The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries Part 34

The curious custom among early Irish Christians, of retiring for a time to a cave, seems to show the lasting into historical times of the pagan cave-ritual now surviving at Lough Derg only. The custom seems to have been common among the saints of Britain and of Scotland;[556] and in Stokes's _Tripart.i.te Life of Patrick_ (p. 242) there is a very significant reference to it. In the _Mabinogion_ story of _Kulhwch and Olwen_ there seems to be another traditional echo of the times when caves were used for religious rites or wors.h.i.+p, in the author's reference to the cave of the witch Orddu as being 'on the confines of h.e.l.l'. A cave was thus popularly supposed to lead to Hades or an underworld of fairies, demons, and spirits; again just as in St.

Patrick's Purgatory. Purely Celtic instances of this kind might be greatly multiplied.

PAGAN ORIGIN OF PURGATORIAL DOCTRINE

The metrical romance of _Orfeo and Herodys_ in Ritson's _Collection of Metrical Romances_[557] ill.u.s.trates how in Britain (and Britain--even England--is more Celtic than Saxon) the Grecian h.e.l.l or Hades was looked on as identical with the Celtic Fairyland. This is quite unusual; and for us is highly significant. It shows that in Britain, at the time the romance was written, there was no essential difference between the underworld of fairies and the underworld of shades. Pluto's realm and the realm where fairy kings and fairy queens held high revelry were the same. The difference is this: Hades was an Egyptian and in turn a Greek conception, while Fairyland was a Celtic conception; they differ as the imagination at work on a philosophical doctrine differs among the three peoples, and not otherwise. And, as Wright has shown, the origin of Purgatory in the Roman Church is very obscure. As to the location of Purgatory, Roman theology confesses it has nothing certain to say.[558]

The natural conclusion, as we suggested in our study of Re-birth, would seem to be that the Irish doctrine of the Otherworld in all its aspects, but especially as the underground world of the _Sidhe_ or fairy-folk, was combined with the pagan Graeco-Roman doctrine of Hades in St.

Patrick's Purgatory, and hence gave rise to the modern Christian doctrine of Purgatory.

CHRISTIAN RITES IN HONOUR OF THE DEPARTED

We may now readily pa.s.s from an examination of world-wide rites concerned with death and re-birth, which are based on an ancient sun-cult, to an examination of their shadows in the theology of Christianity, where they are commonly known as the rites in honour of the departed. It seems to be clear at the outset that the Christian Fete in Commemoration of the Dead, according to its history, is an adaptation from paganism; and with so many Irish ecclesiastics, or else their disciples, educated in the Celtic monasteries of Britain and Ireland, having influence in the Church during the early centuries, there is a strong probability that the Feast of _Samain_ had something to do with shaping the modern feast, as we have suggested in the preceding chapter; for both feasts originally fell on the first of November. Roman Catholic writers record that it was St. Odilon, Abbot of Cluny, who inst.i.tuted in 998 in all his congregations the Fete in Commemoration of the Dead, and fixed its anniversary on the first of November; and that this fete was quickly adopted by all the churches of the East.[559] To-day in the Roman Church both the first and second of November are holy days devoted to those who have pa.s.sed out of this life. The first day, the Fete of All the Saints (_La Toussaint_), is said to have originated thus: the Roman Pantheon--Pantheon meaning the residence of all the G.o.ds--was dedicated to Jupiter the Avenger, and when Christianity triumphed the pagan images were overthrown, and there was thereupon originally established, in place of the cult of all the G.o.ds, the Fete of all the Saints.[560] Why _La Toussaint_ should have become a feast of the dead would be difficult to say unless we admit the ancient Celtic feast of the dead as having amalgamated with it. This we believe is what took place; for if the Fete in Commemoration of the Dead was, as some authorities hold, established by St. Odilon to fall on the first of November, in direct accord with _Samain_ or Halloween, then at some later period it was displaced by _La Toussaint_, for now it is celebrated on the second of November.

