The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 23

_Theories of Modern Anthropologists_

We may define magic, as understood by ancients and moderns, civilized or non-civilized, apart from conjuring, which is mere jugglery and deception of the senses, as the art of controlling for particular ends various kinds of invisible forces, often, and, as we hold, generally thought of as intelligent spirits. This is somewhat opposed to Mr.

Marett's point of view, which emphasizes 'pre-animistic influences', i. e. 'powers to which the animistic form is very vaguely attributed if at all.' And, in dealing with the anthropological aspects of spell-casting in magical operations, Mr. Marett conceives such a magical act to be in relation to the magician 'generically, a projection of imperative will, and specifically one that moves on a supernormal plane', and the victim's position towards this invisible projected force to be 'a position compatible with _rapport_'.[166] He also thinks it probable that the essence of the magician's supernormal power lies in what Melanesians call _mana_.[166] In our opinion _mana_ may be equated with what William James, writing of his att.i.tude toward psychical phenomena, called a universally diffused 'soul-stuff' leaking through, so to speak, and expressing itself in the human individual.[167] On this view, Mr. Marett's theory would amount to saying that magicians are able to produce magical effects because they are able to control this 'soul-stuff'; and our evidence would regard all spirits and fairies as portions of such universally diffused _mana_, 'soul-stuff', or, as Fechner might call it, the 'Soul of the World'. Moreover, in essence, such an idea of magic coincides, when carefully examined, with what ancient thinkers like Plato, Iamblichus, the Neo-Platonists generally, and mediaeval magicians like Paracelsus and Eliphas Levi, called magic; and agrees with ancient Celtic magic--judging from what Roman historians have recorded concerning it, and from Celtic ma.n.u.scripts themselves.

Other modern anthropologists have set up far less satisfactory definitions of magic. According to Dr. Frazer, for example, magic a.s.sumes, as natural science does, that 'one event follows another necessarily and invariably without the intervention of any spiritual or personal agency'.[168] Such a theory is not supported by the facts of anthropology; and does not even apply to those specialized and often superficial kinds of magic cla.s.sed under it by Dr. Frazer as 'sympathetic and imitative magic', i. e. that through which like produces like, or part produces whole. To our mind, sympathetic and imitative magic (to leave out of account many fallacious and irrational ritualistic practices, which Dr. Frazer includes under these loose terms), _when genuine_, in their varied aspects are directly dependent upon hypnotic states, upon telepathy, mind-reading, mental suggestion, a.s.sociation of ideas, and similar processes; in short, are due to the operation of mind on mind and will on will, and, moreover, are recognized by primitive races to have this fundamental character. Or, according to the Fairy-Faith, they are caused by a fairy or disembodied spirit acting upon an embodied one, a man or woman; and not, as Dr.

Frazer holds, through 'mistaken applications of one or other of two great fundamental laws of thought, namely, the a.s.sociation of ideas by similarity and the a.s.sociation of ideas by contiguity in s.p.a.ce or time'.[169]

The mechanical causation theory of magic, as thus set forth in _The Golden Bough_, does not imply _mana_ or will-power, as Mr. Marett's more adequate theory does in part: Dr. Frazer wishes us to regard animistic religious practices as distinct from magic.[170] Nevertheless, in direct opposition to Dr. Frazer's view, the weight of the evidence from the past and from the present, which we are about to offer, is decidedly favourable to our regarding magic and religion as complementary to one another and, for all ordinary purposes of the anthropologist, as in principle the same. The testimony touching magicians in all ages, Celtic magic and witchcraft as well, besides that resulting from modern psychical research, tends to establish an almost exclusively animistic hypothesis to account for fairy magical phenomena and like phenomena among human beings; and with these phenomena we are solely concerned.

_Among the Ancients_[171]

Among the more cultured Greeks and Romans--and the same can be said of most great nations of antiquity--it was an unquestioned belief that innumerable G.o.ds, placed in hierarchies, form part of an unbroken spiritual chain at the lowest end of which stands man, and at the highest the incomprehensible Supreme Deity. These G.o.ds, having their abodes throughout the Universe, act as the agents of the Unknown G.o.d, directing the operation of His cosmic laws and animating every star and planet. Inferior to these G.o.ds, and to man also, the ancients believed there to be innumerable hosts of invisible beings, called by them daemons, who, acting as the servants of the G.o.ds, control, and thus in a secondary sense create, all the minor phenomena of inanimate and animate nature, such as tempests, atmospheric disturbances generally, the failure of crops or their abundance, maladies and their cure, good and evil pa.s.sions in men, wars and peace, and all the blessings and curses which affect the purely human life.

