CHAPTER XII

THE CELTIC DOCTRINE OF RE-BIRTH AND OTHERWORLD SCIENTIFICALLY EXAMINED

'If all things which partook of life were to die, and after they were dead remained in the form of death, and did not come to life again, all would at last die, and nothing would be alive--what other result could there be?'--SOCRATES, as reported by Plato.

'The soul, if immortal, existed before our birth. What is incorruptible must be ungenerable.'--HUME.

'If there be no reasons to suppose that we have existed before that period at which our existence apparently commences, then there are no grounds for supposing that we shall continue to exist after our existence has apparently ceased.'--SHELLEY.

The extension of the terms Fairy and Fairyland--The real man as an invisible force acting through a body-conductor--A psychical organ essential for memory--Pre-existence a scientific necessity--The vitalistic view of evolution--Old theory of heredity disproved--Embryology supports re-birth doctrine--Psycho-physical evolution--Memory of previous existences in subconsciousness--Examples--Dream psychology furnishes clearest illustrations--No post-existence without pre-existence--Resurrection as re-birth--The Circle of Life--The mystical corollary--Conclusion: the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth and Otherworld is essentially scientific.

In the esoteric Fairy-Faith, the terms Fairy and Fairyland attain their broadest meaning. To the Celtic mystic, the universe is divisible into two interpenetrating parts or aspects: the visible in which we are now, and the invisible which is Fairyland or the Otherworld; and a fairy is an intelligent being, either embodied as a member of the human race or else resident in the Otherworld. The latter class includes many distinct hierarchies and lower orders. Some, like the highest of the Tuatha De Danann, who are the same in character as the gods of the Greeks and Hindoos, are superhuman; others are the souls of the dead; while many are subhuman and have never been embodied in gross physical bodies. These last include daemons (incorrectly regarded by Christian and other theologies as being in all cases evil, and called demons); and other like spirits, such as those which Dr. Tylor, in _Primitive Culture_, has designated nature spirits (leprechauns, pixies, knockers, _corrigans_, _lutins_, _little folk_, elves generally, and their counterparts in all non-Celtic Fairy-Faiths), which are the elementals of mediaeval mystics.

In the preceding chapter chiefly the lower species of fairies were under consideration, but now the higher orders (including human souls embodied and disembodied), in their relation toward one another, are to be considered independently. It becomes necessary, then, to present here a view of life and death not yet scientifically orthodox.

The Celt in all ages of his long history, like the ancient Greek thinkers with whom his ancestors were contemporary, has always been inclined, unlike modern scientists, to seek an explanation for the phenomena of evolutionary life by postulating a noumenal world of causes as the background of the phenomenal world of effects. To-day, the rapid march of scientific pioneers, chiefly those in psychical research, is bringing our own cold and exact science very close to that indefinable boundary which separates the two worlds; and for that reason alone a presentation of the Celtic theory of the causes operating to produce death and birth will be, at least by way of suggestion, of some value.

Facts of common everyday knowledge are apt to lose their significance through too great familiarity. A fact of this character is that when each child is born it must awaken into life. Often it is not known whether the newly-born babe is dead or alive until it stretches forth its arms and breathes or cries. And this phenomenon of our first awakening and entry upon the visible plane of life and conscious action seems to corroborate what the early Celt who thoughtfully observed it held to be true, and what the Celt of to-day holds to be true: that the material substance composing the body of man is merely a means of expression for life, a conductor for an unknown force which exhibits volition and individual consciousness; just as material substance in a condition called inanimate is a conductor for another unknown force called electricity, which does not exhibit any volition or consciousness. Destroy the human body, and there is no manifestation of its life force; destroy a wire, and there is no manifestation of electric light: the human body seems to be merely incidental in the history of the individual consciousness, as a wire is incidental to electric light.

But is this consciousness of man which we call life simply a phenomenon of matter non-existent without a physical means of expression, or does it--like electricity after the wire is destroyed--continue to exist in an unmanifested state when the human body is cold and motionless in death? And in the case of a child born dead has this consciousness found some organic imperfection in the newly-constructed infant body which made its manifestation impossible? A few thoughts to aid in answering these questions will probably suggest themselves if we briefly consider the great difference between a human body in life and a human body in death. In life, there is the highly organized, delicately adjusted, perfectly balanced human body responding to the will of an invisible power; and it is admitted by all schools of philosophers, moralists, and scientists that this invisible power--whatever it may be--is the real man.

This invisible power, beginning its manifestation through a microscopic bit of germ-plasm, gradually builds for itself a more and more complex physical habitation, until, after the short space of nine months, it claims membership among the ranks of men. During the many years of its sojourn on our planet, it renews its habitation many times. Every atom it began with in childhood is discarded and replaced by a new one long before the age of manhood is reached, and yet upon reaching manhood the invisible power remembers what it did in a child's frame. This indicates that memory or consciousness as a psychical process does not depend essentially upon a material brain nor upon a certain grouping of ever-changing brain-substance; for if it did, apparently it would slowly and imperceptibly undergo change as completely as the whole physical body and brain. This physiological process furnishes sufficient data to allow us to postulate that there is a psychical organ of memory behind the physical sense-consciousness, and that such an organ in itself is, at least during a human-life period, unchanging in its composition. Without such an organ, the process of memory when more fully analysed (in a way we cannot here attempt) is inexplicable.[608]

The simplest hypothesis is to conceive that organ as the one connected with the subconsciousness or super-sense-consciousness, by means of which the invisible power or rememberer is able to remember and to impress its memory upon the temporary and continually unstable physical brain. In the process of memory there must be first of all a thing to be remembered; second, a record of that thing to be remembered; and third, something to remember that thing. The thing remembered is the result of a conscious experience, the record of it the result of its impress at the time it was experienced, but the rememberer is neither.

That invisible power, which we have called the real man, animates the body, it places food in it as fuel to produce animal heat, animal vitality and force, and tries to keep it in good working order as long as possible. If the body is imperfect at birth or becomes so later, that invisible power is forced to act through it imperfectly; if the brain is diseased, there is insanity, if undeveloped, idiocy; and when the body ceases to respond either perfectly or imperfectly, the invisible power must surrender it entirely, and there is what we call death.

Now what is this invisible power or force which has entirely vanished, leaving the physical body and brain cold and motionless? Let us see if there is an answer. Chemical analysis proves that the visible parts of the body of man are merely transformed gases; but in a complete analysis of a living body such as man's there are certain elements to be considered which are always invisible.[609] Thus at death there is instantly a cessation of all bodily consciousness--of all willing, thinking, movement. The power which has made the body conscious, and which cannot be compared to any known form of matter, is entirely gone. But there is left in the body a moment after its departure everything which we know to be material--the animal heat, the animal magnetism, the animal vitality. When these are gone, the body is cold and stiff, and in no essential way unlike any other mass of inert matter. If heat be applied to the body, or magnetism, or vital forces, there is nothing in it to retain them any more than there would be in a stone. The real man is gone. Then the body begins to disintegrate. The law of the conservation of energy and the indestructibility of matter makes it certain that in the process of death nothing has been lost, certainly nothing material. The animal heat has gone off somewhere in the atmosphere or in some other matter; the animal magnetism and vitality are momentarily lost sight of, but soon they will be attached to other organic beings such as plants or animals to begin a new cycle of embodiment. The physical constituents of the body will go to their appropriate places, into the air as gases, into the water as fluids, into the earth as salts and minerals, and in a short time may form the parts of a flower, or fruit, or animal. But where or what is the willing, the thinking, the remembering, the directing force which once controlled all these and held them together in unity? Ultra-violet rays are invisible, but they show their existence through their chemical action; similarly a soul or Ego may exist invisibly and show its existence through the vital and physical unity manifested by a living human being. As we have already seen in the preceding chapter, there are a number of the first men of science who feel that when all the data of the latest scientific discoveries in the realm of psychology and of psychical research are impartially examined there is no escape from some such hypothesis as the ancient hypothesis of a soul.

If we accept the soul hypothesis, as it seems we must, and regard a soul as an indestructible unit of invisible power possessing consciousness and volition, and normally able to exist independently of a human body, then it becomes a logical and a scientific necessity to postulate its pre-existence, because as such a unit it is indestructible, in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy and indestructibility of matter. We speak here not of the ordinary soul or human personal consciousness, but of that Ego which Celtic mystics conceive as the permanent principle (though probably itself relative to some still higher power) behind the personality--which, in turn, they believe is a temporary combination wholly dependent upon the Ego. Accordingly, it is scientifically possible for such a soul as a homogeneous unit of force or conscious energy to pass from one mass of matter or physical body to another without disintegration, diminution, or loss of its own identity. It is scientifically certain, also, from experiments performed to test the power of resistance to decomposition exhibited by the force which we call life in an organic body, that such a force is capable of outwearing many physical embodiments.[610] Recent demonstrations tend to show that the heredity hypothesis cannot be held to account fully for such widely varied character or soul individuality as may be exhibited by members of one family. We must therefore account for mental, moral, and certainly psychical inequalities among our race by some other hypothesis; and no hypothesis is more scientific, more in line with known physiological and psychical processes, or more in accord with the law of evolution, than that of re-birth.

The theory of the mechanical transmission of acquired characteristics in a purely physical manner through the germ-plasm is no longer tenable when all the data of physiology and psychology are admitted. A vitalistic view of evolution is rapidly developing in the scientific world, and the weight of evidence is decidedly in favour of regarding all evolutionary processes, reaching from the lowest to the highest organisms, as illustrating a gradual unfolding in the sensuous world of a pre-existing psychical power through an ever-increasing complexity of specialized structures, this complexity being brought about by natural selection. Such a view is also strongly supported if not confirmed by the general scientific belief that spontaneous generation of life is and always has been impossible on our planet or on any planet: there must have been life before its physical manifestation or its physical evolution began.

We may regard this psychical power as like a vast reservoir of consciousness ever trying to force itself through matter, the walls of the reservoir. Through the microscopic body of an amoeba there has percolated a very minute drop from the reservoir. As evolution advances, the walls of the reservoir become more and more porous, and little by little the drop increases to a tiny rivulet. Through the higher animals, the tiny rivulet flows as a brook. Through man as he is, the brook flows as a deep and broad river. Throughout the completely evolved man of the far distant future, the deep and broad river will have overflowed all its banks, it will have inundated and completely overwhelmed the animal-human nature of the individual through whom it flows, as the whole volume of the vast reservoir pours itself out. The ordinary consciousness of man will then have been transmuted into the subconsciousness, of which it had always been a pale reflection. In other words, if the theory of the mechanical transmission of acquired characteristics has failed, as seems to be the case, then we must assume that there is, as the bearer of all gains made from generation to generation, some sort of psychical or vitalistic principle. This, making use of the germ-plasm merely as a physical basis for its manifestation, begins to build up a body suited to its further evolutionary needs.

The brilliant discoveries of Dr. Jacques Loeb and of M. Yves Delage have demolished absolutely the old idea that each organ and each tissue contained in embryo in the normal egg-germ must develop in a particular and co-ordinate way into a normal organism and after the parental type: it is possible to make a head grow where there ought to be feet; and at Zürich, Standfuss, solely through changing the temperature of his laboratory, was able to obtain from the same species of butterfly forms which were tropical and forms which were arctic.[611] All this helps to establish the hypothesis, which amounts to certainty, that the conformation of a physical body, or even the kind of species to be born, is directly determined by physical environment and not by heredity, and that the chief factor to consider in organisms is the life animating the body. Physical environment affects only the physical organism; it does not affect the invisible and unknown life-principle resident within the physical organism.

The process of fertilization is a physical process. As such it is simply initiatory to embryonic evolution which also is physical. Once the proper physical conditions are set up by the parents, life pursues its marvellous progress in the womb of the human mother, from the amoeba-like initial embryo to man. That is to say, parents set in motion the laws governing the reproduction of physical bodies. They create such conditions as enable the invisible life-force to begin its physical manifestation.[612] In the two fused germs from the parents resides the physical inheritance of the offspring, to be outwardly shaped by environment; but the physical inheritance is a thing distinct from the psychical part of the living being, just as much as the dead human body is a thing apart from the life which has left it. Though the old heredity theory is overthrown by late discoveries, the question as to what life is in human bodies under all possible environmental conditions remains unsolved; and so do the questions why there should be sports in nature, which among man are called geniuses, and why every human being has a distinct and highly developed individual character, essentially unlike that of his immediate ancestors.

Embryology proves conclusively that the human embryo retraces in its growth the evolution of lower life-forms. At first consisting of two single cells fused into one, it is like the amoeba. By cell-division it grows and progresses step by step through each lower realm of being until it comes to be a water-creature with gills; and science teaches that all organic life on this planet once dwelt in the seas. It grows progressively out of the water-world stage of organic life into the world of air-breathing creatures. Nature at last achieves her highest product, and a human being is born out of the Womb of Time. The initial microscopic bit of germ-plasm is endowed with power of motion, thought, and human consciousness, with dominion over all the lower kingdoms through which by right of ancient conquests it passed in the brief period of nine months. On every side the problem of life is full of poetry and wonder; it is the greatest mystery.

Not only can we thus study the age-long evolution of the physical man, but we have recently acquired sufficient scientific data to lay foundations for a study of the evolution of the psychical man. Thus, for example, instincts seem to be nothing more than habits which through unknown periods of time have become so ingrained in the constitution of man, and of all animals, that now they have become second nature and usually are exercised without the need of reasoning processes. The influence from innate sensuous experiences rises into consciousness as the life of every normal child and youth unfolds itself; and these experiences in their full expansion, when the age of maturity has been reached, constitute in their unity what we call character, which, in one sense, may be defined as the sum total of instincts of every kind. From such a point of view, the psychical or invisible power in man is merely a bundle of acquired habits which make use of the bodily organism in order to express themselves--in the same way, as we have pointed out, that electrical forces manifest their presence through a conductor. If these habits be good, we call their possessor a good man; if evil, we call him an evil man.

The theory of Charles Darwin suggests that all evolutionary progress is directed to the acquirement of newer and ever higher instincts. And if this process be the true one, that is to say, if all instincts, which in their finer distinctions mark off species from species in all animal kingdoms, be as Darwin thought--and as is to-day more clearly evident--the result of a long and gradual evolution through experience in a sensuous realm of existence, then it would seem to follow that there must be some kind of a monad (probably a non-sensuous one) to which such acquired instincts can attach themselves. Such a monad, too, must have been a percipient and hence a recorder of such ever-accumulating experiences throughout an inconceivably long chain of lives, and it of itself must, while so perceiving and recording, not be subject to the transitoriness of the sensuous realm wherein it gathers together these instincts, which in their unified expression form its personality or human character.

In harmony with the vitalistic view of evolution, which implies a pre-existent psychical power continually striving to express itself completely through matter, yet normally able to exist independently of a physical means of expression, we should regard such high mental processes as judgement, reasoning, analysis and synthesis, and spatial perception, along with memory, as resultants of very great experience in a sensuous world, on which in our present psycho-physical constitution such processes appear to have direct bearing. In other words, for man to be able to exercise such high mental processes there is need to postulate incalculable ages of specialization in the nervous apparatus, and in psycho-physical adjustment, of a kind which has thus enabled the psychical power to express itself to such a supreme degree in the realm of mind and matter. The same vitalistic argument is applicable to the lower mental processes and to the instinctual powers in man, because we cannot at any time, in viewing the complete evolution of man as a twofold being composed of a physical and a psychical part, force aside Fechner's conviction that the problem is a psycho-physical one. A study of sexual instincts in children seems to confirm this.[613]

Such a psychical and vitalistic hypothesis is, as we have seen, strongly supported by embryology; and embryology proves conclusively the need of long ages of physical evolution for the development of each tissue and highly specialized organ in the human body. Certain French and German and other scientists of the vitalistic school have demonstrated physiologically the need of a pre-existent power as the unifying principle which attracts and compels material atoms to group themselves into the pattern of the human body[614]--or, as we may add, of any organic body. Psychical researchers at the outset of their science seem apparently to have demonstrated psychologically the post-existence of the personal consciousness-unity; and it is very likely when further progress has been made in psychics that there will arise a logical need to postulate, in addition to the personal consciousness-unity, a hypothetical pre-existent soul-monad as the unifying principle which attracts and compels psychical atoms of experience (if such an expression may be used) to group themselves into the personal consciousness-unity which appears to survive the death of the gross physical body--for a long or short time, as future research may show.[615] Such a soul-monad, to follow the view held by Celtic mystics, led by acquired instincts which were transmitted to it through the personality (held by the Celtic esoteric doctrine to be a temporary combination), apparently weaves out of matter the body-unit adapted to its further evolution, in a way analogous to that in which a silkworm is led by acquired instincts to weave a cocoon. This body-unit is twofold: (1) the visible body derived from the visible elements of matter; and (2) the invisible or ghost-body derived from the invisible or ethereal elements of matter.

