The general belief has its roots in primitive ideas regarding life and its propagation--ideas which some hold to be un-Celtic and un-Aryan. But Aryans were "primitive" at some period of their history, and it would be curious if, while still in a barbarous condition, they had forgotten their old beliefs. In any case, if they adopted similar beliefs from non-Aryan people, this points to no great superiority on their part. Such beliefs originated the idea of rebirth and transmigration.[1230] Nevertheless this was not a characteristically Celtic eschatological belief; that we find in the theory that the dead lived on in the body or assumed a body in another region, probably underground. FOOTNOTES: [1193] For textual details see Zimmer, _Zeit. für Vergl. Sprach._ xxviii. 585 f. The tale is obviously archaic. For a translation see Leahy, i. 8 f. [1194] _IT_ i. 134 f.; D'Arbois, v. 22. There is a suggestion in one of the versions of another story, in which Setanta is child of Conchobar and his sister Dechtire. [1195] _IT_ iii. 245; _RC_ xv. 465; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 69. [1196] Stowe MS. 992, _RC_ vi. 174; _IT_ ii. 210; D'Arbois, v. 3f. [1197] _IT_ iii. 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter (_RC_ xxii. 18). [1198] Nutt-Meyer, i. 45 f., text and translation. [1199] Ibid. 42 f. [1200] Ibid. 58. The simultaneous birth formula occurs in many _Märchen_, though that of the future wife is not common. [1201] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52, 57, 85, 87. [1202] _ZCP_ ii. 316 f. Here Mongan comes directly from Elysium, as does Oisin before meeting S. Patrick. [1203] _IT_ iii. 345; O'Grady, ii. 88. Cf. Rees, 331. [1204] Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. 116, _supra_. [1205] In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form. [1206] See my _Religion: Its Origin and Forms_, 76-77. [1207] Skene, i. 532. After relating various shapes in which he has been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received, and that he rested in her womb as a child. The reference in this early poem from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of the _Märchen_ formula with a myth of rebirth was already well known. See also Guest, iii. 362, for verses in which the transformations during the combat are exaggerated. [1208] Skene, i. 276, 532. [1209] Miss Hull, 67; D'Arbois, v. 331. [1210] For various forms of _geno_-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes, _US_ 110. [1211] For all these names see Holder, _s.v._