Activities will include Live Music by Anwyn & George Leverett, a Bardic circle for poetry and storytelling, workshops, readings, Reiki healings, music, drumming, shared feasting and rituals – also hiking, swimming and vision quests.

LIVE MUSIC! We are very excited to announce that our "official Bards" * Anwyn & George Leverett * will be attending the Gathering and performing their Celtic/Medieval acoustic music on harp, guitar and whatever else they decide to bring... PLUS! George might even be teaching a harp workshop and bringing some harps for us to use that he built himself! More details on that to follow...

Main Page: http://rdg.mithrilstar.org/2007wcdruidgat.htm

Camping & Alternatives Info: http://rdg.mithrilstar.org/gatheringinfo.htm

A Word Within Letters

An Interview with Tallyessin the Bard

By Jillbe Badb, Contributing Editor

Kevan Manwaring – whose Bardic name is Tallyessin – is a novelist, poet, storyteller and teacher. He has been performing his poetry for over a decade in venues across Britain as well as the Rhode Island Sacred Arts Festival. In 1998, he was awarded the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon in Bath. In 1999, he won the Writers' New Ghost Story Competition. He runs Silver Branch Bardic Training and teaches fiction writing for the Open University. He lives in the city of Bath. His Website is: http://www.tallyessin.com/

He penned a comprehensive book on Bardry released last Spring – The Bardic Handbook, The Complete Manual for the 21st Century Bard – which has achieved applause of approval in the Bardic world. You can learn more about this inspired work at: http://www.gothicimage.co.uk/bardic.html?

He has also edited The Book of the Bardic Chair, released in April (UK limited edition initially, by Sulis Underground) – followed by a wider US version in the Autumn – published by RJ Stewart Books. It features a foreword by Professor Ronald Hutton; and contributions from Caitlin Matthews, RJ Stewart, John Michell and Dr. Graham Harvey, as well as all the Bards of Bath, Ovates and Druids. Plus, this work lists current Bardic Chairs, and how to set up your own.

RJ Stewart Books will be publishing his series of Bardic novels: “The Windsmith Odyssey!” Windsmith (1), and The Well Under the Sea (2) will be coming out this Autumn. Check them out soon at: http://www.rjstewart.net/

You can buy his books directly – and even get signed copies – at:
http://www.tallyessin.com/order/order.htm

Now let’s talk with Tallyessin himself...

DE: What are the very basics a person needs to get started on the Bardic path, according to your new work, The Bardic Handbook, The Complete Manual for the 21st Century Bard?

T: An open heart, an open mind, a willingness to learn, to play – to give themselves permission to be creative, and a freedom to fail. To feel the fear and do it anyway – hold onto the dragon's tail and enjoy
the ride!

DE: I have read your (brilliant) work and have noted that it says that the Bardic path is a lifelong one. Are you still memorizing poetry, and how much these days?

T: It depends on the gig ­ if it's required for a show, I'll learn it. Sometimes it's a case of
'downloading' from the long-term memory a poem I've already learnt: dusting it off, polishing it up; other times, it's completely new ­ on average I can learn a poem in 30 minutes. A 30 verse one, like I did in front of 300 people at the Wessex Gathering (although I wrote, learnt and performed that in a week) takes a few days to master. As with stories and songs, you need to let them 'inhabit' you - live and breathe and dream them for a while - until you know them back-to-front, so that when you perform them you're not worried about forgetting the words (although stories are different, as you don't learn them verbatim) you're concentrating upon conveying the nuances of emotion & meaning, and letting the Awen come through.

DE: Have you ever had an Otherworldly creature sing to you or give you a branch?

T: In a way... I was given a medicine rattle, unasked, on Solsbury Hill (our local sacred bump of Peter Gabriel fame) when I was taking part in a medicine circle with Roy Littlesun. A lady came up to me and said: 'I think you should have this.’ Since then, I've used it in my storytelling. Other than that, I'm still waiting for that faerie branch – in the meantime, I made my own.

DE: If an aspiring Bard were enrolled in a University, what classes would you encourage her to take in order to form a good base of Bardic knowledge?

T: Storytelling; performance poetry; creative writing; drama; music; history; local studies; comparative religions; psychology even...

DE: What was your most vivid Sidhe encounter?