Strictly speaking, for the Celtic mystic this soul-monad is something upon which the personal consciousness depends for its psychical unity in precisely the same way as the physical body depends upon the personal consciousness for its physical unity. The Celtic mystic holds that just as the body-unity falls back again into its primal elements of matter, so the personal consciousness-unity (apparently able to survive in the ghost-body for a long period after its separation from the grosser physical envelope or human body) also in due time is discarded by the soul-monad or individuality, and then falls back into its primal psychical constituents. In other words, the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth correctly interpreted does not conceive personal immortality, but it conceives a greater kind of immortality--the immortality of the unknown principle which gives unity to each temporary personality it makes use of, and which we prefer to designate as the individuality, the impersonator. And this individuality is the bearer of all evolutionary gains made in each temporary personality through which it reflects itself: it is the permanent evolving principle.

Perhaps an analogy drawn from nature will make the Celtic position clearer: we may say that the personality occupies a position between the human body and the soul-monad, just as the moon occupies a position between the earth and the sun. Personal consciousness is to the human body what the moonlight is to the earth, merely a pale reflection from a third thing, the soul-monad or individuality, which is the ultimate source of both sets of unities, the material or body-unity in its twofold aspect and the psychical or personal consciousness-unity. Each personality is temporary, while the individuality, like the sun in relation to the earth and moon, is capable of at least a relative immortality: the sun's light, as science holds, existed before there was any moon to reflect it on to the earth, and may continue to exist when both the moon and earth are disintegrated. The essential nature of the sun's energy or life remains unknown to science; so does the essential nature of the energy or life manifesting itself as the individuality. Though all such analogies are more or less weak, this one adequately fits in with the theories concerning the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth which the most learned of contemporary Celts, chiefly mystics, have favoured us with; and it is our rare privilege to put these theories on record for whatever they may be worth. The best hypothesis is always the one which best explains all available data, and, to our mind, when very minutely examined, in a way which (chiefly for reasons of space) cannot be attempted here, this Celtic hypothesis concerning the nature and destiny of man is the best hitherto adduced.[616]

Objectors to the Re-birth Doctrine as held by the Celts and other peoples anciently and now, naturally ask why, if we have lived before here on earth in physical bodies, we do not remember it. But the shallowness and unscientific nature of this question is at once apparent to psychologists who know that there exists in man a subconscious mind which in the great mass of people is almost totally dormant. 'The subconscious self,' wrote William James, 'is nowadays a well-accredited psychological entity.... Apart from all religious considerations, there is actually and literally more life in our total soul than we are at any time aware of.' And he added:--'It thus is "scientific" to interpret all otherwise unaccountable invasive alternations of consciousness as results of the tension of subliminal memories reaching a bursting point.'[617] Intuition, which all men have experienced, would seem to be the result of a momentary contact by the physical brain with its psychical counterpart--the subconscious self, the individuality as distinguished from the personality.

Certain observed psychological processes in ordinary men and women, who never really know that they have a subconsciousness or Transcendental Self, prove that it exists even for them, and any part of man which exists and functions of itself can be developed so as to be consciously perceived. This is incontestable. Let us point out a few of these observed and recorded psychological processes. There may be an unsolved problem in the mind, or inability to recall a certain name or fact, and then a sudden, unexpected intuitional solving of the problem and an instantaneous recollecting of the desired facts, at a time when the ordinary mind may be entirely absorbed in altogether foreign thoughts. Again, many persons through accident or disease have lost their memory to such an extent as to require complete re-education, and then in time, gradually or instantaneously, as the case may be, have completely recovered it.[618] And we noticed in our study of supernatural lapse of time (p. 469) that at the moment of accidental loss of consciousness, as in drowning for example, all forgotten details of life are instantaneously reproduced in a complete panorama. These psychological processes support what we have said above with respect to a psychical organ being behind the sense-consciousness, and seem thus to prove that the subconscious mind is the place for recording permanently all experiences.[619] Under hypnosis, a subject may be requested to perform a certain act, let us say 11,999 minutes after the moment of making the request. When the hypnotic condition is removed, the subject has no personal consciousness of the suggestion, but, as different experiments have proved conclusively, he invariably performs the act exactly at the expiration of the 11,999 minutes without knowing why he does so. This proves that there is a subconsciousness in man which can take full cognizance of such a suggestion, which can keep count of the passing of time and then cause the unconscious personality to act in response to its will.[620] Again, in extreme old age people who have come to have an imperfect memory or none at all in their normal consciousness, under abnormal conditions (which seemingly are due to a temporary influx of a latent psychical power into the physical body and brain, or else to an awakening of a dormant force within the physical body and brain themselves) often regain, for a time, complete and clear memory of their childhood. This proves that the memory is somewhere still perfect, and that it does not reside in the consciousness of the age-exhausted physical brain and memory. Albert Moll, in his treatise on hypnotism, says that events in the normal life which have dropped out of memory can be remembered in hypnosis:--'An English officer in Africa was hypnotized by Hansen, and suddenly began to speak a strange language. This turned out to be Welsh, which he had learnt as a child, but had forgotten.'[621] And even memory of acts done in hypnotic somnambulism can be awakened in the normal state.[622] Furthermore, through psycho-analysis, as Professor Freud has shown, forgotten dreams and dreams which were never complete in the ordinary consciousness can be recovered in their entirety out of the subconsciousness.[623] How many of us can recall without some mental stimulus certain acts performed ten years ago? A good deal of our present life is no longer vivid, much of it is forgotten, and in old age many of the memories of youth and of mature life will be subconscious. If this brain, whose total existence is comprised between birth and death, cannot remember in a normal way all its own experiences, how could it be expected to know anything at all of hypothetical past lives where there were various physical brains long ago disintegrated--unless the hypothetically ever-existing transcendental individuality, whose consciousness is the subconsciousness, be made by some unusual psychical stimuli to transmit its memory of the past lives to each new brain it creates? In other words, to have memory of pre-existent conditions there must be continuity of association with present conditions. If such continuity exists, it exists in the subconsciousness. And if it exists therein, then in order to recall in the present personal or ordinary consciousness, which began at birth, memory of an anterior state of consciousness, it would be necessary to hold impressed upon the present physical brain and body a clear and unremittent consciousness of the subconsciousness. In relation to our personal consciousness, apparently our greatest powers lie in the subconsciousness which is sleeping and in embryo, awaiting to be born into the consciousness of this world through the slow process of evolutionary gestation. In the case of a Buddha, who on good historical authority is said to have been able to recall all past existences from the lowest to the highest, this evolutionary process seems to have reached completion.[624]

Under ordinary conditions, individuals have been known to see a place which they have never seen before, or to do a thing which they have never done before in this life nor in any conscious dream-state, and yet feel that they have seen the place before and done the thing before. M. Th. Ribot, in his _Diseases of Memory_ (chapter iv), has brought together many cases of this kind. Some are undoubtedly explicable as forgotten experiences of the present life. Others, to our mind, strongly support the theory of pre-existent experiences preserved in memory in the subconsciousness.

Under chloroform, or other anaesthetics, patients often recover for the time being forgotten facts of experience, and sometimes appear to make momentary contact with their subconsciousness and to exhibit therein another personality. In certain well-defined types of double personality, which are not the kind due to demon-possession nor to spirit-possession as in 'mediumship', there are two memories, 'each complete and absolutely independent of the other.'[625] And in similar cases, where the subject exhibits alternately numerous personalities, we see the individuality, that is to say the subconscious man, exhibiting, as a dramatist might, various characters or personalities of probable past existences according as each is most active at the moment. Similarly, crystal-gazing sometimes seems not only to revive lost memories of this life, but also to call up subconscious memories of some unknown state of consciousness which may be from a previous life.[626]

M. Ribot has made it clear from his careful study of numerous cases of amnesia (loss of memory) that 'recollections return in an inverse order to that in which they disappear'. For example, a celebrated Russian astronomer lost all memory save that of his childhood, and in recovering it there appeared first the recollections of youth, then those of middle age, then the experiences of later years, and, finally, the most recent events. Many even more marked examples of the law of regression in amnesia are given by M. Ribot. We conclude from them that all strange and apparently long-forgotten facts of experience arising in consciousness out of the subconsciousness, as in the different cases which have been cited above, would necessarily be those which have been the longest lost to memory; and hence if they cannot be attached to this present life then they can only be derived from a former life, because every primary detail of memory must always originate from an experience at some past period of time. M. Ribot himself, in his conclusion to _The Diseases of Memory_, makes this significant observation with respect to the law of regression in amnesia:--'This law of regression provides us with an explanation for extraordinary revivification of certain recollections when the mind turns backward to conditions of existence that had apparently disappeared for ever.'

In dreams there is a great wealth of latent memory; sometimes memory of the present waking life, but often not capable, apparently, of being attached to it, nor explicable as due to the soul wandering from the body during sleep: the hypothesis of re-birth seems to be the only adequate one here. Certain dreams suggest that man possesses innate memories extending backwards to prehistoric times (cf. p. 5 above). This fits in with Professor Freud's theory in his _Die Traumdeutung_, that 'the dream is nothing else than the concealed fulfilment of a repressed wish.' Some dreams are 'in the form of frightful, cruel, horrible scenes, which seem frightful to us, but in a certain depth of the unconscious satisfy wishes which, in the "prehistoric" ages of our own mental development, were actually recognized as desires.'[627] This also supports our vitalistic view of the evolution of human instincts. Again, in somnambulism there is a much more exalted memory, and clear cases are on record of facts being then consciously present which cannot be accounted for save through the same hypothesis.[628]

If we keep in mind the psychology of the dream state, we shall probably get the clearest intellectual theory as to why, if pre-existence be true, we do not remember various previous states of existence. In our present state of consciousness we may enter a dream state, in that dream state by dreaming we enter a second dream state, and theoretically, though not by common experience, there may be no limit to superimposed dream states, each one in itself a state of consciousness distinct from the waking consciousness. Accordingly, if, as Wordsworth put it, 'our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting' of another state of consciousness, and death the abrupt ending of that sleep of dreams and a waking up, or if the direct opposite be true, and death is the entrance to a sleep and dream state of consciousness, it becomes very clear how difficult it would be for us here now either to recall what we may have dreamt or have actually done in another state of conscious existence corresponding to our present one. The subtle thinkers of modern India, who completely accept the doctrine of re-birth as a universal law, have summed up this abstruse aspect of the dream psychology as follows:--'The first or spiritual state was ecstasy; from ecstasy it (the Ego) forgot itself into deep sleep; from deep sleep it awoke out of unconsciousness, but still within itself, into the internal world of dreams; from dreaming it passed finally into the thoroughly waking state, and the outer world of sense.'[629] But our own psychologists are not yet far enough advanced to accept this; much more work in psychical research must first be done before it will be possible for them to announce to the West that pre-existence is a necessary condition for post-existence which they now hypothetically accept. If for the present our standpoint be that of our own psychologists, we may then think of the human consciousness as a spectrum whose central parts alone are visible to us. Beyond at either end lies an unseen and to us unknown region, awaiting its explorer from the West. 'Each one of us is in reality an abiding psychical entity far more extensive than he knows--an individuality which can never express itself completely through any corporeal manifestation. The Self manifests through the organism; but there is always some part of the Self unmanifested; and always, as it seems, some power of organic expression in abeyance or reserve.'[630] William James stated the position thus:--'The B. region' (another name for the region of subconsciousness), 'then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of everything that is latent, and the reservoir of everything that passes unrecorded and unobserved.'[631]

Men of science see no way of accepting the doctrine of the resurrection of the physical body as at present interpreted by Christian theology; but the late Professor Th. Henri Martin, Dean of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rennes, has suggested in his _La Vie future_ that the doctrine may be the exoteric interpretation of a long-forgotten esoteric truth; namely, that the soul may be resurrected in a new physical body, and this is scientifically possible.[632]

The ancient scientists called Life a Circle. In the upper half of this Circle, or here on the visible plane, we know that in the physiological history of man and of all living things there is first the embryonic or prenatal state, then birth; and as life, like a sun, rises in its new-born power toward the zenith, there is childhood, youth, and maturity; and then, as it passes the zenith on its way to the horizon, there is decline, old age, and, finally, death; and as a scientific possibility we have in the lower half of the Circle, in Hades or the Otherworld of the Celts and of all peoples, corresponding processes between death and a hypothetical but logically necessary re-birth.[633]

The logical corollary to the re-birth doctrine, and an integral part of the Celtic esoteric theory of evolution, is that there have been human races like the present human race who in past aeons of time have evolved completely out of the human plane of conscious existence into the divine plane of conscious existence. Hence the gods are beings which once were men, and the actual race of men will in time become gods. Man now stands related to the divine and invisible world in precisely the same manner that the brute stands related to the human race. To the gods, man is a being in a lower kingdom of evolution. According to the complete Celtic belief, the gods can and do enter the human world for the specific purposes of teaching men how to advance most rapidly toward the higher kingdom. In other words, all the Great Teachers, e. g. Jesus, Buddha, Zoroaster, and many others, in different ages and among various races, whose teachings are extant, are, according to a belief yet held by educated and mystical Celts, divine beings who in inconceivably past ages were men but who are now gods, able at will to incarnate into our world, in order to emphasize the need which exists in nature, by virtue of the working of evolutionary laws (to which they themselves are still subject), for man to look forward, and so strive to reach divinity rather than to look backward in evolution and thereby fall into mere animalism. The stating of this mystical corollary makes the exposition of the Fairy-Faith complete, at least in outline.

As shown by the Barddas MSS. in our chapter vii, the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth is the scientific extension of Darwin's law as corrected,[634] that alone through traversing the Circle of Life man reaches that destined perfection which natural analogies, life's processes as exhibited by living things, and evolution, suggest, and from which at present man is so far removed. There seems to emerge this postulate: the world is the object of normal consciousness, the Ego or Soul-Monad the object of subconsciousness; and the subconsciousness cannot be realized in the world until through the normal consciousness of man the Ego is able to function completely, and so endow man with full self-consciousness in matter, which endowment seems to be the goal of all planetary evolution.

We conclude that the Otherworld of the Celts and their Doctrine of Re-birth accord thoroughly in their essentials with modern science; and, accordingly, with other essential elements in the complete Celtic Fairy-Faith which we have in the preceding chapter found to be equally scientific, establish our Psychological Theory of the Nature and Origin of that Fairy-Faith upon a logical and solid foundation; and we now submit this study to the judgement of our readers. With more complete evidence in the future, both from folk-lore and from science, there will be, we trust, a better vindication of the Theory, and perhaps finally there will come about its transformation into what it but seems to us to be now--a Fact.

Some beliefs which a century ago were regarded as absurdities are now regarded as fundamentally scientific. In the same way, what in this generation is heretical alike to the Christian theologian and to the man of science may in coming generations be accepted as orthodox.

INDEX

_Adamnan's Vision_, 356.

Aeneas, Journey of, 336-7, 343, 382, 445.

Aengus, 62, 292, 301, 376, 397, 413-4.

---- Cult of, 415 ff., 450.

---- Dun, 2, 41, 416-8.

_Agallamh_, 28, 283 n., 286, 290, 292, 295, 402, 412.

---- _an dá Shuadh_, 344.

Ailill, 288-9, 301, 374-5, 440.

Aine, 79, 80 n., 83, 301.

Alchemists, 240, 244, 261, 276, 296 n.

Alignements, xv, 199 n., 393, 399, 419 ff.: _see_ Archaeology.

All Saints (_La Toussaint_), 439, 453: _see_ _Samain_, and November Day.

Angel, 7, 12, 85, 238, 240-1, 263-4, 267, 272, 374: _see_ Fallen Angels, and St. Michael.

Angels and Science, 481.

Anglesey, 10, 138-9, 141-2.

Animism, 55, 226 ff., 282, 457 ff.: _see_ Dead, and Death.

---- Pre-, 253, 401.

---- Science and, 459 ff.

_Ankou_, 16, 29, 218, 220.

---- Science and, 484.

_Annwn_, 319, 353.

Anthropology, 226-82.

Antrim, 73, 371.

Apollo, 403, 405-6, 421.

Apparitions, Science and, 480, 484 ff.

Aranmore, 2, 4, 40, 416.

Archaeology, xv, 2, 9, 10, 12-5, 31, 52, 78, 81, 118-9, 137 n., 148, 154, 157 n., 163, 165 ff., 172, 179, 210, 221, 234 n., 393, 397-426, 450 n.

Armagh, 74-5, 443.

