Showing posts with label Fiji. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fiji. Show all posts

Thursday 11 August 2022

6000












'So, What Happened?'


Holly told him about the cadmium II radiation leak; how the crew had been wiped out within seconds; how he'd headed the ship pell-mell out of the solar system, to avoid spreading nuclear contamination; and how he'd had to keep Lister in stasis until the radiation had reached a safe background level.


'So ... How long did you keep me in stasis?'


'Three million years,' said Holly, as casually as he could.


Lister acted as if he hadn't heard. Three million years? It had no meaning. If it had been thirty years, he would have thought 'What a long time.' But three million years. Three million years was iust ... stupid.


He wandered over to the chair opposite the console he'd seen Kochanski operate.


'So, Krissie's dead,' he said, staring at the hummock of dust. 'I always...'


His voice tailed away.


He tried to remember her face. He tried to remember the pinball smile.


'Well, if it's any consolation,' said Holly, 'If she had survived, the age difference would be insurmountable. I mean, you're twenty-four, she's three million: it takes a lot for a relationship with that kind of age gap to work.'


Lister wasn't listening. 'I always thought we'd get back together. I, ah, had this sort of plan that one day I'd have enough money to buy a farm on Fiji. It's cheap land there, and, in a half-assed kind of way, I always pictured she'd be there with me.'


This was getting morbid. Holly tried to lighten the atmosphere.


'Well,' he said, 'she wouldn't be much use to you on Fiji now.


'No,' said Lister.


'Not unless it snowed,' said Holly, 'and you needed something to grit the path with.'


Lister screwed up his face in distaste. 'Holly!'


'Sorry. I've been on my own for three million years. I'm just used to saying what I think.'


For some time now, well, the last two hundred thousand years to be exact, Holly had grown increasingly concerned about himself.


For a computer with an IQ of six thousand, it seems to him he was behaving in a more and more erratic way.


In fact, he'd long suspected he'd gone a bit peculiar. Just as a bachelor who spends too much time on his own gradually develops quirks and eccentricities, so a computer who spends three million years alone in Deep Space can get, well, set in his ways. Become quirky. Go a little bit ... odd.


Holly decided not to burden Lister with this anxiety, and hoped his oddness would eventually sort itself out now he had a bit of company.


Another slight concern which he tried to put to the back of his RAM was that, for a computer with an IQ of six thousand, there was a rather alarming amount of knowledge he seemed to have forgotten. It wasn't, on the whole, important things, but was nonetheless fairly disturbing.


He knew, for instance, that Isaac Newton was a famous physicist, but he couldn't remember why.


He couldn't remember the capital of Luxembourg.


He could recall pi to thirty thousand digits, but he couldn't say for absolute certain whether port was on the left side, and starboard on the right, or whether it was the other way round.


Who knocked Swansea City out of the FA Cup in 1967? He used to know. It was a mystery now.


Obviously none of this missing information was absolutely vital for the smooth running of a mining ship three million years out into Deep Space. But technically he was supposed to know more-or-less everything and, frankly, there were some worrying gaps. He could remember, for instance, that in the second impression, 1959 publication of Lolita by Vladimir Nabakov, printed in Great Britain by the Shenval Press (London, Hertford and Harrow), page 60 was far and away the dirtiest page. But was Nabakov German or Russian? It totally eluded him.


Maybe it wasn't important. Of course it wasn't important.


Still, it was for Holly a source of perturbation.


It's a source of perturbation, he thought. Then he wondered whether there was such a word as 'perturbation', or whether he'd just made it up. He didn't know that either. Oh, it was hopeless.


Sunday 2 May 2021

Just down the road and a turn to the left.






Papa Fury: 

One of our tech boys flagged this, 

splashed down in the Banda Sea. 

Could be the Quinjet. 

But with Stark's stealth tech, 

we still can't track the damn thing.


The Widow :

Right.


Papa Fury: 

Probably jumped out and swam to Fiji. 

He'll send a postcard.


Natasha Romanoff: 

"Wish you were here." 

You sent me to recruit him, way back when. 

Did you know then what was going to happen?


Papa Fury: 

You Never KNOW — 

You Hope for The Best 

and 

Make Do 

with What You Get. 


I got A Great Team.



The Widow :

Nothing lasts forever.


Papa Fury: 

Trouble, Miss Romanoff. 

No matter who wins or loses, 

Trouble still comes around.





“The Grail Castle is always just down the road and a turn to the left. If anyone is humble enough and of good heart, he can find that interior castle. Parsifal has had the arrogance beaten out of him by twenty years of fruitless searching, and he is now ready for his castle.

  THE SECOND GRAIL CASTLE

  Just down the road, turn left, and cross the drawbridge, which snaps closed ticking the back hooves of your horse. It is always dangerous to make the transition of levels that entry to the Grail castle involves.

Parsifal finds the same ceremonial procession going on; a fair damsel carries the sword that pierced the side of Christ, another damsel carries the paten from which the last supper was served, yet another maiden bears the Grail itself. The wounded Fisher King lies groaning on his litter, poised between life and death in his suffering.

