in short, all the details of public and

private life, were elaborated with similar minuteness. For particulars,

the reader may be referred to the ancient legal and customary

treatises, and the respective commentaries thereon, printed in the

Rolls Series, the _Lebor na g-Cert_, ed. O’Donovan, 1847, and O’Curry’s

_Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish_, ed. W. K. Sullivan, 3

vols., 1873.

[101] The _Filid_ must be distinguished from the _Bárd_, a name often

applied to the poetic and literary class promiscuously, but really the

title pertaining to a rank far below the _Filid_ in dignity. See Dr.

Douglas Hyde, _The Literary History of Ireland_, pp. 486, etc.

[102] It is not to be supposed that so elaborate a system ever existed,

or could exist, in its entirety, or that the population of Ireland was

ever sorted out into sets of social pigeon-holes with anything like

the completeness represented by the chroniclers. The old Irish writers

combined two characteristics, which may appear, at first glance,

contradictory, though reflection may enable us to see how compatible

they are on psychologic grounds, viz. a tendency to run riot in the

exuberance of fancy, and an equally excessive love of system and minute

detail. Nevertheless, writing as they did of the state of society

in which they lived, and for readers who were acquainted with the

facts which they described, they cannot be supposed to have invented

their systems and classifications, but rather to have idealised and

elaborated their picture of an existing state of things so as to

make it accord with their conception of the true significance of the

social scheme. Modern writers have often done much the same thing in a

different way, in their treatment of the Feudal System, the Imperial

Theory, the Renaissance, Reformation, and similar movements, etc.

[103] The Irish writers are further remarkable for not confining their

tolerance to traditional practices and the like, but extending it even

to the spiritual beings of the national faith. This point has been well

put by Mr. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, ii. 205: ‘And whereas in every other

European land the ministers of the new faith were as bitterly opposed

to the fanciful as to the business aspect of the older creed, in

Ireland it is the saint who protects the bard, the monk who transcribes

the myth, whilst the bird-flock of Faery, alike with the children of

Adam, yearn for and acclaim the advent of the Apostle.’ And even when

it has seemed necessary to regard these beings as demons, several tales

show priest or saint feeling for them the like regretful kindliness as

Origen, Burns, and Uncle Toby expressed for the chief of the demons. A

very striking instance of the eagerness shown by the Christian writers

to put the best possible construction upon their pagan predecessors,

occurs at the close of ‘The Irish Ordeals,’ etc., trans. by Mr. Whitley

Stokes, _Irische Texte_, III. i. 221: ‘The wise declare that when

any strange apparition was revealed of old to the royal lords … it

was a divine ministration that used to come in that wise, and not a

demoniacal ministration. Angels, moreover, would come and help them,

for they followed Natural Truth, and they served the commandment of the

Law.’

[104] Most of the principal Irish deities include among their functions

that of ruler of the dead. One of the most pronounced examples of the

Yama type is Tethra, who is described in the legends as Chief of the

Fomorians, whereby his distinctly Chthonian character is asserted; and,

after the defeat of his people at the battle of Mag Tured, as ruler of

a land beyond the ocean, like Varuna, when overcome by Indra (and cp.

Hesiod, _Works and Days_, 168-9, and Pindar, _Olymp._ ii.). Thence,

from time to time, he would send beautiful maidens to summon to him the

chiefs and heroes of Éire.

[105] The subject of the Otherworld in Irish literature has been

treated very fully by Mr. Nutt in his _Essay on the Irish Vision of

the Happy Otherworld, and the Celtic Doctrine of Rebirth_, appended to

Professor Kuno Meyer’s _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, 2 vols., 1895-7.

[106] Extracted from the _Lebor na h-Udri_, by O’Curry, _Manners and

Customs_, etc., vol. iii.

[107] A similar caldron was a favourite property of supernatural beings

in the heroic tales of Ireland as of Wales; indeed, so desirable a

possession enters into the folklore of most nations.

[108] _Aislinge Meic Conglinne_,‘The Vision of Mac Conglinne,’ edited,

with translation, notes, and glossary, by Prof. Kuno Meyer, 1892.

