Mr. Henry Maddern, F.I.A.S., our very important witness from Penzance,

testifies as follows concerning a re-birth doctrine in Cornwall:--'Belief

in reincarnation was very common among the old Cornish peoples. For

example, it was believed when an incantation had been pronounced in the

proper way at the Newlyn Tolcarne, that the Troll who inhabited it could

embody the person who called him up in any state in which that person

had existed during a former age. You had only to name the age or period,

and you could live your past life therein over again. My nurse, Betty

Grancan, and an old miner named William Edwards, both believed in

re-birth, and told me about it. I have heard them relate stories to one

another to the effect that a person can go back into the memory of past

lives. They said that the sex always remains the same from life to

life. I have never heard of any belief in transmigration of humans into

animals, but in human re-birth only.'[424]

_In Brittany_

In chapter ii, p. 216, M. Z. Le Rouzic, keeper of the Miln Museum at

Carnac, says that there is now among his Breton countrymen round Carnac

a general and profound belief that spirits incarnate as men and women;

and he has told me that this belief exists also in other regions of the

Morbihan. And I myself found there in this Carnac country of which M. Le

Rouzic speaks, that the doctrine of the reincarnation of ancestors,

which, as he agrees, is the same thing as the incarnation of spirits, is

quite common, though as a rule only talked about among the Bretons

themselves.

M. Le Rouzic restated the belief as he knows it round Carnac, as

follows:--'It is incontestable that the belief in the reincarnation of

spirits is general in our country; and it is believed that the spirits

embodied now are the spirits of the people of former times.'

After Louis Guézel, of the village of St. Columban, a mile from Carnac,

had related to me certain legends of the dead, I asked him if he had

ever heard that the dead may be born again as men and women here on this

earth. Contrary to my expectations, the question caused no surprise

whatever; and I was at once given the impression that the ancient Celtic

Doctrine of Re-birth is a thoroughly familiar one to him and to many

Bretons about the Carnac district. As we conversed about the doctrine,

he said emphatically, '_C'est la vérité_' (It is the truth); and in

illustration told the following anecdotes:--'A woman in a cemetery one

evening saw the spirits of many dead children begging of her life, and

reincarnation. A son of my son resembles my grandfather, especially in

his mental traits and general character, and the family believe that

this son is my grandfather reincarnated.' (Recorded at St. Columban,

Brittany, August 1909.)

Professor Anatole Le Braz, in a letter-preface to _Carnac, Légendes,

Traditions, Coutumes et Contes du Pays_ (Nantes, 1909), by M. Z. Le

Rouzic, makes this poetical reference to his friend, its author, and

thereby admirably echoes the ancient Breton Doctrine of Re-birth:--'You,

your eyes, your ears are elsewhere: you are a seer and a hearer of the

lower regions; you perceive the floating images and you discern the

hollow sounds of the people of the manes; you live, literally, among

them. What am I saying? Under the form and appearance of a man of

to-day, you are in reality one of them, ascended to the day and

reincarnated.' Again, speaking of the Alignements of Menec, Professor Le

Braz adds concerning his friend:--'You have been one of the

priest-builders who worked at its erection; you have officiated among

its myriads of columns, presided amid the pomp of great funerals in its

cyclopean caverns, sprinkled its sepulchral mounds, shaped like tents,

with the blood of oxen and of heifers now dear to St. Cornely. And this

also you confess to me yourself: these unfathomable epochs remain for

you actual and present.'

ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE CELTIC DOCTRINE OF RE-BIRTH

In considering briefly what non-Celtic doctrines could conceivably have

shaped the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, two chief streams of influence

are open to examination. One stream has its source in re-birth doctrines

like those set forth by Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic, and similar

orientally-derived philosophies; while the other arises out of primitive

Christianity, wherein, as literary and historical evidence suggests,

re-birth may have been an equally important doctrine; or, at all events,

there was a decided tendency, later condemned as heretical, to

synthesize the Alexandrian philosophy and the Jewish (which to some

extent influenced the Alexandrian) with early Church doctrines. This

tendency is clearly shown by Origen, and by Clemens Alexandrinus,

another eminent Father.

We have a better check on the second stream than on the first, because

Christianity has a later and more definite origin than any of the

orientally-derived philosophies. Some of the Druids, chiefly of Scotland

and Wales, who are known to have held the re-birth doctrine before

conversion, and probably after conversion, as was the case with a modern

Druid, an editor of the _Archaiology of Wales_ (see p. 391, above),

accepted the New Faith as a purer form of Druidism and Jesus Christ as

the Greatest of Druids. This ready and full acceptance would most likely

not have been possible had their cardinal re-birth doctrine been thereby

condemned. It would seem, therefore, that a primitive Christian re-birth

doctrine may have been openly held by certain of the early Celtic

missionaries. These latter, during the centuries when Ireland was the

university for all Europe, had good opportunities for knowing much about

the earliest traditions of Christianity, and they, with their own

half-pagan instincts, would have given approval to such a doctrine

without consulting Rome, just as Church Fathers like Tertullian

condemned it on their own personal authority and Origen believed it.

Further, if we hold in mind that the doctrine of the Incarnation even

now inculcates that the Son pre-existed and united Himself with a human

soul in the act of conception, and that it may originally and by some

Irish saints have been thought of as applying to all mankind in a more

humble and less divine way, we seem to see in the Mongan re-birth story,

which Christian transcribers have glossed, evidently with such ideas in

mind, a proof that on this doctrinal point Christian and Celtic beliefs

coalesced.[425] But the Christian beliefs did not originate the Celtic,

for scholars have shown that the germ of the Mongan re-birth story, as

well as that of the Cuchulainn re-birth episode, is pre-Christian, and

that the Etain birth-story dates from a time when Irish myth and history

were entirely free from Christian influence.[426] The same original

pagan character is shown in the re-birth episodes existing in Brythonic

literature.[427] And, finally, from the testimony of several ancient

authorities, e. g. Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, and

Lucan, who wrote, respectively, about 50 B. C., 40 B. C., A. D. 44, and

A. D. 60 to 65, that the Celts already held the re-birth doctrine, it is

certain that any possible influence from the Christian stream instead of

originating the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth could merely have modified

it.

The question remaining, Would the classical or oriental doctrines of

re-birth have originated or fundamentally shaped the Celtic re-birth

doctrine? is a very difficult one. At present it cannot be answered with

certainty either negatively or positively. We may suppose, however, as

we did in the case of the parallel Christian re-birth doctrine, a

possible contact and amalgamation, brought about in various ways, e. g.

through Oriental merchants like the Phoenicians, and travellers who

visited Britain in pre-Christian times, but chiefly through the

continental Celts, who had direct knowledge of Greek and Roman culture,

meeting their insular brethren beyond the Channel and Irish Sea. All

such ancient contacts push the problem further and further back in time;

and our easiest and safest course is to state--as we may of the similar

problem of the origin of the Celtic Otherworld belief--that available

facts of comparative religion, philosophy, and myth, indicate clearly a

prehistoric epoch when there was a common ancestral stock for the

Mediterranean and pan-Celtic cultures. This may have had its beginnings

in the Danube country, or in North Europe, as many authorities in

ethnology now hold, or, as others are beginning to hold, in the lost

Atlantis--the most probable home of the dark pre-Celtic peoples of

Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, Britain, Southern and Western Europe,

and North Africa, who with the Aryans are the joint ancestors of the

modern Celts. Both branches of this common Celtic ancestral stock held

the re-birth doctrine. And at least from their Aryan ancestors it seems

to have been inherited by the Celts of history. To attempt a

hypothetical proof that this race or that race, Egyptian, Phoenician,

Greek, or Celtic, as the case may be, is alone the originator of this or

any other particular belief is as useless and as absurd as to attempt

proof that the Gael has no racial affinity with the Brython. One of the

greatest services now being performed by scientific inquiry into human

problems is the demonstration of the unreasonableness of assuming

artificial social barriers separating race from race, religion from

religion, and institution from institution, and the declaration that the

unity and the brotherhood of man is a fact inherent in man's own nature,

and not a sentimental ideal. But there is specialization and

differentiation everywhere in nature; and while Celtic traditions and

beliefs are not fundamentally unlike those found in every age, race, and

cultural stage, the treatment of this common stock of prehistoric lore

and mystical religion is in some respects unique, and hence Celtic.

Beyond this statement we cannot go.

SECTION III

THE CULT OF GODS, SPIRITS, FAIRIES, AND THE DEAD

CHAPTER VIII

THE TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY[428]

'As he spoke, he paused before a great mound grown over with trees,

and around it silver clear in the moonlight were immense stones

piled, the remains of an original circle, and there was a dark,

low, narrow entrance leading therein. "This was my palace. In days

past many a one plucked here the purple flower of magic and the

fruit of the tree of life...." And even as he spoke, a light began

to glow and to pervade the cave, and to obliterate the stone walls

and the antique hieroglyphics engraven thereon, and to melt the

earthen floor into itself like a fiery sun suddenly uprisen within

the world, and there was everywhere a wandering ecstasy of sound:

light and sound were one; light had a voice, and the music hung

glittering in the air.... "I am Aengus; men call me the Young. I am

the sunlight in the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am the

light at the end of every dream, the voice for ever calling to come

away; I am desire beyond joy or tears. Come with me, come with me:

I will make you immortal; for my palace opens into the Gardens of

the Sun, and there are the fire-fountains which quench the heart's

desire in rapture."'--A. E.

Inadequacy of Pygmy Theory--According to the theories concerning

divine images and fetishes, gods, daemons, and ancestral spirits

haunt megaliths--Megaliths are religious and funereal, as shown

chiefly by _Cenn Cruaich_, Stonehenge, Guernsey menhirs, monuments

in Brittany, by the circular fairy dance as an ancient initiatory

sun-dance, by Breton earthworks, archaeological excavations

generally, and by present-day worship at Indian dolmens--New Grange

and Celtic Mysteries: evidence of manuscripts; evidence of

tradition--The Aengus Cult--New Grange compared with Great Pyramid:

both have astronomical arrangement and same internal plan--Why they

open to the sunrise--Initiations in both--Great Pyramid as model

for Celtic tumuli--Gavrinis and New Grange as spirit-temples.

In this chapter we propose to deal with the popular belief among Celtic

peoples that tumuli, dolmens, menhirs, and in fact most megalithic

monuments, prehistoric or historic, are either the abodes or else the

favourite haunts of various orders of fairies--of pixies in Cornwall, of

_corrigans_ in Brittany, of little spirits like pygmies, of spirits like

mortals in stature, of goblins, of demons, and of ghosts. Interesting

attempts have been made to explain this folk-belief by means of the

Pygmy Theory of Fairies; and this folk-belief appears to be almost the

chief one upon which the theory depends.[429] As was pointed out in the

Introduction (p. xxiii), possibly one of the many threads interwoven

into the complex fabric of the Fairy-Faith round an original psychical

pattern may have been bequeathed by a folk-memory of some unknown,

perhaps pygmy, races, who may have inhabited underground places like

those in certain tumuli. But even though the Pygmy Theory were

altogether accepted by us the problem we are to consider would still be

an unsolved one; for how explain by the Pygmy Theory why the folk-memory

should always run in psychical channels, and not alone in Celtic lands,

but throughout Europe, and even in Australia, America, Africa, and

India.

Archaeological researches have now made it clear that many of the great

tumuli covering dolmens or subterranean chambers, like that of Mont St.

Michel (at Carnac) for example, were religious and funereal in their

purposes from the first; and therefore the Pygmy Theory is far from a

satisfactory or adequate explanation. To us the inquiry is similar to an

investigation into the reasons why ghosts should haunt a house, whereas

the supporters of the Pygmy Theory forget the ghosts and tell all about

the people who may or who may never have lived in the haunted house, and

who built it. The megaliths, in the plain language of the folk-belief,

are haunted by fairies, pixies, _corrigans_, ghosts, and various sorts

of invisible beings. Like the Psychical Research Society, we believe

there may be, or actually are, invisible beings like ghosts, and so

propose to conduct our investigations from that point of view.[430]

MENHIRS, DOLMENS, CROMLECHS, AND TUMULI

To begin with, we shall concern ourselves with menhirs, dolmens,

cromlechs, and certain kinds of tumuli--such as are found at Carnac,

round which _corrigans_ hold their nightly revels, and where ghost-like

forms are sometimes seen in the moonlight, or even when there is no

moon. M. Paul Sébillot in _Le Folk-lore de France_[431] has very

adequately described the numerous folk-traditions and customs connected

with all such monuments, and it remains for us to deal especially with

the psychical aspects of these traditions and customs.

The learned Canon Mahé in his _Essai sur les antiquités du département

du Morbihan_ (p. 258), a work of rare merit, published at Vannes in

1825, holds that not only were the majestic Alignements of Carnac used

as temples for religious rites, but that the stones themselves of which

the Alignements are formed were venerated as the abodes of gods.[432]

And quoting Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Hermes, and others, he shows

that the ancients believed that gods and daemons, attracted by sacrifice

and worship to stone images and other inanimate objects, overshadowed

them or even took up their abode in them. This position of Canon Mahé is

confirmed by a comparative study of Celtic and non-Celtic traditions

respecting the theory of what has been erroneously called

'idol-worship'. All evidence goes to show that idols so called, are

simply images used as media for the manifestation of ghosts, spirits,

and gods: the ancients, like contemporary primitive races, do not seem

ever to have actually worshipped such images, but simply to have

supplicated by prayer and sacrifice the indwelling deity.[433] The

ancient Egyptians, for example, conceived the _Ka_ or personality as a

thing separable from the person or body, and hence 'the statue of a

human being represented and embodied a human _Ka_'. Likewise a statue of

a god was the dwelling-place of a divine _Ka_, attracted to it by

certain mystical formulae at the time of dedication.[434] Though there

might be many statues of the same god no two were alike; each was

animated by an independent 'double' which the rites of consecration had

elicited from the god. These statues, being thus animated by a 'double',

manifested their will--as Greek and Roman statues are reported to have

done--either by speaking, or by rhythmic movements. The divine virtue

residing in the images of the gods was thought to be a sort of fluid,

analogous to what we call the magnetic fluid, the aura, &c. It could be

transmitted by the imposition of hands and by magic passes, on the nape

of the neck or along the dorsal spine of a patient;[435] and no doubt

extraordinary curative properties were attributed to it.