Now, wonder of wonders, with twenty years of maturity and experience behind him, Parsifal asks the question which is his greatest contribution to mankind: Whom does The Grail serve?

What a strange question! Hardly comprehensible to modern ears! In essence the question is the most profound question one can ask: where is the center of gravity of a human personality; or where is the center of meaning in a human life? 

Most modern people, asked this question in understandable terms for our time, would reply that 

I am the center of gravity; 
I work to improve my life; 
I am working toward my goals; 
I am increasing my equity; 
I am making something of myself—

or most common of all—

I am searching for happiness, 

which is to say that 

I want the Grail to serve me

We ask this great cornucopia of nature, this great feminine outpouring of all the material of the world—the air, the sea, the animals, the oil, the forests, and all the productivity of The World—we ask that it should serve us. But no sooner is the question asked than the answer comes reverberating through the Grail castle halls — the Grail serves the Grail King. 

Again, a puzzling answer. 

Translated, this means that life serves what a Christian would call God, Jung calls the Self, or and we call by the many terms we have devised to indicate that which is greater than ourselves.

Another language, less poetic but perhaps easier, is available. Dr. Jung speaks of the life process as being the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality from the ego to the Self. He sees this as the life work of a man and the center of meaning for all human endeavor. 

When Parsifal learns that he is no longer the center of the universe—not even his own little kingdom—he is free of his alienation and the Grail is no longer barred from him. 

Though he may come and go from the Grail castle during the rest of his life, now he will never be alien to it again.


Even more astonishing, the wounded Fisher King rises, healed, in triumph and joy. The miracle has happened, and the legend of his healing has been accomplished. 

In Wagner’s opera, Parsifal, the wounded Fisher King rises at this moment and sings a wondrous song of triumph and power and strength. It is the culmination of the whole tale!

Now who is the Grail King whom we have not heard mentioned before? He is the true king of the realm and he lives in the center of the Grail castle. He lives only on the Host and the Wine of the Grail. He is a thinly disguised figure of God, the earthly representation of the Divine, or in Jungian terms, the Self. It is humbling to learn that we hear of this inner center only when we are ready for it and when we have done our duty of formulating a coherent question.

The object of life is not happiness, but to serve God or the Grail. All of the Grail quests are to serve God. If one understands this and drops his idiotic notion that the meaning of life is personal happiness, then one will find that elusive quality immediately at hand.

This same motif appears in a contemporary myth, The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien; the power must be taken from those who would exploit it. In the Grail myth the source of power is given to the representative of God. In Tolkien’s myth the ring of power is taken from evil hands that would use its power to destroy the world and is put back into the ground from which it came. Earlier myths often spoke of the discovery of power and its emergence from the earth into human hands. Recent myths speak of returning the source of power to the earth or into the Hands of God before we destroy ourselves with it.

One detail in the story is worth special observation: Parsifal need only ask the question; he does not have to answer it. When one is discouraged and certain he will never have the intelligence to find the answer to insoluble riddles, he can remember that although it is the duty of the ego to ask a well-formulated question, he is not required to answer it. To ask well is virtually to answer.


Rejoicing bursts forth in the Grail castle; the Grail is brought forth, it gives its food to everyone, including the now-healed Fisher King, and there is perfect peace, joy, and wellbeing.


Such a dilemma! If you ask the Grail to give you happiness, that demand precludes happiness. But if you serve the Grail and the Grail King properly, you will find that what happens and happiness are the same thing. A play on words becomes the definition of enlightenment.

An identical theme is found in very different language in the “Ten Oxherding Pictures” from Zen Buddhism. This is a series of ten pictures prescribed for an artist to portray the steps toward enlightenment. In the first the young hero searches for the ox—his inner nature; in the second he sees the footprints of the ox; in the third he sees the ox. The series proceeds to the ninth picture in which the hero tames the ox, forges a peaceful relationship with it, and sits quietly surveying the scene. The question rises at this pointBehold the streams flowing, whither nobody knows; and the flowers vividly red—for whom are they? Author Mokusen Miyuki reflects that these words could be translated literally into “The stream flows on its own accord, and the flower is red on its own accord.” The Chinese term tsu, “of its own accord,” is used as a compound, tsu-jan, in Taoist thought. It can mean “naturalness,” an occurring of the creative spontaneity of nature, within and without. In other words, tsu-jan, can be taken psychologically as the living reality of selfrealization or the creative urge of the Self manifesting itself in nature.

The series of pictures culminates in the tenth when the hero, now perfectly at peace, walks unnoticed through the village streets. There is nothing extraordinary about him now except that all the trees burst into blossom as he passes by.

This questioning of the meaning of the stream or the redness of the rose from such a different source as Zen Buddhism enhances our understanding of this quest.


A Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, came to America more than a century ago and made some astute observations about the American way. He said that we have a misleading idea at the very head of our Constitution : The Pursuit of Happiness. One can not pursue Happiness; if he does he obscures it. If he will proceed with the human task of life, the relocation of the center of gravity of the personality to something greater outside itself, happiness will be the outcome.

In this year of our Lord we are just beginning to ask the Grail question : Do we have the right to cut down the trees, impoverish the soil, and kill all the pelicans? The answer is beginning to come clear; the first lisping syllables of the question are audible. If we can hear this old tale of an innocent fool blundering into the Grail castle for the first time and earning his way there a second time, we can find some sage advice for our own modern way.