Man, being of the G.o.d-race and thus superior to these lower, servile ent.i.ties, could, like the G.o.ds, control them if adept in the magical sciences; for ancient Magic, about which so much has been written and about which so little has been understood by most people in ancient, mediaeval, and modern times, is according to the wisest ancients nothing more than the controlling of daemons, shades, and all sorts of secondary spirits or elementals by men specially trained for that purpose.

Sufficient records are extant to make it evident that the fundamental training of Egyptian, Indian, a.s.syrian, Greek, Roman, and Druid priests was in the magical or occult sciences. Pliny, in his _Natural History_, says:--'And to-day Britain practises the art [of magic] with religious awe and with so many ceremonies that it might seem to have made the art known to the Persians.'[172] Herein, then, is direct evidence that the Celtic Fairy-Faith, considered in its true psychic nature, has been immediately shaped by the ancient Celtic religion; and, as our witness from the Isle of Skye so clearly set forth, that it originated among a cultured cla.s.s of the Celts more than among the peasants. And, in accordance with this evidence, Professor Georges Dottin, who has made a special study of the historical records concerning Druidism, writes:--'The Druids of Ireland appear to us above all as magicians and prophets. They foretell the future, they interpret the secret will of the _fees_ (fairies), they cast lots.'[173] Thus, in spite of the popular and Christian reshaping which the belief in fairies has had to endure, its origin is easily enough discerned even in its modern form, covered over though this is with accretions foreign to its primal character.

Magic was the supreme science because it raised its adepts out of the ordinary levels of humanity to a close relations.h.i.+p with the G.o.ds and creative powers. Nor was it a science to be had for the asking, 'for many were the wand-bearers and few the chosen.' Roman writers tell us that neophytes for the druidic priesthood often spent twenty years in severe study and training before being deemed fit to be called Druids.

We need not, however, in this study enter into an exposition of the ordeals and trials of candidates seeking magical training, or else initiation into the Mysteries. There were always two schools to which they could apply, directly opposed in their government and policy--the school of white magic and the school of black magic; the former being a school in which magical powers were used in religious rites and always for good ends, the latter a school in which all magical powers were used for wholly selfish and evil ends. In both schools the preliminary training was the same; that is to say, the first thing taught to the neophyte was self-control. When he proved himself absolutely his own master, when his teachers were certain that he could not be dominated by another will or by any outside or psychic influence, then for the first time he was permitted to exercise his own iron will in controlling daemons, ghosts, and all the elemental hosts of the air--either as a white magician or as a black magician.[174]

The magical sciences taught (an idea which still holds its ground, as one can discover in modern India) that by formulas of invocation, by chants, by magic sounds, by music, these invisible beings can be made to obey the will of the magician even as they obey the will of the G.o.ds.

The calling up of the dead and talking with them is called necromancy; the foretelling through spiritual agency and otherwise of coming events or things hidden, like the outcome of a battle, is called divination; the employment of charms against children so as to prevent their growing is known as fascination; to cause any ill fortune or death to fall upon another person by magic is sorcery; to excite the s.e.xual pa.s.sions of man or woman, magical mixtures called philtres are used. Almost all these definitions apply to the practices of black magic. But the great schools known as the Mysteries were of white magic, in so far as they practised the art; and such men as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aeschylus, who are supposed to have been initiated into them, always held them in the highest reverence, though prohibited from directly communicating anything of their esoteric teachings concerning the origin and destiny of man, the nature of the G.o.ds, and the const.i.tution of the universe and its laws.

