Tethra, then, is a king of the Fomorians. He is ruler of a land beneath or beyond the sea, evidently the Irish Elysium. It would seem from the passage we have quoted that Connla is invited to resort to the land here called his "fatherland," and to join the people of Tethra, where "those whom he had known awaited him." I do not know that there is any other passage where a Fomorian is said to rule in the unseen world, or where this world is distinctly spoken of in a piece which has a markedly pagan flavour, as a place where human ancestors are assembled after death.[1] It is, so far as I can see, the only really sound ground adduced by M. D'Arbois for his contention that the Irish Celts believed in a world of shades, or Hades, beyond this life. But M. D'Arbois, in his Cycle Mythologique Irlandaise, makes this isolated passage the foundation and leading argument of his whole volume; again and again it is reiterated in different connections. This, I think, is to get things out of proportion, and to impress a view—in this case, I think, a very uncertain view—derived from an obscure and isolated passage, by means that will hardly bear the weight of the argument laid upon them.
M. D'Arbois draws his arguments indiscriminately from Roman sources, and from the widely different strata of Irish legendary lore.
(2) His second point is founded on the well-known quotation of Caesar: "Galli se omnes ab Dite patre prognatos praedicant, idque a druidibus proditum dicunt" (De Bello Gallico, Bk. vi. 18, § 1). "The Celtic doctrine," D'Arbois adds, "is that men have for first ancestor the
- ↑ It is difficult to tell how far Christian thought has influenced such a story. Though it contains distinctly Christian allusions its form is pagan, and the idea that the world of death is ruled by Tethra must be an old one. In stories of the other world where the tone is Christianised, as The Voyage of Teigue Son of Cian, the idea of finding the dead in Paradise is of course usual, in accordance with Christian belief.
