Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

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h'isJi Superstitions. 89
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Mrs. Harrington, in 18 18, had this account of a professional
Keener, a descendant of pagan performers :
" Before she began to repeat, she usually mumbled for a
short time, with her eyes closed, rocking her body backward
and forward, as if keeping time to the measure of
the verse. She then commenced in a kind of whininfr
recitative ;
but, as she proceeded, and as the composition
required it, her voice assumed a variety of deep and fine
tones." Her eyes continued shut while repeating, with
some variations, it may be, the ancient poem.
It is said of Curran, that he derived his earliest ideas
of eloquence from the hired mourners' lamentations over
the dead. Dryden refers to the ancient practice :
" The women mix their cries, and clamour fills the fields.
The warlike wakes continued all the night.
And funeral games were played at new returning light."
With so imaginative and ignorant a people, a supposed
spiritual set of creatures played a great part in daily
life, and those ancient ideas are not entirely driven off by
the march of the school-master.
Scotland, with its centuries
of parish schools, retained many superstitions to a \Tr\'
late date, as the clergyman of Kirkmichacl, Perthshire,
declared he found there in 1795.
Some spirits answered to those described b}- Plato, as
" Between God and man are the daiuuvics, or spirits, who
are always near us, though commonly invisible to us, and
know our thoughts." The Rev. R. Kirk left on record, in
1691, that "the very devils, conjured in any countrw do
answer to the language of the place ; " and yet he ascertained
that when the Celt left his northern home, they lost
power over him, as they were Dcinoncs Loci. In some
cases they were ghouls, feeding on human llesh, causing tlic