The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 24

We find that taboos, or prohibitions of a religious and social character, are as common in the living Fairy-Faith as exorcisms. The chief one is the taboo against naming the fairies, which inevitably results in the use of euphemisms, such as 'good people', 'gentry', 'people of peace', _Tylwyth Teg_ ('Fair Folk'), or _bonnes dames_ ('good ladies'). A like sort of taboo, with its accompanying use of euphemisms, existed among the Ancients, e. g. among the Egyptians and Babylonians, and early Celts as well, in a highly developed form; and it exists now among the native peoples of Australia, Polynesia, Central Africa, America, in Indian systems of Yoga, among modern Greeks, and, in fact, almost everywhere where there are vestiges of a primitive culture.[205]

And almost always such a taboo is bound up with animistic and magical elements, which seem to form its background, just as it is in our own evidence.

To discuss name taboo in all its aspects would lead us more deeply into magic and comparative folk-lore than we have yet gone, and such discussion is unnecessary here. We may therefore briefly state that the root of the matter would seem to be that the name and the dread power named are so closely a.s.sociated in the very concrete thought of the primitive culture that the one virtually is the other: just as one inevitably calls up the other for the modern thinker, so it is that, in the world of objective fact, for the primitive philosopher the one is equivalent to the other. The primitive man, in short, has projected his subjective a.s.sociations into reality. As regards euphemisms, the process of development possibly is that first you employ any subst.i.tute name, and that secondly you go on to employ such a subst.i.tute name as will at the same time be conciliatory. In the latter case, a certain anthropomorphosing of the power behind the taboo would seem to be involved.[206]

Next in prominence comes the food taboo; and to this, also, there are non-Celtic parallels all the world over, now and in ancient times. We may take notice of three very striking modern parallels:--A woman visited her dead brother in Panoi, the Polynesian Otherworld, and 'he cautioned her to eat nothing there, and she returned'.[207] A Red Man, Ahak-tah, after an apparent death of two days' duration, revived, and declared that he had been to a beautiful land of tall trees and singing-birds, where he met the spirits of his forefathers and uncle.

While there, he felt hunger, and seeing in a bark dish some wild rice, wished to eat of it, but his uncle would allow him none. In telling about this psychical adventure, Ahak-tah said:--'Had I eaten of the food of spirits, I never should have returned to earth.'[208] Also a New Zealand woman visited the Otherworld in a trance, and her dead father whom she met there ordered her to eat no food in that land, so that she could return to this world to take care of her child.[209]

All such parallels, like their equivalents in Celtic belief, seem to rest on this psychological and physiological conception in the folk-mind. Human food is what keeps life going in a human body; fairy food is what keeps life going in a fairy body; and since what a man eats makes him what he is physically, so eating the food of Fairyland or of the land of the dead will make the eater partake of the bodily nature of the beings it nourishes. Hence when a man or woman has once entered into such relation or communion with the Otherworld of the dead, or of fairies, by eating their food, his or her physical body[210] by a subtle transformation adjusts itself to the new kind of nourishment, and becomes spiritual like a spirit's or fairy's body, so that the eater cannot re-enter the world of the living. A study of food taboos confirms this conclusion.[211]

A third prominent taboo, the iron taboo, has been explained by exponents of the Pygmy Theory as pointing to a prehistoric race in Celtic lands who did not know iron familiarly, and hence venerated it so that in time it came to be religiously regarded as very efficacious against spirits and fairies. Undoubtedly there may be much reason in this explanation, which gives some ethnological support to the Pygmy Theory. Apparently, however, it is only a partial explanation of iron taboo in general, because, in many cases, iron in ancient religious rites certainly had magical properties attributed to it, which to us are quite unexplainable from this ethnological point of view;[212] and in Melanesia and in Africa, where iron is venerated now, the same explanation through ethnology seems far-fetched. But at present there seem to be no available data to explain adequately this iron taboo, though we have strong reasons for thinking that the philosophy underlying it is based on mystical conceptions of virtues attributed--reasonably or unreasonably--to various metals and precious stones, and that a careful examination of alchemical sciences would probably arrive at an explanation wholly psychological.

