[111] Pliny (Book XXX) says Britain seems to have taught Druidism to the Persians. Siret's view, given in the concluding part of this chapter, that Druidism was of Eastern origin, is of special interest in this connection.
In ancient Britain and Ireland the belief obtained, as in Greece and elsewhere, that there was an Underworld Paradise and certain Islands of the Blest (in Gaelic called "The Land of Youth", "The Plain of Bliss", &c.) The Underworld was entered through caves, wells, rivers or lakes, or through the ocean cavern from which the moon arose. There are references in Scottish folk-tales to "The Land-Under-Waves", and to men and women entering the Underworld through a "fairy" mound, and seeing the dead plucking fruit and reaping grain as in the Paradise of the Egyptian god Osiris. It is evident that Fairyland was originally a Paradise, and the fairy queen an old mother goddess. There are references in Welsh to as gloomy an Underworld as the Babylonian one. "In addition to _Annwfn_, a term which", according to the late Professor Anwyl, "seems to mean the 'Not-world', we have other names for the world below, such as _anghar_, 'the loveless place'; _difant_, the unrimmed place (whence the modern Welsh word _difancoll_, 'lost for ever'); _affwys_, the abyss; _affan_, 'the land invisible'." In a Welsh poem a bard speaks of the Otherworld as "the cruel prison of earth, the abode of death, the loveless land".[112]
The Border Ballads of Scotland contain references to the Fairyland Paradise of the Underworld, to the islands or continent of Paradise, and to the dark Otherworld of the grave in which the dead lie among devouring worms.
In one Celtic Elysium, known to the Welsh and Irish, the dead feast on pork as do the heroes in the Paradise of the Scandinavian god Odin. There is no trace in Scotland of a belief or desire to reach a Paradise in which the pig was eaten. The popularity of the apple as the fruit of longevity was, however, widespread. It is uncertain when the beliefs connected with it were introduced into England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. As they were similar to those connected with the hazel-nut, the acorn, the rowan, &c., there may have simply been a change of fruit rather than a religious change, except in so far as new ceremonies may have been associated with the cultivated apple tree.