The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

n and what is in man-humani nihil

angeling Belief and its explanation according to the Kidnap, Human-Sacrifice, Soul-Wandering, and Demon-Possession Theory-Ancient and Modern Magic and Witchcraft shown to be based on definite ps

aith as Part of a

world-wide animism, which forms the background of all religions in whatever stage of culture religions exist or to which they have attained by evolution, from the barbarism of the Congo black man to the civilization of the Archbishop of Canterbury; and as far back as we can go into human origins there is some corresponding belief

dowy, and, like the Irish Sidhe, as always youthful in appearance. Precisely like their Celtic counterparts in general, these Australian spirits are believed to haunt inanimate objects such as stones and trees; or to frequent totem centres, as in Ireland demons (daemons) are believed to frequent certain places known to have been anciently dedicated to the religious rites of the pre-Christian Celts; and, quite after the manner of the Breton dead and of most fairies, they are said to control human affairs and natural phenomena. All the Arunta invariably regard thems

iritual beings, which they call Vui and Wui, and these beings hav

n and women, and exhibit the same powers, as the Scotch and Irish peasants assign to the 'good people'. They t

, in the earth and in the air; and that these beings produce storms, droughts, good and bad harvests, abundance and scarcity of game, disease, and the varying fortunes of men. Mr. Leland, who has carefully studied these American bel

th immortality, such as ghosts and spirits on the one hand, and gods, demi-gods, and warriors on the other; for whether in bodies in this world or out of bodies in the invisible world, they equally live and act-quite as fairies do.[116] Throughout the Malay Peninsula, belie

g mankind. Some of these Phi live in forests, in trees, in open spaces; and watercourses are full of them. Others inhabit mountains and high places. A particular order who haunt the sacred trees surrounding the Buddhist temples are known as Phi nang mai; and since nang is the word for female, and mai for tree, they are comparable to tree-dwelling fairies, or Greek wood-nymphs. Still another order called Chao phum phi (gods o

even those who are well educated, have a firm belief in jinns and afreets, different orders of good and bad spirits with all t

best, and at their worst cruel. Their presence is suspected everywhere. I myself had a nereid pointed out to me by my guide, and there certainly was the semblance of a female figure draped in white, and tall beyond human stature, flitting in the dusk between the gnarled and twisted boles of an old olive-yard. What the apparition was, I had no leisure to investigate; for my guide with many signs of t

any a shepherd with his pipes has been favoured by them, though they have their own music and songs too. The Albanian peoples have evil fairies, no taller than children twelve years old, called in Modern Greek τ? ?ξωτικ?, 'those without,' who correspond to the Iele. Young people who have been enticed to enter their round dance afterwards waste away and die, apparently becoming one of 'those without'. These Albanian spirits, like the 'good people' and the Breton dead, have their own

a very valuable study on the Neo-Latin Fay, Mr. H. C. Coote writes:-'Who were the Fays-the fate of later Italy, the fées of mediaeval France? For it is perfectly clear that the fatua, fata, and fée are all one and the same word.' And he pr

easant. And in all cases, whether the beliefs examined be Celtic or non-Celtic, Aryan or non-Aryan, from Australia, Polynesia, Africa, America, Asia, or Europe, they are in essence animistically the same, as later sections in this chapter will make clear. But while the parallelism of these beliefs is indicated it is, of course, not meant for

uence of Soc

conditions alike. But a decided change is beginning to manifest itself in the interpretation of the customs and beliefs of the ruder races. It is assumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must,

t these peoples are not a single social group, but rather a number of such groups, and this is, in a way, true. Nevertheless their folk-lore displays such remarkable homogeneity, from whatever quarter of the Celtic world it be derived, that it seems the s

at the same time one which any primitive society is bound to display. On the other hand, in a second aspect, the Celtic beliefs show of themselves a character which is wholly Celtic: in the Fairy-Faith, which is generically animistic, we find reflected all sorts of specific characteristics of the Celtic

of Elvish Spir

cal or Py

ave rise to the belief in a fairy world existing in caverns and under hills or mountains. When analysed, our evidence shows that in the majority of cases witnesses have regarded fairies either as non-human nature-spirits or else as spirits of the dead; that in a comparatively limited number of cases they have regarded them as the souls of prehistoric races; and that occasionally they have regarded the belief in them as due to a folk-memory of such races. It follows, then, from such an analysis of evidence, that the Pygmy Theory probably do