---- _Book of_, 283 n., 291.

_Art, Voyage of_, 351-2.

Arthur, 9, 10, 12-3, 82 n., 163, 183, 238, 304, 308 ff., 333-4, 353, 381, 429, 437, 441, 447: _see_ Re-birth.

Arthur, Bird, as, 183, 185.

Arthurian Legend, 9, 260, 308 ff.: _see_ Arthur.

Astral Body, 29.

---- Light, 133.

---- Milk, 164.

---- Plane, 167, 171.

---- Spirits, 167, 171.

Avalon, 252, 311, 314-5, 321-4, 330, 347-8, 379, 386.

Bacchus, 28, 80 n.

_Badb_, 302-7, 309 n.

_Ballymote, Book of_, 340 n., 410.

Banshee, 25-6, 81, 99, 220, 304-5, 437-8.

---- Science and, 484.

Baranton, Fountain of, 429.

Bard, 11, 98, 138, 163, 283, 317 n., 365-6, 378.

---- Irish, 344.

_Barddas_, 365-7, 378-9, 515.

Barra, 85, 100 ff.

_Beltene_ (Baaltine), 100 n., 439: _see_ May Day.

Ben Bulbin, 3, 44, 56, 58, 237, 242, 284, 293, 300.

Béroul, 325.

Boron, Robt. de, 325.

Boyne, 2, 34, 292, 410, 412, 415.

Bran, 259, 334.

---- _Voyage of_, 329, 338-40, 373.

Brocéliande, 15, 188, 327, 435.

Brownie, 164-5, 207, 220, 229.

_Bucca_, 164, 175: _see_ Puck.

Cædmon, 240, 243.

Cambrensis, Giraldus, 149 n., 324.

Cardigan, 146, 155, 334, 389.

Ca(e)ridwen, 157 n., 378.

Carmarthen, 147, 149 ff., 390.

---- _Black Book of_, 329.

---- Fall of, 435.

Carnac, xiii, 199 n., 271, 398-9, 407, 418-9, 428.

---- Etymology of, xv.

---- Mystic Centre, as, 13-5, 221.

Carnarvon, 143-4.

_Ceilidh_, Description of, 6.

Changelings, 34, 78, 87, 91, 96, 98, 101, 104, 110, 128, 132, 136-7, 143, 146, 148, 150, 154, 156, 170-1, 177, 179, 182, 198, 204, 210-2, 230, 265, 280-1: _see_ Charms, Fairy.

---- Anthropology and, 244-53.

---- Explanation of, 491.

---- Science and, 487.

Channel Islands, 403, 406-7.

Charms, 42, 49, 171, 176, 258-9: _see_ Exorcism.

---- Fairy, against, 37-8, 49, 58, 87, 91, 95, 97, 112, 124-5, 132, 146, 177, 179, 199, 204, 210, 212, 250, 253, 265, 268, 314.

---- Witchcraft, against, 122.

Chaucer, 326.

Chrétien, 311, 325, 430.

Christabel, 202.

Christian Science and Witchcraft, 261-2.

Christianity, Esoteric, 360 n., 361-2.

---- Fairies and, xvi, 42, 70, 91, 115, 152 n., 153, 168-9, 201, 216, 245, 253, 257, 259, 266-74, 268, 284-5, 293, 296 n., 320, 349-50, 354-7, 370, 373, 407, 410 n., 427 ff., 434 ff., 439, 441, 444 ff., 452 ff.: _see_ Changelings, Cult, Exorcism, Fairy-Faith, and Purgatory.

Clairvoyance, 55, 73, 140 n., 175, 182, 205, 285, 311: _see_ Second-sight, Seers, and Vision.

---- Science and, 473, 478.

Clontarf, 305 ff.

_Cóir Anmann_, 286, 291, 369.

_Colloquy_: _see_ _Agallamh_.

Connaught, 42, 289, 295, 300.

Connemara, xxi, 2.

Connla, 259, 335, 349-50.

Coracle (_currach_), 350, 352.

_Cormac's Voyage_, 340-3.

_Corrigan_, 15, 92, 159 n., 195, 198, 206 ff., 215, 223-4, 229, 238, 241, 250-1, 398, 404-6, 493.

---- Etymology of, 206 n.

Cromlech: _see_ Archaeology.

---- Etymology of, 402 n.

Cruachan, 286, 288-9, 431, 440, 451.

Crystal-gazing, 510.

Cuchulainn, 2, 3-4, 70, 74-5, 96 n., 238, 277-8, 302-3, 307, 309, 316, 334, 353, 441: _see_ Re-birth.

---- _Sick-Bed of_, 286, 345-6.

---- Sun-god, as, 310.

Cult, 100 n., 163, 281, 442: _see_ Arthur, Cuchulainn, _Sidhe_, and Tuatha De Danann.

---- Agricultural, 80 n., 279, 291, 351, 408, 435.

---- Cattle, of, 199 n., 273.

---- Dead, of, 281, 299, 408-9 ff., 436 ff.; Christian, 452-5.

---- Fairies, of, 190, 436 ff.

---- Gods, of, 118, 164, 175 n., 200, 239, 246, 279, 281, 283, 291, 299, 342, 399 ff., 407 ff., 433 ff., 440, 448.

---- Saints, of, 83, 190, 193, 284.

---- Spirits, of, 124 n., 164, 175, 227, 229, 281, 284, 411 ff., 428-9, 436 ff.

---- Stones, of, 399 ff., 427-8: _see_ Archaeology.

---- Sun, of, 12, 100 n., 127, 132 n., 173, 176 n., 179 n., 309, 321, 369, 380, 389-90, 402-3, 405-6, 408, 416 ff., 450-1; Christianity and, 452 ff.; Significance of, 420 ff., 439.

---- Trees, of, 176, 229, 427-8, 433 ff.

---- Waters, of, 78, 163, 179, 223-4, 284, 427 ff., 450 n.

Culture Hero, 238, 309, 320-1, 380-2, 417.

_Da Derga's Hostel_, 287.

Daemons (Demons), 7, 15, 158, 197, 202, 204, 212, 237-8, 241, 249-52, 256-9, 263-71, 279-80, 286, 287 n., 288, 303, 306, 310, 314, 360, 430, 436, 446.

---- Nature of, 493.

---- Science and, 480-1, 483.

Dagda, 286, 291-2, 294, 298, 300-1, 318, 320, 410, 416.

_Daoine Maithe_, 53, 69.

Dead, Legend of, 280.

---- Breton, 14, 29, 169, 194-5, 212 ff., 392, 404.

---- Cornish, 169-70, 178, 180-1, 183.

---- Irish, 33, 48, 53, 55, 68, 71-2, 74-7.

---- Scotch, 95.

---- Welsh, 142 n., 152.

Death-candle (or Corpse-candle), 10, 145, 153, 155, 207, 220-1.

Death-coach, 71, 221.

Death-warning, 10, 169, 180, 213, 220, 304-5.

Demon-Possession, 228: _see_ Exorcism and Possession.

---- Science and, 487 ff.

---- Theory of, 249 ff.

Dermot, 41, 44, 57 n., 354.

---- Pre-existence of, 376.

Devil, 123, 157, 180, 201, 241, 263, 271, 319, 446.

---- Worship, 258 n., 421.

Devonshire Pixies, 179.

Diana, as Moon-Goddess, 80 n.

_Dinnshenchas_, 78 n., 81 n., 260, 301.

Divination, 150, 176 n., 258, 264, 278, 343, 405, 428, 432.

Dolmen: _see_ Archaeology.

---- Etymology of, 402 n.

Donegal, 61, 72, 442.

Dowth, 2, 61.

Dream, 41, 50, 55, 58, 68, 159, 180-1, 281.

---- Fairyland and, 490.

---- Re-birth and, 383, 511 ff.

---- Science and, 459, 464 ff., 508, 511 ff.

Druids, 10, 12, 14, 31, 52, 82 n., 85, 138, 147, 152, 157 n., 216, 256-7, 259, 265-7, 278, 292, 299, 345-6, 351, 356, 441, 444, 457: _see_ Exorcism, Magic, and Magicians.

Druids, Irish, 343.

---- Magic and, 489 n.

---- Oak and, 433 ff.

---- Re-birth and, 359, 364, 367, 369, 378 n., 387-91, 394.

---- Well-worship and, 432.

_Dun Cow, Book of_: _see_ _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_.

Dwarfs, 81 n., 192, 195, 203-4, 206 ff., 235, 237-8, 405: _see_ Pygmy.

_Dynion Hysbys_, 146, 151, 253, 264, 436: _see_ Magicians.

_Echtra Nerai_, 287, 290, 413.

Ecstasy, 61, 91, 512.

---- Fairyland and, 490.

---- Science and, 472, 486.

Ego, Existence of, 496.

---- Idea of, 497.

---- Nature of, 504 n., 515.

_Eisteddfod_, 11, 405 n.

Elementals, 65, 167, 241-2, 256-7.

---- Science and, 481.

_Ellyllon_ (Elves) and Fairies, 233 ff., 432, 493.

---- Science and, 483.

---- Worship of, 436.

Elysian Fields, 338, 358, 416.

Enchantment, 35-6, 52, 113: _see_ Magic.

---- Fairy, 35, 75, 78, 113, 199, 301, 386.

Environment, xvii, xx, xxii, 1 ff., 107, 115, 123, 173, 209, 221, 226, 282.

---- Science and, 499.

Erisgey, 91 n., 100.

Etain, 369.

---- Birth of, 374-6, 395.

Exorcism, 228, 253, 265-74, 277, 281: _see_ Changelings, and Magic.

---- Baptism, as, 269-70.

---- Dead, of, 178.

---- defined, 266.

---- Spirits, of, 42, 67, 123, 125, 172, 179, 250, 287 n., 402.

---- Welsh, 272.

Exorcists, 264, 269: _see_ Magicians.

Faerie Queen, 318.

Fairy: _see_ Apparitions, Angel, Astral Spirits, Banshee, Brownie, _Bucca_, Changelings, _Corrigan_, Cult, Dead, Death, Devil, Dwarfs, Elementals, _Ellyllon_ (_Elves_), Fates, _Fées_, _Fenodyree_, Fir Bolgs, Fomors, Ghost, Gnomes, Goblin, Goddesses, _Grac'hed coz_, Kelpy, Lapps, Lares, Lemures, Leprechaun, _Lutins_, Manes, Mermaid, _Morgan_, Nereids, Penates, Phantom, Pict, Pixies, Proserpine, Puck, Salamanders, Satyrs, Shape-shifting, _Siabra_, _Sidhe_, Soul, Spirits, Succubi, Swan-Maidens, Sylph, Troll, Tuatha De Danann, Undines, Vivian, White Lady, Witch.

Fairy Abduction of animals, 93 n., 95, 106, 109.

---- Abduction of People, 7, 33, 37, 40, 45-8, 51, 53, 56, 68-9, 72, 75, 82 n., 89, 98, 101-2, 104, 109, 113, 120-1, 125, 130, 135, 145, 166 n., 174, 181, 219, 245, 248, 251-2, 289-90, 294 ff., 316, 326, 342, 347, 353, 356, 431: _see_ Changeling, Otherworld, and Re-birth.

---- Army, 33, 50, 55, 57, 68, 74, 133.

---- Arrow, 88, 119.

---- Astrology, 327.

---- Baking, 127.

---- Bathing, 136, 155, 182, 326, 342.

---- Beating, 41, 72.

---- Belt, 106.

---- Birds, 200, 220, 267, 302-7, 329, 334, 345, 355, 376: _see_ _Badb_.

---- Blinding, 54, 131, 136, 140, 182, 205, 209.

---- Boat-Race, 80.

---- Borrowing, 136.

---- Bush: _see_ Fairy Tree, and Cult of Trees.

---- Cattle, 143, 147, 203.

---- Churning and, 43, 97, 132, 253.

---- Cock-crow and, 220, 327.

---- Colour, Green, 10, 103, 106, 110-1, 207, 294, 298, 312-4, 345, 349, 352; Red, 32, 72, 131, 133, 142, 152-60, 181, 289-90, 345.

---- Crops and, 38, 43, 291: _see_ Cult of Agriculture.

---- Curse, 82, 97, 178, 376 n.

---- Dance, 41, 56, 72, 86, 88, 92, 111, 116, 124-5, 131, 135, 139, 142-3, 146, 148, 155, 159-60, 171, 173, 175, 181-2, 207-9, 211; explanation of, 281; origin of, 405-6.

---- Deceit, 127.

---- Description of, 46, 60, 68, 77, 116, 122, 133, 141, 177, 187, 200, 205, 211, 242-3, 297, 349-50, 352: _see_ Fairy Dress.

---- Dog, 40, 120, 122, 129, 134, 259.

---- Dress, 45, 55, 67, 74, 95, 103, 116, 123, 131, 133, 143, 155, 160, 181, 192, 204-5, 208, 289, 294, 297-8, 339, 345, 349-50, 352.

---- Drops, 44.

---- Dwelling, 32, 37, 41, 46, 73, 76-8, 86-8, 93, 95, 97, 99 n., 104, 108, 110, 112-3, 126, 131, 136, 142, 144, 147-9, 151, 172, 188, 200, 203-4, 206, 209, 211, 220, 235, 289, 294, 306, 316-7, 327, 416: _see_ Otherworld.

---- Festivals, 39.

---- Fights, 43, 91.

---- Flies, 39.

---- Food, 44, 47, 68, 219, 275, 279, 292-3, 349, 353, 356, 447: _see_ Sacrifice, Food.

---- Fort (Dún), 2, 24, 31-2, 36, 38, 55, 72, 349-50, 413: _see_ Fairy Dwelling.

---- Fountain and, 101, 210, 223, 264, 341-3, 353: _see_ Cult of Waters.

---- Fulling, 98.

---- Games, 41, 51, 76, 149.

---- Guardian, 46, 76, 78, 179, 189-90, 192-3, 197, 207, 211, 219, 273, 327, 415, 438.

---- Herb, 53, 87, 175.

---- Hill (Knoll, and Mound), 79-80, 89, 97, 220, 237, 243, 288, 290, 293, 296, 299, 301, 306, 349, 374, 431, 437.

---- Hosts (_Sluagh_), xxi, 91, 104, 106, 108.

---- Hunchback and, 92, 143, 198-9, 208.

---- Hunting, 41, 56, 94, 134.

---- Iron and, 34, 87-8, 95, 98 n., 124 n., 138, 144, 147: _see_ Taboo, Iron.

---- Island, 49, 147, 220, 316, 334, 339: _see_ Avalon, and Otherworld.

---- Kings and Queens, 28, 34, 44, 63, 92, 149-51, 200, 202, 218, 292, 300-1, 336, 354.

---- Mr. Lang and, 475.

---- Love, 112.

---- Mid-wife (or Nurse) and, 54, 127, 136, 140, 175, 205.

---- Mine and, 165, 182, 241.

---- Money (Riches, &c.), 71, 82, 142, 146, 156, 158, 160, 162, 200, 289, 297.

---- Music, 24, 31, 40, 47, 56-7, 61, 69, 71-2, 74, 81 n., 86, 95, 103, 111, 118, 124, 131, 141, 159, 162, 181, 211, 297 ff., 336, 339, 340-2, 355-6, 482; Mr. Lang and, 475; Science and, 484.

---- Names, 22, 30, 52, 72, 82, 117, 153, 164, 182, 203, 207, 231, 274, 293, 307; objects and, 86.

---- Natural Phenomena and, xxii, 41, 92, 204, 219, 227, 256, 265, 279, 307: _see_ Fairy, Crops; and Sacrifice, Food.

---- Nature of, 24, 32, 36, 41, 46, 63 ff., 73, 76-7, 80, 94, 99, 102, 104-5, 109, 113-4, 117, 120, 123, 125-6, 133-4, 137-9, 142, 143 n., 144-5, 147-8, 150, 152, 171-3, 176-7, 180, 182, 207, 211, 218 ff., 235 ff., 243, 254, 279, 307, 327, 409, 496.

---- Path (or Pass), 33, 38, 67, 77, 150, 218, 231, 277.

---- Pig, as, 126.

---- Power, 47, 67, 72, 82, 88, 95, 113, 121, 150, 183, 219, 253, 262, 265.

---- Prayer, 118, 129.

---- Preserves, 38, 78, 277, 293.

---- Procession, 33, 57, 67, 74, 79 n., 80 n., 126, 134, 218, 277, 288.

---- Prophet, 47, 94, 139, 160, 197, 211, 290, 302 n., 305.

---- Reality of, 490, 492 ff.

---- Revenge, 92, 95, 97, 125, 142, 146, 177, 180, 191, 196, 199, 205, 208-10, 220, 293: _see_ Fairy, Hunchback.

