[579]Freud,The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, inAmer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, No. 2, xxi. 203.
[580]Du Prel, op. cit., i. 33.
[581]Myers, op. cit., i. 134.
[582]Fechner,Zentralblatt für Anthropologie, p. 774; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 92.
[583]Haddock,Somnolism and Psychism, p. 213; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 93.
[584]Perty,Mystische Erscheinungen, i. 305; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 63.
[585]Kerner,Seherin v. Prevorst, p. 196; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 65.
[586]Chardel,Essai de Psychologie, p. 344; cf. Du Prel, op. cit., ii. 64.
[587]Cf. Du Prel, op. cit., i. 88-9.
[588]Myers, op. cit., chapter vi.
[589]Stout, op. cit., pp. 64, 61-2.
[590]Lang,Mr. Myers’s Theory of ‘The Subliminal Self’, inHibbert Journal, ii, No. 3 (April 1904), p. 530.
[591]The peculiar and often unique characteristics of the fairy-folk of any given fairy-faith, as we have pointed out in chapter iii (pp.233,282), are to be regarded as being merely anthropomorphically coloured reflections of the social life or environment of the particular ethnic group who hold the particular fairy-faith; and, as Mr. Lang here suggests, when they are stripped of these superficial characteristics, which are due to such social psychology, they become ghosts of the dead or other spiritual beings.
Our own researches lead us to the conviction that behind the purely mythical aspect of these fairy-faiths there exists a substantial substratum of real phenomena not yet satisfactorily explained by science; that such phenomena have been in the past and are at the present time the chief source of the belief in fairies, that they are the foundation underlying all fairy mythologies. We need only refer to the following phenomena observed among Celtic and other peoples, and attributed by them to ‘fairy’ or ‘spirit’ agency: (1) music which competent percipients believe to be of non-human origin, and hence by the Celts called ‘fairy’ music, whether this be vocal or instrumental in sound; (2) the movement of objects without known cause; (3) rappings and other noises called ‘supernatural’ (cf. pp.81 n.,481-4,488; also pp.47,57,61,67,71,72,74,88,94,98,101,120,124,125,131,132,134,139,148,156,172,181,187,213,218,220, &c.).
[592]It is our hope that this book will help to lessen the marked deficiency of recorded testimony concerning ‘fairy’ beings and ‘fairy’ phenomena observed by reliable percipients. We have endeavoured to demonstrate that genuine ‘fairy’ phenomena and genuine ‘spirit’ phenomena are in most cases identical. Hence we believe that if ‘spirit’ phenomena are worthy of the attention of science, equally so are ‘fairy’ phenomena. The fairy-beliefin its typicalorconventional aspects(apart from the animism which we discovered at the base of the belief) is, as was pointed out in our anthropological examination of the evidence (pp.281-2), due to a very complex social psychology. In this chapter we have eliminated all social psychology, as not being the essential factor in the Fairy-Faith. Therefore, from our point of view, Mr. Lang’s implied explanation of the typical fairy-visions, that they are due to ‘suggestion acting on the subconscious self’, does not apply to the rarer kind of fairy visions which form part of our x-quantity (see pp.60-6,83-4, &c.). If it does, then it also applies to all non-Celtic visions of spirits, in ancient and in modern times; and the animistic hypothesis now accepted by most psychical researchers, namely, that discarnate intelligences exist independent of the percipient, must be set aside in favour of the non-animistic hypothesis. If, on the other hand, it be admitted that ‘fairy’ phenomena are, as we maintain, essentially the same as ‘spirit’ phenomena, then the belief in fairies ceases to be purely mythical, and ‘fairy’ visions by a Celtic seer who is physically and psychically sound do not seem to arise from that seer’s suggestion acting on his own subconsciousness; but certain types of ‘fairy’ visions undoubtedly do arise from suggestion,coming from a ‘fairy’ or other intelligence, acting on the conscious or subconscious content of the percipient’s mind (cf. pp.484-7).
[593]Lang,Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 208, 35.
[594]Sir Oliver Lodge,Psychical Research, inHarper’s Mag., August 1908 (New York and London).
[595]Sir Oliver Lodge,The Survival of Man(London, 1909), p. 339.
[596]James, op. cit., pp. 587-9.
