[420] It is interesting to note in connexion with these two complementary ideas what has been written by Mr. Standish O’Grady concerning strange phenomena witnessed at the time of Charles Parnell’s funeral:—‘While his followers were committing Charles Parnell’s remains to the earth, the sky was bright with strange lights and flames. Only a coincidence possibly; and yet persons not superstitious have maintained that there is some mysterious sympathy between the human soul and the elements.... Those strange flames recalled to my memory what is told of similar phenomena said to have been witnessed when tidings of the death of the great Christian Saint, Columba, overran the north-west of Europe, as perhaps truer than I had imagined.’—Ireland: Her Story, pp. 211-12.
[421] Cf. M. Lenihan, Limerick; its History and Antiquities (Dublin, 1866), p. 725.
[422] I take this to mean, somewhat as in the similar case of Dechtire, the mother of Cuchulainn (see p. [369], above), that the kind of soul or character which will be reincarnated in the child is determined by the psychic prenatal conditions which a mother consciously or unconsciously may set up. If this interpretation, as it seems to be, is correct, we have in this Welsh belief a surprising comprehension of scientific laws on the part of the ancient Welsh Druids—from whom the doctrine comes—which equals, and surpasses in its subtlety, the latest discoveries of our own psychological embryology, criminology, and so-called laws of heredity.
[423] The reader is referred to the Rev. T. M. Morgan’s latest publication, The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Newchurch, Carmarthenshire (Carmarthen, 1910), pp. 155-6.
[424] I found, however, that the original re-birth doctrine has been either misinterpreted or else corrupted—after Dr. Tylor’s theory—into transmigration into animal bodies among certain Cornish miners in the St. Just region.
[425] The primitive character of the Incarnation doctrine is clear: Origen, in refuting a Jewish accusation against Christians, apparently the natural outgrowth of deep-seated hatred and religious prejudice on the part of the Jews, that Jesus Christ was born through the adultery of the Virgin with a certain soldier named Panthera, argues ‘that every soul, for certain mysterious reasons (I speak now according to the opinions of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Empedocles, whom Celsus frequently names), is introduced into a body, and introduced according to its deserts and former actions’. And, according to Origen’s argument, to assign to Jesus Christ a birth more disgraceful than any other is absurd, because ‘He who sends souls down into the bodies of men’ would not have thus ‘degraded Him who was to dare such mighty acts, and to teach so many men, and to reform so many from the mass of wickedness in the world’. And Origen adds:—‘It is probable, therefore, that this soul also which conferred more benefit by its residence in the flesh than that of many men (to avoid prejudice, I do not say “all”), stood in need of a body not only superior to others, but invested with all excellence’ (Origen against Celsus, Book I, c. xxxii).
It is interesting to compare with Origen’s theology the following passage from the Pistis Sophia, wherein Jesus in the alleged esoteric discourse to his disciples refers to the pre-existence of their souls:—‘I took them from the hands of the twelve saviours of the treasure of light, according to the command of the first mystery. These powers, therefore, I cast into the wombs of your mothers, when I came into the world, and they are those which are in your bodies this day’ (Pistis Sophia, i. II, Mead’s translation).
[426] Cf. Nutt, Voy. of Bran, ii. 27 ff., 45 ff., 54 ff., 98-102.
[427] Cf. ib., p. 105.
[428] In this chapter, largely the result of my own special research and observations in Celtic archaeology, I wish to acknowledge the very valuable suggestions offered to me by Professor J. Loth, both in his lectures and personally.