The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 32

Mr. Borlase, commenting on this pa.s.sage, suggests its importance in proving to us that during the Middle Ages there existed a tradition, thus committed to writing from older ma.n.u.scripts or from oral sources, regarding 'the nature of the rites performed in pagan times at those places, which were held sacred to the heathen mysteries'.[469] The pa.s.sage evidently describes a cult of royal or famous ancestral spirits identified with the G.o.d-race of Tuatha De Danann, who, as we know, being reborn as mortals, ruled Ireland. These ancestral spirits were to be approached by a pilgrimage made to their abode, the spirit-haunted tumulus, and a residence in it of three days and three nights during which period there was to be an unbroken fast. Sacrifices were doubtless offered to the G.o.ds, or spirit-ancestors; and while they were 'fasted upon', they were expected to appear and grant the pilgrim's prayer and to speak with him. All this indicates that the existence of invisible beings was taken for granted, probably through the knowledge gained by initiation.

The _Echtra Nerai_ or the 'Adventures of Nera' (see this study, p. 287), contains a description like the one above, of how a mortal named Nera went into the _Sidhe_-palace at Cruachan; and it is said that he went not only into the cave (_uamh_) but into the _sid_ of the cave. The term _uamh_ or cave, according to Mr. Borlase, indicates the whole of the interior vaulted chamber, while the _sid_ of that vaulted chamber or _uamh_ is intended to refer to 'the _sanctum sanctorum_, or _penetralia_ of the spirit-temple, upon entering into which the mortal came face to face with the royal occupants, and there doubtless he lay fasting, or offering his sacrifices, at the periods prescribed'.[470]

The word _brugh_ refers simply to the appearance of a tumulus, or souterrain beneath a fort or rath, and means, therefore, mansion or dwelling-place.[471] And Mr. Borlase adds:--'I feel but little doubt that in the inner chamber at New Grange, with its three recesses and its basin, we have this _sid of the cave_, and the place where the pilgrims fasted--a situation and a practice precisely similar to those which, under Christian auspices, were continued at such places as the Leaba Mologa in Cork, the original Patrick's Purgatory in Lough Derg, and elsewhere. The practice of lying in stone troughs was a feature of the Christian pilgrimages in Ireland. Sometimes such troughs had served the previous purpose of stone coffins. It is just possible that the shallow basins in the cells at Lough Crew, New Grange, and Dowth may, like the stone beds or troughs of the saints,[472] have been occupied by the pilgrims engaged in their devotions. If so, however, they must have sat in them in Eastern fas.h.i.+on.'[471]

Again, in the popular tale called _The Pursuit of Diarmuid and Grainne_,[473] Aengus, the son of the Dagda, one of the Tuatha De Danann, is called Aengus-an-Bhrogha, and connected with the _Brugh-na-Boinne_. In the tale Finn says, 'Let us leave this tulach, for fear that Aengus-an-Bhrogha and the Tuatha-De-Danann might catch us; and though we have no part in the slaying of Diarmuid, he would none the more readily believe us.' Aengus is evidently an invisible being with great power over mortals. This is clear in what follows: he transports Diarmuid's body to the _Brugh-na-Boinne_, saying, 'Since I cannot restore him to life, I will send a soul into him, so that he may talk to me each day.' Thus, as the presiding deity of the _brugh_, Aengus the Tuatha De Danann could reanimate dead bodies 'and cause them to speak to devotees, we may suppose oracularly.'[474] In the _Bruighion Chaorthainn_ or 'Fort of the Rowan Tree', a Fenian tale, a poet put Finn under taboo to understand these verses:--

I saw a house in the country Out of which no hostages are given to a king, Fire burns it not, harrying spoils it not.

And Finn made reply:--'I understand that verse, for that is the Brugh of the Boyne that you have seen (perhaps, as we suggest, during an initiation), namely, the house of Aengus Og of the Brugh, and it cannot be burned or harried as long as Aengus (a G.o.d) shall live.' As Mr.