In Plato's _Banquet_ the power or function of the daemonic element in nature is explained. Socrates asks of the prophetess Diotima what is the power of the daemonic element (personified as Love for the purposes of the argument), and she replies:--'He interprets between G.o.ds and men, conveying and taking across to the G.o.ds the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the G.o.ds; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophets and priests, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all prophecy and incantation find their way. For G.o.d mingles not with man; but through the daemonic element (or Love) all the intercourse and converse of G.o.d with man, whether awake or asleep, is carried on. The wisdom which understands this is spiritual.'[175]

_Among the Ancient Celts_

If we turn now directly to Celtic magic in ancient times, we discover that the testimony of Pliny is curiously confirmed by Celtic ma.n.u.scripts, chiefly Irish ones, and that then, as now, witchcraft and fairy powers over men and women are indistinguishable in their general character. Thus, in the _Echtra Condla_, 'the Adventures of Connla,' the fairy woman says of Druidism and magic:--'Druidism is not loved, little has it progressed to honour on the Great Strand. When his law shall come it will scatter the charms of Druids _from journeying on the lips of black, lying demons_'--so characterized by the Christian transcribers.[176] In _How Fionn Found his Missing Men_, an ancient tale preserved by oral tradition until recorded by Campbell, it is said that 'Fionn then went out with Bran (his fairy dog). There were millions of people (apparitions) out before him, called up by some sleight of hand'.[177] In the _Leabhar na h-Uidre_, or 'Book of the Dun Cow' (p. 43 a), compiled from older ma.n.u.scripts about A. D. 1100, there is a clear example of Irish fetis.h.i.+sm based on belief in the power of demons:--'...

for their swords used to turn against them (the Ulstermen) when they made a false trophy. Reasonable [was] this; for demons used to speak to them from their arms, so that hence their arms were safeguards.'[178]

Shape-s.h.i.+fting quite after the fairy fas.h.i.+on is very frequently met with in old Celtic literature. Thus, in the Rennes _Dinnshenchas_ there is this pa.s.sage showing that spirits or fairies were regarded as necessary for the employment of magic:--'Folks were envious of them (Faifne the poet and his sister Aige): so they loosed elves at them who transformed Aige into a fawn' (the form a.s.sumed by the fairy mother of Oisin, see p. 299 n.), 'and sent her on a circuit all round Ireland, and the fians of Meilge son of Cobthach, king of Ireland, killed her.'[179]

A fact which ought to be noted in this connexion is that kings or great heroes, rather than ordinary men and women, are very commonly described as being able to s.h.i.+ft their own shape, or that of other people; e. g.

'Mongan took on himself the shape of Tibraide, and gave Mac an Daimh the shape of the cleric, with a large tonsure on his head.'[180] And when this fact is coupled with another, namely the ancient belief that such kings and great heroes were incarnations and reincarnations of the Tuatha De Danann, who form the supreme fairy hierarchy, we realize that, having such an origin, they were simply exercising in human bodies powers which their divine race exercise over men from the fairy world (see our chapter iv).

In Brythonic literature and mythology, magic and witchcraft with the same animistic character play as great or even a greater role than in Gaelic literature and mythology. This is especially true with respect to the Arthurian Legend, and to the _Mabinogion_, some of which tales are regarded by scholars as versions of Irish ones. Sir John Rhys and Professor J. Loth, who have been the chief translators of the _Mabinogion_, consider their chief literary machinery to be magic (see our chapter v).

So far it ought to be clear that Celtic magic contains much animism in its composition, and that these few ill.u.s.trations of it, selected from numerous ill.u.s.trations in the ancient Fairy-Faith, confirm Pliny's independent testimony that in his age the Britons seemed capable of instructing even the Persians themselves in the magical arts.

