The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 31

_In Cornwall_

Mr. Henry Maddern, F.I.A.S., our very important witness from Penzance, testifies as follows concerning a re-birth doctrine in Cornwall:--'Belief in reincarnation was very common among the old Cornish peoples. For example, it was believed when an incantation had been p.r.o.nounced in the proper way at the Newlyn Tolcarne, that the Troll who inhabited it could embody the person who called him up in any state in which that person had existed during a former age. You had only to name the age or period, and you could live your past life therein over again. My nurse, Betty Grancan, and an old miner named William Edwards, both believed in re-birth, and told me about it. I have heard them relate stories to one another to the effect that a person can go back into the memory of past lives. They said that the s.e.x always remains the same from life to life. I have never heard of any belief in transmigration of humans into animals, but in human re-birth only.'[424]

_In Brittany_

In chapter ii, p. 216, M. Z. Le Rouzic, keeper of the Miln Museum at Carnac, says that there is now among his Breton countrymen round Carnac a general and profound belief that spirits incarnate as men and women; and he has told me that this belief exists also in other regions of the Morbihan. And I myself found there in this Carnac country of which M. Le Rouzic speaks, that the doctrine of the reincarnation of ancestors, which, as he agrees, is the same thing as the incarnation of spirits, is quite common, though as a rule only talked about among the Bretons themselves.

M. Le Rouzic restated the belief as he knows it round Carnac, as follows:--'It is incontestable that the belief in the reincarnation of spirits is general in our country; and it is believed that the spirits embodied now are the spirits of the people of former times.'

After Louis Guezel, of the village of St. Columban, a mile from Carnac, had related to me certain legends of the dead, I asked him if he had ever heard that the dead may be born again as men and women here on this earth. Contrary to my expectations, the question caused no surprise whatever; and I was at once given the impression that the ancient Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth is a thoroughly familiar one to him and to many Bretons about the Carnac district. As we conversed about the doctrine, he said emphatically, '_C'est la verite_' (It is the truth); and in ill.u.s.tration told the following anecdotes:--'A woman in a cemetery one evening saw the spirits of many dead children begging of her life, and reincarnation. A son of my son resembles my grandfather, especially in his mental traits and general character, and the family believe that this son is my grandfather reincarnated.' (Recorded at St. Columban, Brittany, August 1909.)

Professor Anatole Le Braz, in a letter-preface to _Carnac, Legendes, Traditions, Coutumes et Contes du Pays_ (Nantes, 1909), by M. Z. Le Rouzic, makes this poetical reference to his friend, its author, and thereby admirably echoes the ancient Breton Doctrine of Re-birth:--'You, your eyes, your ears are elsewhere: you are a seer and a hearer of the lower regions; you perceive the floating images and you discern the hollow sounds of the people of the manes; you live, literally, among them. What am I saying? Under the form and appearance of a man of to-day, you are in reality one of them, ascended to the day and reincarnated.' Again, speaking of the Alignements of Menec, Professor Le Braz adds concerning his friend:--'You have been one of the priest-builders who worked at its erection; you have officiated among its myriads of columns, presided amid the pomp of great funerals in its cyclopean caverns, sprinkled its sepulchral mounds, shaped like tents, with the blood of oxen and of heifers now dear to St. Cornely. And this also you confess to me yourself: these unfathomable epochs remain for you actual and present.'

ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF THE CELTIC DOCTRINE OF RE-BIRTH

In considering briefly what non-Celtic doctrines could conceivably have shaped the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, two chief streams of influence are open to examination. One stream has its source in re-birth doctrines like those set forth by Orphic, Pythagorean, Platonic, and similar orientally-derived philosophies; while the other arises out of primitive Christianity, wherein, as literary and historical evidence suggests, re-birth may have been an equally important doctrine; or, at all events, there was a decided tendency, later condemned as heretical, to synthesize the Alexandrian philosophy and the Jewish (which to some extent influenced the Alexandrian) with early Church doctrines. This tendency is clearly shown by Origen, and by Clemens Alexandrinus, another eminent Father.