T: Wildcamping by myself near a barrow called 'the Giant's Grave' on the Wansdyke - a henge (ancient earthwork) stretching for miles across Somerset and Wiltshire. As I curled up around the fire, in the middle of the night, as the fire had died and I was beginning to feel cold, I felt a presence behind me – a 'man' on the edge of the grove. I was unable to move - sleep paralysis – as he approached, reached over...and stoked the fire into life, adding wood. Then he vanished. I wasn't able to sleep much after that, but it was nearly dawn by then. I am glad I asked for the blessing of the spirit of the (oak) grove before I made the fire and went to sleep.

DE: What is the name of your harp?

T: Haven't got one yet, as been working with a musician, but if I did I think it should be a private sacred thing (personal choice).

DE: If you were Bran -- in The Voyage of Bran – and beheld a plate of food that reflected whatever you desired, would you eat of it?

T: Well, there's strong taboos about eating faerie food, but it would be tempting – depends if I'd felt I'd achieved all I needed to in this world. I still have too many books to write and tales to tell before then!

DE: Do you agree with the works of John and Caitlin Matthews that the Bardic path is necessarily a Shamanic one? What of urban Bards?

T: I think they share similar roots, but you don't have to be a shaman to be a bard, and certainly not vice versa (although there are obvious overlaps). A powerful story performance should take the audience on a magical healing journey - just like shaman does. At the end of the day it is about connecting with your own tradition, and being authentic, your source of inspiration - if that's urban, so be it. The cities need healing and enchantment more than more wild places after all.

DE: Which deity is your biggest taskmaster? Greatest inspiration?

T: The Goddess in her many forms is my constant teacher and inspiration.

DE: An Otherworldly creature offers you a "one-way trip" to 6th Century Wales: go or stay?

T: Tempting...but I've got too much to do in this time, and I probably was there before anyway – I certainly connect with it more than any other period or place.

DE: Anything else you would like to add for up-and-coming Bards?

T: Believe in yourself – if you won't, no one else will. Stand up there and shine!

The following was submitted to us a couple years ago by one of our members "across the pond";
he has always been able to weave a bold and bawdy tale...

* * * * * * *

"This is an excerpt from Bernard Cornwell's "Warlord Chronicles" to remind us of what Beltane is really about and how our ancestors celebrated it.

Your narrator is Derfel Cadarn – a member of Arthur's war band and Bard to Merlin – enjoy the tale and lap up the atmosphere!"

* * * * * * *

Beltane greets the new summer and on the eve of the feast we let all the fires in the village die. The kitchen fires, that had burned all winter long, went unfed for the day and so by nighttime they were nothing but embers. We raked them out, swept the hearths clean, then laid new fires, while on a hill to the east of the village we heaped two great piles of firewood, one of them stacked about the sacred tree that Merlin, our Druid, had selected. It was a young Hazel that we had cut down and carried ceremoniously through the village, across the stream and up the hill. We hung the tree with scraps of cloth, and all the houses, like the hall itself, were decked with new young Hazel boughs.

That night, all across Britain, the fires were dead. On Beltane Eve the darkness rules. The feast was laid out in the hall, but there was no fire to cook it and no flame to light the high rafters. There was no light anywhere, except in those towns where Christians (spits to avert evil) defied the great God Bel and lit treacherous fires to insult him. But here in the countryside, the Pagan countryside, we made sure that all was dark in Bel's honour.

At dusk we climbed the hill, a mass of villagers and spearmen driving cattle and sheep that were folded into wattle enclosures. Children played, but once the great dark fell the smallest of them fell asleep and their little bodies lay in the grass as the rest of us gathered about the unlit fires and sang the "Lament of Annwn".

Then, in the darkest part of the night, we made the new summer's fire. Merlin made the flame by rubbing two sticks, while Issa, my head spearman, dribbled shavings of larch-wood kindling onto the spark that gave off a tiny wisp of smoke. The two men stooped to the tiny flame, blew on it, added more kindling, and at last a strong flame leapt up and all of us began to sing the "Chant of Belenus" as Merlin carried the new fire to the heaps of firewood. The sleeping children awoke and ran to find parents as the Beltane fires sprang high and bright.

