d by
his well-loved charioteer, drawn by the immortal steeds through the
mist, and finally talking of his deeds and claiming a place in the
Christian heaven--a place that Patrick yields to him. The invisible
worlds lived, loved, and thought around this visible world, and were,
it seems, closer and more real to the Celtic than to other races.

But it was not only these agreeable and lovely folk in pleasant
habitations whom the Irish made, but also spirits of another sort, of
lesser powers and those chiefly malignant, having no fixed
dwelling-place, homeless in the air and drifting with it, embodying
the venomous and deadly elements of the earth and the angers and
cruelty of the sea, and the hypocrisy of them all--demons, some of
whom, like the stepmother of the children of Lir, have been changed
from men or women because of wicked doings, but the most part born of
the evil in Nature herself. They do what harm they can to innocent
folk; they enter into, support, and direct--like Macbeth's
witches--the evil thoughts of men; they rejoice in the battle, in the
wounds and pain and death of men; they shriek and scream and laugh
around the head of the hero when he goes forth, like Cuchulain, to an
unwearied slaughter of men. They make the blight, the deadly mist, the
cruel tempest. To deceive is their pleasure; to discourage, to baffle,
to ruin the hero is their happiness. Some of them are monsters of
terrific aspect who abide in lakes or in desolate rocks, as the
terrible tri-formed horse whom Fergus mac Leda conquered and by whom
he died.

Naturally, as a link between these supernatural worlds and the natural
world, there arose a body of men and women in Irish legend who, by
years of study, gained a knowledge of, and power over, the
supernatural beings, and used these powers for hurt to the enemies of
their kingdom, or for help to their own people. Some were wise,
learned, and statesmanlike, and used their powers for good. These were
the high Druids, and every king had a band of them at his court and in
his wars. They practiced what the Middle Ages called white magic.
Others were wizards, magicians, witches, who, like the children of
Cailitin, the foes of Cuchulain, or the three mutilated women whom
Maev educated in evil craft to do evil to her foes, or the dread band
that deceived Cuchulain into his last ride of death, practised black
magic--evil, and the ministers of evil. Magic, and the doing of it,
runs through the who