Besides many other miscellaneous taboos noticeable in the evidence, there is a place taboo which is prominent. Thus, if an Irishman cuts a thorn tree growing on a spot sacred to the fairies, or if he violates a fairy preserve of any sort, such as a fairy path, or by accident interferes with a fairy procession, illness and possibly death will come to his cattle or even to himself. In the same way, in Melanesia, violations of sacred spots bring like penalties: 'A man planted in the bush near Olevuga some coco-nut and almond trees, and not long after died,' the place being a spirit preserve;[213] and a man in the Lepers'

Island lost his senses, because, as the natives believed, he had unwittingly trodden on ground sacred to Tagaro, and 'the ghost of the man who lately sacrificed there was angry with him'.[213] In this case the wizards were called in and cured the man by exorcisms,[213] as Irishmen, or their cows, are cured by the exorcisms of 'fairy-doctors'

when 'fairy-struck' for some similar violation. The animistic background of place taboos in the Fairy-Faith is in these cases apparent.

_Among Ancient Celts_

In the evidence soon to be examined from the recorded Fairy-Faith, we shall find taboos of various kinds often more prominent than in the living Fairy-Faith.[214] So essential are they to the character of much of the literary and mythological matter with which we shall have to deal in the following chapters, that at this point some suggestions ought to be made concerning their correct anthropological interpretation.

Almost every ancient Irish taboo is connected with a king or with a great hero like Cuchulainn; and, in Ireland especially, all such kings and heroes were considered of divine origin, and as direct incarnations, or reincarnations of the Tuatha De Danann, the true Fairies, originally inhabitants of the Otherworld. (See our chapter vii.) As Dr. Frazer points out to have been the case among non-Celts, with whom the same theory of incarnated divinities has prevailed, royal taboos are to isolate the king from all sources of danger, especially from all magic and witchcraft, and they act in many cases 'so to say, as electrical insulators' to preserve him or heroes who are equally divine.[215]

The early Celts recognized an intimate relationship between man and nature: unperceived by man, unseen forces--not dissimilar to what Melanesians call _Mana_--(looked on as animate and intelligent and frequently individual ent.i.ties) guided every act of human life. It was the special duty of Druids to act as intermediaries between the world of men and the world of the Tuatha De Danann; and, as old Irish literature indicates clearly, it was through the exercise of powers of divination on the part of Druids that these declared what was taboo or what was unfavourable, and also what it was favourable for the divine king or hero to perform. As long as man kept himself in harmony with this unseen fairy-world in the background of nature, all was well; but as soon as a taboo was broken, disharmony in the relationship--which was focused in a king or hero--was set up; and when, as in the case of Cuchulainn, many taboos were violated, death was inevitable and not even the Tuatha De Danann could intercede.

Breaking of a royal or hero taboo not only affects the violator, but his subjects or followers as well: in some cases the king seems to suffer vicariously for his people. Almost every great Gaelic hero--a G.o.d or Great Fairy Being incarnate--is overshadowed with an impending fate, which only the strictest observance of taboo can avoid.[216]

Irish taboo, and inferentially all Celtic taboo, dates back to an unknown pagan antiquity. It is imposed at or before birth, or again during life, usually at some critical period, and when broken brings disaster and death to the breaker. Its whole background appears to rest on a supernatural relationship between divine men and the Otherworld of the Tuatha De Danann; and it is very certain that this ancient relationship survives in the living Fairy-Faith as one between ordinary men and the fairy-world. Therefore, almost all taboos surviving among Celts ought to be interpreted psychologically or even psychically, and not as ordinary social regulations.

FOOD-SACRIFICE

Food-sacrifice plays a very important role in the modern Fairy-Faith, being still practised, as our evidence shows, in each one of the Celtic countries. Without any doubt it is a survival from pagan times, when, as we shall observe later (in chapter iv. 291, and elsewhere), propitiatory offerings were regularly made to the Tuatha De Danann as G.o.ds of the earth, and, apparently, to other orders of spiritual beings. The anthropological significance of such food-sacrifice is unmistakable.

