Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/67

 ever existed in the Érnai district a saga about Túatha Dé Danann, a divine race, conquerors of the Fomorians and predecessors of the Milesians, and so it appears that síde is an original old Irish name for supernatural beings. The name Túatha Dé Danann was known only in some parts of Ireland (Connaught), and Lebor Gabála, employing this name for its purposes, made it known through the whole of Ireland. And so we see that our attention must be turned only to the síde.

We understand now quite well why the composer of Fiacc's Mymn wrote

Most of them were dei terreni, but this does not exclude (at least ) ancestral character. In later times they are equivalent to fairies, and these are, e.g. in Slavonic, to a great extent "souls" of deceased maidens. This parallel would also account (at least partly) for the Irish Tír na mban. One might object to this explanation that síd is always a fairyland, a pleasant place, where there is no sorrow, and it is a privilege of some people only to come there. But this fairyland seems by no means to be always such a desirable country. In modern folklore the kidnappings of human beings by fairies are considered as something rather unpleasant. The Old Irish Echtra Nerai does not represent the inhabitants of Cruachan-Sid as very benevolent to the Connaught people. The same we might gather from the story of Etáin.

We must not forget, further, that for primitive man there was no precise break between death and life. The dead lived in the tomb (or in the Other World) the same life as he lived in this world, and it was not believed impossible that the dead could revive again.

After all, we must not forget that this same fairyland is sometimes the object of expeditions which resemble closely expeditions to Hades. So, for example, the expedition to