DeDanaan

Filed by Aine MacDermot

ACCORDING TO ANCIENT AND MODERN AUTHORITIES

First, therefore, for opinions; and we may go to the ancients and then to the moderns. Here are a few from Julius Caesar:–’In particular they (the Druids) wish to inculcate this idea, that souls do not die, but pass from one body to another.’ 1 ‘The Gauls declare that they have all sprung from their father Dis (or Pluto), and this they say was delivered to them by the Druids.’ 1 And the testimony of Caesar is confirmed by Diodorus Siculus, 2 and by Pomponius Mela. 3 Lucan, in the Pharsalia, 4 addressing the Druids on their doctrine of re-birth says:–’If you know what you sing, death is the centre of a long life.’ And again in the same passage he observes:–’Happy the folk upon (p. 368) whom the Bear looks down, happy in this error, whom of fears the greatest moves not, the dread of death. Hence their warrior’s heart hurls them against the steel, hence their ready welcome of death, and the thought that it, were a coward’s part to grudge a life sure of its return.’ 1 Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his Literary History of Ireland (p. 95), speaking for the Irish people, says of the re-birth doctrine:–’. . . the idea of re-birth which forms part of half a dozen existing Irish sagas, was perfectly familiar to the Irish Gael. . . .’ According to another modern Celtic authority, D’Arbois de Jubainville, two chief Celtic doctrines or beliefs were the return of the ghosts of the dead and the re-birth of the same individuality in a new human body here on this planet. 2

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