Borlase observes, to say that 'no hostages are given to a king' out of the _Brugh_ is probably another way of saying that the dead pay no taxes, or that being a holy place, the _Brugh_ was exempt.[475] This last evidence is from oral tradition, and rather late in being placed on record; but it is not on that account less trustworthy, and may be much more so than the older ma.n.u.scripts. Until quite modern times the folk-lore of the Boyne country still echoed similar traditions about unknown mystic rites, following what O'Donovan has recorded; for he has said that Aenghus-an-Bhrogha was considered the presiding fairy of the Boyne till quite within recent times, and that his name was still familiar to the old inhabitants of Meath who were then fast forgetting their traditions with the Irish language.[476] And this tradition brings us to consider what was apparently an Aengus Cult among the ancient Celtic peoples.

THE AENGUS CULT

Euhemeristic tradition came to represent the Great G.o.d Dagda and his sons as buried in a tumulus, probably New Grange, and then called it, as I found it called to-day, a fairy mound, a name given also to Gavrinis, its Breton parallel. The older and clearer tradition relates how Aengus gained possession of the _Brugh_ of the Boyne, and says nothing about it as a cemetery, but rather describes it as 'an admirable place, more accurately speaking, as an admirable land, a term which betrays the usual identification of the fairy mound with the nether world to which it formed the entrance'.[477] The myth placing Dagda at the head of the departed makes him 'a Goidelic Cronus ruling over an Elysium with which a sepulchral mound was a.s.sociated'.[477] The displacement of Dagda by his son makes 'Mac Oc (Aengus), who should have been the youthful Zeus of the Goidelic world, rejoicing in the translucent expanse of the heavens as his crystal bower', a king of the dead.[477]

In Dun Aengus, the strange cyclopean circular structure, and hence most likely sun-temple, on Aranmore, we have another example of the localization of the Aengus myth. This fact leads us to believe, after due archaeological examination, that amid the stronghold of Dun Aengus, with its tiers of amphitheatre-like seats and the native rock at its centre, apparently squared to form a platform or stage, were anciently celebrated pagan mysteries comparable to those of the Greeks and less cultured peoples, and initiations into an Aengus Cult such as seems to have once flourished at New Grange. At Dun Aengus, however, the mystic a.s.semblies and rites, conducted in such a sun-temple, so secure and so strongly fortified against intrusion, no doubt represented a somewhat different mystical school, and probably one very much older than at New Grange. In the same manner, each of the other circular but less important cyclopean structures on Aranmore and elsewhere in west Ireland may have been structures for closely related sun-cults. To our mind, and we have carefully and at leisure examined most of these cyclopean structures on Aranmore, it seems altogether fanciful to consider them as having been _originally_ and _primarily_ intended as places of refuge--_duns_ or forts. Yet, because the ancient Celts never separated civil and religious functions, such probable sun-temples could have been as frequently used for non-religious tribal a.s.semblies as for initiation ceremonies; and nothing makes it impossible for them to have been in times of need also places for refuge against enemies. We are led to this view with respect to Dun Aengus in particular, because the Aengus of Aranmore is known as Aengus, son of Umor, and is a.s.sociated with the mystic people called the Fir Bolg; and, yet, as Sir John Rhys thinks, this Aengus, son of Umor, and Aengus, son of Dagda, are two aspects of a single G.o.d, a Celtic Zeus.[478] O'Curry's statements about Dun Aengus seem to confirm all this; and there seems to have been a tale, now lost, about the 'Destruction of _Dun Oengusa_' (in modern Irish _Dun Aonghuis_), the Fortress of Aengus.[478]

This sun-cult, represented in Ireland by the Aengus Cult, can be traced further: Sir John Rhys regards Stonehenge--a sun-temple also circular like the Irish _duns_ and Breton cromlechs--as a temple to the Celtic Zeus, in Irish mythology typified by Aengus, and in Welsh by Merlin:--'What sort of a temple could have been more appropriate for the primary G.o.d of light and of the luminous heavens than a s.p.a.cious, open-air enclosure of a circular form like Stonehenge?'[479] In Welsh myth, Math ab Mathonwy, called also 'Math the Ancient', was the greatest magician of ancient Wales, and his relation as teacher to Gwydion ab Don, the great Welsh Culture Hero, leads Sir John Rhys to consider him the Brythonic Zeus, though Merlin shares with him in this distinction;[480] and since the Gaelic counterpart of Math is Aengus, a close study of Math might finally show a cult in his honour in Wales as we have found in Ireland an Aengus Cult.[481] We may, therefore, with more or less exactness, equate the Aengus Cult as we see it in Irish myth connected chiefly with Dun Aengus and New Grange, with the unknown cult practised at Stonehenge, and this in turn with other Brythonic or pre-Brythonic sun-cults and initiations practised at Carnac, the great Celtic Jerusalem in Brittany, and at Gavrinis. All this will be more clearly seen after we have set forth what seems a definite and most striking parallel to New Grange, both as a monument erected by man and, as we maintain, as a place for religious mysteries--the greatest structure ever raised by human effort, the Great Pyramid.