---- Ring, 2, 91, 142-3, 148-9, 151, 161, 181-2, 184, 208.

---- Science and, 240, 281-2, 307, 456-515.

---- Smallness of, 32, 41, 47, 72, 99, 102, 104, 123, 125, 133, 140, 143, 146, 148, 151, 155, 159, 171, 173, 176-7, 179-81, 184, 207, 211, 219, 233-44, 281.

---- Song, 40, 71, 86, 92, 98-9, 101, 104, 112, 114, 118, 139, 143, 148, 201-2, 208-9, 301, 339, 342, 345, 375.

---- Spell (and Stroke), 53, 91, 126, 136, 159, 164, 173, 218, 219, 230-1, 252-3, 265, 268, 286, 297, 326, 330, 345, 356, 431: _see_ Exorcism; Fairy, Hunchback; Magic; and Magicians.

---- Spinning, 88, 110.

---- Stations, 46.

---- Stature, 47, 62, 67-8, 77, 96, 114, 123, 141, 148, 233 ff., 242: _see_ Fairy, Smallness of.

---- Tree (or Bush), 33, 70, 78, 126, 277, 292, 435: _see_ Cult of Trees.

---- Tribes, 32, 52.

---- Tricks, 127, 143, 177, 183-4, 191, 205, 207, 211, 320.

---- Visits, 122, 136, 138, 146, 155, 160: _see_ Otherworld.

---- Voice (or Talking), 47, 68, 134, 139, 155, 162, 187-9, 203; Science and, 485.

---- Wand: _see_ Wands.

---- War, 44, 46, 50, 207, 211: _see_ _Sidhe_.

---- Water, and, 38, 270, 311-2, 318, 446: _see_ Cult of Waters.

---- Weaving, 74.

---- Whistle, 46, 208.

---- Wife, 135, 138, 146, 148, 162, 200, 289, 297, 318 n., 325, 328, 346-7, 412.

---- Woman, xxiv, 2, 4, 54, 76-8, 99, 103-4, 110-1, 121, 135, 138, 143, 186, 189, 200-2, 286-7, 293, 296-7, 305, 311, 314, 326, 333, 335, 337-9, 342, 345-7, 351-2: _see_ _Sidhe_ and Tuatha De Danann.

Fairy-Faith, African, 228, 281.

---- Albanian, 230.

---- American, 228, 237, 246, 281.

---- Animism of, 282, 458, 477.

---- Antiquity of, 99, 163, 178, 194, 213, 216, 221, 231, 244, 256, 266, 269, 278, 307, 321, 325, 331, 354, 357, 395, 408, 427, 432, 439, 441, 457, 477.

---- Arabian, 229.

---- Australian, 227, 281.

---- Breton, 185, 225.

---- Chinese, 228, 250.

---- Collecting Evidence of, xix.

---- Comparative, 226 ff., 281, 307, 457, 475.

---- Cornish, 163-85.

---- Degeneration of, 458.

---- Egyptian, 229.

---- Esoteric, 457-8, 492 ff.

---- Etruscan, 231.

---- Exoteric, 457-8.

---- German, 231.

---- Greek, 230, 246.

---- Importance of Studying, xxv, 22.

---- Indian, 228, 238.

---- Interpretation of, xvi, 18, 25, 28-30, 59, 171, 225, 277, 281, 383, 471, 489, 515.

---- Irish, 23-84.

---- Italian, 231.

---- Japanese, 228, 440.

---- Malay, 228, 238.

---- Manx, 117-35.

---- Melanesian, 227, 265, 277.

---- Metaphysics of, 458.

---- Methods of studying, xviii.

---- Mexican, 246.

---- Nature of, 18, 70, 90, 94, 105, 109, 117-8, 126, 133, 145-6, 225, 233, 235-6, 256, 281, 296 n., 307, 433, 438, 458, 477.

---- Origin of, xvi, 18, 70, 90, 99, 137, 168, 178, 226, 244-5, 257, 398, 432-3, 452, 455, 457-8, 477.

---- Persian, 229.

---- Philosophy of, 18-20.

---- Polynesian, 238, 248, 281.

---- Psychical Phenomena and, 459: _see_ Science and Fairies.

---- Religion and, xvi, 22, 70, 78, 83, 90, 99, 100 n., 118, 123, 125, 152 n., 163, 168, 194, 221, 245, 256-7, 266, 269, 271, 274, 296 n., 344, 354, 364, 388, 404, 406-8, 421, 427 ff., 439, 441, 442 ff., 450 n., 452 ff., 457-8, 477: _see_ Cult, and Christianity.

---- Roumain, 230.

---- Scandinavian, 231.

---- Science and, 119, 456 ff.

---- Scotch, 84-116.

---- Siamese, 229.

---- State of, in Brittany, 205; in Cornwall, 170, 180; in Highlands, 84, 88, 90, 91, 94, 99.

---- Swiss, 231.

---- Theology and, 42, 91, 99, 127, 146, 168, 244, 360-3, 365 n., 369, 370, 373, 493.

---- Theories of, xxi, 20, 84, 118; Delusion and Imposture, 462-4, 489; Druid, xxiii; Materialistic, xxv, 461, 489; Mythological, xxiv; Naturalistic, xxi, 1, 8, 152 n.; Pathological, 461-2, 489; Psychical, 1, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 61, 171, 265, 405, 409, 477, 489 ff.; Psychological, xxii, 20, 95, 202, 211, 253, 274, 305, 330, 338, 383, 427, 441, 515; Psycho-Physical, 459-60, 489; Pygmy, xxii, 119, 148 n., 169, 219, 234-5, 241, 245, 276, 398.

---- Turkish, 229.

---- Unity of, 233, 329, 331, 357, 396.

---- Welsh, 135-63.

---- X-quantity of, 282; Outlined, 459; Testing of, 480 ff., 490-1.

Fairyland: _see_ Avalon, Hades, Otherworld, and Purgatory.

---- Dead and, 40, 43, 56, 68-9, 72, 123, 194-5, 202, 214, 217, 219-20, 251, 280, 350, 490: _see_ Dead, Legend of, and under Death.

---- Going to, 40, 43, 55, 65, 68-9, 148, 154, 161, 175, 248, 251-2, 295, 299, 302, 306, 348, 413, 469 ff., 490: _see_ Abduction of People, under Fairy; and Changelings.

---- Nature of, 18, 39, 43, 60 ff., 70, 84, 120, 123, 137 n., 144, 149 n., 150-1, 154, 167, 171, 194-5, 202, 219, 281, 296 n., 310, 312, 317, 335, 350, 383, 416, 452, 493: _see_ Otherworld.

---- Origin of belief in, 235, 245, 281, 452.

---- Reality of, 18, 84, 154, 469, 490, 493, 515.

---- Return from, 39, 48-9, 51, 98, 130, 149, 162, 252, 265, 295, 296 n., 299, 316, 347: _see_ Changelings.

---- Science and, 490.

---- Time in, 88, 95, 113, 135, 145, 149, 154, 162, 175-6, 296 n., 329, 339, 350, 354, 469 ff., 473.

Fallen Angels as Fairies, 67, 76, 85, 105-6, 109, 113, 116, 129, 154, 205, 212, 231, 241.

Fand, 316, 345-6.

Fascination, 258.

Fasting, 179, 267, 412-4, 422, 445, 447 n.

Fate, Irish Idea of, 278.

Fates, 203, 231, 327.

Feast of Dead, 218, 288-9, 299, 439 ff., 452 ff.: _see_ Dead, Legend of; and November Day.

_Fées_, xxiv, 195 ff., 216, 231, 257, 327, 347.

Fennel, 79, 83.

_Fenodyree_, 120, 129, 131.

Fermanagh, 73.

Fetishism, 259, 401, 402 n.

_Fiacc's Hymn_, 436.

Fianna, 287 n., 293, 298, 347, 443.

Find, Re-birth of, 370-4.

Finvara, 2, 28, 42, 44, 300.

Fionn (or Finn), 2, 58 n., 259, 287 n., 292, 298-9, 302, 334, 376, 414-5, 441, 443.

Fir Bolgs, 32, 70, 285, 417.

Fomors, 70, 303, 307, 310, 335.

Food-Sacrifice: _see_ Sacrifice.

_Fountain, Lady of_, 325.

---- Cult of: _see_ Cult.

Fourth Dimension, 167.

---- Science and, 487.

Freemasonry, 313 n., 422, 449.

Galahad, 315-6, 317 n.

Galway, 39, 42.

Gauvain, 312, 316, 348, 447.

Gavrinis, 15, 409 ff., 415, 418, 423-4 ff., 451.

'Gentry': _see_ Fairy Names.

Geoffrey, 308 n., 322-3, 330, 403.

Ghost, 3, 7, 10, 26, 29, 47, 67, 70, 118, 121, 124, 145, 152, 156, 172, 180, 184, 191-2, 217, 219-20, 228, 238, 247-9, 257, 265, 277, 280, 282, 285, 289, 291, 330, 368, 398-9, 446: _see_ Dead, and Death.

---- Fairy and, 438.

---- Science and, 19, 477.

Giant, xxiii, 163, 192.

Gildas, 321.

Glamorgan, 158.

_Glashtin_, 131.

Gnomes, 241-3.

---- Science and, 481, 483.

Gnosticism, 361-2.

Goblin, 143, 145, 207, 220, 241, 306.

Goddess, 78-9, 83, 229, 369, 378, 390, 457.

Goddess Dana, 283-307.

---- Mother, 283, 284 n., 290, 390.

Gods: _see_ Cult.

---- Science and, 480.

'Good People': _see_ Fairy Names.

Gospel Stories and Fairy-Faith, 168.

Gower, 10, 158 ff.

_Grac'hed coz_, 195 ff.

Graelent, 326.

Grail, Holy, 311, 316, 325, 353.

---- Holy, Cup, as, 342, 350.

Grania, 41, 57 n.

_Gruagach_, 92.

_Guingemor_, 326, 348.

Gwenhwyvar, 152 n., 310-4, 316.

Gwion, Re-birth of, 378.

Gwydion, 151-2 n., 379, 417.

Gwynn Ab Nudd, 152 n., 319-20.

Hades, 296 n., 310, 312, 336-8, 352-3, 411, 445.

---- Origin of belief in, 452.

---- Purgatory, as, 447.

---- Science and, 514.

---- Sun-cult and, 422.

Halloween, 38, 91, 93 n., 179: _see_ November Day, and _Samain_.

Hallucinations: _see_ Apparitions.

---- Science and, 459, 461, 464, 490.

Harlech, 10, 144, 334.

Hebrides, 4, 7, 9, 90, 100 ff.

_Hergest, Red Book of_, 308 n., 330.

Highlands, 5, 7, 93 ff.

_Húi Corra, Voyage of_, 354.

Hy Brasil, 334.

Hypnotism, 255, 265, 466, 488, 507-8.

Iamblichus, 254, 257 n., 400, 484.

Immortality, Non-personal, 503 ff., 509 n.

Incantation, 176, 259: _see_ Charms.

Initiates, 59, 313 n., 336-7, 358, 378, 423-4.

Initiations, 13, 78, 157 n., 179 n., 257, 313 n., 336-8, 342, 353, 378-9, 405-6, 411-2, 415-6, 419, 422, 425, 444 ff., 447 ff.

Initiations, Celtic, 342-3, 409 ff.

---- Nature of, 447 n.

Innishmurray, 49, 54, 334.

Inverness, 4, 93.

_Iolo MS._, 308 n.

Iona, 7, 93, 436.

Jack-in-the-Green, 435.

Jeanne d'Arc, 263-4.

Jews, Re-birth and, 359.

---- Sun-cult, and, 421.

Karnak and Carnac, xv.

Kelpy, xxi, 3, 28, 207.

Kerry, 61, 83, 340.

Kirk, Robt., 66, 85, 89, 91 n., 237, 279 n., 293.

Knowth, 34.

_Kulhwch and Olwen_, 317-20, 328, 451.

---- Date of, 331.

Lake, Lady of, 78, 79 n., 314-7, 327, 379.

Lancelot, 312, 315-6, 348.

Land's End, 181.

Lanval, 325, 326.

_Lanval's Voyage_, 347-8.

Lapps, xxiii, 234 n.-5, 244.

Lares, 438.

Layamon, 308 n., 323.

Leaba Mologa, 414.

_Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ (_Book of the Dun Cow_), 259, 285, 292, 353, 374, 377, 409.

---- Age of, 283 n.

Lear, 7, 118, 135, 322: _see_ Manannan.

_Lebar Brecc_, 271, 313 n., 454.

_Lebar Gabala_, 292.

_Lecan, Y. B. of_, Age of, 283 n.

Leinster, 294, 371.

---- _Book of_, 285, 292, 303, 356; age of, 283 n.

Lemures, 438.

Leprechaun, 25, 28, 47, 52, 71, 82, 235-6, 241, 243, 493.

---- Etymology of, 236.

_Lia Fáil_, 14, 401.

Libations to Fairies, 36, 92-3, 200, 218, 273, 291.

Lights, 7, 61, 77, 83, 133, 145, 155, 180, 207, 215.

---- Science and, 463, 483-4.

Limerick, 78, 386.

_Lismore, Book of_, 401, 412; age of, 283 n.

Lough Derg, 72, 442 ff.

Lough Gur, 78, 386.

Lug, 62, 292, 369, 450.

_Lugnasadh_, 451.

_Lutins_, 159 n., 190-1, 206 ff., 493.

Lyonesse, 12, 167.

_Mabinogion_, 10, 260, 297, 304, 317, 328-9, 451.

---- Age of, 308 n., 331.

---- Editions of, 308 n.

_Mael-Duin's Voyage_, 348.

Magic, 10, 93, 120, 131, 153, 156, 168, 171, 204, 245, 250, 253-65, 281, 292, 299, 324, 328, 339, 346, 380-1: _see_ Charms, Divination, Magicians, Necromancy, Fairy Spell, Witches, and Witchcraft.

---- Ancient, 255-60.

---- Celtic, 256-7, 259-60.

---- Fairy, 42, 199, 203, 265, 327.

---- Frazer, Dr., and, 254-5.

---- Indian, 258, 489 n.

---- Religion and, 42, 255, 287 n., 292, 381, 404-5: _see_ Exorcism, and Taboo.

---- Roman Church and, 42, 237 n.

---- Study of, 257, 489 n.

---- Taboo and, 274 ff.

---- Theories of, 253.

Magicians, 131, 156, 227-8, 247, 253-5, 257, 262-5, 268, 299, 329, 344, 380-1, 417, 433, 437, 489 n.: _see_ Manannan, and Merlin.

Magnetism, Animal, 262.

Malory, 308 n., 312, 315, 323, 380.

_Mana_, 254-5, 262, 265, 278, 479.

Manannan, 7, 62, 80 n., 118, 120, 131-2 n., 135, 299, 333, 335, 339, 342-3, 345-6, 356, 372-4, 376.

---- Hermes, like, 343 n.

Manes, 438, 441.

Marazion, 173.

Märchen, 23.

Marie de France, 308 n., 325-6, 348.

Math, 417.

_Matter of Britain_, 328, 331.

May Day, 312, 435.

---- Fairies and, 43, 53, 100 n., 124.

Meath, 297, 415.

Meave (_Medb_), 3, 43, 70, 288-9, 301, 440.

Megaliths, Alignement of, 419 ff.: _see_ Archaeology.

Melwas, 311, 313-4, 316.

Menhir: _see_ Archaeology.

Merionethshire, 144.

Merlin, 10, 149, 314-5, 321-2, 329-30, 403, 417, 429, 435-7, 447.

Mermaid, 25, 28.

_Mesca Ulad_, 344.

Midir, 302, 311, 374-6, 413.

Mil, 284, 291: _see_ Milesians.

Milesians, 32, 287, 303, 349, 372, 377 n.

Mithras, 448.

Modred, 322, 324.

Mongan, 260.

---- Re-birth of, 370 ff., 394-5.

Montgomeryshire, 145.

Morbihan, xv, 199 n., 273, 399, 401, 403-4, 428.

_Morgan_, 200-1, 352.

---- _le Fay_, 311, 315, 327.

_Morrigu_, 302-3, 305, 315: _see_ _Badb_.

Moytura, 2, 303, 335.

Munster, 300, 348.

Mysteries, xiii, 14, 59, 173, 257-9, 313 n., 337-8, 343, 359, 365, 377 n., 405 ff., 409 ff.

---- Celtic, 409 ff., 444 ff.

---- Nature of, 411, 422, 448 ff.

---- Puberty, 449 ff.

Mysticism, xvii, 1, 2, 5, 8, 9, 13-4, 58-9, 78, 313, 341 n., 356, 360 n., 364, 377 n.

