Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF THE CELTS 63To the Egyptian the disembodied soul was no shadowysimulacrum, as the classical nations believed—the future lifewas a mere prolongation of the present; the just man, when hehad won his place in it, found himself among his relatives, hisfriends, his workpeople, with tasks and enjoyments very muchlike those of earth. The doom of the wicked was annihilation; hefell a victim to the invisible monster called the Eater of the Dead.Now when the classical nations first began to take an interestin the ideas of the Celts the thing that principally struck themwas the Celtic belief in immortality, which the Gauls said was“handed down by the Druids.” The classical nations believed inimmortality; but what a picture does Homer, the Bible of theGreeks, give of the lost, degraded, dehumanised creatures whichrepresented the departed souls of men! Take, as one example,the description of the spirits of the suitors slain by Odysseus asHermes conducts them to the Underworld: [80]“Now were summoned the souls of the dead by CyllenianHermes....Touched by the wand they awoke, and obeyed him and followedhim, squealing,Even as bats in the dark, mysterious depths of a cavernSqueal as they flutter around, should one from the cluster befallenWhere from the rock suspended they hung, all clinging together;So did the souls flock squealing behind him, as Hermes theHelperGuided them down to the gloom through dank and moulderingpathways.” 5959 I quote from Mr. H.B. Cotterill's beautiful hexameter version.