There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since the hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor, it may have been held, as many other races have believed, that cowards would miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of the Irish Christian visions of the other-world and in existing folk-belief, certain characteristics of hell may not be derived from Christian eschatology, e.g. the sufferings of the dead from cold.[1189] This might point to an old belief in a cold region whither some of the dead were banished. In the _Adventures of S. Columba's Clerics_, hell is reached by a bridge over a glen of fire,[1190] and a narrow bridge leading to the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here it may be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such Christian writings as the _Dialogues_ of S. Gregory the Great.[1191] It might be contended that the Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory of retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor is there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in which Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till "the day of Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the Lord," does not refer to such a judgment.[1192] If an ethical blindness be attributed to the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of retribution, it should be remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from suggesting an ethical Deity. FOOTNOTES: [1154] Skene, i. 370. [1155] Cæsar, vi. 14, 19. [1156] Diod. Sic. v, 28. [1157] Val. Max. vi. 6. 10. [1158] _Phars._ i. 455 f. [1159] Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2. [1160] Miss Hull, 275. [1161] Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293. [1162] Larminie, 155; Hyde, _Beside the Fire_, 21, 153; _CM_ xiii. 21; Campbell, _WHT_, ii. 21; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xii. [1163] Von Sacken, _Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt_; Greenwell, _British Barrows_; _RC_ x. 234; _Antiquary_, xxxvii. 125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.; Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_. [1164] _L'Anthropologie_, vi. 586; Greenwell, _op. cit._ 119. [1165] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, _Annals_, i. 145, 180; _RC_ xv. 28. In one case the enemy disinter the body of the king of Connaught, and rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a victory. This nearly coincides with the dire results following the disinterment of Bran's head (O'Donovan, i. 145; cf. p. 242, _supra_). [1166] _LU_ 130_a_; _RC_ xxiv. 185; O'Curry, _MC_ i. p. cccxxx; Campbell, _WHT_ iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.