Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

h^zsh Supc7\^titions. o^
I know," said he, ''whether it would be worth their .shiftincr
Hell, and coming back to this world in the wanderin^r
condition those things called Ghosts are understood to be."
Others may exclaim with Dr. Johnson, "All argument is
against it, but all belief is for it."
Thyraeus, the Jesuit, thinks that
purgatory, seeking rest.
they are but souls from
Earberg considered,
''
It is
no Scripture that souls should come from Hades."
against
Henri
Martin, the French Celtic scholar, said, " The intercourse
between earth and heaven is a belief strongly accredited
among the Bards." Gladstone recognizes that the recent
Greek dead '' are wanderers in the Shades, without fixed
doom or occupation." Homer's Odyssey has this reference—
" But swarms of spectres rose from deepest hell,
With bloodless visage and with hideous yell.
They scream, they shriek, and groans and dismal sounds
Stun my scared ears and pierce hell's utmost bounds."
Virgil shows to ^neas his father Anchises—
" Then thrice around his neck his arms he threw
;
And thrice the flitting shadow slipp'd away.
Like wind or empty dreams that tly the day."
Suetonius tells us that the ghost of Caligula walked in
Lavinia's garden, where his body was buried, until the
house was burnt down.
Ecclesiasticus (chap, xlvi.) speaks
of Samuel thus :
" And after his death he prophesied, and
showed the king his end." In the archives of the Royal
Society is a MS. paper, read November i6, 1698. on some
"Apparitions in y^ N. of Scotland," in which we are
informed that Mr. Mackeney, A.M., Oxford, "said that
they saw apparitions allmost every week ;
and upr^n his
knowledge they did very frequently foretell the death (if
Persons, w^^ always succeeded accordingly."
Were all these mistaken } Were they under the influence
of Herbert Spencer's Organ of Rcvivisccncc, or Wondcr-
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