A goat was sacrificed once the fires were burning. As ever Ceinwyn, my wife, could not bear to watch and so turned away as the poor beasts throat was cut and Merlin scattered its blood on the grass so that he could find omens in the pattern that the sacrificial blood had formed. He then tossed the carcass onto the fire where the sacred Hazel now burned, and then the villagers fetched their cattle and sheep and drove them between the great blazes. We hung plaited straw collars about the cows’ necks, and then watched as young women danced between the fires to seek the blessings of Bel on their wombs. They had done this at Imbolc too, but it was always repeated at Beltane. This was the first year that my daughter Morwenna was old enough to dance the fires and Arthur smiled at me as she twirled and leapt - for at the equinox she and his son, Gwydre, would be handfasted, so joining our two families more formally than our lifelong friendship could. I turned around and looked to the horizon and could see the bright flames of all the other Beltane fires burning in the distance. All over Wessex the fires were being lit in honour of the sun God - and I wondered how many more Beltane's we would enjoy before we once again had to fight the Saxons.

My spearmen had brought two huge iron cauldrons filled with wood and each family took a piece, lit it upon the great fire and than ran down to their huts and homes to light their kitchen fire so that every fire in the village, that would burn until Samhain when we repeated the ritual, would have come from the fire of Bel himself. When every home had its fire we went to the hall and there lit the fire that would roast the coming feast for us. By now it was nearly dawn and so we crowded into the palisade to wait for Bel.

The instant that his first shaft showed above the eastern horizon we burst into a joyous song - the song of Lugh's birth and we danced as we sang, and as we sang Merlin called upon the Gods and the Elements to preserve and bless our village and the Sacred Island of Britain. We faced Bel once more as his warming rays lit the new day and heralded the start of summer and together the whole village offered up their prayers to him.

Then we began to cook. Arthur and I had agreed that it should be a huge feast for we did not know when the Saxons would come again and so we wanted to give the people a memory worth fighting for. So we had prepared five deer, two boars, three pigs, six sheep, ten baskets of fresh bread baked on the old season's fires and several barrels of mead. There was cheese and nuts and for the children we had baked little cakes with Bel's symbol, a five-pointed star, scorched onto their crusts.

As the meal cooked, the villagers played games. There were pony races, wrestling matches and a competition to see who could lift the heaviest weight. The girls wove flowers into chains, which they then wore on their heads, and, long before the feat had begun I saw young couples begin to slip off into the woods. We ate in the afternoon – as we feasted, the Bards and poets recited their work and the success of their compositions was judged by the length of the applause that each generated. I gave them all presents, even the bad ones and there were plenty of those!

Most of the poets were young men who had blushed as they had recited some ode to a village girl who had taken their fancy, and the villagers laughed and jeered and then demanded that the girl referred to reward the poet with a kiss. If the kiss was deemed too fleeting they would hold boy and girl together and make them kiss properly.

I drank too much. Indeed we all ate well and drank better. I was challenged to a wrestling match with a farmer friend and the crowd demanded that I accept and so, half drunk already, I clapped my hands on his shoulders and he did the same to me. I could see in his eyes that he was drunk - he could see that I was too and so instead of wrestling we smiled, embracing as only friends can, and then wobbled before toppling over and rolling down the hill in one another’s arms. Somehow we dragged ourselves up again, only to be rewarded by jeers and catcalls for our poor performance.

By nightfall I was very mead-fuddled and Ceinwyn linked her arm through mine, kissed me and said, "Lord Derfel Cadarn, I do believe that you are drunk!"

"I am that my Lady" I answered.

"You will sleep like a Hog and snore like one too" she chided.

"It's Beltane" I answered by way of excuse; "Everyone gets drunk at Beltane!"

When the Great Tuatha De Dannan came to the shores of this reality, they brought with them four Faerie Gifts. These gifts were used in the Creation Battle to dispel the workers of darkness.

The Dagda, the great Father-Lord, brought with him the Cauldron (chalice, emotional power). It would produce food for all who needed it, and any weapon dipped in its waters was immediately repaired.

Nuada, the Silver-Armed, brought the Sword (athame, intellectual power). No enemy it was turned upon would succeed in battle.

Lugh brought the Spear (wand, creative power). When thrown, it would never miss its target and it would always return to the hand of the thrower.

The final was the Stone of Faal, or Stone of Destiny (pentacle, material power). It was the solid foundation upon which this reality was built.

The Tuatha De Dannan won the battle and peace and tranquility reigned for hundreds of years. Then the Milesians (humankind) came, and the Tuatha knew that their time was over. Until this point, the spiritual world and physical world existed on the same plane.

Rather than fight the Milesians, who were born pure of heart, the Great Faeries decided to rip the worlds asunder and split the Spiritual Plane (Astral) from the Physical Plane.

