h a loud cry arose from the
bereaved.

The Breton funeral ceremony, like those prevalent among other Celtic
peoples, is indeed a lugubrious affair, and somewhat recalls the Irish
wake in its strange mixture of mourning and feasting; but curiously
enough brightness reigns afterward, for the peasant is absolutely
assured that at the moment his friend is placed in the tomb he
commences a life of joy without end.

_Tartarus and Paradise_

Two very striking old Breton ballads give us very vivid pictures of
the Breton idea of Heaven and its opposite. That dealing with the
infernal regions hails from the district of Leon. It is attributed to
a priest named Morin, who flourished in the fifteenth century, but
others have claimed it for a Jesuit father called Maunoir, who lived
and preached some two hundred years later. In any case it bears the
ecclesiastical stamp. "Descend, Christians," it begins, "to see what
unspeakable tortures the souls of the condemned suffer through the
justice of God, Who has chained them in the midst of flames for
having abused their gifts in this world. Hell is a profound abyss,
full of shadow, where not the least gleam of light ever comes. The
gates have been closed and bolted by God, and He will never open them
more. The key is lost!

"An oven heated to whiteness is this place, a fire which constantly
devours the lost souls. There they will eternally burn, tormented by
the intolerable heat. They gnash their teeth like mad dogs; they
cannot escape the flames, which are over their heads, under their
feet, and on all sides. The son rushes at his father, and the daughter
at her mother. They drag them by the hair through the midst of flames,
with a thousand maledictions, crying, 'Cursed be ye, lost woman, who
brought us into the world! Cursed be ye, heedless man, who wert the
cause of our damnation!'

"For drink they have only their tears. Their skins are scorched, and
bitten by the teeth of serpents and demons, and their flesh and their
bones are nothing but fuel to the great fire of Hell!

"After they have been for some time in this furnace, they are plunged
by Satan into a lake of ice, and from this they are thrown once more
into the flames, and from the flames into the water, like a bar of
iron in a smithy. 'Have pity, my God, have pity on us!' they call; but
they weep in vain, for God has closed His ears to their plaints.

"The heat is so intense that their marrow burns within their bones.