[597]Readers are referred to such authoritative works as thePhantasms of the Living(London, 1886), by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore; to theReport on the Census of Hallucinations of Modern Spiritualism, by Professor Sidgwick’s Committee; to theNaturalisation of the Supernatural(New York and London, 1908), by F. Podmore; to theSurvival of the Human Personality, by F. W. H. Myers; and other like works, all of which originate from theProceedings of the Society for Psychical Research(London).
[598]C. Flammarion,Mysterious Psychic Forces, pp. 441, 431.
[599]Sir Wm. Crookes,Notes of an Enquiry into Phenomena called Spiritual, during the years 1870-73(London), Part III, p. 87.
[600]SeeQuart. Journ. Science(July 1871).
[601]Cf. Lang,Cock Lane and Common Sense, p. 281; and for other cases of objects moved without contact see ib., pp. 50, 52, 53, 58, 122 ff. See also F. Podmore’s article onPoltergeists, inProceedings S. P. R., xii. 45-115; and hisNaturalisation of the Supernatural, chapter vii.
[602]Sir Wm. Crookes, op. cit., Part III, p. 100.
[603]Ib., p. 94.
[604]Lang,Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 60, 81, 139, &c.
[605]Using as a basis the data of Professor Sidgwick’s Committee and the results earlier obtained by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (seePhantasms of the Living), Mr. William McDougall shows concisely the probability of an apparition appearing within twelve hours of the death of the individual whom it represents. He says:—‘... of all recognized apparitions of living persons, only one in 19,000 may be expected to be a death-coincidence of this sort. But the census shows that of 1,300 recognized apparitions of living persons 30 are death-coincidences, and that is equivalent to 440 in 19,000. Hence, of recognized hallucinations, those coincident with death are 440 times more numerous than we should expect, if no causal relation obtained.’ And Mr. McDougall concludes: ‘... since good evidence of telepathic communication has been experimentally obtained, the least improbable explanation of these death-apparitions is that the dying person exerts upon his distant friend some telepathic influence which generates an hallucinatory perception of himself’ (Hallucinations, inEncy. Brit., 11th ed., xii. 863).
[606]Myers, op. cit., ii. 65, 45 ff., 49 ff., &c.
[607]Nevius,Demon Possession, Introduction, pp. iv, vii; pp. 240-2, 144-5. In accordance with all such phenomena, psychical researchers have logically called spirits manifesting themselves through the body of a living person possessing spirits. And as in the case of Chinese demon-possession, the phenomena of mediumship often result in the moral derangement, insanity, or even suicide on the part of ‘mediums’ who so unwisely exhibit it without special preparation or no preparation at all, and too often in complete ignorance of a possible gradual undermining of their psychic life, will-power, and even physical health. All of this seems to offer direct and certain evidence to sustain Christians and non-Christians in their condemnation of all forms of necromancy or calling up of spirits. The following statement will make our position towards mediumship of the most common kind clear:
In Druidism, for one example, disciples for training in magical sciences are said to have spent twenty years in severe study and special psychical training before deemed fit to be called Druids and thus to control daemons, ghosts, or all invisible entities capable of possessing living men and women. And even now in India and elsewhere there is reported to be still the same ancient course of severe disciplinary training for candidates seeking magical powers. But in modern Spiritualism conditions are altogether different in most cases, and ‘mediums’ instead of controlling with an iron will, as a magician does, spirits which become manifest inséances, surrender entirely their will-power and whole personality to them.
[608]Cf. Sigmund Freud,The Origin and Development of Psychoanalysis, inAmer. Journ. Psych., xxi, No. 2 (April 1910).
[609]The fact that all matter is capable of assuming a gaseous or invisible state furnishes good scientific reasons for postulating the actual existence of intelligent beings possessed of an invisible yet physical body. There may well be on and about our planet many distinct invisible organic life-forms undiscovered by zoologists. To deny such a possibility would be unscientific.
[610]Cf.Communication adressée au DrJ. Dupré, p. 382 of an essay onLa Métempsycose basée sur les Principes de la Biologie et du Magnétisme physiologique, inLe Hasard(Paris, 1909), by P. C. Revel. Cases of regeneration among the aged are known, and these show how the subliminal life-forces try to renew the physical body when it is worn out (cf. Revel, ib., p. 372).
