islands), and to ancient Egyptian conceptions of the future life.[1299] They were also known elsewhere,[1300] and we may therefore assume that in describing such an island as part of Elysium, the Celts were using something common to universal folk-belief.  But it may also owe something to actual custom, to the memory of a time when women performed their rites in seclusion, a seclusion perhaps recalled in the references to the mysterious nature of the island, its inaccessibility, and its disappearance once the mortal leaves it.  To these rites men may have been admitted by favour, but perhaps to their detriment, because of their temporary partner’s extreme erotic madness.  This is the case in the Chinese tales of the island of women, and this, rather than home-sickness, may explain the desire of Bran, Oisin, etc., to leave Elysium.  Celtic women performed orgiastic rites on islands, as has been seen.[1301] All this may have originated the belief in an island of beautiful divine women as part of Elysium, while it also heightened its sensuous aspect.

Borrowed from the delight which the Celt took in music is the recurring reference to the marvellous music which swelled in Elysium.  There, as the goddess says to Bran, “there is nothing rough or harsh, but sweet music striking on the ear.”  It sounded from birds on every tree, from the branches of trees, from marvellous stones, and from the harps of divine musicians.  And this is recalled in the ravishing music which the belated traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots—­“what pipes and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!” The romantic beauty of Elysium is described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other sagas or Maerchen, and it is insisted on by those who come to lure mortals there.  The beauty of its landscapes—­hills, white cliffs, valleys, sea and shore, lakes and rivers,—­of its trees, its inhabitants, and its birds,—­the charm of its summer haze, is obviously the product of the imagination of a people keenly alive to natural beauty.  The opening lines sung by the goddess to Bran strike a note which sounds through all Celtic literature: 

  “There is a distant isle, around which sea-horses glisten,

...

   A beauty of a wondrous land, whose aspects are lovely,
   Whose view is a fair country, incomparable in its haze. 
   It is a day of lasting weather, that showers silver on the land;
   A pure white cliff on the range of the sea,
   Which from the sun receives its heat.”

So Oisin describes it:  “I saw a country all green and full of flowers, with beautiful smooth plains, blue hills, and lakes and waterfalls.”  All this and more than this is the reflection of nature as it is found in Celtic regions, and as it was seen by the eye of Celtic dreamers, and interpreted to a poetic race by them.