We have a better check on the second stream than on the first, because Christianity has a later and more definite origin than any of the orientally-derived philosophies. Some of the Druids, chiefly of Scotland and Wales, who are known to have held the re-birth doctrine before conversion, and probably after conversion, as was the case with a modern Druid, an editor of the _Archaiology of Wales_ (see p. 391, above), accepted the New Faith as a purer form of Druidism and Jesus Christ as the Greatest of Druids. This ready and full acceptance would most likely not have been possible had their cardinal re-birth doctrine been thereby condemned. It would seem, therefore, that a primitive Christian re-birth doctrine may have been openly held by certain of the early Celtic missionaries. These latter, during the centuries when Ireland was the university for all Europe, had good opportunities for knowing much about the earliest traditions of Christianity, and they, with their own half-pagan instincts, would have given approval to such a doctrine without consulting Rome, just as Church Fathers like Tertullian condemned it on their own personal authority and Origen believed it.

Further, if we hold in mind that the doctrine of the Incarnation even now inculcates that the Son pre-existed and united Himself with a human soul in the act of conception, and that it may originally and by some Irish saints have been thought of as applying to all mankind in a more humble and less divine way, we seem to see in the Mongan re-birth story, which Christian transcribers have glossed, evidently with such ideas in mind, a proof that on this doctrinal point Christian and Celtic beliefs coalesced.[425] But the Christian beliefs did not originate the Celtic, for scholars have shown that the germ of the Mongan re-birth story, as well as that of the Cuchulainn re-birth episode, is pre-Christian, and that the Etain birth-story dates from a time when Irish myth and history were entirely free from Christian influence.[426] The same original pagan character is shown in the re-birth episodes existing in Brythonic literature.[427] And, finally, from the testimony of several ancient authorities, e. g. Julius Caesar, Diodorus Siculus, Pomponius Mela, and Lucan, who wrote, respectively, about 50 B. C., 40 B. C., A. D. 44, and A. D. 60 to 65, that the Celts already held the re-birth doctrine, it is certain that any possible influence from the Christian stream instead of originating the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth could merely have modified it.

The question remaining, Would the cla.s.sical or oriental doctrines of re-birth have originated or fundamentally shaped the Celtic re-birth doctrine? is a very difficult one. At present it cannot be answered with certainty either negatively or positively. We may suppose, however, as we did in the case of the parallel Christian re-birth doctrine, a possible contact and amalgamation, brought about in various ways, e. g.

through Oriental merchants like the Phoenicians, and travellers who visited Britain in pre-Christian times, but chiefly through the continental Celts, who had direct knowledge of Greek and Roman culture, meeting their insular brethren beyond the Channel and Irish Sea. All such ancient contacts push the problem further and further back in time; and our easiest and safest course is to state--as we may of the similar problem of the origin of the Celtic Otherworld belief--that available facts of comparative religion, philosophy, and myth, indicate clearly a prehistoric epoch when there was a common ancestral stock for the Mediterranean and pan-Celtic cultures. This may have had its beginnings in the Danube country, or in North Europe, as many authorities in ethnology now hold, or, as others are beginning to hold, in the lost Atlantis--the most probable home of the dark pre-Celtic peoples of Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, Britain, Southern and Western Europe, and North Africa, who with the Aryans are the joint ancestors of the modern Celts. Both branches of this common Celtic ancestral stock held the re-birth doctrine. And at least from their Aryan ancestors it seems to have been inherited by the Celts of history. To attempt a hypothetical proof that this race or that race, Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, or Celtic, as the case may be, is alone the originator of this or any other particular belief is as useless and as absurd as to attempt proof that the Gael has no racial affinity with the Brython. One of the greatest services now being performed by scientific inquiry into human problems is the demonstration of the unreasonableness of a.s.suming artificial social barriers separating race from race, religion from religion, and inst.i.tution from inst.i.tution, and the declaration that the unity and the brotherhood of man is a fact inherent in man's own nature, and not a sentimental ideal. But there is specialization and differentiation everywhere in nature; and while Celtic traditions and beliefs are not fundamentally unlike those found in every age, race, and cultural stage, the treatment of this common stock of prehistoric lore and mystical religion is in some respects unique, and hence Celtic.

Beyond this statement we cannot go.

