Survivals in Belief Among the Celts by George Henderson [1911]

This long out-of-print book, graciously loaned to sacred-texts for scanning by a reader from their personal library, reviews the extensive literature on survivals of pre-Christian beliefs in the Celtic area. It covers customs from Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man, Cornwall and Brittany, and relates them to other traditional cultures world-wide. This is a work of scholarship, and cites from authoritative literature, including many now hard to obtain sources, and several short texts in the original Gaelic. Among the fascinating topics covered are the evil eye, geis (taboos), doppelgangers, beliefs relating to animals and shape-shifting, lustration, second-sight, and healing rituals. Of particular interest is the discussion of pagan elements in the Carmina Gadelica.

Production note: Because this book was basically three very long chapters, each chapter has been arbitrarily broken into somewhat smaller files. These divisions were not present in the original book. Many thanks to Peet McKimmie for the loan of the copytext!