[109] _Ante_, note 3, p. 44. The work is edited, with translation,

notes, and glossary, by Prof. Kuno Meyer, who dates the composition of

the tale in its present form in the seventh century; Mr. Nutt suggests

the eighth century (_op. cit._, i. 141). Fragments of the tale exist in

the L.U. Prof. Rhys identifies Bran with Cernunnos, the divine ancestor

of the ancient Celts (_Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 85-95). Mr. Nutt further

suggests an identity with Brons, the Fisher King, and keeper of the

Graal (_Studies on the Legend of the Holy Graal_, 1888, p. 208).

[110] In the disputation between Neid and Fercertue which was to decide

which of them should be Árd Ollamh (Chief Doctor) of Ulster, Fercertue

put the riddling question, ‘What is it that thou traversest in haste?’

Neid replied, ‘The plain of age, the mountain of youth, the course of

the ages, in pursuit of the King in the house of earth and stones,

between the candle and its ending, between the combat and the hatred of

combat, amid the brave warriors of Tethra.’

[111] Transcribed into the L.U. before 1103 A.D. from the earlier

Book of Slane, now lost: edited (without a translation) by Professor

Windisch in _Irische Texte_, vol. i. pp. 197 _sqq._ Professor Windisch,

who states that the tale is composed of materials from several distinct

sources (_op. cit._, pp. 202-3), calls attention to the thoroughly

pagan character of it, despite the introduction of a passing allusion

to Adam on p. 219. Portions of the descriptions of the Tír Tairngire

contained in this tale and in the story of Mider have been rendered in

metre by Dr. Douglas Hyde, _Literary History of Ireland_, pp. 202-3.

[112] As Zeus was brother to Pluto, and as the strife between the

Olympian and Chthonian powers--the powers of light and darkness--are

typified, in most mythologies, by discord between a pair of divine

brothers; a conception surviving in such creations of the popular or

the lettered imagination as Valentine and Orson, Alcina and Logistilla,

etc.

[113] The episode is contained in the _Tochmarc Emere_, The Wooing of

Emer, dated eighth century, by Professor K. Meyer. Miss Eleanor Hull

translates the L.U. version in her _Cuchullin Saga_, pp. 56 _sqq._

Professor Meyer publishes a shorter version, with translation, in the

_Revue Celtique_, xi. 442 _sq._

[114] Mr. Nutt gives abstracts of these stories in the _Voyage of

Bran_, i. 297 _sqq._

[115] In the Perceval legend, a bridge of glass occurs in Gautier’s

continuation of the _Conte du Graal_ (Nutt, _Studies_, etc., p. 17).

[116] A similar ‘obstacle bridge’ occurs in other Irish Sagas. In

the _Voyage of Maelduin’s Curach_ is a bridge of glass, on which the

passenger kept falling backwards. Of this kind must have been the

bridge which the celebrated Irish M.P.--real or mythical--described as

‘separating’ two shores.

[117] Edited and translated by Professor K. Meyer in _Revue Celtique_,

x. 212 _sqq._, from the MSS. in T. C. D.--H. 2, 16 and Eg. 1782.

[118] This flagstone, the Lia Fáil, was endowed with the property

of shrieking whenever pressed by the foot of a lawful king. The

frequency of vocal stones in Irish legend will be referred to later on.

Popular tradition identifies the Lia Fáil with the stone now inside

the Coronation Chair at Westminster, stolen by Edward I. from Scone,

where the kings of Alban used to be crowned upon it, and whither

it was said to have been brought from Tara by the Dalriad Scots. I

believe, however, that the identity of the stone so taken to Scotland

by the Dalriada with that of Tara has been impugned. The practice of

inaugurating a king or chief upon a certain stone survived into late

historical times.

[119] The habitual presence of the great tree outside the raths of

the Tuatha Dé Danann is doubtless to be ascribed to the custom which

prevailed in Ireland of having in a similar position a public tree

of the tribe, round or beside which assemblies were held and games

celebrated. The Irish chronicles frequently report the cutting down of

such a tree by raiders as an insult to the invaded tribe. This practice

was exactly paralleled in the mediæval republics of Italy, where an

invading army would often put scorn and offence upon a city by cutting

down the public tree which stood outside the gates, and was the central

point in games and festivals.

