The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 21

The Bretons may be said to have a Death-Faith, whereas the other Celts have a Fairy-Faith, and both are a real folk-religion innate in the Celtic nature, and thus quite as influential as Christianity. Should Christianity in some way suddenly be swept away from the Celt he would still be religious, for it is his nature to be so. And as Professor Le Braz has suggested to me, Carnac with its strange monuments of an unknown people and time, and wrapped in its air of mystery and silence, is a veritable Land of the Dead. I, too, have felt that there are strange, vague, indefinable influences at work at Carnac at all times of the day and night, very similar to those which I have felt in the most fairy-haunted regions of Ireland. We might say that all of Brittany is a Land of the Dead, and ancient Carnac its Centre, just as Ireland is Fairyland, with its Centre at ancient Tara.

CONCLUSION

We can very appropriately conclude our inquiry about Brittany with a very beautiful description of a _Veillee_ in Lower Brittany, written down in French for our special use by the Breton poet, M. Le Scour, of Carnac, and here translated. M. Le Scour draws the whole picture from life, and from his own intimate experience. It will serve to give us some insight into the natural literary ability of the Breton Celts, to ill.u.s.trate their love of tales dealing with the marvellous and the supernormal, and is especially valuable for showing the social environment amidst which the Fairy-Faith of Lower Brittany lives and flourishes, isolated from foreign interference:--

_A 'Veillee'[110] in Lower Brittany._--'The wind was blowing from the east, and in the intermittent moonlight the roof of the thatched cottage already gleamed with a thin covering of snow which had fallen since sunset. Each comer reached on the run the comfortable bakehouse, wherein Alain Corre was at work kneading his batch of barley bread; and the father Le Scour was never the last to arrive, because he liked to get the best seat in front of the bake-oven.

'Victor had promised us for that night a pretty story which no person had ever heard before. I was not more than fourteen years old then, but like all the neighbours I hurried to get a place in order to hear Victor. My mother was already there, making her distaff whirr between her two fingers as she sat in the light of a rosin candle, and my brother Yvon was finishing a wooden b.u.t.ter-spoon. Every few minutes I and my little cousin went out to see if it was still snowing, and if Victor had arrived.

'At last Victor entered, and everybody applauded, the young girls lengthening out their distaffs to do him reverence. Then when silence was restored, after some of the older men had several times shouted out, "Let us commence; hold your tongues," Victor began his story as follows:--

'"Formerly, in the village of Kastel-Laer, Plouneventer (Finistere), there were two neighbours; the one was Paol al Ludu and the other Yon Rustik. Paol al Ludu was a good-for-nothing sort of fellow; he gained his living easily, by cheating everybody and by robbing his neighbours; and being always well dressed he was much envied by his poorer acquaintances. Yon Rustik, on the contrary, was a poor, infirm, and honest man, always seeking to do good, but not being able to work, had to beg.

'"One evening our two men were disputing. Paol al Ludu treated Yon shamefully, telling him that it would be absurd to think an old lame man such as he was could ever get to Paris; 'But I,' added Paol, 'am going to see the capital and amuse myself like a rich _bourgeois_.' At this, Yon offered to bet with Paol that in spite of infirmities he would also go to Paris; and being an honest man he placed his trust in G.o.d. The wager was mutually agreed to, and our two men set out for Paris by different routes.

'"Paol al Ludu, who had no infirmities, arrived at Paris within three weeks. He followed the career of a thief, and deceived everybody; and as he was well dressed, people had confidence in him. The poor Yon Rustik, on the contrary, did not travel rapidly. He was obliged to beg his way, and being meanly dressed was compelled to sleep outdoors when he could not find a stable. At the end of a month he arrived in a big forest in the region of Versailles, and having no other shelter for the night chose a great oak tree which was hollowed by the centuries and lined with fungi within. In front of this ancient oak there was a fountain which must have been miraculous, for it flowed from east to west, and Yon had closely observed it.

'"Towards midnight Yon was awakened by a terrible uproar; there were a hundred _corrigans_ dancing round the fountain. He overheard one of them say to the others: 'I have news to report to you; I have cast an evil spell upon the daughter of the King, and no mortal will ever be able to cure her, and yet in order to cure her nothing more would be needed than a drop of water from this fountain.' The _corrigan_ who thus spoke was upon two sticks[111] (crippled), and commanded all the others. The beggar having understood the conversation, awaited impatiently the departure of the _corrigans_. When they were gone, he took a little water from the fountain in a bottle, and hurried on to Paris, where he arrived one fine morning.

