Bousset also gives instances of the soul leaving the body for three days, and wandering through other worlds, both good and evil, and also discusses the origin of the bridge which must be crossed to reach Paradise, both features characteristic of the Owain poem.[17] In fact the whole study is of immense importance for a critical analysis of the sources of the romance in question.

And here I would venture to beg the adherents of the ‘Celtic’ school to use a little more judgment in their attribution of sources.  Visits to the Otherworld are not always derivations from Celtic Fairy-lore.  Unless I am mistaken the root of this theme is far more deeply imbedded than in the shifting sands of Folk and Fairy tale.  I believe it to be essentially a Mystery tradition; the Otherworld is not a myth, but a reality, and in all ages there have been souls who have been willing to brave the great adventure, and to risk all for the chance of bringing back with them some assurance of the future life.  Naturally these ventures passed into tradition with the men who risked them.  The early races of men became semi-mythic, their beliefs, their experiences, receded into a land of mist, where their figures assumed fantastic outlines, and the record of their deeds departed more and more widely from historic accuracy.

The poets and dreamers wove their magic webs, and a world apart from the world of actual experience came to life.  But it was not all myth, nor all fantasy; there was a basis of truth and reality at the foundation of the mystic growth, and a true criticism will not rest content with wandering in these enchanted lands, and holding all it meets with for the outcome of human imagination.

The truth may lie very deep down, but it is there, and it is worth seeking, and Celtic fairy-tales, charming as they are, can never afford a satisfactory, or abiding, resting place.  I, for one, utterly refuse to accept such as an adequate goal for a life’s research.  A path that leads but into a Celtic Twilight can only be a by-path, and not the King’s Highway!

The Grail romances repose eventually, not upon a poet’s imagination, but upon the ruins of an august and ancient ritual, a ritual which once claimed to be the accredited guardian of the deepest secrets of Life.  Driven from its high estate by the relentless force of religious evolution—­for after all Adonis, Attis, and their congeners, were but the ‘half-gods’ who must needs yield place when ‘the Gods’ themselves arrive—­it yet lingered on; openly, in Folk practice, in Fast and Feast, whereby the well-being of the land might be assured; secretly, in cave or mountain-fastness, or island isolation, where those who craved for a more sensible (not necessarily sensuous) contact with the unseen Spiritual forces of Life than the orthodox development of Christianity afforded, might, and did, find satisfaction.