[120] Cethlenn was the wife of Balor of the Mighty Blows, a Fomorian

chief, and therefore of the Chthonian race of Tethra. She has left her

name to Enniskillen, Inis Cethlenn, Cethlenn’s Island.

[121] _The Adventures of Árt, son of Conn, and the Courtship of

Delbchaem, Érin_, iii. 149 _sqq._ Edited and translated by Mr. R. I.

Best, from the _Echtra Áirt_, one of the _Prím-scéla_ of Ireland,

preserved in Early Modern Irish in the Book of Fermoy, R.I.A., a MS. of

the fifteenth century.

[122] Edited, with translation and notes, by Mr. Whitley Stokes,

_Irische Texte_, III. i. 183 _sqq._, from the Book of Ballymote,

R.I.A., and the Yellow Book of Lecan, T.C.D., both MSS. of the

fourteenth century.

[123] Another instance of the sacred character with which the Irish

code of honour invested a pledge, and which is apparent in the stories,

before quoted, of Mider, Conn, Árt, etc. So in the _Baile Mongáin_,

a story printed by Prof. K. Meyer as an appendix to his _Voyage of

Bran_, Mongán is obliged to surrender his wife Dubhlaca to the King of

Leinster (apparently an euhemerisation of Manannán, who figures in an

earlier version, also given by Prof. Meyer (_op. cit._)) in fulfilment

of a like promise.

[124] At the same time, it is perceptible that incidents of the

_märchen_ type are more numerous in this group than in the great heroic

cycles.

[125] In the story of Cormac, Manannán’s Paradise, instead of lying

oversea, is placed within a dún, at which Cormac arrives by land.

[126] So the group of Carolingian romances, which long passed for the

work of Archbishop Turpin, retained the characteristics of a barbarous

society in their views concerning magic, superstition, morals, etc.,

though sanctified by the addition of ecclesiastical miracles, and other

matters of edification, which earned for it the formal approval of Pope

Calixtus II. in the year 1122.

[127] Manannán is presented in like fashion in the story of Mongán,

_op. cit._

[128] So in the tale of Mider, _ante_, where, as here, it is introduced

into the description of the pagan Elysium, Magh Mór; the ecclesiastical

interpolations, as here again, being brought in in the usual

incongruous manner.

[129] As in the _Voyage of Maelduin’s Curach_, an Imram of

substantially the original type, treated from a Christian point of

view. The trait is copied in the _Adventures of Tadg Mac Céin_, a late

mediæval romance composed in the archaic style, where it receives from

Tadg the characteristic comment, ‘’Tis queer, though charming’; he

evidently regarded it as an example intended rather for edification

than imitation. It is interesting to note how the idea recurs in modern

Irish poetry, as, indeed, practically, in Irish peasant life. In poor

Mangan’s beautiful _Love Ballad_, translated or imitated from the

Irish, the hero--

‘Sheltered by the sloe-bush black,

Sat, laughed, and talked, while thick sleet fell,

And cold rain.

Thanks to God! no guilty leaven

Dashed our childish mirth.

You rejoice for this in Heaven,

I not less on earth.’

[130] One of the most explicit instances occurs in the Graal series,

in the _Queste_, when Perceval is informed that the Castle of Maidens

is Hell, and the captives therein are the souls that await Christ’s

coming; the seven knights that defend the castle being the seven deadly

sins (Nutt, _Studies_, etc., p. 41).

[131] Edited and translated by Mr. W. Stokes in _Rev. Celtique_,

ix.-x., from a version contained in the L.U., parts being completed

from later versions. Cf. _Voyage of Bran_, i. 162-3.

[132]

Pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris;

Contendunt ludo, et fulva luctantur arena, etc.

VIRG., _Æn._, vi. 642-3.

