Celtic Mythology and Religion

132 CELTIC MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION.
Angus the Beautiful gave his name to Angus ;
Manannan's name appears in the Isle of Man, and as
the old name of the district at the mouth of the Forth,
still seen in Clack-Mannan.
THE CELTIC ELYSIUM.
All the Aryan nations originally believed in the
existence, after death, of the human soul. This
belief had its root in the " animism " of a more
barbaric period of their existence, and held its place
in the remnants of ancestral worship we meet with in
Rome and Greece, and in the many myths bearing
on the land of shades. Evidently, too, the pre-
Aryan tribes of Europe were strong believers in the
future existence of man's second self, his soul.
Their
barrows, dolmens, and stone-circles point distinctly
to their reverence for the dead, and their belief in
their continued existence in another sphere of
nature, from which they visited, helped and admonished
their living representatives. Ancestor
worship clearly was their main creed. Hence the
vividness of the belief of the early Northern Aryans
Celts and Teutons—in future existence, and their
clinging to ancestor worship so long, may arise
from their mingling with a people who was in that
stage of belief ; whereas at the dawn of our era,
in Greece and Rome, the whole doctrine of a future
state belonged to the region of languid half-belief.
The aristocracy and the philosophers entirely dis-