But they knew that one plane fed upon the other and needed it for existence. So they created many doorways between the worlds. The "Keys" to these doors are the Four Great Faerie Gifts. They placed the energies of the four keys in the hearts of the Milesian to be drawn upon to enter the Gates to the Other-Worlds.

The Spear of Lugh represents the urge to explore one's spirituality. It also represents one's creative urges, inspiration, and young fragile ideas.

The Cauldron of the Dagda represents ones emotional health, relationships, and the need to connect with others.

The Sword of Nuada is the intellectual curiosity inherent in humankind – the need to learn, explore, and communicate with others.

Finally, the Stone of Faal represents the ability to keep one's material life stable; this includes physical health, as well as achieving the means to support and sustain oneself.

The Faerie Gifts are a way to balance one's life to meet the many needs of the soul, mind, body and spirit. It is vital that the four Faerie Gifts remain balanced in the soul. No one gift should be sacrificed for the other three. For example, one should never explore the spirit realms while ignoring the material level. One should never throw oneself into a relationship at the expense of intellectual exploration. Strive always to maintain this balance. When all Faerie Gifts are tended to, one can achieve a sense of Spiritual, Emotional, Intellectual, and Physical health.

Faerie Quest to Regain Balance

-Close your eyes and begin breathing in a slow and steady manner. Use whatever methods you need to achieve your shamanic state of consciousness.

-You materialize in a small clearing with a well in the center of it. Stand for a few minutes and gaze at your surroundings and become familiar with them. Approach the well.

-Allow all of your cares, worries, and stressors to materialize as small pebbles in the palm of your hand. Drop them into the well, and watch them disappear into the darkness. When you hear the sound of them hitting the waters, turn and walk away.

-You walk down a path into the woods. Small woodland creatures and faeries play and frolic in the greenery. Perhaps your Faerie Guides and Animal Helpers approach you and join you on this quest. You enter a small clearing and sit on the earth.

-You see four great trees before you. Each tree has a different symbol glowing in its bark. The first has a red spear, the second a blue cauldron, the third a yellow sword, and the fourth a green stone. Look at the images. Get up and go over to touch them if you wish. Are any of them dimmer or brighter than the others? How does each make you feel? Are you drawn or repelled by any specific symbols. Knowing the basis behind the symbols, intuitively analyze them. Do any of them need to be brightened? Send your power into them and make them burn stronger. Do any need to be dimmed? Transfer some of its power into the healing earth. Use all of your Faerie Shaman skills to achieve a sense of balance in these symbols. Remain here for a while.

-When you are done, return back down the path. Tell your Spirit Friends good-bye and return to the clearing by the well. Look up into the sky. The sun is setting to the west and the moon is rising to the east. A glowing light surrounds you as you return to your body.

-Record your observations and thoughts in your diary.

Find many more of her awesome stories here:
Source: http://www.ladyoftheearth.com/faeries/faeries.html

Celtic Otherworld

“In Ireland this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart.”
~~ W. B. YEATS ~~

More frequently, in the old Irish manuscripts, the Celtic Otherworld was located in the midst of the Western Ocean, as though it were the 'double' of the lost Atlantis; and Manannan Mac Lir, the Son of the Sea--perhaps himself the 'double' of an ancient Atlantean king--was one of the divine rulers of its fairy inhabitants, and his palace, for he was one of the Tuatha De Danann, was there rather than in Ireland; and when he traveled between the two countries it was in a magic chariot drawn by horses who moved over the sea-waves as on land. And fairy women came from that mid-Atlantic world in magic boats like spirit boats, to charm away such mortal men as in their love they chose, or else to take great Arthur wounded unto death. And in that island world there was neither death nor pain nor scandal, naught save immortal and unfading youth, and endless joy and feasting…

Even yet at rare intervals, like a phantom, Hy Brasil appears far out on the Atlantic. No later than the summer of 1908 it is said to have been seen from West Ireland, just as that strange invisible island near Innishmurray, inhabited by the invisible 'gentry', is seen--once in seven years. And too many men of intelligence testify to having seen Hy Brasil at the same moment, when they have been together, or separated, as during the summer of 1908, for it to be explained away as an ordinary illusion of the senses. Nor can it be due to a mirage such as we know, because neither its shape nor position seems to conform to any known island or land mass…

The Celtic Otherworld is like that hidden realm of subjectivity lying just beyond the horizon of mortal existence, which we cannot behold when we would, save with the mystic vision of the Irish seer. Thus in the legend of Bran's friends, who sat over dinner at Harlech with the Head of Bran for seven years, three curious birds acted as musicians, the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which were said to sing the dead back to life and the living into death; but the birds were not in Harlech, they were out over the sea in the atmosphere of Rhiannon's realm in the bosom of Cardigan Bay…

