Alfred Nutt advanced a theory, which anticipated one part of our own, that 'the changeling story is found to be connected with the antique conception of life and sacrifice'. And he wrote:--'It is at least possible that the sickly and ailing would be rejected when the time came for each family to supply its quota of victims, and this might easily translate itself in the folk-memory into the statement that the fairies had carried off the healthy' (alone acceptable as sacrifice) 'and left in exchange the sickly.'[152] Though our evidence will not permit us to accept the theory (why it will not will be clear as we proceed) that some such sacrificial customs among the ancient Celts entirely account for the changeling story, yet we consider it highly probable that the theory helps to explain particular aspects of the complex tradition, and that the underlying philosophy of sacrifice extended in an animistic way, as we shall try to extend it, probably offers more complete explanation. Thus, the Mexicans believed that the souls of all sacrificed children went to live with the god Tlaloc in his heaven-world.[153] Among the Greeks, a sacrificed victim appears to have been sent as a messenger, bearing a message repeated to him before death to some god.[154] On the funeral pile of Patroclus were laid Trojan captives, together with horses and hounds, a practice corresponding to that of American Red Men; the idea being that the sacrificed Trojans and the horses and hounds as well, were thus sent to serve the slain warriors in the otherworld. Among ourselves in Europe and in America it is not uncommon to read in the daily newspaper about a suicide as resulting from the belief that death alone can bring union with a deceased sweetheart or loved one. These examples, and very many parallel ones to be found the world over, seem to furnish the key to the theory of sacrifice: namely, that by extinguishing life in this world it is transmitted to the world of the gods, spirits, and the dead. Both Sir John Rhŷs and D'Arbois de Jubainville have shown that the Irish were wont to sacrifice the first-born of children and of flocks.[155] O'Curry points out a clear case of human sacrifice at an ancient Irish funeral[156]:--'Fiachra then brought fifty hostages with him from Munster'; and, when he died, 'the hostages which he brought from the south were buried alive around the _Fert_ (burial mound) of Fiachra.' More commonly the ancient Celts seem to have made sacrifices to appease place-spirits before the erection of a new building, by sending to them through death the soul of a youth (see p. 436).