[611]Cf. Revel, op. cit., p. 295 ff.
[612]If scientists discover, as they probably will in time, what they call the secret of life, they will not have discovered the secret of life at all. What they will have discovered will be the physical conditions under which life manifests itself. In other words, science will most likely soon be able to set up artificially in a laboratory such physical conditions as exist in nature naturally, and by means of which life is able to manifest itself through matter. Life will still be as great a mystery as it is to-day; though short-sighted materialists are certain to announce to an eager world that the final problem of the universe has been solved and that life is merely the resultant of a subtle chemical compound.
[613]Professor Freud, after long and careful study, arrived at the following conclusion:—‘The child has his sexual impulse and activities from the beginning, he brings them with him into the world, and from these the so-called normal sexuality of adults emerges by a significant development through manifold stages.’ And Dr. Sanford Bell, in an earlier writing entitledA Preliminary Study of the Emotions of Love between the Sexes(seeAmer. Journ. Psych., 1902), came to a similar conclusion (cf. Freud, op. cit., pp. 207-8).
[614]Cf. Hans Driesch,The Science and Philosophy of the Organism(London, 1908); and Henri Bergson,L’Évolution créatrice(Paris, 1908).
[615]This Celtic view of non-personal immortality completely fits in with all the voluminous data of psychical research: after forty years of scientific research into psychics there are no proofs yet adduced that the human personality as a self-sufficient unit of consciousness survives indefinitely the death of its body. Granted that it does survive as a ghost for an undetermined period, generally to be counted in years, during which time it seems to be gradually fading out or disintegrating, there is no reliable evidence anywhere to show that a personalityas suchhas manifested through a ‘medium’ or otherwise after an interval of one thousand years, or even of five hundred years. We have, in fact, no knowledge of the survival of a human personality one hundred years after, and probably there are no good examples of such a survival twenty-five years after the death of the body. Such an eminent psychical researcher as William James recognized this drift of the data of psychics, and when he died he held the conviction that there is no personal immortality (see p.505 n. following).
[616]Though not inclined toward the vitalistic view of human evolution, M. Th. Ribot very closely approaches the Celtic view of the Ego (or individuality) as being the principle which gives unity to different personalities, but he does not have in mind personalities in the sense implied by the Celtic Esoteric Doctrine of Re-birth:—‘The Ego subjectively considered consists of a sum of conscious states’ (comparable to personalities).... ‘In brief, the Ego may be considered in two ways: either in its actual form, and then it is the sum of existing conscious states; or, in its continuity with the past, and then it is formed by the memory according to the process outlined above. It would seem, according to this view, that the identity of the Ego depended entirely upon the memory. But such a conception is only partial. Beneath the unstable compound phenomenon in all its protean phases of growth, degeneration, and reproduction, there is a something that remains: and this something is the undefined consciousness, the product of all the vital processes, constituting bodily perception and what is expressed in one word—thecœnæsthesis.’ (The Diseases of Memory, pp. 107-8).
William James, the greatest psychologist of our epoch, after a long and faithful life consecrated to the search after a true understanding of human consciousness, finally arrived at substantially the same conviction as Fechner did, that there is no personal immortality, but that the personality ‘is but a temporary and partial separation and circumscription of a part of a larger whole, into which it is reabsorbed at death’ (W. McDougall,In Memory of William James, inProc. S. P. R., Part LXII, vol. xxv, p. 28). He thus virtually accepted the mystic’s view that the personality after the death of the body is absorbed into a higher power, which, to our mind, is comparable with the Ego conceived as the unifying principle behind personalities. In one of his last writings, James explained his belief in such a manner as to make it coincide at certain points with the view held by modern Celtic mystics which has been presented above; the difference being that, unlike these mystics, James was not prepared to say (though he raised the question) whether or not behind the ‘mother-sea’ of consciousness there is, as Fechner believed, a hierarchy of consciousnesses (themselves subordinate to still higher consciousnesses, and comparable with so many Egos or Individualities) which send out emanations as temporary human personalities. The organic psychical forms (if we may use such an expression) of such temporary human personalities would have to be regarded from James’s point of view as being built up out of the psychical elements constituting the ‘mother-sea’ of consciousness, just as the human body is built up out of the physical elements in the realm of matter:—‘Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves, and Conanicut and Newport hear each other’s foghorns. But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean’s bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality’ (used as synonymous with personality and not in our distinct sense) ‘builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir. Our “normal” consciousness’ (the personality as we distinguish it from the Ego or individuality) ‘is circumscribed for adaptation to our external earthly environment, but the fence is weak in spots, and fitful influences from beyond break in, showing the otherwise unverifiable common connexion. Not only psychic research, but metaphysical philosophy and speculative biology are led in their own ways to look with favour on some such “pan-psychic” view of the universe as this.’ (W. James,The Confidences of a Psychical Researcher, inThe American Magazine, October 1909). Again, James wrote:—‘The drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious.’ (A Pluralistic Universe, New York, 1909, p. 309.)
