[97] This account about corrigans, more rational than any preceding it, may possibly refer to a dream or trance-like state of mind on the part of the young girl; and if it does, we can then compare the presence of a mortal at this corrigan sabbath, or even at the ordinary witches’ sabbath, to the presence of a mortal in Fairyland. And according to popular Breton belief, as reliable peasants assure me, during dreams, trance, or ecstasy, the soul is supposed to depart from the body and actually see spirits of all kinds in another world, and to be then under their influence. While many details in the more conventional corrigan stories appear to reflect a folk-memory of religious dances and songs, and racial, social, and traditional usages of the ancient Bretons, the animistic background of them could conceivably have originated from psychical experiences such as this girl is supposed to have had.
[98] Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz (Paris, 1867), pp. 33, 35.
[99] J. Loth, in Annales de Bretagne (Rennes), x. 78-81.
[100] E. Renan, Essais de morale et de critique (Paris, 1859), p. 451.
[101] In Ireland it is commonly held that a seer beholding a fairy can make a non-seer see it also by coming into bodily rapport with the non-seer (cf. p. [152]).
[102] It is sometimes believed that phantom washerwomen are undergoing penance for having wilfully brought on an abortion by their work, or else for having strangled their babe.
[103] Every parish in the uncorrupted parts of Brittany has its own Ankou, who is the last man to die in the parish during the year. Each King of the Dead, therefore, never holds office for more than twelve months, since during that period he is certain to have a successor. Sometimes the Ankou is Death itself personified. In the Morbihan, the Ankou occasionally may be seen as an apparition entering a house where a death is about to occur; though more commonly he is never seen, his knocking only is heard, which is the rule in Finistère. In Welsh mythology, Gwynn ab Nudd, king of the world of the dead, is represented as playing a rôle parallel to that of the Breton Ankou, when he goes forth with his fierce hades-hounds hunting the souls of the dying. (Cf. Rhŷs, Arth. Leg., p. 155.)
[104] Cf. A. Le Braz, La Légende de la Mort; Introduction by L. Marillier (Paris, 1893), pp. 31, 40.
[105] Cf. Le Braz, La Légende de la Mort; Introduction by Marillier, pp. 47, 46, 7-8, 40, 45, 46.
[106] Cf. Le Braz, La Légende de la Mort; Introduction by Marillier, p. 43.