The pagan belief that lasted the longest in Brittany, and is by no means dead yet, was the cult of the dead. Caesar said that the Celts of Gaul traced their ancestry from the G.o.d of death, whom he called Dispater. Now figures of l"Ankou, a skeleton armed with a spear, can be seen in most villages of Brittany. This mindfulness of death was strengthened by the sight of the prehistoric cairns of stones on hilltops, the ancient altars of the Druids, and dolmens, formed of one flat rock resting like a roof on two others set up on end with a s.p.a.ce between them, ancient tombs; and by the Bretons being cut off from the rest of France by the nature of the country, and shut in among the uplands, black and misty in November, and blown over by chill Atlantic winds. Under a seeming dull indifference and melancholy the Bretons conceal a lively imagination, and no place has a greater wealth of legendary literature.
What fairies, dwarfs, pixies, and the like are to the Celts of other places, the spirits of the dead are to the Celts of Brittany.
They possess the earth on Christmas, St. John"s Day, and All Saints". In Finistere, that western point of France, there is a saying that on the Eve of All Souls" "there are more dead in every house than sands on the sh.o.r.e." The dead have the power to charm mortals and take them away, and to foretell the future. They must not be spoken of directly, any more than the fairies of the Scottish border, or met with, for fear of evil results.
By the Bretons of the sixth century the near-by island of Britain, which they could just see on clear days, was called the Otherworld.
An historian, Procopius, tells how the people nearest Britain were exempted from paying tribute to the Franks, because they were subject to nightly summons to ferry the souls of the dead across in their boats, and deliver them into the hands of the keeper of souls. Farther inland a black bog seemed to be the entrance to an otherworld underground. One location which combined the ideas of an island and a cave was a city buried in the sea. The people imagined they could hear the bells of Ker-Is ringing, and joyous music sounding, for though this was a city of the dead, it resembled the fairy palaces of Ireland, and was ruled by King Grallon and his fair daughter Dahut, who could lure mortals away by her beauty and enchantments.
The approach of winter is believed to drive like the flocks, the souls of the dead from their cold cheerless graves to the food and warmth of home. This is why November Eve, the night before the first day of winter, was made sacred to them.
"When comes the harvest of the year Before the scythe the wheat will fall."
BOTREL: _Songs of Brittany._
The harvest-time reminded the Bretons of the garnering by that reaper, Death. On November Eve milk is poured on graves, feasts and candles set out on the tables, and fires lighted on the hearths to welcome the spirits of departed kinsfolk and friends.
In France from the twelfth to the fourteenth century stone buildings like lighthouses were erected in cemeteries. They were twenty or thirty feet high, with lanterns on top. On Hallowe"en they were kept burning to safeguard the people from the fear of night-wandering spirits and the dead, so they were called "lanternes des morts."
The cemetery is the social center of the Breton village. It is at once meeting-place, playground, park, and church. The tombs that outline the hills make the place seem one vast cemetery. On All Souls" Eve in the mid-nineteenth century the "procession of tombs"
was held. All formed a line and walked about the cemetery, calling the names of those who were dead, as they approached their resting-places. The record was carefully remembered, so that not one should seem to be forgotten.
"We live with our dead," say the Bretons. First on the Eve of All Souls" comes the religious service, "black vespers." The blessedness of death is praised, the sorrows and shortness of life dwelt upon. After a common prayer all go out to the cemetery to pray separately, each by the graves of his kin, or to the "place of bones," where the remains of those long dead are thrown all together in one tomb. They can be seen behind gratings, by the people as they pa.s.s, and rows of skulls at the sides of the entrance can be touched. In these tombs are Latin inscriptions meaning: "Remember thou must die," "To-day to me, and to-morrow to thee," and others reminding the reader of his coming death.
From the cemetery the people go to a house or an inn which is the gathering-place for the night, singing or talking loudly on the road to warn the dead who are hastening home, lest they may meet.