Dr. Tylor has brought together examples from all parts of the globe of

so-called fetishism, which is veneration paid to natural living objects

such as trees, fish, animals, as well as to inanimate objects of almost

every conceivable description, including stones, because of the spirit

believed to be inherent or resident in the particular object; and he

shows that idols originally were fetishes, which in time came to be

shaped according to the form of the spirit or god supposed to possess

them.[436] Mr. R. R. Marett, the originator of the pre-animistic theory,

believes that originally fetishes were regarded as gods themselves, and

that gradually they came to be regarded as the dwellings of gods.[437]

Certain well-defined Celtic traditions entirely fit in with this

theory:--e. g. Canon Mahé writes, 'In accordance with this strange

theory they (the Celts) could believe that rocks, set in motion by

spirits which animated them, sometimes went to drink at rivers, as is

said of the Peulvan at Noyal-Pontivy' (Morbihan);[438] and I have found

a parallel belief at Rollright, Oxfordshire, England, where it is said

of the King Stone, an ancient menhir, and, according to some

folk-traditions, a human being transformed, that it goes down the hill

on Christmas Eve to drink at the river. In the famous menhir or

pillar-stone on Tara to this day, we have another curious example like

the moving statues in Egypt and the Celtic stones which move; for in the

_Book of Lismore_ the wonderful properties of the _Lia Fáil_, the 'Stone

of Destiny', are enumerated, and it is said that ever when Ireland's

monarch stepped upon it the stone would cry out under him, but that if

any other person stepped upon it, there was only silence.[439]

In the _Tripartite Life of St. Patrick_ it is said that Ireland's chief

idol was at Mag Slecht, and by name 'Cenn Cruaich, covered with gold and

silver, and twelve other idols[440] [were] about it, covered with

brass'. When Patrick tried to place his crosier on the top of Cenn

Cruaich, the idol 'bowed westward to turn on its right side, for its

face was from the South, to wit, Tara.... And the earth swallowed the

twelve other images as far as their heads, and they are thus in sign of

the miracle, and he cursed the demon, and banished him to hell'.[441]

Sir John Rhys points out that _Cenn Cruaich_ means 'Head or Chief of

the Mound', and that the story of its inclined position suggests to us

an ancient and gradually falling menhir planted on the summit of a

tumulus or hill surrounded by twelve lesser pillar stones, all

thirteen--itself a sacred number--regarded as the abodes of gods or else

as gods themselves; and these gods are referred to as the demon

exorcized from the place by Patrick. The central menhir or Cenn Cruaich

probably represents the Solar God, and the twelve menhirs surrounding

this probably represent the twelve months of the year.[442] In the

_Colloquy_ it is said that Patrick went his way 'to sow faith and piety,

to banish devils and wizards out of Ireland; to raise up saints and

righteous, to erect crosses, station-stones, and altars; also to

overthrow idols and goblin images, and the whole art of sorcery'.[443]

Welsh tradition says that St. David split the capstone of the Maen Ketti

Cromlech (dolmen)[444] in Gower, in order to prove to the people that

there was nothing divine in it.[445]

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Merlin constructed Stonehenge by

magically transporting from Ireland the 'Choir of the Giants',

apparently an ancient Irish circle of stones.[446] The rational

explanation of this myth seems to be that the stones of Stonehenge, not

belonging to the native rocks of South England, as geologists well know,

were probably transported from some distant part of Britain and set up

on Salisbury Plain, because of some magical properties supposed to have

been possessed by them; and most likely 'the stones were regarded as

divine or as seats of divine power'.[447] And further (thereby admitting

the sacred purpose of the group), Sir John Rhys sees no objection to

identifying Stonehenge with the famous temple of Apollo in the island of

the Hyperboreans, referred to in the journal of Pytheas' travels.[448]

According to Sir John Rhys's interpretation of this journal, 'the

kings of the city containing the temple and the overseers of the latter

were the Boreads, who took up the government in succession, according to

their tribes. The citizens gave themselves up to music, harping and

chanting in honour of the Sun-god, who was every nineteenth year wont

himself to appear about the time of the vernal equinox, and to go on

harping and dancing in the sky until the rising of the Pleiades.'[448]

Two menhirs, roughly hewn to simulate the human form, are yet to be

found in Guernsey, Channel Islands, and formerly there was a similar

menhir in the Breton village of Baud, Morbihan. One of the Guernsey

figures was dug up in 1878 under the chancel of the Câtel Church, and

then placed in the churchyard, so that in this instance it seems highly

probable that the Christian Church was built on the site of a sacred

pagan shrine where a cult of stones once existed. The second stone

figure (a female), now standing as a gate-post in the churchyard of St.

Martin's parish, seems also to mark a spot where a pre-Christian

sanctuary was christianized. The country-people of the district, up to

the middle of the last century, considered it lucky to make floral and

even food offerings to this stone; but in 1860 the churchwarden to

destroy its sanctity had it broken in two, though now it has been

restored.[449] A like stone image was the famous 'Vénus de Quinipilly',

near Baud, Morbihan. At its base was a stone trough, wherein until late

into the seventeenth century the sick were cured by contact with the

image, and young men and maidens were wont to bathe to secure love and

long life.[449]

Canon Mahé recorded in 1825 that the folk-belief located ghosts and

spirits of the dead round megalithic monuments, more especially those

known to have been used for tombs, because the Celts thought them

haunted by ancestral spirits;[450] and what was true in 1825 is true

now, for there is still in Brittany the association of ancestral

spirits, _corrigans_, and other spirit-like tribes with tumuli, dolmens,

menhirs, and cromlechs, and, as we have shown in chapter ii, a very

living faith in the _Légende de la Mort_. In describing some curious

dolmens and cromlechs (stone circles) on the summit of a mountain called

the _Clech_ or _Mané er kloch_, 'Mountain of the bell,' at Mendon,

Arrondissement de Lorient, Morbihan, the same author gives it as his

opinion, based on folk-traditions, that the cromlechs, like others in

Brittany, were places in which the ancient Bretons practised necromancy

and invoked the spirits of their ancestors, to whom they attributed

great power. He then records a very valuable and interesting tradition

concerning these monuments, which seems to indicate clearly a close

relationship between the _Poulpiquets_ (another name for _corrigans_),

thought of as spirits by the peasants, and the magical rites conducted

in the circles to invoke spirits or daemons:--'The people call the

stones which are found there the rocks of the _Hoséguéannets_ or

_Guerrionets_ (who are the same as the _Poulpiquets_); and they declare

that at fixed seasons they are in the habit of coming there to celebrate

their mysteries, which would prove that the race of these dwarfs is not

yet extinct, as I believed.'[451]

When we hear how _corrigans_ dance the national Breton _ronde_ or

_ridée_, at or in such cromlechs (themselves, like the dance, circular

in form), which with other ancient stone monuments and earthworks are

still believed to be the favourite haunts of these and kindred

spirit-tribes, we seem to see, in the light of what Canon Mahé records,

a psychical folk-memory about a goblin race who are now thought of as

frequenting the very places where anciently such spirits are said to

have been invoked by pagan priests for the purposes of divination.

Further, it appears that at these sacred centres, as the quoted

tradition indicates, in prehistoric times Brythonic initiations took

place, like those still flourishing among a few surviving American

Indian tribes (who also dance the circular initiation dance), and among

other primitive peoples, as we shall more adequately show in the chapter

on St. Patrick's Purgatory. The Breton dance is, therefore, most likely

the memorial of an ancient initiation dance, religious in character,

and, probably, in honour of the sun, being circular in the same way that

cromlechs dedicated to a sun-cult are circular. Stonehenge, the most

highly developed type of the cromlech, was undoubtedly a sun-temple; and

the dance anciently held in it, as described by Pytheas, in honour of

the god Apollo, was no doubt circular like the Breton national dance,

and, presumably, initiatory.[452] Through a natural anthropomorphic

process, this circular initiation dance has come to be attributed to

_corrigans_ in Brittany, to pixies in Cornwall and in England, and to

fairies in these and other Celtic countries. The idea of fairy tribes in

such a special relation may result from a folk-memory of the actual

initiators who, as masked men, represented spirits; and, if this be a

plausible view, then fairies may be compared to the initiators of

contemporary initiation ceremonies among primitive peoples and,

following Dr. Gilbert Murray's theory, to the Greek satyrs also.[453]

A circular dance like the Breton one still survives among the peasantry

in the Channel Islands, at least in Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, being

celebrated at weddings, but the revolution is now around a person

instead of a stone, and to this person obeisance is paid. This tends to

confirm our opinion that the dance is the survival of an ancient

sun-dance, the central figure being typical of the sun deity himself, or

Apollo; and if we design this dance thus [Symbol: sun], we have the

astronomical emblem still used in all our calendars to represent the

sun, one which in itself preserves a vast mass of forgotten lore.

Formerly in Guernsey, the sites of principal dolmens (or cromlechs) and

pillar-stones were visited in sacred procession, and round certain of

them the whole body of pilgrims 'solemnly revolved three times from east

to west'--as the sun moves.[454]

Again, according to Canon Mahé,[455] the bases and lower parts of the

sides of four singular barrows at Coët-bihan blend in such a way as to

form an enclosed court, and one of the barrows has been pierced as

though for a passage-way into this court. And he holds that it is more

than probable that these ancient earthworks when first they were raised,

and others like them in various Celtic lands, witnessed many mystic and

religious rites and sacred tribal assemblies. The supposition that the

Coët-bihan earthworks were originally dedicated to pagan religious

usages is very much strengthened by the fact that in very early times a

Christian chapel was erected near them.[456] Mont St. Michel at Carnac

is another example of a pagan tumulus dedicated to a Christian saint;

and, as Sir John Rhys says, the Archangel Michael appears in more

places than one in Celtic lands as the supplanter of the dark

powers.[457] Not only were tumuli thus transferred by re-dedication from

pagan gods to Christian saints, but dolmens and menhirs as well. Thus,

for example, at Plouharnel-Carnac (Morbihan) there is a menhir

surmounted by a Christian cross, just as at Dol (Ille-et-Vilaine) a

wooden crucifix surmounts the great menhir, and at Carnac there is a

dolmen likewise christianized by a stone cross-mounted on the

table-stone. Again, M. J. Déchelette in his _Manuel d'Archéologie

Préhistorique, Celtique et Gallo-Romaine_ (p. 380) describes a dolmen at

Plouaret (Côtes-du-Nord) converted into a chapel dedicated to the Seven

Saints, and another dolmen at Saint-Germain-de-Confolens (Charente)

likewise transformed into a place of worship. Miss Edith F. Carey thus

explains the dolmens in the Channel Islands:--'All our old traditions

prove our dolmens to have been the general rendezvous of our insular

sorcerers. In sixteenth and seventeenth century manuscripts I have found

these dolmens described as "altars of the gods of the sea".... One of

our ancient dolmens retains its ancient name of De Hus, and a

fifteenth-century "Perchage" of Fief de Léree tells us that a now

destroyed dolmen on our western coast was dedicated to the same god, for

Heus or Hesus was the War-God of ancient Gaul.'[458] The same writer

describes excavations made at De Hus by Mr. Lukis, and that he found in

a side chamber there two kneeling skeletons, one facing the north, the

other the south. He considered them to have been of young persons

probably interred alive as a funeral or propitiatory sacrifice to some

tribal chief, or else to a presiding deity of the dolmen. Beside a tomb

of the early bronze age at the bottom of a large tumulus near

Mammarlöf, in Skåne, Dr. Oscar Montelius, the famous archaeologist of

Sweden, discovered a circular stone altar on which reposed charcoal and

the remains of a burnt animal offering, which undoubtedly was made to

the dead.[459] Schliemann made a parallel discovery in an ancient tomb

at Mycenae, Greece.[460] Curiously, in India to-day the Dravidian

tribes, a pygmy-like aboriginal race, worship at the ancient dolmens in

their forests and mountains, whether as at tombs and hence to ancestral

spirits or to gods is not always clear; but the latter form of worship

is probably more common, since Mr. Walhouse once observed one of their

medicine-men performing a propitiatory service to the agricultural or

earth deities. The medicine-man passed the night in solitude sitting 'on

the capstone of a dolmen with heels and hams drawn together and chin on

knee'--evidently thus to await the advent of the Sun-god.[461]

All the above illustrations, mostly Celtic ones, tend to prove that

menhirs, certain tumuli and earthworks, cromlechs, and dolmens were

originally connected with religious usages, chiefly with a cult of gods

and fairy-like beings, and, though less commonly, with the dead. We pass

now to a special consideration of chambered tumuli, to show that the

same apparently holds true of them.

NEW GRANGE AND CELTIC MYSTERIES

Though, as Professor J. Loth and other eminent archaeologists hold, all

tumuli containing chambers, and all _allées couvertes_ of dolmens,

should be considered as designedly funereal in their purposes,

nevertheless certain of the greater ones, like New Grange and Gavrinis

may also properly be considered as places for rendering worship or even

sacrifice to the dead, and, perhaps, as places for religious pilgrimages

and sacred rites. This, too, seems to be the opinion of M. J. Déchelette

in his work on Celtic and Gallo-Roman archaeology, as he traces from the

earliest prehistoric times in Europe the evolution of the cult of the

dead according to the evidence furnished by the ancient megalithic

monuments.[462]

To begin with, let us take as a type for our study the most famous of

all so-called Celtic tumuli, that of New Grange, on the River Boyne in

Ireland.[463] In Irish literature New Grange is constantly associated

with the Tuatha De Danann as one of their palaces, as our fourth chapter

points out. Throughout our second section generally, the testimony

indicates that the essential nature of these fairy-folk is subjective or

spiritual. These two facts at the outset are very important and

fundamental, because we expect to show even more clearly than we have

just done in the case of menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, and smaller

tumuli, that the folk-belief under consideration is at bottom a

psychical one, which has grown up out of a folk-memory of the time when,

as has just been said, Celtic or pre-Celtic tumuli were used for

interments, and probably certain ones among them as places for the

celebration of pagan mysteries.

