The Crest-Wave Of Evolution Part 34

Another glimpse of the feeling of the age you get in the two oldest Arthurian romances: _The Dream of Rhon.o.bwy,_ and _Culhwch and Olwen._ They were written, in the form in which we have them, not until the last centuries of Welsh independence,--when there was another national illumination; and indeed all the literature of this early time comes to us through the bards of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They transmitted it; wrote it down; added to and took away from it; altered it: a purely brain-mind scholarship might satisfy itself that they invented it; but criticism, to be of any use at all, must be endowed with a certain delicacy and intuition; it must rely on better tools than the brain-mind. Matthew Arnold, who had such qualifications, compared the work of the later bards to peasants'

huts built on and of the ruins of Ephesus; and it is still easier for us, with the light Theosophy throws on all such subjects, to see the greater and more ancient work through the less and later. I shall venture to quote from _Culhwch and Olwen:_ a pa.s.sage that some of you may know very well already.

Culhwch the son of Cilydd the son of the Prince of Celyddon rides out to seek the help of Arthur:

"And the youth p.r.i.c.ked forth upon a steed with head dappled gray, of four winters old, firm of limb, with sh.e.l.l-formed hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold on his head, and upon him a saddle of costly gold. In his hands were two spears of silver, sharp, well-tempered, headed with steel, three ells in length, of an edge to wound the wind and cause blood to flow, and that faster than the fall of the dewdrop from the blade of reed-gra.s.s upon the earth when the dew of June is at its heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was at his side, the blade of which was of gold, bearing a cross of inlaid gold of the hue of the lightning of heaven; his war-horn was of ivory. Before him were two brindled white-breasted greyhounds, having strong collars of rubies about their necks, reaching from the shoulder to the ear. And the one that was on the right side bounded across to the left side, and the one that was on the left to the right, and like two sea-swallows sported they around him. And his courser cast up four sods with his four hoofs like four swallows in the air, now above his head and now below. About him was a four-cornered cloth of purple, having an apple of gold at each corner; and every one of the apples was of the value of a hundred kine. And there was precious gold of the value of three hundred kine upon his shoes and upon his stirrups, from his knee to the tip of his toe. And the blade of reed-gra.s.s bent not beneath him, as he journeyed towards the gates of Arthur's palace."

So far we have the glittering imagination of the twelfth-century bard; you might think working in a medium not wholly Celtic, but Norman-influenced as well; imagining his Arthurian Culhwch in terms of the knights he had seen at the courts of the Lords Marchers,--were it not that just such descriptions are the commonplaces of Irish Celticism, where they come from a time and people that had never seen Norman knights at all. But now you begin to leave regions where Normans can be remembered or imagined at all:

"Spake the youth, 'Is there a porter?'--'There is; and unless thou holdest thy peace, small will be thy welcome. I am the porter of Arthur's hall on the first day of January in every year; and on every other day than this the post is filled by Huandaw, and Gogigwc, and Llaescenym, and Penpingion who goeth upon his head to save his feet, neither towards the heavens nor towards the earth, but like a rolling stone upon the floor of the court.'--'Open thou the portal.'--'I will not open it.'-- 'Wherefore not?'--'The knife is in the meat and the drink is in the horn, and there is revelry in Arthur's court; and no man may enter but a craftsman bearing his craft, or the son of the king of a privileged country. But there will be refreshment for thy dogs and for thy horse, and for thee there will be collops cooked and peppered, and luscious wine and mirthful song,--and food for fifty men shall be set before thee in the guest chamber, where the stranger and the sons of other countries eat, who come not into the precincts of the palace of Arthur. Said the youth, 'That will I not do. If thou openest the portal, it is well. If thou dost not open it, I will bring disgrace upon thy lord and an evil report upon thee. And I will set up three shouts at this very gate, than which none were ever more deadly, from the top of Pengwaed in Cornwall to the bottom of Dinsol in the North, and to Esgair Oerfel in Ireland.'--'Whatsoever clamor thou mayest make,'

said Glewlwyd Gafaelfawr, against the rules of Arthur's court thou shalt not enter until I first go and consult with Arthur.'

