M


178     ZIMMER'S    THEORY    DISCUSSED

pain  are  most  strongly  insisted  upon,  the  Tuatha  De  Danann
share  the  passions  of  mortal  men ;  they  have  their  wars  and
contentions,  death  is  possible  amongst  them. But  I  do  not
think  it  necessary  to  argue  that  the  one  conception  must
have  preceded  the  other,  and  that  there  was  any  conscious
transference  of  attributes  from  the  one  to  the  other. Assum-
ing for  the  moment  that  we  have  before  us  varying  visions  of
a  god's  land,  is  it  not  evident  that  there  must  be  an  inevitable
sameness  about  them,  that  no  matter  how  definitely  they  may
be  localised  their  staple  must  consist  of  vague  and  con-
ventional descriptive  commonplaces?  Assuming  again  that
divine  personages  are  the  subjects  of  these  descriptions,  need
it  surprise  us  to  find  different  dwelling-places  assigned  to
them  ?  Finally,  if  the  sanctity  of  the  fairy  mound  be  a  product
of  the  confusion  caused  by  the  introduction  of  Christianity,
why,  may  we  ask,  should  it  have  assumed  this  special  form  ?
Why  should  the  gods  have  withdrawn  themselves  within  the
hills  unless  these  had  already  been  noted  haunts  of  theirs?
The  answer  to  this  question  involves  fundamental  problems  of
the  history  of  religious  behef. Without  at  this  point  discussing
questions  upon  which  some  light  will  I  hope  be  shed  in  the
course  of  the  present  investigation,  it  may  suffice  to  say  that
two  main  elements  probably  enter  into  the  side  belief:  the  one,
veneration  paid  to  great  natural  features,  mountains,  rivers,
or  other,  originally  conceived  of  as  animated  by  a  life  of  their
own,  secondarily  as  being  the  home  of  beings  wiser  and  more
powerful  than  man  ;  the  other,  respect  and  worship  paid  to
the  funeral  mound  where  dwell  the  shades  of  the  ancestors.^

^  Many  scholars  would  transpose  my  'originally'  and  'secondarily,'
but  I  think  there  is  clear  evidence  that  the  worship  of  great  natural
objects,  as  such,  preceded  that  paid  to  them  as  dwelling-places  of  dead


ZIMMER'S    THEORY    DISCUSSED     179

It  is  conceivable  that  the  Irish  had  progressed  beyond
either  stage,  had  reached  the  cult  of  departmental  gods
of  nature,  to  use  Mr. Lang's  happy  phrase;  possible  also
that  the  older  elements,  temporarily  relegated  to  the  back-
ground during  the  sway  of  the  organised  nature-mythology,
reasserted  themselves  in  the  popular  minds  once  this  latter
had  yielded  before  the  advent  of  Christianity. 