SECTION III

THE CULT OF G.o.dS, SPIRITS, FAIRIES, AND THE DEAD

CHAPTER VIII

THE TESTIMONY OF ARCHAEOLOGY[428]

'As he spoke, he paused before a great mound grown over with trees, and around it silver clear in the moonlight were immense stones piled, the remains of an original circle, and there was a dark, low, narrow entrance leading therein. "This was my palace. In days past many a one plucked here the purple flower of magic and the fruit of the tree of life...." And even as he spoke, a light began to glow and to pervade the cave, and to obliterate the stone walls and the antique hieroglyphics engraven thereon, and to melt the earthen floor into itself like a fiery sun suddenly uprisen within the world, and there was everywhere a wandering ecstasy of sound: light and sound were one; light had a voice, and the music hung glittering in the air.... "I am Aengus; men call me the Young. I am the sunlight in the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am the light at the end of every dream, the voice for ever calling to come away; I am desire beyond joy or tears. Come with me, come with me: I will make you immortal; for my palace opens into the Gardens of the Sun, and there are the fire-fountains which quench the heart's desire in rapture."'--A. E.

Inadequacy of Pygmy Theory--According to the theories concerning divine images and fetishes, G.o.ds, daemons, and ancestral spirits haunt megaliths--Megaliths are religious and funereal, as shown chiefly by _Cenn Cruaich_, Stonehenge, Guernsey menhirs, monuments in Brittany, by the circular fairy dance as an ancient initiatory sun-dance, by Breton earthworks, archaeological excavations generally, and by present-day worship at Indian dolmens--New Grange and Celtic Mysteries: evidence of ma.n.u.scripts; evidence of tradition--The Aengus Cult--New Grange compared with Great Pyramid: both have astronomical arrangement and same internal plan--Why they open to the sunrise--Initiations in both--Great Pyramid as model for Celtic tumuli--Gavrinis and New Grange as spirit-temples.

In this chapter we propose to deal with the popular belief among Celtic peoples that tumuli, dolmens, menhirs, and in fact most megalithic monuments, prehistoric or historic, are either the abodes or else the favourite haunts of various orders of fairies--of pixies in Cornwall, of _corrigans_ in Brittany, of little spirits like pygmies, of spirits like mortals in stature, of goblins, of demons, and of ghosts. Interesting attempts have been made to explain this folk-belief by means of the Pygmy Theory of Fairies; and this folk-belief appears to be almost the chief one upon which the theory depends.[429] As was pointed out in the Introduction (p. xxiii), possibly one of the many threads interwoven into the complex fabric of the Fairy-Faith round an original psychical pattern may have been bequeathed by a folk-memory of some unknown, perhaps pygmy, races, who may have inhabited underground places like those in certain tumuli. But even though the Pygmy Theory were altogether accepted by us the problem we are to consider would still be an unsolved one; for how explain by the Pygmy Theory why the folk-memory should always run in psychical channels, and not alone in Celtic lands, but throughout Europe, and even in Australia, America, Africa, and India.

Archaeological researches have now made it clear that many of the great tumuli covering dolmens or subterranean chambers, like that of Mont St.

Michel (at Carnac) for example, were religious and funereal in their purposes from the first; and therefore the Pygmy Theory is far from a satisfactory or adequate explanation. To us the inquiry is similar to an investigation into the reasons why ghosts should haunt a house, whereas the supporters of the Pygmy Theory forget the ghosts and tell all about the people who may or who may never have lived in the haunted house, and who built it. The megaliths, in the plain language of the folk-belief, are haunted by fairies, pixies, _corrigans_, ghosts, and various sorts of invisible beings. Like the Psychical Research Society, we believe there may be, or actually are, invisible beings like ghosts, and so propose to conduct our investigations from that point of view.[430]

MENHIRS, DOLMENS, CROMLECHS, AND TUMULI

To begin with, we shall concern ourselves with menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, and certain kinds of tumuli--such as are found at Carnac, round which _corrigans_ hold their nightly revels, and where ghost-like forms are sometimes seen in the moonlight, or even when there is no moon. M. Paul Sebillot in _Le Folk-lore de France_[431] has very adequately described the numerous folk-traditions and customs connected with all such monuments, and it remains for us to deal especially with the psychical aspects of these traditions and customs.