Excerpt from : 
"He: Understanding Masculine Psychology" 
by Robert A. Johnson.

Monday 6 April 2020

THE ABANDONED

Hey! Working class kid makes good!



The Holy Mother, saved by Cloister the Stupid, who was frozen in time, and who gaveth of his life that we might live.

Who shall returneth to lead us to Fushal, The Promised Land.


And Cloister spake, `Lo, I shall lead you to Fyushal, and there we shall open a temple of food, wherein shall be sausages and doughnuts and all manner of bountiful things.

Yea, even individual sachets of mustard. 

And those who serve shall have hats of great majesty, yea, though they be made of coloured cardboard and have humorous arrows through the top.'



“And Cloister gave to Frankenstein the sacred writing, saying, `Those who have wisdom will know its meaning.' And it was written thus: `Seven socks, one shirt--'" 


And the ark that left first followed the sacred signs, and lo, they flew straight into an asteroid.

And the righteous in the second ark flew ever onward, knowing they were indeed righteous." 



KRYTEN laughs hard, banging his head off the table, then abruptly sobers
up.

KRYTEN:
“Mum”  
I never had a mum.

CAT :
There, there, it's alright, buddy, it's all part of being drunk.
You've been through the happy stage, now you're going through the melancholy stage.

KRYTEN:
Oooooh... everybody should have a mum.

HOLLY:
I never had a mum, neither.

RIMMER: 
Well, you can have mine!  Everybody else did!

LISTER :
I never had a mum either.

RIMMER:
Oh, for god's sake, what's wrong with everyone?!

HOLLY:
Why didn't you have a mum?

LISTER: 
I was abandoned.

KRYTEN: 
Abandoned?

LISTER: 
Six weeks old.  
A cardboad box underneath the pool table.  
I was just abandoned in this pub.

KRYTEN: 
How could anybody do that?

LISTER:
I don't know.  
I never found out.


For a long time, you'll think that you were abandoned, but you weren't, man.  

You were put here to create a paradox, an unbreakable circle.  

With us going 'round and 'round in time, the human race can never become extinct.

We're like... a kind of 'holding pattern'.

LISTER reaches into the box and touches the baby's chin tenderly

I'll see ya, son.

Quietly, LISTER approaches the pool table and, bending down, gently slides the box underneath.  
He steps away


LISTER: 
Does it say what happened to the rest of the Cats? 

HOLLY: 
Holy wars.
 
There were thousands of years of fighting, Dave, between the two factions. 

LISTER:
What two factions? 

HOLLY:
Well, the ones who believed the hats should be red, 
and the ones who believed the hats should be blue.


LISTER: 
Do you mean they had a war over whether the doughnut diner hats were red or blue? 

HOLLY: 
Yeah. Most of them were killed fighting about that. 
It's daft really, innit? 

LISTER:
You're not kiddin’. 
They were supposed to be green.

Go on, Hol. 

HOLLY: 
Well, finally they called a truce, and built two arks and left Red Dwarf in search of Fyushal. 

LISTER:
But there's no such place as Fyushal. 

It's Fiji. 

I mean, how are they supposed to find it? 


“And Cloister gave to Frankenstein the sacred writing, saying, `Those who have wisdom will know its meaning.' 

And it was written thus: 
`Seven socks, one shirt--'" 

LISTER:
That's my laundry list! 
I lined the cat's basket with me laundry list! 

HOLLY:
The Blue Hats thought it was a star chart leading to The Promised Land. 

LISTER: 
Well it wasn't, it was my dirty washin’.
What happened next, Hol? 

HOLLY: 
“And the ark that left first followed the sacred signs, and lo, they flew straight into an asteroid.

And the righteous in the second ark flew ever onward, knowing they were indeed righteous." 

LISTER: 
This is terrible. 
Holy wars. Killing. 
They're just using religion as an excuse to be extremely crappy to each other. 

TOASTER: 
So what else is new? 












 15 Int. Another corridor.

LISTER: 
Cat! Come on, kitty, kitty! Meow ... meow ... come on, kitty ... come on, Cat, the crispies are getting warm ... come on, Cat...

16 Int. Cargo hold.

Everything is covered in dust and cobwebs. 

There's an improvised altar (a filing cabinet with some cat figurines and candles on top), a big statue of Cloister (wearing a doughnut on his head), and a bed, on which an old, blind Cat priest wearing red robes and hat (complete with arrow) lies. 

The other CAT (the one we know) is there too.

CAT: 
Aaaooowww, yeah yeah yeah yeah, (to the figurines on the altar) 
Hey fellas! 
Yes sir, I'm back! 
Feeling good! (To the priest) 

Feed me. 

PRIEST: 
You're always leaving me! 
Where do you go? 

CAT: 
Investigating! 
See, I have these feet-- 

PRIEST: 
I'm dying. 

CAT: 
I'm telling you about my feet! 
My investigating feet. 

PRIEST: 
Don't you hear me?! 
I'm dying. 