_European and American Witchcraft_

In a general way, the history of witchcraft in Europe and in the American colonies is supplementary to what has already been said, seeing that it is an offshoot of mediaeval magic, which in turn is an offshoot of ancient magic. Witchcraft in the West, in probably a majority of cases, is a mere fabric of absurd superst.i.tions and practices--as it is shown to be by the evidence brought out in so many of the horrible legal and ecclesiastical processes conducted against helpless and eccentric old people, and other men and women, including the young, often for the sake of private revenge, and generally on no better foundation than hearsay and false accusations. In the remaining instances it undoubtedly arose, as ancient witchcraft (black magic) seems to have arisen, through the infiltration of occult knowledge into uneducated and often criminally inclined minds, so that what had formerly been secretly guarded among the learned, and generally used for legitimate ends, degenerated in the hands of the unfit into black magic. In our own age, a parallel development, which adequately ill.u.s.trates our subject of inquiry, has taken place in the United States: fragments of magical lore bequeathed by Mesmer and his immediate predecessors, the alchemists, were practically and honestly applied to the practice of magnetic healing and healing through mental suggestion by a small group of pract.i.tioners in Ma.s.sachusetts, and then with much ingenuity and real genius were applied by Mary Baker Eddy to the interpretation of miraculous healing by Jesus Christ. Hence arose a new religion called Christian Science. But this religious movement did not stop at mental healing: according to published reports, during the years 1908-9 the leader of the New York First Church of Christ, Scientist, was deposed, and, with certain of her close a.s.sociates, was charged with having projected daily against the late Mrs. Eddy's adjutant a current of 'malicious animal magnetism' from New York to Boston, in order to bring about his death. The process is said to have been for the deposed leader and her friends to sit together in a darkened room with their eyes closed. 'Then one of them would say: "You all know Mr. ----. You all know that his place is in the darkness whence he came. If his place is six feet under ground, that is where he should be." Then all present would concentrate their minds on the one thought--Mr. ---- and six feet under ground.' And this practice is supposed to have been kept up for days. Mrs. ----, who gives this testimony, is a friend of the victim, and she a.s.serts that these evil thought-waves slowly but surely began his effacement, and that had the black magicians down in New York not been discovered in time, Mr. ---- could not have withstood the forces.[181] Perhaps so enlightened a country as the United States may in time see history repeat itself, and add a new chapter to witchcraft; for the true witches were not the kind who are popularly supposed to ride on broomsticks and to keep a house full of black cats, and the sooner this is recognized the better.

According to this aspect of Christian Science, 'malicious animal magnetism' (or black magic), an embodied spirit, i. e. a man or woman, possesses and can employ the same magical powers as a disembodied spirit--or, as the Celts would say, the same magical powers as a fairy--casting spells, and producing disease and death in the victim.

And this view coincides with ordinary witchcraft theories; for witches have been variously defined as embodied spirits who have ability to act in conjunction with disembodied spirits through the employment of various occult forces, e. g. forces comparable to Mesmer's odic forces, to the Melanesian _mana_, or to the 'soul-stuff' postulated by William James, or, as Celts think, to forces focused in fairies themselves. So, also, according to Mr. Marett's view, there is a state of _rapport_ between the victim and the magician or witch; and where such a state of _rapport_ exists there is some _mana_-like force pa.s.sing between the two poles of the magical circuit, whether it be only unconscious mental or electrical force emanating from the operator, or an extraneous force brought under control and concentrated in some such conscious unit as we designate by the term 'spirit', 'devil', or 'fairy'.

In conformity with this psychical or animistic view of witchcraft, in the Capital Code of Connecticut (A. D. 1642) a witch is defined as one who 'hath or consorteth with a familiar spirit'.[182] European codes, as ill.u.s.trated by the sixth chapter of Lord c.o.ke's _Third Inst.i.tute_, have parallels to this definition:--'A witch is a person which hath conference with the devil; to consult with him to do some act.'[182] And upon these theories, not upon the broomstick and black-cat conception, were based the trials for witchcraft during the seventeenth century.

The Bible, then so frequently the last court of appeal in such matters, was found to sustain such theories about witches in the cla.s.sical example of the Witch of Endor and Saul; and the idea of witchcraft in Europe and America came to be based--as it probably always had been in pagan times--on the theory that living persons could control or be controlled by disembodied spirits for evil ends. Hence all black magicians, and what are now known as 'spirit mediums', were made liable by law to the death penalty.[183]

In mediaeval Europe the great difficulty always was, as is shown in the trials of Jeanne d'Arc, to decide whether the invisible agent in magical processes, such as was imputed to the accused, was an angel or a demon.

If an angel, then the accused was a saint, and might become a candidate for canonization; but if a demon, the accused was a witch, and liable to a death-sentence. The wisest old doctors of the University of Paris, who sat in judgement (or were consulted) in one of Jeanne's trials, could not fully decide this knotty problem, nor, apparently, the learned churchmen who also tried her; but evidently they all agreed that it was better to waive the question. And, finally, an innocent peasant girl who had heard Divine Voices, and who had thereby miraculously saved her king and her country, was burned at the stake, under the joint direction of English civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and, if not technically, at least practically, with the full approval of the corresponding French authorities, at Rouen, France, May 30, A. D. 1431.[184] In April, A. D.

