THE CELTIC OTHERWORLD[321]

'In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart.'--W. B. YEATS.

'Many go to the Tir-na-nog in sleep, and some are said to have remained there, and only a vacant form is left behind without the light in the eyes which marks the presence of a soul.'--A. E.

General ideas of the Otherworld: its location; its subjectivity; its names; its extent; Tethra one of its kings--The Silver Branch and the Golden Bough; and Initiations--The Otherworld the Heaven-World of all religions--Voyage of Bran--Cormac in the Land of Promise--Magic Wands--Cuchulainn's Sick-Bed--Ossian's return from Fairyland--Lanval's going to Avalon--Voyage of Mael-Duin--Voyage of Teigue--Adventures of Art--Cuchulainn's and Arthur's Otherworld Quests--Literary Evolution of idea of Happy Otherworld.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

The Heaven-World of the ancient Celts, unlike that of the Christians, was not situated in some distant, unknown region of planetary s.p.a.ce, but here on our own earth. As it was necessarily a subjective world, poets could only describe it in terms more or less vague; and its exact geographical location, accordingly, differed widely in the minds of scribes from century to century. Sometimes, as is usual to-day in fairy-lore, it was a subterranean world entered through caverns, or hills, or mountains, and inhabited by many races and orders of invisible beings, such as demons, shades, fairies, or even G.o.ds. And the underground world of the _Sidhe_-folk, which cannot be separated from it, was divided into districts or kingdoms under different fairy kings and queens, just as the upper world of mortals. We already know how the Tuatha De Danann or _Sidhe_-folk, after their defeat by the Sons of Mil at the Battle of Tailte, retired to this underground world and took possession of its palaces beneath the green hills and vales of Ireland; and how from there, as G.o.ds of the harvest, they still continued to exercise authority over their conquerors, or marshalled their own invisible spirit-hosts in fairy warfare, and sometimes interfered in the wars of men.

More frequently, in the old Irish ma.n.u.scripts, the Celtic Otherworld was located in the midst of the Western Ocean, as though it were the 'double' of the lost Atlantis;[322] and Manannan Mac Lir, the Son of the Sea--perhaps himself the 'double' of an ancient Atlantean king--was one of the divine rulers of its fairy inhabitants, and his palace, for he was one of the Tuatha De Danann, was there rather than in Ireland; and when he travelled between the two countries it was in a magic chariot drawn by horses who moved over the sea-waves as on land. And fairy women came from that mid-Atlantic world in magic boats like spirit boats, to charm away such mortal men as in their love they chose, or else to take great Arthur wounded unto death. And in that island world there was neither death nor pain nor scandal, nought save immortal and unfading youth, and endless joy and feasting.

Even yet at rare intervals, like a phantom, Hy Brasil appears far out on the Atlantic. No later than the summer of 1908 it is said to have been seen from West Ireland, just as that strange invisible island near Innishmurray, inhabited by the invisible 'gentry', is seen--once in seven years. And too many men of intelligence testify to having seen Hy Brasil at the same moment, when they have been together, or separated, as during the summer of 1908, for it to be explained away as an ordinary illusion of the senses. Nor can it be due to a mirage such as we know, because neither its shape nor position seems to conform to any known island or land ma.s.s. The Celtic Otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save with the mystic vision of the Irish seer. Thus in the legend of Bran's friends, who sat over dinner at Harlech with the Head of Bran for seven years, three curious birds acted as musicians, the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which were said to sing the dead back to life and the living into death;--but the birds were not in Harlech, they were out over the sea in the atmosphere of Rhiannon's realm in the bosom of Cardigan Bay.[323] And though we might say of that Otherworld, as we learn from these Three Birds of Rhiannon, and as Socrates would say, that its inhabitants are come from the living and the living in our world from the dead there, yet, as has already been set forth in chapter iv, we ought not to think of the _Sidhe_-folk, nor of such great heroes and G.o.ds as Arthur and Cuchulainn and Finn, who are also of its invisible company, as in any sense half-conscious shades; for they are always represented as being in the full enjoyment of an existence and consciousness greater than our own.

