The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries

ver clear in the moonlight were immense stones piled, the remains of an original circ

ike a fiery sun suddenly uprisen within the world, and there was everywhere a wandering ecstasy of sound: light and sound were one; light had a voice, and the music hung glittering in the air.... "I am Aengus; men call me the Young. I am the sunlight in the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am

s in Brittany, by the circular fairy dance as an ancient initiatory sun-dance, by Breton earthworks, archaeological excavations generally, and by present-day worship at Indian dolmens-New Grange and Celtic Mysteries: evidence of manuscripts; evidence of t

g attempts have been made to explain this folk-belief by means of the Pygmy Theory of Fairies; and this folk-belief appears to be almost the chief one upon which the theory depends.[429] As was pointed out in the Introduction (p. xxiii), possibly one of the many threads interwoven into the complex fabric of the Fairy-Faith round an original psychical pattern may have been bequeathed by a folk-memory of some unknown,

te explanation. To us the inquiry is similar to an investigation into the reasons why ghosts should haunt a house, whereas the supporters of the Pygmy Theory forget the ghosts and tell all about the people who may or who may never have lived in the haunted house, and who built it. The megaliths, in the p

ens, Cromlech

els, and where ghost-like forms are sometimes seen in the moonlight, or even when there is no moon. M. Paul Sébillot in Le Folk-lore de France[431] has very adequately described

ting the theory of what has been erroneously called 'idol-worship'. All evidence goes to show that idols so called, are simply images used as media for the manifestation of ghosts, spirits, and gods: the ancients, like contemporary primitive races, do not seem ever to have actually worshipped such images, but simply to have supplicated by prayer and sacrifice the indwelling deity.[433] The ancient Egyptians, for example, conceived the Ka or personality as a thing separable from the person or body, and hence 'the statue of a human being represented and embodied a human Ka'. Likewise a statue of a god was the dwelling-place of a divine Ka, attracted to it by certain mystical formulae at the time of dedicat

at originally fetishes were regarded as gods themselves, and that gradually they came to be regarded as the dwellings of gods.[437] Certain well-defined Celtic traditions entirely fit in with this theory:-e. g. Canon Mahé writes, 'In accordance with this strange theory they (the Celts) could believe that rocks, set in motion by spirits which animated them, sometimes went to drink at rivers, as is said of the Peulvan at Noyal-Pontivy' (Morbihan);[438] and I have found a parallel belief at Rollright, Oxfordshire, England, where it is said of the King Stone, an ancient menh

to hell'.[441] Sir John Rh?s points out that Cenn Cruaich means 'Head or Chief of the Mound', and that the story of its inclined position suggests to us an ancient and gradually falling menhir planted on the summit of a tumulus or hill surrounded by twelve lesser pillar stones, all thirteen-itself a sacred number-regarded as the abodes of gods or else as gods themselves; and these gods are referred to as the demon exorcized from the place by Patrick. The central menhir or Cenn Cruaich probably represents the Solar God, and the twelve

some magical properties supposed to have been possessed by them; and most likely 'the stones were regarded as divine or as seats of divine power'.[447] And further (thereby admitting the sacred purpose of the group), Sir John Rh?s sees no objection to identifying Stonehenge with the famous temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, referred to in the journal of Pytheas' travels.[448] According to Sir John Rh?s's interpretation of

site of a sacred pagan shrine where a cult of stones once existed. The second stone figure (a female), now standing as a gate-post in the churchyard of St. Martin's parish, seems also to mark a spot where a pre-Christian sanctuary was christianized. The country-people of the district, up to the middle of the last century, considered it lucky to make floral and even food offerings to this stone;

urious dolmens and cromlechs (stone circles) on the summit of a mountain called the Clech or Mané er kloch, 'Mountain of the bell,' at Mendon, Arrondissement de Lorient, Morbihan, the same author gives it as his opinion, based on folk-traditions, that the cromlechs, like others in Brittany, were places in which the ancient Bretons practised necromancy and invoked the spirits of their ancestors, to whom they attributed great power. He then records a very valuable and interesting tradition concerning these monuments, which seems to i

ons took place, like those still flourishing among a few surviving American Indian tribes (who also dance the circular initiation dance), and among other primitive peoples, as we shall more adequately show in the chapter on St. Patrick's Purgatory. The Breton dance is, therefore, most likely the memorial of an ancient initiation dance, religious in character, and, probably, in honour of the sun, being circular in the same way that cromlechs dedicated to a sun-cult are circular. Stonehenge, the most highly developed type of the cromlech, was undoubtedly a sun-temple; and the dance anciently held in it, as described by Pytheas, in honour of the god Apollo, was

firm our opinion that the dance is the survival of an ancient sun-dance, the central figure being typical of the sun deity himself, or Apollo; and if we design this dance thus ☉, we have the astronomical emblem still used in all our calendars to represent the sun, one which in itself