"Then Glewlwyd went into the hall. And Arthur said to him, 'Hast thou news from the gate?'--Half of my life is past, and half of thine. I was heretofore in Caer Se and As Se, in Sach and Salach, in Lotor and Ffotor, in India the Greater and India the Less. And I was with thee in the Battle of Dau Ynyr, when the twelve hostages were brought from Norway. And I have also been in Europe and in Africa and in the islands of Corsica, and in Caer Brythwch and Brythach and Ferthach; and I was present when thou didst conquer Greece in the East. And I have have been in Caer Oeth and Annoeth and Caer Nefenhir: nine supreme sovereigns, handsome men, saw we there; but never did I behold a man of equal dignity to him who is now at the door of the portal.' Then said Arthur:--'If walking thou didst enter here, return thou running. And everyone that beholds the light, and everyone that opens and shuts the eye, let him show him respect and serve him; some with gold-mounted drinking-horns, others with collops cooked and peppered, until such time as food and drink can be set before him."

Culhwch came in, and asked a boon of Arthur; and Arthur answered that he should receive whatsoever his tongue might name, "as far as the wind dries and the rain moistens and the sun revolves and the sea encircles and the earth extends; save only my ship and my mantle, and Caledfwlch my sword, and Rhongomiant my lance, and Wynebgwrthucher my shield, and Carnwenhau my dagger and Gwen Hwyfar my wife. By the truth of heaven thou shalt receive it cheerfully, name what thou wilt." So Culhwch made his request;-- and it is really here that the ancient ages come trooping in:--

"I crave of thee that thou obtain for me Olwen the daughter of Yspaddaden Head of Giants; and this boon I seek likewise at the hands of thy warriors. I seek it from Cai, and Bedwyr, and Greidawl Galldonyd, and Greid the son of Eri, and Cynddelig Cyfarwvdd, and Tathal Cheat-the-Light, and Maelwys the son of Baeddan, and"--well, there are hundreds of them; but I must positively give you a few; they are all, it is likely, the denizens of ancient Celtic G.o.d-worlds and fairy-worlds and goblin-worlds,--"and Duach and Grathach and Nerthach the sons of Gwawrddur Cyrfach (these men came forth from the confines of h.e.l.l); and Huell the son of Caw (he never yet made a request at the hands of any lord.) And Taliesin the Chief of Bards, and Manawyddan son of the Boundless, and Cormorant the son of Beauty (no one struck him in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his ugliness; all thought he was an auxiliary devil. Hair had he upon him like the hair of a stag). And Sandde Bryd Angel (no one touched him with a spear in the Battle of Camlan by reason of his beauty; all thought he was a ministering angel). And Cynwyl Sant (the third man who escaped from the Battle of Camlan; and he was the last that parted from Authur upon Henrtoen his horse).

And Henwas the Winged the son of Erim; (unto these three men belonged these three peculiarities: with Henbedestyr there was not anyone that could keep pace, either on horseback or on foot; with Henwas Adeiniog no fourfooted beast could run the distance of an acre, much less could it go beyond it; and as to Sgilti Ysgawndroed, when he intended to go on a message for his lord, he never sought to find a path, but knowing whither he was to go, if his way led through a wood he went along the tops of the trees.

During his whole life a blade of gra.s.s bent not beneath his feet, much less did it break, so light was his tread.) Teithi Hen the son of Gwynhan (his dominions were swallowed by the sea, and he himself barely escaped, and he came to Arthur; and his knife had this peculiarity: from the time he came there no haft would ever remain on it; and owing to this a sickness came on him, and he pined away during the remainder of his life, and of this he died.) Drem the son of Dremidyd (when the gnat arose in the morning with the sun, Drem could see it from Gelli Wis in Cornwall as far off as Pen Blathaon in North Britain.) And Eidol the son of Ner, and Glwyddyn Saer (who built Ehangwen, Arthur's hall.) Henwas and Henwyneb, (an old companion unto Arthur).