The learned Canon Mahe in his _Essai sur les antiquites du departement du Morbihan_ (p. 258), a work of rare merit, published at Vannes in 1825, holds that not only were the majestic Alignements of Carnac used as temples for religious rites, but that the stones themselves of which the Alignements are formed were venerated as the abodes of G.o.ds.[432]

And quoting Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Hermes, and others, he shows that the ancients believed that G.o.ds and daemons, attracted by sacrifice and worship to stone images and other inanimate objects, overshadowed them or even took up their abode in them. This position of Canon Mahe is confirmed by a comparative study of Celtic and non-Celtic traditions respecting the theory of what has been erroneously called 'idol-worship'. All evidence goes to show that idols so called, are simply images used as media for the manifestation of ghosts, spirits, and G.o.ds: the ancients, like contemporary primitive races, do not seem ever to have actually worshipped such images, but simply to have supplicated by prayer and sacrifice the indwelling deity.[433] The ancient Egyptians, for example, conceived the _Ka_ or personality as a thing separable from the person or body, and hence 'the statue of a human being represented and embodied a human _Ka_'. Likewise a statue of a G.o.d was the dwelling-place of a divine _Ka_, attracted to it by certain mystical formulae at the time of dedication.[434] Though there might be many statues of the same G.o.d no two were alike; each was animated by an independent 'double' which the rites of consecration had elicited from the G.o.d. These statues, being thus animated by a 'double', manifested their will--as Greek and Roman statues are reported to have done--either by speaking, or by rhythmic movements. The divine virtue residing in the images of the G.o.ds was thought to be a sort of fluid, a.n.a.logous to what we call the magnetic fluid, the aura, &c. It could be transmitted by the imposition of hands and by magic pa.s.ses, on the nape of the neck or along the dorsal spine of a patient;[435] and no doubt extraordinary curative properties were attributed to it.

Dr. Tylor has brought together examples from all parts of the globe of so-called fetishism, which is veneration paid to natural living objects such as trees, fish, animals, as well as to inanimate objects of almost every conceivable description, including stones, because of the spirit believed to be inherent or resident in the particular object; and he shows that idols originally were fetishes, which in time came to be shaped according to the form of the spirit or G.o.d supposed to possess them.[436] Mr. R. R. Marett, the originator of the pre-animistic theory, believes that originally fetishes were regarded as G.o.ds themselves, and that gradually they came to be regarded as the dwellings of G.o.ds.[437]

Certain well-defined Celtic traditions entirely fit in with this theory:--e. g. Canon Mahe writes, 'In accordance with this strange theory they (the Celts) could believe that rocks, set in motion by spirits which animated them, sometimes went to drink at rivers, as is said of the Peulvan at Noyal-Pontivy' (Morbihan);[438] and I have found a parallel belief at Rollright, Oxfordshire, England, where it is said of the King Stone, an ancient menhir, and, according to some folk-traditions, a human being transformed, that it goes down the hill on Christmas Eve to drink at the river. In the famous menhir or pillar-stone on Tara to this day, we have another curious example like the moving statues in Egypt and the Celtic stones which move; for in the _Book of Lismore_ the wonderful properties of the _Lia Fail_, the 'Stone of Destiny', are enumerated, and it is said that ever when Ireland's monarch stepped upon it the stone would cry out under him, but that if any other person stepped upon it, there was only silence.[439]

In the _Tripart.i.te Life of St. Patrick_ it is said that Ireland's chief idol was at Mag Slecht, and by name 'Cenn Cruaich, covered with gold and silver, and twelve other idols[440] [were] about it, covered with bra.s.s'. When Patrick tried to place his crosier on the top of Cenn Cruaich, the idol 'bowed westward to turn on its right side, for its face was from the South, to wit, Tara.... And the earth swallowed the twelve other images as far as their heads, and they are thus in sign of the miracle, and he cursed the demon, and banished him to h.e.l.l'.[441]

Sir John Rhys points out that _Cenn Cruaich_ means 'Head or Chief of the Mound', and that the story of its inclined position suggests to us an ancient and gradually falling menhir planted on the summit of a tumulus or hill surrounded by twelve lesser pillar stones, all thirteen--itself a sacred number--regarded as the abodes of G.o.ds or else as G.o.ds themselves; and these G.o.ds are referred to as the demon exorcized from the place by Patrick. The central menhir or Cenn Cruaich probably represents the Solar G.o.d, and the twelve menhirs surrounding this probably represent the twelve months of the year.[442] In the _Colloquy_ it is said that Patrick went his way 'to sow faith and piety, to banish devils and wizards out of Ireland; to raise up saints and righteous, to erect crosses, station-stones, and altars; also to overthrow idols and goblin images, and the whole art of sorcery'.[443]