NEW GRANGE AND THE GREAT PYRAMID COMPARED

Caliph Al Mamoun in A. D. 820, by a forced pa.s.sage, was the first in modern times to enter the Great Pyramid, and he found nowhere a mummy or any indications that the structure had ever been used as a tomb for the dead. The King's Chamber, so named by us moderns, proved to be a keen disappointment for its first violator, for in it there was neither gold nor silver nor anything at all worth carrying away. The magnificent chamber contained nothing save an empty stone chest without a lid.

Archaeologists in Egypt and archaeologists in Ireland face the same unsolved problem, namely, the purpose of the empty stone chest without inscriptions and quite unlike a mummy tomb, and of the stone basin in New Grange.[482] Certain Egyptologists have supposed that some royal personage must have been buried in the curious granite coffer, though there can be only their supposition to support them, for they have absolutely no proof that such is true, while there is strong circ.u.mstantial evidence to show that such is not true. Sir Gardner Wilkinson in his well-known publications has already suggested that the stone chest as well as the Great Pyramid itself were never intended to hold a corpse; and it is generally admitted by Egyptologists that no sarcophagus intended for a mummy has ever been found so high up in the body of a pyramid as this empty stone chest, except in the Second Pyramid. Incontestable evidence in support of the highly probable theory that the Great Pyramid was not intended for an actual tomb can be drawn from two important facts:--(1) 'the coffer has certain remarkable cubic proportions which show a care and design beyond what could be expected in any burial-coffer'--according to the high authority of Dr. Flinders Petrie; (2) the chamber containing the coffer and the upper pa.s.sage-ways have ventilating channels not known in any other Pyramid, so that apparently there must have been need of frequent entrance into the chamber by living men, as would be the case if used, as we hold, for initiation ceremonies.[483]

It is well known that very many of the megalithic monuments of the New Grange type scattered over Europe, especially from the Carnac centre of Brittany to the Tara-Boyne centre of Ireland, have one thing in common, an astronomical arrangement like the Great Pyramid, and an entrance facing one of the points of the solstices, usually either the winter solstice, which is common, or the summer solstice.[484] The puzzle has always been to discover the exact arrangement of the Great Pyramid by locating its main entrance. A Californian, Mr. Louis P. McCarty, in his recent (1907) work ent.i.tled _The Great Pyramid Jeezeh_, suggests with the most logical and reasonable arguments that the builders of the Pyramid have placed its main entrance in an undiscovered pa.s.sage-way beneath the Great Sphinx, now half-buried in the s.h.i.+fting desert sands.

If it can be shown that the Sphinx is the real portal, and many things tend to indicate that it is, the Great Pyramid is built on the same plan as New Grange, that is to say, it opens to the south-east, and like New Grange contains a narrow pa.s.sage-way leading to a central chamber.

South-easterly from the centre of the Pyramid lies the Sphinx, 5,380 feet away, a distance equal to 'just five times the distance of the "diagonal socket length" of the Great Pyramid from the centre of the Subterranean Chamber, under the Pyramid, to the supposed entrance under the Sphinx'[485]--a distance quite in keeping with the mighty proportions of the wonderful structure. And what is important, several eminent archaeologists have worked out the same conclusion, and have been seeking to connect the two monuments by making excavations in the Queen's Chamber, where it is supposed there exists a tunnel to the Sphinx. In all this we should bear in mind that the present entrance to the Pyramid is the forced one made by the treasure-seeking Caliph.

