oul could take doubtless varied greatly in men's opinions in
different districts and in different mental perspectives, but folk-lore
tends to confirm the view that early man, in the Celtic world as
elsewhere, tended to emphasise his conception of the subtlety and
mobility of the soul as contrasted with the body. Sooner or later the
primitive philosopher was bound to consider whither the soul went in
dreams or in death. He may not at first have thought of any other sphere
than that of his own normal life, but other questions, such as the home
of the spirits of vegetation in or under the earth, would suggest, even
if this thought had not occurred to him before, that the spirits of men,
too, had entrance to the world below. Whether this world was further
pictured in imagination depended largely on the poetic genius of any
given people. The folk-lore of the Celtic races bears abundant testimony
to their belief that beneath this world there was another. The 'annwfn'
of the Welsh was distinctly conceived in the folk-lore embodied in
mediaeval poetry as being 'is elfydd' (beneath the world). In mediaeval
Welsh legend, again, this lower world is regarded as divided into
kingdoms, like this world, and its kings, like Arawn and Hafgan in the
Mabinogi of Pwyll, are represented as being sometimes engaged in
conflict. From this lower world had come to man some of the blessings of
civilisation, and among them the much prized gift of swine. The lower
world could be even plundered by enterprising heroes. Marriages like
that of Pwyll and Rhiannon were possible between the dwellers of the one
world and the other. The other-world of the Celts does not seem,
however, to have been always pictured as beneath the earth. Irish and
Welsh legend combine in viewing it at times as situated on distant
islands, and Welsh folk-lore contains several suggestions of another
world situated beneath the waters of a lake, a river, or a sea. In one
or two passages also of Welsh mediaeval poetry the shades are represented
as wandering in the woods of Caledonia (Coed Celyddon). This was no
doubt a traditional idea in those families that migrated to Wales in post-
Roman times from Strathclyde. To those who puzzled over the fate of the
souls of the dead the idea of their re-birth was a very natural solution,
and Mr. Alfred Nutt, in his _Voyage of Bran_, has called attention to the
occurrence of this idea in Irish legend. It does not follow, however,