confused it with that of the nether world of Odysseus “At the extreme coast of Gaul is a spot protected from the tides of Ocean, where Odysseus by bloodshed allured forth the silent folk. There are heard wailing cries, and the light fluttering around of the shadows. And the natives there see pale, statue-like figures and dead corpses wandering[1].” According to Philemon in Pliny, the Cimbri called the Northern Ocean Morimarusa, i.e. mare mortuum, the sea of the dead.
In the old romance of Lancelot du Lac, the Demoiselle d’Escalot directed that after death her body should be placed richly adorned in a boat, and allowed to float away before the wind; a trace of the ancient belief in the passage over sea to the soul-land.
“There take the little bed on which I died
For Lancelot’s love, and deck it like the Queen’s
For richness, and me also like the Queen
In all I have of rich, and lay me on it.
And let there be prepared a chariot-bier
To take me to the river, and a barge
Be ready on the river, clothed in black.”
Tennyson’s Elaine.
And the grave-digger in Hamlet sings of being at death
- ↑ In Rufin. i. 123—133.