This very probable astronomical parallelism between the great Egyptian monument and the Irish one would establish their common religious, or, in a mystic sense, their funereal significance. In the preceding chapter we have set forth what symbolical relation the sun, its rising and setting, and its death at the winter equinox, were anciently supposed to hold to the doctrines of human death and re-birth. Jubainville, regarding the sun among the Celts in its symbolical relation to death, wrote, 'In Celtic belief, the dead go to live beyond the Ocean, to the south-west, there where the sun sets during the greater part of the year.'[486] This, too, as M. Maspero shows, was an Egyptian belief;[487]

while, as equally among the Celts, the east, especially the south-east, where, after the winter solstice, the sun seems to be re-born or to rise out of the underworld of Hades into which it goes when it dies, is symbolical of the reverse--Life, Resurrection, and Re-birth. In this last Celtic-Egyptian belief, we maintain, may be found the reason why the chief megalithic monuments (dolmens, tumuli, and alignements), in Celtic countries and elsewhere, have their directions east and west, and why those like New Grange and Gavrinis open to the sunrise.

Greek temples also opened to the sunrise, and on the divine image within fell the first rays of the beautiful G.o.d Apollo.[488] In the great Peruvian sun-temple at Cuzco, a splendid disk of pure gold faced the east, and, reflecting the first rays of the rising sun, illuminated the whole sanctuary.[489] The cave-temple of the Florida Red Men opened eastward, and within its entrance on festival days stood the priest at dawn watching for the first ray of the sun, as a sign to begin the chant and offering.[490] The East Indian performs the ablution at dawn in the sacred Ganges, and stands facing the east meditating, as Brahma appears in all the wondrous glory of a tropical sunrise.[491] And in the same Aryan land there is an opposite wors.h.i.+p: the dreaded Thugs, wors.h.i.+ppers of devils and of Kali the death-G.o.ddess, in their most diabolical rites face the west and the sunset, symbols of death.[492] How Christianity was shaped by paganism is nowhere clearer than in the orientation of great cathedral churches (almost without exception in England), for all of the more famous ones have their altars eastward; and Roman Catholics in prayer in their church services, and Anglicans in repeating the Creed, turn to the east, as the Hindu does. St. Augustine says:--'When we stand at prayer, we turn to the east, where the heaven arises, not as though G.o.d were only there, and had forsaken all other parts of the world, but to admonish our mind to turn to a more excellent nature, that is, to the Lord.'[493] Though the Jews came to be utterly opposed to sun-wors.h.i.+p in their later history, they were sun-wors.h.i.+ppers at first, as their temples opening eastward testify. This was the vision of Ezekiel:--'And, behold, at the door of the temple of Jehovah, between the porch and the Altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of Jehovah, and their faces toward the east, and they wors.h.i.+pped the sun toward the east.'[494]

All this ill.u.s.trates the once world-wide religion of our race; and shows that sun-cults and sun-symbols are derived from a universal doctrine regarding the two states of existence--the one in Hades or the invisible lower world where the Sun-G.o.d goes at night, and the other in what we call the visible realm which the Sun-G.o.d visits daily.[495] The relation between life and death--symbolically figured in this fundamental conception forming the background of every sun-cult--is the foundation of all ancient mysteries. Thus we should expect the correspondences which we believe do exist between New Grange and the Great Pyramid. Both alike, in our opinion, were the greatest places in the respective countries for the celebration of the Mysteries. High up in the body of the Great Pyramid, after he had performed the long underground journey, typical of the journey of Osiris or the Sun to the Otherworld or the World of the Dead, we may suppose (knowing what we do of the Ancient Mysteries and their shadows in modern Masonic initiations[496]) that the royal or priestly neophyte laid himself in that strange stone coffin without a lid, for a certain period of time--probably for three days and three nights. Then, the initiation being complete, he arose from the mystic death to a real resurrection, a true child of Osiris. In New Grange we may suppose that the royal or priestly neophyte, while he 'fasted on the Tuatha De Danann for three days with their nights', sat in that strange stone basin after the manner of the Orient.[497]