CAT: 
Yeah. But I'm telling you about my feet. 

PRIEST: 
Oh, why should you listen to me, a blind old priest that's lost his faith. 

CAT: 
I'm not listening to you. 
I'm trying to tell you about my feet. 

PRIEST: 
What do you care? 

CAT: 
I don't care! 
You're the one who's doing the dying, not me. 
Why should I let it spoil MY evening?

17 Int. Corridor.

The corridor is dusty and cobwebby. LISTER is still looking for the CAT.

LISTER: 
Cat? ... Cat?

He pushes on a grille marked "Supply Pipe 28" and falls through it.

LISTER: 
(Picking himself up) 
Oohh. Cat, when I get you I'm going to turn you into a kebab. 
Holly? Can you still hear me?

Cat...?

18 Int. Cargo cathedral.

PRIEST: 
Here. 
(Takes his hat off.) 
Burn the sacred hat. 

CAT: 
That's a fearsome hat. 

PRIEST: 
Burn it, burn it! 
It's a symbol of the lies.

The CAT takes the hat and puts it on. Meanwhile, LISTER's face appears at a window.

CAT: 
It's burnt. 

PRIEST: 
All my life I've served a lie. 
Because you're not there, Cloister, are you? 

You've never been there! 
YOU DON'T EXIST!

In the antechamber, LISTER has grabbed one of the golden doughnuts off the head of a statue of Cloister and put it on his own head. As the priest shouts his disbelief, LISTER pushes open the doors.





PRIEST: 
Who's that? 

LISTER: 
It is I, Cloister! 

PRIEST: (To CAT) 
Who is it, boy? 

LISTER: 
I told you, it's me, Cloister. 
I've returned from The Dead. 

PRIEST: 
Is it him? 
Is it truly him? Does he look like a king?

LISTER quickly grabs one of the giant golden sausages that line the entrance and holds it threateningly over CAT.

CAT: 
A king?!
Yeah, yeah! 

PRIEST: 
Is he wearing the doughnut and the golden sausage? 

CAT: 
Yeah, yeah! 

PRIEST: 
Then it truly is him! 
Oh, I've failed you, Cloister. All these years I kept my faith. 
I wore the Holy Custard Stain and the Scared Gravy Marks.

LISTER suddenly realises that the priest's robe bears the same stains as his own T-shirt.

PRIEST: 
I renounced coolness, and chose the righteous path of slobbiness. But in The End, I failed you. 

LISTER: 
Why didn't you go on the arks with the rest of the Cats? 

PRIEST: 
They left us behind. 
The sick and the lame. 
Left us to die. 
But then, The Boy was born  - to the cripple and the idiot. 

CAT: 
What idiot? 

PRIEST: 
Your father, boy. 

CAT: 
MY father was a jelly-brain? 

PRIEST: 
Yes, that's why he ate his own feet. 

CAT: 
I did wonder. 

PRIEST: 
But, as one by one we died, my faith died also. 
You tested me, Cloister, and I failed you. 

LISTER: 
Oh, no. You didn't fail, old man. 
You passed! I'm giving you ... 
I'm giving you an A+ distinction. 

PRIEST: 
You ... you mean there's a place for me on Fyushal? 

LISTER: 
A place? Got your own bathroom, own suite, cork floors, your own barbecue on the patio, double glazing, a phone, everything! 


PRIEST: (Horrified) 
My hat! I've burned my sacred hat! 

LISTER: 
No you haven't! (Grabs it off of CAT's head and replaces it on the priest's.) 

PRIEST: 
A miracle! (Tries to stand up.) 
This is the happiest day of my -- uh -- aaahhh--

The priest suddenly collapses back on the bed, as dead as some doodoo. 
LISTER sits down, appalled. 
CAT puts his arm around Lister's shoulders.

CAT: 
Did I ever tell you about my feet? My investigating feet? Once upon a time, there was an old man...


“From the moment he discovered that the cadmium II had achieved critical mass, Holly had less than fifteen nanoseconds to act. He sealed off as much of the ship as possible - the whole cargo area, and the ship's supply bay. 

Simultaneously, he set the drive computer to accelerate far beyond the dull green-blue disc of Neptune in the distance, and out into the abyss of unknown space. Then he read the Bible, the Koran, and other major religious works: he covered  Islam, Zoroastrianism, Mazdaism, Zarathustrianism, Dharma,  Brahmanism, Hinduism, Vedanta, Jainism, Buddhism, Hinayana, Mahayana, Sikhism, Shintoism, Taoism and Confucianism. Then he read all of Marx, Engels, Freud, jung and Einstein. And, to kill the remaining few nanoseconds, he skipped briefly through Joe Klumpp's Zero Gee Football - It's a Funny Old game. 

At the end of this, Holly came to two conclusions. First, given  the whole sphere of human knowledge, it was still impossible to determine the existence or not of God. And second, Joe Klumpp should have stuck to having his hair permed. 

In the hold, Frankenstein's four offspring began to breed. Each litter produced an average of four kittens, three times a year. At the end of the first year, the second generation of kittens started to breed too. 

They also produced three annual litters of three to four kittens. 



When Frankenstein died, at the great old age of fourteen, she left behind one hundred and ninety-eight thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two cats. 