Gwallgoyc another. (When he came to a town, though there were three hundred houses in it, if he wanted anything, he would let sleep come to the eyes of no man until he had it.) Osla Gyllellfawr (he bore a short broad dagger. When Arthur and his hosts came before a torrent, they would seek a narrow place where they might cross the water, and lay the sheathed dagger across the torrent, and it would be a bridge enough for the armies of the Three Islands of the Mighty and the three islands near thereby, with all their spoils.) The sons of Llwch Llawyniog from beyond the raging sea. Celi and Cueli and Gilla Coes Hydd, (who could clear three hundred acres at a bound: the chief leaper of Ireland was he). Sol and Gwadyn Ossol and Gwadyn Odyeith. (Sol could stand all day upon one foot. Gwadyn Ossol, if he stood upon the top of the highest mountain in the world, it would become a level plain under his feet. Gwadyn Odyeith,--the soles of his feet emitted sparks when they struck upon things hard, like the heated ma.s.s drawn out of the forge. He cleared the way for Arthur when they came to any stoppage.) Hireerwm and Hiratrwm (the day they went upon a visit three cantref provided for their entertainment, and they feasted until noon and drank until night and they they devoured the heads of vermin as if they had never eaten anything in their lives. When they made a visit they left neither the fat not the lean, the hot nor the cold, the sour nor the sweet, the fresh not the salt, the boiled nor the raw.) Huarwar the son of Aflawn (who asked Arthur such a boon as would satisfy him; it was the third great plague of Cornwall when he received it. None could get a smile from him but when he was satisfied.) Sugyn the sone of Sugnedydd (who could suck up the sea on which there were three hundred ships, so broad-chested he was). Uchtryd Faryf Draws (who spread his red untrimmed beard over the eight-and-forty rafters that were in Arthur's hall).

Bwlch and Cyfwlch and Sefwlch the three sons of Cleddyf Cyfwlch, the three grandsons of Cleddyf Difwlch. (Their three shields were three gleaming glitterers. Their three spears were three pointed piercers. Their three swords were three griding gashers,--Gles, and Glessic, and Gleisad.) Cl.u.s.t the son of Cl.u.s.tfeinad; (though he were buried seven cubits beneath the earth, he would hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her nest in the norning). Medyr the son of Methredydd; (from Belli Wic he could in a twinkling")--

Well; one must stop somewhere; Culhwch himself was in no hurry to. He went on until the armies of the Island of the Mighty and the chief ladies of Arthur's court, with all their peculiarities, had been enumerated. But here, I say, you are let into an elder world; beyond this one in s.p.a.ce, beyond it in time. You are on the precipice edge of the world's end, and mist fills the chasm before you; and out of the mist, things vast and gigantic, things half human and things not half human, present themselves, stirring your wonder, and withdraw leaving your imagination athirst. "These men came forth from the confines of h.e.l.l" ....

Who wrote of them had news, I think, of terrific doings in Atlantis, when earth shook to the tread of giant hosts. I confess that to me all things European, after this, look a little neat and dapper. I look from the cliffs at the limit of things, out over

.....the sunset bound of Lyonnesse, A land of old upheaven from the abyss By fire, to sink into the abyss again; Where fragments of forgotten people dwelt:

--it is not in this world; belongs not to this Fifth Race; but is more ancient, fantasmal, and portentous.

Has it ever occurred to you that no body of men, no movement, no nation for that matter, can choose for itself a symbol that does not actually express it? The flags of the nations are all, for those that can read them, the sign manuals of the souls of the nations, wherein the status of each is written plain; though those that chose the symbol, and those that glory in it, may have no idea how they are thus revealing or exposing themselves.--No, I am not going to speak of the Dragon; which, by all traditions, was the symbol chosen for the monarchy set up by the fifth-century Britons; nor to remind you--and yet it is worth remembering,-- that the Dragon is the symbol of the Esoteric Wisdom;--I am going to speak of something else.--You take some form, some picture; and it seems to you in some inexplicable way inspiring; and you adopt it, and say _In hoc signo vincam._ Why? You know nothing about symbolism; and yet, if you have any inner life, those who understand symbolism can read your inner life in you symbol. That is because symbolism is a universal science, real, and with nothing arbitrary about it; and because something in your subconsciousness wiser than you has directed you choice, and means you to be expressed.

