having directed my attention to this curious passage, and for having
pointed out its probable significance in relation to druidical
practices.
[190] Adamnan, _Life of S. Columba_, B. II, cc. xvi, xvii.
[191] For this fact I am personally indebted to Mrs. W. J. Watson, of
Edinburgh.
[192] Stokes, _Tripartite Life_, pp. clxxx, 303, 305; from _Book of
Armagh_, fo. 9, A 2, and fo. 9, B 2.
[193] Bergier, _Dict. de Théol._, ii. 545, 431, 233.
[194] See _Instruction sur le Rituel_, par l'Évêque de Toulon, iii.
1-16. 'In the Greek rite (of baptism), the priest breathes thrice on the
catechumen's mouth, forehead, and breast, praying that every unclean
spirit may be expelled.'--W. Bright, _Canons of First Four General
Councils_ (Oxford, 1892), p. 122.
[195] Cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_ (Paris, 1835), xiii. 254-66.
[196] _De Incarnatione Verbi_ (ed. Ben.), i. 88; cf. Godescard, op.
cit., xiii. 254-66.
[197] Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xiii. 263-4.
[198] Par Joly de Choin, Évêque de Toulon, i. 639.
[199] Bergier, _Dict. de Théol._, ii. 335.
[200] Stokes, _Tripartite Life_, Intro., p. 162.
[201] J. E. Mirville, _Des Esprits_ (Paris, 1853), i. 475.
[202] _Instructions sur le Rituel_, par Joly de Choin, iii. 276-7.
[203] G. Evans, _Exorcism in Wales_, in _Folk-Lore_, iii. 274-7.
[204] W. Crooke, in _Folk-Lore_, xiii. 189-90.
[205] For ancient usages see F. Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_ (London,
1877), pp. 103-4; Iamblichus and other Neo-Platonists; and for modern
usages see Marett, _Threshold of Religion_, chap. iii.
[206] Cf. Marett, _Is Taboo a Negative Magic?_ in _The Threshold of
Religion_, pp. 85-114.
[207] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 277.
[208] Eastman, _Dacotah_, p. 177; cf. Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 52 n.
[209] Shortland, _Trad. of New Zeal._, p. 150; cf. Tylor, op. cit., ii.
51-2.
[210] Precisely like Celtic peasants, primitive peoples often fail to
take into account the fact that the physical body is in reality left
behind upon entering the trance state of consciousness known to them as
the world of the departed and of fairies, because there they seem still
to have a body, the ghost body, which to their minds, in such a state,
is undistinguishable from the physical body. Therefore they ordinarily
believe that the body and soul both are taken.
[211] Frazer, _Golden Bough_,{2} _passim_.
[212] Cf. ib., i. 344 ff., 348; iii. 390.
[213] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 177, 218-9.
[214] Cf. Eleanor Hull, _Old Irish Tabus or Geasa_, in _Folk-Lore_, xii.
41 ff.
[215] Cf. Frazer, _Golden Bough_,{2} i. 233 ff., 343.
[216] Cf. E. J. Gwynn, _On the Idea of Fate in Irish Literature_, in
_Journ. Ivernian Society_ (Cork), April 1910.
[217] Cf. our evidence, pp. 38, 44; also Kirk's _Secret Commonwealth_
(c. i), where it is said of the 'good people' or fairies that their
bodies are so 'plyable thorough the Subtilty of the Spirits that agitate
them, that they can make them appear or disappear att Pleasure. Some
have Bodies or Vehicles so spungious, thin, and delecat, that they are
fed by only sucking into some fine spirituous Liquors, that pierce lyke
pure Air and Oyl'.
[218] _Laws_, iv; cf. Jowett, _Dialogues of Plato_, v. 282-90.
[219] Chief general references: _Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_
(Paris, 1884) and _L'Épopée celtique en Irlande_ (Paris, 1892)--both by
H. D'Arbois de Jubainville. Chief sources: The _Book of Armagh_, a
collection of ecclesiastical MSS. probably written at Armagh, and
finished in A. D. 807 by the learned scribe Ferdomnach of Armagh; the
_Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ or 'Book of the Dun Cow', the most ancient of the
great collections of MSS. containing the old Irish romances, compiled
about A. D. 1100 in the monastery of Clonmacnoise; the _Book of
Leinster_, a twelfth-century MS. compiled by Finn Mac Gorman, Bishop of
Kildare; the _Yellow Book of Lecan_ (fifteenth century); and the _Book
of Lismore_, an old Irish MS. found in 1814 by workmen while making
repairs in the castle of Lismore, and thought to be of the fifteenth
century. The _Book of Lismore_ contains the _Agallamh na senórach_ or
'Colloquy of the Ancients', which has been edited by S. H. O'Grady in
his _Silva Gadelica_ (London, 1892), and by Whitley Stokes, _Ir. Texte_,
iv. 1. For additional texts and editions of texts see Notes by R. I.
Best to his translations of _Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_ (Dublin,
1903).
[220] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 144-5.
[221] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 266-7. From the way they are
described in many of the old Irish manuscripts, we may possibly regard
the Tuatha De Danann as reflecting to some extent the characteristics of
an early human population in Ireland. In other words, on an already
flourishing belief in spiritual beings, known as the _Sidhe_, was
superimposed, through anthropomorphism, an Irish folk-memory about a
conquered pre-Celtic race of men who claimed descent from a mother
goddess called Dana.
[222] Page 10, col. 2, ll. 6-8; cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, p. 143.
[223] Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 581 n.; and _Cóir Anmann_, in _Ir.
Texte_, III, ii. 355.
[224] Kuno Meyer's trans. in _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 300.
[225] Cf. Standish O'Grady, _Early Bardic Literature_ (London, 1879),
pp. 65-6.
[226] L. U.; cf. A. Nutt, _Voy. of Bran_, i. 157-8.
[227] Before Caeilte appears, Patrick is chanting Mass and pronouncing
benediction 'on the rath in which Finn Mac Cumall (the slain leader of
the Fianna) has been: the rath of Drumderg'. This chanting and
benediction act magically as a means of calling up the ghosts of the
other Fianna, for, as the text continues, thereupon 'the clerics saw
Caeilte and his band draw near them; and fear fell on them before the
tall men with their huge wolf-dogs that accompanied them, _for they were
not people of one epoch or of one time with the clergy_. Then Heaven's
distinguished one, that pillar of dignity and angel on earth, Calpurn's
son Patrick, apostle of the Gael, rose and took the aspergillum to
sprinkle holy water on the great men; floating over whom until that day
there had been [and were now] a thousand legions of demons. Into the
hills and "skalps", into the outer borders of the region and of the
country, the demons forthwith departed in all directions; after which
the enormous men sat down' (_Silva Gadelica_, ii. 103). Here,
undoubtedly, we observe a literary method of rationalizing the ghosts of
the Fianna; and their sudden and mysterious coming and personal aspects
can be compared with the sudden and mysterious coming and personal
aspects of the Tuatha De Danann as recorded in certain Irish
manuscripts.
[228] Kuno Meyer's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, x. 214-27. This tale is
probably as old as the ninth or tenth century, so far as its present
form is concerned, though representing very ancient traditions (Nutt,
_Voy. of Bran_, i. 209).
[229] Stokes's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, xxii. 36-40. This text is one of
the earliest with references to fairy beings, and may go back to the
eighth or ninth century as a literary composition, though it too
represents much older traditions.
[230] E. O'Curry, _Lectures on Manuscript Materials_ (Dublin, 1861), p.
504.
[231] In the _Book of Leinster_, pp. 245-6; cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._,
p. 269.
[232] Cf. _Mesca Ulad_, Hennessy's ed., in _Todd Lectures_, Ser. 1
(Dublin, 1889), p. 2.
[233] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 273-6.
[234] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 273-6.
[235] Cf. _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 222-3.
[236] Ib., ii. 343-7.
[237] Ib., ii. 94-6.
[238] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 204-20.
[239] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 290-1. In many old texts mortals are not
forcibly _taken_; but go to the fairy world through love for a fairy
woman; or else to accomplish there some mission.
No doubt the most curious elements in this text are those which
represent the prince and his warrior companions, fresh come from
Fairyland, as in some mysterious way so changed that they must neither
dismount from their horses and thus come in contact with the earth, nor
allow any mortal to touch them; for to his father the king who came
forward in joy to embrace him after having mourned him as dead,
Laeghaire cried, 'Approach us not to touch us!' Some unknown magical
bodily transmutation seems to have come about from their sojourn among
the Tuatha De Danann, who are eternally young and unfading--a
transmutation apparently quite the same as that which the 'gentry' are
said to bring about now when one of our race is taken to live with them.
And in all fairy stories no mortal ever returns from Fairyland a day
older than on entering it, no matter how many years may have elapsed.
The idea reminds us of the dreams of mediaeval alchemists who thought
there exists, if one could only discover it, some magic potion which
will so transmute every atom of the human body that death can never
affect it. Probably the Christian scribe in writing down these strange
words had in mind what Jesus said to Mary Magdalene when she beheld him
after the Resurrection:--'Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto
the Father.' The parallel would be a striking and exact one in any case,
for it is recorded that Jesus after he had arisen from the dead--had
come out of Hades or the invisible realm of subjectivity which, too, is
Fairyland--appeared to some and not to others--some being able to
recognize him and others not; and concerning the nature of Jesus's body
at the Ascension not all theologians are agreed. Some believe it to have
been a physical body so purified and transmuted as to be like, or the
same as, a spiritual body, and thus capable of invisibility and of
entrance into the Realm of Spirit. The Scotch minister and seer used
this same parallel in describing the nature and power of fairies and
spirits (p. 91); hence it would seem to follow, if we admit the
influence in the Irish text to be Christian, that early, like modern
Christians, have, in accordance with Christianity, described the nature
of the _Sidhe_ so as to correspond with what we know it to be in the
Fairy-Faith itself, both anciently and at the present day.
[240] _Death of Muirchertach_, Stokes's trans., in _Rev. Celt._, xxiii.
397.
[241] Cf. J. Loth, _Les Mabinogion_ (Paris, 1889), i. 38-52.
[242] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 187-92.
[243] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 142-4.
[244] Campbell, _The Fians_, pp. 79-80. In _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 522, it
is stated that the mother of Ossian bore him whilst in the shape of a
doe. The mother of Ossian in animal shape may be an example of an
ancient Celtic totemistic survival.
[245] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 311-24.
[246] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 311-24.
[247] For an enumeration of the Tuatha De Danann chieftains and their
respective territories see _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 225.
[248] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, p. 285.
[249] I am personally indebted for these names to Dr. Douglas Hyde.
[250] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 284-9; cf. _Rev. Celt._, iii. 347.
[251] Cf. E. S. Hartland, _Science of Fairy Tales_ (London, 1891), cc.
x-xi.
[252] Stokes's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, xvi. 274-5.
[253] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 222 ff.; ii. 290. In another version of the
second tale, referred to above (on page 295), Laeghaire and his fifty
companions enter the fairy world through a _dún_.
[254] Sometimes, as in _Da Choca's Hostel_ (_Rev. Celt._, xxi. 157,
315), the _Badb_ appears as a weird woman uttering prophecies. In this
case the _Badb_ watches over Cormac as his doom comes. She is described
as standing on one foot, and with one eye closed (apparently in a bird's
posture), as she chanted to Cormac this prophecy:--'I wash the harness
of a king who will perish.'
[255] Synonymous names are _Badb-catha_, _Fea_, _Ana_. Cf. _Rev. Celt._,
i. 35-7.
[256] Cf. Hennessy, _Ancient Irish Goddess of War_, in _Rev. Celt._, i.
32-55.
[257] Stokes, _Second Battle of Moytura_, in _Rev. Celt._, xii. 109-11.
[258] Luzel, _Contes populaires de Basse Bretagne_, iii. 296-311.
[259] The Celtic examples recall non-Celtic ones: the raven was sacred
among the ancient Scandinavians and Germans, being looked upon as the
emblem of Odin; in ancient Egypt and Rome commonly, and to a less extent
in ancient Greece, gods often declared their will through birds or even
took the form of birds; in Christian scriptures the Spirit of God or the
Holy Ghost descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the semblance of a
dove; and it is almost a world-wide custom to symbolize the human soul
under the form of a bird or butterfly. Possibly such beliefs as these
are relics of a totemistic creed which in times long previous to history
was as definitely held by the ancestors of the nations of antiquity,
including the ancient Celts, as any totemistic creed to be found now
among native Australians or North American Red Men. At all events, in
the story of a bird ancestry of Conaire we seem to have a perfectly
clear example of a Celtic totemistic survival--even though Dr. Frazer
may not admit it as such (cf. _Rev. Celt._, xxii. 20, 24; xii. 242-3).
[260] Hennessy, _The Ancient Irish Goddess of War_, in _Rev. Celt._, i.
32-57.
[261] _Aoibheall_, who came to tell Brian Borumha of his death at
Clontarf, was the family banshee of the royal house of Munster. Cf. J. H.