[617]W. James,Varieties of Religious Experience(London, 1902), pp. 511, 236 n.
[618]M. Th. Ribot, inDiseases of Memory(London, 1882), pp. 82-98 ff., gives numerous examples of such loss and recovery of memory.
[619]Cf. Freud, op. cit., pp. 192, 204-5, &c.
[620]Cf. A. Moll,Hypnotism(London, 1890), pp. 141 ff., 126.
[621]Cf. A. Moll,Hypnotism(London, 1890), pp. 141 ff., 126.
[622]Cf. Freud, op. cit., p. 192.
[623]Freud,Die Traumdeutung, 2nd ed. (Vienna, 1906); cf. S. Ferenczi,The Psychological Analysis of Dreams, inAmer. Journ. Psych.(April 1910), xxi, No. 2, p. 326.
[624]A similar state of high development is to be assumed for a great Celtic hero like Arthur, who were he to be re-born would (as is said to have been the case with King Mongan, the reincarnation of Finn) bring with him memory of his past: unlike the consciousness of the normal man, the consciousness of one of the Divine Ones is normally the subconsciousness, the consciousness of the individuality; and not the personal consciousness, which, like the personality, is non-permanentin itself. This further illustrates the Celtic theory of non-personal immortality.
[625]Ribot, op. cit., p. 100 ff.
[626]Cf. Lang,Cock Lane and Common Sense, pp. 217 ff.Blackwood’s Magazine, cxxix (January 1881), contains a remarkable account of a child who remembered previous lives. Lord Lindsay, in hisLetters(ed. of 1847, p. 351), refers to a feeling when he beheld the river Kadisha descending from Lebanon, of having in a previous life seen the same scene. Dickens in hisPictures from Italytestifies to a parallel experience. E. D. Walker, in his interesting work onReincarnation(pp. 42-5) has brought together many other well-attested cases of people who likewise have thought they could remember fragments of a former state of conscious existence. In his diary, under date of February 17, 1828, Sir Walter Scott wrote as follows:—‘I cannot, I am sure, tell if it is worth marking down, that yesterday, at dinner-time, I was strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of pre-existence, viz. a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time.’ Lockhart,Life of Scott(first ed.), vii. 114. Bulwer Lytton inGodolphin(chapter xv), and Edgar Allen Poe inEureka, record similar experiences. Mr. H. Fielding Hall, inThe Soul of a People4(London, 1902), pp. 290-308, reports several very remarkable cases of responsible natives of Burma who stated that they could recall former lives passed by them as men and women. Mr. Hall has carefully investigated these cases, and gives us the impression that they are worthy of scientific consideration.
[627]Cf. Ferenczi, op. cit., p. 316, &c. Professor Freud’s theory of dreams supports entirely, but does not imply our hypothesis that some (and probably many) abnormal dreams of a rare kind, whether good or bad in tendency, may be due to the latent content of subconsciousness, out of which they undoubtedly arise, having been collected and carried over from a previous state of consciousness parallel to our present one. In respect to our present life Professor Freud holds, as a result of psycho-analysis of thousands of dream subjects, that the latent content of every dream in the adult is directly dependent upon mental processes which frequently reach back to the earliest childhood; and he gives detailed cases in illustration. In other words, there is always a latent dream-material behind the conscious dream-content, and probably a part of it was innate in the child at birth, and hence, according to our view, was pre-existent. (Cf. Ernest Jones,Freud’s Theory of Dreams, inAmer. Journ. Psych., April 1910, xxi, No. 2, pp. 301 ff.)