Welsh tradition says that St. David split the capstone of the Maen Ketti Cromlech (dolmen)[444] in Gower, in order to prove to the people that there was nothing divine in it.[445]

According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Merlin constructed Stonehenge by magically transporting from Ireland the 'Choir of the Giants', apparently an ancient Irish circle of stones.[446] The rational explanation of this myth seems to be that the stones of Stonehenge, not belonging to the native rocks of South England, as geologists well know, were probably transported from some distant part of Britain and set up on Salisbury Plain, because of some magical properties supposed to have been possessed by them; and most likely 'the stones were regarded as divine or as seats of divine power'.[447] And further (thereby admitting the sacred purpose of the group), Sir John Rhys sees no objection to identifying Stonehenge with the famous temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, referred to in the journal of Pytheas' travels.[448]

According to Sir John Rhys's interpretation of this journal, 'the kings of the city containing the temple and the overseers of the latter were the Boreads, who took up the government in succession, according to their tribes. The citizens gave themselves up to music, harping and chanting in honour of the Sun-G.o.d, who was every nineteenth year wont himself to appear about the time of the vernal equinox, and to go on harping and dancing in the sky until the rising of the Pleiades.'[448]

Two menhirs, roughly hewn to simulate the human form, are yet to be found in Guernsey, Channel Islands, and formerly there was a similar menhir in the Breton village of Baud, Morbihan. One of the Guernsey figures was dug up in 1878 under the chancel of the Catel Church, and then placed in the churchyard, so that in this instance it seems highly probable that the Christian Church was built on the site of a sacred pagan shrine where a cult of stones once existed. The second stone figure (a female), now standing as a gate-post in the churchyard of St.

Martin's parish, seems also to mark a spot where a pre-Christian sanctuary was christianized. The country-people of the district, up to the middle of the last century, considered it lucky to make floral and even food offerings to this stone; but in 1860 the churchwarden to destroy its sanct.i.ty had it broken in two, though now it has been restored.[449] A like stone image was the famous 'Venus de Quinipilly', near Baud, Morbihan. At its base was a stone trough, wherein until late into the seventeenth century the sick were cured by contact with the image, and young men and maidens were wont to bathe to secure love and long life.[449]

Canon Mahe recorded in 1825 that the folk-belief located ghosts and spirits of the dead round megalithic monuments, more especially those known to have been used for tombs, because the Celts thought them haunted by ancestral spirits;[450] and what was true in 1825 is true now, for there is still in Brittany the a.s.sociation of ancestral spirits, _corrigans_, and other spirit-like tribes with tumuli, dolmens, menhirs, and cromlechs, and, as we have shown in chapter ii, a very living faith in the _Legende de la Mort_. In describing some curious dolmens and cromlechs (stone circles) on the summit of a mountain called the _Clech_ or _Mane er kloch_, 'Mountain of the bell,' at Mendon, Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt de Lorient, Morbihan, the same author gives it as his opinion, based on folk-traditions, that the cromlechs, like others in Brittany, were places in which the ancient Bretons practised necromancy and invoked the spirits of their ancestors, to whom they attributed great power. He then records a very valuable and interesting tradition concerning these monuments, which seems to indicate clearly a close relationship between the _Poulpiquets_ (another name for _corrigans_), thought of as spirits by the peasants, and the magical rites conducted in the circles to invoke spirits or daemons:--'The people call the stones which are found there the rocks of the _Hosegueannets_ or _Guerrionets_ (who are the same as the _Poulpiquets_); and they declare that at fixed seasons they are in the habit of coming there to celebrate their mysteries, which would prove that the race of these dwarfs is not yet extinct, as I believed.'[451]

When we hear how _corrigans_ dance the national Breton _ronde_ or _ridee_, at or in such cromlechs (themselves, like the dance, circular in form), which with other ancient stone monuments and earthworks are still believed to be the favourite haunts of these and kindred spirit-tribes, we seem to see, in the light of what Canon Mahe records, a psychical folk-memory about a goblin race who are now thought of as frequenting the very places where anciently such spirits are said to have been invoked by pagan priests for the purposes of divination.