[133] _Odyssey_, ix. 481 _sqq._

[134] David Fitzgerald, ‘Popular Tales of Ireland,’ _Rev. Celtique_,

iv. 189 _sqq._

[135] The root conception belongs to the common stock of Celtic

tradition. We shall see more of the fiery rampart later on; for the

revolving wall, cp. the castle in the Welsh story of Peredur, which

spun round faster than the winds.

[136] Probably a reminiscence of some hermit who had chosen a snowy

region in the North for his retreat.

[137] A similar miraculous provision by the agency of some animal

occurs in the legends of several of the Irish hermits. In Wolfram’s

_Parzifal_, the Grail appears as a ‘stone which yields all manner of

food and drink, the power of which is sustained by a dove, who every

week lays a Host upon it.’--Nutt, _Studies_, etc., p. 25.

[138] _Vita S. Columbæ_, I. xiv.

[139] _Iomram Churraig h-Ua g-Corra_, ed. and trans, by Mr. W. Stokes,

in _Rev. Celt._, xiv. 22 _sqq._, from the Book of Fermoy, a MS. of

the fourteenth century. The tale, in its present form, is later than

that of Maelduin, though Professor Zimmer considers that the original

was written early in the eighth century, the present being probably

‘a thirteenth-century _rifacimento_, save the opening portion, which

he (Zimmer) thus looks upon as being the earliest fragment of this

genre of story-telling.’--Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, i. 162. Mr. Stokes,

however, regards the extant version as a work of the eleventh century,

_loc. cit._

[140] Here, again, the harp in the hands of a modern minstrel re-echoes

the ancient tune:

‘And, as I watch the line of light, that plays

Along the smooth wave, tow’rd the burning west,

I long to tread that golden path of rays,

And think ’twould lead to some bright isle of rest.’--MOORE.

[141] A similar belief existed in the old Latin religion. Outside the

city gates of every town there used to be a pit, the ‘Mundus,’ which

was regarded as the receptacle of the souls of the dead. It was covered

with a flagstone, which was lifted on three days in the year, occurring

in August, October, and November, to give the imprisoned souls a

holiday. Cp. the belief, once prevalent all over Europe, and still

existing in many parts, that on All Souls’ Eve the spirits would go

through their towns in procession, and visit their former homes.

[142] _Imrum Snedghusa agus Mic Ríagla_, ed. and trans, by Mr. Whitley

Stokes, _Rev. Celt._, ix. 12 _sqq._, from the Yellow Book of Lecan,

before mentioned; and see O’Curry, _MS. Materials of Irish History_,

pp. 333 _sqq._ Mr. Stokes ascribes the tale to the middle of the

seventh century; Mr. Nutt, to the middle or latter part of the ninth

century.--_Voyage of Bran_, i. 231.

[143] The anticipation of a general battle immediately prior to the

Judgment, though an article of many religions (_e.g._ the Persian, the

Norse, etc.), is unusual in Irish writings of the present class; it

is probably suggested by the prophecies contained in the Revelations,

and in the prophetical books of the Old Testament, more especially

the mention of the Battle of Armageddon in Rev. xvi. The mention of

Enoch in connection with this battle is singular, and suggests the

legend of Enoch in the Talmud. The disappearance of a national hero,

and his seclusion until he shall appear to take part in some great

conflict, though common to the traditions of most races (some of the

most familiar being Arthur, Dietrich of Berne, Holger Danske, Frederick

II.--not Frederick I., Barbarossa), has always appealed to the Irish

imagination, and recurs in the modern folk-tales of Gearoid Iarla,

O’Sullivan, the MacMahon, etc. It will be remembered that on Mr.

Parnell’s death many believed that the Chief was not really dead, but

had only disappeared for a time.

[144] There is no intention to suggest that the _Echtra_, the _Imram_,

and the _Fis_, or the tales in each group, succeeded one another in

the order in which they are referred to in the text, either in their

present form or in their original composition, least of all as regards

the very ancient materials which are embodied in all of them. It has

been attempted to present them in such order as may best illustrate the

development of the eschatological idea, and the increasing fusion of

native traditions with the Church legends. A later writer, on account

of his subject, or for other reasons, might sometimes employ a more

archaic form of narrative than some of his predecessors.