Reunions of families take place on this night, in the spirit of the Roman feast of the dead, the Feralia, of which Ovid wrote:
"After the visit to the tombs and to the ancestors who are no longer with us, it is pleasant to turn towards the living; after the loss of so many, it is pleasant to behold those who remain of our blood, and to reckon up the generations of our descendants."
_Fasti._
A toast is drunk to the memory of the departed. The men sit about the fireplace smoking or weaving baskets; the women apart, knitting or spinning by the light of the fire and one candle. The children play with their gifts of apples and nuts. As the hour grows later, and mysterious noises begin to be heard about the house, and a curtain sways in a draught, the thoughts of the company already centred upon the dead find expression in words, and each has a tale to tell of an adventure with some friend or enemy who has died.
The dead are thought to take up existence where they left it off, working at the same trades, remembering their old debts, likes and dislikes, even wearing the same clothes they wore in life. Most of them stay not in some distant, definite Otherworld, but frequent the scenes of their former life. They never trespa.s.s upon daylight, and it is dangerous to meet them at night, because they are very ready to punish any slight to their memory, such as selling their possessions or forgetting the hospitality due them. L"Ankou will come to get a supply of shavings if the coffins are not lined with them to make a softer resting-place for the dead bodies.
The lively Celtic imagination turns the merest coincidence into an encounter with a spirit, and the poetic temperament of the narrators clothes the stories with vividness and mystery. They tell how the presence of a ghost made the midsummer air so cold that even wood did not burn, and of groans and footsteps underground as long as the ghost is displeased with what his relatives are doing.
Just before midnight a bell-man goes about the streets to give warning of the hour when the spirits will arrive.
"They will sit where we sat, and will talk of us as we talked of them: in the gray of the morning only will they go away."
LE BRAZ: _Night of the Dead._
The supper for the souls is then set out. The poor who live in the mountains have only black corn, milk, and smoked bacon to offer, but it is given freely. Those who can afford it spread on a white cloth dishes of clotted milk, hot pancakes, and mugs of cider.
After all have retired to lie with both eyes shut tight lest they see one of the guests, death-singers make their rounds, chanting under the windows:
"You are comfortably lying in your bed, But with the poor dead it is otherwise; You are stretched softly in your bed While the poor souls are wandering abroad.
"A white sheet and five planks, A bundle of straw beneath the head, Five feet of earth above Are all the worldly goods we own."
LE BRAZ: _Night of the Dead._
The tears of their deserted friends disturb the comfort of the dead, and sometimes they appear to tell those in sorrow that their shrouds are always wet from the tears shed on their graves.
Wakened by the dirge of the death-singers the people rise and pray for the souls of the departed.
Divination has little part in the annals of the evening, but one in Finistere is recorded. Twenty-five new needles are laid in a dish, and named, and water is poured upon them. Those who cross are enemies.
In France is held a typical Continental celebration of All Saints"
and All Souls". On October 31st the children go asking for flowers to decorate the graves, and to adorn the church. At night bells ring to usher in All Saints". On the day itself the churches are decorated gaily with flowers, candles, and banners, and a special service is held. On the second day of November the light and color give way to black drapings, funeral songs, and prayers.
CHAPTER XII
THE TEUTONIC RELIGION. WITCHES
The Teutons, that race of northern peoples called by the Romans, "barbarians," comprised the Goths and Vandals who lived in Scandinavia, and the Germans who dwelt north of Italy and east of Gaul.
The nature of the northern country was such that the people could not get a living by peaceful agriculture. So it was natural that in the intervals of cattle-tending they should explore the seas all about, and ravage neighboring lands. The Romans and the Gauls experienced this in the centuries just before and after Christ, and England from the eighth to the tenth centuries. Such a life made the Nors.e.m.e.n adventurous, hardy, warlike, independent, and quick of action, while the Celts were by nature more slothful and fond of peaceful social gatherings, though of quicker intellect and wit.