198,732 cats, who continued to breed 
 
Still Red Dwarf accelerated. 
Holly witnessed at first hand phenomena which had never been witnessed before. He saw phenomena which had only been guessed at by theoretical physicists. 
He saw a star form. 
He saw another star die. 
He saw a black hole. 
He saw pulsars and quasars. 
He saw twin and triplet sun systems.

He saw sights Copernicus would have torn out his eyes for, but all the while he couldn't stop thinking how bad that book was by Joe Klumpp. 
 
The cats continued to breed. 
 
Red Dwarf continued to accelerate. 

The forty-square mile cargo hold was seething with cats. 
A sea of cats. 
A sea of cats, sealed from the radiation-poisoned decks above with nowhere to go. 
Only the smartest, the biggest and the strongest survived.

The mutants. 



The mutants, who had rudimentary fingers instead of claws, who stood on their hind legs, and clubbed rivals to death with crudely made clubs. Who found the best breeding mates. 

And bred. 

Felis erectus was born.

Red Dwarf, still accelerating, passed five stars in concentric orbits, performing a breathtaking, mind-boggling stellar ballet. 

Not that Holly noticed. 

He'd been on his own now for two million years and was no 
longer interested in mind-boggling stellar ballets. What he was really into was Netta Muskett novels. The young doctor had just told Jemma she had only three years to live, as he held her in his powerful masculine grip, his dark brooding eyes piercing her very 
soul. Outside, the suns danced into a perfect pentagon and span, end over end, like a gigantic Catherine wheel. 
 
But Holly didn't see it. He was too busy reading Doctor, Darling. 

Then there was a plague. 

And the plague was hunger. 

Less than thirty Cat tribes now survived, roaming the cargo decks on their hind legs in a desperate search for food.

But the food had gone. 

The supplies were finished. 

Weak and ailing, they prayed at the supply hold's silver moun-
tains: huge towering acres of metal rocks which, in their 
pagan way, the mutant Cats believed watched over them. 

Amid the wailing and the screeching one Cat stood up and held aloft the sacred icon. The icon which had been passed down as holy and one day would make its use known. 

It was a piece of V-shaped metal with a revolving handle on its head. 

He took down a silver rock from the silver mountain, while the 
other Cats cowered and screamed at the blasphemy. 

He placed the icon on the rim of the rock, and turned the handle. 
And the handle turned. 
And the rock opened. 
And inside the rock was Alphabetti spaghetti in tomato sauce. 
And in the other rocks were even more delights. Sugar-free baked  beans. Chicken and mushroom Toastie Toppers. Faggots in rich meaty gravy. All sealed in perfect vacuums, preserved from the 
ravages of Time. 

God had spoken. 

And Felis sapiens was born. 

Holly was gurning. He was pulling his pixelized face into the most bizarre and ludicrous expressions he could muster. He'd been gurning now for nearly two thousand years. It wasn't much of a hobby, but 
it helped pass the time. 

He was beginning to worry that he was going computer-senile. 

Driven crazy by loneliness. What he needed, he decided, was a companion. 

He would build a woman.

A perfectly functioning human woman, capable of independent thought and decision-making. Identical to a real woman in the minutest detail. 

The problem was he didn't know how. 

He didn't even know what to make the nose out of. 

So he gave the whole scheme up as a bad idea, and started  gurning again. 

And there was a war between the Cats. 

A bloody war that laid waste many of their number. 

But the reason was good. 

The cause was sensible. 

The principle was worth fighting over. 

It was a holy war. 

Some of the Cats believed the one true father of Catkind was a man called Cloister, who saved Frankenstein, the Holy Mother, and was frozen in time by the evil men who sought to kill her. One day Cloister would return to lead them to Bearth, the planet where they could make their home. 

The other Cats believed exactly the same thing, except they maintained the name of the true Father of Catkind was a man called Clister. 

They spent the best part of two thousand years fighting over this huge, insuperable theological chasm.

Millions died. 

Finally, a truce was called. 

Commandeering the fleet of shuttles from the docking bay, half the Cats flew off in one direction, in search of Cloister and the Promised Planet, and the other half flew off in the opposite direction, in search of Clister and the Promised Planet. 

Behind them they left the ones who were too weak to travel: the old, the lame, the sick and the dying. 

And one by one, they died. 

Soon only two remained: one a cripple, one an idiot. 

They snuggled together for warmth and companionship.

And one day, to the cripple and the idiot, a son was born. 

Tuesday 21 November 2017

THE STATE OF THE DEAD



p. 333

CHAPTER XXII.

THE STATE OF THE DEAD.

AMONG all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have doubted the existence of a future state, but their conceptions of it have differed greatly. But of all the races of antiquity, outside Egypt, the Celts seem to have cherished the most ardent belief in the world beyond the grave, and to have been preoccupied with its joys. Their belief, so far as we know it, was extremely vivid, and its chief characteristic was life in the body after death, in another region. 1 This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a doctrine by the Druids, made it the admiration of classical onlookers. But besides this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a distant past, that the dead lived on in the grave--the two conceptions being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of belief in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul could exist apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that they believed in a future existence of the soul as a shade. This belief is certainly found in some late Welsh poems, where the ghosts are described as wandering in the Caledonian forest, but these can hardly be made use of as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may be gathered

p. 334

from classical observers, from archaeology and from Irish texts.

