Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/69

 Other World; the predatory expeditions of some successful chieftains against an alien country may have enriched this motive. So it is possible that the poem from B. of Tal. 25$b$ (Skene, ii. 181) relates to some prehistoric expedition (cf Skene, i. 228). The same ethnical traces some scholars see in modern fairy-lore (cf Rhŷs, Celtic Folklore, but see also Hartland's Science of Fairy Tales, pp. 349 ff.). Similar traces of peoples who dwelt in some subterranean locality are suggested by Popol Vuh.

We see that the conception of the Other World is a complex one, that it results from various motives, and I do not suppose that we have any right to presuppose that in the earliest times this conception was much simpler. The Insular Celts, as they came to the British Isles, had already absorbed many foreign elements, and assimilating the older population of the British Isles they underwent further modifications; we can hardly expect that the different stages of culture through which they had to pass should not have left traces in Insular Celtic religious conceptions, coexisting with others which were quite contradictory to these. In many religions we find different strata and different or contradictory ideas one beside the other, the best example of this being found in the old Egyptian religion. One might, however, object that the analogy of Egyptian religion does not prove anything for the old Celtic, and I must agree with this ; but there are certain facts in folklore survivals which prove that in Britain two contradictory ideas existed. Sir Laurence Gomme has proved that there existed two different attitudes towards the deceased, one of which was based on fear of the dead, and another reflecting love towards the deceased (Ethnology in Folklore, pp. 109 ff. and especially 125 ff.). I will not argue that these different survivals presuppose different races. I think it possible that these new influences may be of other kinds beyond the racial admixture: this question is, however, the old crux of archaeology, being identical with