With the same propitiatory ends in view as modern Celts now have in offering food to fairies, ancient peoples, e. g. the Greeks and Romans, maintained a state ritual of sacrifices to the G.o.ds, genii, daemons, and to the dead. And such sacrifices, so essential a part of most ancient religions, were based on the belief, as stated by Porphyry in his _Treatise Concerning Abstinence_, that all the various orders of G.o.ds, genii or daemons, enjoy as nourishment the odour of burnt offerings. And like the Fairy-Folk, the daemons of the air live not on the gross substance of food, but on its finer invisible essences, conveyed to them most easily on the altar-fire.[217] Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, and other leading Greeks, as well as the Romans of a like metaphysical school, unite in declaring the fundamental importance to the welfare of the State of regular sacrifices to the G.o.ds and to the daemons who control all natural phenomena, since they caused, if not neglected, abundant harvests and national prosperity. For unto the G.o.ds is due by right a part of all things which they give to man for his happiness.

The relation which the worship of ancestors held to that of the G.o.ds above, who are the Olympian G.o.ds, the great G.o.ds, and to the G.o.ds below, who are the G.o.ds of the Dead, and also to the daemons, and heroes or divine ancestors, is thus set forth by Plato in his _Laws_:--'In the first place, we affirm that next after the Olympian G.o.ds, and the G.o.ds of the State, honour should be given to the G.o.ds below.... Next to these G.o.ds, a wise man will do service to the daemons or spirits, and then to the heroes, and after them will follow the sacred places of private and ancestral G.o.ds, having their ritual according to law. Next comes the honour of living parents.'[218]

It is evident from this direct testimony that the same sort of philosophy underlies food-sacrifice among the Celts and other peoples as we discovered underlying human-sacrifice, in our study of the Changeling Belief; and that the Tuatha De Danann in their true mythological nature, and fairies, their modern counterpart, correspond in all essentials to Greek and Roman G.o.ds, genii, and daemons, and are often confused with the dead.

THE CELTIC LEGEND OF THE DEAD

The animistic character of the Celtic Legend of the Dead is apparent; and the striking likenesses constantly appearing in our evidence between the ordinary apparitional fairies and the ghosts of the dead show that there is often no essential and sometimes no distinguishable difference between these two orders of beings, nor between the world of the dead and fairyland. We reserve for our chapter on _Science and Fairies_ the scientific consideration of the psychology of this relationship, and of the probability that fairies as souls of the dead and as ghosts of the dead actually exist and influence the living.

GENERAL CONCLUSION

The chief anthropological problems connected with the modern Fairy-Faith, as our evidence presents it, have now been examined, at sufficient length, we trust, to explain their essential significance; and problems, to some extent parallel, connected with the ancient Fairy-Faith have likewise been examined. There remain, however, very many minor anthropological problems not yet touched upon; but several of the most important of these, e. g. various cults of G.o.ds, spirits, fairies, and the dead, and folk-festivals thereto related (see Section III); the circular fairy-dance (see pp. 405-6); or the fairy world as the Otherworld (see chap. vi), or as Purgatory (see chap. x), will receive consideration in following chapters, and so will certain very definite psychological problems connected with dreams, and trance-like states, with supernormal lapse of time, and with seership. We may now sum up the results so far attained.

Whether we examine the Fairy-Faith as a whole or whether we examine specialized parts of it like those relating to the smallness of fairies, to changelings, to witchcraft and magic, to exorcisms, to taboos, and to food-sacrifice, in all cases comparative folk-lore shows that the beliefs composing it find their parallels the world over, and that fairy-like beings are objects of belief now not only in Celtic countries, but in Central Australia, throughout Polynesia, in Africa, among American Red Men, in Asia generally, in Southern, Western, and Northern Europe, and, in fact, wherever civilized and primitive men hold religious beliefs. From a rationalist point of view anthropologists would be inclined to regard the bulk of this widespread belief in spiritual beings as being purely mythical, but for us to do so and stop there would lead to no satisfactory solution: the origin of myth itself needs to be explained, and one of the chief objects of our study throughout the remainder of this book is to make an attempt at such an explanation, especially of Celtic myth.

