Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

96 Old Irish Religions.
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her cloak round the hero O'Hartigan at the battle of
Clontarf, so rendering him invisible. In fact, Joyce is led
to exclaim, " Some parts of Connaught must have been
more thickly populated with fairies than with men."
Were the fairies in Ireland of great antiquity ?
One has written of the fancy, " that the tales of mortals
abiding with the Fays in their Sighe palaces are founded
on the tender preferences shown by the Druidic priestesses
of old to favourite worshippers of the Celtic divinities."
N. O'Kearney is of opinion that " our fairy traditions are
relics of paganism." Kennedy says, " In borrowing these
fictions from their heathen predecessors, the Christian
story-tellers did not take much trouble to correct their
laxity on the subject of moral obligations."
Andrew Lang
sees that ''the lower mythology— the elemental beliefs of
a people—do service beneath a thin
covering of Christian
uniformity."
At least, we may admit, with Prof. Stokes, that " much
of the narrative element in the classic epics is to be found
in a popular or childish form in primitive Fairy tales."
Among the early and latter superstitions, Gliosis are
very prominent.
As so many ghost stories rest upon tradition, it is well to
bear in mind what the author of
The Golden Bough says
" The superstitious beliefs and practices which have been
handed down by word of mouth are generally of a far
more archaic type than the religions depicted in the most
ancient literature of the Aryan race."
It is not easy to laugh at Irish peasants for ghost yarns
when all nations, from the remotest antiquity, accepted
them, and philosophers like Dr. Johnson, preachers like
John Wesley, reformers like Luther, poets like Dante and
Tasso, recognized such spirits. Some, like an author in
1729, may doubt souls returning from heaven— "Nor do