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In Celtic mythology, the Otherworld is the realm of the dead and the home of the deities and other powerful spirits. The intrusion of the Otherworld into this one is signaled by the appearance of divine beings or unusual animals, or other phenomena such as sudden changes in the weather.〔James MacKillop, ''Dictionary of Celtic Mythology'', Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp.21, 205, 270, 322–3, 346, 359–60. ISBN 0-19-280120-1.〕 Sometimes an otherworldly woman will present an apple or an apple branch, or a ball of thread to follow as it unwinds.〔〔Cf. Eleanor Hull, The Silver Bough in Irish Legend, in Folk-Lore, xii.〕 ==Beliefs of the ancient Gauls== In Lucan's account of the druidical doctrine of metempsychosis, the Otherworld is referred to as ''Orbis alius''.〔Pharsalia, 1, 457〕 Graeco-Roman geographers tell us about how Celtic belief in islands consecrated to gods and heroes. Among them were Anglesey (''Môn''), located on the Northern Welsh Coast, which was the sacred island of the druids of Britain; the Scilly islands, where archaeological remains of proto-historical temples have been found; and some of the Hebrides Islands, which were, in the Gaelic tradition, home of ghosts and demons: on one of them, Skye, the Irish hero Cúchulainn was educated by the warrior woman Scathach. Byzantine scholar Procopius of Caesarea described the Otherworld beliefs of the ancient Gauls. He said it was thought that the Land of Dead lay some place west of Great Britain. The Continental Celtic myths told that once the souls of the dead had left their bodies, they travelled to the Northwestern coast of Gaul and took a boat in direction to ''Britannia''. When they had to cross the Channel, the souls went to the homes of the fishermen, and knocked desperately at their doors. The fishermen went then out of their houses and led the dead to their goal in ghostly ships. There are still remains of those beliefs in the Breton and Galician traditions. In Brittany, the name ''Bag an Noz'' is used to denote those ships who carry the dead to their goal: Anatole Le Braz describes in his book ''La légende de la mort chez les Bretons armoricains'' the existence of souls' processions which make their way toward coastal places like Laoual, to start their last travel from there. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Celtic Otherworld」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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