Death is a passport to the world of the _Sidhe_, a world where there is eternal youth and never-ending joy, as we shall learn when we study it as the Celtic Otherworld. The recorded mythology and literature of ancient Ireland have, very faithfully for the most part, preserved to us clear pictures of the Tuatha De Danann; so that disregarding some Christian influence in the texts of certain manuscripts, much rationalization, and a good deal of poetical colouring and romantic imagination in the pictures, we can easily describe the People of the Goddess Dana as they appeared in pagan days, when they were more frequently seen by mortals than now. Perhaps the Irish folk of the olden times were even more clairvoyant and spiritual-minded than the Irish folk of to-day. So by drawing upon these written records let us try to understand what sort of beings the _Sidhe_ were and are. NATURE OF THE _SIDHE_ In the _Book of Leinster_[222] the poem of _Eochaid_ records that the Tuatha De Danann, the conquerors of the Fir-Bolgs, were hosts of _siabra_; and _siabra_ is an Old Irish word meaning fairies, sprites, or ghosts. The word fairies is appropriate if restricted to mean fairies like the modern 'gentry'; but the word _ghosts_ is inappropriate, because our evidence shows that the only relation the _Sidhe_ or real Fairies hold to ghosts is a superficial one, the _Sidhe_ and ghosts being alike only in respect to invisibility. In the two chief Irish MSS., the _Book of the Dun Cow_ and the _Book of Leinster_, the Tuatha De Danann are described as 'gods and not-gods'; and Sir John Rhŷs considers this an ancient formula comparable with the Sanskrit _deva_ and _adeva_, but not with 'poets (_dée_) and husbandmen (_an dée_)' as the author of _Cóir Anmann_ learnedly guessed.[223] It is also said, in the _Book of the Dun Cow_, that wise men do not know the origin of the Tuatha De Danann, but that 'it seems likely to them that they came from heaven, on account of their intelligence and for the excellence of their knowledge'.[224] The hold of the Tuatha De Danann on the Irish mind and spirit was so strong that even Christian transcribers of texts could not deny their existence as a non-human race of intelligent beings inhabiting Ireland, even though they frequently misrepresented them by placing them on the level of evil demons,[225] as the ending of the story of the _Sick-Bed of Cuchulainn_ illustrates:--'So that this was a vision to Cuchulainn of being stricken by the people of the _Sid_: for the demoniac power was great before the faith; and such was its greatness that the demons used to fight bodily against mortals, and they used to show them delights and secrets of how they would be in immortality. It was thus they used to be believed in. So it is to such phantoms the ignorant apply the names of _Side_ and _Aes Side_.'[226] A passage in the _Silva Gadelica_ (ii. 202-3) not only tends to confirm this last statement, but it also shows that the Irish people made a