Again, if we examine all fairy-like beings from a certain superficial point of view, or even from the mythological point of view, it is easy to discern that they are universally credited with precisely the same characters, attributes, actions, or powers as the particular peoples possess who have faith in them; and then the further fact emerges that this anthropomorphosing is due directly to the more immediate social environment: we see merely an anthropomorphically coloured picture of the whole of an age-long social evolution of the tribe, race, or nation who have fostered the particular aspect of this one world-wide folk-religion. But if we look still deeper, we discover as background to the myths and the social psychology a profound animism. This animism appears in its own environment in the shading away of the different fairy-like beings into spirits and ghosts of the departed. Going deeper yet, we find that such animistic beliefs as concern themselves exclusively with the realm of the dead are in many cases apparently so well founded on definite provable psychical experiences on the part of living men and women that the aid of science itself must be called in to explain them, and this will be done in our chapter ent.i.tled _Science and Fairies_.

So far it ought to be clear that already our evidence points to a very respectable residue in the experiences of percipients, which cannot be explained away--as can the larger ma.s.s of the evidence--as due to ethnological, anthropomorphic, naturalistic, or sociological influences on the Celtic mind; and for the present this must be designated as the _x_ or unknown quant.i.ty in the Fairy-Faith. In chapter xi this _x_ quant.i.ty, augmented by whatever else is to be elicited from further evidence, will be specifically discussed.

These points of view derived from our anthropological examination of the chief parts of the evidence presented by the living Fairy-Faith will be kept constantly before us as we proceed further; and what has been demonstrated anthropologically in this chapter will serve to interpret what is to follow until chapter xi is reached. With this tentative position we pa.s.s to Section II of this study, and shall there begin to examine, as we have just done with their modern Fairy-Faith, the ancient Fairy-Faith of the Celts.

SECTION II

THE RECORDED FAIRY-FAITH

CHAPTER IV

THE PEOPLE OF THE G.o.dDESS DANA (_TUATHA De DANANN_) OR THE _SIDHE_ (p.r.o.nOUNCED _SHEE_)[219]

'So firm was the hold which the ethnic G.o.ds of Ireland had taken upon the imagination and spiritual sensibilities of our ancestors that even the monks and christianized bards never thought of denying them. They doubtless forbade the people to worship them, but to root out the belief in their existence was so impossible that they could not even dispossess their own minds of the conviction that the G.o.ds were real supernatural beings.'--STANDISH O'GRADY.

The G.o.ddess Dana and the modern cult of St. Brigit--The Tuatha De Danann or _Sidhe_ conquered by the Sons of Mil--But Irish seers still see the _Sidhe_--Old Irish MSS. faithfully represent the Tuatha De Danann--The _Sidhe_ as a spirit race--_Sidhe_ palaces--The 'Taking' of mortals--Hill visions of _Sidhe_ women--_Sidhe_ minstrels and musicians--Social organization and warfare among the _Sidhe_--The _Sidhe_ war-G.o.ddesses, the _Badb_--The _Sidhe_ at the Battle of Clontarf, A. D.

1014--Conclusion.

The People of the G.o.ddess Dana, or, according to D'Arbois de Jubainville, the People of the G.o.d whose mother was called Dana,[220]

are the Tuatha De Danann of the ancient mythology of Ireland. The G.o.ddess Dana, called in the genitive Danand, in middle Irish times was named Brigit.[220] And this G.o.ddess Brigit of the pagan Celts has been supplanted by the Christian St. Brigit[220]; and, in exactly the same way as the pagan cult once bestowed on the spirits in wells and fountains has been transferred to Christian saints, to whom the wells and fountains have been re-dedicated, so to St. Brigit as a national saint has been transferred the pagan cult rendered to her predecessor.

Thus even yet, as in the case of the minor divinities of their sacred fountains, the Irish people through their veneration for the good St.