Like the Greeks and Romans, the Teutons had twelve G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, among whom were Odin or Wotan, the king, and his wife Freya, queen of beauty and love. Idun guarded the apples of immortality, which the G.o.ds ate to keep them eternally young. The chief difference in Teutonic mythology was the presence of an evil G.o.d, Loki. Like Vulcan, Loki was a G.o.d of fire, like him, Loki was lame because he had been cast out of heaven. Loki was always plotting against the other G.o.ds, as Lucifer, after being banished from Heaven by G.o.d, plotted against him and his people, and became Satan, "the enemy."
"Him the Almighty Power Hurl"d headlong flaming from th" ethereal sky With hideous ruin and combustion down To bottomless perdition, there to dwell In adamantine chains and penal fire, Who durst defy th" Omnipotent to arms."
MILTON: _Paradise Lost._
It was this G.o.d of evil in Teutonic myth who was responsible for the death of the bright beautiful sun-G.o.d, Baldur. Mistletoe was the only thing in the world which had not sworn not to harm Baldur.
Loki knew this, and gave a twig of mistletoe to Baldur"s blind brother, Hodur, and Hodur cast it at Baldur and "unwitting slew"
him. Vali, a younger brother of Baldur, avenged him by killing Hodur. Hodur is darkness and Baldur light; they are brothers; the light falls a victim to blind darkness, who reigns until a younger brother, the sun of the next day, rises to slay him in turn.
Below these G.o.ds, all nature was peopled with divinities. There were elves of two kinds: black elves, called trolls, who were frost-spirits, and guarded treasure (seeds) in the ground; and white elves, who lived in mid-heaven, and danced on the earth in fairy rings, where a mortal entering died. Will-o"-the-wisps hovered over swamps to mislead travellers, and jack-o"-lanterns, the spirits of murderers, walked the earth near the places of their crimes.
The Otherworlds of the Teutons were Valhalla, the abode of the heroes whom death had found on the battlefield, and Niflheim, "the misty realm," secure from the cold outside, ruled over by Queen Hel. Valkyries, warlike women who rode through the air on swift horses, seized the heroes from the field of slaughter, and took them to the halls of Valhalla, where they enjoyed daily combats, long feasts, and drinking-bouts, music and story-telling.
The sacred tree of the Druids was the oak; that of the Teutonic priests the ash. The flat disk of the earth was believed to be supported by a great ash-tree, Yggdrasil,
"An ash know I standing, Named Yggdrasil, A stately tree sprinkled With water the purest; Thence come the dewdrops That fall in the dales; Ever-blooming, it stands O"er the Urdar-fountain."
_Voluspa saga._ (Blackwell _trans._)
guarded by three fates, Was, Will, and Shall Be. The name of Was means the past, of Will, the power, howbeit small, which men have over present circ.u.mstances, and Shall Be, the future over which man has no control. Vurdh, the name of the latter, gives us the word "weird," which means fate or fateful. The three Weird Sisters in _Macbeth_ are seeresses.
Besides the ash, other trees and shrubs were believed to have peculiar powers, which they have kept, with some changes of meaning, to this day. The elder (elves" grave), the hawthorn, and the juniper, were sacred to supernatural powers.
The priests of the Teutons sacrificed prisoners of war in consecrated groves, to Tyr, G.o.d of the sword. The victims were not burned alive, as by the Druids, but cut and torn terribly, and their dead bodies burned. From these sacrifices auspices were taken. A man"s innocence or guilt was manifested by G.o.ds to men through ordeals by fire; walking upon red-hot ploughshares, holding a heated bar of iron, or thrusting the hands into red-hot gauntlets, or into boiling water. If after a certain number of days no burns appeared the person was declared innocent. If a suspected man, thrown into the water, floated he was guilty; if he sank, he was acquitted.
The rites of the Celts were done in secret, and it was forbidden that they be written down. Those of the Teutons were commemorated in Edda and Saga (poetry and prose).