Take one of the most universal symbols of all: the Cross. In one form or another we find it all over the world. In ancient Egypt, where it is called the _Ankh,_ and is drawn as a capital T with a circle above. There it symbolizes life in the largest sense.

The circle above stands for Spirit; the Tau or cross below, for matter: thus it pictures the two in their true relation the one to the other.--The Christian Church, as it grew up in the last centuries of the Roman empire, chose for itself a symbol,--in which Constantine went forth to conquer. It was the four limbs of the cross: simply the symbol of Matter.

But somehow, the Christian Church in the Celtic Isles did not adopt this symbol, or rather this form of it. It took what is called the Celtic Cross: the Cross, which is matter, with the Circle, which is Spirit, imposed over the upper part of it. Now if you brought a man from India, or China, or anywhere, who knew nothing about European history or Christianity, but understood the ancient science of symbolism; and showed him these two crosses, the Celtic and the Latin; he would tell you at once that the one, the Latin, stood for a movement wholly unspiritual; and that the other, the Celtic, stood for a movement with some spiritual light in it. How much, I am not prepared to say.

One of the chief formative forces in Christian theology was Saint Augustine of Hippo, born in 354, died in 430. He taught that man was Originally sinful, naturally depraved; and that no effort of his own will could make him otherwise: all depended on the Grace of G.o.d, something from without, absolutely beyond control of volition. Then rose up a Welshman by the name of Morgan,--or he may have been an Irishman; some say so; only Morgan is a Welsh, not an Irish name; and evidence is lacking that there were Irish Christians at that time; he was a Celt, 'whatever';--and went to Rome, teaching and preaching. His doctrine was that man is not originally sinful and naturally depraved; he had the temerity to declare that pagans, especially those who had never heard of Christianity, were not by G.o.d's ineffable mercy d.a.m.ned to everlasting h.e.l.l; that unbaptized infants were not destined to frizzle eternally; that what a man ought to do, that he had the power, within his own being, to do; and that his salvation lay in his own hands. They translated his Welsh name (which means 'Sea-born') into the Greek--Pelagius; and dubbed his d.a.m.nable heresy 'Pelagianism'; and it was a heresy that flourished a good deal in the Celtic Isles;--his writings came down in Ireland.

The incident is not much in itself; but something. Not that the Celtic Church of David and Patrick was Pelagian; it was not. In the matter of doctrine it is impossible to distinguish it from the Church on the continent. But Pelagianism may suggest that there were in Britain relics of an elder light.

Did some echo of ancient wisdom, Druidic, survive in Britain from Pre-roman days? It is a question that has been much fought over; and one that, nowadays, the learned among my countrymen answer very rabidly in the negative. You have but to propound it in a whisper, to make them foam heartily at the mouth. Bless you, they know that it didn't, and can prove it over and over; because--because--it couldn't have, and you are a fool for thinking it could. Here is the position taken by modern scholarship (as a rule): we know nothing about the philosophy of the Druids, and do not believe they had one. They could not have had one; and the cla.s.sical writers who said they had simply knew nothing about it. It may be useful to quote what some of these cla.s.sical writers say.

"They (the Druids) speak the language of the G.o.ds," says Diodorus Siculus (v, 31, 4); who describes them also as "exhorting combatants to peace, and taming them like wild beasts by enchantment" (v, 31, 5). They taught men, says Diogenes Laertius, "to worship the G.o.ds, to do no evil, and to exercise courage" (6). They taught "many things regarding the stars and their motions, the extent of the universe and the earth, and the nature of things, and the power and might of the immortal G.o.ds,"

says Caesar (iv, 14.); and Strabo speaks of their teaching in moral science (iv, 4, 4). "And ye, ye Druids," says Lucan, "to you only is given knowledge or ignorance (whichever it be) of the G.o.ds and the powers of heaven. . . . From you we learn that the borne of man's ghost is not the senseless grave, not the pale realm of the monarch below." (i, 451 sq,) "The Druids wish to impress this in particular: that souls do not perish, but pa.s.s from one to another after death." (Caesar, iv, 14) Diodorus testifies that "among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed, that the souls of men are immortal, and after completing their term of existence, live again, the soul pa.s.sing into another body" (v, 28). Says Valerius Maximus: "They would fain make us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-warers fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras"; and he goes on to speak of the Celtic custom of lending money to be repaid in a future life (vi, 6, 10). Timagenes, Strabo, and mela also bear witness to their teaching the immortality of the soul.