stic

archaic. This blending of the natural or ethnological and the supernatural-in quite the same manner as in the modern Fairy-Faith-is clearly seen in another of Campbell's collected tales, The Lad with the Skin Coverings,[127] which in essence is an otherworld tale: 'a little thickset man in a russet coat,' who is a magician, but who otherwise seems to be a genuine Lapp dressed in furs, is introduced into a story where real fairy-like beings play the chief parts. Again, in Irish literature, we read of a loch luchra or 'lake of the pygmies'.[128] Light is thrown upon this reference by what is recorded about the leprechauns and Fergus:-While asleep on the seashore one day, Fergus was about to be carried off by the luchorpáin; 'whereat he awoke and caught three of them, to wit, one in each of his two hands, and one on his breast. "Life for life" (i. e. protection), say they. "Let my three wishes (i

he Source of the Missouri River, found among the Sioux a tradition that a hill near the Whitestone River, which the Red Men called the 'Mountain of Little People' or 'Little Spirits', was inhabited by pygmy demons in human form, about eighteen inches tall, armed with sharp arrows, and ever on the alert to kill mortals who should dare to invade their domain. So afraid were all the tribes of Red Men who lived near the mountain of these little spirits that no one of them could be induced to visit

wild races of pygmy stature, are myths about the spirits called wui or vui, who correspond to European dwarfs and trolls. These little spirits seem to occupy the same position toward the Melanesian gods or culture heroes, Qat of the Banks Islands and Tagaro of the New Hebrides, as daemons toward Greek gods, or as good angels toward the Christian Trinity, or as fa

ords testify to the existence of pygmies in China during the twenty-third century B. C.;[139] yet no one has ever tried to explain the well-known animistic beliefs of modern Chinamen in ghosts, demons, and in little nature-spirits like fairies, by saying that these are a folk-memory of this ancient pygmy race. In Yezo and the Kurile Islands of Japan still survive a few of the hairy Ainu, a Caucasian-like, under-sized race; and their immediate predecessor

c folk conception of fairies as small-statured beings. Mr. A. E. Crawley, in his Idea of the Soul (pp. 200-1, 206), shows by carefully selected evidence from ancient and modern psychologies that 'first among the attributes of the soul in its primary form may be placed its size', and that 'in the majority of cases

of Dêr el Bahri, Queen Hatsheps? Rāmaka is making offerings of perfume to the gods, while just behind her stands her Ka (soul) as a pygmy so little that the crown of its head is just on a level with her waist.[142] The Ka is u

o often represented the soul as a small winged human figure, and Romans, in turn, imagined the soul as a pygmy with butterfly wings. These ideas reappear in mediaeval reliefs and pictures wherein the soul i

and Mysti

raise the final problem-if there are any scientific grounds for believing in such pygmy nature-spirits as these remarkable thinkers of the Middle Ages claim to have studied as beings actually existing in nature. To some extent this intere

and happily is now again in our own generation. But they were quite scientific in their methods, for they divided all invisible beings into four distinct classes: the Angels, who in character and function are parallel to the gods of the ancients, and equal to the Tuatha De Danann of the Irish, are the highest; below t

especially like the aerials in The Tempest, which, according to Mr. Morton Luce, a commentator on the drama, seem to have been shaped by Shakespeare from his knowledge of Rosicrucian occultism, in which such spirits hold an important place. Those inhabiting the water are called Undines, and correspond exactly to the fairies who live in sacred fountains, lakes, or rivers. And the fourth kind, those inhabiting the fire, are called Salamanders, and seldom appear in the Celtic Fairy-Faith: they are supreme in the elementary hierarchies. All these Elementals, who procreate after the manner of men, are said to have bodies of an elastic half-material essence, which is sufficiently ethereal not to be visible to the physical sight, and probably comparable to matter in the form of invisible gases. Mr. W. B. Yeats has given this explanation:-'Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages an