Cæsar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another (ab aliis ... ad alios) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved clients were also consumed. 1 Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live again, the soul passing into another body. Hence at the burial of the dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile, believing that the dead would read them in the next world." 2 Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal. 3 These passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite one common original, but Cæsar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The real point of

p. 335

connection was the insistence of both upon immortality, the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality via a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or believing in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be struck with the vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon conduct. The only thing like it of which they knew was the Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at in this light, Cæsar's words need not convey the idea of transmigration, and it is possible that he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these writers meant that the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly have added the passages regarding debts being paid in the other world, or letters conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit the dead there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of the soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic, may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.

This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, in orbe alio) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is but the centre of a

p. 336

long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic warrior had no fear of death. 1 Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its rich and varied existence. Classical writers, of course, may have known of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths telling of the rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and Mela, 2 speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela appears to copy Cæsar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on to the next world.

This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus, when Cúchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black ... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses are equally corporeal. 3 Similar descriptions of the dead who return are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich, who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and

p. 337

clad in his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the Táin1 Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions of the "Dead Debtor" folktale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as a living person in corporeal form. 2Equally substantial and corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine folk of the síd or of Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in the texts. To the Celts, gods, síde, and the dead, all alike had a bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways differed from the earthly body.

The archæological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots, utensils, ornaments, and coins. 3 Some of the interments undoubtedly point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons, without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body, pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied behind the back. 4 All this

p. 338

suggests, taken in connection with classical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was life in the body, and that it was a replica of this life, with the same affections, needs, and energies. Certain passages in Irish texts also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented their attack. 1 Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead husbands. 2

The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before burial. It appears from such practices as binding the dead with cords, or laying heavy stones or a mound of earth on the grave, probably to prevent their egress, or feeding the dead with sacrificial food at the grave, or from the belief that the dead come forth not as spirits, but in the body from the grave. This primitive conception, of which the belief in a subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long survived among various

p. 339

races, e.g. the Scandinavians, who believed in the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while they also had their conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the Slavs, side by side with Christian conceptions. 1 It also survived among the Celts, though another belief in the orbis alius had arisen. This can be shown from modern and ancient folk-belief and custom.

In numerous Celtic folk-tales the dead rise in the body, not as ghosts, from the grave, which is sometimes described as a house in which they live. They perform their ordinary occupations in house or field; they eat with the living, or avenge themselves upon them; if scourged, blood is drawn from their bodies; and, in one curious Breton tale, a dead husband visits his wife in bed and she then has a child by him, because, as he said, "sa compte d'enfants" was not yet complete. 2 In other stories a corpse becomes animated and speaks or acts in presence of the living, or from the tomb itself when it is disturbed. 3 The earliest literary example of such a tale is the tenth century "Adventures of Nera," based on older sources. In this Nera goes to tie a withy to the foot of a man who has been hung. The corpse begs a drink, and then forces Nera to carry him to a house, where he kills two sleepers. 4 All such stories, showing as they do that a corpse is really living, must in essence be of great antiquity. Another common belief, found over the Celtic area, is that the dead rise from the grave, not as ghosts, when they will, and that they appear en masse on the night of All Saints, and join the living. 5

As a result of such beliefs, various customs are found in

p. 340

use, apparently to permit of the corpse having freedom of movement, contrary to the older custom of preventing its egress from the grave. In the west of Ireland the feet of the corpse are left free, and the nails are drawn from the coffin at the grave. In the Hebrides the threads of the shroud are cut or the bindings of feet, hands, and face are raised when the body is placed in the coffin, and in Brittany the arms and feet are left free when the corpse is dressed. 1 The reason is said to be that the spirit may have less trouble in getting to the spirit world, but it is obvious that a more material view preceded and still underlies this later gloss. Many stories are told illustrating these customs, and the earlier belief, Christianised, appears in the tale of a woman who haunted her friends because they had made her grave-clothes so short that the fires of Purgatory burnt her knees. 2

Earlier customs recorded among the Celts also point to the existence of this primitive belief influencing actual custom. Nicander says that the Celts went by night to the tombs of great men to obtain oracles, so much did they believe that they were still living there. 3 In Ireland, oracles were also sought by sleeping on funeral cairns, and it was to the grave of Fergus that two bards resorted in order to obtain from him the lost story of the Táin. We have also seen how, in Ireland, armed heroes exerted a sinister influence upon enemies from their graves, which may thus have been regarded as their homes--a belief also underlying the Welsh story of Bran's head.

Where was the world of the dead situated? M. Reinach has shown, by a careful comparison of the different uses of the

p. 341

word orbis, that Lucan's words do not necessarily mean "another world," but "another region," i.e. of this world. 1 If the Celts cherished so firmly the belief that the dead lived on in the grave, a belief in an underworld of the dead was bound in course of time to have been evolved as part of their creed. To it all graves and tumuli would give access. Classical observers apparently held that the Celtic future state was like their own in being an underworld region, since they speak of the dead Celts as inferi, or as going ad Manes, and Plutarch makes Camma speak of descending to her dead husband. 2 What differentiated it from their own gloomy underworld was its exuberant life and immortality. This aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had descended, 3 probably a myth of their coming forth from his subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful life.