1909, almost five centuries afterwards, it has been decided with tardy justice that Jeanne's Voices were those of angels and not of demons, and she has been made a saint.

How the case of Jeanne d'Arc bears directly upon the Fairy-Faith is self-evident: One of the first questions asked by Jeanne's inquisitors was 'if she had any knowledge of those who went to the Sabbath with the fairies? or if she had not a.s.sisted at the a.s.semblies held at the fountain of the fairies, near Domremy, around which dance malignant spirits?' And another question exactly as recorded was this:--'_Interroguee s'elle croiet point au devant de aujourduy, que les fees feussent maulvais esperis: respond qu'elle n'en scavoit rien._'[185]

_Conclusion_

Finally, we may say that what medicine-men are to American Indians, to Polynesians, Australians, Africans, Eskimos, and many other contemporary races, or what the mightier magicians of modern India are to their people, the 'fairy-doctors' and 'charmers' of Ireland, Scotland, and Man are to the Gaels, and the '_Dynion Hysbys_' or 'Wise Men' of Wales, the witches of Cornwall, and the seers, sorceresses, and exorcists of Brittany are to the Brythons. These Gaelic and Brythonic magicians and witches, and 'fairy mediums', almost invariably claim to derive their power from their ability to see and to communicate with fairies, spirits, and the dead; and they generally say that they are enabled through such spiritual agencies to reveal the past, to foretell the future, to locate lost property, to cast spells upon human beings and upon animals, to remove such spells, to cure fairy strokes and changelings, to perform exorcisms, and to bring people back from Fairyland.

We arrive at the following conclusion:--If, as eminent psychical researchers now postulate (and as many of them believe), there are active and intelligent disembodied beings able to act psychically upon embodied men in much the same way that embodied men are known ordinarily to act psychically upon one another, then there is every logical and common-sense reason for extending this psychical hypothesis so as to include the ancient, mediaeval, and modern theory of magic and witchcraft, namely, that what embodied men and women can do in magical ways, as for example in hypnotism, disembodied men and women can do.

Further, if fairies, in accord with reliable testimony from educated and critical percipients, hypothetically exist (whatever their nature may be), they may be possessed of magical powers of the same sort, and so can cast spells upon or possess living human beings as Celts believe and a.s.sert. And this hypothesis coincides in most essentials with the one we used as a basis for this discussion, that, in accordance with the Melanesian doctrine of control of ghosts and spirits with their inherent _mana_, magical acts are possible.[186] This in turn applied to the Celts amounts to a hypothetical confirmation of the ancient druidical doctrine that through control of fairies or demons (daemons) Druids or magicians could control the weather and natural phenomena connected with vegetable and animal processes, could cast spells, could divine the future, could execute all magical acts.

EXORCISMS

According to the testimony of anthropology, exorcism as a religious practice has always flourished wherever animistic beliefs have furnished it with the necessary environment; and not only has exorcism been a fundamental part of religious practices in past ages, but it is so at the present day. Among Christians, Celtic and non-Celtic, among followers of all the great historical religions, and especially among East Indians, Chinese, American Red Men, Polynesians, and most Africans, the expelling of demons from men and women, from animals, from inanimate objects, and from places, is sanctioned by well-established rituals.

Exorcism as applied to the human race is thus defined in the _Dictionnaire de Theologie_ (Roman Catholic) by L'Abbe Bergier:--'_Exorcism_--conjuration, prayer to G.o.d, and command given to the demon to depart from the body of persons possessed.' The same authority thus logically defends its practice by the Church:--'Far from condemning the opinion of the Jews, who attributed to the demon certain maladies, that divine Master confirmed it.'[187] And whenever exorcism of this character has been or is now generally practised, the professional exorcist appears as a personage just as necessary to society as the modern doctor, since nearly all diseases were and to some extent are still, both among Christians and non-Christians, very often thought to be the result of demon-possession.

When we come to the dawn of the Christian period in Ireland and in Scotland, we see Patrick and Columba, the first and greatest of the Gaelic missionaries, very extensively practising exorcism; and there is every reason to believe (though the data available on this point are somewhat unsatisfactory) that their wide practice of exorcism was quite as much a Christian adaptation of pre-Christian Celtic exorcism, such as the Druids practised, as it was a continuation of New Testament tradition. We may now present certain of the data which tend to verify this supposition, and by means of them we shall be led to realize how fundamentally such an animistic practice as exorcism must have shaped the Fairy-Faith of the Celts, both before and after the coming of Christianity.