Mr. George Coffey, the eminent archaeologist in charge of the

archaeological collections of the Royal Irish Academy, quotes from

ancient Irish records in the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ and other manuscripts

to show that the early traditions refer to the Boyne country as the

burial-place of the kings of Tara, and that sometimes they seem to

associate _Brugh-na-Boyne_ with the tumuli on the Boyne,[464] but, no

exact identification being possible, it cannot be said with certainty

whether any one of the three great Boyne tumuli is meant. Even though it

could be shown conclusively that some mighty hero or king had actually

been entombed in New Grange, as is likely, in the earth behind the

chamber, under the chamber's floor, or even within the chamber, still,

as we have already pointed out, most of the great Irish heroes and kings

were in popular belief literally gods incarnate, and, therefore (as

commonly among all ancient peoples, civilized and non-civilized, who

held the same doctrine), the tomb of such a divine personage came to be

regarded as the actual dwelling of the once incarnate god, even though

his bones were long turned to dust. The _Book of Ballymote_ strengthens

this suggestion: in one of its ancient Irish poems, by MacNia, son of

Oenna, preceded by this mystical dedication, 'Ye Poets of Bregia, of

truth, not false,' the wonders of the Palace of the Boyne, the Hall of

the great god Daghda, supreme king and oracle of the Tuatha de Danann,

are thus celebrated:--

Behold the _Sidh_ before your eyes,

It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion,

Which was built by the firm Daghda;

It was a wonder, a court, an admirable hill.[465]

It seems clear enough, from the old Irish manuscripts referred to by Mr.

Coffey,[466] that the Boyne country near Tara was the sacred and

religious centre of ancient Ireland, and was used by the Irish in very

much the same way as Memphis and other places on the sacred Nile were

used by the ancient Egyptians, both as a royal cemetery and as a place

for the celebration of pagan mysteries. It is known that most of the

Mysteries of Antiquity were psychic in their nature, having to do with

the neophyte's entrance into Hades or the invisible world while out of

the physical body, or else with direct communication with gods, spirits,

and shades of the dead, while in the physical body; and such mysteries

were performed in darkened chambers from which all light was excluded.

These chambers were often carved out of solid rock, as can be seen in

the Rock Temples of India; and when mountain caves or natural caverns

were not available, artificial ones were used (see chapter x).

The places, like Tara and Memphis, where the great men and kings of the

nations of antiquity were entombed, being the most sacred, were very

often, on that account, also the places dedicated to the most

magnificent temples and to the Mysteries, or among less advanced nations

to the worship of the dead. On every side of sacred Stonehenge,

Salisbury Plain is dotted with the burial mounds of unknown heroes and

chieftains of ancient Britain; while in modern times, even though the

Mysteries are long forgotten, Westminster Abbey, at the centre of the

planet's capital, has, in turn, become the hallowed Hall of the Mighty

Dead for the vast British Empire. In view of all these facts, after a

careful examination of the famous New Grange tumulus itself, and a study

of the references to it in old Irish literature, we are firmly of the

opinion that one cannot be far wrong in describing it as a spirit-temple

in which were celebrated ancient Celtic or pre-Celtic Mysteries at the

time when neophytes, including those of royal blood, were initiated; and

as such it is directly related to a cult of the Tuatha De Danann or

Fairy-Folk, of spirits, and of the dead. Nor are we alone in this

opinion. Mr. Coffey himself, we believe, is inclined to favour it; and

Mr. W. C. Borlase, author of _The Dolmens of Ireland_, who is quite

committed to it, says that it is not necessary, as some do, to consider

New Grange as an ancient abode of mortal men, for 'the spirits of the

dead, the fairies, the _Sidhe_, might have had their _brugh_, or

palace, as well'.[467] And he points out that in the old Irish

manuscripts we have proof that it was supposed to be thus used. This

proof is found in the _Agallamh na Senórach_ or 'Colloquy with the

Ancients' by St. Patrick, from the _Book of Lismore_, a

fifteenth-century manuscript copied from older manuscripts and now

translated by Standish H. O'Grady:--The three sons of the King of

Ireland, by name Ruidhe, Fiacha, and Eochaid, leaving their nurse's and

guardian's house, went to _fert na ndruadh_, i. e. 'grave of the

wizards', north-west of Tara, to ask of their father a country, a

domain; but he refused their request, and then they formed a project to

gain lands and riches by fasting on the _tuatha dé Danann_ at the

_brugh_ upon the Boyne: '"Lands therefore I will not bestow on you, but

win lands for yourself." Thereupon they with the ready rising of one man

rose and took their way to the green of the _brugh_ upon the Boyne

where, none other being in their company, they sat them down. Ruidhe

said: "What is your plan to-night?" His brothers rejoined: "Our project

is to fast on the _tuatha dé Danann_, aiming thus to win from them good

fortune in the shape of a country, of a domain, of lands, and to have

vast riches." Nor had they been long there when they marked a

cheery-looking young man of a pacific demeanour that came towards them.

He salutes the king of Ireland's sons; they answer him after the same

manner. "Young man, whence art thou? whence comest thou?" "Out of yonder

_brugh_ chequered with the many lights hard by you here." "What name

wearest thou?" "I am the Daghda's son Bodhb Derg; and to the _tuatha dé

Danann_ it was revealed that ye would come to fast here to-night, for

lands and for great fortune."' Then with Bodhb Derg, the three sons of

Ireland's king entered into the _brugh_, and the _tuatha dé Danann_ went

into council, and Midhir Yellow-mane son of the Daghda who presided

said: 'Those yonder accommodate now with three wives, since from wives

it is that either fortune or misfortune is derived.' And from their

marriages with the three daughters of Midhir they derived all their

wishes--territories and wealth in the greatest abundance. 'For three

days with their nights they abode in the _sídh_.' 'Angus told them to

carry away out of _fidh omna_, i. e. "Oakwood," three apple-trees: one in

full bloom, another shedding the blossom, and another covered with ripe

fruit. Then they repaired to the _dún_, where they abode for three times

fifty years, and until those kings disappeared; for in virtue of

marriage alliance they returned again to the _tuatha dé Danann_, and

from that time forth have remained there.'[468]

Mr. Borlase, commenting on this passage, suggests its importance in

proving to us that during the Middle Ages there existed a tradition,

thus committed to writing from older manuscripts or from oral sources,

regarding 'the nature of the rites performed in pagan times at those

places, which were held sacred to the heathen mysteries'.[469] The

passage evidently describes a cult of royal or famous ancestral spirits

identified with the god-race of Tuatha De Danann, who, as we know, being

reborn as mortals, ruled Ireland. These ancestral spirits were to be

approached by a pilgrimage made to their abode, the spirit-haunted

tumulus, and a residence in it of three days and three nights during

which period there was to be an unbroken fast. Sacrifices were doubtless

offered to the gods, or spirit-ancestors; and while they were 'fasted

upon', they were expected to appear and grant the pilgrim's prayer and

to speak with him. All this indicates that the existence of invisible

beings was taken for granted, probably through the knowledge gained by

initiation.

The _Echtra Nerai_ or the 'Adventures of Nera' (see this study, p. 287),

contains a description like the one above, of how a mortal named Nera

went into the _Sidhe_-palace at Cruachan; and it is said that he went

not only into the cave (_uamh_) but into the _síd_ of the cave. The term

_uamh_ or cave, according to Mr. Borlase, indicates the whole of the

interior vaulted chamber, while the _síd_ of that vaulted chamber or

_uamh_ is intended to refer to 'the _sanctum sanctorum_, or

_penetralia_ of the spirit-temple, upon entering into which the mortal

came face to face with the royal occupants, and there doubtless he lay

fasting, or offering his sacrifices, at the periods prescribed'.[470]

The word _brugh_ refers simply to the appearance of a tumulus, or

souterrain beneath a fort or rath, and means, therefore, mansion or

dwelling-place.[471] And Mr. Borlase adds:--'I feel but little doubt

that in the inner chamber at New Grange, with its three recesses and its

basin, we have this _síd of the cave_, and the place where the pilgrims

fasted--a situation and a practice precisely similar to those which,

under Christian auspices, were continued at such places as the Leaba

Mologa in Cork, the original Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg, and

elsewhere. The practice of lying in stone troughs was a feature of the

Christian pilgrimages in Ireland. Sometimes such troughs had served the

previous purpose of stone coffins. It is just possible that the shallow

basins in the cells at Lough Crew, New Grange, and Dowth may, like the

stone beds or troughs of the saints,[472] have been occupied by the

pilgrims engaged in their devotions. If so, however, they must have sat

in them in Eastern fashion.'[471]

Again, in the popular tale called _The Pursuit of Diarmuid and

Grainnè_,[473] Aengus, the son of the Dagda, one of the Tuatha De

Danann, is called Aengus-an-Bhrogha, and connected with the

_Brugh-na-Boinne_. In the tale Finn says, 'Let us leave this tulach, for

fear that Aengus-an-Bhrogha and the Tuatha-De-Danann might catch us; and

though we have no part in the slaying of Diarmuid, he would none the

more readily believe us.' Aengus is evidently an invisible being with

great power over mortals. This is clear in what follows: he transports

Diarmuid's body to the _Brugh-na-Boinne_, saying, 'Since I cannot

restore him to life, I will send a soul into him, so that he may talk to

me each day.' Thus, as the presiding deity of the _brugh_, Aengus the

Tuatha De Danann could reanimate dead bodies 'and cause them to speak

to devotees, we may suppose oracularly.'[474] In the _Bruighion

Chaorthainn_ or 'Fort of the Rowan Tree', a Fenian tale, a poet put Finn

under taboo to understand these verses:--

I saw a house in the country

Out of which no hostages are given to a king,

Fire burns it not, harrying spoils it not.

And Finn made reply:--'I understand that verse, for that is the Brugh of

the Boyne that you have seen (perhaps, as we suggest, during an

initiation), namely, the house of Aengus Og of the Brugh, and it cannot

be burned or harried as long as Aengus (a god) shall live.' As Mr.

Borlase observes, to say that 'no hostages are given to a king' out of

the _Brugh_ is probably another way of saying that the dead pay no

taxes, or that being a holy place, the _Brugh_ was exempt.[475] This

last evidence is from oral tradition, and rather late in being placed on

record; but it is not on that account less trustworthy, and may be much

more so than the older manuscripts. Until quite modern times the

folk-lore of the Boyne country still echoed similar traditions about

unknown mystic rites, following what O'Donovan has recorded; for he has

said that Aenghus-an-Bhrogha was considered the presiding fairy of the

Boyne till quite within recent times, and that his name was still

familiar to the old inhabitants of Meath who were then fast forgetting

their traditions with the Irish language.[476] And this tradition brings

us to consider what was apparently an Aengus Cult among the ancient

Celtic peoples.

THE AENGUS CULT

Euhemeristic tradition came to represent the Great God Dagda and his

sons as buried in a tumulus, probably New Grange, and then called it, as

I found it called to-day, a fairy mound, a name given also to Gavrinis,

its Breton parallel. The older and clearer tradition relates how Aengus

gained possession of the _Brugh_ of the Boyne, and says nothing about

it as a cemetery, but rather describes it as 'an admirable place, more

accurately speaking, as an admirable land, a term which betrays the

usual identification of the fairy mound with the nether world to which

it formed the entrance'.[477] The myth placing Dagda at the head of the

departed makes him 'a Goidelic Cronus ruling over an Elysium with which

a sepulchral mound was associated'.[477] The displacement of Dagda by

his son makes 'Mac Oc (Aengus), who should have been the youthful Zeus

of the Goidelic world, rejoicing in the translucent expanse of the

heavens as his crystal bower', a king of the dead.[477]

In Dun Aengus, the strange cyclopean circular structure, and hence most

likely sun-temple, on Aranmore, we have another example of the

localization of the Aengus myth. This fact leads us to believe, after

due archaeological examination, that amid the stronghold of Dun Aengus,

with its tiers of amphitheatre-like seats and the native rock at its

centre, apparently squared to form a platform or stage, were anciently

celebrated pagan mysteries comparable to those of the Greeks and less

cultured peoples, and initiations into an Aengus Cult such as seems to

have once flourished at New Grange. At Dun Aengus, however, the mystic

assemblies and rites, conducted in such a sun-temple, so secure and so

strongly fortified against intrusion, no doubt represented a somewhat

different mystical school, and probably one very much older than at New

Grange. In the same manner, each of the other circular but less

important cyclopean structures on Aranmore and elsewhere in west Ireland

may have been structures for closely related sun-cults. To our mind, and

we have carefully and at leisure examined most of these cyclopean

structures on Aranmore, it seems altogether fanciful to consider them as

having been _originally_ and _primarily_ intended as places of

refuge--_dúns_ or forts. Yet, because the ancient Celts never separated

civil and religious functions, such probable sun-temples could have been

as frequently used for non-religious tribal assemblies as for

initiation ceremonies; and nothing makes it impossible for them to have

been in times of need also places for refuge against enemies. We are led

to this view with respect to Dun Aengus in particular, because the

Aengus of Aranmore is known as Aengus, son of Umór, and is associated

with the mystic people called the Fir Bolg; and, yet, as Sir John

Rhys thinks, this Aengus, son of Umór, and Aengus, son of Dagda, are

two aspects of a single god, a Celtic Zeus.[478] O'Curry's statements

about Dun Aengus seem to confirm all this; and there seems to have been

a tale, now lost, about the 'Destruction of _Dún Oengusa_' (in modern

Irish _Dún Aonghuis_), the Fortress of Aengus.[478]

This sun-cult, represented in Ireland by the Aengus Cult, can be traced

further: Sir John Rhys regards Stonehenge--a sun-temple also circular

like the Irish _dúns_ and Breton cromlechs--as a temple to the Celtic

Zeus, in Irish mythology typified by Aengus, and in Welsh by

Merlin:--'What sort of a temple could have been more appropriate for the

primary god of light and of the luminous heavens than a spacious,

open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge?'[479] In Welsh

myth, Math ab Mathonwy, called also 'Math the Ancient', was the greatest

magician of ancient Wales, and his relation as teacher to Gwydion ab

Dôn, the great Welsh Culture Hero, leads Sir John Rhys to consider

him the Brythonic Zeus, though Merlin shares with him in this

distinction;[480] and since the Gaelic counterpart of Math is Aengus, a

close study of Math might finally show a cult in his honour in Wales as

we have found in Ireland an Aengus Cult.[481] We may, therefore, with

more or less exactness, equate the Aengus Cult as we see it in Irish

myth connected chiefly with Dun Aengus and New Grange, with the unknown

cult practised at Stonehenge, and this in turn with other Brythonic or

pre-Brythonic sun-cults and initiations practised at Carnac, the great

Celtic Jerusalem in Brittany, and at Gavrinis. All this will be more

clearly seen after we have set forth what seems a definite and most

striking parallel to New Grange, both as a monument erected by man and,

as we maintain, as a place for religious mysteries--the greatest

structure ever raised by human effort, the Great Pyramid.