Likewise prayers and ma.s.ses for the dead, which annually receive emphasis on the first two days of November, seem to have had their origin in pre-Christian cults. According to Mosheim, in his _Histoire ecclesiastique_,[561] the usage of celebrating the Sacrament at the tombs of martyrs and at funerals was introduced during the fourth century; and from this usage the ma.s.ses for the saints and for the dead originated in the eighth century. Prior to the fourth century we find the newly converted Christians in all parts of Celtic Europe, and in many countries non-Celtic, still rendering a cult to ancestral spirits, making food offerings at the tombs of heroes, and strictly observing the very ancient November feast, or its equivalent, in honour of the dead and fairies. Then, very gradually, in the course of four centuries, the character of the Christian cults and feasts of the saints and of the dead seems to have been determined. The following citation will serve to ill.u.s.trate the nature of Irish Christian rites in honour of the dead:--In the _Lebar Brecc_[562] we read: 'There is nothing which one does on behalf of the soul of him who has died that doth not help it, both prayer on knees, and abstinence, and singing requiems, and frequent blessings. Sons are bound to do penance for their deceased parents. A full year, now, was Maedoc of Ferns, with his whole community, on water and bread, after loosing from h.e.l.l the soul of Brandub son of Echaid.'

According to St. Augustine, the souls of the dead are solaced by the piety of their living friends when this expresses itself through sacrifice made by the Church;[563] St. Ephrem commanded his friends not to forget him after death, but to give proofs of their charity in offering for the repose of his soul alms, prayers, and sacrifices, especially on the thirtieth day;[563] Constantine the Great wished to be interred under the Church of the Apostles in order that his soul might be benefited by the prayers offered to the saints, by the mystic sacrifice, and by the holy communion.[563] Such prayers and sacrifices for the dead were offered by the Church sometimes during thirty and even forty days, those offered on the third, the seventh, and the thirtieth days being the most solemn.[564] The history of the venerable Bede, the letters of St. Boniface, and of St. Lul prove that even in the ancient Anglican church prayers were offered up for the souls of the dead;[565]

and a council of bishops held at Canterbury in 816 ordered that immediately after the death of a bishop there shall be made for him prayers and alms.[565] At Oxford, in 1437, All Souls College was founded, chiefly as a place in which to offer prayers on behalf of the souls of all those who were killed in the French wars of the fifteenth century.

CONCLUSION

As seems to be evident from this and the two preceding chapters, all these fetes, rites, or observances of Christianity have a relation more or less direct to paganism, and thus to ancient Celtic cults and sacrifice offered to the dead, to spirits, and to the Tuatha De Danann or Fairies. And the same set of ideas which operated among the Celts to create their Fairy-Mythology--ideas arising out of a belief in or knowledge of the one universal Realm of Spirit and its various orders of invisible inhabitants--gave the Egyptians, the Indians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Teutons, the Mexicans, the Peruvians, and all nations their respective mythologies and religions; and we moderns are literally 'the heirs of all the ages'.

SECTION IV

MODERN SCIENCE AND THE FAIRY FAITH; AND CONCLUSIONS[566]

CHAPTER XI

SCIENCE AND FAIRIES

'Puzzling and weird occurrences have been vouched for among all nations and in every age. It is possible to relegate a good many a.s.serted occurrences to the domain of superst.i.tion, but it is not possible thus to eliminate all.'--SIR OLIVER LODGE.

Method of Examination: Exoteric and Esoteric Aspects--The X-quant.i.ty--Scientific Att.i.tudes toward the Animistic Hypothesis: Materialistic Theory; Pathological Theory; Delusion and Imposture Theory--Problems of Consciousness: Dreams; Supernormal Lapse of Time--Psychical Research and Fairies: Myers's Researches--Present Position of Psychical Research--Psychical Research and Anthropology in relation to Fairy-Faith, according to a special contribution from Mr. Andrew Lang--Final Testing of the X-quant.i.ty--Conclusion: the Celtic belief in Fairies and in Fairyland is scientific.

METHOD OF EXAMINATION

The promise made in the Introduction to examine the Why of the belief in fairies must now be fulfilled by calling in the aid of modern science.