I may say at once that I copy all these quotations from a book written largely to prove that the Druids were savage medicine-men with no philosophy at all: it is, _The Religion of the Ancient Celts,_ by Canon MacCulloch. The argument used by this learned divine is very simple. The Druids were savage medicine-men, and could have known nothing about Pythagoras' teachings or Pythagoras himself. Therefore they didn't. All the cla.s.sical writers were exaggerating, or inventing, or copying from one another.--It never occurs to our Canon to remember Iamblichus'

statement that the Druids did not borrow or learn from Pythagoras, but Pythagoras from them. He quotes with no sign of doubt the things said by the cla.s.sical writers about barbaric Druid rites; never dreaming that in respect to these there may have been invention, exaggeration, or copying one from another-- and that other chiefly the gentle Julius who--but I have mentioned _his_ exploit before.

Holding to such firm preconceptions as these,--and being in total ignorance of the fact that the Esoteric Wisdom was once universal, and therefore naturally the same with Pythagoras as with anyone else who had not lost it, whether he and the Druids had ever heard of each other or not,--it becomes quite easy for my learned countryment to scout the idea that any such doctrine or system could have survived among the Britons until the fifth century, and revived then. Yet Nennius, by the way, a.s.serts that Vortigern (the king who called in the Saxons) had 'Magi' with him; which word in the Irish text appears as 'Druids': and Canon MacCulloch himself speaks of this as evidence of a recrudescence of Druidism at that time.

With those quotations from the cla.s.sical writers in view--if with nothing else,--I think we may call Reincarnation.... the characteristic doctrine of Druidism. It so appeared to the Romans; it was that doctrine, which with themselves had been obscured by skepticism, worldliness, and the outwornness of their spiritual perceptions, that struck them as the most noteworthy, most surprising thing in Druidic teaching. It stood in sharp contrast, too, with the beliefs of Christianity; so that, supposing it, and the system that taught it, had died during the Roman occupation of Britain, there really was nowhere from which it might have been regained. Wales has been, until very recently, extraordinarily cut off from the currents of civilization and world-thought. She has dwelt aloof among her mountains, satisfied with an interesting but exceedingly narrow little culture of her own. You might almost say that from the time the Romans left Britain there was no channel through which ideas might flow in to her; and this idea, especially, was hardly in Europe to flow in. And yet this idea has curiously persisted in Wales, as a tradition among the unlettered, even to our own day. Dr. Evans-Wentz, of Berkeley, Oxford, and Rennes Universities, in this present twentieth century, found old people among the peasantry who knew something about it, had heard of it from their elders; there was nothing new or unfamiliar about it to them; and this though nearly all Welsh folklore, even belief in the fairies, almost suffered extinction during the Religious Revivals of the eighteenth century and since. They say the chapels frightened the fairies out of Wales; it is not quite true; but you can understand how wave after wave of fervid Calvinism would have dealt with a tradition like that of Reincarnation. And yet echoes of it linger, and Dr. Wentz found them. I myself remember hearing of a servant-girl from the mountains to whom her mistress (from whom I heard it) introduced the subject. The girl expressed no surprise whatever: indeed to goodness she shouldn' wonder, so there; her father was a druid, miss, indeed and had told her about it when she was a child.

We have collateral evidence,--in Nennius, I believe,--for the existence of several famed poets among the Welsh at that time; and Tallesin' is one of the names mentioned. Seventy-seven poems come down ascribed to him: I quoted some lines from one of them; here now are some line from another. The child Taliesin is discovered in the court of Maelgwr Gwynedd, where he has confounded the bards with his magic; and is called forth to explain himself. He does so in the following verses:

Primary Chief Bard am I to Elphin, And my original country is the Region of the Summer Stars; Idno and Heinin called me Merddin; At length every being shall call me Taliesin.

I was with my Lord in the highest sphere When Lucifer fell into the depths of h.e.l.l; I have borne a banner before Alexander; I know the names of the stars from north to south.