NEW GRANGE AND THE GREAT PYRAMID COMPARED

Caliph Al Mamoun in A. D. 820, by a forced passage, was the first in

modern times to enter the Great Pyramid, and he found nowhere a mummy or

any indications that the structure had ever been used as a tomb for the

dead. The King's Chamber, so named by us moderns, proved to be a keen

disappointment for its first violator, for in it there was neither gold

nor silver nor anything at all worth carrying away. The magnificent

chamber contained nothing save an empty stone chest without a lid.

Archaeologists in Egypt and archaeologists in Ireland face the same

unsolved problem, namely, the purpose of the empty stone chest without

inscriptions and quite unlike a mummy tomb, and of the stone basin in

New Grange.[482] Certain Egyptologists have supposed that some royal

personage must have been buried in the curious granite coffer, though

there can be only their supposition to support them, for they have

absolutely no proof that such is true, while there is strong

circumstantial evidence to show that such is not true. Sir Gardner

Wilkinson in his well-known publications has already suggested that the

stone chest as well as the Great Pyramid itself were never intended to

hold a corpse; and it is generally admitted by Egyptologists that no

sarcophagus intended for a mummy has ever been found so high up in the

body of a pyramid as this empty stone chest, except in the Second

Pyramid. Incontestable evidence in support of the highly probable theory

that the Great Pyramid was not intended for an actual tomb can be drawn

from two important facts:--(1) 'the coffer has certain remarkable cubic

proportions which show a care and design beyond what could be expected

in any burial-coffer'--according to the high authority of Dr. Flinders

Petrie; (2) the chamber containing the coffer and the upper passage-ways

have ventilating channels not known in any other Pyramid, so that

apparently there must have been need of frequent entrance into the

chamber by living men, as would be the case if used, as we hold, for

initiation ceremonies.[483]

It is well known that very many of the megalithic monuments of the New

Grange type scattered over Europe, especially from the Carnac centre of

Brittany to the Tara-Boyne centre of Ireland, have one thing in common,

an astronomical arrangement like the Great Pyramid, and an entrance

facing one of the points of the solstices, usually either the winter

solstice, which is common, or the summer solstice.[484] The puzzle has

always been to discover the exact arrangement of the Great Pyramid by

locating its main entrance. A Californian, Mr. Louis P. McCarty, in his

recent (1907) work entitled _The Great Pyramid Jeezeh_, suggests with

the most logical and reasonable arguments that the builders of the

Pyramid have placed its main entrance in an undiscovered passage-way

beneath the Great Sphinx, now half-buried in the shifting desert sands.

If it can be shown that the Sphinx is the real portal, and many things

tend to indicate that it is, the Great Pyramid is built on the same

plan as New Grange, that is to say, it opens to the south-east, and like

New Grange contains a narrow passage-way leading to a central chamber.

South-easterly from the centre of the Pyramid lies the Sphinx, 5,380

feet away, a distance equal to 'just five times the distance of the

"diagonal socket length" of the Great Pyramid from the centre of the

Subterranean Chamber, under the Pyramid, to the supposed entrance under

the Sphinx'[485]--a distance quite in keeping with the mighty

proportions of the wonderful structure. And what is important, several

eminent archaeologists have worked out the same conclusion, and have

been seeking to connect the two monuments by making excavations in the

Queen's Chamber, where it is supposed there exists a tunnel to the

Sphinx. In all this we should bear in mind that the present entrance to

the Pyramid is the forced one made by the treasure-seeking Caliph.

This very probable astronomical parallelism between the great Egyptian

monument and the Irish one would establish their common religious, or,

in a mystic sense, their funereal significance. In the preceding chapter

we have set forth what symbolical relation the sun, its rising and

setting, and its death at the winter equinox, were anciently supposed to

hold to the doctrines of human death and re-birth. Jubainville,

regarding the sun among the Celts in its symbolical relation to death,

wrote, 'In Celtic belief, the dead go to live beyond the Ocean, to the

south-west, there where the sun sets during the greater part of the

year.'[486] This, too, as M. Maspero shows, was an Egyptian belief;[487]

while, as equally among the Celts, the east, especially the south-east,

where, after the winter solstice, the sun seems to be re-born or to rise

out of the underworld of Hades into which it goes when it dies, is

symbolical of the reverse--Life, Resurrection, and Re-birth. In this

last Celtic-Egyptian belief, we maintain, may be found the reason why

the chief megalithic monuments (dolmens, tumuli, and alignements), in

Celtic countries and elsewhere, have their directions east and west, and

why those like New Grange and Gavrinis open to the sunrise.

Greek temples also opened to the sunrise, and on the divine image within

fell the first rays of the beautiful god Apollo.[488] In the great

Peruvian sun-temple at Cuzco, a splendid disk of pure gold faced the

east, and, reflecting the first rays of the rising sun, illuminated the

whole sanctuary.[489] The cave-temple of the Florida Red Men opened

eastward, and within its entrance on festival days stood the priest at

dawn watching for the first ray of the sun, as a sign to begin the chant

and offering.[490] The East Indian performs the ablution at dawn in the

sacred Ganges, and stands facing the east meditating, as Brahma appears

in all the wondrous glory of a tropical sunrise.[491] And in the same

Aryan land there is an opposite worship: the dreaded Thugs, worshippers

of devils and of Kali the death-goddess, in their most diabolical rites

face the west and the sunset, symbols of death.[492] How Christianity

was shaped by paganism is nowhere clearer than in the orientation of

great cathedral churches (almost without exception in England), for all

of the more famous ones have their altars eastward; and Roman Catholics

in prayer in their church services, and Anglicans in repeating the

Creed, turn to the east, as the Hindu does. St. Augustine says:--'When

we stand at prayer, we turn to the east, where the heaven arises, not as

though God were only there, and had forsaken all other parts of the

world, but to admonish our mind to turn to a more excellent nature, that

is, to the Lord.'[493] Though the Jews came to be utterly opposed to

sun-worship in their later history, they were sun-worshippers at first,

as their temples opening eastward testify. This was the vision of

Ezekiel:--'And, behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between

the porch and the Altar, were about five and twenty men, with their

backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east, and

they worshipped the sun toward the east.'[494]

All this illustrates the once world-wide religion of our race; and shows

that sun-cults and sun-symbols are derived from a universal doctrine

regarding the two states of existence--the one in Hades or the invisible

lower world where the Sun-god goes at night, and the other in what we

call the visible realm which the Sun-god visits daily.[495] The relation

between life and death--symbolically figured in this fundamental

conception forming the background of every sun-cult--is the foundation

of all ancient mysteries. Thus we should expect the correspondences

which we believe do exist between New Grange and the Great Pyramid. Both

alike, in our opinion, were the greatest places in the respective

countries for the celebration of the Mysteries. High up in the body of

the Great Pyramid, after he had performed the long underground journey,

typical of the journey of Osiris or the Sun to the Otherworld or the

World of the Dead, we may suppose (knowing what we do of the Ancient

Mysteries and their shadows in modern Masonic initiations[496]) that the

royal or priestly neophyte laid himself in that strange stone coffin

without a lid, for a certain period of time--probably for three days and

three nights. Then, the initiation being complete, he arose from the

mystic death to a real resurrection, a true child of Osiris. In New

Grange we may suppose that the royal or priestly neophyte, while he

'fasted on the Tuatha De Danann for three days with their nights', sat

in that strange stone basin after the manner of the Orient.[497]

The Great Pyramid seems to be the most ancient of the Egyptian pyramids,

and undoubtedly was the model for all the smaller ones, which 'always

betray profound ignorance of their noble model's chiefest internal

features, as well as of all its niceties of angle and cosmic harmonies

of linear measurement'.[498] Dr. Flinders Petrie says:--'The Great

Pyramid at Gizeh (of Khufu, fourth dynasty) unquestionably takes the

lead, in accuracy and in beauty of work, as well as in size. Not only is

the fine work of it in the pavement, casing, King's and Queen's chambers

quite unexcelled; but the general character of the core masonry is

better than that of any other pyramid in its solidity and

regularity.'[499] And of the stone coffers he says:--'Taking most of its

dimensions at their maximum, they agree closely with the same theory as

that which is applicable to the chambers; for when squared they are all

even multiples of a square fifth of a cubit.... There is no other theory

applicable to every lineal dimension of the coffer; but having found the

[Greek: pi] proportion in the form of the Pyramid, and in the King's

Chamber, there is some ground for supposing that it was intended also in

the coffer, on just one-fifth the scale of the chamber.'[499] And here

is apparent the important fact we wish to emphasize; the Great Pyramid

does not seem to have been intended primarily, if at all, for the

entombment of dead bodies or mummies while 'the numerous quasi-copies'

were 'for sepulchral purposes'[500] without doubt. There appears to have

been at first a clear understanding of the esoteric usage of the Great

Pyramid as a place for the mystic burial of Initiates, and then in the

course of national decadence the exoteric interpretation of this usage,

the interpretation now popular with Egyptologists, led to the erection

of smaller pyramids for purposes of actual burial. And may we not see in

such pyramid-like tumuli as those of Mont St. Michel, Gavrinis, and New

Grange copies of these smaller funeral pyramids;[501] or, if not direct

copies, at least the result of a similar religious decadence from the

unknown centuries since the Great Pyramid was erected by the Divine

Kings of prehistoric Egypt as a silent witness for all ages that Great

Men, Initiates, have understood Universal Law, and have solved the

greatest of all human problems, the problem of Life and Death?

GAVRINIS AND NEW GRANGE COMPARED

In conclusion, and in support of the arguments already advanced, I offer

a few observations of my own, made at Gavrinis itself, the most famous

tumulus in Continental Europe. After a very careful examination of the

interior and exterior of the tumulus, an examination extending over more

than twelve hours, I am convinced that its curious rock-carvings and

those in New Grange are by the same race of people, whoever that race

may have been; and that there is sufficient evidence in its construction

to show that, like New Grange, it was quite as religious as funereal in

its nature and use. The facts which bear out this view are the

following. First, there are three strange cavities cut into the body of

the stone on the south side of the inner chamber, communicating

interiorly with one another, and large enough to admit human hands; if

used as places in which to offer sacrifice to the dead or fairies, small

objects could have been placed in them. In the oldest extant authentic

records of them which I have found it is said of their probable

purpose:--'Some people look on them as a double noose intended to

strangle the [animal] victims which the priest sacrificed; for others

they are two rings behind which the hands of the betrothed met each

other to be married.'[502] Their purpose is certainly difficult enough

to decipher, perhaps is undecipherable; but one thing about them is

certain, namely, that a close examination round their exterior edges and

within them also shows the rock-surface worn smooth as though by ages

of handling and touching; and it is incontestable that this wearing of

the rock-surface by human hands could not have taken place had the inner

chamber been sealed up and used solely as a tomb. We suggest here, as

Sir James Fergusson in his _Rude Stone Monuments_ (p. 366) has

suggested, that the inner chamber of Gavrinis was probably a place for

the celebration of religious rites: he advances the opinion that the

strange cavities were used to contain holy oil or holy water. There is

this second curious fact connected with the tumulus of Gavrinis. On

entering it--and it opens like New Grange to the sunrise, being oriented

43° 60" to the south-east[503]--one finds placed across the floor of the

narrow passage-way as slightly inclined steps rising to the inner

chamber three or four stones. Two of them, now very prominent, form

veritable stumbling-blocks, and the one at the threshold of the inner

chamber is carved quite like the lintel stone above the entrance at New

Grange.[504] From what we know of ancient mystic cults, there was a

darkened chamber approached by a narrow passage-way so low that the

neophyte must stoop in traversing it to show symbolically his humility;

and as symbolic of his progress to the Chamber of Death, the _Sanctum

Sanctorum_ of the spirit-temple, there were steps, often purposely

placed as stumbling-blocks. The Great Pyramid, evidently, conforms to

this mystical plan; and strikes one, therefore, all the more forcibly as

the most remarkable structure for initiatory ceremonies ever constructed

on our planet. Thus, Dr. Flinders Petrie says:--'But we are met then by

an extraordinary idea, that all access to the King's chamber after its

completion must have been by climbing over the plug-blocks, as they lay

in the gallery, or by walking up the ramps on either side of them. Yet,

as the blocks cannot physically have been lying in any other place

before they were let down we are shut up to this view.'[505] And as

Egyptian tombs represented the mansions of the dead,[506] just so Celtic

or pre-Celtic spirit-temples and place for initiations were always

connected with the Underworld of the Dead; and save for such symbolical

arrangements as we see in Gavrinis, and New Grange also, they were

undistinguishable from tombs used for interments only.

It seems to us most reasonable to suppose that if, as the old Irish

manuscripts show, there were spirit-temples or places for pagan funeral

rites, or rites of initiation, in Ireland, constructed like other tumuli

which were used only as tombs for the dead (because the ancient cult was

one of ancestor worship and worship of gods like the Tuatha De Danann,

and spirits), then there must have been others in Brittany also, where

we find the same system of rock-inscriptions. Further, in view of all

the definite provable relations between Gavrinis and New Grange, we are

strongly inclined to regard them both as having the same origin and

purpose, Gavrinis being for Armorica what New Grange was for Ireland,

the royal or principal spirit-temple.

SECTION III

THE CULT OF GODS, SPIRITS, FAIRIES, AND THE DEAD

CHAPTER IX

THE TESTIMONY OF PAGANISM

'The cult of forests, of fountains, and of stones is to be

explained by that primitive naturalism which all the Church

Councils held in Brittany united to proscribe.'--ERNEST RENAN.

Edicts against pagan cults--Cult of Sacred Waters and its

absorption by Christianity--Celtic Water Divinities--Druidic

influence on Fairy-Faith--Cult of Sacred Trees--Cult of Fairies,

Spirits, and the Dead--Feasts of the Dead--Conclusion.