Brigit, render homage to the divine mother of the People who bear her name Dana,--who are the ever-living invisible Fairy-People of modern Ireland. For when the Sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, came to Ireland they found the Tuatha De Danann in full possession of the country. The Tuatha De Danann then retired before the invaders, without, however, giving up their sacred Island. a.s.suming invisibility, with the power of at any time reappearing in a human-like form before the children of the Sons of Mil, the People of the G.o.ddess Dana became and are the Fairy-Folk, the _Sidhe_ of Irish mythology and romance.[221]

Therefore it is that to-day Ireland contains two races,--a race visible which we call Celts, and a race invisible which we call Fairies. Between these two races there is constant intercourse even now; for Irish seers say that they can behold the majestic, beautiful _Sidhe_, and according to them the _Sidhe_ are a race quite distinct from our own, just as living and possibly more powerful. These _Sidhe_ (who are the 'gentry'

of the Ben Bulbin country and have kindred elsewhere in Ireland, Scotland, and probably in most other countries as well, such as the invisible races of the Yosemite Valley) have been described more or less accurately by our peasant seer-witnesses from County Sligo and from North and East Ireland. But there are other and probably more reliable seers in Ireland, men of greater education and greater psychical experience, who know and describe the _Sidhe_ races as they really are, and who even sketch their likenesses. And to such seer Celts as these, Death is a pa.s.sport to the world of the _Sidhe_, a world where there is eternal youth and never-ending joy, as we shall learn when we study it as the Celtic Otherworld.

The recorded mythology and literature of ancient Ireland have, very faithfully for the most part, preserved to us clear pictures of the Tuatha De Danann; so that disregarding some Christian influence in the texts of certain ma.n.u.scripts, much rationalization, and a good deal of poetical colouring and romantic imagination in the pictures, we can easily describe the People of the G.o.ddess Dana as they appeared in pagan days, when they were more frequently seen by mortals than now. Perhaps the Irish folk of the olden times were even more clairvoyant and spiritual-minded than the Irish folk of to-day. So by drawing upon these written records let us try to understand what sort of beings the _Sidhe_ were and are.

NATURE OF THE _SIDHE_

In the _Book of Leinster_[222] the poem of _Eochaid_ records that the Tuatha De Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of _siabra_; and _siabra_ is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts. The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like the modern 'gentry'; but the word _ghosts_ is inappropriate, because our evidence shows that the only relation the _Sidhe_ or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a superficial one, the _Sidhe_ and ghosts being alike only in respect to invisibility. In the two chief Irish MSS., the _Book of the Dun Cow_ and the _Book of Leinster_, the Tuatha De Danann are described as 'G.o.ds and not-G.o.ds'; and Sir John Rhys considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit _deva_ and _adeva_, but not with 'poets (_dee_) and husbandmen (_an dee_)' as the author of _Coir Anmann_ learnedly guessed.[223] It is also said, in the _Book of the Dun Cow_, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that 'it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence of their knowledge'.[224] The hold of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons,[225] as the ending of the story of the _Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn_ ill.u.s.trates:--'So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being stricken by the people of the _Sid_: for the demoniac power was great before the faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be in immortality. It was thus they used to be believed in. So it is to such phantoms the ignorant apply the names of _Side_ and _Aes Side_.'[226] A pa.s.sage in the _Silva Gadelica_ (ii. 202-3) not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish people made a clear distinction between the G.o.d-race and our own:--In _The Colloquy with the Ancients_, as St. Patrick and Caeilte are talking with one another, 'a lone woman robed in mantle of green, a smock of soft silk being next her skin, and on her forehead a glittering plate of yellow gold,' came to them; and when Patrick asked from whence she came, she replied: 'Out of _uaimh Chruachna_, or "the cave of Cruachan".' Caeilte then asked: 'Woman, my soul, who art thou?' 'I am _Scothniamh_ or "Flower-l.u.s.tre", daughter of the Daghda's son Bodhb derg.' Caeilte proceeded: 'And what started thee hither?' 'To require of thee my marriage-gift, because once upon a time thou promisedst me such.' And as they parleyed Patrick broke in with: 'It is a wonder to us how we see you two: the girl young and invested with all comeliness; but thou Caeilte, a withered ancient, bent in the back and dingily grown grey.'