Further, it appears that at these sacred centres, as the quoted tradition indicates, in prehistoric times Brythonic initiations took place, like those still flourishing among a few surviving American Indian tribes (who also dance the circular initiation dance), and among other primitive peoples, as we shall more adequately show in the chapter on St. Patrick's Purgatory. The Breton dance is, therefore, most likely the memorial of an ancient initiation dance, religious in character, and, probably, in honour of the sun, being circular in the same way that cromlechs dedicated to a sun-cult are circular. Stonehenge, the most highly developed type of the cromlech, was undoubtedly a sun-temple; and the dance anciently held in it, as described by Pytheas, in honour of the G.o.d Apollo, was no doubt circular like the Breton national dance, and, presumably, initiatory.[452] Through a natural anthropomorphic process, this circular initiation dance has come to be attributed to _corrigans_ in Brittany, to pixies in Cornwall and in England, and to fairies in these and other Celtic countries. The idea of fairy tribes in such a special relation may result from a folk-memory of the actual initiators who, as masked men, represented spirits; and, if this be a plausible view, then fairies may be compared to the initiators of contemporary initiation ceremonies among primitive peoples and, following Dr. Gilbert Murray's theory, to the Greek satyrs also.[453]

A circular dance like the Breton one still survives among the peasantry in the Channel Islands, at least in Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, being celebrated at weddings, but the revolution is now around a person instead of a stone, and to this person obeisance is paid. This tends to confirm our opinion that the dance is the survival of an ancient sun-dance, the central figure being typical of the sun deity himself, or Apollo; and if we design this dance thus ?, we have the astronomical emblem still used in all our calendars to represent the sun, one which in itself preserves a vast ma.s.s of forgotten lore. Formerly in Guernsey, the sites of princ.i.p.al dolmens (or cromlechs) and pillar-stones were visited in sacred procession, and round certain of them the whole body of pilgrims 'solemnly revolved three times from east to west'--as the sun moves.[454]

Again, according to Canon Mahe,[455] the bases and lower parts of the sides of four singular barrows at Coet-bihan blend in such a way as to form an enclosed court, and one of the barrows has been pierced as though for a pa.s.sage-way into this court. And he holds that it is more than probable that these ancient earthworks when first they were raised, and others like them in various Celtic lands, witnessed many mystic and religious rites and sacred tribal a.s.semblies. The supposition that the Coet-bihan earthworks were originally dedicated to pagan religious usages is very much strengthened by the fact that in very early times a Christian chapel was erected near them.[456] Mont St. Michel at Carnac is another example of a pagan tumulus dedicated to a Christian saint; and, as Sir John Rhys says, the Archangel Michael appears in more places than one in Celtic lands as the supplanter of the dark powers.[457] Not only were tumuli thus transferred by re-dedication from pagan G.o.ds to Christian saints, but dolmens and menhirs as well. Thus, for example, at Plouharnel-Carnac (Morbihan) there is a menhir surmounted by a Christian cross, just as at Dol (Ille-et-Vilaine) a wooden crucifix surmounts the great menhir, and at Carnac there is a dolmen likewise christianized by a stone cross-mounted on the table-stone. Again, M. J. Dechelette in his _Manuel d'Archeologie Prehistorique, Celtique et Gallo-Romaine_ (p. 380) describes a dolmen at Plouaret (Cotes-du-Nord) converted into a chapel dedicated to the Seven Saints, and another dolmen at Saint-Germain-de-Confolens (Charente) likewise transformed into a place of worship. Miss Edith F. Carey thus explains the dolmens in the Channel Islands:--'All our old traditions prove our dolmens to have been the general rendezvous of our insular sorcerers. In sixteenth and seventeenth century ma.n.u.scripts I have found these dolmens described as "altars of the G.o.ds of the sea".... One of our ancient dolmens retains its ancient name of De Hus, and a fifteenth-century "Perchage" of Fief de Leree tells us that a now destroyed dolmen on our western coast was dedicated to the same G.o.d, for Heus or Hesus was the War-G.o.d of ancient Gaul.'[458] The same writer describes excavations made at De Hus by Mr. Lukis, and that he found in a side chamber there two kneeling skeletons, one facing the north, the other the south. He considered them to have been of young persons probably interred alive as a funeral or propitiatory sacrifice to some tribal chief, or else to a presiding deity of the dolmen. Beside a tomb of the early bronze age at the bottom of a large tumulus near Mammarlof, in Skne, Dr. Oscar Montelius, the famous archaeologist of Sweden, discovered a circular stone altar on which reposed charcoal and the remains of a burnt animal offering, which undoubtedly was made to the dead.[459] Schliemann made a parallel discovery in an ancient tomb at Mycenae, Greece.[460] Curiously, in India to-day the Dravidian tribes, a pygmy-like aboriginal race, worship at the ancient dolmens in their forests and mountains, whether as at tombs and hence to ancestral spirits or to G.o.ds is not always clear; but the latter form of worship is probably more common, since Mr. Walhouse once observed one of their medicine-men performing a propitiatory service to the agricultural or earth deities. The medicine-man pa.s.sed the night in solitude sitting 'on the capstone of a dolmen with heels and hams drawn together and chin on knee'--evidently thus to await the advent of the Sun-G.o.d.[461]