Todd, _War of the Gaedhil with the Gaill_ (London, 1867), p. 201.
[262] Hyde, _Literary History of Ireland_, p. 440.
[263] Cf. Hennessy, in _Rev. Celt._, i. 39-40. In place of _badb_, Dr.
Hyde (_Lit. Hist. Irl._, p. 440) uses the word _vulture_.
[264] Hennessy, in _Rev. Celt._, i. 52.
[265] Chief general reference: Sir John Rhys, _Arthurian Legend_
(Oxford, 1891). Chief sources: Nennius, _Historia Britonum_ (circa 800);
Geoffrey of Monmouth, _Historia Regum Britanniae_ (circa 1136); Wace,
_Le Roman de Brut_ (circa 1155); Layamon's _Brut_ (circa 1200); Marie de
France, _Lais_ (twelfth-thirteenth century); _The Four Ancient Books of
Wales_ (twelfth-fifteenth century), edited by W. F. Skene; _The
Mabinogion_ (based on the _Red Book of Hergest_, a fourteenth-century
manuscript), edited by Lady Charlotte Guest, Sir John Rhys and J. G.
Evans, and Professor J. Loth; Malory, _Le Morte D'Arthur_ (1470); _The
Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales_, collected out of ancient manuscripts
(Denbigh, 1870); _Iolo Manuscripts_, a selection of ancient Welsh
manuscripts (Llandovery, 1848).
[266] In a Welsh poem of the twelfth century (see W. F. Skene, _Four
Ancient Books_, Edinburgh, 1868, ii. 37, 38) wherein the war feats of
Prince Geraint are described, his men, who lived and fought a long time
after the period assigned to Arthur, are called the men of Arthur; and,
as Sir John Rhys thinks, this is good evidence that the genuine
Arthur was a mythical figure, one might almost be permitted to say a
god, who overshadows and directs his warrior votaries, but who, never
descending into the battle, is in this respect comparable with the Irish
war-goddess the _Badb_ (cf. Rhys, _Celtic Britain_, London, 1904, p.
236).
[267] Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, chap. 1.
[268] Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, pp. 24, 48. Sir John Rhys sees good
reasons for regarding Arthur as a culture hero, because of Arthur's
traditional relation with agriculture, which most culture heroes, like
Osiris, have taught their people (ib., pp. 41-3).
[269] Cf. G. Maspero, _Contes populaires de l'Égypte Ancienne_{3}
(Paris, 1906), Intro., p. 57.
[270] Sommer's Malory's _Morte D'Arthur_, iii. 1.
[271] Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 9.
[272] I am indebted to Professor J. Loth for help with this etymology.
[273] Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 22.
[274] i. 10; ii. 21{b}; iii. 70; cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 60.
[275] See Williams' _Seint Greal_, pp. 278, 304, 341, 617, 634, 658,
671; Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 61.
[276] Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, pp. 51, 35; and see our study, pp.
374-6.
[277] _Chevalier de la Charrette_ (ed. by Tarbé), p. 22; _Romania_, xii.
467, 515; cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 54.
[278] _Romania_, xii. 467-8, 473-4; cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 55.
[279] Cf. Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 93-4.
[280] _Romania_, xii. 508; cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 54.
[281] Book XIX, c. i.
[282] In the _Lebar Brecc_ there is a tract describing eight Eucharistic
Colours and their mystical or hidden meaning; and green is so described
that we recognize in its Celtic-Christian symbolism the same essential
significance as in the writings of both pagan and non-Celtic Christian
mystics, thus:--'This is what the Green denotes, when he (the priest)
looks at it: that his heart and his mind be filled with great faintness
and exceeding sorrow: for what is understood by it is his burial at the
end of life under mould of earth; for green is the original colour of
every earth, and therefore the colour of the robe of Offering is likened
unto green' (Stokes, _Tripartite Life_, Intro., p. 189). During the
ceremonies of initiation into the Ancient Mysteries, it is supposed that
the neophyte left the physical body in a trance state, and in full
consciousness, which he retained afterwards, entered the subjective
world and beheld all its wonders and inhabitants; and that coming out of
that world he was clothed in a robe of sacred green to symbolize his own
spiritual resurrection and re-birth into real life--for he had
penetrated the Mystery of Death and was now an initiate. Even yet there
seems to be an echo of the ancient Egyptian Mysteries in the Festival of
Al-Khidr celebrated in the middle of the wheat harvest in Lower Egypt.
Al-Khidr is a holy personage who, according to the belief of the people,
was the Vizier of Dhu'l-Karnen, a contemporary of Abraham, and who,
never having died, is still living and will continue to live until the
Day of Judgement. And he is always represented 'clad in green garments,
whence probably the name' he bears. Green is thus associated with a hero
or god who is immortal and unchanging, like the Tuatha De Danann and
fairy races (see Sir Norman Lockyer's _Stonehenge and Other Stone
Monuments_, London, 1909, p. 29). In modern Masonry, which preserves
many of the ancient mystic rites, and to some extent those of initiation
as anciently performed, green is the symbol of life, immutable nature,
of truth, and victory. In the evergreen the Master Mason finds the
emblem of hope and immortality. And the masonic authority who gives this
information suggests that in all the Ancient Mysteries this symbolism
was carried out--green symbolizing the birth of the world and the moral
creation or resurrection of the initiate (_General History, Cyclopedia,
and Dictionary of Freemasonry_, by Robert Macoy, 33{o}, New York, 1869).
[283] _Myv. Arch._, i. 175. The text itself in this work is said to be
copied from the _Green Book_--now unknown. Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._ p.
56 n.
[284] In this text, the Gwenhwyvar who is in the power of Melwas is
referred to as Arthur's second wife Gwenhwyvar, for according to the
Welsh Triads (i. 59; ii. 16; iii. 109) there are three wives of Arthur
all named Gwenhwyvar. As Sir John Rhys observes, no poet has ever
availed himself of all three, for the evident reason that they would
have spoilt his plot (_Arth. Leg._, p. 35).
[285] D. ab Gwilym's Poetry (London, 1789), poem cxi, line 44. Cf.
Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 66.
[286] Malory, Book I, c. xxv. One account of Arthur's sword _Caledvwlch_
or _Caleburn_ describes it as having been made in the Isle of Avalon
(Lady Ch. Guest's _Mabinogion_, ii. 322 n.; also _Myv. Arch._, ii. 306).
[287] Malory, Book IX, c. xv; Sir John Rhys takes the Lady of the
Lake who sends Arthur the sword and the one who aids him afterwards
(though, apparently by error, two characters in Malory) as different
aspects of the one lake-lady _Morgen_ (_Arth. Leg._, p. 348).
[288] Merlin explained to Arthur that King Loth's wife was Arthur's own
sister (Sommer's _Malory_, i. 64-5); and King Loth is one of the rulers
of the Otherworld.
[289] Book XXI, c. vi.
[290] This poem, according to Gaston Paris, was translated during the
late twelfth century from a French original now lost (_Romania_, x.
471). Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 127.
[291] Malory, Book XII, cc. iii-x; Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, pp. 145, 164.
Galahad, however, does not belong to the more ancient Arthurian romances
at all, so far as scholars can determine; and, therefore, too much
emphasis ought not to be placed on this episode in connexion with the
character of Arthur.
[292] We should like to direct the reader's attention to the interesting
similarity shown between this old story of _Kulhwch and Olwen_ and the
fairy legend which we found living in South Wales, and now recorded by
us on page 161, under the title of _Einion and Olwen_. As we have there
suggested, the legend seems to be the remnant of a very ancient bardic
tale preserved in the oral traditions of the people; and the prevalence
of such bardic traditions in a part of Wales where some of the
_Mabinogion_ stories either took shape, or from where they drew
folk-lore material, would make it probable that there may even be some
close relationship between the Olwen of the story and the Olwen of our
folk-tale. If it could be shown that there is, we should be able at once
to regard both Olwens as 'Fair-Folk' or of the _Tylwyth Teg_, and the
quest of Kulhwch as really a journey to the Otherworld to gain a fairy
wife.
[293] We may even have in the story of _Kulhwch and Olwen_ a symbolical
or mystical account of ancient Brythonic rites of initiation, which have
also directly to do with the spiritual world and its invisible
inhabitants.
[294] Cf. J. Loth, _Les Mabinogion_ (Paris, 1889), p. 252 n.
[295] Cf. J. Loth, _Le Mabinogi de Kulhwch et Olwen_ (Saint-Brieuc,
1888), Intro., p. 7.
[296] Lady Ch. Guest's _Mabinogion_ (London, 1849), ii. 323 n.
[297] Cf. R. H. Fletcher, _Arthurian Material in the Chronicles_, in
_Harv. Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit._, x. 20-1.
[298] Fletcher, ib., x. 29; 26.
[299] Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 7; and Rhys, _The Welsh People_{3}
(London, 1902), p. 105.
[300] Cf. Fletcher, op. cit., x. 43-115; from ed. by San-Marte (A.
Schulz), _Gottfried's von Monmouth Hist. Reg. Brit._ (Halle, 1854), Eng.
trans. by A. Thompson, _The British History_, &c. (1718).
[301] Cf. Fletcher, op. cit., pp. 117-44.
[302] Sir Frederic Madden, _Layamon's Brut_ (London, 1847), ii. 384.
Here the Germanic elves are by Layamon made the same in character and
nature as Brythonic elves or fairies.
[303] Madden, _Layamon's Brut_, ii. 144.
[304] J. Bédier's ed., _Société des anciens textes français_ (Paris,
1902).
[305] E. Muret's ed., _Société des anciens textes français_ (Paris,
1903).
[306] A. C. L. Brown, _The Knight and the Lion_; also, by same author,
_Iwain_, in _Harv. Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit._, vii. 146, &c.
[307] _Celtic Mag._, xii. 555; _Romania_ (1888); cf. Brown, ib.
[308] J. Loth, _Les Romans arthuriens_, in _Rev. Celt._, xiii. 497.
[309] _Bibliotheca Normannica_, iii, _Die Lais der Marie de France_, pp.
86-112.
[310] Cf. W. H. Schofield, _The Lays of Graelent and Lanval, and the
Story of Wayland_, in Pub. Mod. Lang. Ass. of America, xv. 176.
[311] Cf. Schofield, _The Lay of Guingamor_, in _Harv. Stud. and Notes
in Phil. and Lit._, v. 221-2.
[312] For editions, and fuller details of the fairy elements, see De La
Warr B. Easter, _A Study of the Magic Elements in the_ ROMANS D'AVENTURE
_and the_ ROMANS BRETONS (Johns Hopkins Univ., Baltimore, 1906). See
also Lucy A. Paton, _Studies in the Fairy Mythology of the Arthurian
Romance_, Radcliffe College Monograph XIII (New York, 1903).
[313] Perc., vi. 235; cf. Easter's Dissertation, p. 42 n.
[314] _Joufrois_, 3179 ff.; ed. Hofmann und Muncker (Halle, 1880); cf.
Easter's Diss., pp. 40-2 n.
[315] _Brun_, 562 ff., 3237, 3251, 3396, 3599 ff.; ed. Paul Meyer
(Paris, 1875); cf. ib., pp. 42 n., 44 n.
[316] E. Anwyl, _The Four Branches of the Mabinogi_, in _Zeit. für Celt.
Phil._ (London, Paris, 1897), i. 278.
[317] Cf. Nutt, _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 19, 21.
[318] _Black Book of Caermarthen_, xvii, stanza 7, ll. 5-8. This book
dates from 1154 to 1189 as a manuscript; cf. Skene, _Four Anc. Books_,
i. 3, 372.
[319] Stanzas 19-20. This book took shape as a manuscript from the
fourteenth to fifteenth century, according to Skene. Cf. Skene, _Four
Anc. Books_, i. 3, 464.
[320] See _A Fugitive Poem of Myrddin in his Grave. Red Book of
Hergest_, ii. Skene, ib., i. 478-81, stanza 27.
[321] Chief general references: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _L'Épopée
celtique en Irlande_, _Le Cycle Mythologique Irlandais_; Kuno Meyer and
Alfred Nutt, _The Happy Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth_.
Chief sources: the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ (A. D. 1100); the _Book of
Leinster_ (twelfth century); the _Lais_ of Marie de France (twelfth to
thirteenth century); the _White Book of Rhyderch_, Hengwrt Coll.
(thirteenth to fourteenth century); the _Yellow Book of Lecan_
(fifteenth century); the _Book of Lismore_ (fifteenth century); the
_Book of Fermoy_ (fifteenth century); the _Four Ancient Books of Wales_
(twelfth to fifteenth century).
[322] One of the commonest legends among all Celtic peoples is about
some lost city like the Breton Is, or some lost land or island (cf.
Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, c. xv, and _Celtic Folk-Lore_, c. vii); and we
can be quite sure that if, as some scientists now begin to think (cf.
