or sometimes after awaking.[865] Perhaps the animal whose flesh was eaten was a sacred one.  Another method was that of the Teinm Laegha.  The File made a verse and repeated it over some person or thing regarding which he sought information, or he placed his staff on the person’s body and so obtained what he sought.  The rite was also preceded by sacrifice; hence S. Patrick prohibited both it and the Imbas Forosnai.[866] Another incantation, the Cetnad, was sung through the fist to discover the track of stolen cattle or of the thief.  If this did not bring enlightenment, the File went to sleep and obtained the knowledge through a dream.[867] Another Cetnad for obtaining information regarding length of life was addressed to the seven daughters of the sea.  Perhaps the incantation was repeated mechanically until the seer fell into a kind of trance.  Divination by dreams was also used by the continental Celts.[868]

Other methods resemble “trance-utterance.”  “A great obnubilation was conjured up for the bard so that he slept a heavy sleep, and things magic-begotten were shewn to him to enunciate,” apparently in his sleep.  This was called “illumination by rhymes,” and a similar method was used in Wales.  When consulted, the seer roared violently until he was beside himself, and out of his ravings the desired information was gathered.  When aroused from this ecstatic condition, he had no remembrance of what he had uttered.  Giraldus reports this, and thinks, with the modern spiritualist, that the utterance was caused by spirits.[869] The resemblance to modern trance-utterance and to similar methods used by savages is remarkable, and psychological science sees in it the promptings of the subliminal self in sleep.

The taghairm of the Highlanders was a survival from pagan times.  The seer was usually bound in a cow’s hide—­the animal, it may be conjectured, having been sacrificed in earlier times.  He was left in a desolate place, and while he slept spirits were supposed to inspire his dreams.[870] Clothing in the skin of a sacrificial animal, by which the person thus clothed is brought into contact with it and hence with the divinity to which it is offered, or with the divine animal itself where the victim is so regarded, is a widespread custom.  Hence, in this Celtic usage, contact with divinity through the hide would be expected to produce enlightenment.  For a like reason the Irish sacrificed a sheep for the recovery of the sick, and clothed the patient in its skin.[871] Binding the limbs of the seer is also a widespread custom, perhaps to restrain his convulsions or to concentrate the psychic force.

Both among the continental and Irish Celts those who sought hidden knowledge slept on graves, hoping to be inspired by the spirits of the dead.[872] Legend told how, the full version of the Tain having been lost, Murgan the File sang an incantation over the grave of Fergus mac Roig.  A cloud hid him for three days, and during that time the dead man appeared and recited the saga to him.