hile the dwelling of favoured mortals there with
divine beings is suggestive of that union with the divine which is the
essence of all religion. Though men are lured to seek it, they do not
leave it, or they go back to it after a brief absence, and Laeg says
that he would prefer Elysium to the kingship of all Ireland, and his
words are echoed by others. And the lure of the goddess often emphasises
the freedom from turmoil, grief, and the rude alarms of earthly life.
This "sweet and blessed country" is described with all the passion of a
poetical race who dreamed of perfect happiness, and saw in the joy of
nature's beauty, the love of women, and the thought of unbroken peace
and harmony, no small part of man's truest life. Favoured mortals had
reached Elysium, and the hope that he, too, might be so favoured buoyed
up the Celt as he dreamed over this state, which was so much more
blissful even than the future state of the dead. Many races have
imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with
magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood
on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed
before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and
on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a
glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the
setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and
instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and
disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes
and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time,
eternal happiness and eternal love.

FOOTNOTES:

[1231] Nutt-Meyer, i. 213.

[1232] Joyce, _OCR_ 431.

[1233] D'Arbois, ii. 311; _IT_ i. 113 f.; O'Curry, _MC_ iii. 190.

[1234] Nutt-Meyer, i. 1 f., text and translation.

[1235] _LU_ 120_a_; Windisch, _Irische Gramm._ 120 f.; D'Arbois, v. 384
f.; _Gaelic Journal_, ii. 307.

[1236] _TOS_ iv. 234. See also Joyce, _OCR_ 385; Kennedy, 240.

[1237] _LU_ 43 f.; _IT_ i. 205 f.; O'Curry, _Atlantis_, ii., iii.;
D'Arbois, v. 170; Leahy, i. 60 f.

[1238] "From Manannan came foes."

[1239] Joyce, _OCR_ 223 f.

[1240] O'Grady, ii. 290. In this story the sea is identified with
Fiachna's wife.

[1241] Joyce, _OCR_ 253 f.

[1242] _IT_ iii. 211 f.; D'Arbois, ii. 185.

[1243] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 388.

[1244] A similar idea occurs in many