Batella, _Pruebas geológicas de la existencia de la Atlántida_, in
_Congreso internacional de Americanistas_, iv., Madrid, 1882; also
Meyers, _Grosses Konversations-Lexikon_, ii. 44, Leipzig und Wien, 1903)
Atlantis once existed, its disappearance must have left from a
prehistoric epoch a deep impress on folk-memory. But the Otherworld idea
being in essence animistic is not to be regarded, save from a
superficial point of view, as conceivably having had its origin in a
lost Atlantis. The real evolutionary process, granting the disappearance
of this island continent, would seem rather to have been one of
localizing and anthropomorphosing very primitive Aryan and pre-Aryan
beliefs about a heaven-world, such as have been current among almost all
races of mankind in all stages of culture, throughout the two Americas
and Polynesia as well as throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. (Cf.
Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 62, 48, &c.)
[323] _White Book of Rhyderch_, folio 291{a}; cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._,
pp. 268-9.
[324] From _Echtra Condla_, in the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_. Cf. _Le Cycle
Myth. Irl._, pp. 192-3.
[325] Cf. Eleanor Hull, _The Silver Bough in Irish Legend_, in
_Folk-Lore_, xii.
[326] Cf. Eleanor Hull, op. cit., p. 431.
[327] Classical parallels to the Celtic Otherworld journeys exist in the
descent of Dionysus to bring back Semele, of Orpheus to recover his
beloved Eurydike, of Herakles at the command of his master Eurystheus to
fetch up the three-headed Kerberos--as mentioned first in Homer's
_Iliad_ (cf. Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 48); and chiefly in the voyage
of Odysseus across the deep-flowing Ocean to the land of the departed
(Homer, _Odyss._ xi).
[328] Servius, _ad Aen._, vi. 136 ff.
[329] _Voy. of Bran_, i, pp. 2 ff. The tale is based on seven
manuscripts ranging in age from the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ of about A. D.
1100 to six others belonging to the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries (cf. ib., p. xvi).
[330] This tale exists in several manuscripts of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries; i. e. _Book of Ballymote_, and _Yellow Book of
Lecan_, as edited and translated by Stokes, in _Irische Texte_, III. i.
183-229; cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 190 ff.; cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp.
326-33.
[331] The fountain is a sacred fountain containing the sacred salmon;
and the nine hazels are the sacred hazels of inspiration and poetry.
These passages are among the most mystical in Irish literature. Cf. pp.
432-3.
[332] Cf. Stokes's trans. in _Irische Texte_ (Leipzig, 1891), III. i.
211-16.
[333] The Greeks saw in Hermes the symbol of the Logos. Like Manannan,
he conducted the souls of men to the Otherworld of the gods, and then
brought them back to the human world. Hermes 'holds a rod in his hands,
beautiful, golden, wherewith he spellbinds the eyes of men whomsoever he
would, and wakes them again from sleep'--in initiations; while Manannan
and the fairy beings lure mortals to the fairy world through sleep
produced by the music of the Silver Branch.--Hippolytus on the Naasenes
(from the Hebrew _Nachash_, meaning a 'Serpent'), a Gnostic school; cf.
G. R. S. Mead, _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_, pp. 198, 201. Or again,
'the Caduceus, or Rod of Mercury (Hermes), and the Thyrsus in the Greek
Mysteries, which conducted the soul from life to death, and from death
to life, figured forth the serpentine power in man, and the path whereby
it would carry the "man" aloft to the height, if he would but cause the
"Waters of the Jordan" to "flow upwards".'--G. R. S. Mead. ib., p. 185.
[334] Cf. Hennessy's ed. in _Todd Lectures_, ser. I. i. 9.
[335] Among the early ecclesiastical manuscripts of the so-called
_Prophecies_. See E. O'Curry, _Lectures_, p. 383.
[336] Cf. Eleanor Hull, op. cit., pp. 439-40.
[337] Now in three versions based on the _L. U._ MS. Our version is
collated from O'Curry's translation in _Atlantis_, i. 362-92, ii.
98-124, as revised by Kuno Meyer, _Voy. of Bran_, i. 152 ff.; and from
Jubainville's translation in _L'Ép. celt. en Irl._, pp. 170-216.
[338] As Alfred Nutt pointed out, 'There is no parallel to the position
or to the sentiments of Fand in the post-classic literature of Western
Europe until we come to Guinevere and Isolt, Ninian and Orgueilleuse'
(_Voy. of Bran_, i. 156 n.).
[339] See poem _Tir na nog_ (Land of Youth), by Michael Comyn, composed
or collected about the year 1749. Ed. by Bryan O'Looney, in _Trans.
Ossianic Soc._, iv. 234-70.
[340] Laeghaire, who also came back from Fairyland on a fairy horse, and
fifty warriors with him each likewise mounted, to say good-bye for ever
to the king and people of Connaught, were warned as they set out for
this world not to dismount if they wished to return to their fairy
wives. The warning was strictly observed, and thus they were able to go
back to the _Sidhe_-world (see p. 295).
[341] Cf. _Bibliotheca Normannica_, iii, _Die Lais der Marie de France_,
pp. 86-112.
[342] Cf. Stokes's trans., in _Rev. Celt._, ix. 453-95, x. 50-95. Most
of the tale comes from the _L. U._ MS.; cf. _L'Ép. celt. en Irl._, pp.
449-500.
[343] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 385-401. The MS. text, _Echira Thaidg mheic
Chéin_, or 'The Adventure of Cian's son Teigue', is found in the _Book
of Lismore_.
[344] Summarized and quoted from translation by R. I. Best, in _Ériu_,
iii. 150-73. The text is found in the _Book of Fermoy_ (pp. 139-45), a
fifteenth-century codex in the Royal Irish Academy.
[345] Folios 113-15, trans. O'Beirne Crow, _Journ. Kilkenny Archae.
Soc._ (1870-1), pp. 371-448; cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 260-1.
[346] Cf. Skene, _Four Ancient Books of Wales_, i. 264-6, 276, &c.
[347] Cf. _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 301 ff., from Additional MS. 34119,
dating from 1765, in British Museum.
[348] _Giolla an Fhiugha_, or 'The Lad of the Ferrule', trans. by
Douglas Hyde, in _Irish Texts Society_, London, 1899.
[349] Cf. Meyer and Nutt, _Voy. of Bran_, i. 147, 228, 230, 235; 161.
[350] The bulk of the text comes from the _Book of Fermoy_. Cf. Stokes's
trans. in _Rev. Celt._, xiv. 59, 49, 53, &c.
[351] J. Loth, _L'Émigration bretonne en Armorique_ (Paris, 1883), pp.
139-40.
[352] Ed. and trans. by W. Stokes, Calcutta, 1866. This _Vision_ has
been erroneously ascribed to the celebrated Abbot of Iona, who died in
703; but Professor Zimmer has regarded it as a ninth-century
composition; cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 219 ff.
[353] Cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 195 ff.
[354] See J. G. Campbell, _The Fians_, pp. 260-7.
[355] _The Literary Movement in Ireland_, in _Ideals in Ireland_, ed. by
Lady Gregory (London, 1901), p. 95.
[356] Cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 331.
[357] General reference: _Essay upon the Irish Vision of the happy
Otherworld and the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth_, by Alfred Nutt in Kuno
Meyer's _Voyage of Bran_. Chief sources: _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_; _Book of
Leinster_; _Four Ancient Books of Wales_; _Mabinogion_; _Silva
Gadelica_; _Barddas_, a collection of Welsh manuscripts made about 1560;
and the _Annals of the Four Masters_, compiled in the first half of the
seventeenth century.
[358] Cf. Plato, _Republic_, x; _Phaedo_; _Phaedrus_, &c.; Iamblichus,
_Concerning the Mysteries of Egypt, Chaldaea, Assyria_; Plutarch,
_Mysteries of Isis (De Iside et Osiride)_.
[359] He says:--'I, for my part, suspect that the spirit was implanted
in them (rational creatures, men) from without' _(De Principiis_, Book
I, c. vii. 4);... 'the cause of each one's actions is a pre-existing
one; and then every one, according to his deserts, is made by God either
a vessel unto honour or dishonour' (ib., Book III, c. i. 20). 'Whence we
are of opinion that, seeing the soul, as we have frequently said, is
immortal and eternal, it is possible that, in the many and endless
periods of duration in the immeasurable and different worlds, it may
descend from the highest good to the lowest evil, or be restored from
the lowest evil to the highest good' (ib., Book III, c. i, 21);...
'every one has the reason in himself, why he has been placed in this or
that rank in life' (ib., Book III, c. v, 4).
[360] Cf. Bergier, _Origène_, in _Dict. de Théologie_, v. 69.
[361] _Holy Bible_, Revised Version, St. Matt. xi. 14-15; cf. St. Matt.
xvii. 10-13, St. Mark ix. 13, St. Luke vii. 27, St. John i. 21.
[362] Tertullian's conclusion is as follows:--'These substances ("soul
and body") are, in fact, the natural property of each individual; whilst
"the spirit and power" (cf. Mal. iv. 5) are bestowed as external gifts
by the grace of God, and so may be transferred to another person
according to the purpose and will of the Almighty, as was anciently the
case with respect to the spirit of Moses' (cf. Num. xii. 2).--_De Anima_
c. xxxv; cf. trans, in _Ante-Nicene Christian Library_ (Edinburgh,
1870), xv. 496-7.
[363] Origen says:--'But that there should be certain doctrines not made
known to the multitude, which are [revealed] after the exoteric ones
have been taught, is not a peculiarity of Christianity alone, but also
of philosophic systems, in which certain truths are exoteric and others
esoteric' (_Origen against Celsus_, Book I, c. vii).
[364] How Tertullian almost literally accepted the re-birth doctrine is
shown in his _Apology_, chapter xlviii, concerning the resurrection of
the body. It is the corrupted form of the doctrine, viz. transmigration
of human souls into animal bodies, which he therein, as well as in his
_De Anima_ and elsewhere, chiefly and logically combats, as Origen also
combated it. He first shows why a human soul must return into a human
body in accordance with natural analogy, every creature being after its
own kind always; and then, because the purpose of the Resurrection is
the judgement, that the soul must return into its own body. And he
concludes:--'It is surely more worthy of belief that a man will be
restored from a man, any given person from any given person, but still a
man; so that the same kind of soul may be reinstated in the same mode of
existence, even if not into the same outward form' (_The Apology of
Tertullian for the Christians_; cf. trans. by T. H. Bindley, Oxford,
1890, pp. 137-9).
[365] British Museum MS. Add. 5114, vellum--a Coptic manuscript in the
dialect of Upper Egypt. Its undetermined date is placed by Woide at
latest about the end of the fourth century. It was evidently copied by
one scribe from an older manuscript, the original probably having been
the _Apocalypse of Sophia_, by Valentius, the learned Gnostic who lived
in Egypt for thirty years during the second century. See the translation
of the Schwartze's parallel Latin version of _Pistis Sophia_ and its
introduction, both by G. R. S. Mead (London, 1896).
[366] The chief passages are as follows, Jesus being the
speaker:--'Moreover, in the region of the soul of the rulers, destined
to receive it, I found the soul of the prophet Elias, in the aeons of
the sphere, and I took him, and receiving his soul also, I brought it to
the virgin of light, and she gave it to her receivers; they brought it
to the sphere of the rulers, and cast it into the womb of Elizabeth.
Wherefore the power of the little Iaô, who is in the midst, and the soul
of Elias the prophet, are united with the body of John the Baptist. For
this cause have ye been in doubt aforetime, when I said unto you, "John
said, I am not the Christ"; and ye said unto me, "It is written in the
Scripture, that when the Christ shall come, Elias will come before him,
and prepare his way." And I, when ye had said this unto me, replied unto
you, "Elias verily is come, and hath prepared all things, according as
it is written; and they have done unto him whatsoever they would." And
when I perceived that ye did not understand that I had spoken concerning
the soul of Elias united with John the Baptist, I answered you openly
and face to face with the words, "If ye will receive it, John the
Baptist is Elias who, I said, was for to come"' (_Pistis Sophia_, Book
I, 12-13, Mead's translation).
[367] 'The Saviour answered and said unto his disciples:--"Preach ye
unto the whole world, saying unto men, 'Strive together that ye may
receive the mysteries of light in this time of stress, and enter into
the kingdom of light. Put not off from day to day, and from cycle to
cycle, in the belief that ye will succeed in obtaining the mysteries
when ye return to the world in another cycle'"' (_Pistis Sophia_, Book
II, 317, Mead's translation).
[368] Cf. Bergier, _Manichéisme_, in _Dict. de Théol._, iv. 211-13.
[369] The _Refutation of Irenaeus_, until quite recently, has been the
chief source of much of our knowledge concerning Gnosticism. It was
written during the second century at Lyons, by Irenaeus, a bishop of
Gaul, far from any direct contact with the still flourishing Gnosticism.