In Irish ma.n.u.scripts, the Otherworld beyond the Ocean bears many names.

It is _Tir-na-nog_, 'The Land of Youth'; _Tir-Innambeo_, 'The Land of the Living'; _Tir Tairngire_, 'The Land of Promise'; _Tir N-aill_, 'The Other Land (or World)'; _Mag Mar_, 'The Great Plain'; and also _Mag Mell_, 'The Plain Agreeable (or Happy).'

But this western Otherworld, if it is what we believe it to be--a poetical picture of the great subjective world--cannot be the realm of any one race of invisible beings to the exclusion of another. In it all alike--G.o.ds, Tuatha De Danann, fairies, demons, shades, and every sort of disembodied spirits--find their appropriate abode; for though it seems to surround and interpenetrate this planet even as the X-rays interpenetrate matter, it can have no other limits than those of the Universe itself. And that it is not an exclusive realm is certain from what our old Irish ma.n.u.scripts record concerning the Fomorian races.[324] These, when they met defeat on the battle-field of Moytura at the hands of the Tuatha De Danann, retired altogether from Ireland, their overthrow being final, and returned to their own invisible country--a mysterious land beyond the Ocean, where the dead find a new existence, and where their G.o.d-king Tethra ruled, as he formerly ruled in this world. And the fairy women of Tethra's kingdom, even like those who came from the Tuatha De Danann of Erin, or those of Manannan's ocean-world, enticed mortals to go with them to be heroes under their king, and to behold there the a.s.semblies of ancestors. It was one of them who came to Connla, son of Conn, supreme king of Ireland; and this was her message to him:--'The immortals invite you. You are going to be one of the heroes of the people of Tethra. You will always be seen there, in the a.s.semblies of your ancestors, in the midst of those who know and love you.' And with the fairy spell upon him the young prince entered the gla.s.s boat of the fairy woman, and his father the king, in great tribulation and wonder, beheld them disappear across the waters never to return.[324]

THE SILVER BRANCH[325] AND THE GOLDEN BOUGH

To enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by death, a pa.s.sport was often necessary, and this was usually a silver branch of the sacred apple-tree bearing blossoms, or fruit, which the queen of the Land of the Ever-Living and Ever-Young gives to those mortals whom she wishes for as companions; though sometimes, as we shall see, it was a single apple without its branch. The queen's gifts serve not only as pa.s.sports, but also as food and drink for mortals who go with her. Often the apple-branch produces music so soothing that mortals who hear it forget all troubles and even cease to grieve for those whom the fairy women _take_. For us there are no episodes more important than those in the ancient epics concerning these apple-tree talismans, because in them we find a certain key which unlocks the secret of that world from which such talismans are brought, and proves it to be the same sort of a place as the Otherworld of the Greeks and Romans. Let us then use the key and make a few comparisons between the Silver Branch of the Celts and the Golden Bough of the Ancients, expecting the two symbols naturally to differ in their functions, though not fundamentally.

It is evident at the outset that the Golden Bough was as much the property of the queen of that underworld called Hades as the Silver Branch was the gift of the Celtic fairy queen, and like the Silver Bough it seems to have been the symbolic bond between that world and this, offered as a tribute to Proserpine by all initiates, who made the mystic voyage in full human consciousness. And, as we suspect, there may be even in the ancient Celtic legends of mortals who make that strange voyage to the Western Otherworld and return to this world again, an echo of initiatory rites--perhaps druidic--similar to those of Proserpine as shown in the journey of Aeneas, which, as Virgil records it, is undoubtedly a poetical rendering of an actual psychic experience of a great initiate.

