CELTIC MYTHOLOGY (Illustrated Edition). T. W. Rolleston

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Holed dolmens or naturally pierced blocks are used for the magical cure of sickness both in Brittany and Cornwall, the patient being passed through the hole.¹⁰⁹⁶ Similar rites are used with trees, a slit being often made in the trunk of a sapling, and a sickly child passed through it. The slit is then closed and bound, and if it joins together at the end of a certain time, this is a proof that the child will recover.¹⁰⁹⁷ In these rites the spirit in stone or tree was supposed to assist the process of healing, or the disease was transferred to them, or, again, there was the idea of a new birth with consequent renewed life, the act imitating the process of birth. These rites are not confined to Celtic regions, but belong to that universal use of magic in which the Celts freely participated.

Since Christian writers firmly believed in the magical powers of the Druids, aided however by the devil, they taught that Christian saints had miraculously overcome them with their own weapons. S. Patrick dispelled snow-storms and darkness raised by Druids, or destroyed Druids who had brought down fire from heaven. Similar deeds are attributed to S. Columba and others.¹⁰⁹⁸ The moral victory of the Cross was later regarded also as a magical victory. Hence also lives of Celtic saints are full of miracles which are simply a reproduction of Druidic magic—controlling the elements, healing, carrying live coals without hurt, causing confusion by their curses, producing invisibility or shape-shifting, making the ice-cold waters of a river hot by standing in them at their devotions, or walking unscathed through the fiercest storms.¹⁰⁹⁹ They were soon regarded as more expert magicians than the Druids themselves. They may have laid claim to magical powers, or perhaps they used a natural shrewdness in such a way as to suggest magic. But all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my Druid"—the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they were imbued with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S. Columba sent a white stone to King Brude at Inverness for the cure of his Druid Broichan, who drank the water poured over it, and was healed.¹¹⁰⁰ Soon similar virtues were ascribed to the relics of the saints themselves, and at a later time, when most Scotsmen ceased to believe in the saints, they thought that the ministers of the kirk had powers like those of pagan Druid and Catholic saint. Ministers were levitated, or shone with a celestial light, or had clairvoyant gifts, or, with dire results, cursed the ungodly or the benighted prelatist. They prophesied, used trance-utterance, and exercised gifts of healing. Angels ministered to them, as when Samuel Rutherford, having fallen into a well when a child, was pulled out by an angel.¹¹⁰¹ The substratum of primitive belief survives all changes of creed, and the folk impartially attributed magical powers to pagan Druid, Celtic saints, old crones and witches, and Presbyterian ministers.

1041. IT i. 56; D'Arbois, v. 387.

1042. See, e.g., "The Death of Muirchertach," RC xxiii. 394.

1043. HN xxx. 4, 13.

1044. Zimmer, Gloss. Hibern. 183; Reeves, Adamnan, 260.

1045. Kennedy, 175; cf. IT i. 220.

1046. See RC xii. 52 f.; D'Arbois, v. 403-404; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 505; Kennedy, 75, 196, 258.

1047. D'Arbois, v. 277.

1048. Stokes, Three Middle Irish Homilies, 24; IT iii. 325.

1049. RC xii. 83; Miss Hull, 215; D'Arbois, v. 424; O'Curry, MC ii. 215.

1050. Keating, 341; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 271.

1051. RC xii. 81.

1052. Miss Hull, 240 f.

1053. Maury, 14.

1054. Sébillot, ii. 226 f., i. 101, ii. 225; Bérenger-Féraud, Superstitions et Survivances, iii. 169 f.; Stat. Account, viii. 52.

1055. Rev. des Trad. 1893, 613; Sébillot, ii. 224.

1056. Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 218 f.; Sébillot, i. 100, 109; RC ii. 484; Frazer, Golden Bough², i. 67.

1057. D'Arbois, v. 387; IT i. 52; Dixon, Gairloch, 165; Carmichael, Carm. Gad. ii. 25.

1058. RC xvi. 152; Miss Hull, 243.

1059. D'Arbois, v. 133; IT ii. 373.

1060. Mela, iii. 6; RC xv. 471.

1061. Joyce, OCR 1 f.; Kennedy, 235.

1062. Bird-women pursued by Cúchulainn; D'Arbois, v. 178; for other instances see O'Curry, MS. Mat. 426; Miss Hull, 82.

1063. D'Arbois, v. 215.

1064. Joyce, OCR 279.

1065. Ibid. 86.

1066. RC xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, Vita S. Kent. c. 1.

1067. RC xv. 446.

1068. O'Conor, Rer. Hib. Scrip. ii. 142; Stokes, Lives of Saints, xxviii.

1069. RC xv. 444.

1070. See p. 251, supra.

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