And though we might say of that Otherworld, as we learn from these Three Birds of Rhiannon, and as Socrates would say, that its inhabitants are come from the living and the living in our world from the dead there, yet…we ought not to think of the Sidhe-folk, nor of such great heroes and gods as Arthur and Cuchulainn and Finn, who are also of its invisible company, as in any sense half-conscious shades; for they are always represented as being in the full enjoyment of an existence and consciousness greater than our own…

In Irish manuscripts, the Otherworld beyond the Ocean bears many names. It is Tír-na-nog, 'The Land of Youth'; Tír-Innambéo, 'The Land of the Living'; Tír Tairngire, 'The Land of Promise'; Tír N-aill, 'The Other Land (or World)'; Mag Már, 'The Great Plain'; and also Mag Mell, 'The Plain Agreeable (or Happy)...'

But this western Otherworld, if it is what we believe it to be--a poetical picture of the great subjective world--cannot be the realm of any one race of invisible beings to the exclusion of another. In it all alike--gods, Tuatha De Danann, fairies, demons, shades, and every sort of disembodied spirits--find their appropriate abode; for though it seems to surround and interpenetrate this planet even as the X-rays interpenetrate matter, it can have no other limits than those of the Universe itself…

And that it is not an exclusive realm is certain from what our old Irish manuscripts record concerning the Fomorian races. These, when they met defeat on the battle-field of Moytura at the hands of the Tuatha De Danann, retired altogether from Ireland, their overthrow being final, and returned to their own invisible country--a mysterious land beyond the Ocean, where the dead find a new existence, and where their god-king Tethra ruled, as he formerly ruled in this world…

And the fairy women of Tethra's kingdom, even like those who came from the Tuatha De Danann of Erin, or those of Manannan's ocean-world, enticed mortals to go with them to be heroes under their king, and to behold there the assemblies of ancestors. It was one of them who came to Connla, son of Conn, supreme king of Ireland; and this was her message to him: 'The immortals invite you. You are going to be one of the heroes of the people of Tethra. You will always be seen there, in the assemblies of your ancestors, in the midst of those who know and love you.' And with the fairy spell upon him the young prince entered the glass boat of the fairy woman, and his father the king, in great tribulation and wonder, beheld them disappear across the waters never to return…

To enter the Otherworld before the appointed hour marked by death, a passport was often necessary, and this was usually a silver branch of the sacred apple-tree bearing blossoms, or fruit, which the queen of the Land of the Ever-Living and Ever-Young gives to those mortals whom she wishes for as companions; though sometimes, as we shall see, it was a single apple without its branch. The queen's gifts serve not only as passports, but also as food and drink for mortals who go with her. Often the apple-branch produces music so soothing that mortals who hear it forget all troubles and even cease to grieve for those whom the fairy women take. For us there are no episodes more important than those in the ancient epics concerning these apple-tree talismans, because in them we find a certain key which unlocks the secret of that world from which such talismans are brought, and proves it to be the same sort of a place as the Otherworld of the Greeks and Romans…

A branch of the apple-tree from Emain
I bring, like those one knows;
Twigs of white silver are on it,
Crystal brows with blossoms.
There is a distant isle,
Around which sea-horses glisten:
A fair course against the white-swelling surge,--
Four feet uphold it.

The Irish Druids made their wands of divination from the yew-tree, and, like the ancient priests of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, are believed to have controlled spirits, fairies, daemons, elementals, and ghosts while making such divinations…

It will help us to understand how closely the ancient symbols have affected our own life and age – though we have forgotten their relation with the Otherworld – by offering a few examples, beginning with the ancient Irish bards who were associated with the Druids...

A wand in the form of a symbolic branch, like a little spike or crescent with gently tinkling bells upon it, was borne by them; and in the piece called Mesca Ulad or 'Inebriety of the Ultonians' it is said of the chief bard of Ulster, Sencha, that in the midst of a bloody fray he 'waved the peaceful branch of Sencha, and all the men of Ulster were silent, quiet'...

In Agallamh an dá Shuadh or the 'Dialogue of the two Sages', the mystic symbol used by gods, fairies, magicians, and by all initiates who know the mystery of life and death, is thus described as a Druid symbol: 'Neidhe' (a young bard who aspired to succeed his father as chief poet of Ulster), 'made his journey with a silver branch over him...