To adduce parallels when studying a religion or a mythology is worth doing, in order to show the fundamental bond which unites all systems of belief in things called spiritual; but it is more important to try to understand why there should be such parallels and such a unifying principle behind them. Perhaps there has been too much of a tendency among students of folk-lore, and of anthropology as a whole, to be content to do no more than to discover that the Eskimos in Greenland hold a belief in spirits parallel to a belief in spirits held in Central Africa, or that the Greek Pantheon (and possibly the Celtic one as well) consists of G.o.ddesses which are apparently pre-Aryan and of G.o.ds which are apparently Aryan. We, too, have drawn many parallels between the Celtic Fairy-Faith and the various fairy-faiths throughout the world; but now we should attempt to find out why there are animistic beliefs at all.

This chapter, then, will confine itself to a scientific examination of the more popular or, as it may be called, the exoteric aspect of the Fairy-Faith, which has come to us directly from the ma.s.ses of the Celtic peoples. The following chapter, which is corollary to the present one, will deal especially with the mystical aspect or, as this may be called by contrast, the esoteric aspect of the same belief, which, in turn, has come to us from learned mystics and seers, who form, in proportion, but a very small minority of the modern Celts. Each of these complementary aspects of the Celtic religion undoubtedly has its origin in the remotest antiquity. This is probably more readily seen with respect to the former than to the latter. The latter has been esoteric always, and in our opinion shows an unbroken tradition (if only a very incomplete one) from druidic times; and it depends less upon written records, because the Druids had none, than upon oral transmission from age to age. Both aspects of the Fairy-Faith have in modern times absorbed many ideas from non-Celtic systems of religion and mystical thought. As Mr.

Jenner has suggested in his Introduction for Cornwall, and as certain details in chapter ii clearly indicate, systems of modern theosophy have had a marked influence in this respect; but it is impossible for us to-day to say what parts of the Fairy-Faith are purely Celtic and what are not so, because comparative studies prove that mysticism is fundamentally the same in all ages and among all peoples. It is psychologically true, also, that there must always exist some sort of affinity between two sets of thought in order for them to coalesce.

Hence, if modern mysticism (derived from Oriental or other sources) has, as we believe, affected Celtic mysticism as handed down from the dim druidic ages, it is merely because the two occupy a common psychical territory. We must therefore be content to examine scientifically the Fairy-Faith as it now presents itself.

The a.n.a.lysis of evidence in chapter iii indicates clearly that there is in the exoteric part of the modern Celtic belief in fairies considerable degeneration from what must have been in pagan times a widespread and highly developed animistic creed. In the esoteric part of it there will be observed, instead of such degeneracy, a surprisingly elaborate system of the most subtle speculation, which parallels that of East Indian systems of metaphysics. If the belief be looked at in this comprehensive manner, it seems to be clear that to some extent at least, as has been pointed out already (pp. 99, 257), the Fairy-Faith in its purest form originated amongst the most highly educated and scientific Celts of ancient times rather than among their unlearned fellows. The two aspects of the belief form an harmonious whole as they will be presented in this Section IV. Chapter xi depends mostly upon the evidence set forth in chapter ii. Chapter xii depends mostly upon the evidence set forth in chapter vii.

In chapter iii we examined anthropologically the modern; and (both there and in parts of chapters following) the historical and ancient belief in fairies in Celtic countries, and found it to be in essence animistic.

Folk-imagination, social psychology, anthropomorphism generally, adequately explained by far the greater ma.s.s of the evidence presented; but the animistic background of the belief in question presented problems which the strictly anthropological sciences are unable to solve. The point has now been reached when these problems must be presented to physiology and to psychology for solution. If they can be completely solved by purely rational and physical data, then the Fairy-Faith as a whole will have to be cast aside as worthless in the eyes of science.

In our generation, however, such a casting aside is not to be the fate of the folk-religion of the Celts: the following phenomena recorded in chapter ii and elsewhere throughout our study, and designated as the x- or unknown quant.i.ty of the Fairy-Faith, cannot at the present time be satisfactorily explained by science: (1) Collective hallucinations and veridical hallucinations; (2) objects moving without contact; (3) raps and noises called 'supernatural'; (4) telepathy; (5) seers.h.i.+p and visions; (6) dream and trance states manifesting supernormal knowledge; (7) 'mediums.h.i.+p' or 'spirit-possession'. Independently of our own Celtic data in their support, the first cla.s.s of phenomena are supported by an enormous ma.s.s of good data scientifically collected; the second and third cla.s.s are less well supported; telepathy is almost generally accepted as now being established; the last three cla.s.ses are hypothetically accepted by many authorities in pathology, psychology, and psychical research.