The Great Pyramid seems to be the most ancient of the Egyptian pyramids, and undoubtedly was the model for all the smaller ones, which 'always betray profound ignorance of their n.o.ble model's chiefest internal features, as well as of all its niceties of angle and cosmic harmonies of linear measurement'.[498] Dr. Flinders Petrie says:--'The Great Pyramid at Gizeh (of Khufu, fourth dynasty) unquestionably takes the lead, in accuracy and in beauty of work, as well as in size. Not only is the fine work of it in the pavement, casing, King's and Queen's chambers quite unexcelled; but the general character of the core masonry is better than that of any other pyramid in its solidity and regularity.'[499] And of the stone coffers he says:--'Taking most of its dimensions at their maximum, they agree closely with the same theory as that which is applicable to the chambers; for when squared they are all even multiples of a square fifth of a cubit.... There is no other theory applicable to every lineal dimension of the coffer; but having found the p proportion in the form of the Pyramid, and in the King's Chamber, there is some ground for supposing that it was intended also in the coffer, on just one-fifth the scale of the chamber.'[499] And here is apparent the important fact we wish to emphasize; the Great Pyramid does not seem to have been intended primarily, if at all, for the entombment of dead bodies or mummies while 'the numerous quasi-copies' were 'for sepulchral purposes'[500] without doubt. There appears to have been at first a clear understanding of the esoteric usage of the Great Pyramid as a place for the mystic burial of Initiates, and then in the course of national decadence the exoteric interpretation of this usage, the interpretation now popular with Egyptologists, led to the erection of smaller pyramids for purposes of actual burial. And may we not see in such pyramid-like tumuli as those of Mont St. Michel, Gavrinis, and New Grange copies of these smaller funeral pyramids;[501] or, if not direct copies, at least the result of a similar religious decadence from the unknown centuries since the Great Pyramid was erected by the Divine Kings of prehistoric Egypt as a silent witness for all ages that Great Men, Initiates, have understood Universal Law, and have solved the greatest of all human problems, the problem of Life and Death?

GAVRINIS AND NEW GRANGE COMPARED

In conclusion, and in support of the arguments already advanced, I offer a few observations of my own, made at Gavrinis itself, the most famous tumulus in Continental Europe. After a very careful examination of the interior and exterior of the tumulus, an examination extending over more than twelve hours, I am convinced that its curious rock-carvings and those in New Grange are by the same race of people, whoever that race may have been; and that there is sufficient evidence in its construction to show that, like New Grange, it was quite as religious as funereal in its nature and use. The facts which bear out this view are the following. First, there are three strange cavities cut into the body of the stone on the south side of the inner chamber, communicating interiorly with one another, and large enough to admit human hands; if used as places in which to offer sacrifice to the dead or fairies, small objects could have been placed in them. In the oldest extant authentic records of them which I have found it is said of their probable purpose:--'Some people look on them as a double noose intended to strangle the [animal] victims which the priest sacrificed; for others they are two rings behind which the hands of the betrothed met each other to be married.'[502] Their purpose is certainly difficult enough to decipher, perhaps is undecipherable; but one thing about them is certain, namely, that a close examination round their exterior edges and within them also shows the rock-surface worn smooth as though by ages of handling and touching; and it is incontestable that this wearing of the rock-surface by human hands could not have taken place had the inner chamber been sealed up and used solely as a tomb. We suggest here, as Sir James Fergusson in his _Rude Stone Monuments_ (p. 366) has suggested, that the inner chamber of Gavrinis was probably a place for the celebration of religious rites: he advances the opinion that the strange cavities were used to contain holy oil or holy water. There is this second curious fact connected with the tumulus of Gavrinis. On entering it--and it opens like New Grange to the sunrise, being oriented 43 60" to the south-east[503]--one finds placed across the floor of the narrow pa.s.sage-way as slightly inclined steps rising to the inner chamber three or four stones. Two of them, now very prominent, form veritable stumbling-blocks, and the one at the threshold of the inner chamber is carved quite like the lintel stone above the entrance at New Grange.[504] From what we know of ancient mystic cults, there was a darkened chamber approached by a narrow pa.s.sage-way so low that the neophyte must stoop in traversing it to show symbolically his humility; and as symbolic of his progress to the Chamber of Death, the _Sanctum Sanctorum_ of the spirit-temple, there were steps, often purposely placed as stumbling-blocks. The Great Pyramid, evidently, conforms to this mystical plan; and strikes one, therefore, all the more forcibly as the most remarkable structure for initiatory ceremonies ever constructed on our planet. Thus, Dr. Flinders Petrie says:--'But we are met then by an extraordinary idea, that all access to the King's chamber after its completion must have been by climbing over the plug-blocks, as they lay in the gallery, or by walking up the ramps on either side of them. Yet, as the blocks cannot physically have been lying in any other place before they were let down we are shut up to this view.'[505] And as Egyptian tombs represented the mansions of the dead,[506] just so Celtic or pre-Celtic spirit-temples and place for initiations were always connected with the Underworld of the Dead; and save for such symbolical arrangements as we see in Gavrinis, and New Grange also, they were undistinguishable from tombs used for interments only.

