The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 66

[539] Cf. Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 854.

[540] Cf. Lefevre, _Rev. Trad. Pop._, ix. 195-209.

[541] J. G. Campbell collected in Scotland two versions of a parallel episode, but concerning Loch Lurgan. In both versions the flight begins by Fionn's foster-mother carrying Fionn, and in both, when she is tired, Fionn carries her and runs so fast that when the loch is reached only her shanks are left. These he throws out on the loch, and hence its name Loch Lurgan, 'Lake of the Shanks.' (_The Fians_, pp. 18-19).

[542] During the seventeenth century, the English government, acting through its Dublin representatives, ordered this original Cave or Purgatory to be demolished; and with the temporary suppression of the ceremonies which resulted and the consequent abandonment of the island, the Cave, which may have been filled up, has been lost.

[543] Thomas Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_ (London, 1844), pp. 67-8.

[544] Wright, op. cit., p. 69.

[545] In the face of all the legends told of pilgrims who have been in Patrick's Purgatory, it seems that either through religious frenzy like that produced in Protestant revivals, or else through some strange influence due to the cave itself after the preliminary disciplines, some of the pilgrims have had most unusual psychic experiences. Those who have experienced fasting and a rigorous life for a prescribed period affirm that there results a changed condition, physical, mental, and spiritual, so that it is very probable that the Christian pilgrims to the Purgatory, like the pagan pilgrims who 'fasted on' the Tuatha De Danann in New Grange, were in good condition to receive impressions of a psychical nature such as the Society for Psychical Research is beginning to believe are by no means rare to people susceptible to them. Neophytes seeking initiation among the ancients had to undergo even more rigorous preparations than these; for they were expected while entranced to leave their physical bodies and in reality enter the purgatorial state, as we shall presently have occasion to point out.

[546] Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_, pp. 62 ff.

[547] L. R. Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_ (Oxford, 1907), iii.

126-98, &c.

[548] Cf. Athenaeus, 614 A; Aristoph., _Nubes_, 508; and Harper's _Dict.

Cla.s.s. Lit. and Antiq._, p. 1615.

[549] Cf. O. Seyffert, _Dict. Cla.s.s. Antiquities_, trans. (London, 1895), _Mithras_.

[550] Bra.s.seur, _Mexique_, iii. 20, &c.; Tylor, _P. C._,{4} ii. 45.

[551] Cf. Hutton Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_ (New York, 1908), p. 38, and _pa.s.sim_.

[552] In the ancient Greek world the annual celebration of the Mysteries drew great concourses of people from all regions round the Mediterranean; to the modern Breton world the chief religious Pardons are annual events of such supreme importance that, after preparing plenty of food for the pilgrimage, the whole family of a pious peasant of Lower Brittany will desert farm and work dressed in their beautiful and best costumes for one of these Pardons, the most picturesque, the most inspiring, and the highest folk-festivals still preserved by the Roman Church; while to Roman Catholics in all countries a pilgrimage to Lough Derg is the sacred event of a lifetime.

In the Breton Pardons, as in the purgatorial rites, we seem to see the survivals of very ancient Celtic Mysteries strikingly like the Mysteries of Eleusis. The greatest of the Pardons, the Pardon of St. Anne d'Auray, will serve as a basis for comparison; and while in some respects it has had a recent and definitely historical origin (or revival), this origin seems on the evidence of archaeology to have been a restoration, an expansion, and chiefly a Christianization of prehistoric rites then already partly fallen into decay. Such rites remained latent in the folk-memory, and were originally celebrated in honour of the sacred fountain, and probably also of Isis and the child, whose terra-cotta image was ploughed up in a neighbouring field by the famous peasant Nicolas, and naturally regarded by him and all who saw it as of St. Anne and the Holy Child. Thus, in the Pardon of St. Anne d'Auray, which extends over three days, there is a torch-light procession at night under ecclesiastical sanction; as in the Ceres Mysteries, wherein the neophytes with torches kindled sought all night long for Proserpine.

There are purification rites, not especially under ecclesiastical sanction, at the holy fountain now dedicated to St. Anne, like the purification rites of the Eleusinian worshippers at the sea-sh.o.r.e and their visit to a holy well. There are mystery plays, recently inst.i.tuted, as in Greek initiation ceremonies; sacred processions, led by priests, bearing the image of St. Anne and other images, comparable to Greek sacred processions in which the G.o.d Iacchos was borne on the way to Eleusis. The all-night services in the dimly-lighted church of St. Anne, with the special ma.s.ses in honour of the Christian saints and for the dead, are parallel to the midnight ceremonies of the Greeks in their caves of initiation and to the libations to the G.o.ds and to the spirits of the departed at Greek initiations. Finally, in the Greek mysteries there seems to have been some sort of expository sermon or exhortation to the a.s.sembled neophytes quite comparable to the special appeal made to the faithful Catholics a.s.sembled in the magnificent church of St. Anne d'Auray by the bishops and high ecclesiastics of Brittany. (For these Cla.s.sical parallels compare Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, iii, _pa.s.sim_.)