[628]Cf. Du Prel,Philosophy of Mysticism, ii. 25 ff., 34 ff.
[629]The Dream of Ravan, inDublin Univ. Mag., xliii. 468.
[630]Myers, inProc. S. P. R., vii. 305.
[631]James,Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 483.
[632]The esoteric teaching in many of the mystic schools of antiquity was that the atoms of each human body transmigrate through all lower forms of life during the long period supposed to intervene between death and re-birth of the individuality. This doctrine seems to be one of the main sources of the corruption which crept into the ancient re-birth doctrines and transformed many of them into doctrines of transmigration of the human soul into animal and plant bodies; and some unscrupulous priesthoods openly taught such corrupted doctrines as a means of making the ignorant populace submissive to ecclesiastical rule, the theological theory expounded by such priesthoods being that the evil-doer, but not the keeper of the letter of the canonical law, is condemned to expiate his sins through birth in brute bodies. The pure form of the mystic doctrine was that after the lapse of the long period of disembodiment the individuality reconstructs its human body anew by drawing to itself the identical atoms which constituted its previous human body—these atoms, and not the individuality, having transmigrated through all the lower kingdoms. Such an esoteric doctrine probably lies behind the exoteric Egyptian teaching that the human soul after the death of its body passes through all plant and animal bodies during a period of three thousand years, after which it returns to human embodiment. Some scholars have held that the exoteric interpretation of this theory and its consequent literal interpretation as a transmigration doctrine led the Egyptians to mummify the bodies of their dead. Cf. Lucretius,De Rerum Natura, Book III, ll. 843-61; and Herodotus, Book II, on Egypt.
[633]Cf. Dr. L. S. Fugairon’sLa Survivance de l’âme, ou la Mort et la Renaissance chez les êtres vivants; études de physiologie et d’embryologie philosophiques(Paris, 1907); cf. Revel,Le Hasard, p. 457.
[634]Darwin never considered or attempted to suggest what it is that of itself really evolves, for it cannot be the physical body which onlygrowsfrom immaturity to maturity and then dissolves. Darwin thus overlooked the essential factor in his whole doctrine; while the Druids and other ancients, wiser than we have been willing to admit, seem not only to have anticipated Darwin by thousands of years, but also to have quite surpassed him in setting up their doctrine of re-birth, which explains both the physical and psychical evolution of man.
English Translation
My dear Mr. Wentz,
I recollect that, at the time of your examination on your thesis before the Faculty of Letters of the University of Rennes, one of my colleagues, my friend Professor Dottin, put to you this question:—
‘You believe, you assert, in the existence of fairies? Have you seen any?’
You answered, with equal coolness and candour:
‘No. I have made every effort to do so, and I have never seen any. But there are many things which you, sir, have not seen, and of which, nevertheless, you would not think of denying the existence. That is my attitude toward fairies.’
I am like you, my dear Mr. Wentz: I have never seen fairies. It is true that I have a very dear lady friend whom we have christened by that name [fairy], but, in spite of all her fair supernatural gifts, she is only a humble mortal. On the other hand, I lived, when a mere child, among people who had almost daily intercourse with real fairies.
That was in a little township in Lower Brittany, inhabited by peasants who were half sailors, and by sailors who were half peasants. There was, not far from the village, an ancient manor-house long abandoned by its owners, for what reason was not known exactly. It continued to be called the ‘Château’ of Lanascol, though it was hardly more than a ruin. It is true that the avenues by which one approached it had retained their feudal aspect, with their fourfold rows of ancient beeches whose huge masses of foliage were reflected in splendid pools. The people of the neighbourhood seldom ventured into these avenues in the evening. They were supposed to be, from sunset onwards, the favourite walking-ground of a ‘lady’ who went by the name ofGroac’h Lanascol, the ‘Fairy of Lanascol’.