its, and who seem to be a sorrowful race. I once saw some of them distinctly on the side of Ben Bulbin. They had rather round heads and dark thick-set bodies, and in stature were about two and one-half feet. (2) The Leprechauns are different, being full of mischief, though they, too, are small. I followed a leprechaun from the town of Wicklow out to the Carraig Sidhe, "Rock of the Fairies," a distance of half a mile or more, where he disappeared. He had a very merry face, and beckoned to me with

the Rosicrucians, and the Theosophists, that there exist in nature invisible spiritual beings of pygmy stature and of various forms and characters, comparable in all

ies as pygmy spirits may be purely Celtic, and how far they may reflect beliefs not Celtic. The problem, however, is far too complicated to be discussed here; and one may briefly say that there seems to have been a time in the evolution of animism when the ancient Celts of Britain, of Ireland, and of Continental Europe too, held, in common with the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Teutons, an original Aryan doctrine. This doctrine, after these four stocks separated in possession of it, bega

clu

belief in certain kinds of fairies, and thus have been a shaping influence in the animistic traditions about other fairies. The animistic argument shows that pygmies described in Celtic literature and in Celtic and non-Celtic mythologies are nearly always to be thought of as non-human spirits; and that there is now and was in past ages a world

ngeling

in chapter ii; and we are now to consider the second. The prevalent and apparently the only important theories which are current to explain this belief in changelings may be des

ap T

tales about having been in an underground fairy-world with fairies. Frequently this argument has taken a slightly different form: that instead of unfriendly pre-Celtic peoples it was magic-working Druids who-either through their own choice or else, having been driven to bay by the spread of Christianity, through force of circumstances-dwelt in secret in chambered mounds or sou

it, the changeling belief, there are conceivably more of such elements which lend some support to the Kidnap Theory. In itself, however, as w

acrific

his might easily translate itself in the folk-memory into the statement that the fairies had carried off the healthy' (alone acceptable as sacrifice) 'and left in exchange the sickly.'[152] Though our evidence will not permit us to accept the theory (why it will not will be clear as we proceed) that some such sacrificial customs

gether with horses and hounds, a practice corresponding to that of American Red Men; the idea being that the sacrificed Trojans and the horses and hounds as well, were thus sent to serve the slain warriors in the otherworld. Among ourselves in Europe and in America it is not uncommon to read in the daily newspaper about a suicide as r

cient Irish funeral[156]:-'Fiachra then brought fifty hostages with him from Munster'; and, when he died, 'the hostages which he brought from the south were buried alive around the Fert (burial mound) o

ory is also inadequate; for, though changelings may in some cases in ancient times have conceivably been the sickly children discarded by priests as unfit for

ndering

er takes it.'[157] In Banks Island, Polynesia, the ghost of a woman who has died in childbirth is greatly dreaded: as long as her child is on earth she cannot proceed to Panoi, the otherworld; and the relatives take her child to another house, 'because they know that the mother will come back to take its soul.'[158] When a Motlav child sneezes, the mother will cry, 'Let him come back into the world! let him remain.' Under similar circumstances in Mota, the cry is, 'Live; roll back to us!' 'The notion is that a ghost is drawing a child's soul away.' If the chil

62] just as among Celts sickness is often thought to be due to fairies having taken the soul to Fairyland. An old Irish piper who came up to Lady Gregory's home at Coole Park told us that

plain the changeling idea than the Human-Sacrifice Theory

ossessi

possession of this character takes place there is-as in 'mediumship'-a change of personality, and the manner, thoughts, actions, language, and the whole nature of the possessed person are radically changed. Sometimes a foreign tongue, of which the subject is ignorant, is fluently spoken. When the possession is an evil one, as Dr. Nevius has observed in China, where the phenomena are common, the change of character is in the direction of imm

the child's body while the child's soul is out of it during sleep-and all fairies make changelings when a babe is asleep in its cradle at night, or during the day when it is left alone for a short time. The Chinese child-soul is then unable to return into its body until some kind of magical ceremony or exorcism expels the possessing demon; and through precisely similar methods, often aided by Christian priests, Celts cure changelings made by fairies, pixies, and corrigans. In the following account, therefore, apparently lies the root explanation of the puzzling beliefs concerning fairy changelings so commonly met with in the Celtic Fair