SCIENTIFIC ATt.i.tUDES TOWARDS THE ANIMISTIC HYPOTHESIS

a.s.sertions similar to ours, that phenomena like these are incapable of being explained away by any known laws of orthodox science, have helped to bring about a marked division in the ranks of scientific workers. On one hand there are those scientists who deny the existence of anything not capable of being mathematically tested, weighed, dissected, or otherwise a.n.a.lysed in laboratories; on the other hand, there are their colleagues who, often in spite of previous bias toward materialism, have arrived at a personal conviction that an animistic view of man is more in harmony with their scientific experience than any other. Both schools include men eminent in all branches of biological sciences.

Midway between these contending schools are the psycho-physicists who maintain that man is a twofold being composed of a psychical and physical part. Some of them are inclined to favour animism, others are unwilling to regard the psychical part of man as separable from the physical part. So the world of science is divided.

Under such chaotic conditions of science it is our right to accept one view or another, or to reject all views and use scientific data independently. There can be no final court of appeal in matters where opinion is thus divided, save the experience of coming generations. We are therefore content to state our own position and leave it to the future for rejection or acceptance, as the case may be. To attempt a critical examination of the thousand and one theories occupying the modern arena of scientific controversy about the essential nature of man is altogether beyond the scope of this work. We must, nevertheless, blaze a rough footpath through the jungle of scientific theories, and, at the outset, put on record our opposition to that school of scientific workers who deny to man a supersensuous const.i.tution. Their theory, if carried out to its logical conclusion, is now essentially no different from Feuerbach's theory at a time when science was far less developed than it is to-day. He held that 'the object of sense, or the sensuous, alone is really true, and therefore truth, reality, and the sensible are one'.[567] To say that we know reality through sensual perception is an error, as all schools of scientists must nowadays admit. Nature is for ever illuding the senses; she masquerades in disguise until science tears away her mask. We must always adjust the senses to the world itself: where there are only vibrations in ether, man sees light; and in atmospheric vibrations he hears sound. We only know things through the way in which our senses react upon them. We sum up the world-problem by saying: 'consciousness does not exhaust its object, the world.'[567]

Perceptibility and reality thus not being coincident, man and the universe remain an unsolved problem, despite the noisy shoutings of the materialist in his hermetically sealed and light-excluding case called sensual perceptions. Science admits that all her explanations of the universe are mere products of human understanding and perceptions by the physical senses: the universe of science is wholly a universe of phenomena, and behind phenomena, as no scientist would dare deny, there must be the noumena, the ultimate causes of all things, as to which science as yet offers no comprehensive hypothesis, much less an answer.

To consider the materialistic hypothesis as adequate to account for the residuum or x-quant.i.ty of the Fairy-Faith would not even be reasonable, and, incontestably, would not be scientific.

When scientists holding to the non-animistic view of life are driven from their now for the most part abandoned fortress built by German scientists of the last century, of whom Feuerbach was a type, they, in opposing the animists, occupy a more modernly equipped fortress called the Pathological Theory. This theory is that 'mediums.h.i.+p', telepathy, hallucinations, or the voluntary and involuntary exercise of any so-called 'psychical' faculties on the part of men and women, with the resulting phenomena, can be explained as due to abnormal and hence--according to its point of view--diseased states of the human organism, or to some derangement of bodily functions, leading to delusions resembling those of insanity, which by a sort of hypnosis telepathically induced may even affect researchers and lead them into erroneous conclusions. All scientists are in agreement with the Pathological Theory in so far as it rejects as unworthy of serious consideration all apparitions and abnormal phenomena save those observed by sane and healthy percipients under ordinary conditions. And, accordingly, whenever there can be shown in our percipients a diseased mental or psychical state, we must eliminate their testimony without argument. But since we have endeavoured to present no testimony from Celtic percipients who are not physically and psychically normal, the Pathological Theory at best can affect the x-quant.i.ty merely hypothetically.

