The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 38

[1115] D'Arbois, v. 215.

[1116] Joyce, _OCR_ 279.

[1117] Ibid. 86.

[1118] _RC_ xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kent._ c. 1.

[1119] _RC_ xv. 446.

[1120] O'Conor, _Rer. Hib. Scrip._ ii. 142; Stokes, _Lives of Saints_, xxviii.

[1121] _RC_ xv. 444.

[1122] See p. 251, _supra_.

[1123] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 240.

[1124] See pp. 248, 304, _supra_; Caesar, _vi_. 14.

[1125] Zimmer, _Gloss. Hiber._ 271. Other Irish incantations, appealing to the saints, are found in the _Codex Regularum_ at Klosternenburg (_RC_ ii. 112).

[1126] Leahy, i. 137; Kennedy, 301.

[1127] Sauve, _RC_ vi. 67 f.; Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._, _pa.s.sim_; _CM_ xii. 38; Joyce, _SH_ i. 629 f.; Camden, _Britannia_, iv. 488; Scot, _Discovery of Witchcraft_, iii. 15.

[1128] For examples see O'Curry, _MS. Met._ 248; D'Arbois, ii. 190; _RC_ xii. 71, xxiv. 279; Stokes, _TIG_ x.x.xvi. f.

[1129] Windisch, _Tain_, line 3467.

[1130] Diod. Sic. v. 31.

[1131] D'Arbois, i. 271.

[1132] _RC_ xii. 109; Nutt-Meyer, i. 2; D'Arbois, v. 445.

[1133] Petrie, _Ancient Music of Ireland_, i. 73; _The Gael_, i. 235 (fairy lullaby of MacLeod of MacLeod).

[1134] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 255.

[1135] _Archaeologia_, x.x.xix. 509; _Proc. Soc. Ant._ iii. 92; Gaidoz, _Le Dieu Gaul. du Soleil_, 60 f.

[1136] _IT_ iii. 409; but see Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 215.

[1137] Pliny, _HN_ xxix. 3. 54.

[1138] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227, x.x.xiii. 283.

[1139] h.o.a.re, _Modern Wilts.h.i.+re_, 56; Camden, _Britannia_, 815; Hazlitt, 194; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 84. In the Highlands spindle-whorls are thought to have been perforated by the adder, which then pa.s.ses through the hole to rid itself of its old skin.

[1140] Pliny, x.x.xii. 2. 24; Reinach, _RC_ xx. 13 f.

[1141] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 165; Elton, 66; Renel, 95f., 194f.

[1142] Reinach, _BF_ 286, 289, 362.

[1143] O'Curry, _MS Mat._ 387. See a paper by Hartland, "The Voice of the Stone of Destiny," _Folk-lore Journal_, xiv. 1903.

[1144] Petrie, _Trans. Royal Irish Acad._ xviii. pt. 2.

[1145] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 393 f.

[1146] Sebillot, i. 334 f.

[1147] Trollope, _Brittany_, ii. 229; Berenger-Feraud, _Superst.i.tions et Survivances_, i. 529 f.; Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 580, 689, 841 f.

[1148] _Rev. des Trad._ 1894, 494; Berenger-Feraud, i. 529, ii. 367; Elworthy, _Evil Eye_, 70.

[1149] Berenger-Feraud, i. 523; Elworthy, 69, 106; Reinach, _L'Anthropologie_, iv. 33.

[1150] Kennedy, 324; Ad.a.m.nan, _Vita S. Col._ ii. 35.

[1151] Life of S. Fechin of Fore, _RC_ xii. 333; Life of S. Kieran, O'Grady, ii. 13; Amra Cholumbchille, _RC_ xx. 41; Life of S. Moling, _RC_ xxvii. 293; and other lives _pa.s.sim_. See also Plummer, _Vitae Sanctorum Hiberniae_.

[1152] Ad.a.m.nan, ii. 34. This pebble was long preserved, but mysteriously disappeared when the person who sought it was doomed to die.

[1153] Wodrow, _a.n.a.lecta_, _pa.s.sim_; Walker, _Six Saints of the Covenant_, ed. by Dr. Hay Fleming.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE STATE OF THE DEAD.

Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a farther sh.o.r.e, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have doubted the existence of a future state, but their conceptions of it have differed greatly. But of all the races of antiquity, outside Egypt, the Celts seem to have cherished the most ardent belief in the world beyond the grave, and to have been preoccupied with its joys. Their belief, so far as we know it, was extremely vivid, and its chief characteristic was life in the body after death, in another region.[1154] This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a doctrine by the Druids, made it the admiration of cla.s.sical onlookers.

But besides this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a distant past, that the dead lived on in the grave--the two conceptions being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of belief in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul could exist apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that they believed in a future existence of the soul as a shade. This belief is certainly found in some late Welsh poems, where the ghosts are described as wandering in the Caledonian forest, but these can hardly be made use of as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may be gathered from cla.s.sical observers, from archaeology and from Irish texts.

Caesar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them that souls do not perish, but pa.s.s from one to another (_ab aliis ... ad alios_) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live again, the soul pa.s.sing into another body. Hence at the burial of the dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile, believing that the dead would read them in the next world."[1156]

Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal.[1157] These pa.s.sages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite one common original, but Caesar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The real point of connection was the insistence of both upon immortality, the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality _via_ a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or believing in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be struck with the vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon conduct. The only thing like it of which they knew was the Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at in this light, Caesar's words need not convey the idea of transmigration, and it is possible that he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these writers meant that the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly have added the pa.s.sages regarding debts being paid in the other world, or letters conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit the dead there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of the soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic, may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.

This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, _in orbe alio_) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is but the centre of a long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic warrior had no fear of death.[1158] Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its rich and varied existence. Cla.s.sical writers, of course, may have known of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths telling of the rebirth of G.o.ds or semi-divine beings, these may have been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and Mela,[1159] speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela appears to copy Caesar, and speaks of accounts and debts being pa.s.sed on to the next world.

This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus, when Cuchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black ... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses are equally corporeal.[1160] Similar descriptions of the dead who return are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich, who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and clad in his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the _Tain_.[1161]

Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions of the "Dead Debtor" folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as a living person in corporeal form.[1162] Equally substantial and corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine folk of the _sid_ or of Elysium, or the G.o.ds as they are represented in the texts. To the Celts, G.o.ds, _side_, and the dead, all alike had a bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways differed from the earthly body.

The archaeological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots, utensils, ornaments, and coins.[1163] Some of the interments undoubtedly point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons, without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body, pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied behind the back.[1164] All this suggests, taken in connection with cla.s.sical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was life in the body, and that it was a _replica_ of this life, with the same affections, needs, and energies. Certain pa.s.sages in Irish texts also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented their attack.[1165] Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead husbands.[1166]

The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before burial. It appears from such practices as binding the dead with cords, or laying heavy stones or a mound of earth on the grave, probably to prevent their egress, or feeding the dead with sacrificial food at the grave, or from the belief that the dead come forth not as spirits, but in the body from the grave. This primitive conception, of which the belief in a subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long survived among various races, e.g. the Scandinavians, who believed in the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while they also had their conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the Slavs, side by side with Christian conceptions.[1167] It also survived among the Celts, though another belief in the _orbis alius_ had arisen. This can be shown from modern and ancient folk-belief and custom.