The evidence of paganism in support of our Psychological Theory

concerning the Fairy-Faith is so vast that we cannot do more than point

to portions of it--especially such portions as are most Celtic in their

nature. Perhaps most of us will think first of all about the ancient

cults rendered to fountains, rivers, lakes, trees, and, as we have seen

(pp. 399 ff.), to stones. There can be no reasonable doubt that these

cults were very flourishing when Christianity came to Europe, for kings,

popes, and church councils issued edict after edict condemning

them.[507] The second Council of Arles, held about 452, issued the

following canon:--'If in the territory of a bishop, infidels light

torches, or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects to

abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of sacrilege. If the

director of the act itself, on being admonished, refuses to correct it,

he is to be excluded from communion.'[507] The Council of Tours, in 567,

thus expressed itself:--'We implore the pastors to expel from the Church

all those whom they may see performing before certain stones things

which have no relation with the ceremonies of the Church, and also

those who observe the customs of the Gentiles.'[508] King Canute in

England and Charlemagne in Europe conducted a most vigorous campaign

against all these pagan worships. This is Charlemagne's edict:--'With

respect to trees, stones, and fountains, where certain foolish people

light torches or practise other superstitions, we earnestly ordain that

that most evil custom detestable to God, wherever it be found, should be

removed and destroyed.'[509]

The result of these edicts was a curious one. It was too much to expect

the eradication of the old cults after their age-long existence, and so

one by one they were absorbed by the new religion. In a sacred tree or

grove, over a holy well or fountain, on the shore of a lake or river,

there was placed an image of the Virgin or of some saint, and

unconsciously the transformation was made, as the simple-hearted

country-folk beheld in the brilliant images new and more glorious

dwelling-places for the spirits they and their fathers had so long

venerated.

THE CULT OF SACRED WATERS

In Brittany, perhaps better than in other Celtic countries to-day, one

can readily discern this evolution from paganism to Christianity. Thus,

for example, in the Morbihan there is the fountain of St. Anne d'Auray,

round which centres Brittany's most important Pardon; a fountain near

Vannes is dedicated to St. Peter; at Carnac there is the far-famed

fountain of St. Cornely with its niche containing an image of Carnac's

patron saint, and not far from it, on the roadside leading to Carnac

Plage, an enclosed well dedicated to the Holy Virgin; and, less than a

mile away, the beautiful fountain of St. Columba. Near Ploermel, Canton

of Ploermel (Morbihan), there is the fountain of Recourrance or St.

Laurent, in which sailors perform divinations to know the future state

of the weather by casting on its waters a morsel of bread. If the bread

floats, it is a sure sign of fair weather, but if it sinks, of weather

so bad that no one should take risks by going out in the fishing-boats.

In some wells, pins are dropped by lovers. If the pins float, the

water-spirits show favourable auspices, but if the pins sink, the maiden

is unhappy, and will hesitate in accepting the proposal of marriage.

Long after their conversion, the inhabitants of Concoret (Arrondissement

de Ploermel, Morbihan) paid divine honours to the fountain of Baranton

in the druidical forest of Brocéliande, so famous in the Breton legends

of Arthur and Merlin:--'For a long time the inhabitants of Concoret ...

in place of addressing themselves to God or to his Saints in their

maladies, sought the remedy in the fountain of Baranton, either by

praying to it, after the manner of the Gauls, or by drinking of its

waters.'[510] In the month of August 1835, when there was an unusual

drought in the land, all the inhabitants of Concoret formed in a great

procession with banners and crucifix at their head, and with chants and

ringing of church bells marched to this same fountain of Baranton and

prayed for rain.[511] This curious bit of history was also reported to

me in July 1909 by a peasant who lives near the fountain, and who heard

it from his parents; and he added that the foot of the crucifix was

planted in the water to aid the rain-making. We have here an interesting

combination of paganism and Christianity.

Gregory of Tours says that the country-folk of Gévaudan rendered divine

honours to a certain lake, and as offerings cast on its waters linen,

wool, cheese, bees'-wax, bread, and other things;[512] and Mahé adds

that gold was sometimes offered,[512] quite after the manner of the

ancient Peruvians, who cast gold and silver of great value into the

waters of sacred Lake Titicaca, high up in the Andes. To absorb into

Christianity the worship paid to the lake near Gévaudan, the bishop

ordered a church to be built on its shore, and to the people he

said:--'My children, there is nothing divine in this lake: defile not

your souls by these vain ceremonies; but recognize rather the true

God.'[513] The offerings to the lake-spirits then ceased, and were made

instead on the altar of the church. As Canon Mahé so consistently sets

forth, other similar means were used to absorb the pagan cults of sacred

waters:--'Other pastors employed a similar device to absorb the cult of

fountains into Christianity; they consecrated them to God under the

invocation of certain saints; giving the saints' names to them and

placing in them the saints' images, so that the weak and simple-hearted

Christians who might come to them, struck by these names and by these

images, should grow accustomed to addressing their prayers to God and to

his saints, in place of honouring the fountains themselves, as they had

been accustomed to do. This is the reason why there are seen in the

stonework of so many fountains, niches and little statues of saints who

have given their names to these springs.'[514]

Procopius reports that the Franks, even after having accepted

Christianity, remained attached to their ancient cults, sacrificing to

the River Po women and children of the Goths, and casting the bodies

into its waters to the spirits of the waters.[514] Well-worship in the

Isle of Man, not yet quite extinct, was no doubt once very general. As

A. W. Moore has shown, the sacred wells in the Isle of Man were visited

and offerings made to them to secure immunity from witches and fairies,

to cure maladies, to raise a wind, and for various kinds of

divination.[515] And no doubt the offerings of rags on bushes over

sacred wells, and the casting of pins, coins, buttons, pebbles, and

other small objects into their waters, a common practice yet in Ireland

and Wales, as in non-Celtic countries, are to be referred to as

survivals of a time when regular sacrifices were offered in divination,

or in seeking cures from maladies, and equally from obsessing demons who

were thought to cause the maladies. In the prologue to Chrétien's _Conte

du Graal_ there is an account, seemingly very ancient, of how dishonour

to the divinities of wells and springs brought destruction on the rich

land of Logres. The damsels who abode in these watery places fed

travellers with nourishing food until King Amangons wronged one of them

by carrying off her golden cup. His men followed his evil example, so

that the springs dried up, the grass withered, and the land became

waste.[516]

According to Mr. Borlase, 'it was by passing under the waters of a well

that the _Sidh_, that is, the abode of the spirits called _Sidhe_, in

the tumulus or natural hill, as the case might be, was reached.'[517]

And it is evident from this that the well-spirits were even identified

in Ireland with the Tuatha De Danann or Fairy-Folk. I am reminded of a

walk I was privileged to take with Mr. William B. Yeats on Lady

Gregory's estate at Coole Park, near Gort (County Galway); for Mr. Yeats

led me to the haunts of the water-spirits of the region, along a strange

river which flows underground for some distance and then comes out to

the light again in its weird course, and to a dark, deep pool hidden in

the forest. According to tradition, the river is the abode of

water-fairies; and in the shaded forest-pool, whose depth is very great,

live a spirit-race like the Greek nymphs. More than one mortal while

looking into this pool has felt a sudden and powerful impulse to plunge

in, for the fairies were then casting their magic spell over him that

they might take him to live in their under-water palace for ever.

One of the most beautiful passages in _The Tripartite Life of Patrick_

describes the holy man at the holy well called Cliabach:--'Thereafter

Patrick went at sunrise to the well, namely Cliabach on the sides of

Cruachan. The clerics sat down by the well. Two daughters of Loegaire

son of Niall went early to the well to wash their hands, as was a custom

of theirs, namely, Ethne the Fair, and Fedelm the Ruddy. The maidens

found beside the well the assembly of the clerics in white garments,

with their books before them. And they wondered at the shape of the

clerics, and thought that they were men of the elves or apparitions.

They asked tidings of Patrick: "Whence are ye, and whence have ye come?

Are ye of the elves or of the gods?" And Patrick said to them: "It were

better for you to believe in God than to inquire about our race." Said

the girl who was elder: "Who is your god? and where is he? Is he in

heaven, or in earth, or under earth, or on earth? Is he in seas or in

streams, or in mountains or in glens? Hath he sons and daughters? Is

there gold and silver, is there abundance of every good thing in his

kingdom? Tell us about him, how he is seen, how he is loved, how he is

found? if he is in youth, or if he is in age? if he is ever-living; if

he is beautiful? if many have fostered his son? if his daughters are

dear and beautiful to the men of the world?"'[518]

And in another place it is recorded that 'Patrick went to the well of

Findmag. Slán is its name. They told Patrick that the heathen honoured

the well as if it were a god.'[519] And of the same well it is said,

'that the magi, i. e. wizards or Druids, used to reverence the well Slán

and "offer gifts to it as if it were a god."'[519] As Whitley Stokes

pointed out, this is the only passage connecting the Druids with

well-worship; and it is very important, because it establishes the

relation between the Druids as magicians and their control of spirits

like fairies.[519] As shown here, and as seems evident in Columba's

relation with Druids and exorcism in Adamnan's _Life of St.

Columba_,[520] the early Celtic peoples undoubtedly drew many of their

fairy-traditions from a memory of druidic rites of divination. Perhaps

the most beautiful description of a holy well and a description

illustrative of such divination is that of Ireland's most mystical well,

Connla's Well:--'Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Ler, out

of Tír Tairngire ("Land of Promise, Fairyland"), went to Connla's Well

which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels

and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of

poetry, and in the same hour their fruit, and their blossom and their

foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower,

which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the [sacred]

salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their

purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there

again.'[521]

To these cults of sacred waters numerous non-Celtic parallels could

easily be offered, but they seem unnecessary with Celtic evidence so

clear. And this evidence which is already set forth shows that the

origin of worship paid to sacred wells, fountains, lakes, or rivers, is

to be found in the religious practices of the Celts before they became

christianized. They believed that certain orders of spirits, often

called fairies, and to be identified with them, inhabited, or as was the

case with Sinend, who came from the Otherworld, visited these places,

and must be appeased or approached through sacrifice by mortals seeking

their favours. Canon Mahé puts the matter thus:--'The Celts recognized a

supreme God, the principle of all things; but they rendered religious

worship to the genii or secondary deities who, according to them, united

themselves to different objects in nature and made them divine by such

union. Among the objects were rivers, the sea, lakes and

fountains.'[522]

THE CULT OF SACRED TREES

The things said of sacred waters can also be said of sacred trees among

the Celts; and, in the case of sacred trees, more may be added about the

Druids and their relation to the Fairy-Faith, for it is well known that

the Druids held the oak and its mistletoe in great religious veneration,

and it is generally thought that most of the famous Druid schools were

in the midst of sacred oak-groves or forests. Pliny has recorded that

'the Druids, for so they call their magicians, have nothing which they

hold more sacred than the mistletoe[523] and the tree on which it

grows, provided only it be an oak (_robur_). But apart from that, they

select groves of oak, and they perform no sacred rite without leaves

from that tree, so that the Druids may be regarded as even deriving from

it their name interpreted as Greek'[524] (a disputed point among modern

philologists). Likewise of the Druids, Maximus Tyrius states that the

image of their chief god, considered by him to correspond to Zeus, was a

lofty oak tree;[525] and Strabo says that the principal place of

assembly for the Galatians, a Celtic people of Asia Minor, was the

Sacred Oak-grove.[526]

Just as the cult of fountains was absorbed by Christianity, so was the

cult of trees. Concerning this, Canon Mahé writes:--'One sees sometimes,

in the country and in gardens, trees wherein, by trimming and bending

together the branches, have been formed niches of verdure, in which have

been placed crosses or images of certain saints. This usage is not

confined to the Morbihan. Our Lady of the Oak, in Anjou, and Our Lady of

the Oak, near Orthe, in Maine, are places famous for pilgrimage. In this

last province, says a historian, "One sees at various cross-roads the

most beautiful rustic oaks decorated with figures of saints. There are

seen there, in five or six villages, chapels of oaks, with whole trunks

of that tree enshrined in the wall, beside the altar. Such among others

is that famous chapel of Our Lady of the Oak, near the forge of Orthe,

whose celebrity attracts daily, from five to six leagues about, a very

great gathering of people."'[527]

Saint Martin, according to Canon Mahé, tried to destroy a sacred

pine-tree in the diocese of Tours by telling the people there was

nothing divine in it. The people agreed to let it be cut down on

condition that the saint should receive its great trunk on his head as

it fell; and the tree was not cut down.[527] Saint Germain caused a

great scandal at Auxerre by hanging from the limbs of a sacred tree the

heads of wild animals which he had killed while hunting.[527] Saint

Gregory the Great wrote to Brunehaut exhorting him to abolish among his

subjects the offering of animals' heads to certain trees.[528]

In Ireland fairy trees are common yet; though throughout Celtdom sacred

trees, naturally of short duration, are almost forgotten. In Brittany,

the Forest of Brocéliande still enjoys something of the old veneration,

but more out of sentiment than by actual worship. A curious survival of

an ancient Celtic tree-cult exists in Carmarthen, Wales, where there is

still carefully preserved and held upright in a firm casing of cement

the decaying trunk of an old oak-tree called Merlin's Oak; and local

prophecy declares on Merlin's authority that when the tree falls

Carmarthen will fall with it. Perhaps through an unconscious desire on

the part of some patriotic citizens of averting the calamity by inducing

the tree-spirit to transfer its abode, or else by otherwise hoodwinking

the tree-spirit into forgetting that Merlin's Oak is dead, a vigorous

and now flourishing young oak has been planted so directly beside it

that its foliage embraces it. And in many parts of modern England, the

Jack-in-the-Green, a man entirely hidden in a covering of green foliage

who dances through the streets on May Day, may be another example of a

very ancient tree (or else agricultural) cult of Celtic origin.

THE CULT OF FAIRIES, SPIRITS, AND THE DEAD

There was also, as we already know, more or less of direct worship

offered to fairies like the Tuatha De Danann; and sacrifice was made to

them even as now, when the Irish or Scotch peasant pours a libation of

milk to the 'good people' or to the fairy queen who presides over the

flocks. In _Fiacc's Hymn_[529] it is said, 'On Ireland's folk lay

darkness: the tribes worshipped elves: They believed not the true

godhead of the true Trinity.' And there is a reliable legend concerning

Columbkille which shows that this old cult of elves was not forgotten

among the early Irish Christians, though they changed the original good

reputation of these invisible beings to one of evil. It is said that

Columbkille's first attempts to erect a church or monastery on Iona were

rendered vain by the influence of some evil spirit or else of demons;

for as fast as a wall was raised it fell down. Then it was revealed to

the saint that the walls could not stand until a human victim should be

buried alive under the foundations. And the lot fell on Oran,

Columbkille's companion, who accordingly became a sacrifice to appease

the evil spirit, fairies, or demons of the place where the building was

to be raised.[530]

As an illustration of what the ancient practice of such sacrifice to

place-spirits, or to gods, must have been like in Wales, we offer the

following curious legend concerning the conception of Myrddin (Merlin),

as told by our witness from Pontrhydfendigaid, Mr. John Jones (see p.