The following admission in regard to visual and auditory hallucinations is here worth noting as coming from so thorough an exponent of materialistic psychology as M. Theodule Ribot:--'There must exist anatomical and physiological causes which would solve the problem, but unfortunately they are hidden from us.' Of these hidden causes, which he thinks create all psychical states of mind or consciousness called by him 'disease of personality', M. Ribot says:--'Our ignorance of the causes stops us short. The psychologist is here like the physician who has to deal with a disease in which he can make out only the symptoms.

What physiological influences are they which thus alter the general tone of the organism, consequently of the coenaesthesis, consequently too of the memory? Is it some condition of the vascular system? Or some inhibitory action, some arrest of function? We cannot say.'[568] And after six years of most careful experimentation, M. Charles Richet, Professor of Physiology in the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, reached this conclusion:--'There exists in certain persons at certain moments a faculty of acquiring knowledge which has no _rapport_ with our normal faculties of that kind.'[569] We seem to have here the last words of science touching the Pathological Theory.

When driven from their pathological stronghold, and they maintain that they have not been driven from it, the non-animists always find a safe way to cover their retreat by setting up the charge that all psychical phenomena are fraudulent or else due to delusion on the part of observers. In reply, psychical researchers readily admit that there is a large percentage of mere trickery, delusion, and imposture in observed 'spirit' phenomena; some of which is deliberate on the part of the 'medium' and some of which is apparently not consciously induced.

Nevertheless, such investigators are not at all willing to say that there is nothing more than this. The Delusion and Imposture Theory will account for a very respectable proportion of these phenomena, but not for all of them, and theoretically we shall admit its application to the parallel phenomena attributed to fairies; though it must be acknowledged that 'fairy' phenomena are for the most part spontaneously exhibited rather than as in 'Spiritualism' set up through holding _seances_.

Further, there are comparatively few 'charmers' or 'wise men'--the fairy 'mediums' among the Celts--who ever make money out of their ability to deal with the 'good people', or _Tylwyth Teg_; whence the margin of encouragement for fraudulent production of 'fairy' phenomena is extremely limited when compared with 'Spiritualism'.

After twenty-five years of experimentation, more or less continuous, with 'mediums', during which every conceivable test for the detection of fraud on their part was applied, William James put his conclusions on record in these words:--'When imposture has been checked off as far as possible, when chance coincidence has been allowed for, when opportunities for normal knowledge on the part of the subject have been noted, and skill in "fis.h.i.+ng" and following clues unwittingly furnished by the voice or face of bystanders have been counted in, those who have the fullest acquaintance with the phenomena admit that in good mediums _there is a residuum of knowledge displayed_ [italics are James's own]

that can only be called supernormal: the medium taps some source of information not open to ordinary people.'[570] Mr. Andrew Lang, one of the bravest of psychical researchers in England, not only would agree with William James in this, but, having carefully examined the Delusion and Imposture Theory from the more commanding point of view of an anthropologist, would go further and include cla.s.sical spiritualistic phenomena as well as those existing among contemporary uncultured races.

He says:--'Meanwhile, the extraordinary similarity of savage and cla.s.sical spiritualistic rites, with the corresponding similarity of alleged modern phenomena, raises problems which it is more easy to state than to solve. For example, such occurrences as "rappings", as the movement of untouched objects, as the lights of the _seance_ room, are all easily feigned. But that ignorant modern knaves should feign precisely the same raps, lights, and movements as the most remote and unsophisticated barbarians, and as the educated Platonists of the fourth century after Christ, and that many of the other phenomena should be identical in each case, is certainly noteworthy.'[571] Evidently, then, there is a large proportion of psychical and 'fairy' phenomena which remain unexplained even after the Delusion and Imposture Theory has been applied to such phenomena, and in all such cases we must look further for a scientific explanation.

PROBLEMS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Our chief investigations will at first be directed more especially to the problems common both to psychology and to psychical research, namely, dream and trance states, hallucinations, and possessions, in order to show what bearings, if any, they have in the eyes of science upon parallel phenomena said to be due to fairies, and set forth in chapter ii and anthropologically examined in chapter iii.