'"In the house where Yon stopped to eat his crust of dry bread he heard it reported that the daughter of the King was very ill, and that the wisest doctors in France had been sent for. Three days later, Yon Rustik presented himself at the palace, and asked audience with the King, but as he was so shabbily dressed the attendants did not wish to let him enter. When he strongly insisted, they finally prevailed upon the King to receive him; and then Yon told the King that he had come to cure the princess. Thereupon the King caused Yon to be fittingly dressed and presented before the sick-bed; and Yon drew forth his bottle of water, and, at his request, the princess drank it to the last drop. Suddenly she began to laugh with joy, and throwing her arms about the neck of the beggar thanked him: she was radically cured. At once the King gave orders that his golden coach of state be made ready; and placing the princess and the beggar on one seat, made a tour throughout all the most beautiful streets of Paris. Never before were such crowds seen in Paris, for the proclamation had gone forth that the one who had made the miraculous cure was a beggar.

'"Paol al Ludu, who was still in Paris, pressed forward to see the royal coach pa.s.s, and when he saw who sat next to the princess he was beside himself with rage. But before the day was over he discovered Yon in the great hotel of the city, and asked him how it was that he had been able to effect the cure; and Yon replied to his old rival that it was with the water of a miraculous fountain, and relating everything which had pa.s.sed, explained to him in what place the hollow oak and the fountain were to be found.

'"Paol did not wait even that night, but set off at once to find the miraculous fountain. When he finally found it the hour was almost midnight, and so he hid himself in the hollow of the oak, hoping to overhear some mysterious revelation. Midnight had hardly come when a frightful uproar commenced: this time the crippled _corrigan_ chief was swearing like a demon, and he cried to the others, 'The daughter of the King has been cured by a beggar! He must have overheard us by hiding in the hollow of that d----d old oak. Quick! let fire be put in it, for it has brought us misfortune.'

'"In less than a minute, the trunk of the oak was in flames; and there were heard the cries of anguish of Paol al Ludu and the gnashing of his teeth, as he fought against death. Thus the evil and dishonest man ended his life, while Yon Rustik received a pension of twenty thousand francs, and was able to live happy for many years, and to give alms to the poor."'

Here M. Le Scour ends his narrative, leaving the reader to imagine the enthusiastic applause and fond embraces bestowed upon Victor for this most marvellous story, by the happy gathering of country-folk in that cosy warm bakehouse in Lower Brittany, while without the cold east wind of winter was whirling into every nook and corner the falling flakes of snow.

The evidence from Ireland, Scotland, Isle of Man, Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany, which the living Celtic Fairy-Faith offers, has now been heard; and, as was stated at the beginning of the inquiry, apparently most of it can only be interpreted as belonging to a world-wide doctrine of souls. But before this decision can be arrived at safely, all the evidence should be carefully estimated according to anthropological and psychological methods; and this we shall proceed to do in the following chapter, before pa.s.sing to Section II of our study.

SECTION I

THE LIVING FAIRY-FAITH

CHAPTER III

AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE EVIDENCE

Anthropology is concerned with man and what is in man--_humani nihil a se alienum putat_.--ANDREW LANG.

The Celtic Fairy-Faith as part of a World-wide Animism--Shaping Influence of Social Psychology--Smallness of Elvish Spirits and Fairies, according to Ethnology, Animism, and Occult Sciences--The Changeling Belief and its explanation according to the Kidnap, Human-Sacrifice, Soul-Wandering, and Demon-Possession Theory--Ancient and Modern Magic and Witchcraft shown to be based on definite psychological laws--Exorcisms--Taboos, of Name, Food, Iron, Place--Taboos among Ancient Celts--Food-Sacrifice--Legend of the Dead--Conclusion: The background of the modern belief in Fairies is animistic.