All the above ill.u.s.trations, mostly Celtic ones, tend to prove that menhirs, certain tumuli and earthworks, cromlechs, and dolmens were originally connected with religious usages, chiefly with a cult of G.o.ds and fairy-like beings, and, though less commonly, with the dead. We pa.s.s now to a special consideration of chambered tumuli, to show that the same apparently holds true of them.

NEW GRANGE AND CELTIC MYSTERIES

Though, as Professor J. Loth and other eminent archaeologists hold, all tumuli containing chambers, and all _allees couvertes_ of dolmens, should be considered as designedly funereal in their purposes, nevertheless certain of the greater ones, like New Grange and Gavrinis may also properly be considered as places for rendering worship or even sacrifice to the dead, and, perhaps, as places for religious pilgrimages and sacred rites. This, too, seems to be the opinion of M. J. Dechelette in his work on Celtic and Gallo-Roman archaeology, as he traces from the earliest prehistoric times in Europe the evolution of the cult of the dead according to the evidence furnished by the ancient megalithic monuments.[462]

To begin with, let us take as a type for our study the most famous of all so-called Celtic tumuli, that of New Grange, on the River Boyne in Ireland.[463] In Irish literature New Grange is constantly a.s.sociated with the Tuatha De Danann as one of their palaces, as our fourth chapter points out. Throughout our second section generally, the testimony indicates that the essential nature of these fairy-folk is subjective or spiritual. These two facts at the outset are very important and fundamental, because we expect to show even more clearly than we have just done in the case of menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, and smaller tumuli, that the folk-belief under consideration is at bottom a psychical one, which has grown up out of a folk-memory of the time when, as has just been said, Celtic or pre-Celtic tumuli were used for interments, and probably certain ones among them as places for the celebration of pagan mysteries.

Mr. George Coffey, the eminent archaeologist in charge of the archaeological collections of the Royal Irish Academy, quotes from ancient Irish records in the _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ and other ma.n.u.scripts to show that the early traditions refer to the Boyne country as the burial-place of the kings of Tara, and that sometimes they seem to a.s.sociate _Brugh-na-Boyne_ with the tumuli on the Boyne,[464] but, no exact identification being possible, it cannot be said with certainty whether any one of the three great Boyne tumuli is meant. Even though it could be shown conclusively that some mighty hero or king had actually been entombed in New Grange, as is likely, in the earth behind the chamber, under the chamber's floor, or even within the chamber, still, as we have already pointed out, most of the great Irish heroes and kings were in popular belief literally G.o.ds incarnate, and, therefore (as commonly among all ancient peoples, civilized and non-civilized, who held the same doctrine), the tomb of such a divine personage came to be regarded as the actual dwelling of the once incarnate G.o.d, even though his bones were long turned to dust. The _Book of Ballymote_ strengthens this suggestion: in one of its ancient Irish poems, by MacNia, son of Oenna, preceded by this mystical dedication, 'Ye Poets of Bregia, of truth, not false,' the wonders of the Palace of the Boyne, the Hall of the great G.o.d Daghda, supreme king and oracle of the Tuatha de Danann, are thus celebrated:--

Behold the _Sidh_ before your eyes, It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion, Which was built by the firm Daghda; It was a wonder, a court, an admirable hill.[465]

It seems clear enough, from the old Irish ma.n.u.scripts referred to by Mr.