Many claimed to have met her, and described her in colours which were, however, the most varied. Some represented her as an old woman who walked all bent, her two hands leaning on a stump of a crutch with which, in autumn, from time to time she stirred the dead leaves. The dead leaves which she thus stirred became suddenly shining like gold, and clinked against one another with the clear sound of metal. According to others, it was a young princess, marvellously adorned, after whom there hurried curious little black silent men. She advanced with a majestic and queenly bearing. Sometimes she stopped in front of a tree, and the tree at once bent down as if to receive her commands. Or again, she would cast a look on the water of a pool, and the pool trembled to its very depths, as though stirred by an access of fear beneath the potency of her look.
The following strange story was told about her:–
The owners of Lanascol having desired to get rid of an estate which they no longer occupied, the manor and lands attached to it were put up to auction by a notary of Plouaret. On the day fixed for the bidding a number of purchasers presented themselves. The price had already reached a large sum, and the estate was on the point of being knocked down, when, on a last appeal from the auctioneer, a female voice, very gentle and at the same time very imperious, was raised and said:
‘A thousand francs more!’
A great commotion arose in the hall. Every one’s eyes sought for the person who had made this advance, and who could only be a woman. But there was not a single woman among those present. The notary asked:
‘Who spoke?’
Again the same voice made itself heard.
‘The Fairy of Lanascol!’ it replied.
A general break-up followed. From that time forward no purchaser has ever appeared, and, as the current report ran, that was the reason why Lanascol continued to be for sale.
I have designedly quoted to you the story of the Fairy of Lanascol, my dear Mr. Wentz, because she was the first to make an impression on me in my childhood. How many others have I come to know later on in the course of narratives from those who lived with me on the sandy beaches, in the fields or the woods! Brittany has always been a kingdom of Faerie. One cannot there travel even a league without brushing past the dwelling of some male or female fairy. Quite lately, in the course of an autumn pilgrimage to the hallucinatory forest of Paimpont (or Brocéliande), still haunted throughout by the great memories of Celtic legend, I encountered beneath the thick foliage of the Pas-du-Houx, a woman gathering faggots, with whom I did not fail, as you may well imagine, to enter into conversation. One of the first names I uttered was naturally that of Vivian.
‘Vivian!’ cried out the poor old woman. ‘Ah! a blessing on her, the good Lady! for she is as good as she is beautiful.... Without her protection my good man, who works at woodcutting, would have fallen, like a wolf, beneath the keepers’ guns....’ And she began to narrate to me ‘as how’ her husband, something of a poacher like all the woodcutters of these districts, had one night gone to watch for a roebuck in the neighbourhood of the Butte-aux-Plaintes, and had been caught red-handed by a party of keepers. He sought to fly: the keepers fired. A bullet hit him in the thigh: he fell, and was making ready to let himself be killed on the spot, rather than surrender, when there suddenly interposed between him and his assailants a kind of very thick mist which covered everything—the ground, the trees, the keepers, and the wounded man himself. And he heard a voice coming out of the mist, a voice gentle like the rustling of leaves, and murmuring in his ear: ‘Save thyself, my son: the spirit of Vivian will watch over thee till thou hast crawled out of the forest.’
‘Such were the actual words of the fairy,’ concluded the faggot-gatherer. And she crossed herself devoutly, for pious Brittany, as you know, reveres fairies as much as saints.
I do not know iflutins(mischievous spirits) should be included in the fairy world, but what is certain is that this charming and roguish tribe has always abounded in our country. I have been told that formerly every house had its own. It (thelutin) was something like the little Roman household god. Now visible, now invisible, it presided over all the acts of domestic life. Nay more; it shared in them, and in the most effective manner. Inside the house it helped the servants, blew up the fire on the hearth, supervised the cooking of the food for men or beasts, quieted the crying of the babe lying in the bottom of the cupboard, and prevented worms from settling in the pieces of bacon hanging from the beams. Similarly there fell within its sphere the management of the byres and stables: thanks to it the cows gave milk abounding in butter, and the horses had round croups and shining coats. It was, in a word, the good genius of the house, but conditionally on every one paying to it the respect to which it had the right. If neglected, ever so little, its kindness changed into spite, and there was no unkind trick of which it was not capable towards people who had offended it, such as upsetting the contents of the pots on the hearth, entangling wool round distaffs, making tobacco unsmokeable, mixing a horse’s mane in inextricable confusion, drying up the udders of cows, or stripping the backs of sheep. Therefore care was taken not to annoy it. Careful attention was paid to all its habits and humours. Thus, in my parents’ house, our old maid Filie never lifted the trivet from the fire without taking the precaution of sprinkling it with water to cool it, before putting it away at the corner of the hearth. If you asked her the reason for this ceremony, she would reply to you:
‘To prevent thelutinburning himself there, if, presently, he sat on it.’