THE CELTIC FAIRY-FAITH AS PART OF A WORLD-WIDE ANIMISM

The modern belief in fairies, with which until now we have been specifically concerned, is Celtic only in so far as it reflects Celtic traditions and customs, Celtic myth and religion, and Celtic social and environmental conditions. Otherwise, as will be shown throughout this and succeeding chapters, it is in essence a part of a world-wide animism, which forms the background of all religions in whatever stage of culture religions exist or to which they have attained by evolution, from the barbarism of the Congo black man to the civilization of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and as far back as we can go into human origins there is some corresponding belief in a fairy or spirit realm, as there is to-day among contemporary civilized and uncivilized races of all countries. We may therefore very profitably begin our examination of the living Fairy-Faith of the Celts by comparing it with a few examples, taken almost at random, from the animistic beliefs current among non-Celtic peoples.

To the Arunta tribes of Central Australia, furthest removed in s.p.a.ce from the Celts and hence least likely to have been influenced by them, let us go first, in order to examine their doctrine of ancestral _Alcheringa_ beings and of the _Iruntarinia_, which offers an almost complete parallel to the Celtic belief in fairies. These _Alcheringa_ beings and _Iruntarinia_--to ignore the secondary differences between the two--are a spirit race inhabiting an invisible or fairy world. Only certain persons, medicine-men and seers, can see them; and these describe them as thin and shadowy, and, like the Irish _Sidhe_, as always youthful in appearance. Precisely like their Celtic counterparts in general, these Australian spirits are believed to haunt inanimate objects such as stones and trees; or to frequent totem centres, as in Ireland demons (daemons) are believed to frequent certain places known to have been anciently dedicated to the religious rites of the pre-Christian Celts; and, quite after the manner of the Breton dead and of most fairies, they are said to control human affairs and natural phenomena. All the Arunta invariably regard themselves as incarnations or reincarnations of these ancestral spirit-beings; and, in accordance with evidence to be set forth in our seventh chapter, ancient and modern Celts have likewise regarded themselves as incarnations or reincarnations of ancestors and of fairy beings. Also the Arunta think of the _Alcheringa_ beings exactly as Celts think of fairies: as real invisible ent.i.ties who must be propitiated if men wish to secure their goodwill; and as beneficent and protecting beings when not offended, who may attach themselves to individuals as guardian spirits.[112]

Among the Melanesian peoples there is an equally firm faith in spiritual beings, which they call _Vui_ and _Wui_, and these beings have very many of the chief attributes of the _Alcheringa_ beings.[113]

In Africa, the _Amatongo_, or _Abapansi_ of Amazulu belief, have essentially the same motives for action toward men and women, and exhibit the same powers, as the Scotch and Irish peasants a.s.sign to the 'good people'. They _take_ the living through death; and people so _taken_ appear afterwards as apparitions, having become _Amatongo_.[114]

In the New World, we find in the North American Red Men a race as much given as the Celts are to a belief in various spirits like fairies. They believe that there are spirits in lakes, in rivers and in waterfalls, in rocks and trees, in the earth and in the air; and that these beings produce storms, droughts, good and bad harvests, abundance and scarcity of game, disease, and the varying fortunes of men. Mr. Leland, who has carefully studied these American beliefs, says that the _Un a games-suk_, or little spirits inhabiting rocks and streams, play a much more influential part in the social and religious life of the North American Red Men than elves or fairies ever did among the Aryans.[115]

In Asia there is the well-known and elaborate animistic creed of the Chinese and of the j.a.panese, to be in part ill.u.s.trated in subsequent sections. In popular Indian belief, as found in the Panjab, there is no essential difference between various orders of beings endowed with immortality, such as ghosts and spirits on the one hand, and G.o.ds, demi-G.o.ds, and warriors on the other; for whether in bodies in this world or out of bodies in the invisible world, they equally live and act--quite as fairies do.[116] Throughout the Malay Peninsula, belief in many orders of good and bad spirits, in demon-possession, in exorcism, and in the power of black magicians is very common.[117] But in the _Phi_ races of Siam we discover what is probably the most important and complete parallel to the Celtic Fairy-Faith existing in Asia.