147):--'When building the Castle of Gwrtheyrn, near Carmarthen, as much

as was built by day fell down at night. So a council of the _Dynion

Hysbys_ or "Wise Men" was called, and they decided that the blood of a

fatherless boy had to be used in mixing the mortar if the wall was to

stand. Search was thereupon made for a fatherless boy (cf. p. 351), and

throughout all the kingdom no such boy could be found. But one day two

boys were quarrelling, and one of them in defying the other wanted to

know what a fatherless boy like him had to say to him. An officer of the

king, overhearing the quarrel, seized the boy thus tauntingly addressed

as the one so long looked for. The circumstances were made known to the

king, and the boy was taken to him. "Who is your father?" asked the

king. "My mother never told me," the boy replied. Then the boy's mother

was sent for, and the king asked her who the father of the boy was, and

she replied: "I do not know; for I have never known a man. Yet, one

night, it seemed to me that a man noble and majestic in appearance slept

with me, and I awoke to find that I had been in a dream. But when I grew

pregnant afterwards, and this wonderful boy whom you now see was

delivered, I considered that a divine being or an angel had visited me

in that dream, and therefore I called his child Myrddin the Magician,

for such I believe my son to be." When the mother had thus spoken, the

king announced to the court and wise men, "Here is the fatherless boy.

Take his blood and use it in mixing the mortar. The walling will not

hold without it." At this, Myrddin taunted the king and wise men, and

said they were no better than a pack of idiots. "The reason the walling

falls down," Myrddin went on to say, "is because you have tried to raise

it on a rock which covers two large sea-serpents. Whenever the wall is

raised over them its weight presses on their backs and makes them

uneasy. Then during the night they upheave their backs to relieve

themselves of the pressure, and thus shake the walling to a fall."' The

story ends here, but presumably Merlin's statements were found to be

true; and Merlin was not sacrificed, for, as we know, he became the

great magician of Arthur's court.

There are two hills in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire where travellers

had to propitiate the banshee by placing barley-meal cakes near a well

on each hill; and if the traveller neglected the offering, death or some

dire calamity was sure to follow.[531] It is quite certain that the

banshee is almost always thought of as the spirit of a dead ancestor

presiding over a family, though here it appears more like the tutelary

deity of the hills. But sacrifice being thus made, according to the

folk-belief, to a banshee, shows, like so many other examples where

there is a confusion between divinities or fairies and the souls of the

dead, that ancestral worship must be held to play a very important part

in the complex Fairy-Faith as a whole. A few non-Celtic parallels

determine this at once. Thus, exactly as to fairies here, milk is

offered to the souls of saints in the Panjab, India, as a means of

propitiating them.[532] M. A. Lefèvre shows that the Roman Lares, so

frequently compared to house-haunting fairies, are in reality quite like

the Gaelic banshee; that originally they were nothing more than the

unattached souls of the dead, akin to Manes; that time and custom made

distinctions between them; that in the common language Lares and Manes

had synonymous dwellings; and that, finally, the idea of death was

little by little divorced from the worship of the Lares, so that they

became guardians of the family and protectors of life.[533] On all the

tombs of their dead the Romans inscribed these names: _Manes_, _inferi_,

_silentes_,[534] the last of which, meaning _the silent ones_, is

equivalent to the term 'People of Peace' given to the fairy-folk of

Scotland.[535] Nor were the Roman Lares always thought of as inhabiting

dwellings. Many were supposed to live in the fields, in the streets of

cities, at cross-roads, quite like certain orders of fairies and demons;

and in each place these ancestral spirits had their chapels and received

offerings of fruit, flowers, and of foliage. If neglected they became

spiteful, and were then known as Lemures.

All these examples tend to show what the reviewer of Curtin's _Tales of

the Fairies and of the Ghost World_ states, that 'The attributes of a

ghost--that is to say, the spirit of a dead man--are indistinguishable

from those of a fairy. And it is well known how world-wide is the

worship of the dead and the offering of food to them, among uncivilized

tribes like those of Africa, Australia, and America, as well as among

such great nations as China, Corea, India, and Japan; and in ancient

times it was universal among the masses of the people in Egypt, Greece,

and Rome.

CELTIC AND NON-CELTIC FEASTS OF THE DEAD

_Samain_, as we already know, was the great Celtic feast of the dead

when offerings or sacrifice of various kinds were made to ancestral

spirits, and to the Tuatha De Danann and the spirit-hosts under their

control; and _Beltene_, or the first of May, was another day anciently

dedicated to fêtes in honour of the dead and fairies. Chapter ii has

shown us how November Eve, the modern _Samain_, and like it, All Saints

Eve or _La Toussaint_, are regarded among the Celtic peoples now; and

the history of _La Toussaint_ seems to indicate that Christianity, as in

the case of the cult of trees and fountains, absorbed certain Celtic

cults of the dead which centred around the pagan _Samain_ feast of the

dead, and even adopted the date of _Samain_ (see p. 453).

Among the ancient Egyptians, so much like the ancient Celts in their

innate spirituality and clear conceptions of the invisible world, we

find a parallel feast which fell on the seventeenth _Athyr_ of the year.

This day was directly dependent upon the progress of the sun; and, as we

have throughout emphasized, the ancient symbolism connected with the

yearly movements of the Great God of Light and Life cannot be divorced

from the ancient doctrines of life and death. To the pre-Christian

Celts, the First of November, or the Festival of _Samain_, which marked

the end of summer and the commencement of winter, was symbolical of

death.[536] _Samain_ thus corresponds with the Egyptian fête of the

dead, for the seventeenth _Athyr_ of the year marks the day on which

Sîtou (the god of darkness) killed in the midst of a banquet his brother

Osiris (the god of light, the sun), and which was therefore thought of

as the season when the old sun was dying of his wounds. It was a time

when the power of good was on the decline, so that all nature, turning

against man, was abandoned to the divinities of darkness, the

inhabitants of the Realms of the Dead. On this anniversary of the death

of Osiris, an Egyptian would undertake no new enterprise: should he go

down to the Nile, a crocodile would attack him as the crocodile sent by

Sîtou had attacked Osiris, and even as the Darkness was attacking the

Light to devour it;[537] should he set out on a journey, he would part

from his home and family never to return. His only course was to remain

locked in his house, and there await in fear and inaction the passing of

the night, until Osiris, returning from death, and reborn to a new

existence, should rise triumphant over the forces of Darkness and

Evil.[538] It is clear that this last part of the Egyptian belief is

quite like the Celtic conception of _Samain_ as we have seen Ailill and

Medb celebrating that festival in their palace at Cruachan.

There is a great resemblance between the christianized Feast of

_Samain_, when the dead return to visit their friends and to be

entertained, for example as in Brittany, and the beautiful festivals

formerly held in the Sînto temples of Japan. Thus at Nikko thousands of

lanterns were lighted, 'each one representing the spirit of an

ancestor,' and there was masquerading and revelry for the entertainment

of the visiting spirits.[539] It shows how much religions are alike.

Each year the Roman peoples dedicated two days (February 21-2) to the

honouring of the Dead. On the first day, called the _Feralia_, all

Romans were supposed to remain within their own homes. The sanctuaries

of all the gods were closed and all ceremony suspended. The only

sacrifices made at such a time were to the dead, and to the gods of the

dead in the underworld; and all manes were appeased by food-offerings of

meats and cakes. The second day was called _Cara Cognatio_ and was a

time of family reunions and feasting. Of it Ovid has said (_Fasti_, ii.

619), 'After the visit to the tombs and to the ancestors who are no

longer [among us], it is pleasant to turn towards the living; after the

loss of so many, it is pleasant to behold those who remain of our blood

and to reckon up the generations of our descendants.' And the Greeks

also had their feasts for the dead.[540]

CONCLUSION

The fact of ancient Celtic cults of stones, waters, trees, and fairies

still existing under cover of Christianity directly sustains the

Psychological Theory; and the persistence of the ancient Celtic cult of

the dead, as illustrated in the survival of _Samain_ in its modern

forms, and perhaps best seen now among the Bretons, goes far to sustain

the opinion of Ernest Renan, who declared in his admirable _Essais_ that

of all peoples the Celts, as the Romans also recorded, have most precise

ideas about death. Thus it is that the Celts at this moment are the most

spiritually conscious of western nations. To think of them as

materialists is impossible. Since the time of Patrick and Columba the

Gaels have been the missionaries of Europe; and, as Caesar asserts, the

Druids were the ancient teachers of the Gauls, no less than of all

Britain. And the mysteries of life and death are the key-note of all

things really Celtic, even of the great literature of Arthur,

Cuchulainn, and Finn, now stirring the intellectual world.

SECTION III

THE CULT OF GODS, SPIRITS, FAIRIES, AND THE DEAD

CHAPTER X

THE TESTIMONY OF CHRISTIANITY

'The Purgatory of St. Patrick became the framework of another

series of tales, embodying the Celtic ideas concerning the other

life and its different states. Perhaps the profoundest instinct of

the Celtic peoples is their desire to penetrate the unknown. With

the sea before them, they wish to know what is to be found beyond

it; they dream of the Promised Land. In the face of the unknown

that lies beyond the tomb, they dream of that great journey which

the pen of Dante has celebrated.'--ERNEST RENAN.

Lough Derg a sacred lake originally--Purgatorial rites as

christianized survivals of ancient Celtic rites--Purgatory as

Fairyland--Purgatorial rites parallel to pagan initiation

ceremonies--The Death and Resurrection Rite--Breton Pardons

compared--Relation to Aengus Cult and Celtic cave-temples--Origin

of Purgatorial doctrine pre-Christian--Celtic and Roman feasts of

dead shaped Christian ones--Fundamental unity of Mythologies,

Religions, and the Fairy-Faith.

The best evidence offered by Christianity with direct bearing on the

Fairy-Faith comes from what may be designated survivals of transformed

paganism within the Church itself. Various pagan cults, which also came

to be more or less christianized, have been considered under Paganism;

and in this chapter we propose to examine the famous Purgatory of St.

Patrick and the Christian rites in honour of the dead.

ST. PATRICK'S PURGATORY

In the south of County Donegal, in Ireland, amid treeless mountains and

moorlands, lies Lough Derg or the Red Lake, containing an island which

has long been famous throughout Christendom as the site of St. Patrick's

Purgatory. Even to-day more than in the Middle Ages it is the goal of

thousands of pious pilgrims who repair thither to be purified of the

accumulated sins of a lifetime. In this age of commercialism the picture

is an interesting and a happy one, no matter what the changing voices of

the many may have to say about it.

The following weird legends, which during the autumn of 1909 I found

surviving among the Lough Derg peasantry, explain how the lough received

its present name, and seem to indicate that long before Patrick's time

the lough was already considered a strange and mysterious place,

apparently an Otherworld preserve. The first legend, based on two

complementary versions, one from James Ryan, of Tamlach Townland, who is

seventy-five years old, the other from Arthur Monaghan, a younger man,

who lives about three miles from James Ryan, is as follows:--'In his

flight from County Armagh, Finn Mac Coul took his mother on his

shoulder, holding her by the legs, but so rapidly did he travel that on

reaching the shores of the lake nothing remained of his mother save the

two legs, and these he threw down there. Some time later, the Fenians,

while searching for Finn, passed the same spot on the lake-shore, and

Cinen Moul(?), who was of their number, upon seeing the shin-bones of

Finn's mother and a worm in one, said: "If that worm could get water

enough it would come to something great." "I'll give it water enough,"

said another of the followers, and at that he flung it into the lake

(later called Finn Mac Coul's lake).[541] Immediately the worm turned

into an enormous water-monster. This water-monster it was that St.

Patrick had to fight and kill; and, as the struggle went on, the lake

ran red with the blood of the water-monster, and so the lake came to be

called Loch Derg (Red Lake).' The second legend, composed of

folk-opinions, was related by Patrick Monaghan, the caretaker of the

Purgatory, as he was rowing me to Saints' Island--the site of the

original purgatorial cave; and this legend is even more important for

us than the preceding one:--'I have always been hearing it said that

into this lough St. Patrick drove all the serpents from Ireland, and

that with them he had here his final battle, gaining complete victory.

The old men and women in this neighbourhood used to believe that Lough

Derg was the last stronghold of the Druids in Ireland; and from what I

have heard them say, I think the old legend means that this is where St.

Patrick ended his fight with the Druids, and that the serpents represent

the Druids or paganism.'

These and similar legends, together with what we know about the

purgatorial rites, lead us to believe that in pre-Christian times Finn

Mac Coul's Lake, later called Lough Derg, was venerated as sacred, and

that the cave which then undoubtedly existed on Saints' Island was used

as a centre for the celebration of pagan mysteries similar in character

to those supposed to have been celebrated in New Grange. Evidently, in

the ordeals and ceremonies of the modern Christian Purgatory of St.

Patrick, we see the survivals of such pagan initiatory rites. Just as

the cults of stones, trees, fountains, lakes, and waters were absorbed

by the new religion, so, it would seem, were all cults rendered in

prehistoric times to Finn Mac Coul's Lake and within the island cave.

Though the present location of the Purgatory is not the original place

of the old Celtic cults, there having been a transfer from Saints'

Island to Station Island, the present place of pilgrimage, where instead

of the cave there is the 'Prison Chapel', the practices, though

naturally much modified and corrupted, retain their primitive outlines.

Patrick in his time ordered the observance of the following ceremonies

by all penitents before their entrance into the original cave on Saints'

Island;[542] and for a long time they were strictly carried out:--'The

visitor must first go to the bishop of the diocese, declare to him that

he came of his own free will, and request of him permission to make the

pilgrimage. The bishop warned him against venturing any further in his

design, and represented to him the perils of his undertaking; but if the

pilgrim still remained steadfast in his purpose, he gave him a

recommendatory letter to the prior of the island. The prior again tried

to dissuade him from his design by the same arguments that had been

previously urged by the bishop. If, however, the pilgrim still remained

steadfast, he was taken into the church to spend there fifteen days in

fasting and praying. After this the mass was celebrated, the holy

communion administered to him and holy water sprinkled over him, and he

was led in procession with reading of litanies to the entrance of the

purgatory, where a third attempt was made to dissuade him from entering.