Several writers, notably M. D'Arbois, assume that the orbis alius of the dead was the Celtic island Elysium. But that Elysium never appears in the tales as a land of the dead. It is a land of gods and deathless folk who are not those who have passed from this world by death. Mortals may reach it by favour, but only while still in life. It might be argued that Elysium was regarded in pagan times as the land of the dead, but after Christian eschatological views prevailed, it became a kind of fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being carefully examined, they show that Elysium

p. 342

had always been a place distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a tendency to confuse the two.

If there was a genuine Celtic belief in an island of the dead, it could have been no more than a local one, else Cæsar would not have spoken as he does of the Celtic Dispater. Such a local belief now exists on the Breton coast, but it is mainly concerned with the souls of the drowned. 1 A similar local belief may explain the story told by Procopius, who says that Brittia (Britain), an island lying off the mouth of the Rhine, is divided from north to south by a wall beyond which is a noxious region. This is a distorted reminiscence of the Roman wall, which would appear to run in this direction if Ptolemy's map, in which Scotland lies at right angles to England, had been consulted. Thither fishermen from the opposite coast are compelled to ferry over at dead of night the shades of the dead, unseen to them, but marshalled by a mysterious leader. 2 Procopius may have mingled some local belief with the current tradition that Ulysses' island of the shades lay in the north, or in the west. 3 In any case his story makes of the gloomy land of the shades a very different region from the blissful Elysium of the Celts and from their joyous orbis alius, nor is it certain that he is referring to a Celtic people.

Traces of the idea of an underworld of the dead exist in Breton folk-belief. The dead must travel across a subterranean ocean, and though there is scarcely any tradition regarding what happens on landing, M. Sébillot thinks that formerly "there existed in the subterranean world a sort of centralisation of the different states of the dead." If so, this must have been founded on pagan belief. The interior of the earth is

p. 343

also believed to be the abode of fabulous beings, of giants, and of fantastic animals, and there is also a subterranean fairy world. In all this we may see a survival of the older belief, modified by Christian teaching, since the Bretons suppose that purgatory and hell are beneath the earth and accessible from its surface. 1

Some British folk-lore brought to Greece by Demetrius and reported by Plutarch might seem to suggest that certain persons--the mighty dead--were privileged to pass to the island Elysium. Some islands near Britain were called after gods and heroes, and the inhabitants of one of these were regarded as sacrosanct by the Britons, like the priestesses of Sena. They were visited by Demetrius, who was told that the storms which arose during his visit were caused by the passing away of some of the "mighty" or of the "great souls." It may have been meant that such mighty ones passed to the more distant islands, but this is certainly not stated. In another island, Kronos was imprisoned, watched over by Briareus, and guarded by demons. 2 Plutarch refers to these islands in another work, repeating the story of Kronos, and saying that his island is mild and fragrant, that people live there waiting on the god who sometimes appears to them and prevents their departing. Meanwhile they are happy and know no care, spending their time in sacrificing and hymn-singing or in studying legends and philosophy.

Plutarch has obviously mingled Celtic Elysium beliefs with the classical conception of the Druids. 3 In Elysium there is

p. 344

no care, and favoured mortals who pass there are generally prevented from returning to earth. The reference to Kronos may also be based partly on myths of Celtic gods of Elysium, partly on tales of heroes who departed to mysterious islands or to the hollow hills where they lie asleep, but whence they will one day return to benefit their people. So Arthur passed to Avalon, but in other tales be and his warriors are asleep beneath Craig-y-Ddinas, just as Fionn and his men rest within this or that hill in the Highlands. Similar legends are told of other Celtic heroes, and they witness to the belief that great men who had died would return in the hour of their people's need. In time they were thought not to have died at all, but to be merely sleeping and waiting for their hour. 1 The belief is based on the idea that the dead are alive in grave or barrow, or in a spacious land below the earth, or that dead warriors can menace their foes from the tomb.

Thus neither in old sagas, nor in Märchen, nor in popular tradition, is the island Elysium a world of the dead. For the most part the pagan eschatology has been merged in that of Christianity, while the Elysium belief has remained intact and still survives it a whole series of beautiful tales.