In Virgil's cla.s.sic poem the Sibyl commanded the plucking of the sacred bough to be carried by Aeneas when he entered the underworld; for without such a bough plucked near the entrance to Avernus from the wondrous tree sacred to Infernal Juno (i. e. Proserpine) none could enter Pluto's realm.[326] And when Charon refused to ferry Aeneas across the Stygian lake until the Sibyl-woman drew forth the Golden Bough from her bosom, where she had hidden it, it becomes clearly enough a pa.s.sport to Hades, just as the Silver Branch borne by the fairy woman is a pa.s.sport to _Tir N-aill_; and the Sibyl-woman who guided Aeneas to the Greek and Roman Otherworld takes the place of the fairy woman who leads mortals like Bran to the Celtic Otherworld.[327]

THE OTHERWORLD IDEA LITERALLY INTERPRETED

With this parallel between the Otherworld of the Celts and that of the Ancients seemingly established, we may leave poetical images and seek a literal interpretation for the animistic idea about those realms. The Rites of Proserpine as conducted in the Mysteries of Antiquity furnish us with the means; and in what Servius has written we have the material ready.[328] Taking the letter Y, which Pythagoras said is like life with its dividing ways of good and evil, as the mystic symbol of the branch which all initiates like Aeneas offered to Proserpine in the subjective world while there out of the physical body, he says of the initiatory rites:--'He (the poet) could not join the Rites of Proserpine without having the branch to hold up. And by "_going to the shades_" _he_ (the poet) _means celebrating the Rites of Proserpine_.'[328] This pa.s.sage is certainly capable of but one meaning; and we may perhaps a.s.sume that the invisible realm of the Ancients, which is called Hades, is like the Celtic Otherworld located in the Western Ocean, and is also like, or has its mythological counterpart in, the Elysian Fields to the West, reserved by the Greeks and Romans for their G.o.ds and heroes, and in the Happy Otherworld of Scandinavian, Iranian, and Indian mythologies. It must then follow that all these realms--though placed in different localities by various nations, epochs, traditions, scribes, and poets (even as the under-ground world of the Tuatha De Danann in Ireland differs from that ruled over by one of their own race, Manannan the Son of the Sea)--are simply various ways which different Aryan peoples have had of looking at that one great invisible realm of which we have just spoken, and which forms the Heavenworld of every religion, Aryan and non-Aryan, known to man. And if this conclusion is accepted, and it seems that it must be, merely on the evidence of the literary or recorded Celtic Fairy-Faith, our Psychological Theory stands proven.

The Rites of Proserpine had many counterparts. Thus, to pa.s.s on to another parallel, in the Mysteries of Eleusis the disappearance of the Maiden into the under-world, into Hades, the land of the dead, was continually re-enacted in a sacred drama, and it no doubt was one of the princ.i.p.al rites attending initiation. In our study of the Celtic Doctrine of Re-birth, we shall return to this subject of Celtic Initiation.

THE VOYAGE OF BRAN, SON OF FEBAL

We are well prepared now to enjoy the best known voyages which men, heroes, and G.o.d-men, are said to have made to Avalon, or the Land of the Living, through the invitation of a fairy woman or else of the G.o.d Manannan himself; and probably the most famous is that of the _Voyage of Bran, Son of Febal_, as so admirably translated from the original old Irish saga by Dr. Kuno Meyer.[329] Perhaps in all Celtic literature no poem surpa.s.ses this in natural and simple beauty.

One day Bran heard strange music behind him as he was alone in the neighbourhood of his stronghold; and as he listened, so sweet was the sound that it lulled him to sleep. When he awoke, there lay beside him a branch of silver so white with blossoms that it was not easy to distinguish the blossoms from the branch. Bran took up the branch and carried it to the royal house, and, when the hosts were a.s.sembled therein, they saw a woman in strange raiment standing on the floor.

Whence she came and how, no one could tell. And as they all beheld her, she sang fifty quatrains to Bran:--

A branch of the apple-tree from Emain I bring, like those one knows; Twigs of white silver are on it, Crystal brows with blossoms.

There is a distant isle, Around which sea-horses glisten: A fair course against the white-swelling surge,-- Four feet uphold it.

