Irish Druids And Old Irish Religions

Mrs. Harrington, in 1818, had this account of a professional Keener, a descendant of pagan performers:--"Before she began to repeat, she usually mumbled for a short time, with her eyes closed, rocking her body backward and forward, as if keeping time to the measure of the verse. She then commenced in a kind of whining recitative; but, as she proceeded, and as the composition required it, her voice assumed a variety of deep and fine tones." Her eyes continued shut while repeating, with some variations, it may be, the ancient poem.

It is said of Curran, that he derived his earliest ideas of eloquence from the hired mourners' lamentations over the dead. Dryden refers to the ancient practice:--

"The women mix their cries, and clamour fills the fields.
The warlike wakes continued all the night,
And funeral games were played at new returning light."

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With so imaginative and ignorant a people, a supposed spiritual set of creatures played a great part in daily life, and those ancient ideas are not entirely driven off by the march of the school-master. Scotland, with its centuries of parish schools, retained many superstitions to a very late date, as the clergyman of Kirkmichael, Perthshire, declared he found there in 1795.

Some spirits answered to those described by Plato, as--"Between God and man are the daimones, or spirits, who are always near us, though commonly invisible to us, and know our thoughts." The Rev. R. Kirk left on record, in 1691, that "the very devils, conjured in any country, do answer to the language of the place;" and yet he ascertained that when the Celt left his northern home, they lost power over him, as they were Demones Loci. In some cases they were ghouls, feeding on human flesh, causing the

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