According to the Siamese folk-belief, all the stars and various planets, as well as the ethereal s.p.a.ces, are the dwelling-places of the _Thevadas_, G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses of the old pre-Buddhist mythology, who correspond pretty closely to the Tuatha De Danann of Irish mythology; and this world itself is peopled by legions of minor deities called _Phi_, who include all the various orders of good and bad spirits continually influencing mankind. Some of these _Phi_ live in forests, in trees, in open s.p.a.ces; and watercourses are full of them. Others inhabit mountains and high places. A particular order who haunt the sacred trees surrounding the Buddhist temples are known as _Phi nang mai_; and since _nang_ is the word for female, and _mai_ for tree, they are comparable to tree-dwelling fairies, or Greek wood-nymphs. Still another order called _Chao phum phi_ (G.o.ds of the earth) are like house-frequenting brownies, fairies, and pixies, or like certain orders of _corrigans_ who haunt barns, stables, and dwellings; and in many curious details these _Chao phum phi_ correspond to the Penates of ancient Rome. Not only is the worship of this order of _Phi_ widespread in Siam, but to every other order of _Phi_ altars are erected and propitiatory offerings made by all cla.s.ses of the Siamese people.[118]

Before pa.s.sing westwards to Europe, in completion of our rapid folk-lore tour of the world, we may observe that the Persians, even those who are well educated, have a firm belief in _jinns_ and _afreets_, different orders of good and bad spirits with all the chief characteristics of fairies.[119] And modern Arabs and Egyptians and Egyptian Turks hold similar animistic beliefs.[120]

In Europe, the Greek peasant as firmly believes in nymphs or nereids as the Celtic peasant believes in fairies; and nymphs, nereids, and fairies alike are often the survivals of an ancient mythology. Mr. J. C. Lawson, who has very carefully investigated the folk-lore of modern Greece, says: 'The nereids are conceived as women half-divine yet not immortal, always young, always beautiful, capricious at best, and at their worst cruel. Their presence is suspected everywhere. I myself had a nereid pointed out to me by my guide, and there certainly was the semblance of a female figure draped in white, and tall beyond human stature, flitting in the dusk between the gnarled and twisted boles of an old olive-yard.

What the apparition was, I had no leisure to investigate; for my guide with many signs of the cross and muttered invocations of the Virgin urged my mule to perilous haste along the rough mountain path.' Like Celtic fairies, these Greek nereids have their queens; they dance all night, disappearing at c.o.c.k-crow; they can cast spells on animals or maladies on men and women; they can shift their shape; they _take_ children in death and make changelings; and they fall in love with young men.[121]

Among the Roumain peoples the widespread belief in the _Iele_ shows in other ways equally marked parallels with the Fairy-Faith of the Celts.

These _Iele_ wait at cross-roads and near dwellings, or at village fountains or in fields and woods, where they can best cast on men and women various maladies. Sometimes they fall in love with beautiful young men and women, and have on such occasions even been controlled by their mortal lovers. They are extremely fond of music and dancing, and many a shepherd with his pipes has been favoured by them, though they have their own music and songs too. The Albanian peoples have evil fairies, no taller than children twelve years old, called in Modern Greek ta e??t??a, 'those without,' who correspond to the _Iele_. Young people who have been enticed to enter their round dance afterwards waste away and die, apparently becoming one of 'those without'. These Albanian spirits, like the 'good people' and the Breton dead, have their own particular paths and retreats, and whoever violates these is struck and falls ill.[122] These parallels from Roumain lands are probably due to the close Aryan relationship between the Roumains, the Greeks, and the Celts. The _Iele_ seem nothing more than the nymphs and nereids of cla.s.sical antiquity transformed under Christian influence into beings who contradict their original good character, as in Celtic lands the fairy-folk have likewise come to be fallen angels and evil spirits.

There is an even closer relationship between the Italian and Celtic fairies. For example, among the Etruscan-Roman people there are now flourishing animistic beliefs almost identical in all details with the Fairy-Faith of the Celts.[123] In a very valuable study on the Neo-Latin Fay, Mr. H. C. Coote writes:--'Who were the Fays--the _fate_ of later Italy, the _fees_ of mediaeval France? For it is perfectly clear that the _fatua_, _fata_, and _fee_ are all one and the same word.' And he proceeds to show that the race of immortal damsels whom the old natives of Italy called _Fatuae_ gave origin to all the family of _fees_ as these appear in Latin countries, and that the Italians recognized in the Greek nymphs their own _Fatuae_.[124]

It is quite evident that we have here discovered in Italy, as we discovered in Greece and Roumain lands, fairies very Celtic in character; and should further examination be made of modern European folk-lore yet other similar fairies would be found, such, for example, as the elves of Germany and of Scandinavia, or as the _servans_ of the Swiss peasant. And in all cases, whether the beliefs examined be Celtic or non-Celtic, Aryan or non-Aryan, from Australia, Polynesia, Africa, America, Asia, or Europe, they are in essence animistically the same, as later sections in this chapter will make clear. But while the parallelism of these beliefs is indicated it is, of course, not meant for a moment that in all of the cases or in any one of the cases the specific differences are not considerable. The ground of comparison consists simply in those generic characteristics which these fairy-faiths, as they may be called, invariably display--characteristics which we have good precedent for summing up in the single adjective animistic.