But now with the discovery of genuine manuscripts of Gnostic works: (1)
the _Askew Codex_, vellum, British Museum, London, containing the
_Pistis Sophia_ (see above, p. 361 n.) and extracts from the _Books of
the Saviour_; (2) the _Bruce Codex_ (two MSS.), papyrus, Bodleian
Library, Oxford, containing the fragmentary _Book of the Great Logos_,
an unknown treatise, and fragments; and (3) the _Akhmim Codex_
(discovered in 1896), papyrus, Egyptian Museum, Berlin, containing _The
Gospel of Mary_ (or _Apocryphon of John_), _The Wisdom of Jesus Christ_,
and _The Acts of Peter_, we are able to check from original sources the
Fathers in many of their writings and canons concerning Gnostic
'heresies'; and find that Irenaeus, the last refuge of Christian
haeresiologists, has so condensed and paraphrased his sources that we
cannot depend upon him at all for a consistent exposition of Gnostic
doctrines, which with more or less prejudice he is trying to refute. It
is true that the age of these manuscripts has not been satisfactorily
determined; in fact most of them have not yet been carefully studied.
Very probably, however, as appears to be the case with the _Pistis
Sophia_, they have been copied from manuscripts which were contemporary
with or earlier than the time of Irenaeus, and hence may be regarded as
good authority in determining Gnostic teachings. (Cf. all of above note
with G. R. S. Mead, _Fragments of a Faith Forgotten_, London, 1900, pp.
147, 151-3.)
Many unprejudiced scholars are now unwilling to admit the rulings of the
Church Councils which determined what was orthodox and what heretical
doctrines among the Gnostic-Christians, because many of their dogmatic
decisions were based upon the unscholarly _Refutation of Irenaeus_ and
upon other equally unreliable evidence. The data which have accumulated
in the hands of scholars about early Christian thought and Gnosticism
are now much more complete and trustworthy than the similar data were
upon which the Council of Constantinople in 553 based its decision with
respect to the doctrine of re-birth; and the truth coming to be
recognized seems to be that the Gnostics rather than the Church Fathers,
who adopted from them what doctrines they liked, condemning those they
did not like, should henceforth be regarded as the first Christian
theologians, and mystics. If this view of the very difficult and complex
matter be accepted, then modern Christianity itself ought to be allowed
to resume what thus appears to have been its original position--so long
obscured by the well-meaning, but, nevertheless, ill-advised
ecclesiastical councils--as the synthesizer of pagan religions and
philosophies. Some such view has been accepted by many eminent Christian
theologians since Origen: i. e. the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More,
openly advocated the re-birth doctrine in the seventeenth century; and
in later times it has been preached from Christian pulpits by such men
as Henry Ward Beecher and Phillips Brooks.
[370] See A. Bertrand, _La Religion des Gaulois, les Druides et le
Druidisme_ (Paris, 1897); H. Jennings, _The Rosicrucians_ (London,
1887); the Work of Paracelsus; H. Cornelius Agrippa, _De Occulta
Philosophia_ (Paris, 1567); H. P. Blavatsky's _Isis Unveiled_, and the
_Secret Doctrine_ (London, 1888); and _Hermetic Works_, by Anna
Kingsford and E. Maitland (London, 1885).
[371] Cf. Bergier, _Purgatoire_, in _Dict. de Théol._, v. 409. A Celt, a
professed faithful and fervent adherent of the Church of Rome, whom I
met in the Morbihan where he now lives, told me that he believes
thoroughly in the doctrine of re-birth, and that it is according to his
opinion the proper and logical interpretation of the doctrine of
Purgatory; and he added that there are priests in his Church who have
told him that their personal interpretation of the purgatorial doctrine
is the same. Thus some Roman Catholics do not deny the re-birth
doctrine. And such conversations as this with Catholic Celts in Ireland
and Brittany lead me to believe that to a larger extent than has been
suspected the old Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth may have been one of the
chief foundations for the modern Roman Catholic Doctrine of Purgatory,
whose origin is not clearly indicated in any theological works. For us
this probability is important as well as interesting, and especially so
when we remember the profound influence which the Celtic St. Patrick's
Purgatory certainly exerted on the Church during the Middle Ages when
the doctrine of Purgatory was taking definite shape (see our chapter x).
[372] _Barddas_ (Llandovery, 1862) is 'a collection (by Iolo Morganwg, a
Bard) of original documents, illustrative of the theology, wisdom, and
usage of the Bardo-Druidic System of the Isle of Britain'. The original
manuscripts are said to have been in the possession of Llywelyn Sion, a
Bard of Glamorgan, about 1560. _Barddas_ shows considerable Christian
influence, yet in its essential teachings is sufficiently distinct.
Though of late composition, _Barddas_ seems to represent the traditional
bardic doctrines as they had been handed down orally for an unknown
period of time, it having been forbidden in earlier times to commit such
doctrines to writing. We are well aware also of the adverse criticisms
passed upon these documents; but since no one questions their Celtic
origin--whether it be ancient or more modern--we are content to use
them.
[373] _Barddas_, i, 189-91.
[374] _Barddas_, i, 177.
[375] Preface to _Barddas_, xlii.
[376] One of the greatest errors formerly made by European Sanskrit
scholars and published broadcast throughout the West, so that now it is
popularly accepted there as true, is that Nirvana, the goal of Indian
philosophy and religion, means annihilation. It does mean annihilation
(evolutionary transmutation of lower into higher), but only of all those
forces or elements which constitute man as an animal. The error arose
from interpreting exoterically instead of esoterically, and was a
natural result of that system of western scholarship which sees and
often cares only to examine external aspects. Native Indian scholars who
have advised us in this difficult problem prefer to translate _Nirvana_
as 'Self-realization', i. e. a state of supernormal consciousness (to be
acquired through the evolution of the individual), as much superior to
the normal human consciousness as the normal human consciousness is
superior to the consciousness existing in the brute kingdom.
[377] _De Bel. Gal._, lib. vi. 14. 5; vi. 18. 1.
[378] Book V, 31. 4.
[379] _De Situ Orbis_, iii. c. 2: 'One point alone of the Druids'
teaching has become generally known among the common people (in order
that they should be braver in war), that souls are eternal and there is
a second life among the shades.'
[380] i. 449-62.
[381] Lucan, i. 457-8; i. 458-62.
[382] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 345, 347 ff.
[383] _Folk-Lore_, xii. 64, &c.; also cf. Eleanor Hull, _The Cuchullin
Saga in Irish Literature_ (London, 1898), Intro., p. 23, &c.
[384] What is probably the oldest form of a tale concerning Conchobhar's
birth makes Conchobhar 'the son of a god who incarnated himself in the
same way as did Lug and Etain' (cf. _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 73).
[385] See _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_, 101{b}; and _Book of Leinster_,
123{b}:--'_Cúchulainn mc dea dechtiri_.'
[386] We have already mentioned the belief that gods having their abode
in the sun could leave it to assume bodies here on earth and become
culture heroes and great teachers (see p. 309).
[387] From _Wooing of Emer_ in _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_; cf. _Voy. of
Bran_, ii. 97.
[388] _L'Épopée celt. en Irl._, p. 11.
[389] Cf. _Voy. of Bran_, ii. p. 74 ff.
[390] In the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_, 133{a}-134{b}; cf. _Le Cycle Myth.
Irl._, pp. 336-43; cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 49-52; cf. O'Curry, _Manners
and Customs_, iii. 175.
[391] Cf. Stokes's ed. _Annals of Tigernach, Third Frag._ in _Rev.
Celt._ xvii. 178. In the piece called _Tucait baile Mongâin_ in the
_Leabhar na h-Uidhre_, p. 134, col. 2, 'Mongan is seen living with his
wife the year of the death of Ciaran mac int Shair, and of Tuathal
Mael-Garb, that is to say in 544,' following the _Chronicum Scotorum_,
Hennessy's ed., pp. 48-9. As D'Arbois de Jubainville adds, the Irish
chronicles of this epoch are only approximate in their dates. Thus,
while the _Four Masters_ (i. 243) makes the death of Mongan A. D. 620,
the _Annals of Ulster_ makes it A. D. 625, the _Chronicum Scotorum_ A.
D. 625, the _Annals of Clonmacnoise_, A. D. 624, and _Egerton MS._ 1782
A. D. 615 (cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 137-9).
[392] J. O'Donovan, _Annals of Ireland by the Four Masters_ (Dublin,
1856), i. 121.
[393] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 336-43; O'Curry, _Manners and
Customs_ iii. 175; _L. U._, 133{a}-134{b}; and _Voy. of Bran_, i. 52.
[394] _Voy. of Bran_, i. 44-5; from _The Conception of Mongan_.
[395] Meyer's version, _Voy. of Bran_, i. 73-4.
[396] Cf. _Voy. of Bran_, i. 137.
[397] _Voy. of Bran_, i. 22-8, quatrains 48-59, &c.
[398] In _L. U._; cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, pp. 311-22; and _Voy. of
Bran_, ii. 47-53.
[399] In the Irish conception of re-birth there is no change of sex: Lug
is re-born as a boy, in Cuchulainn; Finn as Mongan; Etain as a girl. But
it seems that Etain as a mortal had no consciousness of her previous
divine existence, while Cuchulainn and Mongan knew their non-human
origin and pre-existence.
[400] Some time after this, according to one part of the tale, Eochaid
stormed Midir's fairy palace--for the purpose localized in Ireland--and
won Etain back, but the fairies cast a curse on his race for this, and
Conaire, his grandson, fell a victim to it. Such a recovering of Etain
by Eochaid may vaguely suggest a re-birth of Etain, through the power
exerted by Eochaid, who, being a king, is to be regarded in his
non-human nature as one of the Tuatha De Danann himself, like Midir his
rival.
[401] Cf. _The Gilla decair_, in _Silva Gadelica_, pp. 300-3.
[402] Cf. _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 76 ff. The Christian scribe's version
fills up the space between Tuan's death and re-birth by making him pass
eighty years as a stag, twenty as a wild boar, one hundred as an eagle,
and twenty as a salmon (ib., p. 79). In this particular example, the
uninitiated scribe (evidently having failed to grasp an important aspect
of the re-birth doctrine as this was esoterically explained in the
Mysteries, namely, that between death and re-birth, while the conscious
Ego is resident in the Otherworld, the physical atoms of the discarded
human body may transmigrate through various plant and animal bodies)
appears to set forth as Celtic an erroneous doctrine of the
transmigration of the conscious Ego itself (see p. 513 n.). In other
texts, for example in the song which Amairgen (considered the Gaelic
equivalent or even original of the Brythonic Taliessin) sang as he, with
the conquering Sons of Mil, set foot on Ireland, there are similar
transformations, attributed to certain heroes like Taliessin (see the
_Mabinogion_) and Tuan mac Cairill during their disembodied states after
death and until re-birth. But these transformations seem to echo
poetically, and often rationally, a very mystical Celtic pantheism, in
which Man, regarded as having evolved upwards through all forms and
conditions of existence, is at one with all creation:--
I am the wind which blows o'er the sea;
I am the wave of the deep;
I am the bull of seven battles;
I am the eagle on the rock;
I am a tear of the sun;
I am the fairest of plants;
I am a boar for courage;
I am a salmon in the water;
I am a lake in the plain;
I am the world of knowledge;
I am the head of the battle-dealing spear;
I am the god who fashions fire in the head;
Who spreads light in the gathering on the mountain?
Who foretells the ages of the moon?
Who teaches the spot where the sun rests?
And Amairgen also says:--'I am,' [Taliessin] 'I have been' (_Book of
Invasions_; cf. _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 91-2; cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p.
549; cf. Skene, _Four Ancient Books_, i. 276 ff.).
In later times, especially among non-bardic poets, there has been a
similar tendency to misinterpret this primitive mystical Celtic
pantheism into the corrupt form of the re-birth doctrine, namely
transmigration of the human soul into animal bodies. Dr. Douglas Hyde
has sent to me the following evidence:--'I have a poem, consisting of
nearly one hundred stanzas, about a pig who ate an Irish manuscript, and
who by eating it recovered human speech for twenty-four hours and gave
his master an account of his previous embodiments. He had been a
right-hand man of Cromwell, a weaver in France, a subject of the Grand
Signor, &c. The poem might be about one hundred or one hundred and fifty
years old.' It is probable that the poet who composed this poem intended
to add a touch of modern Irish humour by making use of the pig. We
should, nevertheless, bear in mind that the pig (or, as is more commonly
the rule, the wild boar) holds a very curious and prominent position in
the ancient mythology of Ireland, and of Wales as well. It was regarded
as a magical animal (cf. p. 451 n.); and, apparently, was also a Druid
symbol, whose meaning we have lost. Possibly the poet may have been
aware of this. If so, he does not necessarily imply transmigration of
the human soul into animal bodies; but is merely employing symbolism.
[403] See _Taliessin_ in the _Mabinogion_, and the _Book of Taliessin_
in Skene's _Four Ancient Books_, i. 523 ff.; cf. Nutt, _Voy. of Bran_,
ii. 84, and Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 548, 551.
[404] Cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 548-50.
[405] Cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 259; and _Arth. Leg._, p. 252.