chologists; or, in a distinct type of changelings, those who exhibit great precocity in childhood combined with an old and wizened countenance, there is neither a changed personality nor demon-possession, but simply some abnormal physical or mental condition, in the nature of cretinism, atrophy, marasmus, or arrested development. One of the most striking examples of a changeling exists at Plouharnel-Carnac, Brittany, where there is now living a dwarf Breton whom I have photog

clu

cts of the essentially animistic Fairy-Faith as a whole, is accordingly limited in its explanation of this specialized part of the Fairy-Faith, the changeling belief,

would have been taken to heaven by Jehovah as fairies take souls to Fairyland through death. But the difference is that in human sacrifice men do voluntarily and for specific religious ends what various kinds of fairies or spirits w

hing: if it comes to a child or to a beautiful youth in any way whatsoever, the fairies have taken what they coveted. In all mythologies gods have always enjoyed the companionship of beautiful maidens, and goddesses the love of heroic youths; and they have often taken them to their world as th

ooked at philosophically, a fairy exchange of this kind is fair and evenly balanced, and there has been no true robbery. And in this aspect of the changeling creed-an aspect of it purely Celtic-there seems to be still another influence apart from human sacrifice, soul-abductions, demon or fairy-possession, and disease; namely, a greatly corrupted folk-memory of an ancient re-birth doctrine: the living are taken to the dead or the fairies and then sent back again, after the manner of Socrates' argument that the living come from the dead and the dead from the living (cf. our

and Wi

use exorcisms, they are able, acting independently, to counteract fairy power, thereby preventing changelings or curing them, saving churnings, healing man or beast of 'fairy-strokes', and, in short, nullifying all undesirable influences emanating from the fairy world. A correct interpretation of these magical elements so prominent in the Fairy-

Modern Ant

he 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 attitude 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

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, association of ideas, and similar processes; in short, are due to the operation

azer'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 m

he Anci

ir abodes throughout the Universe, act as the agents of the Unknown God, directing the operation of His cosmic laws and animating every star and planet. Inferior to these gods, 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 gods, con

ndian, Assyrian, 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 class of the Celts more than a

n 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 schoo

r 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 sexual passions of man or woman, magical mixtures called philtres are used. Almost all these definitions apply to the practices of black magic. But the great scho

and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; 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 a

he Anci

nour 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 s

99 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 shift 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 t

hology. 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.

trations of it, selected from numerous illustrations in the ancient Fairy-Faith, confirm Pliny's independent tes

nd America

ic. In our own age, a parallel development, which adequately illustrates 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 practitioners in Massachusetts, 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 associates, 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

e 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 rap

t'.[182] European codes, as illustrated by the sixth chapter of Lord Coke's Third Institute, have parallels to this definition:-'A witch is a person which hath conference with the devil;

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 b

rsity 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

went to the Sabbath with the fairies? or if she had not assisted at the assemblies held at the fountain of the fairies, near Domremy, around which dance malignant spirits?' And ano

clu

s' 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 dea

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 assert. And this hypothesis coincides in most essentials with the one we used as a basis for this

rci

d 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 Théologie (Roman Catholic) by L'Abbé Bergier:-'Exorcism-conjuration, prayer to God, 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:-'

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 c

e 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 Adamnan'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 Adamnan 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, s

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,

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

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 Nazianzus 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 asserts 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 de

orcism.[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 fête 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,

reviously 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 illustration of what Welsh exorcis

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

edeemer and

all witchcraft and

] Devil Amen ? O

the power of all evil men; women; spirits; or wizards pa

g seven kinds of grain.' The rope is stretched between two poles at the entrance of a village, and under it the cattle pass 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 ro

iry-Faith in a very fundamental manner. And anthropologically the whole subject of exorcism falls in li

bo

r Folk'), or bonnes dames ('good ladies'). A like sort of taboo, with its accompanying use of euphemisms, existed among the Ancients, e. g. among the Egyptians and Babylonians, and early Celts as well, in a highly developed form; and it exists now among the native peoples of Australia, Polynesia, Centr

ete thought of the primitive culture that the one virtually is the other: just as one inevitably calls up the other for the modern thinker, so it is that, in the world of objective fact, for the primitive philosopher the one is equivalent to the other. The primitive man, in short, has projected his subjective associations int