If he still persisted, the prior allowed him to enter the cave, after he

had received the benediction of the priests, and, in entering, he

commended himself to their prayers, and made the sign of the cross on

his forehead with his own hand. The prior then made fast the door, and

opened it not again till the next morning, when, if the penitent were

there, he was taken out and led with great joy to the church, and, after

fifteen days' watching and praying, was dismissed. If he was not found

when the door was opened, it was understood that he had perished in his

pilgrimage through purgatory; the door was closed again, and he was

never afterwards mentioned'.

An enormous mass of literary and historical material was recorded during

the mediaeval period, in various European vernaculars and in Latin,

concerning St. Patrick's Purgatory; and all of it testifies to the

widespread influence of the rites which already then as now attracted

thousands of pilgrims from all parts of Christendom. In the poem of

_Owayne Miles_,[543] which forms part of this material, we find a

poetical description of the purgatorial initiatory rites quite

comparable to Virgil's account of Aeneas on his initiatory journey to

Hades. The poem records how Sir Owain was locked in the cave, and how,

after a short time, he began to penetrate its depths. He had but little

light, and this by degrees disappeared, leaving him in total darkness.

Then a strange twilight appeared. He went on to a hall and there met

fifteen men clad in white and with heads shaven after the manner of

ecclesiastics. One of them told Owain what things he would have to

suffer in his pilgrimage, how unclean spirits would attack him, and by

what means he could withstand them. Then the fifteen men left the knight

alone, and soon all sorts of demons and ghosts and spirits surrounded

him, and he was led on from one torture and trial to another by

different companies of fiends. (In the original Latin legend there were

four fields of punishment.) Finally Owain came to a magic bridge which

appeared safe and wide, but when he reached the middle of it all the

fiends and demons and unclean spirits raised so horrible a yell that he

almost fell into the chasm below. He, however, reached the other shore,

and the power of the devils ceased. Before him was a celestial city, and

the perfumed air which was wafted from it was so ravishing that he

forgot all his pains and sorrows. A procession came to Owain and,

welcoming him, led him into the paradise where Adam and Eve dwelt before

they had eaten the apple. Food was offered to the knight, and when he

had eaten of it he had no desire to return to earth, but he was told

that it was necessary to live out his natural life in the world and to

leave his flesh and bones behind him before beginning the heavenly

existence. So he began his return journey to the cave's entrance by a

short and pleasant way. He again passed the fifteen men clad in white,

who revealed what things the future had in store for him; and reaching

the door safely, waited there till morning. Then he was taken out,

congratulated, and invited to remain with the priests for fifteen

days.[544]

Here we have clearly enough many of the essential features of the

underworld: there is the mystic bridge which when crossed guarantees the

traveller against evil spirits, just as in Ireland a peasant believes

himself safe when fairies are pursuing him if he can only cross a bridge

or stream. The celestial city is both like the Christian Heaven and the

_Sidhe_ world. The eating of angel food by Owain has an effect quite

like that of eating food in Fairyland; but Owain, by Christian

influence, is sent back on earth to die 'that death which the King of

Heaven and Earth hath ordained,' as Patrick said of the prince whom he

saved from the _Sidhe_-folk.[545]

A curious story, in which King Arthur himself is made to visit St.

Patrick's Purgatory, published during the sixteenth century by a learned

Frenchman, Stephanus Forcatulus, shows how real a relation there is

between Purgatory and the Greek or Roman Hades. Arthur, it is said,

leaving the light behind him, descended into the cave by a rough and

steep road. 'For they say that this cave is an entrance to the shades,

or at least to purgatory, where poor sinners may get their offences

washed out, and return again rejoicing to the light of day.' But

Forcatulus adds that 'I have learnt from certain serious commentaries of

Merlin, that Gawain, his master of horse, called Arthur back, and

dissuaded him from examining further the horrid cave in which was heard

the sound of falling water which emitted a sulphureous smell, and of

voices lamenting as it were for the loss of their bodies'.[546]

PURGATORIAL AND INITIATORY RITES

Judging from the above data and from the great mass of similar data

available, the religious rites connected with St. Patrick's Purgatory

are to be anthropologically interpreted in the light of what is known

about ancient and modern initiatory ceremonies, similarly conducted. As

has already been stated, the original Purgatory which was in a cave on

Saints' Island is to-day typified by 'Prison Chapel' on Station Island;

and in this 'Prison Chapel', as formerly in the cave, pilgrims, after

having fasted and performed the necessary preparatory penances, are

required to pass the night. Among the Greeks, neophytes seeking

initiation, after similar preparation, entered the cave-shrine recently

discovered at Eleusis, the site of the Great Mysteries, and therein, in

the _sanctum sanctorum_, entered into communion with the god and goddess

of the lower world;[547] whereas in the original Purgatory Sir Owain and

Arthur are described as having come into contact with the Hades-world

and its beings. In the state cult at Acharaca, Greece, there was another

cavern-temple in which initiations were conducted.[547] The oracle of

Zeus Trophonius was situated in a subterranean chamber, into which,

after various preparatory rites, including the invocation of Agamedes,

neophytes descended to receive in a very mysterious manner the divine

revelations which were afterwards interpreted for them. So awe-inspiring

were the descent into the cave and the sights therein seen that it was

popularly believed that no one who visited the cave ever smiled again;

and persons of grave and serious aspect were proverbially said to have

been in the cave of Trophonius.[548]

The worship of Mithras, the Persian god of created light and all earthly

wisdom, who in time became identified with the sun, was conducted in

natural and artificial caves found in every part of the Roman Empire

where his cult flourished until superseded by Christianity; and in these

caves very elaborate initiations of seven degrees were carried out. The

cave itself signified the lower world, into which during the ordeals of

initiation the neophyte was supposed to enter while out of the physical

body, that the soul might be purged by many trials.[549] In Mexico the

cavern of Chalchatongo led to the plains of paradise, evidently through

initiations; and Mictlan, a subterranean temple, similarly led to the

Aztec land of the dead.[550]

Among the most widespread and characteristic features of contemporary

primitive races we find highly developed mysteries (puberty

institutions) of the same essential character as these ancient

mysteries. They are to uncivilized youth what the Greek Mysteries were

to Greek youth, and what colleges and universities are to the youth of

Europe and America, though perhaps more successful than these last as

places of moral and religious instruction. These mysteries vary from

tribe to tribe, though in almost all of them there is what corresponds

to the Death Rite in Freemasonry; that is to say, there is either a

symbolical presentation of death in a sacred drama--as there was among

the Greeks in their complete initiatory rites--or a state of actual

trance imposed upon each neophyte by the priestly initiators. The

_sanctum sanctorum_ of these primitive mysteries is sometimes in a

natural or artificial cavern (as was the rule with respect to the

Ancient Mysteries and St. Patrick's Purgatory on Saints' Island);

sometimes in a structure specially prepared to exclude the light; or

else the neophytes are symbolically or literally buried in an

underground place to be resurrected greatly purified and

strengthened.[551] And the mystic purification at the sea-shore and

spiritual re-birth sought in the cave at Eleusis by the highly cultured

Athenians and their fellow Greeks, or among other cultured and

uncultured ancient and modern peoples through some corresponding

initiation ceremony, find their parallel in the purification and

spiritual re-birth still sought in the Christian Purgatory, now 'Prison

Chapel', and in the lake waters, amid the solitude of sacred Lough Derg,

Ireland, by thousands of earnest pilgrims from all parts of the

world.[552]

There is a correspondence between this conclusion and what was said

about the initiatory aspects of the Aengus Cult; and should we try to

connect the Purgatory with some particular sun-cult of a character

parallel to that of the Aengus Cult we should probably have to name Lug,

the great Irish sun-god, because of the significant fact that the

purgatorial rites on Station Island come to an end on the Festival of

the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, the 15th of August, a date which

apparently coincides sufficiently to represent, as it probably does, the

ancient August Lugnasadh, the 1st of August, a day sacred to the sun-god

Lug, as the name indicates.[553]

If we are to class together the original Purgatory, New Grange,

Gavrinis, and other Celtic underground places, as centres of the highest

religious practices in the past, we should expect to discover that many

similar structures or natural caverns existed in pagan Ireland, as

indeed we find they did. Thus in different Irish manuscripts various

caves are mentioned,[554] and most of them, so far as they can be

localized, are traditionally places of supernatural marvels, and often

(as in the case of the last one enumerated, the Cave of Cruachan) are

directly related to the under-world.[555] Another of these caves is

described as being under a church, which circumstance suggests that the

church was dedicated over an underground place originally sacred to

pagan worship, and, as we may safely assume, to pagan mysteries.

The curious custom among early Irish Christians, of retiring for a time

to a cave, seems to show the lasting into historical times of the pagan

cave-ritual now surviving at Lough Derg only. The custom seems to have

been common among the saints of Britain and of Scotland;[556] and in

Stokes's _Tripartite Life of Patrick_ (p. 242) there is a very

significant reference to it. In the _Mabinogion_ story of _Kulhwch and

Olwen_ there seems to be another traditional echo of the times when

caves were used for religious rites or worship, in the author's

reference to the cave of the witch Orddu as being 'on the confines of

Hell'. A cave was thus popularly supposed to lead to Hades or an

underworld of fairies, demons, and spirits; again just as in St.

Patrick's Purgatory. Purely Celtic instances of this kind might be

greatly multiplied.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF PURGATORIAL DOCTRINE

The metrical romance of _Orfeo and Herodys_ in Ritson's _Collection of

Metrical Romances_[557] illustrates how in Britain (and Britain--even

England--is more Celtic than Saxon) the Grecian Hell or Hades was looked

on as identical with the Celtic Fairyland. This is quite unusual; and

for us is highly significant. It shows that in Britain, at the time the

romance was written, there was no essential difference between the

underworld of fairies and the underworld of shades. Pluto's realm and

the realm where fairy kings and fairy queens held high revelry were the

same. The difference is this: Hades was an Egyptian and in turn a Greek

conception, while Fairyland was a Celtic conception; they differ as the

imagination at work on a philosophical doctrine differs among the three

peoples, and not otherwise. And, as Wright has shown, the origin of

Purgatory in the Roman Church is very obscure. As to the location of

Purgatory, Roman theology confesses it has nothing certain to say.[558]

The natural conclusion, as we suggested in our study of Re-birth, would

seem to be that the Irish doctrine of the Otherworld in all its aspects,

but especially as the underground world of the _Sidhe_ or fairy-folk,

was combined with the pagan Graeco-Roman doctrine of Hades in St.

Patrick's Purgatory, and hence gave rise to the modern Christian

doctrine of Purgatory.

CHRISTIAN RITES IN HONOUR OF THE DEPARTED

We may now readily pass from an examination of world-wide rites

concerned with death and re-birth, which are based on an ancient

sun-cult, to an examination of their shadows in the theology of

Christianity, where they are commonly known as the rites in honour of

the departed. It seems to be clear at the outset that the Christian

Fête in Commemoration of the Dead, according to its history, is an

adaptation from paganism; and with so many Irish ecclesiastics, or else

their disciples, educated in the Celtic monasteries of Britain and

Ireland, having influence in the Church during the early centuries,

there is a strong probability that the Feast of _Samain_ had something

to do with shaping the modern feast, as we have suggested in the

preceding chapter; for both feasts originally fell on the first of

November. Roman Catholic writers record that it was St. Odilon, Abbot of

Cluny, who instituted in 998 in all his congregations the Fête in

Commemoration of the Dead, and fixed its anniversary on the first of

November; and that this fête was quickly adopted by all the churches of

the East.[559] To-day in the Roman Church both the first and second of

November are holy days devoted to those who have passed out of this

life. The first day, the Fête of All the Saints (_La Toussaint_), is

said to have originated thus: the Roman Pantheon--Pantheon meaning the

residence of all the gods--was dedicated to Jupiter the Avenger, and

when Christianity triumphed the pagan images were overthrown, and there

was thereupon originally established, in place of the cult of all the

gods, the Fête of all the Saints.[560] Why _La Toussaint_ should have

become a feast of the dead would be difficult to say unless we admit the

ancient Celtic feast of the dead as having amalgamated with it. This we

believe is what took place; for if the Fête in Commemoration of the Dead

was, as some authorities hold, established by St. Odilon to fall on the

first of November, in direct accord with _Samain_ or Halloween, then at

some later period it was displaced by _La Toussaint_, for now it is

celebrated on the second of November.

Likewise prayers and masses for the dead, which annually receive

emphasis on the first two days of November, seem to have had their

origin in pre-Christian cults. According to Mosheim, in his _Histoire

ecclésiastique_,[561] the usage of celebrating the Sacrament at the

tombs of martyrs and at funerals was introduced during the fourth

century; and from this usage the masses for the saints and for the dead

originated in the eighth century. Prior to the fourth century we find

the newly converted Christians in all parts of Celtic Europe, and in

many countries non-Celtic, still rendering a cult to ancestral spirits,

making food offerings at the tombs of heroes, and strictly observing the

very ancient November feast, or its equivalent, in honour of the dead

and fairies. Then, very gradually, in the course of four centuries, the

character of the Christian cults and feasts of the saints and of the

dead seems to have been determined. The following citation will serve to

illustrate the nature of Irish Christian rites in honour of the

dead:--In the _Lebar Brecc_[562] we read: 'There is nothing which one

does on behalf of the soul of him who has died that doth not help it,

both prayer on knees, and abstinence, and singing requiems, and frequent

blessings. Sons are bound to do penance for their deceased parents. A

full year, now, was Maedóc of Ferns, with his whole community, on water

and bread, after loosing from hell the soul of Brandub son of Echaid.'

According to St. Augustine, the souls of the dead are solaced by the

piety of their living friends when this expresses itself through

sacrifice made by the Church;[563] St. Ephrem commanded his friends not

to forget him after death, but to give proofs of their charity in

offering for the repose of his soul alms, prayers, and sacrifices,

especially on the thirtieth day;[563] Constantine the Great wished to be

interred under the Church of the Apostles in order that his soul might

be benefited by the prayers offered to the saints, by the mystic

sacrifice, and by the holy communion.[563] Such prayers and sacrifices

for the dead were offered by the Church sometimes during thirty and even

forty days, those offered on the third, the seventh, and the thirtieth

days being the most solemn.[564] The history of the venerable Bede, the

letters of St. Boniface, and of St. Lul prove that even in the ancient

Anglican church prayers were offered up for the souls of the dead;[565]

and a council of bishops held at Canterbury in 816 ordered that

immediately after the death of a bishop there shall be made for him

prayers and alms.[565] At Oxford, in 1437, All Souls College was

founded, chiefly as a place in which to offer prayers on behalf of the

souls of all those who were killed in the French wars of the fifteenth

century.