It seems to us most reasonable to suppose that if, as the old Irish ma.n.u.scripts show, there were spirit-temples or places for pagan funeral rites, or rites of initiation, in Ireland, constructed like other tumuli which were used only as tombs for the dead (because the ancient cult was one of ancestor wors.h.i.+p and wors.h.i.+p of G.o.ds like the Tuatha De Danann, and spirits), then there must have been others in Brittany also, where we find the same system of rock-inscriptions. Further, in view of all the definite provable relations between Gavrinis and New Grange, we are strongly inclined to regard them both as having the same origin and purpose, Gavrinis being for Armorica what New Grange was for Ireland, the royal or princ.i.p.al spirit-temple.

SECTION III

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

CHAPTER IX

THE TESTIMONY OF PAGANISM

'The cult of forests, of fountains, and of stones is to be explained by that primitive naturalism which all the Church Councils held in Brittany united to proscribe.'--ERNEST RENAN.

Edicts against pagan cults--Cult of Sacred Waters and its absorption by Christianity--Celtic Water Divinities--Druidic influence on Fairy-Faith--Cult of Sacred Trees--Cult of Fairies, Spirits, and the Dead--Feasts of the Dead--Conclusion.

The evidence of paganism in support of our Psychological Theory concerning the Fairy-Faith is so vast that we cannot do more than point to portions of it--especially such portions as are most Celtic in their nature. Perhaps most of us will think first of all about the ancient cults rendered to fountains, rivers, lakes, trees, and, as we have seen (pp. 399 ff.), to stones. There can be no reasonable doubt that these cults were very flouris.h.i.+ng when Christianity came to Europe, for kings, popes, and church councils issued edict after edict condemning them.[507] The second Council of Arles, held about 452, issued the following canon:--'If in the territory of a bishop, infidels light torches, or venerate trees, fountains, or stones, and he neglects to abolish this usage, he must know that he is guilty of sacrilege. If the director of the act itself, on being admonished, refuses to correct it, he is to be excluded from communion.'[507] The Council of Tours, in 567, thus expressed itself:--'We implore the pastors to expel from the Church all those whom they may see performing before certain stones things which have no relation with the ceremonies of the Church, and also those who observe the customs of the Gentiles.'[508] King Canute in England and Charlemagne in Europe conducted a most vigorous campaign against all these pagan wors.h.i.+ps. This is Charlemagne's edict:--'With respect to trees, stones, and fountains, where certain foolish people light torches or practise other superst.i.tions, we earnestly ordain that that most evil custom detestable to G.o.d, wherever it be found, should be removed and destroyed.'[509]

The result of these edicts was a curious one. It was too much to expect the eradication of the old cults after their age-long existence, and so one by one they were absorbed by the new religion. In a sacred tree or grove, over a holy well or fountain, on the sh.o.r.e of a lake or river, there was placed an image of the Virgin or of some saint, and unconsciously the transformation was made, as the simple-hearted country-folk beheld in the brilliant images new and more glorious dwelling-places for the spirits they and their fathers had so long venerated.

THE CULT OF SACRED WATERS

In Brittany, perhaps better than in other Celtic countries to-day, one can readily discern this evolution from paganism to Christianity. Thus, for example, in the Morbihan there is the fountain of St. Anne d'Auray, round which centres Brittany's most important Pardon; a fountain near Vannes is dedicated to St. Peter; at Carnac there is the far-famed fountain of St. Cornely with its niche containing an image of Carnac's patron saint, and not far from it, on the roadside leading to Carnac Plage, an enclosed well dedicated to the Holy Virgin; and, less than a mile away, the beautiful fountain of St. Columba. Near Ploermel, Canton of Ploermel (Morbihan), there is the fountain of Recourrance or St.

