Now in view of the evidence set forth in the last chapter, is it not clear that this was a locality in which these semi-Pagan, semi-Christian, rites, might, prima facie, be expected to linger on?  It is up here, along the Northern border, that the Roman legionaries were stationed; it is here that we find monuments and memorials of their heathen cults; obviously this was a locality where the demon-hunting activities of the Saint might find full scope for action.  I would submit that there is at least presumptive evidence that we may here be dealing with the survival of a genuine tradition.

And should any of my readers find it difficult to believe that, even did initiations take place, and even were they of a character that involved a stern test of mental and physical endurance—­and I imagine most scholars would admit that there was, possibly, more in the original institutions, than, let us say, in a modern admission to Free-Masonry—­yet it is ‘a far cry’ from pre-Christian initiations to Medieval Romance, and a connection between the two is a rash postulate, I would draw their attention to the fact that, quite apart from our Grail texts, we possess a romance which is, plainly, and blatantly, nothing more or less than such a record.  I refer, of course, to Owain Miles, or The Purgatory of Saint Patrick, where we have an account of the hero, after purification by fasting and prayer, descending into the Nether World, passing through the abodes of the Lost, finally reaching Paradise, and returning to earth after Three Days, a reformed and regenerated character.[15]

“Then with his monks the Prior anon,
With Crosses and with Gonfanon
Went to that hole forthright,
Thro’ which Knight Owain went below,
There, as of burning fire the glow,
They saw a gleam of light;
And right amidst that beam of light
He came up, Owain, God’s own knight,
By this knew every man
That he in Paradise had been,
And Purgatory’s pains had seen,
And was a holy man.”

Now if we turn to Bousset’s article Himmelfahrt der Seele, to which I have previously referred (p. —–­), we shall find abundant evidence that such a journey to the Worlds beyond was held to be a high spiritual adventure of actual possibility—­a venture to be undertaken by those who, greatly daring, felt that the attainment of actual knowledge of the Future Life was worth all the risks, and they were great and terrible, which such an enterprise involved.

Bousset comments fully on Saint Paul’s claim to have been ’caught up into the Third Heaven’ and points out that such an experience was the property of the Rabbinical school to which Saul of Tarsus had belonged, and was brought over by him from his Jewish past; such experiences were rare in Orthodox Christianity.[16] According to Jewish classical tradition but one Rabbi had successfully passed the test, other aspirants either failing at a preliminary stage, or, if they persevered, losing their senses permanently.  The practice of this ecstatic ascent ceased among Jews in the second century A.D.