'Once upon a time,' so the tale runs about Patrick, 'his foster-mother went to milk the cow. He also went with her to drink a draught of new milk. Then the cow goes mad in the byre and killed five other kine: a demon, namely, entered her. There was great sadness on his foster-mother, and she told him to bring the kine back to life. Then he brought the kine to life, so that they were whole, and he cured the mad one. So G.o.d's name and Patrick's were magnified thereby.'[188] On another occasion, when demons came to Ireland in the form of black birds, quite after the manner of the Irish belief that fairies a.s.sume the form of crows (see pp. 302-5), the Celtic ire of Patrick was so aroused in trying to exorcize them out of the country that he threw his bell at them with such violence that it was cracked, and then he wept:--'Now at the end of those forty days and forty nights' [of Patrick's long fast on the summit of Cruachan Aigle or Croagh Patrick, Ireland's Holy Mountain] 'the mountain was filled with black birds, so that he knew not heaven or earth. He sang maledictive psalms at them.

They left him not because of this. Then his anger grew against them. He strikes his bell at them, so that the men of Ireland heard its voice, and he flung it at them, so that a gap broke out of it, and that [bell]

is "Brigit's Gapling". Then Patrick weeps till his face and his chasuble in front of him were wet. No demon came to the land of Erin after that till the end of seven years and seven months and seven days and seven nights. Then the angel went to console Patrick and cleansed the chasuble, and brought white birds round the Rick, and they used to sing sweet melodies for him.'[188] In Ad.a.m.nan's _Life of S. Columba_ it is said that 'according to custom', which in all probability was established in pagan times by the Druids and then maintained by their Christian descendants, it was usual to exorcize even a milk vessel before milking, and the milk in it afterwards.[189] Thus Ad.a.m.nan tells us that one day a youth, Columban by name, when he had finished milking, went to the door of St. Columba's cell carrying the pail full of new milk that, _according to custom_, the saint might exorcize it. When the holy man had made the sign of the cross in the air, the air 'was greatly agitated, and the bar of the lid, driven through its two holes, was shot away to some distance; the lid fell to the ground, and most of the milk was spilled on the soil.' Then the saint chided the youth, saying:--'Thou hast done carelessly in thy work to-day; for thou hast not cast out the demon that was lurking in the bottom of the empty pail, by tracing on it, before pouring in the milk, the sign of the Lord's cross; and now not enduring, thou seest, the virtue of the sign, he has quickly fled away in terror, while at the same time the whole of the vessel has been violently shaken, and the milk spilled. Bring then the pail nearer to me, that I may bless it.' When the half-empty pail was blessed, in the same moment it was refilled with milk. At another time, the saint, to destroy the practice of sorcery, commanded Silnan, a peasant sorcerer, to draw a vessel full of milk from a bull; and by his diabolical art Silnan drew the milk. Then Columba took it and said:--'Now it shall be proved that this, which is supposed to be true milk, is not so, but is blood deprived of its colour by the fraud of demons to deceive men; and straightway the milky colour was turned into its own proper quality, that is, into blood.' And it is added that 'The bull also, which for the s.p.a.ce of one hour was at death's door, wasting and worn by a horrible emaciation, in being sprinkled with water blessed by the Saint, was cured with wonderful rapidity.'[190]

And to-day, as in the times of Patrick and Columba, exorcism is practised in Ireland and in the Western Hebrides of Scotland by the clergy of the Roman Church against fairies, demons, or evil spirits, when a person is possessed by them--that is to say, 'fairy-struck,' or when they have entered into some house or place; and on the Scotch mainland individual Protestants have been known to practise it. A haunted house at Balechan, Perths.h.i.+re, in which certain members of the Psychical Research Society had taken up summer quarters to 'investigate', was exorcized by the late Archbishop of Edinburgh, a.s.sisted by a priest from the Outer Isles.[191]