The world of the dead was in all respects a replica of this world, but it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief--a survival of the older conception of the bodily state of the dead--they resume their tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings. Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their customary dress. Like

p. 345

the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed and clothe the dead in the other world. 1 If the world of the dead was subterranean,--a theory supported by current folk-belief, 2--the Earth-goddess or the Earth-god, who had been first the earth itself, then a being living below its surface and causing fertility, could not have become the divinity of the dead until the multitude of single graves or barrows, in each of which the dead lived, had become a wide subterranean region of the dead. This divinity was the source of life and growth; hence he or she was regarded as the progenitor of mankind, who had come forth from the underworld and would return there at death. It is not impossible that the Breton conception of Ankou, death personified, is a reminiscence of the Celtic Dispater. He watches over all things beyond the grave, and carries off the dead to his kingdom. But if so he has been altered for the worse by mediæval ideas of "Death the skeleton" 3 He is a grisly god of death, whereas the Celtic Dis was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed a happy immortality. They were not cold phantasms, but alive and endowed with corporeal form and able to enjoy the things of a better existence, and clad in the beautiful raiment and gaudy ornaments which were loved so much on earth. Hence Celtic warriors did not fear death, and suicide was extremely common, while Spanish Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others celebrated the birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with joy. 4 Lucan's words are thus the truest expression of Celtic eschatology--"In another

p. 346

region the spirit animates the members; death, if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring life."

There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since the hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor, it may have been held, as many other races have believed, that cowards would miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of the Irish Christian visions of the other-world and in existing folk-belief, certain characteristics of hell may not be derived from Christian eschatology, e.g. the sufferings of the dead from cold. 1 This might point to an old belief in a cold realm whither some of the dead were banished. In the Adventures of S. Columba's Clerics, hell is reached by a bridge over a glen of fire, 2 and a narrow bridge leading to the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here it may be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such Christian writings as the Dialogues of S. Gregory the Great. 3 It might be contended that the Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory of retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor is there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in which Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till "the day of Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the Lord," does not refer to such a judgment. 4 If an ethical blindness be attributed to the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of retribution, it should

p. 347

be remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from suggesting an ethical Deity.


Footnotes

333:1 Skene, i. 370.

334:1 Cæsar, vi. 14, 19.

334:2 Diod. Sic, v. 28.

334:3 Val. Max. vi. 6. 10.

336:1 Phars. f. 455f.

336:2 Amm. Marc. xv, 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2.

336:3 Miss Hull, 275.

337:1 Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293.

337:2 Larminie, 155; Hyde, Beside the Fire, 21, 153; CM xiii. 21; Campbell, WHT, ii. 21; Le Braz 2, i. p. xii.

337:3 Von Sacken, Das Grabfeld von Hallslatt; Greenwell, British Barrows; RC x. 234; Antiquary, xxxvii. 125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.; Anderson, Scotland in Pagan Times.

337:4 L'Anthropologie, vi. 586; Greenwell, op. cit. 119.

338:1 Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, Annals, i. 145, 180; RC xv. 28. In one case the enemy disinter the body of the king of Connaught, and rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a victory. This nearly coincides with the dire results following the disinterment of Bran's head (O'Donovan, i, 145; cf. p. 242, supra).

338:2 LU 130aRC xxiv. 185; O'Curry, MC i. p. cccxxx; Campbell, WHT iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.

339:1 Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 167, 417-418, 420; and see my Childhood of Fiction, 103 f.

339:2 Larminie, 31; Le Braz 2, ii. 146, 159, 161, 184, 257 (the rôle of the dead husband is usually taken by a lutin or follet, Luzel, Veillées Bretons, 79); Rev. des Trad. Pop. ii. 267; Ann. de Bretagne, viii. 514.

339:3 Le Braz 2, i. 313. Cf. also an incident in the Voyage of Maelduin.

339:4 RC x. 214 f. Cf. Kennedy, 162; Le Braz 2, i. 217, for variants.

339:5 Curtin, Tales, 156; see p. 170supra.

340:1 Curtin, Tales, 156; Campbell, Superstitions, 241; Folk-Lore, xiii. 60; Le Braz 2, i. 213.

340:2 Folk-Lore, ii. 26; Yeats, Celtic Twilight, 166.

340:3 Tertullian, de Anima, 21.

341:1 Reinach, RC xxii. 447.

341:2 Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. Virt. mul 20.

341:3 See p. 229supra.

342:1 Le Braz 2, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many local beliefs (cf. Sébillot, ii. 149).

342:2 Procop. De Bello Goth. vi. 20.

342:3 Claudian, In Rufin. i. 123.

343:1 Sébillot, i 418 f.

343:2 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).

343:3 de Facie Lunæ, 26.

344:1 See Hartland, Science of Fairy Tales, 209; Macdougall, Folk and Hero Tales, 73, 263; Le Braz 2, 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.

345:1 Le Braz 2, i, p. X1, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail, Folk-Lore, vi. 170.

345:2 Seep. 338, supra, and Logan, Scottish Gael, ii. 374; Folk-Lore, viii. 208, 253.

345:3 Le Braz 2, i. 96, 127, 136 f., and Intro. xlv.

345:4 Philostratus, Apoll. of Tyana, v. 4; Val. Max. ii. 6. 12.

346:1 Le Braz 1, ii. 91; Curtin, Tales, 146. The punishment of suffering from ice and snow appears in the Apocalypse of Paul and in later Christian accounts of hell.

346:2 RC xxvi. 153.

346:3 Bk. iv. ch. 36.

346:4 Erdathe, according to D'Arbois, means (1) "the day in which the dead will resume his colour," from dath, "colour"; (2) "the agreeable day," from data, "agreeable" (D'Arbois, i. 185; cf. Les Druides, 135).


Next: Chapter XXIII. Rebirth and Transmigration