[553] Cf. Rhys, _Hib. Lect._, p. 411, &c.

[554] O'Curry, _Lectures_, pp. 586-7.

[555] There is this very significant legend on record about the Cave of Cruachan:--'Magh Mucrime, now, pigs of magic came out of the cave of Cruachain, and that is Ireland's gate of h.e.l.l.' And 'Out of it, also, came the Red Birds that withered up everything in Erin that their breath would touch, till the Ulstermen slew them with their slings.' (_B. of Leinster_, p. 288a; Stokes's trans., in _Rev. Celt._, xiii. 449; cf.

_Silva Gadelica_, ii. 353.)

[556] Forbes, _Lives of S. Ninian and S. Kentigern_ (Edinburgh, 1874), pp. 285, 345.

[557] Cf. Wright, _St. Patrick's Purgatory_, pp. 81-2.

[558] Cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 24; also Bergier, _Dict. de Theol._, v. 405.

[559] Cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 32. But there is some disagreement in this matter of dates: Petrus Damia.n.u.s, _Vita S.

Odilonis_, in the Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, January 1, records a legend of how the Abbot Odilon decreed that November 2, the day after All Saints' Day, should be set apart for services for the departed (cf.

Tylor, _Prim. Cult._,{4} ii. 37 n.).

[560] Cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 1 n.

[561] Part II, sec. 4; c. 4, par. 8; cf. Bergier, _Dict. de Theol._, iv.

322.

[562] P. 11{a}, l. 19; in Stokes's _Tripart.i.te Life_, Intro., p. 194.

[563] _Enchiridion_, chap. cx; _Testament of St. Ephrem_ (ed. Vatican), ii. 230, 236; Euseb., _de Vita Constant._, liv. iv, c. lx. 556, c. lxx.

562; cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 30-1.

[564] St. Ambroise, _de Obitu Theodosii_, ii. 1197; cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 31 n.

[565] Cf. G.o.descard, _Vies des Saints_, xi. 31-2.

[566] I am indebted to Mr. William McDougall, M.A., Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy in the University of Oxford, for having read through and criticized the first draft of this section; and while he is in no way responsible for the views set forth herein, nevertheless his suggestions for the improvement of their scientific framework have been of very great value. I must also express my obligation to him for having suggested through his Oxford lectures a good share of the important material interwoven into chapter xii touching the vitalistic view of evolution.

[567] Cf. C. Du Prel, _Philosophy of Mysticism_ (London, 1889), i. 7, 11.

[568] T. Ribot, _The Diseases of Personality_; cf. J. L. Nevius, _Demon Possession_ (London, 1897), pp. 234-5.

[569] _Proc. S. P. R._ (London), v. 167; cf. A. Lang, _Making of Religion_, p. 64.

[570] W. James, _Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'_, in _American Magazine_ (October 1909).

[571] A. Lang, _c.o.c.k Lane and Common Sense_ (London, 1896), p. 35.

[572] According to Professor Freud, the well-known neurologist of Vienna, external stimuli are not admitted to the dream-consciousness in the same manner that they would be admitted to the waking-consciousness, but they are disguised and altered in particular ways (cf. S. Freud, _Die Traumdeutung_, 2nd ed., Vienna, 1909; and S. Ferenczi, _The Psychological a.n.a.lysis of Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 318, &c.).

[573] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 135.

[574] G. F. Stout, _Mr. F. W. Myers on 'Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death'_, in _Hibbert Journal_, ii, No. 1 (London, October 1903), p. 56.

[575] F. W. H. Myers, _Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death_ (London, 1903), i. 131.

[576] R. L. Stevenson, _Across the Plains_, chapter on Dreams.

[577] Stout, op. cit., p. 54.

[578] Freud, op. cit.; Ferenczi, op. cit.; E. Jones, _Freud's Theory of Dreams_, in _Amer. Journ. Psych._, April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 283-308.

[579] Freud, _The Origin and Development of Psychoa.n.a.lysis_, in _Amer.

Journ. Psych._, April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 203.

[580] Du Prel, op. cit., i. 33.

[581] Myers, op. cit., i. 134.

[582] Fechner, _Zentralblatt fur Anthropologie_, p. 774; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 92.