The Anradhs, or poets of the second order, carried a silver branch, but the Ollamhs, or chief poets, carried a branch of gold; all other poets bore a branch of bronze...'

Modern and ancient parallels are worldwide, among the most civilized as among the least civilized peoples, and in civil or religious life among ourselves. Thus, it was with a magic rod that Moses struck the rock and pure water gushed forth, and he raised the same rod and the Red Sea opened; kings hold their sceptres no less than Neptune his trident; popes and bishops have their croziers; in the Roman Church there are little wandlike objects used to perform benedictions; high civil officials have their mace of office; and all the world over there are the wands of magicians and of medicine-men…

Ossian…was enticed into Fairyland by a fairy woman: She carries him away on a white horse, across the Western Ocean; and as they are moving over the sea-waves they behold a fair maid on a brown horse, and she holding in her right hand a golden apple...

After the hero had married his fairy abductress and lived in the Otherworld for three hundred years, an overpowering desire to return to Ireland and join again in the councils of his dearly beloved Fenian Brotherhood took possession of him, and he set out on the same white horse on which he traveled thence with the fairy princess, for such was his wife...

And she, as he went, thrice warned him not to lay his 'foot on level ground', and he heard from her the startling announcement that the Fenians were all gone and Ireland quite changed...

Safe in Ireland, Ossian seeks the Brotherhood, and though he goes from one place to another where his old companions were wont to meet, not one of them can he find. And how changed is all the land! He realizes at last how long he must have been away. The words of his fairy wife are too sadly true…

While Ossian wanders disconsolately over Ireland, he comes to a multitude of men trying to move an enormous slab of marble, under which some other men are lying. 'Ossian's assistance is asked, and he generously gives it. But in leaning over his horse, to take up the stone with one hand, the girth breaks, and he falls. Straightway the white horse fled away on his way home, and Ossian became aged, decrepit, and blind...'

There are two chief classes of Otherworld legends. In one there is the beautiful and peaceful Tír Innambéo or' Land of the Living' under Manannan's rule across the seas, and its fairy inhabitants are principally women who lure away noble men and youths through love for them; in the other there is a Hades world – often confused with the former – in which great heroes go on some mysterious quest. Sometimes this Hades world is inseparable from the underground palaces or world of the Tuatha De Danann...

As a rule the Hades world, or underground and under-wave world, is unlike Manannan's peaceful ocean realm, being often described as a place of much strife; and mortals are usually induced to enter it to aid in settling the troubles of its fairy inhabitants...

In the Book of Leinster, and in later MSS., there is a dinnshenchas of almost primal pagan purity. It alludes to Clidna's Wave, that of Tuag Inbir: To Tuag, daughter of Conall, Manannan the sea-god sent a messenger, a Druid of the Tuatha De Danann in the shape of a woman. The Druid chanted a sleep spell over the girl, and while he left her on the seashore to look for a boat in which to embark for the 'Land of Everliving Women', a wave of the flood tide came and drowned her...

But the Oxford version of the same tale doubts whether the maiden was drowned, for it suggests, 'Or maybe it (the wave) was Manannan himself that was carrying her off.' Thus the scribe understood that to go to Manannan's world literally meant entering a sleep or trance state, or, what is equivalent in the case of the maiden whom Manannan summoned, the passage through death from the physical body...

And still, to-day, the Irish peasant believes that the 'good people' take to their invisible world all young men or maidens who meet death; or that one under a fairy spell may go to their world for a short-time, and come back to our world again…

There is a LOT more info on the various aspects of the Otherworld/Underworld of the Celts at the following website:

Source: Excerpts from: SECTION II, THE RECORDED FAIRY-FAITH, CHAPTER VI
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/ffcc/ffcc260.htm

THE STATE OF THE REFORM
1 Samradh Y.G.R. 01

As of today 335 Druids have registered with the RDG:

29members are initiated Second Degree Druids
1 member is eligible for ordination into the Third Degree
13 members are ordained Third Degree Druids

During the season of Earrach, we experienced a net membership gain of 20

Total Groves chartered: 2 (+ 6 Proto-Groves)
Total US Members: 177
Total Canadian Members: 15
Total UK Members:9
Total International Members: 158
Total Countries represented: 10
Total US States represented: 38
Total Canadian Provinces represented: 7
Top 5 US States: CA=32, OR=19, WA=13, FL=12, NY=7