I was in Canaan when Absalom was slain; I was in the Court of Don (the Milky Way) before the birth of Gwydion; I was on the high cross of the merciful Son of G.o.d; I have been three periods in the prison of Arianrhod.

I was in Asia with Noah in the Ark; I saw the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; I was in India when Rome was built; I am now come here to the remnant of the Trojans.

I was with my Lord in the a.s.s's manger; I strengthened Moses through the waters of Jordan; I was in the firmament from the Cauldron of Ceridwen I shall be on earth until the day of doom. *

------ * I quote it from Mr. T.W. Rollestone's _Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race._ The poem appeares in the _Hanes Taliesin,_ in Lady Guest's _Mabinogion._ ------

Now, what would common sense have to say about things like that?

Simply, I think, that they are echoes that came down in Wales through the ages, of a teaching that once was known. They do not,--they would not,--no one would expect them to,--give the true and exact features and the inwardness of such teaching, but they do reflect the haunting reminiscences of a race that once believed in Reincarnation so firmly, that people were ready to lend money not to be repaid until a future life on earth. If you can prove that that poem not written until the thirteenth, or sixteenth, or eighteenth century, all the better; it only shows the greater strength, the longer endurance, of the tradition; and therefore, the greater reality of that from which the tradition came. It is the ghost of something which once was living; and the longer you can show the ghost surviving,--the more living in its day was the something it survived from. Your Tamerlanes and Malek Rics can be used to frighten babies for centures;--their ghosts walk in that sense; their memories linger;--but your Tomlinsons die and are done with, and no wind carries rumors of them after.

And the name of Taliesin,--whom you may say we know to have been a Welsh poet of the sixth century,--is made the peg on which to hang these floating reminiscences of Druidic teaching;--and the story told about him,--a story replete with universal symbolism, --is, for anyone who has studied that science, clearly symbolic of the initiation of a Teacher of the Secret Doctrine.

What is it accounts for race-persistence? _Not_ just what you see on the physical plane. There is what we should call an astral mold; and this is fed and nourished,--its edges kept firm and distinct,--by forces from the plane of causes, the thought-plane. When this mold has been well established,--as by centuries of national greatness and power,--all sorts of waves of outer circ.u.mstance may roll over the race, and apparently wash its raciality clean away; and yet something in the unseen operates to resist, and, when the waves recede, to raise up first the old race-consciousness, and finally national existence again.

Take Ireland for example. It has been over-run and over-run so much that many authorities would deny the existence of any Celtic blood there at all. But what is absolutely undeniable is that a distinct and well-defined racial type exists there; and that it corresponds largely to the racial type--I do not mean physical so much as spiritual,--that the Greek and Roman writers ascribed to the Celtic Gauls. It is often claimed that an Irishman is merely an inferior kind of Englishman, and that there is little difference in blood between the two; but those who make this claim most loudly would not dream of denying the difference of the mental types; they are generally the ones who see most difference. Why was it that the children of the Norman invaders of Ireland became _Hiberniores ipsis Hiberniis?_ Because of the astral mold, certainly. It is race-consciousness that makes race, and not the other way; and there is something behind that makes race-consciousness; so that even where calamity has smashed up the latter and put it altogether in abeyance, the seeds of it remain, in the soil and on the inner planes, to sprout again in their day; when the Crest-Wave rolls in; when Souls come to revive them. It may be that this will never happen, of course; but it seems to me that where Nature wishes to put an end to these racial recrudescences, she must take strong steps.

Though the British Celts had been under Roman rule for four centuries, their language today is Celtic.--Why?--Because there was what you may call a very old, well-established and strong Celtic-speaking astral mold. We absorbed a large number of Latin words; but a.s.similated them to the Celtic mold so that you would never recognise them; whereas in a page of English the Latin borrowings stand out by the score. Look at that _ascend,_ for instance: Latin _ascendere_ parading itself naked and unashamed, and making no pretense whatever to be anything else. You shall find _ascendere,_ too, on any page of Welsh; or rather, you shall not find him, by reason of his skillful camouflage. He has cut off his train, as in English; but he has cut off more of it: the _d_ of the stem, as well as the ending. He has altered both his vowels, and one of his three remaining consonants; and appears as _esgyn,_ to walk the pages undetected for an alien by that vigilant police, the Celtic sense of euphony. He is typical of a thousand others. Wherefore the difference?--The English were a new people in process of formation, and besides with a whole heap of Latin blood in them from the Roman province; their mold was faintly formed, or only forming; but the Celts had formed theirs rigidly in ancient times.