[406] Loth, _Les Mabinogion, Kulhwch et Olwen_, p. 187 n.
[407] _Le Morte D'Arthur_, Book XXI, c. vii.
[408] See works on Egyptian mythology and religion, by Maspero; also
Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_, p. 84, &c.
[409] F. L. Griffith, _Stories of the High-priests of Memphis_ (Oxford,
1900), c. iii. The text of this story is written on the back of two
Greek documents, bearing the date of the seventh year of the Emperor
Claudius (A. D. 46-7), not before published.
[410] It is interesting to compare with this episode the episodes of how
the magic of St. Patrick prevailed over the magic of the Druids when the
old and the new religions met in warfare on the Hill of Tara, in the
presence of the high king of Ireland and his court.
[411] E. A. Wallis Budge, _The Gods of the Egyptians_ (London, 1904),
p. 3.
[412] Prescott, _Conquest of Mexico and Conquest of Peru_.
[413] W. Crooke, _The Legends of Krishna_, in _Folk-Lore_, xi. 2-3 ff.
[414] _Laws of Manu_, vii. 8, trans, by G. Bühler.
[415] A. B. Cook, _European Sky-God_, in _Folk-Lore_, xv. 301-4.
[416] Cf. Lucian, _Somn._, 17, &c. See Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 13;
also Tertullian, _De Anima_, c. xxviii, where Pythagoras is described as
having previously been Aethalides, and Euphorbus, and the fisherman
Pyrrhus.
[417] Cf. Huc, _Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la Tartarie et le Thibet_, i.
279 ff.
[418] The doctrine of kingly rule by divine right was substituted after
the conversion of the Roman Empire for the very ancient belief that the
emperor was a god incarnate (not necessarily reincarnate); and the same
christianized aspect of a pre-Christian doctrine stands behind the
English kingship at the present day.
[419] A curious parallel to this Irish doctrine that through re-birth
one suffers for the sins committed in a previous earth-life is found in
the Christian scriptures, where in asking Jesus about a man born blind,
'Rabbi, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he should be born
blind?' the disciple exhibits what must have been a popular Jewish
belief in re-birth quite like the Celtic one. See St. John ix. 1-2.
Though the Rabbis admitted the possibility of ante-natal sin in thought,
this passage seems to point unmistakably to a Jewish re-birth doctrine.
[420] It is interesting to note in connexion with these two
complementary ideas what has been written by Mr. Standish O'Grady
concerning strange phenomena witnessed at the time of Charles Parnell's
funeral:--'While his followers were committing Charles Parnell's remains
to the earth, the sky was bright with strange lights and flames. Only a
coincidence possibly; and yet persons not superstitious have maintained
that there is some mysterious sympathy between the human soul and the
elements.... Those strange flames recalled to my memory what is told of
similar phenomena said to have been witnessed when tidings of the death
of the great Christian Saint, Columba, overran the north-west of Europe,
as perhaps truer than I had imagined.'--_Ireland: Her Story_, pp.
211-12.
[421] Cf. M. Lenihan, _Limerick; its History and Antiquities_ (Dublin,
1866), p. 725.
[422] I take this to mean, somewhat as in the similar case of Dechtire,
the mother of Cuchulainn (see p. 369, above), that the kind of soul or
character which will be reincarnated in the child is determined by the
psychic prenatal conditions which a mother consciously or unconsciously
may set up. If this interpretation, as it seems to be, is correct, we
have in this Welsh belief a surprising comprehension of scientific laws
on the part of the ancient Welsh Druids--from whom the doctrine
comes--which equals, and surpasses in its subtlety, the latest
discoveries of our own psychological embryology, criminology, and
so-called laws of heredity.
[423] The reader is referred to the Rev. T. M. Morgan's latest
publication, _The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Newchurch,
Carmarthenshire_ (Carmarthen, 1910), pp. 155-6.
[424] I found, however, that the original re-birth doctrine has been
either misinterpreted or else corrupted--after Dr. Tylor's theory--into
transmigration into animal bodies among certain Cornish miners in the
St. Just region.
[425] The primitive character of the Incarnation doctrine is clear:
Origen, in refuting a Jewish accusation against Christians, apparently
the natural outgrowth of deep-seated hatred and religious prejudice on
the part of the Jews, that Jesus Christ was born through the adultery of
the Virgin with a certain soldier named Panthera, argues 'that every
soul, for certain mysterious reasons (I speak now according to the
opinions of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus
frequently names), is introduced into a body, and introduced according
to its deserts and former actions'. And, according to Origen's argument,
to assign to Jesus Christ a birth more disgraceful than any other is
absurd, because 'He who sends souls down into the bodies of men' would
not have thus 'degraded Him who was to dare such mighty acts, and to
teach so many men, and to reform so many from the mass of wickedness in
the world'. And Origen adds:--'It is probable, therefore, that this soul
also which conferred more benefit by its residence in the flesh than
that of many men (to avoid prejudice, I do not say "all"), stood in need
of a body not only superior to others, but invested with all excellence'
(_Origen against Celsus_, Book I, c. xxxii).
It is interesting to compare with Origen's theology the following
passage from the _Pistis Sophia_, wherein Jesus in the alleged esoteric
discourse to his disciples refers to the pre-existence of their
souls:--'I took them from the hands of the twelve saviours of the
treasure of light, according to the command of the first mystery. These
powers, therefore, I cast into the wombs of your mothers, when I came
into the world, and they are those which are in your bodies this day'
(_Pistis Sophia_, i. II, Mead's translation).
[426] Cf. Nutt, _Voy. of Bran_, ii. 27 ff., 45 ff., 54 ff., 98-102.
[427] Cf. ib., p. 105.
[428] In this chapter, largely the result of my own special research and
observations in Celtic archaeology, I wish to acknowledge the very
valuable suggestions offered to me by Professor J. Loth, both in his
lectures and personally.
[429] See David MacRitchie, _Fians, Fairies, and Picts_; also his
_Testimony of Tradition_.
[430] Myers, in the _Survival of the Human Personality_ (ii. 55-6),
shows that 'the departed spirit, long after death, seems pre-occupied
with the spot where his bones are laid'. Among contemporary uncultured
races there exists a theory parallel to this one arrived at through
careful scientific research, namely, that ghosts haunt graves and
monuments connected with the dead: according to the Australian Arunta
the 'double' hovers near its body until the body is reduced to dust, the
spirit or soul of the deceased having separated from this 'double' or
ghost at the time of death or soon afterwards (Spenser and Gillen, _Nat.
Tribes of Cent. Aust._).
[431] See _Les Grottes_, t. i; _Les Menhirs, Les Dolmens, Les Tumulus_,
and _Cultes et observances mégalithiques_, t. iv.
[432] On April 17, 1909, at Carnac, in a natural fissure in the body of
the finest menhir at the head of the Alignement of Kermario, I found
quite by chance, while making a very careful examination of the
geological structure of the menhir, a Roman Catholic coin (or medal) of
St. Peter. The place in the menhir where this coin was discovered is on
the south side about fifteen inches above the surface of the ground. The
menhir is very tall and smoothly rounded, and there is no possible way
for the coin to have fallen into the fissure by accident. Nor is there
any probability that the coin was placed there without a serious
purpose; and it is an object such as only an adult would possess. An
examination of the link remaining on the coin, which no doubt formerly
connected it with a necklace or string of prayer-beads, shows that it
has been purposely opened so as to free it at the time it was deposited
in the stone. Had the coin been accidentally torn away from a chain or
string of prayer-beads the link would have presented a different sort of
opening. But it would be altogether unreasonable to suppose that by any
sort of chance the coin could have reached the place where I found it. I
showed the coin to M. Z. Le Rouzic, of the Carnac Museum, and he
considers it, as I do, as evidence or proof of a cult rendered to stones
here in Brittany. The coin must have been secretly placed in the menhir
by some pious peasant as a direct _ex voto_ for some favour received or
demanded. The coin is somewhat discoloured, and has probably been some
years in the stone, though it cannot be very old. And the offering of a
coin to the spirit residing in a menhir is parallel to throwing coins,
pins, or other objects into sacred fountains, which, as we know, is an
undisputed practice.
[433] Cf. A. C. Kruijt, _Het Animisme in den Indischen Archipel_; quoted
in Crawley's _Idea of the Soul_, p. 133.
[434] Cf. Weidemann, _Ancient Egyptian Doct. Immortality_, p. 21.
[435] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_.
[436] Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 143 ff., 169, 172.
[437] Marett, _The Threshold of Religion_, c. i.
[438] Mahé, _Essai_, p. 230.
[439] A famous controversy exists as to whether the Coronation Stone now
in Westminster Abbey is the _Lia Fáil_, or whether the pillar-stone
still at Tara is the _Lia Fáil_. See article by E. S. Hartland in
_Folk-Lore_, xiv. 28-60.
[440] These 'idols' probably were not true images, but simply unshaped
stone pillars planted on end in the earth; and ought, therefore, more
properly to be designated fetishes.
[441] Stokes, in _Rev. Celt._, i. 260; Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 200-1.
[442] Very much first-class evidence suggests that the menhir was
regarded by the primitive Celts both as an abode of a god or as a seat
of divine power, and as a phallic symbol (cf. Jubainville, _Le culte des
menhirs dans le monde celtique_, in _Rev. Celt._, xxvii. 313). As a
phallic symbol, the menhir must have been inseparably related to a
Celtic sun-cult; because among all ancient peoples where phallic worship
has prevailed, the sun has been venerated as the supreme masculine force
in external nature from which all life proceeds, while the phallus has
been venerated as the corresponding force in human nature.
[443] _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 137.
[444] Professor J. Loth says:--'_Étymologiquement, le mot est composé
de_ CROM, _courbe, arque, formant creux, convexe, et de_ LLECH, _pierre
plate_' (_Rev. Celt._, xv. 223, _Dolmen_, _Leach-Derch_, _Peulvan_,
_Menhir_, _Cromlech_). In Cornwall, Wales, and Ireland, instead of the
peculiarly Breton word _dolmen_ (composed of _dol_ [for _tol == tavl_],
meaning _table_, and of _men_ [Middle Breton _maen_], meaning _stone_)
the word _cromlech_ is used. _Cromlech_ is the Welsh equivalent for the
Breton _dolmen_, but Breton archaeologists use _cromlech_ to describe a
circle formed by menhirs.
[445] Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 193-4.
[446] Ib., p. 192; from Sans-Marte's edition, pp. 108-9, 361.
[447] Ib., p. 193.
[448] Ib., pp. 194-5; cf. _Bibliotheca_ of Diodorus Siculus, ii. c. 47.
[449] Edith F. Carey, _Channel Island Folklore_ (Guernsey, 1909).
[450] Mahé, _Essai_, p. 198.
[451] Mahé, _Essai_, pp. 287-9.
[452] The place for holding a _gorsedd_ for modern Welsh initiations,
under the authority of which the Eisteddfod is conducted, must also be
within a circle of stones, 'face to face with the sun and the eye of
light, as there is no power to hold a _gorsedd_ under cover or at night,
but only where and as long as the sun is visible in the heavens'
(Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 208-9; from _Iolo_ MSS., p. 50).
[453] Recently before the Oxford Anthropological Society, Dr. Murray
argued that the satyrs of Greek drama may originally have been masked
initiators in Greek initiations. (Cf. _The Oxford Magazine_, February 3,
1910, p. 173.)
[454] Edith F. Carey, op. cit.
[455] Mahé, _Essai_, pp. 126-9.
[456] Mahé, _Essai_, pp. 126-9.
[457] Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 339.
[458] Edith F. Carey, op. cit.
[459] Montelius' _Les Temps préhistoriques en Suède_, par S. Reinach, p.
126. (Paris, 1895).
[460] H. Schliemann, _Mycenae_ (London, 1878), p. 213.
[461] Walhouse, in _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, vii. 21. These Dravidians
are slightly taller than the pure Negritos, their probable ancestors;
and Indian tradition considers them to be the builders of the Indian
dolmens, just as Celtic tradition considers fairies and _corrigans_
(often described as dark or even black-skinned dwarfs) to be the
builders of dolmens and megaliths among the Celts. Apparently, in such
folk-traditions, which correctly or incorrectly regard fairies,
_corrigans_, or Dravidians as the builders of ancient stone monuments,
there has been preserved a folk-memory of early races of men who may
have been Negritos (pygmy blacks). These races, through a natural
anthropomorphic process, came to be identified with the spirits of the
dead and with other spiritual beings to whom the monuments were
dedicated and at which they were worshipped. Here, again, the Pygmy
Theory is seen at its true relative value: it is subordinate to the
fundamental animism of the Fairy-Faith.
[462] J. Déchelette, _Manuel d'Archéologie préhistorique_ (Paris, 1908),
i. 468, 302, 308, 311, 576, 610, &c.
[463] This famous chambered tumulus 'measures nearly 700 feet in
circumference, or about 225 feet in diameter, and between 40 and 50 feet
in height' (G. Coffey, in _Rl. Ir. Acad. Trans._ [Dublin, 1892], xxx.