CONCLUSION

As seems to be evident from this and the two preceding chapters, all

these fêtes, rites, or observances of Christianity have a relation more

or less direct to paganism, and thus to ancient Celtic cults and

sacrifice offered to the dead, to spirits, and to the Tuatha De Danann

or Fairies. And the same set of ideas which operated among the Celts to

create their Fairy-Mythology--ideas arising out of a belief in or

knowledge of the one universal Realm of Spirit and its various orders of

invisible inhabitants--gave the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the

Romans, the Teutons, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, and all nations their

respective mythologies and religions; and we moderns are literally 'the

heirs of all the ages'.

SECTION IV

MODERN SCIENCE AND THE FAIRY FAITH; AND CONCLUSIONS[566]

CHAPTER XI

SCIENCE AND FAIRIES

'Puzzling and weird occurrences have been vouched for among all

nations and in every age. It is possible to relegate a good many

asserted occurrences to the domain of superstition, but it is not

possible thus to eliminate all.'--SIR OLIVER LODGE.

Method of Examination: Exoteric and Esoteric Aspects--The

X-quantity--Scientific Attitudes toward the Animistic Hypothesis:

Materialistic Theory; Pathological Theory; Delusion and Imposture

Theory--Problems of Consciousness: Dreams; Supernormal Lapse of

Time--Psychical Research and Fairies: Myers's Researches--Present

Position of Psychical Research--Psychical Research and Anthropology

in relation to Fairy-Faith, according to a special contribution

from Mr. Andrew Lang--Final Testing of the X-quantity--Conclusion:

the Celtic belief in Fairies and in Fairyland is scientific.

METHOD OF EXAMINATION

The promise made in the Introduction to examine the Why of the belief in

fairies must now be fulfilled by calling in the aid of modern science.

To adduce parallels when studying a religion or a mythology is worth

doing, in order to show the fundamental bond which unites all systems of

belief in things called spiritual; but it is more important to try to

understand why there should be such parallels and such a unifying

principle behind them. Perhaps there has been too much of a tendency

among students of folk-lore, and of anthropology as a whole, to be

content to do no more than to discover that the Eskimos in Greenland

hold a belief in spirits parallel to a belief in spirits held in Central

Africa, or that the Greek Pantheon (and possibly the Celtic one as well)

consists of goddesses which are apparently pre-Aryan and of gods which

are apparently Aryan. We, too, have drawn many parallels between the

Celtic Fairy-Faith and the various fairy-faiths throughout the world;

but now we should attempt to find out why there are animistic beliefs at

all.

This chapter, then, will confine itself to a scientific examination of

the more popular or, as it may be called, the exoteric aspect of the

Fairy-Faith, which has come to us directly from the masses of the Celtic

peoples. The following chapter, which is corollary to the present one,

will deal especially with the mystical aspect or, as this may be called

by contrast, the esoteric aspect of the same belief, which, in turn, has

come to us from learned mystics and seers, who form, in proportion, but

a very small minority of the modern Celts. Each of these complementary

aspects of the Celtic religion undoubtedly has its origin in the

remotest antiquity. This is probably more readily seen with respect to

the former than to the latter. The latter has been esoteric always, and

in our opinion shows an unbroken tradition (if only a very incomplete

one) from druidic times; and it depends less upon written records,

because the Druids had none, than upon oral transmission from age to

age. Both aspects of the Fairy-Faith have in modern times absorbed many

ideas from non-Celtic systems of religion and mystical thought. As Mr.

Jenner has suggested in his Introduction for Cornwall, and as certain

details in chapter ii clearly indicate, systems of modern theosophy have

had a marked influence in this respect; but it is impossible for us

to-day to say what parts of the Fairy-Faith are purely Celtic and what

are not so, because comparative studies prove that mysticism is

fundamentally the same in all ages and among all peoples. It is

psychologically true, also, that there must always exist some sort of

affinity between two sets of thought in order for them to coalesce.

Hence, if modern mysticism (derived from Oriental or other sources) has,

as we believe, affected Celtic mysticism as handed down from the dim

druidic ages, it is merely because the two occupy a common psychical

territory. We must therefore be content to examine scientifically the

Fairy-Faith as it now presents itself.

The analysis of evidence in chapter iii indicates clearly that there is

in the exoteric part of the modern Celtic belief in fairies considerable

degeneration from what must have been in pagan times a widespread and

highly developed animistic creed. In the esoteric part of it there will

be observed, instead of such degeneracy, a surprisingly elaborate system

of the most subtle speculation, which parallels that of East Indian

systems of metaphysics. If the belief be looked at in this comprehensive

manner, it seems to be clear that to some extent at least, as has been

pointed out already (pp. 99, 257), the Fairy-Faith in its purest form

originated amongst the most highly educated and scientific Celts of

ancient times rather than among their unlearned fellows. The two aspects

of the belief form an harmonious whole as they will be presented in this

Section IV. Chapter xi depends mostly upon the evidence set forth in

chapter ii. Chapter xii depends mostly upon the evidence set forth in

chapter vii.

In chapter iii we examined anthropologically the modern; and (both there

and in parts of chapters following) the historical and ancient belief in

fairies in Celtic countries, and found it to be in essence animistic.

Folk-imagination, social psychology, anthropomorphism generally,

adequately explained by far the greater mass of the evidence presented;

but the animistic background of the belief in question presented

problems which the strictly anthropological sciences are unable to

solve. The point has now been reached when these problems must be

presented to physiology and to psychology for solution. If they can be

completely solved by purely rational and physical data, then the

Fairy-Faith as a whole will have to be cast aside as worthless in the

eyes of science.

In our generation, however, such a casting aside is not to be the fate

of the folk-religion of the Celts: the following phenomena recorded in

chapter ii and elsewhere throughout our study, and designated as the x-

or unknown quantity of the Fairy-Faith, cannot at the present time be

satisfactorily explained by science: (1) Collective hallucinations and

veridical hallucinations; (2) objects moving without contact; (3) raps

and noises called 'supernatural'; (4) telepathy; (5) seership and

visions; (6) dream and trance states manifesting supernormal knowledge;

(7) 'mediumship' or 'spirit-possession'. Independently of our own Celtic

data in their support, the first class of phenomena are supported by an

enormous mass of good data scientifically collected; the second and

third class are less well supported; telepathy is almost generally

accepted as now being established; the last three classes are

hypothetically accepted by many authorities in pathology, psychology,

and psychical research.

SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE ANIMISTIC HYPOTHESIS

Assertions similar to ours, that phenomena like these are incapable of

being explained away by any known laws of orthodox science, have helped

to bring about a marked division in the ranks of scientific workers. On

one hand there are those scientists who deny the existence of anything

not capable of being mathematically tested, weighed, dissected, or

otherwise analysed in laboratories; on the other hand, there are their

colleagues who, often in spite of previous bias toward materialism, have

arrived at a personal conviction that an animistic view of man is more

in harmony with their scientific experience than any other. Both schools

include men eminent in all branches of biological sciences.

Midway between these contending schools are the psycho-physicists who

maintain that man is a twofold being composed of a psychical and

physical part. Some of them are inclined to favour animism, others are

unwilling to regard the psychical part of man as separable from the

physical part. So the world of science is divided.

Under such chaotic conditions of science it is our right to accept one

view or another, or to reject all views and use scientific data

independently. There can be no final court of appeal in matters where

opinion is thus divided, save the experience of coming generations. We

are therefore content to state our own position and leave it to the

future for rejection or acceptance, as the case may be. To attempt a

critical examination of the thousand and one theories occupying the

modern arena of scientific controversy about the essential nature of man

is altogether beyond the scope of this work. We must, nevertheless,

blaze a rough footpath through the jungle of scientific theories, and,

at the outset, put on record our opposition to that school of scientific

workers who deny to man a supersensuous constitution. Their theory, if

carried out to its logical conclusion, is now essentially no different

from Feuerbach's theory at a time when science was far less developed

than it is to-day. He held that 'the object of sense, or the sensuous,

alone is really true, and therefore truth, reality, and the sensible are

one'.[567] To say that we know reality through sensual perception is an

error, as all schools of scientists must nowadays admit. Nature is for

ever illuding the senses; she masquerades in disguise until science

tears away her mask. We must always adjust the senses to the world

itself: where there are only vibrations in ether, man sees light; and in

atmospheric vibrations he hears sound. We only know things through the

way in which our senses react upon them. We sum up the world-problem by

saying: 'consciousness does not exhaust its object, the world.'[567]

Perceptibility and reality thus not being coincident, man and the

universe remain an unsolved problem, despite the noisy shoutings of the

materialist in his hermetically sealed and light-excluding case called

sensual perceptions. Science admits that all her explanations of the

universe are mere products of human understanding and perceptions by the

physical senses: the universe of science is wholly a universe of

phenomena, and behind phenomena, as no scientist would dare deny, there

must be the noumena, the ultimate causes of all things, as to which

science as yet offers no comprehensive hypothesis, much less an answer.

To consider the materialistic hypothesis as adequate to account for the

residuum or x-quantity of the Fairy-Faith would not even be reasonable,

and, incontestably, would not be scientific.

When scientists holding to the non-animistic view of life are driven

from their now for the most part abandoned fortress built by German

scientists of the last century, of whom Feuerbach was a type, they, in

opposing the animists, occupy a more modernly equipped fortress called

the Pathological Theory. This theory is that 'mediumship', telepathy,

hallucinations, or the voluntary and involuntary exercise of any

so-called 'psychical' faculties on the part of men and women, with the

resulting phenomena, can be explained as due to abnormal and

hence--according to its point of view--diseased states of the human

organism, or to some derangement of bodily functions, leading to

delusions resembling those of insanity, which by a sort of hypnosis

telepathically induced may even affect researchers and lead them into

erroneous conclusions. All scientists are in agreement with the

Pathological Theory in so far as it rejects as unworthy of serious

consideration all apparitions and abnormal phenomena save those observed

by sane and healthy percipients under ordinary conditions. And,

accordingly, whenever there can be shown in our percipients a diseased

mental or psychical state, we must eliminate their testimony without

argument. But since we have endeavoured to present no testimony from

Celtic percipients who are not physically and psychically normal, the

Pathological Theory at best can affect the x-quantity merely

hypothetically.

The following admission in regard to visual and auditory hallucinations

is here worth noting as coming from so thorough an exponent of

materialistic psychology as M. Théodule Ribot:--'There must exist

anatomical and physiological causes which would solve the problem, but

unfortunately they are hidden from us.' Of these hidden causes, which

he thinks create all psychical states of mind or consciousness called by

him 'disease of personality', M. Ribot says:--'Our ignorance of the

causes stops us short. The psychologist is here like the physician who

has to deal with a disease in which he can make out only the symptoms.

What physiological influences are they which thus alter the general tone

of the organism, consequently of the coenaesthesis, consequently too of

the memory? Is it some condition of the vascular system? Or some

inhibitory action, some arrest of function? We cannot say.'[568] And

after six years of most careful experimentation, M. Charles Richet,

Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, reached

this conclusion:--'There exists in certain persons at certain moments a

faculty of acquiring knowledge which has no _rapport_ with our normal

faculties of that kind.'[569] We seem to have here the last words of

science touching the Pathological Theory.

When driven from their pathological stronghold, and they maintain that

they have not been driven from it, the non-animists always find a safe

way to cover their retreat by setting up the charge that all psychical

phenomena are fraudulent or else due to delusion on the part of

observers. In reply, psychical researchers readily admit that there is a

large percentage of mere trickery, delusion, and imposture in observed

'spirit' phenomena; some of which is deliberate on the part of the

'medium' and some of which is apparently not consciously induced.

Nevertheless, such investigators are not at all willing to say that

there is nothing more than this. The Delusion and Imposture Theory will

account for a very respectable proportion of these phenomena, but not

for all of them, and theoretically we shall admit its application to the

parallel phenomena attributed to fairies; though it must be acknowledged

that 'fairy' phenomena are for the most part spontaneously exhibited

rather than as in 'Spiritualism' set up through holding _séances_.

Further, there are comparatively few 'charmers' or 'wise men'--the fairy

'mediums' among the Celts--who ever make money out of their ability to

deal with the 'good people', or _Tylwyth Teg_; whence the margin of

encouragement for fraudulent production of 'fairy' phenomena is

extremely limited when compared with 'Spiritualism'.

After twenty-five years of experimentation, more or less continuous,

with 'mediums', during which every conceivable test for the detection of

fraud on their part was applied, William James put his conclusions on

record in these words:--'When imposture has been checked off as far as

possible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when

opportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been

noted, and skill in "fishing" and following clues unwittingly furnished

by the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have

the fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums

_there is a residuum of knowledge displayed_ [italics are James's own]

that can only be called supernormal: the medium taps some source of

information not open to ordinary people.'[570] Mr. Andrew Lang, one of

the bravest of psychical researchers in England, not only would agree

with William James in this, but, having carefully examined the Delusion

and Imposture Theory from the more commanding point of view of an

anthropologist, would go further and include classical spiritualistic

phenomena as well as those existing among contemporary uncultured races.

He says:--'Meanwhile, the extraordinary similarity of savage and

classical spiritualistic rites, with the corresponding similarity of

alleged modern phenomena, raises problems which it is more easy to state

than to solve. For example, such occurrences as "rappings", as the

movement of untouched objects, as the lights of the _séance_ room, are

all easily feigned. But that ignorant modern knaves should feign

precisely the same raps, lights, and movements as the most remote and

unsophisticated barbarians, and as the educated Platonists of the

fourth century after Christ, and that many of the other phenomena should

be identical in each case, is certainly noteworthy.'[571] Evidently,

then, there is a large proportion of psychical and 'fairy' phenomena

which remain unexplained even after the Delusion and Imposture Theory

has been applied to such phenomena, and in all such cases we must look

further for a scientific explanation.

PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Our chief investigations will at first be directed more especially to

the problems common both to psychology and to psychical research,

namely, dream and trance states, hallucinations, and possessions, in

order to show what bearings, if any, they have in the eyes of science

upon parallel phenomena said to be due to fairies, and set forth in

chapter ii and anthropologically examined in chapter iii.

_Dreams_