Footnote 1176:[(return)]
Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. Virt. mul 20.
Footnote 1177:[(return)]
See p. [229], supra.
Footnote 1178:[(return)]
Le Braz2, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many local beliefs (cf. Sébillot, ii. 149).
Footnote 1179:[(return)]
Procop. De Bello Goth. vi. 20.
Footnote 1180:[(return)]
Claudian, In Rufin. i. 123.
Footnote 1181:[(return)]
Sébillot, i. 418 f.
Footnote 1182:[(return)]
de Defectu Orac. 18. An occasional name for Britain in the Mabinogion is "the island of the Mighty" (Loth, i. 69, et passim). To the storm incident and the passing of the mighty, there is a curious parallel in Fijian belief. A clap of thunder was explained as "the noise of a spirit, we being near the place in which spirits plunge to enter the other world, and a chief in the neighbourhood having just died" (Williams, Fiji, i. 204).
Footnote 1183:[(return)]
de Facie Lun[oe], 26.
Footnote 1184:[(return)]
See Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, 209; Macdougall, Folk and Hero Tales, 73, 263; Le Braz2, i. p. xxx. Mortals sometimes penetrated to the presence of these heroes, who awoke. If the visitor had the courage to tell them that the hour had not yet come, they fell asleep again, and he escaped. In Brittany, rocky clefts are believed to be the entrance to the world of the dead, like the cave of Lough Dearg. Similar stories were probably told of these in pagan times, though they are now adapted to Christian beliefs in purgatory or hell.
Footnote 1185:[(return)]
Le Braz2, i. p. xl, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail, Folk-Lore, vi. 170.