Laurent, in which sailors perform divinations to know the future state of the weather by casting on its waters a morsel of bread. If the bread floats, it is a sure sign of fair weather, but if it sinks, of weather so bad that no one should take risks by going out in the fis.h.i.+ng-boats.

In some wells, pins are dropped by lovers. If the pins float, the water-spirits show favourable auspices, but if the pins sink, the maiden is unhappy, and will hesitate in accepting the proposal of marriage.

Long after their conversion, the inhabitants of Concoret (Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt de Ploermel, Morbihan) paid divine honours to the fountain of Baranton in the druidical forest of Broceliande, so famous in the Breton legends of Arthur and Merlin:--'For a long time the inhabitants of Concoret ...

in place of addressing themselves to G.o.d or to his Saints in their maladies, sought the remedy in the fountain of Baranton, either by praying to it, after the manner of the Gauls, or by drinking of its waters.'[510] In the month of August 1835, when there was an unusual drought in the land, all the inhabitants of Concoret formed in a great procession with banners and crucifix at their head, and with chants and ringing of church bells marched to this same fountain of Baranton and prayed for rain.[511] This curious bit of history was also reported to me in July 1909 by a peasant who lives near the fountain, and who heard it from his parents; and he added that the foot of the crucifix was planted in the water to aid the rain-making. We have here an interesting combination of paganism and Christianity.

Gregory of Tours says that the country-folk of Gevaudan rendered divine honours to a certain lake, and as offerings cast on its waters linen, wool, cheese, bees'-wax, bread, and other things;[512] and Mahe adds that gold was sometimes offered,[512] quite after the manner of the ancient Peruvians, who cast gold and silver of great value into the waters of sacred Lake t.i.ticaca, high up in the Andes. To absorb into Christianity the wors.h.i.+p paid to the lake near Gevaudan, the bishop ordered a church to be built on its sh.o.r.e, and to the people he said:--'My children, there is nothing divine in this lake: defile not your souls by these vain ceremonies; but recognize rather the true G.o.d.'[513] The offerings to the lake-spirits then ceased, and were made instead on the altar of the church. As Canon Mahe so consistently sets forth, other similar means were used to absorb the pagan cults of sacred waters:--'Other pastors employed a similar device to absorb the cult of fountains into Christianity; they consecrated them to G.o.d under the invocation of certain saints; giving the saints' names to them and placing in them the saints' images, so that the weak and simple-hearted Christians who might come to them, struck by these names and by these images, should grow accustomed to addressing their prayers to G.o.d and to his saints, in place of honouring the fountains themselves, as they had been accustomed to do. This is the reason why there are seen in the stonework of so many fountains, niches and little statues of saints who have given their names to these springs.'[514]

Procopius reports that the Franks, even after having accepted Christianity, remained attached to their ancient cults, sacrificing to the River Po women and children of the Goths, and casting the bodies into its waters to the spirits of the waters.[514] Well-wors.h.i.+p in the Isle of Man, not yet quite extinct, was no doubt once very general. As A. W. Moore has shown, the sacred wells in the Isle of Man were visited and offerings made to them to secure immunity from witches and fairies, to cure maladies, to raise a wind, and for various kinds of divination.[515] And no doubt the offerings of rags on bushes over sacred wells, and the casting of pins, coins, b.u.t.tons, pebbles, and other small objects into their waters, a common practice yet in Ireland and Wales, as in non-Celtic countries, are to be referred to as survivals of a time when regular sacrifices were offered in divination, or in seeking cures from maladies, and equally from obsessing demons who were thought to cause the maladies. In the prologue to Chretien's _Conte du Graal_ there is an account, seemingly very ancient, of how dishonour to the divinities of wells and springs brought destruction on the rich land of Logres. The damsels who abode in these watery places fed travellers with nouris.h.i.+ng food until King Amangons wronged one of them by carrying off her golden cup. His men followed his evil example, so that the springs dried up, the gra.s.s withered, and the land became waste.[516]

According to Mr. Borlase, 'it was by pa.s.sing under the waters of a well that the _Sidh_, that is, the abode of the spirits called _Sidhe_, in the tumulus or natural hill, as the case might be, was reached.'[517]

And it is evident from this that the well-spirits were even identified in Ireland with the Tuatha De Danann or Fairy-Folk. I am reminded of a walk I was privileged to take with Mr. William B. Yeats on Lady Gregory's estate at Coole Park, near Gort (County Galway); for Mr. Yeats led me to the haunts of the water-spirits of the region, along a strange river which flows underground for some distance and then comes out to the light again in its weird course, and to a dark, deep pool hidden in the forest. According to tradition, the river is the abode of water-fairies; and in the shaded forest-pool, whose depth is very great, live a spirit-race like the Greek nymphs. More than one mortal while looking into this pool has felt a sudden and powerful impulse to plunge in, for the fairies were then casting their magic spell over him that they might take him to live in their under-water palace for ever.