68).
[464] G. Coffey, in _Rl. Ir. Acad. Trans._, xxx. 73-92.
[465] Fol. 190 b; trans. O'Curry, _Lectures_, p. 505.
[466] Mr. Coffey quotes from the _Senchus-na-Relec_, in _L. U._, this
significant passage:--'The nobles of the Tuatha De Danann were used to
bury at Brugh (i. e. the Dagda with his three sons; also Lugaidh, and Oe,
and Ollam, and Ogma, and Etan the Poetess, and Corpre, the son of Etan)'
(G. Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 77). The manuscript, however, being late and
directly under Christian influence, echoes but imperfectly very ancient
Celtic tradition: the immortal god-race are therein rationalized by the
transcribers, and made subject to death.
[467] W. C. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_ (London, 1897), ii. 346 n.
[468] As translated in the _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 109-11.
[469] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.
[470] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 346-7 n.
[471] Ib., ii. 347 n.
[472] A good example of a saint's stone bed can be seen now at
Glendalough, the stone bed of St. Kevin, high above a rocky shore of the
lake.
[473] Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS., by Michael
O'Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and translated by Douglas Hyde.
[474] Coffey, op. cit., xxv. 73-4, from R. I. A. MS. by Michael
O'Longan, dated 1810, p. 10, and trans. by Douglas Hyde.
[475] Borlase, op. cit., ii. 347 n.
[476] O'Donovan, _Four Masters_, i. 22 n.
[477] Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 148-50.
[478] Cf. O'Curry, _Manners and Customs_, ii. 122; iii. 5, 74, 122;
Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, pp. 150, 150 n.; Jubainville, _Essai d'un
Catalogue_, p. 244.
[479] Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 194.
[480] Math ab Mathonwy's Irish counterpart is Math mac Umóir, the
magician (_Book of Leinster_, f. 9{b}; cf. Rhys, _Trans. Third Inter.
Cong. Hist. Religions_, Oxford, 1908, ii. 211).
[481] Rhys, ib., pp. 225-6; cf. R. B. _Mabinogion_, p. 60; _Triads_,
i. 32, ii. 20, iii. 90. A fortified hill-top now known as Pen y Gaer, or
'Hill of the Fortress', on the western side of the Conway, on a mountain
within sight of the railway station of Tal y Cafn, Carnarvonshire, is
regarded by Sir John Rhys as the site of a long-forgotten cult of
Math the Ancient. (Rhys, ib., p. 225).
[482] This stone basin, now in the centre of the inner chamber, seems
originally to have stood in the east recess, the largest and most richly
inscribed. It is 4 feet long, 3 feet 6 inches across, and 1 foot thick.
(Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 14, 21).
[483] Cf. W. M. Flinders Petrie, _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_
(London, 1883), p. 201.
[484] All of the chief megaliths of this type, together with the chief
alignements, which I have personally inspected--with the aid of a
compass--in Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and
Brittany, are definitely aligned east and west. It cannot be said,
however, that _all_ megalithic monuments throughout Celtic countries
show definite orientation (see Déchelette's _Manuel d'Archéologie_).
[485] L. P. McCarty, _The Great Pyramid Jeezeh_ (San Francisco, 1907),
p. 402.
[486] Jubainville, _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, p. 28.
[487] Maspero, _Les Contes populaires de l'Égypte Ancienne_,{3} p. 74 n.
[488] Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 426.
[489] W. H. Prescott, _Conquest of Peru_, i, c. 3.
[490] Rochefort, _Iles Antilles_, p. 365; cf. Tylor, _P. C._,{4} ii. 424.
[491] Colebrooke, _Essays_, vols. i, iv, v; cf. Tylor, _P. C._,{4} 425.
[492] _Illus. Hist. and Pract. of Thugs_ (London, 1837), p. 46; cf.
Tylor, _P. C._,{4} ii. 425.
[493] Augustin, _de Serm. Dom. in Monte_, ii. 5; cf. Tylor, _P. C._,{4}
ii. 427-8.
[494] Ezek. viii. 16. The popular opinion that Christians face the east
in prayer, or have altars eastward because Jerusalem is eastward, does
not fit in with facts.
[495] Cf. Lenormant, _Chaldean Magic_, p. 88; also Tylor, _Prim.
Cult._,{4} ii. 48-9.
[496] Though not a Mason, the writer draws his knowledge from Masons of
the highest rank, and from published works by Masons like Mr. Carty's
_The Great Pyramid Jeezeh_.
[497] Cf. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, ii. 347 n.
[498] C. Piazzi Smyth, _Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid_ (London,
1890).
[499] Flinders Petrie, _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_, pp. 169,
222.
[500] C. Piazzi Smyth, op. cit.
[501] In 1770, when New Grange apparently was not covered with a growth
of trees as now, Governor Pownall visited it and described it as like a
pyramid in general outline: 'The pyramid in its present state' is 'but a
ruin of what it was' (Coffey, op. cit., xxx. 13).
[502] Le Dr. G. de C., _Locmariaquer et Gavr'inis_ (Vannes, 1876), p.
18.
[503] According to Le Dr. G. de C., op. cit., p. 18.
[504] Mr. Coffey says of similar details in Irish tumuli:--'In the
construction of such chambers it is usual to find a sort of sill or low
stone placed across the entrance into the main chamber, and at the
openings into the smaller chambers or recesses; such stones also occur
laid at intervals across the bottom of the passages. This forms a marked
feature in the construction at Dowth, and in the cairns on the Loughcrew
Hills, but is wholly absent at New Grange' (op. cit., xxx. 15). New
Grange, however, has suffered more or less from vandalism, and
originally may have contained similar stone sills.
[505] Flinders Petrie, _The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_, p. 216.
[506] Maspero, op. cit., p. 69 n., &c. The world-wide anthropomorphic
tendency to construct tombs for the gods and for the dead after the plan
of earthly dwellings is as evident in the excavations at Mycenae as in
ancient Egypt and in Celtic lands.
[507] Cf. Bruns, _Canones apostolorum et conciliorum saeculorum_, ii.
133.
[508] Cf. F. Maassen, _Concilia aevi merovingici_, p. 133.
[509] Cf. Boretius, _Capitularia regum Francorum_, i. 59; for each of
the above references cf. Jubainville, _Le culte des menhirs dans le
monde celtique_, in _Rev. Celt._, xxvii. 317.
[510] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 427.
[511] See Villemarqué _sur Bretagne_.
[512] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 326; quoted from _De Glor. Conf._, c. 2.
[513] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 326; quoted from _De Glor. Conf._, c. 2.
[514] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 326; quoted from _Goth._, lib. ii.
[515] A. W. Moore, in _Folk-Lore_, v. 212-29.
[516] Cf. Rhys, _Arthurian Legend_, p. 247.
[517] Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 729.
[518] Stokes, _Tripartite Life of Patrick_, pp. 99-101.
[519] Ib., text, pp. 123, 323, and Intro., p. 159.
[520] Book II, 69-70; see our study, p. 267.
[521] Rennes _Dinnshenchas_, Stokes's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, xv. 457.
[522] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 323.
[523] The Celts may have viewed the mistletoe on the sacred oak as the
seat of the tree's life, because in the winter sleep of the leafless oak
the mistletoe still maintains its own foliage and fruit, and like the
heart of a sleeper continues pulsing with vitality. The mistletoe thus
being regarded as the heart-centre of the divine spirit in the oak-tree
was cut with a golden sickle by the arch-druid clad in pure white robes,
amid great religious solemnity, and became a vicarious sacrifice or
atonement for the worshippers of the tree god. (Cf. Frazer, _G. B._,{2}
iii. 447 ff.)
[524] Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xvi. 95; cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 218.
[525] _Dissert._, viii; cf. Rhys, ib., p. 219.
[526] Meineke's ed., xii. 5, 1; cf. Rhys, ib., p. 219. The oak-tree
is pre-eminently the holy tree of Europe. Not only Celts, but Slavs,
worshipped amid its groves. To the Germans it was their chief god; the
ancient Italians honoured it above all other trees; the original image
of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been a natural oak-tree.
So at Dodona, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in a sacred oak. Cf.
Frazer, _G. B._,{2} iii. 346 ff.
[527] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, pp. 333-4; quotation from _Hist. du Maine_, i.
17.
[528] Cf. Mahé, _Essai_, p. 334; quoted from _Lib._ VII, _indict._ i,
_epist._ 5.
[529] Stokes, _Tripartite Life_, p. 409.
[530] Cf. Wood-Martin, _Traces of the Older Faiths in Ireland_, i. 305.
[531] W. Gregor, _Notes on Beltene Cakes_, in _Folk-Lore_, vi. 5.
[532] Temple, _Legends of the Panjab_, in _Folk-Lore_, x. 406.
[533] Lefèvre, _Le Culte des Morts chez les Latins_, in _Rev. Trad.
Pop._, ix. 195-209.
[534] See _Folk-Lore_, vi. 192.
[535] The term 'People of Peace' seems, however, to have originated from
confounding _sid_, 'fairy abode,' and _síd_, 'peace.'
[536] Cf. _Le Cycle Myth. Irl._, p. 102.
[537] The crocodile as the mystic symbol of Sîtou provides one key to
unlock the mysteries of what eminent Egyptologists have erroneously
called animal worship, erroneously because they have interpreted
literally what can only be interpreted symbolically. The crocodile is
called the 'son of Sîtou' in the _Papyrus magique_, Harris, pl. vi, ll.
8-9 (cf. Maspero, _Les Contes populaires de l'Égypte Ancienne_,[539]
Intro., p. 56); and as the waters seem to swallow the sun as it sinks
below the horizon, so the crocodile, as Sîtou representing the waters,
swallows the Children of Osiris, as the Egyptians called themselves. On
the other hand, Osiris is typified by the white bull, in many nations
the sun emblem, white being the emblem of purity and light, while the
powers of the bull represent the masculinity of the sun, which
impregnates all nature, always thought of as feminine, with life germs.
[538] Cf. Maspero, op. cit., Intro., p. 49.
[539] Cf. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 854.
[540] Cf. Lefèvre, _Rev. Trad. Pop._, ix. 195-209.
[541] J. G. Campbell collected in Scotland two versions of a parallel
episode, but concerning Loch Lurgan. In both versions the flight begins
by Fionn's foster-mother carrying Fionn, and in both, when she is tired,
Fionn carries her and runs so fast that when the loch is reached only
her shanks are left. These he throws out on the loch, and hence its name
Loch Lurgan, 'Lake of the Shanks.' (_The Fians_, pp. 18-19).
[542] During the seventeenth century, the English government, acting
through its Dublin representatives, ordered this original Cave or
Purgatory to be demolished; and with the temporary suppression of the
ceremonies which resulted and the consequent abandonment of the island,
the Cave, which may have been filled up, has been lost.
[543] Thomas Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_ (London, 1844), pp. 67-8.
[544] Wright, op. cit., p. 69.
[545] In the face of all the legends told of pilgrims who have been in
Patrick's Purgatory, it seems that either through religious frenzy like
that produced in Protestant revivals, or else through some strange
influence due to the cave itself after the preliminary disciplines, some
of the pilgrims have had most unusual psychic experiences. Those who
have experienced fasting and a rigorous life for a prescribed period
affirm that there results a changed condition, physical, mental, and
spiritual, so that it is very probable that the Christian pilgrims to
the Purgatory, like the pagan pilgrims who 'fasted on' the Tuatha De
Danann in New Grange, were in good condition to receive impressions of a
psychical nature such as the Society for Psychical Research is beginning
to believe are by no means rare to people susceptible to them. Neophytes
seeking initiation among the ancients had to undergo even more rigorous
preparations than these; for they were expected while entranced to leave
their physical bodies and in reality enter the purgatorial state, as we
shall presently have occasion to point out.
[546] Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_, pp. 62 ff.
[547] L. R. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ (Oxford, 1907), iii.
126-98, &c.
[548] Cf. Athenaeus, 614 A; Aristoph., _Nubes_, 508; and Harper's _Dict.
Class. Lit. and Antiq._, p. 1615.
[549] Cf. O. Seyffert, _Dict. Class. Antiquities_, trans. (London,
1895), _Mithras_.
[550] Brasseur, _Mexique_, iii. 20, &c.; Tylor, _P. C._,{4} ii. 45.
[551] Cf. Hutton Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_ (New York, 1908),
p. 38, and _passim_.
[552] In the ancient Greek world the annual celebration of the Mysteries
drew great concourses of people from all regions round the
Mediterranean; to the modern Breton world the chief religious Pardons
are annual events of such supreme importance that, after preparing
plenty of food for the pilgrimage, the whole family of a pious peasant
of Lower Brittany will desert farm and work dressed in their beautiful
and best costumes for one of these Pardons, the most picturesque, the
most inspiring, and the highest folk-festivals still preserved by the
Roman Church; while to Roman Catholics in all countries a pilgrimage to
Lough Derg is the sacred event of a lifetime.