Further, I suppose there should be included in the class of male fairies thatBugul-Noz, that mysterious Night Shepherd, whose tall and alarming outline the rural Bretons see rising in the twilight, if, by chance, they happen to return late from field-work. I have never been able to obtain exact information about the kind of herd which he fed, nor about what was foreboded by the meeting with him. Most often such a meeting is dreaded. Yet, as one of my female informants, Lise Bellec, reasonably pointed out, if it is preferable to avoid theBugul-Nozit does not from that follow that he is a harmful spirit. According to her, he would rather fulfil a beneficial office, in warning human beings, by his coming, that night is not made for lingering in the fields or on the roads, but for shutting oneself in behind closed doors and going to sleep. This shepherd of the shades would then be, take it altogether, a kind of good shepherd. It is to ensure our rest and safety, to withdraw us from excesses of toil and the snares of night, that he compels us, thoughtless sheep, to return quickly to the fold.
No doubt it is an almost similar protecting office which, in popular belief, has fallen to another male fairy, more particularly attached to the seashore, as his name,Yann-An-Ôd, indicates. There is not, along all the coast of Brittany or, as it is called, in all theArmor, a single district where the existence of this ‘John of the Dunes’ is not looked on as a real fact, fully proved and undeniable. Changing forms and different aspects are attributed to him. Sometimes he is a giant, sometimes a dwarf. Sometimes he wears a seaman’s hat of oiled cloth, sometimes a broad black felt hat. At times he leans on an oar and recalls the enigmatic personage, possessed of the same attribute, whom Ulysses has to follow, in theOdyssey. But he is always a marine hero whose office it is to traverse the shores, uttering at intervals long piercing cries, calculated to frighten away fishermen who may have allowed themselves to be surprised outside by the darkness of night. He only hurts those who resist; and even then would only strike them in their own interest, to force them to seek shelter. He is, before all, one who warns. His cries not only call back home people out late on the sands; they also inform sailors at sea of the dangerous proximity of the shore, and, thereby, make up for the insufficiency of the hooting of sirens or of the light of lighthouses.
We may remark, in this connexion, that a parallel feature is observed in the legend of the old Armorican saints, who were mostly emigrants from Ireland. One of their usual exercises consisted in parading throughout the night the coasts where they had set up their oratories, shaking little bells of wrought iron, the ringing of which, like the cries ofYann-An-Ôd, was intended to warn voyagers that land was near.
I am persuaded that the worship of saints, which is the first and most fervent of Breton religious observances, preserves many of the features of a more ancient religion in which a belief in fairies held the chief place. The same, I feel sure, applies to those death-myths which I have collected under the name of the Legend of the Dead among the Armorican Bretons. In truth, in the Breton mind, the dead are not dead; they live a mysterious life on the edge of real life, but their world remains fully mingled with ours, and as soon as night falls, as soon as the living, properly so called, give themselves up to the temporary sleep of death, the so-called dead again become the inhabitants of the earth which they have never left. They resume their place at their former hearth, devote themselves to their old work, take an interest in the home, the fields, the boat; they behave, in a word, like the race of male and female fairies which once formed a more refined and delicate species of humanity in the midst of ordinary humanity.
I might, my dear Mr. Wentz, evoke many other types from this intermediate world of Breton Faerie, which, in my countrymen’s mind, is not identical with this world nor with the other, but shares at once in both, through a curious mixture of the natural and supernatural. I have only intended in these hasty lines to show the wealth of material to which you have with so much conscientiousness and ardour devoted your efforts. And now may the fairies be propitious to you, my dear friend! They will do nothing but justice in favouring with all their goodwill the young and brilliant writer who has but now revived their cult by renewing their glory.
Rennes,November1, 1910.
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Some quotes are opened with marks but are not closed. Obvious errors have been silently closed while those requiring interpretation have been left open.
Other punctuation has been corrected without note.
Other than the corrections noted by hover information, inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original.