[152] Cp. Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 61-3:—
‘A dungeon horrible on all sides round,
As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames
No light, but rather darkness visible.’
[153] Possibly this amplification of the usual description of the Piast owes something to the picture of Rumour, in Book iv. of the Æneid.
[154] David Fitzgerald, loc. cit., pp. 192-3, where he cites from Kuhn, Die Herabkunft des Feuers, a passage of the Vedas: ‘Two birds sit on the top of the imperishable açvattha, one eating its figs, and the other looking on.’ He also cites from the Félire Oengusa: ‘A great tree that was in the Eastern world, and the heathens used to worship it, so that the Christians fasted against all the Saints of Europe that the tree might fall, et statim cecidit.’ This passage contrasts curiously with the terms in which the ‘great tree’ is described in other Irish writings. The Félire also speaks of Elijah, Gospel in hand, preaching to the spirits under the Tree of Life in Paradise, while the bird-flocks come to eat the berries of it, which are sweeter than honey and headier than wine; just as the ale of the Tír Tairngire is described as headier than the ale of Éire.
The human souls in the form of birds are a variant of a belief of world-wide extent. In Lithuania and the neighbouring countries the belief still exists, or existed lately, that the souls of dead children return as birds. Nearer to the present instance is the Mohammedan belief that the martyrs for Islam feast on the fruits of Paradise in the shape of beautiful green birds.
[155] Cp. hereon Professor Alessandro d’Ancona, I Precursori di Dante (Firenze, 1874), pp. 29-30, 108, etc.
[156] Cp. Inferno, i. 144 sqq.: ‘loco eterno Ove udirai le disperate strida, Di quegli antichi spiriti dolenti, Chè la seconda morte ciascun grida: E poi vedrai,’ etc.
[157] In nearly all the visions the seer is provided with a guide or instructor, though there is a great variety in the persons invested with this office. The earliest of these is the Archangel Michael in the Book of Enoch, and he retains his functions in a large proportion of the subsequent visions, and even in the conventional relations of a visit to Hades in Renaissance and post-Renaissance literature. Dryden, indeed, in his Essay on Epic Poetry, complains of the unfair share of work in this department that is thrust upon him. In the Vision of Esdras he is associated with Gabriel and thirty-four other angels. In the Vision of Fursa he is conducted by three angels who represent the Trinity. In other narratives St. Paul or St. Peter figures. In the later mediæval visions the guardian angel appears in this capacity with increasing frequency, and in particular in the Irish legends from the time of St. Patrick, who received his revelations through the mouth of his angel Victor. In the Shepherd of Hermas, the apparition of the object of Hermas’s affection, followed by that of the sibyl-like personification of the Church, is a very curious anticipation of Beatrice instigating Virgil to undertake Dante’s guidance.