In the Breton Pardons, as in the purgatorial rites, we seem to see the
survivals of very ancient Celtic Mysteries strikingly like the Mysteries
of Eleusis. The greatest of the Pardons, the Pardon of St. Anne d'Auray,
will serve as a basis for comparison; and while in some respects it has
had a recent and definitely historical origin (or revival), this origin
seems on the evidence of archaeology to have been a restoration, an
expansion, and chiefly a Christianization of prehistoric rites then
already partly fallen into decay. Such rites remained latent in the
folk-memory, and were originally celebrated in honour of the sacred
fountain, and probably also of Isis and the child, whose terra-cotta
image was ploughed up in a neighbouring field by the famous peasant
Nicolas, and naturally regarded by him and all who saw it as of St. Anne
and the Holy Child. Thus, in the Pardon of St. Anne d'Auray, which
extends over three days, there is a torch-light procession at night
under ecclesiastical sanction; as in the Ceres Mysteries, wherein the
neophytes with torches kindled sought all night long for Proserpine.
There are purification rites, not especially under ecclesiastical
sanction, at the holy fountain now dedicated to St. Anne, like the
purification rites of the Eleusinian worshippers at the sea-shore and
their visit to a holy well. There are mystery plays, recently
instituted, as in Greek initiation ceremonies; sacred processions, led
by priests, bearing the image of St. Anne and other images, comparable
to Greek sacred processions in which the god Iacchos was borne on the
way to Eleusis. The all-night services in the dimly-lighted church of
St. Anne, with the special masses in honour of the Christian saints and
for the dead, are parallel to the midnight ceremonies of the Greeks in
their caves of initiation and to the libations to the gods and to the
spirits of the departed at Greek initiations. Finally, in the Greek
mysteries there seems to have been some sort of expository sermon or
exhortation to the assembled neophytes quite comparable to the special
appeal made to the faithful Catholics assembled in the magnificent
church of St. Anne d'Auray by the bishops and high ecclesiastics of
Brittany. (For these Classical parallels compare Farnell, _Cults of the
Greek States_, iii, _passim_.)
[553] Cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 411, &c.
[554] O'Curry, _Lectures_, pp. 586-7.
[555] There is this very significant legend on record about the Cave of
Cruachan:--'Magh Mucrime, now, pigs of magic came out of the cave of
Cruachain, and that is Ireland's gate of Hell.' And 'Out of it, also,
came the Red Birds that withered up everything in Erin that their breath
would touch, till the Ulstermen slew them with their slings.' (_B. of
Leinster_, p. 288a; Stokes's trans., in _Rev. Celt._, xiii. 449; cf.
_Silva Gadelica_, ii. 353.)
[556] Forbes, _Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern_ (Edinburgh, 1874),
pp. 285, 345.
[557] Cf. Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_, pp. 81-2.
[558] Cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 24; also Bergier, _Dict. de
Théol._, v. 405.
[559] Cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 32. But there is some
disagreement in this matter of dates: Petrus Damianus, _Vita S.
Odilonis_, in the Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, January 1, records a
legend of how the Abbot Odilon decreed that November 2, the day after
All Saints' Day, should be set apart for services for the departed (cf.
Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 37 n.).
[560] Cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 1 n.
[561] Part II, sec. 4; c. 4, par. 8; cf. Bergier, _Dict. de Théol._, iv.
322.
[562] P. 11{a}, l. 19; in Stokes's _Tripartite Life_, Intro., p. 194.
[563] _Enchiridion_, chap. cx; _Testament of St. Ephrem_ (ed. Vatican),
ii. 230, 236; Euseb., _de Vita Constant._, liv. iv, c. lx. 556, c. lxx.
562; cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 30-1.
[564] St. Ambroise, _de Obitu Theodosii_, ii. 1197; cf. Godescard, _Vies
des Saints_, xi. 31 n.
[565] Cf. Godescard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 31-2.
[566] I am indebted to Mr. William McDougall, M.A., Wilde Reader in
Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford, for having read through
and criticized the first draft of this section; and while he is in no
way responsible for the views set forth herein, nevertheless his
suggestions for the improvement of their scientific framework have been
of very great value. I must also express my obligation to him for having
suggested through his Oxford lectures a good share of the important
material interwoven into chapter xii touching the vitalistic view of
evolution.
[567] Cf. C. Du Prel, _Philosophy of Mysticism_ (London, 1889), i. 7,
11.
[568] T. Ribot, _The Diseases of Personality_; cf. J. L. Nevius, _Demon
Possession_ (London, 1897), pp. 234-5.
[569] _Proc. S. P. R._ (London), v. 167; cf. A. Lang, _Making of
Religion_, p. 64.
[570] W. James, _Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'_, in _American
Magazine_ (October 1909).
[571] A. Lang, _Cock Lane and Common Sense_ (London, 1896), p. 35.
[572] According to Professor Freud, the well-known neurologist of
Vienna, external stimuli are not admitted to the dream-consciousness in
the same manner that they would be admitted to the waking-consciousness,
but they are disguised and altered in particular ways (cf. S. Freud,
_Die Traumdeutung_, 2nd ed., Vienna, 1909; and S. Ferenczi, _The
Psychological Analysis of Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910,
No. 2, xxi. 318, &c.).
[573] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 135.
[574] G. F. Stout, _Mr. F. W. Myers on 'Human Personality and its
Survival of Bodily Death'_, in _Hibbert Journal_, ii, No. 1 (London,
October 1903), p. 56.
[575] F. W. H. Myers, _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily
Death_ (London, 1903), i. 131.
[576] R. L. Stevenson, _Across the Plains_, chapter on Dreams.
[577] Stout, op. cit., p. 54.
[578] Freud, op. cit.; Ferenczi, op. cit.; E. Jones, _Freud's Theory of
Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 283-308.
[579] Freud, _The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis_, in _Amer.
Journ. Psych._, April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 203.
[580] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 33.
[581] Myers, op. cit., i. 134.
[582] Fechner, _Zentralblatt für Anthropologie_, p. 774; cf. Du Prel,
op. cit., i. 92.
[583] Haddock, _Somnolism and Psychism_, p. 213; cf. Du Prel, op. cit.,
i. 93.
[584] Perty, _Mystische Erscheinungen_, i. 305; cf. Du Prel, op. cit.,
ii. 63.
[585] Kerner, _Seherin v. Prevorst_, p. 196; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii.
65.
[586] Chardel, _Essai de Psychologie_, p. 344; cf. Du Prel, op. cit.,
ii. 64.
[587] Cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 88-9.
[588] Myers, op. cit., chapter vi.
[589] Stout, op. cit., pp. 64, 61-2.
[590] Lang, _Mr. Myers's Theory of 'The Subliminal Self'_, in _Hibbert
Journal_, ii, No. 3 (April 1904), p. 530.
[591] The peculiar and often unique characteristics of the fairy-folk of
any given fairy-faith, as we have pointed out in chapter iii (pp. 233,
282), are to be regarded as being merely anthropomorphically coloured
reflections of the social life or environment of the particular ethnic
group who hold the particular fairy-faith; and, as Mr. Lang here
suggests, when they are stripped of these superficial characteristics,
which are due to such social psychology, they become ghosts of the dead
or other spiritual beings.
Our own researches lead us to the conviction that behind the purely
mythical aspect of these fairy-faiths there exists a substantial
substratum of real phenomena not yet satisfactorily explained by
science; that such phenomena have been in the past and are at the
present time the chief source of the belief in fairies, that they are
the foundation underlying all fairy mythologies. We need only refer to
the following phenomena observed among Celtic and other peoples, and
attributed by them to 'fairy' or 'spirit' agency: (1) music which
competent percipients believe to be of non-human origin, and hence by
the Celts called 'fairy' music, whether this be vocal or instrumental in
sound; (2) the movement of objects without known cause; (3) rappings and
other noises called 'supernatural' (cf. pp. 81 n., 481-4, 488; also pp.
47, 57, 61, 67, 71, 72, 74, 88, 94, 98, 101, 120, 124, 125, 131, 132,
134, 139, 148, 156, 172, 181, 187, 213, 218, 220, &c.).
[592] It is our hope that this book will help to lessen the marked
deficiency of recorded testimony concerning 'fairy' beings and 'fairy'
phenomena observed by reliable percipients. We have endeavoured to
demonstrate that genuine 'fairy' phenomena and genuine 'spirit'
phenomena are in most cases identical. Hence we believe that if 'spirit'
phenomena are worthy of the attention of science, equally so are 'fairy'
phenomena. The fairy-belief _in its typical_ or _conventional aspects_
(apart from the animism which we discovered at the base of the belief)
is, as was pointed out in our anthropological examination of the
evidence (pp. 281-2), due to a very complex social psychology. In this
chapter we have eliminated all social psychology, as not being the
essential factor in the Fairy-Faith. Therefore, from our point of view,
Mr. Lang's implied explanation of the typical fairy-visions, that they
are due to 'suggestion acting on the subconscious self', does not apply
to the rarer kind of fairy visions which form part of our x-quantity
(see pp. 60-6, 83-4, &c.). If it does, then it also applies to all
non-Celtic visions of spirits, in ancient and in modern times; and the
animistic hypothesis now accepted by most psychical researchers, namely,
that discarnate intelligences exist independent of the percipient, must
be set aside in favour of the non-animistic hypothesis. If, on the other
hand, it be admitted that 'fairy' phenomena are, as we maintain,
essentially the same as 'spirit' phenomena, then the belief in fairies
ceases to be purely mythical, and 'fairy' visions by a Celtic seer who
is physically and psychically sound do not seem to arise from that
seer's suggestion acting on his own subconsciousness; but certain types
of 'fairy' visions undoubtedly do arise from suggestion, _coming from a
'fairy' or other intelligence_, acting on the conscious or subconscious
content of the percipient's mind (cf. pp. 484-7).
[593] Lang, _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, pp. 208, 35.
[594] Sir Oliver Lodge, _Psychical Research_, in _Harper's Mag._, August
1908 (New York and London).
[595] Sir Oliver Lodge, _The Survival of Man_ (London, 1909), p. 339.
[596] James, op. cit., pp. 587-9.
[597] Readers are referred to such authoritative works as the _Phantasms
of the Living_ (London, 1886), by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore; to the
_Report on the Census of Hallucinations of Modern Spiritualism_, by
Professor Sidgwick's Committee; to the _Naturalisation of the
Supernatural_ (New York and London, 1908), by F. Podmore; to the
_Survival of the Human Personality_, by F. W. H. Myers; and other like
works, all of which originate from the _Proceedings of the Society for
Psychical Research_ (London).
[598] C. Flammarion, _Mysterious Psychic Forces_, pp. 441, 431.
[599] Sir Wm. Crookes, _Notes of an Enquiry into Phenomena called
Spiritual, during the years 1870-73_ (London), Part III, p. 87.
[600] See _Quart. Journ. Science_ (July 1871).
[601] Cf. Lang, _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, p. 281; and for other
cases of objects moved without contact see ib., pp. 50, 52, 53, 58, 122
ff. See also F. Podmore's article on _Poltergeists_, in _Proceedings S.
P. R._, xii. 45-115; and his _Naturalisation of the Supernatural_,
chapter vii.
[602] Sir Wm. Crookes, op. cit., Part III, p. 100.
[603] Ib., p. 94.
[604] Lang, _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, pp. 60, 81, 139, &c.
[605] Using as a basis the data of Professor Sidgwick's Committee and
the results earlier obtained by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (see
_Phantasms of the Living_), Mr. William McDougall shows concisely the
probability of an apparition appearing within twelve hours of the death
of the individual whom it represents. He says:--'... of all recognized
apparitions of living persons, only one in 19,000 may be expected to be
a death-coincidence of this sort. But the census shows that of 1,300
recognized apparitions of living persons 30 are death-coincidences, and
that is equivalent to 440 in 19,000. Hence, of recognized
hallucinations, those coincident with death are 440 times more numerous
than we should expect, if no causal relation obtained.' And Mr.
McDougall concludes: '... since good evidence of telepathic
communication has been experimentally obtained, the least improbable
explanation of these death-apparitions is that the dying person exerts
upon his distant friend some telepathic influence which generates an
hallucinatory perception of himself' (_Hallucinations_, in _Ency.
Brit._, 11th ed., xii. 863).
[606] Myers, op. cit., ii. 65, 45 ff., 49 ff., &c.
[607] Nevius, _Demon Possession_, Introduction, pp. iv, vii; pp. 240-2,
144-5. In accordance with all such phenomena, psychical researchers have
logically called spirits manifesting themselves through the body of a
living person possessing spirits. And as in the case of Chinese
demon-possession, the phenomena of mediumship often result in the moral
derangement, insanity, or even suicide on the part of 'mediums' who so
unwisely exhibit it without special preparation or no preparation at
all, and too often in complete ignorance of a possible gradual
undermining of their psychic life, will-power, and even physical health.
