Mooney. ] 246 [Oct, 19; 
retaining its human and spiritual nature, and transferd from the body of 
one animal to that of another, by a series of changes varying in number 
and character according to the degree of punishment merited, until, puri- 
fied by suffering, it was allowd to return once more to its original human 
body and enter with it into happiness. 
‘It was an essential point of this doctrin that the body must be pre- 
servd from decay, or rather from dissolution into the elements, otherwise 
the soul, unable to enter again into its earthly tabernacle, would be com- 
peld to return to its animal prison or become a lonely wanderer through 
all eternity. Hence the pains taken among early nations, by embalming 
or by the erection of huge funeral mounds, to prevent the destruction 
of the body or the scattering of its ashes. A similar idea seems to under- 
lie the belief that a failure to perform the customary funeral rites doomd 
the soul to wander in outer darkness. This belief seems to hav been 
general among the northern Indians, as evinced by the desperate efforts 
they invariably made to bring off their dead from the field of battle, by 
their anxiety to ‘‘cover the bones”’ of their murderd friends, and by the 
Iroquois custom of driving away the ghost of a tortured prisoner with 
shouts and hideous noises after the blackend and mutilated corpse had 
been thrown out from the village to lie unburied in the forest.* It was 
evidently held also by the ancient Irish, as is shown by some of their old 
popular tales. 
THe EARLy RaActrs. 
As the human mind, under ordinary circumstances, develops by regular 
stages, so there is a regular sequence in the beliefs and customs which 
mark this development. The most highly civilized nations of to-day hav 
risen through all the intermediate grades from savagery, and in studying 
their national life we shal find lingering remains of customs which can be 
explaind only through a knowledge of the existing beliefs of more primi- 
tiv peoples, and if we can pursue the investigation into the domain of 
archeology we must expect to meet evidences of former practices which 
ar now relegated to the lowest savages. In treating of the funeral cus- 
toms of Ireland, a country especially rich in the remains of antiquity, it 
is necessary to a proper understanding of the subject to go back to the 
earliest period of which we hav any monuments. It is not, however, 
practicable within the limits of this paper to enter into a detailed account 
of particular structures or to institute a comparison with similar works on 
the continent. 
The Irish, like every other historic nation, ar a mixt race, and the native 
annals, which unquestionably go back to a remote antiquity, recount sev- 
eral invasions or colonizations of the island long before the Christian era. 
The aborigines of the country, or, more correctly speaking, the earliest 
colonists, wer known as Fomorians, which, however, was not their true 
name, but that imposed by their conquerors. They ar said to hav come 
* Greenhalgh (1677), in Doc. Hist., New York, i, 16. 
