Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
General
Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland, Second Series
Atlantic Coast (Ireland) -- Social life and customs; Folklore -- Ireland; Ireland -- Social life and customs
chrysanthemums which hide the mouth of a fox's hole"; and now the two
lovers have "slipped into the shadow of the cave." Left alone and
too cold to sleep the priest decides to spend the night in prayer.
He prays that the lovers may at last be one. Presently he sees to
his wonder that the cave is lighted up "where people are talking and
setting up looms for spinning and painted red sticks." The ghosts
creep out and thank him for his prayer and say that through his pity
"the love promises of long past incarnations" find fulfilment in
a dream. Then he sees the love story unfolded in a vision and the
chorus compares the sound of weaving to the clicking of crickets.
A little later he is shown the bridal room and the lovers drinking
from the bridal cup. The dawn is coming. It is reflected in the
bridal cup and now singers, cloth, and stick break and dissolve like
a dream, and there is nothing but "a deserted grave on a hill where
morning winds are blowing through the pine."
I remember that Aran story of the lovers who came after death to the
priest for marriage. It is not uncommon for a ghost, "a control" as
we say, to come to a medium to discover some old earthly link to fit
into a new chain. It wishes to meet a ghostly enemy to win pardon or
to renew an old friendship. Our service to the dead is not narrowed
to our prayers, but may be as wide as our imagination. I have known
a control to warn a medium to unsay her promise to an old man, to
whom, that she might be rid of him, she had promised herself after
death. What is promised here in our loves or in a witch's bond may be
fulfilled in a life which is a dream. If our terrestrial condition
is, as it seems the territory of choice and of cause, the one ground
for all seed sowing, it is plain why our imagination has command
over the dead and why they must keep from sight and earshot. At the
British Museum at the end of the Egyptian Room and near the stairs
are two statues, one an august decoration, one a most accurate
looking naturalistic portrait. The august decoration was for a public
site, the other, like all the naturalistic art of the epoch, for
burial beside a mummy. So buried it was believed, the Egyptologists
tell us, to be of service to the dead. I have no doubt it helped a
dead man to build out of his spirit-body a recognizable apparition,
and that all boats or horses or weapons or their models buried in
ancient tombs were helps for a flagging memory or a too weak fancy
to imagine and so substantiate the old surroundings. A shepherd at
Doneraile told me some years ago of an aunt of his who showed herself
after death stark naked and bid her relatives to make clothes and to
give them to a beggar, the while remembering her.[4] Presently she
appeared again wearing the clothes and thanked them.
XII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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