---- Comparative, 457-8.

Mythology, Interpretation of Irish, 307.

---- Origin of, 281, 455.

Necromancy, 151 n., 258, 404, 489 n.

Nennius, 308 n., 322.

Nereids, 230-1.

New Grange, 2, 36, 61, 409 ff., 451.

Newlyn, 178 ff.

Nirvana, Meaning of, 366, 391.

November Day (or Eve), Origin of, 439, 453.

---- Fairies and, 38, 53, 73, 91, 93 n., 100 n., 179, 213, 218, 288-9, 301: _see_ _Samain_.

Nuada, 319.

Nymphs, 229-31.

Obsession: _see_ Possession.

Occultism, Discussion of, 240.

Ogam, 340, 372.

Ogier, 348.

Oracles, 10, 15, 410, 448.

Osiris, xv, 309 n., 310, 320-1, 381, 422, 439-40.

Ossian (Oisin), 57, 260, 299.

_Ossian's Voyage_, 346-7, 357.

Otherworld, 60, 62, 78, 123, 194, 220, 246-7, 252, 277-8, 281, 295, 311, 316, 318, 321, 371-3, 443.

---- Atlantis and, 33 n., 59.

---- Classical, 336-7.

---- Description of, 332-8, 340-3, 349 ff.

---- Egyptian, 380-1, 422.

---- Evolution of idea of, 333 n., 353-7.

---- Heaven, as, 354-5, 446.

---- Hell, as, 355.

---- Interpreted, 70, 285, 337-8, 356, 492.

---- Location of, 332-4.

---- Names of, 334-5.

---- Nature of, 332-8, 340-3, 356-7.

---- New Zealand, 275.

---- Passport to, 336-7.

---- Polynesian, 275.

---- Purgatory, as, 281, 354, 364: _see_ Purgatory.

---- Re-birth and, 334, 365: _see_ Re-birth.

---- Science and, 514-5.

---- Virgil on, 336-7, 382, 445.

---- Voyages, 328, 335, 338-57, 378-80.

Paimpont, 188: _see_ Brocéliande.

Pantheism, Celtic, 377 n.

Paracelsus, 167, 240, 254.

Pardon, Breton, 428, 450 n.

Peel, 129, 132, 387.

Pembrokeshire, 147, 153, 161.

Penates, 190, 229.

Penzance, 12, 174 ff., 391.

'People of Peace,' Origin of name, 438 n.: _see_ Fairy Names.

Phallicism, 402 n.

Phantom: _see_ Apparition, Dead, Death, Fairy, Ghost, and Science and Fairies.

---- Coach, 25.

---- Funeral, 10, 126, 145, 152, 213-5, 221.

---- Horse, 79 n., 215.

---- Ship, 25.

---- Washerwomen, 212, 216.

Philtres, 258.

Phoenicians, 12, 173, 176, 395-6.

Pict, 165-6, 234 n.-5.

Pin-Wells, 430.

Pixies, 158-9, 164 ff., 207, 220, 229, 238, 241, 250, 398, 406, 493.

---- Etymology of, 165.

Pliny on Druids, 256, 259, 260, 433.

Pluto, 312, 337, 367, 452.

_Poltergeist_ Phenomena, 67, 74, 88, 120, 124-5, 132, 156, 162, 164, 218, 220, 488.

---- Fairies and, 475-6, 482, 484.

---- Science and, 459, 463, 481, 490.

Possession, 34, 69, 112, 207, 265, 268 ff., 375: _see_ Demon-Possession, and Exorcism.

---- Science and, 472.

Proserpine, 312, 336-8, 382, 450 n., 475.

Psychical Research, 14, 255, 265, 365, 459, 461 ff., 471 ff., 493, 497, 502 ff.

---- Society, 268, 330, 398, 447 n., 488.

Psychic Centres, 14, 74, 221, 299, 410-1: _see_ Mysteries.

Psychological Theory: _see_ Fairy-Faith, Theories of.

Psychology, Social, 232, 251, 282, 289, 307, 458, 469, 475 n., 476 n.

Puck (_Puca_), 25, 53, 164, 207.

---- Science and, 483.

Purgatory, 169, 364, 405, 414, 442 ff.

---- Fairies and, 76.

---- Origin of doctrine of, 452.

Pygmy, xxii-xxiii, 28, 234 n., 236-9, 245, 398: _see_ Fairy-Faith, Theories of, Pygmy.

Pyramid, xv.

---- Celtic tumuli and, 418 ff.

---- Purpose of, 423 ff.

Rag-Bushes, 430.

Rappings and Science, 459, 463, 475 n., 481, 488.

Re-birth, 5, 9, 64, 84, 227, 252, 313 n., 353, 358-96.

---- Arthur and, 310, 315, 321, 323-4, 379-81, 386, 509 n.

---- Australian, 227.

---- _Barddas MSS._ on, 365-7, 378, 515.

---- Brython, 216, 378-80, 392-3.

---- Buddha and, 359, 382, 509, 514.

---- Christian, 359-63, 387, 391, 393-5, 513.

---- Classical Writers on, 367, 395.

---- Darwinism and, 365, 501, 515.

---- Dermot's, 376.

---- Emerson and, 382.

---- Esoteric Doctrine of, 377 n., 503-4, 513 n., 514.

---- Fichte and, 382.

---- Gnostics and, 361-2.

---- Greek, 382.

---- Herder and, 382.

---- Historical Survey of, 359-65.

---- Dr. Hyde on, 368.

---- Japanese, 383.

---- Jewish, 359, 384 n.

---- Jubainville on, 368.

---- Lama and, 383.

---- Manichaean, 362.

---- Modern, 364.

---- Modern Celtic, 383-93; non-Celtic, 364, 380-3.

---- Mongan's, 370.

---- Origen on, 359-61, 394.

---- Origin and Evolution of Doctrine, 393-6.

---- Otherworld and, 338, 358, 452.

---- Parnell's, 385.

---- Philo and, 359.

---- Purgatory and, 364, 384, 452.

---- Roman Church and, 364.

---- Rosicrucians and, 364.

---- Schopenhauer and, 382.

---- Science and, 469, 492-513.

---- Sex in, 375 n., 391.

---- Spiritual, 449.

---- Sun and, 310, 321, 380, 420.

---- Tennyson and, 382.

---- Tertullian on, 359-61, 394.

---- Tuan's, 377.

---- Tuatha De Danann, of, 367-76.

---- Whitman and, 382.

---- William II and, 383.

---- Wordsworth and, 382.

Religions, Origin of, 226, 455.

Robin Good-fellow, 207, 220.

---- Science and, 481.

Roman Catholic Theology and Fairies, 42, 168, 270, 364, 452.

_Romans Bretons_, 326-8.

Roscommon, 3, 27, 69, 70.

Rosicrucians, 167, 240-1, 243, 364.

Rosses Point, 58, 66, 243.

Ross-shire, 90.

Round Table, 309-10, 312, 323.

Round Tower, 59, 98, 129.

Sabbath, 215, 264.

---- _Corrigan_, 209-10 n.

Sacrifice, 258-9, 413, 429-30, 434 n., 436 ff., 455.

---- Animal, 424, 435.

---- Food, 281, 404, 408, 437-8, 441, 454; Anthropology and, 279-80; Fairy, to, 36-7, 44, 70, 75, 117, 164, 171, 175, 218, 279-80, 291, 437: _see_ Libations.

---- Human, 246-7, 251-2, 280, 351, 407, 430, 436.

Sagas, 30, 368, 374.

Saints, Communion of, 127.

Salamanders, 242.

Salmon, Sacred, 341 n., 433.

_Samain_, 31, 288-90, 298-9, 345, 439-40, 453: _see_ November Day.

Satyrs, 303, 306, 406.

Science and Fairies, 456-515.

Second-sight, 43, 91 n., 140: _see_ Clairvoyance.

---- Science and, 486.

Seers and Seeresses, xviii, 2, 3, 18, 43-4, 55, 60 ff., 72, 76, 80, 82-3, 91, 94, 96, 122, 124, 141, 152, 155, 158, 177, 182, 206, 213-4, 217, 227, 242, 264, 284-5, 290, 334, 392-3, 457, 459, 470, 477.

Sein, Île de, 15, 218.

_Senchus na relec_, 292.

Serpents, 343.

---- St. Patrick and, 444.

_Sgéalta_, 23.

Shakespeare, 164, 241.

Shape-shifting, 34-5, 47, 79 n., 81 n., 192, 205, 207, 211, 230, 259, 293, 301-2, 328, 345, 356, 374, 389.

_Shoney_, 93, 200.

_Siabra_ (Ghosts), 285, 310.

_Sidh_, Definition of, 291.

_Sidhe_, 27-8, 58-66, 77, 86, 113, 227, 283-307, 314, 334, 352, 431: _see_ Tuatha De Danann.

---- Abductions by, 294-6.

---- Clontarf, at, 305-7.

---- Minstrels and Musicians, 69, 297-300.

---- Nature of, 62-4, 285-91, 307.

---- Palaces, 291-3, 300-2, 431.

---- Science and, 473, 479.

---- Society and Warfare, 60, 63, 65, 291, 300-7, 335.

---- Visions of, 60 ff., 296-7.

---- War-Goddesses, 302.

---- World, 60, 62-5, 295.

Skye, 4, 96, 98, 257.

Slieve Gullion, 2, 75-6, 237.

Sligo, 44, 54, 285, 299.

_Sluagh_, 108: _see_ Fairy Hosts.

_Snedgus, Voyage of_, 354.

Snowdon, 10, 136-7 n.

Sociology of Celts, 233.

Sorcery, 258, 402.

Soul, Bee, as, 178.

---- Bird, as, 183, 185, 240, 304 n., 355.

---- Existence of, 496-7.

---- Fairy, as, 147, 169, 176, 179, 183, 235, 493: _see_ Dead.

---- Idea of, 178, 215, 239-41, 244, 247-52, 304 n., 355, 360, 390.

---- Moth, as, 178, 240, 304 n.

---- Seen Disembodied, 215.

---- Science and, 480.

---- World, of, 65, 254.

Spenser, 318.

Sphynx, 419-20.

Spirits, Nature, 237-8, 240-4, 493.

Spiritualism, 55, 151 n., 249, 263, 459 ff.

St. Anne, 428, 450 n.

_St. Brandan's Voyage_, 354.

St. Brigit, 3, 284.

St. Columba, 3, 7, 85, 266-8, 441, 428.

---- Human sacrifice and, 436.

---- Re-birth and, 385.

St. Cornely, 199 n., 271, 274, 393, 428.

St. David, 402.

St. David's, 10, 147.

St. Guenolé, 201.

St. John's Day, 80 n., 273.

_St. Malo's Voyage_, 355.

St. Michael, 12, 407.

St. Michael's Mount, xv, 12, 15, 173, 398, 407, 423.

Stonehenge, xv, 403, 405, 411, 417-8.

Story-telling, 3, 5-7, 23-4, 115, 121, 149, 152, 154, 161, 184, 221.

St. Patrick, 3, 9, 14, 74, 118, 266-8, 286-7, 292, 294, 297-8, 431-2, 441 ff.

---- Re-birth and, 385.

---- Serpents and, 444.

_St. Patrick's Tripartite Life_, 402, 431, 451.

Succubi, 113 n.

Sun-dance and Fairy-dance, 405-6.

Swan-maidens, 200, 301.

Sylph, 241.

Taboo, 79 n., 130, 136, 161, 175, 204, 281, 340, 347, 415.

---- Anthropology and, 274-9.

---- Celtic, 277-9, 289-90, 295-6 n., 340, 347, 352, 368, 415.

---- Food, 47, 68, 127, 219, 275-6, 352.

---- Iron, 34, 87-8, 95, 124 n., 135, 138, 144, 147, 276.

---- Name, 70, 92, 208-10, 213, 274-5.

---- Place, 33, 35, 82, 150, 231, 237, 248, 277, 293.

_Táin_, 287, 302.

Taliessin, 161-2, 337 n., 388.

---- _Book of_, 353, 378.

---- Re-birth of, 378.

Tara, 2, 13-5, 31-2, 35, 221, 289, 292, 298-9, 340 ff., 351-2, 376, 381 n., 401-2, 410, 419.

_Teigue's Voyage_, 348-51.

Telepathy, 120, 217, 255.

---- Science and, 459, 472-3, 477-8, 490.

Tethra, 335.

Theology: _see_ Fairy-Faith, and Christianity and Fairies.

Theosophy, 167, 243, 457.

Thomas's _Tristan_, 325.

Tintagel, 12, 183-4.

_Togail_, 287.

Totem, 178, 227, 299 n., 304 n.

Trance, 65, 68-9, 181, 210, 248, 275, 281, 343, 356, 383, 472.

---- Fairyland and, 469 ff., 490.

---- Science and, 459.

Transmigration, 377 n., 387-9, 392: _see_ Re-birth.

Tree, Sacred: _see_ Cult.

_Triads_, 311, 313 n., 365.

Trinity, The, 238, 436.

_Tristan_, 325.

Troll, 176, 238, 391.

Tuam, 42, 384.

_Tuan's Re-birth_, 377.

Tuatha De Danann, 28, 31-2, 59, 62, 70, 211, 229, 241, 243, 252, 260, 277-80, 283-307: _see_ _Sidhe_, and Re-birth of.

---- Cult of, 412 ff.

---- Nature of, 285 ff., 296 n., 310, 313 n.-4, 335, 351, 355, 376, 379, 411, 492.

---- Welsh parallels to, 329.

_Tylwyth Teg_: _see_ Fairy, Names.

---- Breton parallel to, 211.

---- Origin of, 163.

Ulster, 3, 344-5, 370, 373, 374.

Undine, Tale of, 135.

Undines, 241.

Uthr Bendragon, 310.

_Viellée_, 6 n., 221.

Virgin, Holy, the, 394 n., 428, 451.

Vision, 60-2, 65-7, 80, 83, 91, 117, 122, 124-6, 133-4, 139, 140-1, 143, 145, 152, 155, 158, 182, 214-5, 230, 242, 286, 296, 334, 356: _see_ Clairvoyance, and Seers.

---- Conferring of, 77, 152, 215.

---- Explanation of, 485 ff.

---- Science and, 459, 476.

Vitalism, 493 ff.

Vivian, 10, 189, 315, 329.

Wace, 308 n., 323.

_Wales, Archaiology of_, 394.

---- _Four Ancient Books of_, 308 n., 328-31; age of, 331.

Wands, 52, 202, 343-4.

White Lady, 28, 82 n., 152 n., 310.

Witch, 34, 36, 121-2, 124 n., 174, 248, 264, 272, 304, 306, 389, 430.

---- Definition of, 263.

Witchcraft, 10, 12, 34, 36, 122, 153-4, 159 n., 167, 248, 253-65, 272, 281.

---- Theory of, 263.

Footnotes:

[1] Quite appropriately it means _place of cairns_ or _tumuli_--those prehistoric monuments religious and funereal in their purposes. _Carnac_ seems to be a Gallo-Roman form. According to Professor J. Loth, the Breton (Celtic) forms would be: old Celtic, _Carnaco-s_; old Breton (ninth-eleventh century), _Carnoc_; Middle Breton (eleventh-sixteenth century), _Carneuc_; Modern Breton, _Carnec_.

[2] For we cannot offer any proof of what at first sight appears like a philological relation or identity between _Carnac_ and _Karnak_.

[3] Andrew Lang, Kirk's _Secret Commonwealth_ (London, 1893), p. xviii; and _History of Scotland_ (Edinburgh, 1900-07).

[4] Cf. David MacRitchie's published criticisms of our Psychological Theory in _The Celtic Review_ (January 1910), entitled _Druids and Mound-Dwellers_; also his first part of these criticisms, ib. (October 1909), entitled _A New Solution of the Fairy Problem_.

[5] Alexander Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_ (Edinburgh, 1900), i, p. xix.

[6] The _ceilidh_ of the Western Hebrides corresponds to the _veillée_ of Lower Brittany (see pp. 221 ff.), and to similar story-telling festivals which formerly flourished among all the Celtic peoples. 'The _ceilidh_ is a literary entertainment where stories and tales, poems, and ballads, are rehearsed and recited, and songs are sung, conundrums are put, proverbs are quoted, and many other literary matters are related and discussed.'--Alexander Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_, i, p. xviii.

[7] I am indebted for this information to the late Mr. Davies, the competent scholar and antiquarian of Newcastle-Emlyn, where for many years he has been vicar.

[8] In the Gnosis, St. Michael symbolizes the sun, and thus very appropriately at St. Michael's Mount, Cornwall, at Mont St. Michel, Carnac, and also at Mont St. Michel on the coast of Normandy, replaced the Great God of Light and Life, held in supreme honour among the ancient Celts.