Among the nine orders of the Irish ecclesiastical organization of Patrick's time, one was composed of exorcists.[192] The official ceremony for the ordination of an exorcist in the Latin Church was established by the Fourth Council of Carthage, and is indicated in nearly all the ancient rituals. It consists in the bishop giving to the candidate the book of exorcisms and saying as he does so:--'Receive and understand this book, and have the power of laying hands upon demoniacs, whether they be baptized, or whether they be catechumens.'[193] By a decree of the Church Council of Orange, making men possessed of a demon ineligible to enter the priesthood, it would seem that the number of demoniacs must have been very great.[193] As to the efficacy of exorcisms, the church Fathers during the first four centuries, when the Platonic philosophy was most influential in Christianity, are agreed.[193]

In estimating the shaping influences, designated by us as fundamental, which undoubtedly were exerted upon the Fairy-Faith through the practice of exorcism, it is necessary to realize that this animistic practice holds a very important position in the Christian religion which for centuries the Celtic peoples have professed. One of the two chief sacraments of Christianity, that of Baptism, is preceded by a definitely recognized exorcism, as shown in the Roman Ritual, where we can best study it. In the Exhortation preceding the rite the infant is called a slave of the demon, and by baptism is to be set free. The salt which is placed in the mouth of the infant by the priest during the ceremony has first been exorcized by special rites. Then there follows before the entrance to the baptismal font a regular exorcism p.r.o.nounced over the child: the priest taking some of his own saliva on the thumb of his right hand, touches the child's ears and nostrils, and commands the demon to depart out of the child. After this part of the ceremony is finished, the priest makes on the child's forehead a sign of the cross with holy oil. Finally, in due order, comes the actual baptism.[194] And even after baptismal rites have expelled all possessing demons, precautions are necessary against a repossession: St. Augustine has said that exorcisms of precaution ought to be performed over every Christian daily; and it appears that faithful Roman Catholics who each day employ holy water in making the sign of the cross, and all Protestants who pray 'lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil', are employing such exorcisms:[195] St. Gregory of n.a.z.ianzus writes, 'Arm yourself with the sign of the cross which the demons fear, and before which they take their flight'[196]; and by the same sign, said St. Athanasius, 'All the illusions of the demon are dissipated and all his snares destroyed.'[197] An eminent Catholic theologian a.s.serts that saints who, since the time of Jesus Christ, have been endowed with the power of working miracles, have always made use of the sign of the cross in driving out demons, in curing maladies, and in raising the dead. In the _Instruction sur le Rituel_,[198] it is said that water which has been blessed is particularly designed to be used against demons; in the _Apostolic Const.i.tutions_, formulated near the end of the fourth century, holy water is designated as a means of purification from sin and of putting the demon to flight.[199] And nowadays when the priest pa.s.ses through his congregation casting over them holy water, it is as an exorcism of precaution; or when as in France each mourner at a grave casts holy water over the corpse, it is undoubtedly--whether done consciously as such or not--to protect the soul of the deceased from demons who are held to have as great power over the dead as over the living. Other forms of exorcism, too, are employed. For example, in the _Lebar Brecc_, it is said of the Holy Scripture that 'By it the snares of devils and vices are expelled from every faithful one in the Church'.[200] And from all this direct testimony it seems to be clear that many of the chief practices of Christians are exorcisms, so that, like the religion of Zoroaster, the religion founded by Jesus has come to rest, at least in part, upon the basic recognition of an eternal warfare between good and bad spirits for the control of Man.

The curing of diseases through Christian exorcism is by no means rare now, and it was common a few centuries ago. Thus in the eighteenth century, beginning with 1752 and till his death, Ga.s.sner, a Roman priest of Closterle, diocese of Coire, Switzerland, devoted his life to curing people of possessions, declaring that one third of all maladies are so caused, and fixed his head-quarters at Elw.a.n.gen, and later at Ratisbon.

His fame spread over many countries of Europe, and he is said to have made ten thousand cures solely by exorcism.[201] And not only are human ills overcome by exorcism, but also the maladies of beasts: at Carnac, on September 13, there continues to be celebrated an annual fete in honour of St. Cornely, the patron saint of the country and the saint who (as his name seems to suggest) presides over domestic _horned_ animals; and if there is a cow, or even a sheep suffering from some ailment which will not yield to medicine, its owner leads it to the church door beneath the saint's statue, and the priest blesses it, and, as he does so, casts over it the exorcizing holy water. The Church Ritual designates two forms of Benediction for such animals, one form for those who are ordinarily diseased, and another for those suffering from some contagious malady. In each ceremony there comes first the sprinkling of the animal with holy water as it stands before the priest at the church door; and then there follows in Latin a direct invocation to G.o.d to bless the animal, 'to extinguish in it all diabolical powers,' to defend its life, and to restore it to health.[202]

