Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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ALL ROADS LEAD T0 THULE. 27 Of prehistoric Keltic navigators with America. This Western World of ours was their sacred isle of Avalon, their Tir na n-Og QLand of perpetual Youthj, Tir na m-Beo QLand of the Living Onesj , Mag Mell QField of Delightsj, Flaith Innis Qlsle of' Heroesj, Tir Tairngire fLand of Promisej. And from all accounts of the beauty and fertility of these Paradisaic regions he feels compelled to conclude that those prehistoric voyagers not only reached America, but also explored it far down into the inter-tropical regions, seeing with their own eyes the gor- geous flowers and spontaneous fruits which gave such marvellous color and exuberance to their descriptions of the country, as these lived on in later legends. The tirst embarrassment experienced by our author in ex- pounding this general theory is met at the very threshold, where the attempt is made to identify Hesiod's and Plutarch's Sacred Isle of Saturn with Mag Mell. Somehow the due West loca- tion of' America will not fit the classic description at all. This uncompromisingly fixes the Saturnian isle in the North, high in the Oronian Sea? Moreover, according to all accounts, it was not a land of ordinary days and nights, such as we have here in America, but, on the contrary, a region of almost continuous light, -a land which, as he himself' says, corresponds to Pliny's and Mela's Ultima Thule, where at the time of the summer sol- stice there were for six months no nights at 1111.8 What can be done? There seems to M. Beauvois to be no relief from difficulty in interpreting these and other references to Saturn and his isle, until one goes more than a thousand miles due North from Ire- 1 1 Pages 720-727. 2 Son ile, qui dans cette categorie de legendes est aussi celle des Bien- heureux, devait Gtre dans la mer de Saturne, le Mare Cranium, partie sep- tentrionale de 1'0c6an Atlantique. C'est ce qui ressort clairement d'un passage de Plutarque dans son dialogue sur la Figure qui se voit dans la Lune fp. 2782. 3 Un trait qu'elle n. de commun avec Pultima Thule, en voici uvn gun-9 caraeteristiqueg le soleil n'y disparait sous Phorizon qu'une heure ou molns pendant trente jours fp. 2785. For Pliny's words, see motto to this paper. Elsewhere, speaking of the lengthening day as the sun goes north, he writes as follows: Ubi :estate luoldm noctes llaud dubie promittunt id, quod cogit ratio credi, solstitl diebus accedente sole propius verticem muudi, angusto lucis amhitu, suhjeuta teme continues dies lrubere senis mensihns, noctisque e dlverso ad brumam remoto. Quod iieri in insula flhule Pytheas Massiliensis scrlbet Cllist. Nat. ii. 1871.

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i 26 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. ethnic traditions everywhere point the searcher for the cradle of humanity, not to Mesopotamia, nor U Limuria, nor Ar- menia, nor Pamir., nor Syria, but to a primeval 't mountain of the world in the highest North, - a land of light, the start- ing-point of all sublunary life, the navel of the earth, the Atlantis of the Egyptian priests, the Atlas-station of the Greeks, the Nysa ofthe Dionysia, the Tulan or Tollan of the Toltecs, the Tula of the Lenapi, the Thule of the Romans, the Avalon of the Kclts. In some instances, the evidences of this fact are curiously if not comically embarrassing to the advocates of new hypotheses respecting the cradle of humanity, or respecting the origin of the Paradisaie tradition. For striking illustrations of this last statement, it is only necessary to refer to the recently published theories of E. Beau- vois, and Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourgg the former relating to the Paradise ideas of the Kelts, and the latter to those of the prehistoric tribes of Mexico and Central America. In his learned papers entitled L'EIys6e Tmnsatlaintique, and L'Eclen Occidemalf the first of these writers has brought together a most interesting and valuable mass of materialrillus- trative of the beliefs of the different branches of the .Keltic family, touching the Earthly Paradise. Without dogmatically asserting it, he suggests that the Grmco-Roman ideas of an Elysium at the ends of the earth, of the Islands of the Blessed in or beyond the Atlantic Ocean, of Ogygia the Eden-like isle of Kalypso, of the land of the Fountain of Youth, and so on, were all borrowed from this widespread people, who, in the march ot' nations into Europe, preceded the ancestors of both those classic peoples, and at the dawn of historic times were found Echelormd along the shores of the Atlantic from Celtiberia to the British Isles? But whence did the Kelts themselves derive them? To this question also, M. Beauvois gives no dog- matic answerg but he everywhere suggests that the historic basis of all these traditions is to be sought in an early acquaintance 1 Published in the Revue de Vhistoirc des Religions. Paris, 1883. pp. 273- 318, 673-727. 2 ln a note to p. 274, M. Beauvois seems very plainly and strongly to intimate, that, in his opinion. the whole classic pantheon originated on this west coast of Europe, among the Keltic tribes.

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28 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. land, where, far above the Arctic Circle, in the frozen ocean to the northeast of Iceland, one finds in the small volcanic isle of Jan-Mayen, the very one which in thc belief' of Sylla Qin Plu- tarehj belonged to Saturn? The agitations and labored breath- ings of the god on awakening from his dreams, are a mythological expression of the rumblings of the earth beneath the crater of Hecla or under the intermittent volcano of the Jan-Mayen islc.2 This outcome, so contrary to the demands of his theory, evi- dently troubles M. Beauvois. He admits that he cannot ima- gine how the Kelts should have been led to locate their Paradise, their Fortunate Islands, their Elysium, in islands so frozen and sterile and hyperborean. But, like a good advocate, he draws from the admitted facts such comfort as he can, saying, that, inasmuch as it would never have occurred to more southerly peoples to do so strange a thing, the fact that, according to Pindar and Theopompos, the Greeks also placed their Elysium in the extreme North, must be taken as conclusive proof that the Greeks accepted of Keltie ideas on this subject at a very early period! A far more reasonable inference would have been, that the ancestors of each people once lived in a Pre- Glacial Arctic Eden of more than tropical luxuriance, and that 1 Il fSyllaJ croyait que c'etait au-dela de la mer Cronienne, par conse- quent dans 1' ile Jean Mayen fp. 2795 compare also p. 281 and 278D. 2 Nous croyons comprendre que 1'autre avec son rocher rutilant est simplement le cratere de l'I-lekla. Ce volt-an reste en repos pendant long- temps et semble sommeiller, mais tout a coup il se reveille et ses eruptions entreeoupees rappellent les penibles efforts de respiration et les convulsions titaniques de Saturne. Et meme, si l'on admet avec Sylla. que 1'antre est situe au-dela de la :ner Cronienne, il faudra. le chercher jusque dans 1'ile Jean-Mayen, dont le volcan est aussi intermittent Cp. 2817. B On le devinerait rien qu'en constatant que, pour rapprocher de leur pays le paradis des heros, ils l'ont place dans des iles froides et steriles, n'ayant aucun titre a Pepithete de fortunees 1 p. 282y. 4 Jarnais pareillenidee ne seralt venue aux meridionaux qui, en effet, cherchaieut leur Elysee dans une -z6ne plus temperee et plus favorisee de la. nature. Pour que Pindaro identiflat l'asile des Bienheureux, Paneien pays des Gorgones, avec les contrees iiyperbm-venues, pour que Thdg. pompe regardat les Hyperhoreens comme les heureux des mortels, il fallait que les conceptions celtiques se fussent de bonne heure imposees aux Grecs fp. 2821. The reader will notice the incidental concession of the correctness of the representation of Greek ideas given in Paradise Found, pp. 182-187.