[9] In this connexion we may think of the North and South Magnetic Poles of the earth as centres of definite yet invisible forces which can be detected, and to some extent measured scientifically.

[10] Anglo-Irish for _rath_, a circular earthen fort.

[11] Throughout Ireland there are many ancient, often prehistoric, earthworks or tumuli, which are popularly called _forts_, _raths_, or _dúns_, and in folk-belief these are considered fairy hills or the abodes of various orders of fairies. In this belief we see at work a definite anthropomorphism which attributes dwellings here on earth to an invisible spirit-race, as though this race were actually the spirits of the ancient Irish who built the _forts_. As we proceed, we shall see how important and varied a part these earthworks play in the Irish Fairy-Faith (cf. chapter viii, on Archaeology).

[12] An Irish mystic, and seer of great power, with whom I have often discussed the Fairy-Faith in its details, regards 'fairy paths' or 'fairy passes' as actual magnetic arteries, so to speak, through which circulates the earth's magnetism.

[13] 'Irish scholars differ as to the signification of _Meadha_. Some say that it is the genitive case of _Meadh_, the name of some ancient chieftain who was buried in the hill. _Knock Magh_ is the spelling often used by writers who hold that the name means "Hill of the Plain".'--JOHN GLYNN.

[14] On September 8, 1909, about a year after this testimony was given, Mr. ----, our seer-witness, at his own home near Grange, told to me again the same essential facts concerning his psychical experiences as during my first interview with him, and even repeated word for word the expressions the 'gentry' used in communicating with him. Therefore I feel that he is thoroughly sincere in his beliefs and descriptions, whatever various readers may think of them. As his neighbours said to me about him--and I interviewed a good many of them--'Some give in to him and some do not'; but they always spoke of him with respect, though a few naturally consider him eccentric. At the time of our second meeting (which gave me a chance to revise the evidence as first taken down) Mr. ---- made this additional statement:--'The _gentry_ do not tell all their secrets, and I do not understand many things about them, nor can I be sure that everything I tell concerning them is exact.'

[15] A learned and more careful Irish seer thinks this head-dress should really be described as an aura.

[16] I have been told by a friend in California, who is a student of psychical sciences, that there exist in certain parts of that state, notably in the Yosemite Valley, as the Red Men seem to have known, according to their traditions, invisible races exactly comparable to the 'gentry' of this Ben Bulbin country such as our seer-witness describes them and as other seers in Ireland have described them, and quite like the 'people of peace' as described by Kirk, the seventh son, in his _Secret Commonwealth_ (see this study, p. 85 n.). These California races are said to exist now, as the Irish and Scotch invisible races are said to exist now, by seers who can behold them; and, like the latter races, are described as a distinct order of beings who have never been in physical embodiments. If we follow the traditions of the Red Men, the Yosemite invisible tribes are probably but a few of many such tribes scattered throughout the North American continent; and equally with their Celtic relatives they are described as a warlike race with more than human powers over physical nature, and as able to subject or destroy men.

[17] This refers to a tale told by Hugh Currid, in August, 1908, about Father Patrick and Father Dominick, which is here omitted because re-investigation during my second visit to Grange, in September, 1909, showed the tale to have been incorrectly reported. The same story, however, based upon facts, according to several reliable witnesses, was more accurately told by Patrick Waters at the time of my re-investigation, and appears on page 51.

[18] It happened that I had in my pocket a fossil, picked out of the neighbouring sea-cliff rocks, which are very rich in fossils. I showed this to Pat to ascertain if what he had had in his hand looked anything like it, and he at once said 'No'.

[19] After this Ossianic fragment, which has been handed down orally, I asked Pat if he had ever heard the old people talk about Dermot and Grania, and he replied:--'To be sure I have. Dermot and Grania used to live in these parts. Dermot stole Finn MacCoul's sister, and had to flee away. He took with him a bag of sand and a bunch of heather; and when he was in the mountains he would put the bag of sand under his head at night, and then tell everybody he met that he had slept on the sand (the sea-shore); and when on the sand he would use the bunch of heather for a pillow, and say he had slept on the heather (the mountains). And so nobody ever caught him at all.'

[20] As to probable proof that there was an Atlantis, see p. 333 n.

[21] This refers to Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle, who wrote _The Secret Commonwealth_ (see this study, p. 85 n.).

[22] In going from East Ireland to Galway, during the summer of 1908, I passed through the country near Mullingar, where there was then great excitement over a leprechaun which had been appearing to school-children and to many of the country-folk. I talked with some of the people as I walked through part of County Meath about this leprechaun, and most of them were certain that there could be such a creature showing itself; and I noticed, too, that they were all quite anxious to have a chance at the money-bag, if they could only see the little fellow with it. I told one good-natured old Irishman at Ballywillan--where I stopped over night--as we sat round his peat fire and pot of boiling potatoes, that the leprechaun was reported as captured by the police in Mullingar. 'Now that couldn't be, at all,' he said instantly, 'for everybody knows the leprechaun is a spirit and can't be caught by any blessed policeman, though it is likely one might get his gold if they got him cornered so he had no chance to run away. But the minute you wink or take your eyes off the little devil, sure enough he is gone.'

[23] Cf. David Fitzgerald, _Popular Tales of Ireland_, in _Rev. Celt._, iv. 185-92; and _All the Year Round_, New Series, iii. 'This woman guardian of the lake is called Toice Bhrean, "untidy" or "lazy wench". According to a local legend, she is said to have been originally the guardian of the sacred well, from which, owing to her neglect, Lough Gur issued; and in this rôle she corresponds to Liban, daughter of Eochaidh Finn, the guardian of the sacred well from which issued Lough Neagh, according to the _Dinnshenchas_ and the tale of Eochaidh MacMairido.'--J. F. LYNCH.

[24] It was on the bank of the little river Camóg, which flows near Lough Gur, that the Earl of Desmond one day saw Aine as she sat there combing her hair. Overcome with love for the fairy-goddess, he gained control over her through seizing her cloak, and made her his wife. From this union was born the enchanted son Geróid Iarla, even as Galahad was born to Lancelot by the Lady of the Lake. When Geróid had grown into young manhood, in order to surpass a woman he leaped right into a bottle and right out again, and this happened in the midst of a banquet in his father's castle. His father, the earl, had been put under taboo by Aine never to show surprise at anything her magician son might do, but now the taboo was forgotten, and hence broken, amid so unusual a performance; and immediately Geróid left the feasting and went to the lake. As soon as its water touched him he assumed the form of a goose, and he went swimming over the surface of the Lough, and disappeared on Garrod Island.

According to one legend, Aine, like the Breton _Morgan_, may sometimes be seen combing her hair, only half her body appearing above the lake. And in times of calmness and clear water, according to another legend, one may behold beneath Aine's lake the lost enchanted castle of her son Geróid, close to Garrod Island--so named from Geróid or 'Gerald'.

Geróid lives there in the under-lake world to this day, awaiting the time of his normal return to the world of men (see our chapter on re-birth, p. 386). But once in every seven years, on clear moonlight nights, he emerges temporarily, when the Lough Gur peasantry see him as a phantom mounted on a phantom white horse, leading a phantom or fairy cavalcade across the lake and land. A well-attested case of such an apparitional appearance of the earl has been recorded by Miss Anne Baily, the percipient having been Teigue O'Neill, an old blacksmith whom she knew (see _All the Year Round_, New Series, iii. 495-6, London, 1870). And Moll Riall, a young woman also known to Miss Baily, saw the phantom earl by himself, under very weird circumstances, by day, as she stood at the margin of the lake washing clothes (ib., p. 496).

Some say that Aine's true dwelling-place is in her hill; upon which on every St. John's Night the peasantry used to gather from all the immediate neighbourhood to view the moon (for Aine seems to have been a moon goddess, like Diana), and then with torches (_cliars_) made of bunches of straw and hay tied on poles used to march in procession from the hill and afterwards run through cultivated fields and amongst the cattle. The underlying purpose of this latter ceremony probably was--as is the case in the Isle of Man and in Brittany (see pp. 124 n., 273), where corresponding fire-ceremonies surviving from an ancient agricultural cult are still celebrated--to exorcise the land from all evil spirits and witches in order that there may be good harvests and rich increase of flocks. Sometimes on such occasions the goddess herself has been seen leading the sacred procession (cf. the Bacchus cult among the ancient Greeks, who believed that the god himself led his worshippers in their sacred torch-light procession at night, he being like Aine in this respect, more or less connected with fertility in nature). One night some girls staying on the hill late were made to look through a magic ring by Aine, and lo the hill was crowded with the folk of the fairy goddess who before had been invisible. The peasants always said that Aine is 'the best-hearted woman that ever lived' (cf. David Fitzgerald, _Popular Tales of Ireland_, in _Rev. Celt._, iv. 185-92).

In _Silva Gadelica_ (ii. 347-8), Aine is a daughter of Eogabal, a king of the Tuatha De Danann, and her abode is within the _sidh_, named on her account '_Aine cliach_, now Cnoc Aine, or Knockany'. In another passage we read that Manannan took Aine as his wife (ib., ii. 197). Also see in _Silva Gadelica_, ii, pp. 225, 576.

[25] 'In some local tales the _Bean-tighe_, or _Bean a'tighe_ is termed _Bean-sidhe_ (Banshee), and _Bean Chaointe_, or "wailing woman", and is identified with Aine. In an elegy by Ferriter on one of the Fitzgeralds, we read:--

Aine from her closely hid nest did awake, The woman of wailing from Gur's voicy lake.

'Thomas O'Connellan, the great minstrel bard, some of whose compositions are given by Hardiman, died at Lough Gur Castle about 1700, and was buried at New Church beside the lake. It is locally believed that Aine stood on a rock of Knock Adoon and "keened" O'Connellan whilst the funeral procession was passing from the castle to the place of burial.'--J. F. LYNCH.

A Banshee was traditionally attached to the Baily family of Lough Gur; and one night at dead of night, when Miss Kitty Baily was dying of consumption, her two sisters, Miss Anne Baily and Miss Susan Baily, who were sitting in the death chamber, 'heard such sweet and melancholy music as they had never heard before. It seemed to them like distant cathedral music.... The music was not in the house.... It seemed to come through the windows of the old castle, high in the air.' But when Miss Anne, who went downstairs with a lighted candle to investigate the weird phenomenon, had approached the ruined castle she thought the music came from above the house; 'and thus perplexed, and at last frightened, she returned.' Both sisters are on record as having distinctly heard the fairy music, and for a long time (_All the Year Round_, New Series, iii. 496-7; London, 1870).

[26] 'The _Buachailleen_ is most likely one of the many forms assumed by the shape-shifting Fer Fi, the Lough Gur Dwarf, who at Tara, according to the _Dinnshenchas_ of Tuag Inbir (see _Folk-Lore_, iii; and A. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, i. 195 ff.), took the shape of a woman; and we may trace the tales of Geróid Iarla to Fer Fi, who, and not Geróid, is believed by the oldest of the Lough Gur peasantry to be the owner of the lake. Fer Fi is the son of Eogabal of Sídh Eogabail, and hence brother to Aine. He is also foster-son of Manannan Mac Lir, and a Druid of the Tuatha De Danann (cf. _Silva Gadelica_, ii. 225; also _Dinnshenchas_ of Tuag Inbir). At Lough Gur various tales are told by the peasants concerning the Dwarf, and he is still stated by them to be the brother of Aine. For the sake of experiment I once spoke very disrespectfully of the Dwarf to John Punch, an old man, and he said to me in a frightened whisper: "Whisht! he'll hear you." Edward Fitzgerald and other old men were very much afraid of the Dwarf.'--J. F. LYNCH.

[27] 'Compare the tale of Excalibur, the Sword of King Arthur, which King Arthur before his death ordered Sir Bedivere to cast into the lake whence it had come.'--J. F. LYNCH.

[28] 'It is commonly believed by young and old at Lough Gur that a human being is drowned in the Lake once every seven years, and that it is the _Bean Fhionn_, or "White Lady" who thus _takes_ the person.'--J. F. LYNCH.

[29] It was the belief of the Rev. Robert Kirk, as expressed by him in his _Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies_, that the fairy tribes are a distinct order of created beings possessing human-like intelligence and supernormal powers, who live and move about in this world invisible to all save men and women of the second-sight (see this study, pp. 89, 91 n.).

[30] The Rev. Robert Kirk, in his _Secret Commonwealth_, defines the second-sight, which enabled him to see the 'good people', as 'a rapture, transport, and sort of death'. He and our present witness came into the world with this abnormal faculty; but there is the remarkable case to record of the late Father Allen Macdonald, who during a residence of twenty years on the tiny and isolated Isle of Erisgey, Western Hebrides, acquired the second-sight, and was able some years before he died there (in 1905) to exercise it as freely as though he had been a natural-born seer.

[31] In his note to _Le Chant des Trépassés_ (_Barzaz Breiz_, p. 507), Villemarqué reports that in some localities in Lower Brittany on All Saints Night libations of milk are poured over the tombs of the dead. This is proof that the nature of fairies in Scotland and of the dead in Brittany is thought to be the same.

[32] 'In many parts of the Highlands, where the same deity is known, the stone into which women poured the libation of milk is called _Leac na Gruagaich_, "Flag-stone of the Gruagach." If the libation was omitted in the evening, the best cow in the fold would be found dead in the morning.'--ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL.

[33] Dr. George Henderson, in _The Norse Influence on Celtic Scotland_ (Glasgow, 1901), p. 101, says:--'_Shony_ was a sea-god in Lewis, where ale was sacrificed to him at Hallowtide. After coming to the church of St. Mulvay at night a man was sent to wade into the sea, saying: "Shony, I give you this cup of ale hoping that you will be so kind as to give us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground the ensuing year." As _o_ from Norse would become _o_, and _fn_ becomes _nn_, one thinks of _Sjöfn_, one of the goddesses in the Edda. In any case the word is Norse.' It seems, therefore, that the Celtic stock in Lewis have adopted the name _Shony_ or _Shoney_, and possibly also the god it designates, through contact with Norsemen; but, at all events, they have assimilated him to their own fairy pantheon, as we can see in their celebrating special libations to him on the ancient Celtic feast of the dead and fairies, Halloween.

[34] This, as Dr. Carmichael told me, I believe very justly represents the present state of folk-lore in many parts of the Highlands. There are, it is true, old men and women here and there who know much about fairies, but they, fearing the ridicule of a younger and 'educated' generation, are generally unwilling to admit any belief in fairies.

[35] The following note by Miss Tolmie is of great interest and value, especially when one bears in mind Cuchulainn's traditional relation with Skye (see p. 4):--'The Koolian range should never be written _Cu-chullin_. The name is written here with a K, to ensure its being correctly uttered and written. It is probably a Norse word; but, as yet, a satisfactory explanation of its origin and meaning has not been published. In Gaelic the range is always alluded to (in the masculine singular) as the Koolian.'

[36] Dr. Alexander Carmichael found that the scene of this widespread tale is variously laid, in Argyll, in Perth, in Inverness, and in other counties of the Highlands. From his own collection of folk-songs he contributes the following verses to illustrate the song (existing in numerous versions), which the maiden while invisible used to sing to the cows of Colin:--

_Crodh Chailean! crodh Chailean! Crodh Chailean mo ghaoil, Crodh Chailean mo chridhe, Air lighe cheare fraoish._

(Cows of Colin! cows of Colin! Cows of Colin of my love, Cows of Colin of my heart, In colour of the heather-hen.)

In one of Dr. Carmichael's versions, 'Colin's wife and her infant child had been lifted away by the fairies to a fairy bower in the glen between the hills.' There she was kept nursing the babes which the fairies had stolen, until 'upon Hallow Eve, when all the bowers were open', Colin by placing a steel tinder above the lintel of the door to the fairy bower was enabled to enter the bower and in safety lead forth his wife and child.

[37] In this beautiful fairy legend we recognize the fairy woman as one of the Tuatha De Danann-like fairies--one of the women of the _Sidhe_, as Irish seers call them.

[38] It is interesting to know that the present inhabitants of Barra, or at least most of them, are the descendants of Irish colonists who belonged to the clan Eoichidh of County Cork, and who emigrated from there to Barra in A. D. 917. They brought with them their old customs and beliefs, and in their isolation their children have kept these things alive in almost their primitive Celtic purity. For example, besides their belief in fairies, May Day, Baaltine, and November Eve are still rigorously observed in the pagan way, and so is Easter--for it, too, before being claimed by Christianity, was a sun festival. And how beautiful it is in this age to see the youths and maidens and some of the elders of these simple-hearted Christian fisher-folk climb to the rocky heights of their little island-home on Easter morn to salute the sun as it rises out of the mountains to the east, and to hear them say that the sun dances with joy that morning because the Christ is risen. In a similar way they salute the new moon, making as they do so the sign of the cross. Finn Barr is said to have been a County Cork man of great sanctity; and he probably came to Barra with the colony, for he is the patron saint of the island, and hence its name. (To my friend, Mr. Michael Buchanan, of Barra, I am indebted for this history and these traditions of his native isle.)