Coffey,[466] that the Boyne country near Tara was the sacred and religious centre of ancient Ireland, and was used by the Irish in very much the same way as Memphis and other places on the sacred Nile were used by the ancient Egyptians, both as a royal cemetery and as a place for the celebration of pagan mysteries. It is known that most of the Mysteries of Antiquity were psychic in their nature, having to do with the neophyte's entrance into Hades or the invisible world while out of the physical body, or else with direct communication with G.o.ds, spirits, and shades of the dead, while in the physical body; and such mysteries were performed in darkened chambers from which all light was excluded.

These chambers were often carved out of solid rock, as can be seen in the Rock Temples of India; and when mountain caves or natural caverns were not available, artificial ones were used (see chapter x).

The places, like Tara and Memphis, where the great men and kings of the nations of antiquity were entombed, being the most sacred, were very often, on that account, also the places dedicated to the most magnificent temples and to the Mysteries, or among less advanced nations to the worship of the dead. On every side of sacred Stonehenge, Salisbury Plain is dotted with the burial mounds of unknown heroes and chieftains of ancient Britain; while in modern times, even though the Mysteries are long forgotten, Westminster Abbey, at the centre of the planet's capital, has, in turn, become the hallowed Hall of the Mighty Dead for the vast British Empire. In view of all these facts, after a careful examination of the famous New Grange tumulus itself, and a study of the references to it in old Irish literature, we are firmly of the opinion that one cannot be far wrong in describing it as a spirit-temple in which were celebrated ancient Celtic or pre-Celtic Mysteries at the time when neophytes, including those of royal blood, were initiated; and as such it is directly related to a cult of the Tuatha De Danann or Fairy-Folk, of spirits, and of the dead. Nor are we alone in this opinion. Mr. Coffey himself, we believe, is inclined to favour it; and Mr. W. C. Borlase, author of _The Dolmens of Ireland_, who is quite committed to it, says that it is not necessary, as some do, to consider New Grange as an ancient abode of mortal men, for 'the spirits of the dead, the fairies, the _Sidhe_, might have had their _brugh_, or palace, as well'.[467] And he points out that in the old Irish ma.n.u.scripts we have proof that it was supposed to be thus used. This proof is found in the _Agallamh na Senorach_ or 'Colloquy with the Ancients' by St. Patrick, from the _Book of Lismore_, a fifteenth-century ma.n.u.script copied from older ma.n.u.scripts and now translated by Standish H. O'Grady:--The three sons of the King of Ireland, by name Ruidhe, Fiacha, and Eochaid, leaving their nurse's and guardian's house, went to _fert na ndruadh_, i. e. 'grave of the wizards', north-west of Tara, to ask of their father a country, a domain; but he refused their request, and then they formed a project to gain lands and riches by fasting on the _tuatha de Danann_ at the _brugh_ upon the Boyne: '"Lands therefore I will not bestow on you, but win lands for yourself." Thereupon they with the ready rising of one man rose and took their way to the green of the _brugh_ upon the Boyne where, none other being in their company, they sat them down. Ruidhe said: "What is your plan to-night?" His brothers rejoined: "Our project is to fast on the _tuatha de Danann_, aiming thus to win from them good fortune in the shape of a country, of a domain, of lands, and to have vast riches." Nor had they been long there when they marked a cheery-looking young man of a pacific demeanour that came towards them.

He salutes the king of Ireland's sons; they answer him after the same manner. "Young man, whence art thou? whence comest thou?" "Out of yonder _brugh_ chequered with the many lights hard by you here." "What name wearest thou?" "I am the Daghda's son Bodhb Derg; and to the _tuatha de Danann_ it was revealed that ye would come to fast here to-night, for lands and for great fortune."' Then with Bodhb Derg, the three sons of Ireland's king entered into the _brugh_, and the _tuatha de Danann_ went into council, and Midhir Yellow-mane son of the Daghda who presided said: 'Those yonder accommodate now with three wives, since from wives it is that either fortune or misfortune is derived.' And from their marriages with the three daughters of Midhir they derived all their wishes--territories and wealth in the greatest abundance. 'For three days with their nights they abode in the _sidh_.' 'Angus told them to carry away out of _fidh omna_, i. e. "Oakwood," three apple-trees: one in full bloom, another shedding the blossom, and another covered with ripe fruit. Then they repaired to the _dun_, where they abode for three times fifty years, and until those kings disappeared; for in virtue of marriage alliance they returned again to the _tuatha de Danann_, and from that time forth have remained there.'[468]