Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl.

  • Edward Anwyl
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Celtic religion in pre-Christian times / by Edward Anwyl. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    71/88 (page 59)
    EARLY IDEAS OF THE SOUL life of its own apart from the body, and which survived even death, burial, and burning. Some¬ times this inner self was associated with the breath, whence, for example, the Latin ‘ anima ’ and the Welsh ‘enaid,’ both meaning the soul, from the root an-, to breathe. At other times the term employed for the second self had reference to man’s shadow: the Greek ‘ skia,’ the Latin 'umbra,’ the'Welsh ‘ysgawd,’ the English * shade.’ There are abundant evidences, too, that the life-prin¬ ciple was frequently regarded as being especially associated with the blood. Another tendency, of which Principal Rhys has given numerous ex¬ amples in his Welsh folk-lore, was to regard the soul as capable of taking a visible form, not necessarily human, preferably that of some winged creature. In ancient writers there is no informa¬ tion as to the views prevalent among the Celts regarding the forms or the abodes of the spirits of the dead, beyond the statement that the Druids taught the doctrine of their re-birth. We are thus compelled to look to the evidence afforded by myth, legend, and folk-lore. These give fair indications as to the types of earlier popular belief in these matters, but it would be a mistake to assume that the ideas embodied in them had remained entirely unchanged from remote times.