_Dreams_

The popular opinion that dreams are nonsense is quite overthrown by definite psychological facts. When during sleep our sensory organs are exposed to external irritants the impressions physically produced are transmitted to the brain by the nervous system and react in dreams as they would in the waking state, except that the reactions in the two states of consciousness--the dream state and the waking state--differ in proportion as the two states differ; but in both the Ego is the real percipient.[572] Such stimuli as arise from after-theatre dinners, wine-parties, and so forth, produce a well-known type of dreams; and the same stimuli at the same period of time would produce an equal effect, though an altered one, to suit the altered psycho-physical conditions, if the waking state were active rather than the dream state, just as would all dreams which arise from pathological disturbances in disease, or abnormal physiological functions. This is evident from dreams of a morbid and sensual type, which directly affect the physical organism and its functions as parallel waking-states would. In all such dreams of the lower order, animal and purely physical tendencies, which are directly due to the state of the body, act very freely: an imperfectly balanced, temporarily deranged, or diseased organism must correspondingly respond to its driving forces. And it is clear from comparative study of phenomena that these lower kinds of dream states express only the lower or animal consciousness, which in most individuals is the predominant or only consciousness even in the waking life; and not the higher consciousness of the Ego or subconsciousness which may be expressed in somnambulism, for 'in somnambulism there awakes an inner, second Ego',[573] which is the Subliminal Self of Myers. Dr. G. F. Stout urges against Myers's theory of the Subliminal Self that 'the usual incoherence of dreams is an objection to regarding them as manifestations of a stream of thought equal or superior in systematic complexity and continuity to that of the waking self',[574] which objection Myers also observed. But if we regard all dreams which are of the lower order as being due to the imperfect response of the body to its driving forces because of various bad physical conditions in the body, and recognize that these driving forces depend ultimately on the subconsciousness, the difficulty seems to be met by observing that under such conditions there is no real mergence of the normal consciousness into the subconsciousness. Hence ordinary dreams are within the ordinary spectrum of consciousness; but extra-ordinary dreams pa.s.s beyond the ordinary spectrum into the truly supernormal state of consciousness.

As all this indicates, dreams are of many cla.s.ses: those of the lowest type, which we have explained as due to bad physiological conditions in the animal-man; those which are readily explainable as distorted reflections of waking actions, often based on some stray thought or suggestion of the day and then comparable to post-hypnotic suggestions.

Other dreams are demonstrably entirely outside the range of ordinary mental or physical disturbances, actions, reflections, or suggestions of the waking life, and seem thus 'to have a wider purview, and to indicate that the record of external events which is kept within us is far fuller than we know'.[575] In some dreams there is reasoning as well as memory, and mathematicians have been known to solve problems in sleep: an American inventor known to the writer's mother a.s.serted that he had dreamt out the details of a certain ice-manufacturing process which proved successful when tested; through self-suggestion set up in the waking state, R. L. Stevenson, upon entering the dream state, secured details for his imaginary romances.[576] Dr. Stout himself, in criticizing Myers's 'Subliminal Self', admits that 'in some very rare instances, a man has achieved, while dreaming, intellectual performances equalling or perhaps surpa.s.sing the best of which he was capable in waking life';[577] and there are many authentic cases of dream experiences which cannot possibly be explained as revivals of facts fallen out of the range of the ordinary memory or consciousness. We seem to be led to some hypothesis like this: in dreaming there is mental activity which in the waking state is either functionless or else below the psycho-physical threshold of sensibility; because much that is subconscious in the non-dream state is in the dream state fully conscious. And we probably do not remember one quarter of our dreams: they belong to a mainly different order of consciousness.

Professor Freud's view of dreams coincides pretty generally with this view. He holds that the subconsciousness is the storehouse out of which dream contents are drawn and acted upon by the dream mind. Very much distortion of the subconscious material takes place in the process, due to what he calls the 'endopsychic censor'. In the waking state this censor is always on the alert to keep out of consciousness all subconscious processes or deposits, but in sleep the censor is less alert, and allows some subconscious content to escape over into the ordinary consciousness. The result is a dream distorted out of all recognition of its origin. Such a dream seems to occupy a position midway between what we have cla.s.sed as the lowest or animal-mind dream and the highest or subliminal dream. It possibly shows an harmonious psycho-physical condition of the dream life, whereas the lowest type of dream shows the preponderance of the physical or animal, and the highest type of dream shows the preponderance of the psychical elements in man.

Further, it may be designated as the normal dream, and the other two types respectively as the physically abnormal and the psychically abnormal.