When the song was finished, 'the woman went from them while they knew not whither she went. And she took her branch with her. The branch sprang from Bran's hand into the hand of the woman, nor was there strength in Bran's hand to hold the branch.' The next day, with the fairy spell upon him, Bran begins the voyage towards the setting sun. On the ocean he meets Manannan riding in his magic chariot over the sea-waves; and the king tells Bran that he is returning to Ireland after long ages. Parting from the Son of the Sea, Bran goes on, and the first island he and his companions reach is the 'Island of Joy', where one of the party is set ash.o.r.e; the second isle is the 'Land of Women', where the queen draws Bran and his followers to her realm with a magic clew, and then entertains them for what seems no more than a year, though 'it chanced to be many years'. After a while, home-sickness seizes the adventurers and they come to a unanimous decision to return to Ireland; but they depart under a taboo not to set foot on earth, or at least not till holy water has been sprinkled on them. In their coracle they arrive before a gathering at Srub Brain, probably in West Kerry, and Bran (who may now possibly be regarded as an apparition temporarily returned from the Otherworld to bid his people farewell) announces himself, and this reply is made to him:--'We do not know such a one, though the Voyage of Bran is in our ancient stories.' Then one of Bran's party, in his eagerness to land, broke the taboo; he 'leaps from them out of the coracle. As soon as he touched the earth of Ireland, forthwith he was a heap of ashes, as though he had been in the earth for many hundred years.... Thereupon, to the people of the gathering, Bran told all his wanderings from the beginning until that time. And he wrote these quatrains in Ogam, and then bade them farewell. And from that hour his wanderings are not known.'

CORMAC'S ADVENTURE IN THE LAND OF PROMISE[330]

In _Cormac's Adventure in the Land of Promise_, there is again a magic silver branch with three golden apples on it:--'One day, at dawn in May-time, Cormac, grandson of Conn, was alone on Mur Tea in Tara. He saw coming towards him a sedate(?), grey-headed warrior.... A branch of silver with three golden apples on his shoulder. Delight and amus.e.m.e.nt to the full was it to listen to the music of that branch, for men sore wounded, or women in child-bed, or folk in sickness, would fall asleep at the melody when that branch was shaken.' And the warrior tells Cormac that he has come from a land where only truth is known, where there is 'neither age nor decay nor gloom nor sadness nor envy nor jealousy nor hatred nor haughtiness'. On his promising the unknown warrior any three boons that he shall ask, Cormac is given the magic branch. The grey-headed warrior disappears suddenly; 'and Cormac knew not whither he had gone.'

'Cormac turned into the palace. The household marvelled at the branch.

Cormac shook it at them, and cast them into slumber from that hour to the same time on the following day. At the end of a year the warrior comes into his meeting and asked of Cormac the consideration for his branch. "It shall be given," says Cormac. "I will take [thy daughter]

Ailbe to-day," says the warrior. So he took the girl with him. The women of Tara utter three loud cries after the daughter of the king of Erin.

But Cormac shook the branch at them, so that he banished grief from them all and cast them into sleep. That day month comes the warrior and takes with him Carpre Lifechair (the son of Cormac). Weeping and sorrow ceased not in Tara after the boy, and on that night no one therein ate or slept, and they were in grief and in exceeding gloom. But Cormac shook the branch at them, and they parted from [their] sorrow. The same warrior comes again. "What askest thou to-day?" says Cormac. "Thy wife,"

saith he, "even Ethne the Longsided, daughter of Dunlang king of Leinster." Then he takes away the woman with him.' Thereupon Cormac follows the messenger, and all his people go with him. But 'a great mist was brought upon them in the midst of the plain of the wall. Cormac found himself on a great plain alone'. It is the 'Land of Promise'.

Palaces of bronze, and houses of white silver thatched with white birds'

wings are there. 'Then he sees in the garth a shining fountain, with five streams flowing out of it, and the hosts in turn a-drinking its water. Nine hazels of Buan grow over the well. The purple hazels drop their nuts into the fountain, and the five salmon which are in the fountain sever them, and send their husks floating down the streams. Now the sound of the falling of those streams is more melodious than any music that [men] sing.'[331]

Cormac having entered the fairy palace at the fountain beholds 'the loveliest of the world's women'. After she has been magically bathed, he bathes, and this, apparently, is symbolical of his purification in the Otherworld. Finally, at a feast, the warrior-messenger sings Cormac to sleep; and when Cormac awakes he sees beside him his wife and children, who had preceded him thither to the Land of Promise. The warrior-messenger who _took_ them all is none other than the great G.o.d Manannan Mac Lir of the Tuatha De Danann.

