Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, First Series

by Unknown

"A wood with blossom and with fruit, that has the smell of wine; a wood without fault, without withering, with leaves of the colour of gold." (Gods and Fighting Men, by Lady Gregory.)

Note [5]. Swedenborg describes these colours and I have a note of similar visions as seen by a fellow-student of mine at the Dublin Art School. Mrs. Besant in her Ancient Wisdom and other writers of the Modern Theosophical School describe them and moralize about them.

Note [6]. There are constant stories in the history of modern spiritism of people carried through the air often for considerable distances. It is not my business to weigh the evidence at this moment, for I am concerned only with similarity of belief. The medium, Mrs. Guppy, somewhere in the "sixties" was believed to have been carried from Hampstead, a pen in one hand and an account book in the other, and dropped on to the middle of a table in South Conduit Street. Lord Dunraven was one of a number of witnesses who testified to having seen the medium Hume float out of one window of the upper room, where they were sitting, and in at another window. I read the other day in a spiritistic paper, of two boys carried through the air in Italy and dropped in front of a bishop who immediately handed them over to the police. And of course the folk-lore of all countries and the legends of the saints are full of such tales.

Note [7]. The offering to the Sidhe is generally made at Hallowe'en, the old beginning of winter, and upon that night I was told when a boy the offering was still made in the slums of Dublin.

Note [8]. Father Sinistrari speaks of a like commerce between beasts and spirits. "Et non solum hoc evenit cum mulieribus, sed etiam cum equabus, cum quibus commicetur; quæ si libenter coitum admittunt, ab eo curantur optime, ac ipsarum jubæ varie artificiosis et inextricabilibus nodis texuntur; si autem illum adversentur, eas male tractat, percutit, macras reddit, et tandem necat, ut quotidiana constat experienta."

Note [9]. Houses built upon faery paths are thought to be unlucky. Often the thatch will be blown away, or their inhabitants die or suffer misfortune.

Note [10]. The number of quotations I can find to prove the universality of the thought that the dead and other spirits change their shape as they please is but lessened by the fewness of the books that are near my hand in the country where I am writing. John Heydon, "a servant of God and secretary of nature," writing in 1662 in The Rosie Cross Uncovered which is the last book of his Holy Guide says that a man may become one of the heroes: "A hero," he writes, "is a dæmon, or good genius, and a genius a partaker of divine things and a companion of the holy company of unbodied souls and immortal angels who live according to their vehicles a versatile life, turning themselves proteus-like into any shape."

And Mrs. Besant, a typical writer of the modern Theosophical School, insists upon these changes of form, especially among those spirits that are most free from the terrestrial body and explains it by saying that, "astral matter takes form under every impulse of thought." Swedenborg I have already quoted in my long essay, but to prove that the shape-changer is a part of general literature—I have but Wordsworth and Milton under my hand. When the white doe of Rylstone shows itself at the church door according to its Sunday custom, one has one tale to tell, another another, but an Oxford student will have it that it is the faery that loved a certain "shepherd-lord."

"'Twas said that she all shapes could wear."