Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/270

248 given up. A single obscure dictum of Caesar is not sufficient to establish a permanent theory which is not supported by native warrant or tradition. The Irish kings and septs certainly traced their descent from the god or local deity worshipped by their tribe, or from some more universal divinity; but that they believed in an 'underworld from which they came and to which they went at death,' there is, I believe, nothing in the ancient literature to prove. If such a doctrine is given at all, it should be with extreme caution, as a hypothesis, not as a statement of fact. It is a pity to perpetuate a doubtful theory in a popular book.

We sum up a few suggestions that occur to us. In his chapter on geasa or tabus, the author omits the tabus belonging to King Conchobhar, which are much the most instructive for his purpose. They will be found in the Book of Leinster, fac. pp. 106, 33-197b, 16. On p. 232, he gives the reply of the Celts of Thrace to Alexander the Great (Strabo, Bk. vii, ch. iii, 8) as a hint of a belief in a final cataclysm. But it had no reference to the end of natural things, and was simply an expression, familiar to the Celt of Ireland as of Thrace, of courage and fearlessness. The only sign known to me of an ancient belief in a final catastrophe is in the use once in the Book of Armagh of the word erdathe, which seems to be a native word applied to the day of doom; but, if such a pagan belief existed, it speedily became absorbed into the universal mediæval Christian doctrine of Doomsday.

The examples given on p. 223 of unnatural unions are largely metaphorical of the union of different qualities, and cannot be taken as proving any state of society in which these conditions were generally practised; some of the practices referred to may, however, be surmised from other sources of information.

To his examples of tree-worship, the author should add the very explicit and interesting example from the poem on Finn's sword in Duanaire Finn (Irish Texts Society, vol. vii) speaking of "Eitheor of the smooth brown face" who was called "Son of Hazel," because "this was the hazel that he worshipped" (pp. 36, 137).