There in the Otherworld, Cormac gains a magic cup of gold richly and wondrously wrought, which would break into three pieces if 'three words of falsehood be spoken under it', and the magic silver branch; and Manannan, as the G.o.d-initiator, says to Ireland's high king:--'Take thy family then, and take the Cup that thou mayest have it for discerning between truth and falsehood. And thou shalt have the Branch for music and delight. And on the day that thou shalt die they all will be taken from thee. I am Manannan, son of Ler, king of the Land of Promise; _and to see the Land of Promise was the reason I brought [thee] hither...._ The fountain which thou sawest, with the five streams out of it, is the Fountain of Knowledge, and the streams are the five senses through which knowledge is obtained (?). And no one will have knowledge who drinketh not a draught out of the fountain itself and out of the streams. The folk of many arts are those who drink of them both.'

'Now on the morrow morning, when Cormac arose, he found himself on the green of Tara, with his wife and his son and daughter, and having his Branch and his Cup. Now that was afterwards [called] "Cormac's Cup", and it used to distinguish between truth and falsehood with the Gael.

Howbeit, as had been promised him [by Manannan], it remained not after Cormac's death.'[332]

This beautiful tale evidently echoes in an extremely poetical and symbolical manner a very ancient Celtic initiation of a king and his family into the mystic cult of the mighty G.o.d Manannan, Son of the Sea.

They enter the Otherworld in a trance state, and on waking are in Erin again, spiritually enriched. The Cup of Truth is probably the symbol of having gained knowledge of the Mystery of Life and Death, and the Branch, that of the Peace and Joy which comes to all who are truly Initiated; for to have pa.s.sed from the realm of mortal existence to the Realm of the Dead, of the Fairy-Folk, of the G.o.ds, and back again, with full human consciousness all the while, was equivalent to having gained the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of Life, the Cup of Truth, and to having bathed in the Fountain of Eternal Youth which confers triumph over Death and unending happiness. Thus we may have here a Celtic poetical parallel to the initiatory journey of Aeneas to the Land of the Dead or Hades.

THE MAGIC WAND OF G.o.dS, FAIRIES, AND DRUIDS

Manannan of the Tuatha De Danann, as a G.o.d-messenger from the invisible realm bearing the apple-branch of silver, is in externals, though not in other ways, like Hermes, the G.o.d-messenger from the realm of the G.o.ds bearing his wand of two intertwined serpents.[333] In modern fairy-lore this divine branch or wand is the magic wand of fairies; or where messengers like old men guide mortals to an underworld it is a staff or cane with which they strike the rock hiding the secret entrance.

The Irish Druids made their wands of divination from the yew-tree; and, like the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are believed to have controlled spirits, fairies, daemons, elementals, and ghosts while making such divinations. It will help us to understand how closely the ancient symbols have affected our own life and age--though we have forgotten their relation with the Otherworld--by offering a few examples, beginning with the ancient Irish bards who were a.s.sociated with the Druids. A wand in the form of a symbolic branch, like a little spike or crescent with gently tinkling bells upon it, was borne by them; and in the piece called _Mesca Ulad_ or 'Inebriety of the Ultonians'[334] it is said of the chief bard of Ulster, Sencha, that in the midst of a b.l.o.o.d.y fray he 'waved the peaceful branch of Sencha, and all the men of Ulster were silent, quiet'. In _Agallamh an da Shuadh_ or the 'Dialogue of the two Sages',[335] the mystic symbol used by G.o.ds, fairies, magicians, and by all initiates who know the mystery of life and death, is thus described as a Druid symbol:--'Neidhe' (a young bard who aspired to succeed his father as chief poet of Ulster), 'made his journey with a silver branch over him. The _Anradhs_, or poets of the second order, carried a silver branch, but the _Ollamhs_, or chief poets, carried a branch of gold; all other poets bore a branch of bronze.'[336] Modern and ancient parallels are world-wide, among the most civilized as among the least civilized peoples, and in civil or religious life among ourselves. Thus, it was with a magic rod that Moses struck the rock and pure water gushed forth, and he raised the same rod and the Red Sea opened; kings hold their sceptres no less than Neptune his trident; popes and bishops have their croziers; in the Roman Church there are little wand-like objects used to perform benedictions; high civil officials have their mace of office; and all the world over there are the wands of magicians and of medicine-men.

