[149] _The Vision of Laisrén_, in _Stories and Songs from Irish MSS._, by Professor Kuno Meyer, _Otia Merseiana_, i. 1899; ed. and trans. with notes from Rawlinson B. 512, a fifteenth-century MS. in the Bodleian. Professor Meyer considers that the original was an O. I. work of the late ninth or early tenth century (p. 112). [150] Edited by Mr. Whitley Stokes, in _A Middle Irish Homily, Rev. Celt._, iv. 245 _sq._ [151] Cited by Mr. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, i. 225, where it is suggested that this circumstance may have arisen in the distinction between the Pagan Elysium and Heaven, a provisional Hell being added for the sake of symmetry. But it appears quite as probable that this classification may be another instance of the acquaintance of the Irish Church with Eastern writers, for the fourfold division already exists in the _Book of Enoch_, c. 22, the several categories being: (1) The martyrs, as in the _Fis Adamnáin_; (2) The rest of the righteous; (3) Sinners who have been punished in this life; (4) Sinners who have not made expiation. [152] Cp. Milton, _Paradise Lost_, i. 61-3:-- ‘A dungeon horrible on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible.’ [153] Possibly this amplification of the usual description of the Piast owes something to the picture of Rumour, in Book iv. of the _Æneid_. [154] David Fitzgerald, _loc. cit._, pp. 192-3, where he cites from Kuhn, _Die Herabkunft des Feuers_, a passage of the Vedas: ‘Two birds sit on the top of the imperishable açvattha, one eating its figs, and the other looking on.’ He also cites from the _Félire Oengusa_: ‘A great tree that was in the Eastern world, and the heathens used to worship it, so that the Christians fasted against all the Saints of Europe that the tree might fall, _et statim cecidit_.’ This passage contrasts curiously with the terms in which the ‘great tree’ is described in other Irish writings. The _Félire_ also speaks of Elijah, Gospel in hand, preaching to the spirits under the Tree of Life in Paradise, while the bird-flocks come to eat the berries of it, which are sweeter than honey and headier than wine; just as the ale of the Tír Tairngire is described as headier than the ale of Éire. The human souls in the form of birds are a variant of a belief of world-wide extent. In Lithuania and the neighbouring countries the belief still exists, or existed lately, that the souls of dead children return as birds. Nearer to the present instance is the Mohammedan belief that the martyrs for Islam feast on the fruits of Paradise in the shape of beautiful green birds. [155] Cp. hereon Professor Alessandro d’Ancona, _I Precursori di Dante_ (Firenze, 1874), pp. 29-30, 108, etc. [156] Cp. _Inferno_, i. 144 _sqq._: ‘loco eterno Ove udirai le disperate strida, Di quegli antichi spiriti dolenti, Chè la seconda morte ciascun grida: E poi vedrai,’ etc.