debts being passed on
to the next world.

This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in
which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who
return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus,
when Cuchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described
exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black
... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side
of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His
clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses
are equally corporeal.[1160] Similar descriptions of the dead who return
are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom
every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich,
who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and clad in
his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the _Tain_.[1161]
Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated
the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions
of the "Dead Debtor" folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape
a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but
in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as
a living person in corporeal form.[1162] Equally substantial and
corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine
folk of the _sid_ or of Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in
the texts. To the Celts, gods, _side_, and the dead, all alike had a
bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways
differed from the earthly body.

The archaeological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears
witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of
grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots,
utensils, ornaments, and coins.[1163] Some of the interments undoubtedly
point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and
female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of
the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains
of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly
provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons,
without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body,
pointing to decapitation, while in one case