THE SICK-BED OF CUCHULAINN

We turn now to the story of the _Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn_.[337] And this is how the great hero of Ulster was fairy-struck. Manannan Mac Lir, tiring of his wife Fand, had deserted her, and so she, wishing to marry Cuchulainn, went to Ireland with her sister Liban. Taking the form of two birds bound together by a chain of red gold, Fand and Liban rested on a lake in Ulster where Cuchulainn should see them as he was hunting.

To capture the two birds, Cuchulainn cast a javelin at them, but they escaped, though injured. Disappointed at a failure like this, which for him was most unusual, Cuchulainn went away to a menhir where he sat down and fell asleep. Then he saw two women, one in a green and one in a crimson cloak; and the woman in green coming up to him laughed and struck him with a whip-like object. The woman in crimson did likewise, and alternately the two women kept striking him till they left him almost dead. And straightway the mighty hero of the Red Branch Knights took to his bed with a strange malady, which no Druid or doctor in all Ireland could cure.

Till the end of a year Cuchulainn lay on his sick-bed at Emain-Macha without speaking to any one. Then--the day before _Samain_ (November Eve)--there came to him an unknown messenger who sang to him a wonderful song, promising to cure him of his malady if he would only accept the invitation of the daughters of Aed Abrat to visit them in the Otherworld. When the song was ended, the messenger departed, 'and they knew not whence he came nor whither he went.' Thereupon Cuchulainn went to the place where the malady had been put on him, and there appeared to him again the woman in the green cloak. She let it be known to Cuchulainn that she was Liban, and that she was longing for him to go with her to the Plain of Delight to fight against Labraid's enemies.

And she promised Cuchulainn as a reward that he would get Fand to wife.

But Cuchulainn would not accept the invitation without knowing to what country he was called. So he sent his charioteer Laeg to bring back from there a report. Laeg went with the fairy woman in a boat of bronze, and returned; and when Cuchulainn heard from him the wonderful glories of that Otherworld of the _Sidhe_ he willingly set out for it.

After Cuchulainn had overthrown Labraid's enemies and had been in the Otherworld a month with the fairy woman Fand, he returned to Ireland alone; though afterwards in a place agreed upon, Fand joined him. Emer, the wife of Cuchulainn, was overcome with jealousy and schemed to kill Fand, so that Fand returned to her husband the G.o.d Manannan and he received her back again. When she was gone Cuchulainn could not be consoled; but Emer obtained from the Druids a magic drink for Cuchulainn, which made him forget all about the Otherworld and the fairy woman Fand. And another drink the Druids gave to Emer so that she forgot all her jealousy; and then Manannan Mac Lir himself came and shook his mantle between Cuchulainn and Fand to prevent the two ever meeting again. And thus it was that the _Sidhe_-women failed to steal away the great Cuchulainn. The magic of the Druids and the power of the Tuatha De Danann king triumphed; and the Champion of Ulster did not go to the Otherworld until he met a natural death in that last great fight.[338]

OSSIAN'S RETURN FROM FAIRYLAND[339]

Ossian too, like Cuchulainn, was enticed into Fairyland by a fairy woman:--She carries him away on a white horse, across the Western Ocean; and as they are moving over the sea-waves they behold a fair maid on a brown horse, and she holding in her right hand a golden apple. After the hero had married his fairy abductress and lived in the Otherworld for three hundred years, an overpowering desire to return to Ireland and join again in the councils of his dearly beloved Fenian Brotherhood took possession of him, and he set out on the same white horse on which he travelled thence with the fairy princess, for such was his wife. And she, as he went, thrice warned him not to lay his 'foot on level ground', and he heard from her the startling announcement that the Fenians were all gone and Ireland quite changed.