One of the most beautiful pa.s.sages in _The Tripart.i.te Life of Patrick_ describes the holy man at the holy well called Cliabach:--'Thereafter Patrick went at sunrise to the well, namely Cliabach on the sides of Cruachan. The clerics sat down by the well. Two daughters of Loegaire son of Niall went early to the well to wash their hands, as was a custom of theirs, namely, Ethne the Fair, and Fedelm the Ruddy. The maidens found beside the well the a.s.sembly of the clerics in white garments, with their books before them. And they wondered at the shape of the clerics, and thought that they were men of the elves or apparitions.

They asked tidings of Patrick: "Whence are ye, and whence have ye come?

Are ye of the elves or of the G.o.ds?" And Patrick said to them: "It were better for you to believe in G.o.d than to inquire about our race." Said the girl who was elder: "Who is your G.o.d? and where is he? Is he in heaven, or in earth, or under earth, or on earth? Is he in seas or in streams, or in mountains or in glens? Hath he sons and daughters? Is there gold and silver, is there abundance of every good thing in his kingdom? Tell us about him, how he is seen, how he is loved, how he is found? if he is in youth, or if he is in age? if he is ever-living; if he is beautiful? if many have fostered his son? if his daughters are dear and beautiful to the men of the world?"'[518]

And in another place it is recorded that 'Patrick went to the well of Findmag. Slan is its name. They told Patrick that the heathen honoured the well as if it were a G.o.d.'[519] And of the same well it is said, 'that the magi, i. e. wizards or Druids, used to reverence the well Slan and "offer gifts to it as if it were a G.o.d."'[519] As Whitley Stokes pointed out, this is the only pa.s.sage connecting the Druids with well-wors.h.i.+p; and it is very important, because it establishes the relation between the Druids as magicians and their control of spirits like fairies.[519] As shown here, and as seems evident in Columba's relation with Druids and exorcism in Ad.a.m.nan's _Life of St.

Columba_,[520] the early Celtic peoples undoubtedly drew many of their fairy-traditions from a memory of druidic rites of divination. Perhaps the most beautiful description of a holy well and a description ill.u.s.trative of such divination is that of Ireland's most mystical well, Connla's Well:--'Sinend, daughter of Lodan Lucharglan, son of Ler, out of Tir Tairngire ("Land of Promise, Fairyland"), went to Connla's Well which is under sea, to behold it. That is a well at which are the hazels and inspirations (?) of wisdom, that is, the hazels of the science of poetry, and in the same hour their fruit, and their blossom and their foliage break forth, and these fall on the well in the same shower, which raises on the water a royal surge of purple. Then the [sacred]

salmon chew the fruit, and the juice of the nuts is apparent on their purple bellies. And seven streams of wisdom spring forth and turn there again.'[521]

To these cults of sacred waters numerous non-Celtic parallels could easily be offered, but they seem unnecessary with Celtic evidence so clear. And this evidence which is already set forth shows that the origin of wors.h.i.+p paid to sacred wells, fountains, lakes, or rivers, is to be found in the religious practices of the Celts before they became christianized. They believed that certain orders of spirits, often called fairies, and to be identified with them, inhabited, or as was the case with Sinend, who came from the Otherworld, visited these places, and must be appeased or approached through sacrifice by mortals seeking their favours. Canon Mahe puts the matter thus:--'The Celts recognized a supreme G.o.d, the principle of all things; but they rendered religious wors.h.i.+p to the genii or secondary deities who, according to them, united themselves to different objects in nature and made them divine by such union. Among the objects were rivers, the sea, lakes and fountains.'[522]

THE CULT OF SACRED TREES