wooden crucifix surmounts the great menhir, and at Carnac there is a dolmen likewise christianized by a stone cross-mounted on the table-stone. Again, M. J. Déchelette in his Manuel d'Archéologie Préhistorique, Celtique et Gallo-Romaine (p. 380) describes a dolmen at Plouaret (C?tes-du-Nord) converted into a chapel dedicated to the Seven Saints, and another dolmen at Saint-Germain-de-Confolens (Charente) likewise transformed into a place of worship. Miss Edith F. Carey thus explains the dolmens in the Channel Islands:-'All our old traditions prove our dolmens to have been the general rendezvous of our insular sorcerers. In sixteenth and seventeenth century manuscripts I have found these dolmens described as "altars of the gods of the sea".... One of our ancient dolmens retains its ancient name of De Hus, and a fifteenth-century "Perchage" of Fief de Léree tells us that a now destroyed dolmen on our western coast was dedicated to the same god, for Heus or Hesus was the War-God of ancient Gaul.'[458] The same writer describes excavations made at De Hus by Mr. Lukis, and that he found in a side chamber there two kneeling skeletons, one facing the north, the oth

ns were originally connected with religious usages, chiefly with a cult of gods and fairy-like beings, and, though less commonly

and Celti

es, like New Grange and Gavrinis may also properly be considered as places for rendering worship or even sacrifice to the dead, and, perhaps, as places for religious pilgrimages and sacred rites. This, too, seems to be the opinion of M. J

ur second section generally, the testimony indicates that the essential nature of these fairy-folk is subjective or spiritual. These two facts at the outset are very important and fundamental, because we expect to show even more clearly than we have just done in the case of menhirs, dolmens, cromlechs, and

he three great Boyne tumuli is meant. Even though it could be shown conclusively that some mighty hero or king had actually been entombed in New Grange, as is likely, in the earth behind the chamber, under the chamber's floor, or even within the chamber, still, as we have already pointed out, most of the great Irish heroes and kings were in popular belief literally gods incarnate, and, therefore (as commonly among all ancient peoples, civilized and non-civilized, who held the same doctrin

Sidh before

o you that it is

uilt by the

a court, an adm

cemetery and as a place for the celebration of pagan mysteries. It is known that most of the Mysteries of Antiquity were psychic in their nature, having to do with the neophyte's entrance into Hades or the invisible world while out of the physical body, or else with direct communication with gods, spirits, and shades of the

nsider New Grange as an ancient abode of mortal men, for 'the spirits of the dead, the fairies, the Sidhe, might have had their brugh, or palace, as well'.[467] And he points out that in the old Irish manuscripts we have proof that it was supposed to be thus used. This proof is found in the Agallamh na Senórach or 'Colloquy with the Ancients' by St. Patrick, from the Book of Lismore, a fifteenth-century manuscript copied from older manuscripts and now translated by Standish H. O'Grady:-The three sons of the King of Ireland, by name Ruidhe, Fiacha, and Eochaid, leaving their nurse's and guardian's house, went to fert na ndruadh, i. e. 'grave of the wizards', north-west of Tara, to ask of their father a country, a domain; but he refused their request, and then they formed a project to gain lands and riches by fasting on the tuatha dé Danann at the brugh upon the Boyne: '"Lands therefore I will not bestow on you, but win lands for yourself." Thereupon they with the ready rising of one man rose and took their way to the green of the brugh upon the Boyne where, none other being in their company, they sat them down. Ruidhe said: "What is your plan to-night?" His brothers rejoined: "Our project is to fast on the tuatha dé Danann, aiming thus to win from them good fortune in the shape of a country, of a domain, of lands, and to have vast riches." Nor had they been long ther

vidently describes a cult of royal or famous ancestral spirits identified with the god-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

he 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 síd of the cave, and the place where the pilgrims fasted-a situation and a practice precisely similar to those which, under Christian auspices, were co

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 th

ouse in t

hostages are g

not, harrying

e 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 manuscripts. Until quite modern times the folk-lore of the Boyne country still echoed similar traditions about unknown mystic rites, following what

engus

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 m

ortified 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-dúns 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-r

cient', was the greatest magician of ancient Wales, and his relation as teacher to Gwydion ab D?n, the great Welsh Culture Hero, leads Sir John Rh?s 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 chie

d the Great P

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 circumstantial 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

s with the most logical and reasonable arguments that the builders of the Pyramid have placed its main entrance in an undiscovered passage-way beneath the Great Sphinx, now half-buried in the shifting 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 passage-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 distanc

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

ondrous glory of a tropical sunrise.[491] And in the same Aryan land there is an opposite worship: the dreaded Thugs, worshippers of devils and of Kali the death-goddess, 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

ries. 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 Mason

y 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 π 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 esoter

nd New Gra

[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 passage-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 ancie

he dead (because the ancient cult was one of ancestor worship and worship of gods 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 al

TIO

, SPIRITS, FAIRI