[39] '_Sluagh_, "hosts," the spirit-world. The "hosts" are the spirits of mortals who have died.... According to one informant, the spirits fly about in great clouds, up and down the face of the world like the starlings, and come back to the scenes of their earthly transgressions. No soul of them is without the clouds of earth, dimming the brightness of the works of God, nor can any win heaven till satisfaction is made for the sins of earth.'--ALEXANDER CARMICHAEL, _Carmina Gadelica_, ii. 330.

[40] This curious tale suggests that certain of the fairy women who entice mortals to their love in modern times are much the same, if not the same, as the _succubi_ of Middle-Age mystics. But it is not intended by this observation to confuse the higher orders of the _Sidhe_ and all the fairy folk like the fays who come from Avalon with _succubi_; though _succubi_ and fairy women in general were often confused and improperly identified the one with the other. It need not be urged in this example of a 'fairy woman' that we have to do not with a being of flesh and blood, whatever various readers may think of her.

[41] '"Willy-the-Fairy," otherwise known as William Cain, is the musician referred to by the late Mr. John Nelson (p. 131). The latter's statement that William Cain played one of these fairy tunes at one of our Manx entertainments in Peel is perfectly correct.'--SOPHIA MORRISON.

[42] This is the Mid-world of Irish seers, who would be inclined to follow the Manx custom and call the fairies 'the People of the Middle World'.

[43] 'May 11 == in Manx _Oie Voaldyn_, "May-day Eve." On this evening the fairies were supposed to be peculiarly active. To propitiate them and to ward off the influence of evil spirits, and witches, who were also active at this time, green leaves or boughs and _sumark_ or primrose flowers were strewn on the threshold, and branches of the _cuirn_ or mountain ash made into small crosses without the aid of a knife, which was on no account to be used (steel or iron in any form being taboo to fairies and spirits), and stuck over the doors of the dwelling-houses and cow-houses. Cows were further protected from the same influences by having the _Bollan-feaill-Eoin_ (John's feast wort) placed in their stalls. This was also one of the occasions on which no one would give fire away, and on which fires were and are still lit on the hills to drive away the fairies.'--SOPHIA MORRISON.

[44] I am wholly indebted to Miss Morrison for these Manx verses and their translation, which I have substituted for Mrs. Moore's English rendering. Miss Morrison, after my return to Oxford, saw Mrs. Moore and took them down from her, a task I was not well fitted to do when the tale was told.

[45] It has been suggested, and no doubt correctly, that these murmuring sounds heard on Dalby Mountain are due to the action of sea-waves, close at hand, washing over shifting masses of pebbles on the rock-bound shore. Though this be the true explanation of the phenomenon itself, it only proves the attribution of cause to be wrong, and not the underlying animistic conception of spiritual beings.

[46] In this mythological role, Manannan is apparently a sun god or else the sun itself; and the Manx coat of arms, which is connected with him, being a sun symbol, suggests to us now ages long prior to history, when the Isle of Man was a Sacred Isle dedicated to the cult of the Supreme God of Light and Life, and when all who dwelt thereon were regarded as the Children of the Sun.

[47] Sir John Rhys tells me that this Snowdon fairy-lore was contributed by the late Lady Rhys, who as a girl lived in the neighbourhood of Snowdon and heard very much from the old people there, most of whom believed in the fairies; and she herself then used to be warned, in the manner mentioned, against being carried away into the under-lake Fairyland.

[48] Cf. _Celtic Folklore, Welsh and Manx_, pp. 683-4 n., where Sir John Rhys says of his friend, Professor A. C. Haddon:--'I find also that he, among others, has anticipated me in my theory as to the origins of the fairies: witness the following extract from the syllabus of a lecture delivered by him at Cardiff in 1894 on _Fairy Tales_:--"What are the fairies?--Legendary origin of the fairies. It is evident from fairy literature that there is a mixture of the possible and the impossible, of fact and fancy. Part of fairydom refers to (1) spirits that never were embodied: other fairies are (2) spirits of environment, nature or local spirits, and household or domestic spirits; (3) spirits of the organic world, spirits of plants, and spirits of animals; (4) spirits of men, or ghosts; and (5) witches and wizards, or men possessed with other spirits. All these, and possibly other elements, enter into the fanciful aspects of Fairyland, but there is a large residuum of real occurrences; these point to a clash of races, and we may regard many of these fairy sagas as stories told by men of the Iron Age of events which happened to men of the Bronze Age in their conflicts with men of the Neolithic Age, and possibly these, too, handed on traditions of the Paleolithic Age."'

[49] This is the one tale I have found in North Wales about a midwife and fairies--a type of tale common to West Ireland, Isle of Man, Cornwall, and Brittany, but in a reverse version, the midwife there being (as she is sometimes in Welsh versions) one of the human race called in by fairies. If evidence of the oneness of the Celtic mind were needed we should find it here (cf. pp. 50, 54, 127, 175, 182, 205). There are in this type of fairy-tale, as the advocates of the Pygmy Theory may well hold, certain elements most likely traceable to a folk-memory of some early race, or special class of some early race, who knew the secrets of midwifery and the use of medicines when such knowledge was considered magical. But in each example of this midwife story there is the germ idea--no matter what other ideas cluster round it--that fairies, like spirits, are only to be seen by an extra-human vision, or, as psychical researchers might say, by clairvoyance.

[50] After this remarkable story, Mrs. Jones told me about another very rare psychical experience of her own, which is here recorded because it illustrates the working of the psychological law of the association of ideas:--'My husband, Price Jones, was drowned some forty years ago, within four miles of Arms Head, near Bangor, on Friday at midday; and that night at about one o'clock he appeared to me in our bedroom and laid his head on my breast. I tried to ask him where he came from, but before I could get my breath he was gone. I believed at the time that he was out at sea perfectly safe and well. But next day, Saturday, at about noon, a message came announcing his death. I was as fully awake as one can be when I thus saw the spirit of my husband. He returned to me a second time about six months later.' Had this happened in West Ireland, it is almost certain that public opinion would have declared that Price Jones had been _taken_ by the 'gentry' or 'good people'.

[51] Here we find the _Tylwyth Teg_ showing quite the same characteristics as Welsh elves in general, as Cornish pixies, and as Breton _corrigans_, or _lutins_; that is, given to dancing at night, to stealing children, and to deceiving travellers.

[52] This folk-belief partially sustains the view put forth in our chapter on Environment, that St. David's during pagan times was already a sacred spot and perhaps then the seat of a druidic oracle.

[53] Here we have an example of the _Tylwyth Teg_ being identified with a prehistoric race, quite in accordance with the argument of the Pygmy Theory. We have, however, as the essential idea, that the _Tylwyth Teg_ heard singing were the spirits of this prehistoric race. Thus our contention that ancestral spirits play a leading part in the fairy-belief is sustained, and the Pygmy Theory appears quite at its true relative value--as able to explain one subordinate ethnological strand in the complex fabric of the belief.

[54] This story is much like the one recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis about a boy going to Fairyland and returning to his mother (see this study, p. 324). The possibility that it may be an independent version of the folk-tale told to Cambrensis which has continued to live on among the people makes it highly interesting.

Mr. Jones gives further evidence on the re-birth doctrine in Wales (pp. 388-9), and concerning Merlin and sacrifice to appease place-spirits (pp. 436-7).

[55] As a result of his researches, the Rev. T. M. Morgan has just published a new work, entitled _The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Newchurch_ (Carmarthen, 1910).

[56] In these last two anecdotes, as in modern 'Spiritualism', we observe a popular practice of necromancy or the calling up of spirits, so-called 'materialization' of spirits, and spirit communication through a human 'medium', who is the _dyn hysbys_, as well as divination, the revealing of things hidden and the foretelling of future events. This is direct evidence that Welsh fairies or the _Tylwyth Teg_ were formerly the same to Welshmen as spirits are to Spiritualists now. We seem, therefore, to have proof of our Psychological Theory (see chap. xi).

[57] Here we have a combination of many distinct elements and influences. As among mortals, so among the _Tylwyth Teg_ there is a king; and this conception may have arisen directly from anthropomorphic influences on the ancient Brythonic religion, or it may have come directly from druidic teachings. The locating of _Gwydion ab Don_, like a god, in a heaven-world, rather than like his counterpart, _Gwynn ab Nudd_, in a hades-world, is probably due to a peculiar admixture of Druidism and Christianity: at first, both gods were probably druidic or pagan, and the same, but _Gwynn ab Nudd_ became a demon or evil god under Christian influences, while _Gwydion ab Don_ seems to have curiously retained his original good reputation in spite of Christianity (cf. p. 320). The name _Gwenhidw_ reminds us at once of Arthur's queen _Gwenhwyvar_ or 'White Apparition'; and the sheep of _Gwenhidw_ can properly be explained by the Naturalistic Theory. It seems, however, that analogy was imaginatively suggested between the Queen _Gwenhidw_ as resembling the Welsh White Lady or a ghost-like being, and her sheep, the clouds, also of a necessarily ghost-like character. All this is an admirable illustration of the great complexity of the Fairy-Faith.

[58] The parallel between this Welsh method of conferring vision and the Breton method is very striking (cf. p. 215).

[59] This is the substance of the story as it was told to me by a gentleman who lives within sight of the farm where the image is said to have been found. And one day he took me to the house and showed me the room and the place in the wall where the find was made. The old manor is one of the solidest and most picturesque of its kind in Wales, and, in spite of its extreme age, well preserved. He, being as a native Welshman of the locality well acquainted with its archaeology, thinks it safe to place an age of six to eight hundred years on the manor. What is interesting about this matter of age arises from the query, Was the image one of the Virgin or of some Christian saint, or was it a Druid idol? Both opinions are current in the neighbourhood, but there is a good deal in favour of the second. The region, the little valley on whose side stands the Pentre Evan Cromlech, the finest in Britain, is believed to have been a favourite place with the ancient Druids; and in the oak groves which still exist there tradition says there was once a flourishing pagan school for neophytes, and that the cromlech instead of being a place for interments or for sacrifices was in those days completely enclosed, forming like other cromlechs a darkened chamber in which novices when initiated were placed for a certain number of days--the interior being called the 'Womb or Court of Ceridwen'.

[60] The same remedy is prescribed in Brittany when mischievous _lutins_ or _corrigans_ lead a traveller astray, in Ireland when the _good people_ lead a traveller astray; and at Rollright, Oxfordshire, England, an old woman told me that it is efficacious against being led astray through witchcraft. Obviously the fairy and witch spell are alike.

[61] The same sort of a story as this is told in Lower Brittany, where the _corrigans_ or _lutins_ slaughter a farmer's fat cow or ox and invite the farmer to partake of the feast it provides. If he does so with good grace and humour, he finds his cow or ox perfectly whole in the morning, but if he refuses to join the feast or joins it unwillingly, in the morning he is likely to find his cow or ox actually dead and eaten.

[62] See Sir John Rhys, _Celtic Folk-Lore: Welsh and Manx_ (Oxford, 1901), _passim_.

[63] The _New English Dictionary_, s.v. _Pixy_, gives rather vaguely a Swedish dialect word, _pysg_, a small fairy. It also mentions _pix_ as a Devon imprecation, 'a pix take him.' I suspect the last is only an _umlaut_ form of a common Shakespearean imprecation. If not, it is interesting, and reminds one of the fate of Margery Dawe, 'Piskies came and carr'd her away.'

[64] 'Some say that the Phoenicians never came to Cornwall at all, and that their Ictis was Vectis (the Isle of Wight) or even Thanet.'--HENRY JENNER.

[65] 'This is, I think, the usual Cornish belief.'--HENRY JENNER.

[66] 'About Porth Curnow and the Logan Rock there are little spots of earth in the face of the granite cliffs where sea-daisies (thrift) and other wild flowers grow. These are referred to the sea pisky, and are known as "piskies' gardens."'--HENRY JENNER.

[67] I was told by another Cornishman that, in a spirit of municipal rivalry and fun, the Penzance people like to taunt the people of Newlyn (now almost a suburb of Penzance) by calling them _Buccas_, and that the Newlyn townsmen very much resent being so designated. Thus what no doubt was originally an ancient cult to some local sea-divinity called _Bucca_, has survived as folk-humour. (See Mr. Jenner's Introduction, p. 164.)

[68] 'Another version, which is more usual, is that the pisky anointed the person's eyes and so rendered itself visible.'--HENRY JENNER.

[69] This is a natural outcropping of greenstone on a commanding hill just above the vicarage in Newlyn, and concerning it many weird legends survive. In pre-Christian times it was probably one of the Cornish sacred spots for the celebration of ancient rites--probably in honour of the Sun--and for divination.

[70] For more about the Tolcarne Troll see chapter on Celtic Re-birth p. 391.

[71] Mr. John B. Cornish, solicitor, of Penzance, told me that when he once suggested to an old miner who fully believed in the 'knockers', that the noises they were supposed to make were due to material causes, the old miner became quite annoyed, and said, 'Well, I guess I have ears to hear.'

[72] For the Cornish folk-lore already published by Miss M. A. Courtney, the reader is referred to her work, _Cornish Feasts and Folk-Lore_ (Penzance, 1890).

[73] A curious holed stone standing between two low menhirs on the moors beyond the Lanyon Dolmen, near Madron; but in Borlase's time (cf. his _Antiquities of Cornwall_, ed. 1769, p. 177) the three stones were not as now in a direct line. The Men-an-Tol has aroused much speculation among archaeologists as to its probable use or meaning. No doubt it was astronomical and religious in its significance; and it may have been a calendar stone with which ancient priests took sun observations (cf. Sir Norman Lockyer, _Stonehenge and Other Stone Monuments_); or it may have been otherwise related to a sun cult, or to some pagan initiatory rites.

[74] I asked what a nath is, and Mr. Spragg explained:--'A nath is a bird with a beak like that of a parrot, and with black and grey feathers. The naths live on sea-islands in holes like rabbits, and before they start to fly they first run.' The nath, as Mr. Henry Jenner informs me, is the same as the puffin (_Fratercula arctica_), called also in Cornwall a 'sea parrot'.

[75] Sometimes it is necessary to turn your coat inside out. A Zennor man said that to do the same thing with your socks or stockings is as good. In Ireland this strange psychological state of going astray comes from walking over a fairy domain, over a confusing-sod, or getting into a fairy pass.

[76] Cf. F. M. Luzel, _Contes populaires de Basse-Bretagne_ (Paris, 1887), i. 177-97; following the account of Ann Drann, a servant at Coat-Fual, Plouguernevel (Côtes-du-Nord), November 1855.

[77] My Breton friend, M. Goulven Le Scour, was born November 20, 1851, at Kerouledic in Plouneventer, Finistère. He is an antiquarian, a poet, and, as we shall see, a folk-lorist of no mean ability. In 1902, at the _Congrès d'Auray_ of Breton poets and singers, he won two prizes for poetry, and, in 1901, a prize at the _Congrès de Quimperlé_ or _Concours de Recueils poétiques_.

[78] This story concerns persons still living, and, at M. Le Scour's suggestion, I have omitted their names.

[79] By a Carnac family I was afterwards given a sprig of such blessed box-wood, and was assured that its exorcizing power is still recognized by all old Breton families, most of whom seem to possess branches of it.

[80] This idea seems related to the one in the popular Morbihan legend of how St. Cornely, the patron saint of the country and the saint who presides over the Alignements and domestic horned animals, changed into upright stones the pagan forces opposing him when he arrived near Carnac; and these stones are now the famous Alignements of Carnac.

[81] Luzel, op. cit., iii. 226-311; i. 128-218; ii. 349-54.

[82] Ib., ii. 269; cf. our study, p. 93.

[83] According to the annotations to a legend recorded by Villemarqué, in his _Barzaz Breiz_, pp. 39-44, and entitled the _Submersion de la Ville d'Is_, St. Guenolé was traditionally the founder of the first monastery raised in Armorica; and Dahut the princess stole the key from her sleeping father in order fittingly to crown a banquet and midnight debaucheries which were being held in honour of her lover, the Black Prince.

[84] Luzel, op. cit., ii. 257-68; i. 3-13.

[85] P. Sébillot, _Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne_ (Paris, 1882), i. 100.