All of this seems to offer direct and certain evidence to sustain
Christians and non-Christians in their condemnation of all forms of
necromancy or calling up of spirits. The following statement will make
our position towards mediumship of the most common kind clear:
In Druidism, for one example, disciples for training in magical sciences
are said to have spent twenty years in severe study and special
psychical training before deemed fit to be called Druids and thus to
control daemons, ghosts, or all invisible entities capable of possessing
living men and women. And even now in India and elsewhere there is
reported to be still the same ancient course of severe disciplinary
training for candidates seeking magical powers. But in modern
Spiritualism conditions are altogether different in most cases, and
'mediums' instead of controlling with an iron will, as a magician does,
spirits which become manifest in _séances_, surrender entirely their
will-power and whole personality to them.
[608] Cf. Sigmund Freud, _The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis_,
in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, xxi, No. 2 (April 1910).
[609] The fact that all matter is capable of assuming a gaseous or
invisible state furnishes good scientific reasons for postulating the
actual existence of intelligent beings possessed of an invisible yet
physical body. There may well be on and about our planet many distinct
invisible organic life-forms undiscovered by zoologists. To deny such a
possibility would be unscientific.
[610] Cf. _Communication adressée au D{r} J. Dupré_, p. 382 of an essay
on _La Métempsycose basée sur les Principes de la Biologie et du
Magnétisme physiologique_, in _Le Hasard_ (Paris, 1909), by P. C. Revel.
Cases of regeneration among the aged are known, and these show how the
subliminal life-forces try to renew the physical body when it is worn
out (cf. Revel, ib., p. 372).
[611] Cf. Revel, op. cit., p. 295 ff.
[612] If scientists discover, as they probably will in time, what they
call the secret of life, they will not have discovered the secret of
life at all. What they will have discovered will be the physical
conditions under which life manifests itself. In other words, science
will most likely soon be able to set up artificially in a laboratory
such physical conditions as exist in nature naturally, and by means of
which life is able to manifest itself through matter. Life will still be
as great a mystery as it is to-day; though short-sighted materialists
are certain to announce to an eager world that the final problem of the
universe has been solved and that life is merely the resultant of a
subtle chemical compound.
[613] Professor Freud, after long and careful study, arrived at the
following conclusion:--'The child has his sexual impulse and activities
from the beginning, he brings them with him into the world, and from
these the so-called normal sexuality of adults emerges by a significant
development through manifold stages.' And Dr. Sanford Bell, in an
earlier writing entitled _A Preliminary Study of the Emotions of Love
between the Sexes_ (see _Amer. Journ. Psych._, 1902), came to a similar
conclusion (cf. Freud, op. cit., pp. 207-8).
[614] Cf. Hans Driesch, _The Science and Philosophy of the Organism_
(London, 1908); and Henri Bergson, _L'Évolution créatrice_ (Paris,
1908).
[615] This Celtic view of non-personal immortality completely fits in
with all the voluminous data of psychical research: after forty years of
scientific research into psychics there are no proofs yet adduced that
the human personality as a self-sufficient unit of consciousness
survives indefinitely the death of its body. Granted that it does
survive as a ghost for an undetermined period, generally to be counted
in years, during which time it seems to be gradually fading out or
disintegrating, there is no reliable evidence anywhere to show that a
personality _as such_ has manifested through a 'medium' or otherwise
after an interval of one thousand years, or even of five hundred years.
We have, in fact, no knowledge of the survival of a human personality
one hundred years after, and probably there are no good examples of such
a survival twenty-five years after the death of the body. Such an
eminent psychical researcher as William James recognized this drift of
the data of psychics, and when he died he held the conviction that there
is no personal immortality (see p. 505 n. following).
[616] Though not inclined toward the vitalistic view of human evolution,
M. Th. Ribot very closely approaches the Celtic view of the Ego (or
individuality) as being the principle which gives unity to different
personalities, but he does not have in mind personalities in the sense
implied by the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth:--'The Ego
subjectively considered consists of a sum of conscious states'
(comparable to personalities).... 'In brief, the Ego may be considered
in two ways: either in its actual form, and then it is the sum of
existing conscious states; or, in its continuity with the past, and then
it is formed by the memory according to the process outlined above. It
would seem, according to this view, that the identity of the Ego
depended entirely upon the memory. But such a conception is only
partial. Beneath the unstable compound phenomenon in all its protean
phases of growth, degeneration, and reproduction, there is a something
that remains: and this something is the undefined consciousness, the
product of all the vital processes, constituting bodily perception and
what is expressed in one word--the _coenæsthesis_.' (_The Diseases of
Memory_, pp. 107-8).
William James, the greatest psychologist of our epoch, after a long and
faithful life consecrated to the search after a true understanding of
human consciousness, finally arrived at substantially the same
conviction as Fechner did, that there is no personal immortality, but
that the personality 'is but a temporary and partial separation and
circumscription of a part of a larger whole, into which it is reabsorbed
at death' (W. McDougall, _In Memory of William James_, in _Proc. S. P.
R._, Part LXII, vol. xxv, p. 28). He thus virtually accepted the
mystic's view that the personality after the death of the body is
absorbed into a higher power, which, to our mind, is comparable with the
Ego conceived as the unifying principle behind personalities. In one of
his last writings, James explained his belief in such a manner as to
make it coincide at certain points with the view held by modern Celtic
mystics which has been presented above; the difference being that,
unlike these mystics, James was not prepared to say (though he raised
the question) whether or not behind the 'mother-sea' of consciousness
there is, as Fechner believed, a hierarchy of consciousnesses
(themselves subordinate to still higher consciousnesses, and comparable
with so many Egos or Individualities) which send out emanations as
temporary human personalities. The organic psychical forms (if we may
use such an expression) of such temporary human personalities would have
to be regarded from James's point of view as being built up out of the
psychical elements constituting the 'mother-sea' of consciousness, just
as the human body is built up out of the physical elements in the realm
of matter:--'Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited
enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this,
that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the
forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their
leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other's foghorns. But the
trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the
islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is
a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality'
(used as synonymous with personality and not in our distinct sense)
'builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge
as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our "normal" consciousness' (the
personality as we distinguish it from the Ego or individuality) 'is
circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but
the fence is weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond break in,
showing the otherwise unverifiable common connexion. Not only psychic
research, but metaphysical philosophy and speculative biology are led in
their own ways to look with favour on some such "pan-psychic" view of
the universe as this.' (W. James, _The Confidences of a Psychical
Researcher_, in _The American Magazine_, October 1909). Again, James
wrote:--'The drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us
very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with
which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious.' (_A Pluralistic
Universe_, New York, 1909, p. 309.)
[617] W. James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_ (London, 1902), pp.
511, 236 n.
[618] M. Th. Ribot, in _Diseases of Memory_ (London, 1882), pp. 82-98
ff., gives numerous examples of such loss and recovery of memory.
[619] Cf. Freud, op. cit., pp. 192, 204-5, &c.
[620] Cf. A. Moll, _Hypnotism_ (London, 1890), pp. 141 ff., 126.
[621] Cf. A. Moll, _Hypnotism_ (London, 1890), pp. 141 ff., 126.
[622] Cf. Freud, op. cit., p. 192.
[623] Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1906); cf. S.
Ferenczi, _The Psychological Analysis of Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ.
Psych._ (April 1910), xxi, No. 2, p. 326.
[624] A similar state of high development is to be assumed for a great
Celtic hero like Arthur, who were he to be re-born would (as is said to
have been the case with King Mongan, the reincarnation of Finn) bring
with him memory of his past: unlike the consciousness of the normal man,
the consciousness of one of the Divine Ones is normally the
subconsciousness, the consciousness of the individuality; and not the
personal consciousness, which, like the personality, is non-permanent
_in itself_. This further illustrates the Celtic theory of non-personal
immortality.
[625] Ribot, op. cit., p. 100 ff.
[626] Cf. Lang, _Cock Lane and Common Sense_, pp. 217 ff. _Blackwood's
Magazine_, cxxix (January 1881), contains a remarkable account of a
child who remembered previous lives. Lord Lindsay, in his _Letters_ (ed.
of 1847, p. 351), refers to a feeling when he beheld the river Kadisha
descending from Lebanon, of having in a previous life seen the same
scene. Dickens in his _Pictures from Italy_ testifies to a parallel
experience. E. D. Walker, in his interesting work on _Reincarnation_
(pp. 42-5) has brought together many other well-attested cases of people
who likewise have thought they could remember fragments of a former
state of conscious existence. In his diary, under date of February 17,
1828, Sir Walter Scott wrote as follows:--'I cannot, I am sure, tell if
it is worth marking down, that yesterday, at dinner-time, I was
strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of pre-existence, viz.
a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time.'
Lockhart, _Life of Scott_ (first ed.), vii. 114. Bulwer Lytton in
_Godolphin_ (chapter xv), and Edgar Allen Poe in _Eureka_, record
similar experiences. Mr. H. Fielding Hall, in _The Soul of a People_{4}
(London, 1902), pp. 290-308, reports several very remarkable cases of
responsible natives of Burma who stated that they could recall former
lives passed by them as men and women. Mr. Hall has carefully
investigated these cases, and gives us the impression that they are
worthy of scientific consideration.
[627] Cf. Ferenczi, op. cit., p. 316, &c. Professor Freud's theory of
dreams supports entirely, but does not imply our hypothesis that some
(and probably many) abnormal dreams of a rare kind, whether good or bad
in tendency, may be due to the latent content of subconsciousness, out
of which they undoubtedly arise, having been collected and carried over
from a previous state of consciousness parallel to our present one. In
respect to our present life Professor Freud holds, as a result of
psycho-analysis of thousands of dream subjects, that the latent content
of every dream in the adult is directly dependent upon mental processes
which frequently reach back to the earliest childhood; and he gives
detailed cases in illustration. In other words, there is always a latent
dream-material behind the conscious dream-content, and probably a part
of it was innate in the child at birth, and hence, according to our
view, was pre-existent. (Cf. Ernest Jones, _Freud's Theory of Dreams_,
in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910, xxi, No. 2, pp. 301 ff.)
[628] Cf. Du Prel, _Philosophy of Mysticism_, ii. 25 ff., 34 ff.
[629] _The Dream of Ravan_, in _Dublin Univ. Mag._, xliii. 468.
[630] Myers, in _Proc. S. P. R._, vii. 305.
[631] James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, p. 483.
[632] The esoteric teaching in many of the mystic schools of antiquity
was that the atoms of each human body transmigrate through all lower
forms of life during the long period supposed to intervene between death
and re-birth of the individuality. This doctrine seems to be one of the
main sources of the corruption which crept into the ancient re-birth
doctrines and transformed many of them into doctrines of transmigration
of the human soul into animal and plant bodies; and some unscrupulous
priesthoods openly taught such corrupted doctrines as a means of making
the ignorant populace submissive to ecclesiastical rule, the theological
theory expounded by such priesthoods being that the evil-doer, but not
the keeper of the letter of the canonical law, is condemned to expiate
his sins through birth in brute bodies. The pure form of the mystic
doctrine was that after the lapse of the long period of disembodiment
the individuality reconstructs its human body anew by drawing to itself
the identical atoms which constituted its previous human body--these
atoms, and not the individuality, having transmigrated through all the
lower kingdoms. Such an esoteric doctrine probably lies behind the
exoteric Egyptian teaching that the human soul after the death of its
body passes through all plant and animal bodies during a period of three
thousand years, after which it returns to human embodiment. Some
scholars have held that the exoteric interpretation of this theory and
its consequent literal interpretation as a transmigration doctrine led
the Egyptians to mummify the bodies of their dead. Cf. Lucretius, _De
Rerum Natura_, Book III, ll. 843-61; and Herodotus, Book II, on Egypt.
[633] Cf. Dr. L. S. Fugairon's _La Survivance de l'âme, ou la Mort et la
Renaissance chez les êtres vivants; études de physiologie et
d'embryologie philosophiques_ (Paris, 1907); cf. Revel, _Le Hasard_, p.
457.
[634] Darwin never considered or attempted to suggest what it is that of
itself really evolves, for it cannot be the physical body which only
_grows_ from immaturity to maturity and then dissolves. Darwin thus
overlooked the essential factor in his whole doctrine; while the Druids
and other ancients, wiser than we have been willing to admit, seem not
only to have anticipated Darwin by thousands of years, but also to have
quite surpassed him in setting up their doctrine of re-birth, which
explains both the physical and psychical evolution of man.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
Superscripted letters are indicated by {superscript}.
The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations.
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors
have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have
been left open.
Other punctuation has been corrected without note.
The following misprints have been corrected:
"Fortelling" standardized to "foretelling" (page 213)
"fom" corrected to "from" (footnote 342)
"Name" corrected to "Names" (Index)
Other than the corrections listed above, inconsistencies in spelling and
hyphenation have been retained from the original.
The following symbols were substituted for images on pages 272 and 273:
Maltese cross = [C]
Triangle = [T]
Jupiter = [J]
Mercury = [M]
Venus = [V]
Saturn = [S]
Moon = [Mo]
Sun = [O]
Large Asterisk [*]