Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/189

Rh gradual absorption of new and fixed doctrinal ideas of outside growth into the older and vaguer, but exquisite imaginings of the native mind, as it can be traced in the Gaelic visions of the Other World. It was impossible to shatter at a blow a form of belief which was rooted in the very nature of the people; it held its place with persistent vitality, and even when, with many slow loiterings by the way, it gradually, and, as it were, reluctantly, fell into the background, it was not without having carried over into the new many beautiful fancies derived from the old, as it likewise absorbed into the old many thoughts (principally, alas, thoughts of gloom and penance and punishment) gathered out of the graver and more awesome conceptions of the Christian monks.

Let me point out, briefly, how this changed idea is introduced. In general, the framework of a voyage is carried on from Pagan times into the semi-Christian visions, but the idea has gradually enlarged from that of a single island in a lake or across the sea, into a long series of islands out on the open boundless ocean, in each of which some new marvel is to be found. Already, in the Voyage of Bran, one of the oldest of the tales, we have the single isle of older times expanded into fifty or "thrice fifty" isles in the ocean to the west of us, and several of these are separately described; but in this voyage the main incidents remain unchanged. It is a lady who beckons, a branch of silver that allures, and the whole aspect is joyous and full of brilliant charm. In the Voyage of Maelduin, in the Voyage of the Sons of O'Corra, of Snedgus and MacRiagla, of St. Columcille's Three Clerics, and in the famous Voyage of St. Brendan, there are a multitude of islands, each preserving some well-defined characteristic differentiating it from all the rest.

The voyage is no longer made in a magic craft, which moves of itself across a magic ocean; it is an actual