Again: when in the ninth century Hywel Dda king of Wales codified the laws of his country, the result was a Celtic code without, I think, any relation to Roman law; though Roman law had prevailed in Roman Britain for three centuries or so. What strong Celtic molds must have persisted, to cause this! Roman law imposed itself on nearly all Europe, including many peoples that never were under Roman rule; and yet here was this people, that had been all that time under the Romans, oblivious of Roman law, uninfluenced by it, practically speaking;--and returning at the first opportunity to the kind of laws they had had before the Romans were born or thought of.

Druidism had been proscribed, as a practice, during Roman times.

The worship of the Celtic G.o.ds had continued; but they had been a.s.similated to those of the empire;--which would be a much more difficult thing to do were the G.o.ds, as your modern learned suppose, mere fictions of the superst.i.tious, and not the symbols of, or the Powers behind, the forces of Nature. So Celtic religion outwardly was submerged in Roman religion; and then later. Christianity came in. But the science, the inst.i.tutions, and the philosophy of the Druids had been part and parcel of the inner life of the race perhaps as long as their laws and language had; and your Celt runs by nature to religion, or even to religiosity,--ultra-religion. Is it likely that, while he kept his laws and language, he let his religion go? And when it was not an arbitrary farrago of dogmas, like some we might mention; but a philosophy of the soul so vivid that he counted death little more to fuss about than going to sleep?

When should those old ideas have reappeared,--when should the racial astral molds have been brought out and furbished up with new strength to make them endure? Why, when the Roman dominion came to an end; when the people were turning for inspiration to their own things, and away from Latin things; when they were forgoing Latin for Celtic; reviving Celtic laws and customs; trying to forget they had been subjected to foreigners, and to remember and resurrect the old Monarchy of Britain. Christianity would not give them all the difference from Romanism that they wanted,--that the most ardent among them wanted: the Romans were Christians too;--but there was that other ancient thing which the Romans had proscribed. It still existed, in Ireland for example; and for that matter, there were plenty of places in Britain where the Roman arm could never have reached it. Matthew Arnold saw these things in his day, and argued for the Neo-druidism of the sixth century. He was a man accustomed to deal in ideas. You may easily train your mind to an acuteness and sagacity in dealing with grammatical roots, and forms, that will not help you in dealing with ideas.

To sum up, then: I believe there was an influx of the Crest-Wave into Britain, from about 410 to 540: a national awakenment, with something of greatness to account for the Arthurian legend; and with something of spiritual illumination, through a revival of Druidic Wisdom to account for the rumor of Taliesin. I am not sure but that this influenced the Celtic Church: I am not sure but that David, and Cadoc, and Teilo, and Padarn, fathers of that church, were men pervious to higher influences; and that the monastery-colleges they presided over were real seats of lerning, unopposed to, if not in league with, the light.

XXVI. "SACRED IERNE OF THE HIBERNIANS" *

"I could not put the pen aside Till with my heart's love I had tried To fashion some poor skilless crown For that dear head so low bowed down."

--From the Celtic

It is but a step from Wales to Ireland. From the one, you can see the "fair hills of holy Ireland" in the heart of any decent sunset; from the other, you can see Wales shining landed in in any shining dawn. No Roman legion ever landed in Ireland; yet all through Roman times boats must have been slipping across and across; there must have been constant communication, and there was, really, no distinction of race. There was a time, I believe, when they were joined, one island; and all the seas were east of the Severn. Both peoples were a mixture of Gaels and Cymry; only it happens that the Gaelic or Q language survived in Ireland; the Cymric or P language in Wales. So, having touched upon Wales last week, and shown the Crest-Wave flowing in there, this week, following that Wave westward,

I invoke the land of Ireland!

Shining, shining sea!

Fertile, fertile mountain!

Gladed, gladed wood!