'Which is no wonder at all,' said Caeilte, 'for no people of one generation or of one time are we: _she is of the Tuatha De Danann, who are unfading and whose duration is perennial; I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable and fade away_.' The exact distinction is between Caeilte, a withered old ancient--in most ways to be regarded as a ghost called up that Patrick may question him about the past history of Ireland--and a fairy-woman who is one of the _Sidhe_ or Tuatha De Danann.[227]

In two of the more ancient Irish texts, the _Echtra Nerai_[228] or 'Expedition of Nera', a preliminary tale in the introduction to the _Tain bo Cuailnge_ or 'Theft of the Cattle of Cuailnge'; and a pa.s.sage from the _Togail Bruidne da Derga_, or 'Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel',[229] there seems no reasonable doubt whatever about the Tuatha De Danann or _Sidhe_ being a race like what we call spirits. The first text describes how Ailill and Medb in their palace of Cruachan celebrated the feast of _Samain_ (November Eve, a feast of the dead even in pre-Christian times). Two culprits had been executed on the day before, and their bodies, according to the ancient Irish custom, were left hanging from a tree until the night of _Samain_ should have pa.s.sed; for on that night it was dangerous to touch the bodies of the dead while demons and the people of the _Sidhe_ were at large throughout all Ireland, and mortals found near dead bodies at such a time were in great danger of being _taken_ by these spirit hosts of the Tuatha De Danann.

And so on this very night, when thick darkness had settled down, Ailill desired to test the courage of his warriors, and offered his own gold-hilted sword to any young man who would go out and tie a coil of twisted twigs around the leg of one of the bodies suspended from the tree. After many had made the attempt and failed, because unable to brave the legions of demons and fairies, Nera alone succeeded; but his success cost him dear, for he finally fell under the power both of the dead man, round whose legs he had tied the coil, and of an elfin host: with the dead man's body on his back, Nera was obliged to go to a strange house that the thirst of the dead man might be a.s.suaged therein; and the dead man in drinking scattered 'the last sip from his lips at the faces of the people that were in the house, so that they all died'.

Nera carried back the body; and on returning to Cruachan he saw the fairy hosts going into the cave, 'for the fairy-mounds of Erinn are always opened about Halloween.' Nera followed after them until he came to their king in a palace of the Tuatha De Danann, seemingly in the cavern or elsewhere underground; where he remained and was married to one of the fairy women. She it was who revealed to Nera the secret hiding-place, in a mysterious well, of the king's golden crown, and then betrayed her whole people by reporting to Nera the plan they had for attacking Ailill's court on the Halloween to come. Moreover, Nera was permitted by his fairy wife to depart from the _sid_; and he in taking leave of her asked: 'How will it be believed of me that I have gone into the _sid_?' 'Take fruits of summer with thee,' said the woman. 'Then he took wild garlic with him and primrose and golden fern.' And on the following November Eve when the _sid_ of Cruachan was again open, 'the men of Connaught and the black hosts of exile' under Ailill and Medb plundered it, taking away from it the crown of Briun out of the well.

But 'Nera was left with his people in the _sid_, and has not come out until now, nor will he come till Doom.'

All of this matter is definitely enough in line with the living Fairy-Faith: there is the same belief expressed as now about November Eve being the time of all times when ghosts, demons, spirits, and fairies are free, and when fairies _take_ mortals and marry them to fairy women; also the beliefs that fairies are living in secret places in hills, in caverns, or under ground--palaces full of treasure and open only on November Eve. In so far as the real fairies, the _Sidhe_, are concerned, they appear as the rulers of the Feast of the Dead or _Samain_, as the controllers of all spirits who are then at large; and, allowing for some poetical imagination and much social psychology and anthropomorphism, elements as common in this as in most literary descriptions concerning the Tuatha De Danann, they are faithfully enough presented.

The second text describes how King Conaire, in riding along a road toward Tara, saw in front of him three strange hors.e.m.e.n, three men of the _Sidhe_:--'Three red frocks had they, and three red mantles: three red steeds they bestrode, and three red heads of hair were on them. Red were they all, both body and hair and raiment, both steeds and men.'