n, Ahak-tah, after an apparent death of two days' duration, revived, and declared that he had been to a beautiful land of tall trees and singing-birds, where he met the spirits of his forefathers and uncle. While there, he felt hunger, and seeing in a bark dish some wild rice, wished to eat of it, but his uncle would allow him none. In telli

hat he is physically, so eating the food of Fairyland or of the land of the dead will make the eater partake of the bodily nature of the beings it nourishes. Hence when a man or woman has once entered into such relation or communion with the Otherworld of the dead, or of fairies, by ea

e Pygmy Theory. Apparently, however, it is only a partial explanation of iron taboo in general, because, in many cases, iron in ancient religious rites certainly had magical properties attributed to it, which to us are quite unexplainable from this ethnological point of view;[212] and in Melanesia and in Africa, where iron is venerated now, the same explanation through ethnology seems far-fetched.

en to himself. In the same way, in Melanesia, violations of sacred spots bring like penalties: 'A man planted in the bush near Olevuga some coco-nut and almond trees, and not long after died,' the place being a spirit preserve;[213] and a man in the Lepers' Island lost his senses, because, as the natives believed, he had unwittingly trodden on ground sacred to Tagar

Ancien

iving Fairy-Faith.[214] So essential are they to the character of much of the literary and mythological matter with which we shall have to

f the Tuatha De Danann, the true Fairies, originally inhabitants of the Otherworld. (See our chapter vii.) As Dr. Frazer points out to have been the case among non-Celts, with whom the same theory of incarnated divinities has preva

rld of men and the world of the Tuatha De Danann; and, as old Irish literature indicates clearly, it was through the exercise of powers of divination on the part of Druids that these declared what was taboo or what was unfavourable, and also what it was favourable for the divine king or hero to perform. As long as man kept himself i

ases the king seems to suffer vicariously for his people. Almost every great Gaelic hero-a god or Great Fairy Bei

th to the breaker. Its whole background appears to rest on a supernatural relationship between divine men and the Otherworld of the Tuatha De Danann; and it is very certain that this ancient relationship survives in the

-Sac

y doubt it is a survival from pagan times, when, as we shall observe later (in chapter iv, 291, and elsewhere), propitiatory offerings were regularly made to the T

bstinence, that all the various orders of gods, genii or daemons, enjoy as nourishment the odour of burnt offerings. And like the Fairy-Folk, the daemons of the air live not on the gross substance of food, but on its finer invisible essences, conveyed to them most easily on the altar-fire.[217] Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, and other leading Greeks, as well as the Romans

estors, is thus set forth by Plato in his Laws:-'In the first place, we affirm that next after the Olympian Gods, and the Gods of the State, honour should be given to the Gods below.... Next to these Gods, a wise man will

vered underlying human-sacrifice, in our study of the Changeling Belief; and that the Tuatha De Danann in their true mythological nature, and fa

c Legend

show that there is often no essential and sometimes no distinguishable difference between these two orders of beings, nor between the world of the dead and fairyland. We reserve for our chapter on Science

l Conc

ere remain, however, very many minor anthropological problems not yet touched upon; but several of the most important of these, e. g. various cults of gods, spirits, fairies, and the dead, and folk-festivals thereto related (see Section III); the circular fairy-dance (see pp. 405-6); or the fairy world as th

beings are objects of belief now not only in Celtic countries, but in Central Australia, throughout Polynesia, in Africa, among American Red Men, in Asia generally, in Southern, Western, and Northern Europe, and, in fact, wherever civilized and primitive men hold religious beliefs. From a rationalist point of view anthropologists would be inclined to regar

nvironment: we see merely an anthropomorphically coloured picture of the whole of an age-long social evolution of the tribe, race, or nation who have fostered the particular aspect of this one world-wide folk-religion. But if we look still deeper, we discover as background to the myths and the social psychology a profound animism. This animism appears in its own environment in the shading away of the different fairy-l

r mass of the evidence-as due to ethnological, anthropomorphic, naturalistic, or sociological influences on the Celtic mind; and for the present this must be designated as t

we proceed further; and what has been demonstrated anthropologically in this chapter will serve to interpret what is to follow until chapter xi is reached. With this tentat

TIO

RDED FAI