[86] General references: Sébillot, ib.; and his _Folk-Lore de France_ (Paris, 1905).

[87] Sébillot, _Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne_, i. 73-4.

[88] Ib., i. 102, 103-4.

[89] Sébillot, _Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne_, i. 83.

[90] Ib., i. 90-1.

[91] Cf. ib., i. 109.

[92] Cf. ib., i. 74-5, &c.

[93] Cf. Sébillot, _Traditions et superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne_, i. 74-5, &c.

[94] In Lower Brittany the _corrigan_ tribes collectively are commonly called _Corrikêt_, masculine plural of _Corrik_, diminutive of _Corr_, meaning 'Dwarf'; or _Corriganed_, feminine plural of _Corrigan_, meaning 'Little Dwarf'. Many other forms are in use. (Cf. R. F. Le Men, _Trad. et supers. de la Basse-Bretagne_, in _Rev. Celt._, i. 226-7.)

[95] Cf. _Foyer breton_, i. 199.

[96] By 'E. R.', in _Mélusine_ (Paris), i. 114.

[97] This account about _corrigans_, more rational than any preceding it, may possibly refer to a dream or trance-like state of mind on the part of the young girl; and if it does, we can then compare the presence of a mortal at this _corrigan_ sabbath, or even at the ordinary witches' sabbath, to the presence of a mortal in Fairyland. And according to popular Breton belief, as reliable peasants assure me, during dreams, trance, or ecstasy, the soul is supposed to depart from the body and actually see spirits of all kinds in another world, and to be then under their influence. While many details in the more conventional _corrigan_ stories appear to reflect a folk-memory of religious dances and songs, and racial, social, and traditional usages of the ancient Bretons, the animistic background of them could conceivably have originated from psychical experiences such as this girl is supposed to have had.

[98] Villemarqué, _Barzaz Breiz_ (Paris, 1867), pp. 33, 35.

[99] J. Loth, in _Annales de Bretagne_ (Rennes), x. 78-81.

[100] E. Renan, _Essais de morale et de critique_ (Paris, 1859), p. 451.

[101] In Ireland it is commonly held that a seer beholding a fairy can make a non-seer see it also by coming into bodily _rapport_ with the non-seer (cf. p. 152).

[102] It is sometimes believed that phantom washerwomen are undergoing penance for having wilfully brought on an abortion by their work, or else for having strangled their babe.

[103] Every parish in the uncorrupted parts of Brittany has its own _Ankou_, who is the last man to die in the parish during the year. Each King of the Dead, therefore, never holds office for more than twelve months, since during that period he is certain to have a successor. Sometimes the _Ankou_ is Death itself personified. In the Morbihan, the _Ankou_ occasionally may be seen as an apparition entering a house where a death is about to occur; though more commonly he is never seen, his knocking only is heard, which is the rule in Finistère. In Welsh mythology, Gwynn ab Nudd, king of the world of the dead, is represented as playing a rôle parallel to that of the Breton _Ankou_, when he goes forth with his fierce hades-hounds hunting the souls of the dying. (Cf. Rhys, _Arth. Leg._, p. 155.)

[104] Cf. A. Le Braz, _La Légende de la Mort_; Introduction by L. Marillier (Paris, 1893), pp. 31, 40.

[105] Cf. Le Braz, _La Légende de la Mort_; Introduction by Marillier, pp. 47, 46, 7-8, 40, 45, 46.

[106] Cf. Le Braz, _La Légende de la Mort_; Introduction by Marillier, p. 43.

[107] Ib.; Notes by G. Dottin (Paris, 1902), p. 44.

[108] Ib.; Introduction by Marillier, pp. 19, 23, 68.

[109] Cf. ib.; Introduction by Marillier, pp. 53 ff., 68.

[110] A Breton night's entertainment held in a peasant's cottage, stable, or other warm outhouse. In parts of the Morbihan and of Finistère where the old Celtic life has escaped modern influences, almost every winter night the Breton Celts, like their cousins in very isolated parts of West Ireland and in the Western Hebrides, find their chief enjoyment in story-telling festivals, some of which I have been privileged to attend.

[111] The word in the MS. is _boiteux_, and in relation to a devil or demon this seems to be the proper rendering.

[112] B. Spencer and F. T. Gillen, _Nat. Tribes of Cent. Aust._ (London, 1899), chapters xi, xv.

[113] R. H. Codrington, _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ x. 261; _The Melanesians_ (Oxford, 1891), pp. 123, 151, &c.; also cf. F. W. Christian, _The Caroline Islands_ (London, 1899), pp. 281 ff., &c.

[114] H. Callaway, _The Religious System of the Amazulu_ (London, 1868), pp. 226-7.

[115] C. G. Leland, _Memoirs_ (London, 1893), i. 34.

[116] R. C. Temple, _Legends of the Panjab_, in _Folk-Lore_, x. 395.

[117] W. W. Skeat, _Malay Magic_ (London, 1900), _passim_.

[118] Hardouin, _Traditions et superstitions siamoises_, in _Rev. Trad. Pop._, v. 257-67.

[119] Ella G. Sykes, _Persian Folklore_, in _Folk-Lore_, xii. 263.

[120] I am directly indebted for this information to a friend who is a member of Lincoln College, Oxford, Mr. Mohammed Said Loutfy, of Barkein, Lower Egypt. Mr. Loutfy has come into frequent and very intimate contact with these animistic beliefs in his country, and he tells me that they are common to all classes of almost all races in modern Egypt. The common Egyptian spellings are _afreet_, in the singular, and _afaareet_ in the plural, for spiritual beings, who are usually described by percipients as of pygmy stature, but as being able to assume various sizes and shapes. The _djinns_, on the contrary, are described as tall spiritual beings possessing great power.

[121] J. C. Lawson, _Modern Greek Folk-Lore_ (Cambridge, 1910), pp. 131-7, 139-46, 163.

[122] L. Sainéan, _Les Fées méchantes d'après les croyances du peuple roumain_, in _Mélusine_, x. 217-26, 243-54.

[123] Cf. C. G. Leland, _Etruscan Roman Remains in Pop. Trad._ (London, 1892), pp. 162, 165, 223, &c.

[124] H. C. Coote, _The Neo-Latin Fay_, in _Folk-Lore Record_, ii. 1-18.

[125] We cannot here attempt to present, even in outline, all the complex ethnological arguments for and against the existence in prehistoric times of European pygmy races. Attention ought, however, to be called to the remarkable finds recently made in the _Grotte des Enfants_, at Mentone, France. A certain number of well-preserved skeletons of probably the earliest men who dwelt on the present land surface of Europe, which were found there, suggest that different racial stocks, possibly in succession, have preceded the Aryan stock. The first race, as indicated by two small negroid-looking skeletons of a woman, 1,580 mm. (62·21 inches), and of a boy 1,540 mm. (60·63 inches) in height, found in the lowest part of the _Grotte_, was probably Ethiopian. The succeeding race was probably Mongolian, judging from other remains found in another part of the same _Grotte_, and especially from the Chancelade skeleton with its distinctly Eskimo appearance, only 1,500 mm. (59·06 inches) high, discovered near Perigneux, France. The race succeeding this one was possibly the one out of which our own Aryan race evolved. In relation to the Pygmy Theory these recent finds are of the utmost significance. They confirm Dr. Windle's earlier conclusion, that, contrary to the argument advanced to support the Pygmy Theory, the neolithic races of Central Europe were not true pygmies--a people whose average stature does not exceed four feet nine inches (cf. B. C. A. Windle, _Tyson's Pygmies of the Ancients_, London, 1894, Introduction). And, furthermore, these finds show, as far as any available ethnological data can, that there are no good reasons for believing that European and, therefore, Celtic lands were once dominated by pygmies even in epochs so remote that we can only calculate them in tens of thousands of years. Nevertheless, it is very highly probable that a folk-memory of Lappish, Pictish, or other small but not true pygmy races, has superficially coloured the modern fairy traditions of Northern Scotland, of the Western Hebrides (where what may prove to have been Lapps' or Picts' houses undoubtedly remain), of Northern Ireland, of the Isle of Man, and slightly, if indeed at all, the fairy traditions of other parts of the Celtic world (cf. David MacRitchie, _The Testimony of Tradition_, London, 1890; and his criticism of our own Psychological Theory, in the _Celtic Review_, October 1909 and January 1910, entitled respectively, _A New Solution of the Fairy Problem_, and _Druids and Mound-Dwellers_).

Again, the very small flint implements frequently found in Celtic lands and elsewhere have perhaps very reasonably been attributed to a long-forgotten pygmy race; though we must bear in mind in this connexion that it would be very unwise to conclude definitely that no race save a small-statured race could have made and used such implements: American Red Men were, when discovered by Europeans, and still are, making and using the tiniest of arrow-heads, precisely the same in size and design as those found in Celtic lands and attributed to pygmies. The use of small flint implements for special purposes, e. g. arrows for shooting small game like birds, for spearing fish, and for use in warfare as poisoned arrows, seems to have been common to most primitive peoples of normal stature. Contemporary pygmy races, far removed from Celtic lands, are also using them, and no doubt their prehistoric ancestors used them likewise.

[126] J. G. Campbell, _The Fians_ (London, 1891), p. 239. An Irish dwarf is minutely described in _Silva Gadelica_ (ii. 116), O'Grady's translation. Again, in Malory's _Morte D'Arthur_ (B. XII. cc. i-ii) a dwarf is mentioned.

[127] Campbell, _The Fians_, p. 265.

[128] S. H. O'Grady, _Silva Gadelica_ (London, 1892), ii. 199.

[129] Commentary on the _Senchas Már_, i. 70-1, Stokes's translation, in _Rev. Celt._, i. 256-7.

[130] Sir John Rhys, _Hibbert Lectures_ (London, 1888), p. 592. Dwarfs supernatural in character also appear in the _Mabinogion_, and one of them is an attendant on King Arthur. In Béroul's _Tristan_, Frocin, a dwarf, is skilled in astrology and magic, and in the version by Thomas we find a similar reference.

[131] Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} i. 385.

[132] Cf. Windle, op. cit., Intro., p. 57.

[133] Hunt, _Anthrop. Mems._, ii. 294; cf. Windle, op. cit., Intro., p. 57.

[134] Smith, _Myths of the Iroquois_, in _Amer. Bur. Eth._, ii. 65.

[135] Skeat, _Malay Magic_, p. 329.

[136] Monier-Williams, _Brahminism and Hinduism_ (London, 1887), p. 236.

[137] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 152.

[138] _Dwarfs in the East_, in _Folk-Lore_, iv. 401-2.

[139] Lacouperie, _Babylonian and Oriental Record_, v; cf. Windle, op. cit., Intro., pp. 21-2.

[140] A. H. S. Landor, _Alone with the Hairy Ainu_ (London, 1893), p. 251; also Windle, op. cit., Intro., pp. 22-4.

[141] J. G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2} (London, 1900), i. 248 ff.

[142] Cf. A. Wiedemann, _Ancient Egyptian Doctrine Immortality_ (London, 1895), p. 12.

[143] Cf. A. E. Crawley, _Idea of the Soul_ (London, 1909), p. 186.

[144] Examples are in Orcagna's fresco of 'The Triumph of Death', in the Campo Santo of Pisa (cf. A. Wiedemann, _Anc. Egy. Doct. Immort._, p. 34 ff.); and over the porch of the Cathedral Church of St. Trophimus, at Arles.

[145] Cf. Crawley, op. cit., p. 187.

[146] General references: Eliphas Levi, _Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie_ (Paris); Paracelsus; A. E. Waite, _The Occult Sciences_ (London, 1891).

[147] W. B. Yeats, _Irish Fairy and Folk-Tales_ (London), p. 2.

[148] W. B. Yeats, _The Celtic Twilight_ (London, 1902), p. 92 n.

[149] In this connexion should be read Mr. Jenner's Introduction, pp. 167 ff.

[150] Cf. Cririe, _Scottish Scenery_ (London, 1803), pp. 347-8; P. Graham, _Sketches Descriptive of Picturesque Scenery on the Southern Confines of Perthshire_ (Edinburgh, 1812), pp. 248-50, 253; Mahé, _Essai sur les Antiquités du Départ. du Morbihan_ (Vannes, 1825); Maury, _Les Fées du Moyen-Age_ (Paris, 1843).

[151] David MacRitchie, _Druids and Mound Dwellers_, in _Celtic Review_ (January 1910); and his _Testimony of Tradition_.

[152] K. Meyer and A. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_ (London, 1895-7), ii 231-2.

[153] Cf. Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 61.

[154] Lawson, _Modern Greek Folklore_, pp. 356, 359.

[155] Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 201; Jubainville, _Cyc. Myth. Irl._, pp. 106-8.

[156] E. O'Curry, _Manners and Customs_ (Dublin, 1873), I. cccxx; from _Book of Ballymote_, fol. 145, b. b.

[157] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 286.

[158] Ib., p. 275.

[159] Ib., pp. 226, 208-9.

[160] Crawley, _Idea of the Soul_, p. 114.

[161] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, p. 289.

[162] Ib., p. 194.

[163] Cf. Crawley, _Idea of the Soul_, chap. iv.

[164] For a thorough and scientific discussion of this matter, see J. L. Nevius, _Demon Possession_ (London, 1897).

[165] N. G. Mitchell-Innes, _Birth, Marriage, and Death Rites of the Chinese_, in _Folk-Lore Journ._, v. 225. Very curiously, the pagan Chinese mother uses the sign of the cross against the demon as Celtic mothers use it against fairies; and no exorcism by Catholic or Protestant to cure a fairy changeling or to drive out possessing demons is ever performed without this world-wide and pre-Christian sign of the cross (see pp. 270-1).

[166] R. R. Marett, _The Threshold of Religion_ (London, 1909), p. 58, &c.; p. 67.

[167] W. James, _Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'_, in _American Magazine_ (October 1909).

[168] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_{3} (London, 1911), i. 220.

[169] Frazer, _The Golden Bough_,{3} i. 221-2.

[170] Ib., chap. iv.

[171] See Apuleius, _De Deo Socratis_; Cicero, _De Natura Deorum_ (lib. i); Iamblichus, _De Mysteriis Aegypt., Chaldaeor., Assyrior._; Plato, _Timaeus, Symposium, Politicus, Republic_, ii. iii. x; Plutarch, _De Defectu Oraculorum, The Daemon of Socrates, Isis and Osiris_; Proclus, _Commmentarius in Platonis Alcibiadem_.

[172] Pliny, _Natural History_, xxx. 14.

[173] Cf. G. Dottin, _La Religion des Celtes_ (Paris, 1904), p. 44.

[174] The neo-Platonists generally, including Porphyry, Julian, Iamblichus, and Maximus, being persuaded of man's power to call up and control spirits, called white magic _theurgy_, or the invoking of good spirits, and the reverse _goêty_, or the calling up and controlling of evil spirits for criminal purposes. Cf. F. Lélut, _Du Démon de Socrate_ (Paris, 1836).

If white magic be correlated with religion as religion is popularly conceived, namely the cult of supernatural powers friendly to man, and black magic be correlated with magic as magic tends to be popularly conceived, namely witchcraft and devil-worship, we have a satisfactory historical and logical basis for making a distinction between religion and magic; religion (including white magic) is a social good, magic (black magic) is a social evil. Such a distinction as Dr. Frazer makes is untenable within the field of true magic.

[175] Cf. B. Jowett, _Dialogues of Plato_ (Oxford, 1892), i. 573.

[176] Cf. Meyer and Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_ (London, 1895-7), i. 146.

[177] Campbell, _The Fians_, p. 195.

[178] Cf. Stokes's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, i. 261.

[179] Cf. Stokes's trans. in _Rev. Celt._, xv. 307.

[180] From the _Conception of Mongán_, cf. Meyer, _Voyage of Bran_, i. 77.

[181] Quoted and summarized from _Projectors of 'Malicious Animal Magnetism'_, in _Literary Digest_, xxxix. No. 17, pp. 676-7 (New York and London, October 23, 1909).

[182] Cf. Nevius, _Demon Possession_, pp. 300-1.

[183] For a fuller discussion of the history of witchcraft see _The Superstitions of Witchcraft_, by Howard Williams, London, 1865.

[184] Cf. J. Quicherat, _Procès_ (Paris, 1845), _passim_.

[185] Ib., i. 178.

[186] Codrington, _The Melanesians_, pp. 127, 200, 202-3 ff.

[187] Bergier, _Dict. de Théol._ (Paris, 1848), ii. 541-2, &c.

[188] W. Stokes, _Tripartite Life_ (London, 1887), pp. 13, 115.

[189] I am personally indebted to Dr. W. J. Watson, of Edinburgh, for 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_,