In 1868, according to Dr. Evans, an old cow-house in North Wales was torn down, and in its walls was found a tin box containing an exorcist's formula. The box and its enclosed ma.n.u.script had been hidden there some years previously to ward off all evil spirits and witchcraft, for evidently the cattle had been dying of some strange malady which no doctors could cure. Because of its unique nature, and as an ill.u.s.tration of what Welsh exorcisms must have been like, we quote the contents of the ma.n.u.scripts both as to spelling and punctuation as checked by Sir John Rhys with the original, except the undecipherable symbols which come after the archangels' names:--

'? Lignum sanctae crusis defendat me a malis presentibus preateritus & futuris; interioribus & exterioribus ? ?

Daniel Evans ? ? Omnes spiritus laudet Dominum: Mosen habent & prophetas. Exergat Deus & disipenture inimiciessus ? ? O Lord Jesus Christ I beseech thee to preserve me Daniel Evans; and all that I possess from the power of all evil men, women; spirits, or wizards, or hardness of heart, and this I will trust thou will do by the same power as thou didst cause the blind to see the lame to walk and they that were possesed with unclean spirits to be in their own minds Amen Amen ? ? ? ? pater pater pater Noster Noster Noster aia aia aia Jesus ? Christus ? Messyas ?

Emmanuel ? Soter ? Sabaoth ? Elohim ? on ? Adonay ? Tetragrammaton ? Ag : : ? Panthon ? ... reaton ? Agios ? Jasper ? Melchor ? Balthasar Amen ? ? ?

* ? * ? * ? ? ? ? ? ? ? . ? * ? * ? ? ? And by the power of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Hevenly Angels being our Redeemer and Saviour from Gabriel [_symbols_] all witchcraft and from a.s.saults of the Michail [_symbols_] Devil Amen ? O Lord Jesus Christ I beseech thee to preserve me and all that I possess from the power of all evil men; women; spirits; or wizards past, present, or to come inward and outward Amen ? ?.'[203]

From India Mr. W. Crooke reports similar exorcisms and charms to cure and to protect cattle.[204] Thus there is employed in Northern India the _Ajaypal jantra_, i. e. 'the charm of the Invincible Protector,' one of Vishnu's t.i.tles, in his character as the earth-G.o.d Bhumiya--in Scotland it would be the charm of the Invincible Fairy who presides over the flocks and to whom libations are poured--in order to exorcize diseased cattle or else to prevent cattle from becoming diseased. This _Ajaypal jantra_ is a rope of twisted straw, in which chips of wood are inserted.

'In the centre of the rope is suspended an earthen platter, inside which an incantation is inscribed with charcoal, and beside it is hung a bag containing seven kinds of grain.' The rope is stretched between two poles at the entrance of a village, and under it the cattle pa.s.s to and fro from pasture. The following is the incantation found on one of the earthen saucers:--'O Lord of the Earth on which this cattle-pen stands, protect the cattle from death and disease! I know of none, save thee, who can deliver them.' In the Morbihan, Lower Brittany, we seem to see the same folk-custom, somewhat changed to be sure; for on St. John's Day, the christianized pagan sun-festival in honour of the summer solstice, in which fairies and spirits play so prominent a part in all Celtic countries, just outside a country village a great fire is lit in the centre of the main road and covered over with green branches, in order to produce plenty of smoke, and then on either side of this fire and through the exorcizing smoke are made to pa.s.s all the domestic animals in the district as a protection against disease and evil spirits, to secure their fruitful increase, and, in the case of cows, abundant milk supply. Mr. Milne, while making excavations in the Carnac country, discovered the image of a small bronze cow, now in the Carnac Museum, and this would seem to indicate that before Christian times there was in the Morbihan a cult of cattle, preserved even until now, no doubt, in the Christian fete of St. Cornely, just as in St. Cornely's Fountain there is preserved a pagan holy well.

It ought now to be clear that both pre-Christian and Christian exorcisms among Celts have shaped the Fairy-Faith in a very fundamental manner.

And anthropologically the whole subject of exorcism falls in line with the Psychological Theory of the nature and origin of the belief in fairies in Celtic countries.

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