SHAPING INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

For the term animism we have to thank Dr. E. B. Tylor, whose _Primitive Culture_, in which the animistic theory is developed, may almost be said to mark the beginning of scientific anthropology. In this work, however, there is a decided tendency (which indeed displays itself in most of the leading anthropological works, as, for example, in those by Dr. Frazer) to regard men, or at any rate primitive men, as having a mind absolutely h.o.m.ogeneous, and therefore as thinking, feeling, and acting in the same way under all conditions alike. But a decided change is beginning to manifest itself in the interpretation of the customs and beliefs of the ruder races. It is a.s.sumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must, it is held, p.r.o.nounce both the first and last word regarding all matters of mythology, religion, and art in its numerous forms. The reason is that these are social products, and as such are to be understood only in the light of the laws governing the workings of the collective mind of any particular ethnic group. Such a method is, for instance, employed in Mr. William McDougall's _Social Psychology_, in Mr. R. R. Marett's _Threshold of Religion_, and in many anthropological articles to be found in _L'Annee Sociologique_.

If, therefore, we hold by this new and fruitful method of social psychology we must be prepared to treat the Fairy-Faith of the Celtic peoples also in and for itself, as expressive of an individuality more or less unique. It might, indeed, be objected that these peoples are not a single social group, but rather a number of such groups, and this is, in a way, true. Nevertheless their folk-lore displays such remarkable h.o.m.ogeneity, from whatever quarter of the Celtic world it be derived, that it seems the soundest method to treat them as one people for all the purposes of the student of sociology, mythology, and religion.

Granting, then, such a unity in the beliefs of the pan-Celtic race, we are finally obliged to distinguish as it were two aspects thereof.

On the one hand there is shown, even in the mere handful of non-Celtic parallels, which for reasons of s.p.a.ce we have been content to cite, as well as in their Celtic equivalents, a generic element common to all peoples living under primitive conditions of society. It is emphatically a social element, but at the same time one which any primitive society is bound to display. On the other hand, in a second aspect, the Celtic beliefs show of themselves a character which is wholly Celtic: in the Fairy-Faith, which is generically animistic, we find reflected all sorts of specific characteristics of the Celtic peoples--their patriotism, their peculiar type of imagination, their costumes, amus.e.m.e.nts, household life, and social and religious customs generally. With this fact in mind, we may proceed to examine certain of the more specialized aspects of the Fairy-Faith, as manifested both among Celts and elsewhere.

THE SMALLNESS OF ELVISH SPIRITS AND FAIRIES

_Ethnological or Pygmy Theory_

In any anthropological estimate of the Fairy-Faith, the pygmy stature so commonly attributed to various orders of Celtic and of non-Celtic fairies should be considered. Various scholarly champions of the Pygmy Theory have attempted to explain this smallness of fairies by means of the hypothesis that the belief in such fairies is due _wholly_ to a folk-memory of small-statured pre-Celtic races;[125] and they add that these races, having dwelt in caverns like the prehistoric Cave Men, and in underground houses like those of Lapps or Eskimos, gave rise to the belief in a fairy world existing in caverns and under hills or mountains. When a.n.a.lysed, our evidence shows that in the majority of cases witnesses have regarded fairies either as non-human nature-spirits or else as spirits of the dead; that in a comparatively limited number of cases they have regarded them as the souls of prehistoric races; and that occasionally they have regarded the belief in them as due to a folk-memory of such races. It follows, then, from such an a.n.a.lysis of evidence, that the Pygmy Theory probably does explain some ethnological elements which have come to be almost inseparably interwoven with the essentially animistic fabric of the primitive Fairy-Faith. But though the theory may so account for such ethnological elements, it disregards the animism that has made such interweaving possible; and, on the whole, we are inclined to accept Mr. Jenner's view of the theory (see p. 169).

Since the Pygmy Theory thus fails entirely to provide a basis for what is by far the most important part of the Fairy-Faith, a more adequate theory is required.