Ὄλβιοι ἤροες, τοῖσιν μελιεδέα καρπὸν
Τρὶς ἔτεος θάλλοντα φέρει ζείδωρος ἄρουρα.’[[151]]
These Islands of the Blest, assigned as the abode of blessed spirits of the dead, came indeed to be identified with the Elysian Fields. Thus Pindar sings of steadfast souls, who through three lives on either side have endured free from injustice; then they pass by the road of Zeus to the tower of Kronos, where the ocean breezes blow round the islands of the happy, blazing with golden flowers of land and water. Thus, also, in the famous hymn of Kallistratos in honour of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who slew the tyrant Hipparchos:—
‘Φίλταθ’ Ἁρμόδἰ, οὔ τι πω τέθνηκας
Νήσοις δ’ ἐν μακάρων σε φασὶν εîναι,
Ἵνα περ ποδώκες Ἀχιλλεύς,
Τυδείδεν τε φασὶ τὸν ἐσθλὸν Διομήδεα.’[[152]]
This group of legends has especial interest to us Englishmen, who ourselves dwell, it seems, on such an island of the dead. It is not that we or our country are of a more ghostly nature than others, but the idea is geographical we are dwellers in the region of the setting sun, the land of death. The elaborate account by Procopius, the historian of the Gothic War, dates from the 6th century. The island of Brittia, according to him, lies opposite the mouths of the Rhine, some 200 stadia off, between Britannia and Thule, and on it dwell three populous nations, the Angles, Frisians, and Britons. (By Brittia, it appears, he means our Great Britain, his Britannia being the coast-land from modern Brittany to Holland, and his Thule being Scandinavia.) In the course of his history it seems to him needful to record a story, mythic and dreamlike as he thinks, yet which numberless men vouch for as having been themselves witnesses by eye and ear to its facts. This story is that the souls of the departed are conveyed across the sea to the island of Brittia. Along the mainland coast are many villages, inhabited by fishermen and tillers of the soil and traders to this island in their vessels. They are subject to the Franks, but pay no tribute, having from of old had to do by turns the burdensome service of transporting the souls. Those on duty for each night stay at home till they hear a knocking at the doors, and a voice of one unseen calling them to their work. Then without delay rising from their beds, compelled by some unknown power they go down to the beach, and there they see boats, not their own but others, lying ready but empty of men. Going on board and taking the oars, they find that by the burden of the multitude of souls embarked, the vessel lies low in the water, gunwale under within a finger’s breadth. In an hour they are at the opposite shore, though in their own boats they would hardly make the voyage in a night and day. When they reach the island, the vessel becomes empty, till it is so light that only the keel touches the waves. They see no man on the voyage, no man at the landing, but a voice is heard that proclaims the name and rank and parentage of each newly arrived passenger, or if women, those of their husbands. Traces of this remarkable legend seem to have survived, thirteen centuries later, in that endmost district of the Britannia of Procopius which still keeps the name of Bretagne. Near Raz, where the narrow promontory stretches westward into the ocean, is the ‘Bay of Souls’ (boé ann anavo); in the commune of Plouguel the corpse is taken to the churchyard, not by the shorter road by land, but in a boat by the ‘Passage de l’Enfer,’ across a little arm of the sea; and Breton folk-lore holds fast to the legend of the Curé de Braspar, whose dog leads over to Great Britain the souls of the departed, when the wheels of the soul-car are heard creaking in the air. These are but mutilated fragments, but they seem to piece together with another Keltic myth, told by Macpherson in the last century, the voyage of the boat of heroes to Flath-Innis, Noble Island, the green island home of the departed, which lies calm amid the storms far in the Western Ocean. With full reason, also, Mr. Wright traces to the situation of Ireland in the extreme West its especial association with legends of descents to the land of shades. Claudian placed at the extremity of Gaul the entrance where Ulysses found a way to Hades—
‘Est locus extremum qua pandit Gallia litus,
Oceani prætentus aquis, ubi fertur Ulysses,’ &c.