By long familiarity with the scientific or quasi-scientific explanations of these things, we find it difficult to realise fully their constant fascination for early man, who had his thinkers and philosophies like ourselves.

One very widely accepted solution of early man in the Celtic world was, that within him there was another self which could live a life of its own apart from the body, and which survived even death, burial, and burning.

Sometimes this inner self was associated with the breath, whence, for example, the Latin 'anima' and the Welsh 'enaid,' both meaning the soul, from the root _an_-, to breathe.

At other times the term employed for the second self had reference to man's shadow: the Greek 'skia,' the Latin 'umbra,' the Welsh 'ysgawd,' the English 'shade.' There are abundant evidences, too, that the life-principle was frequently regarded as being especially associated with the blood.

Another tendency, of which Principal Rhys has given numerous examples in his Welsh folk-lore, was to regard the soul as capable of taking a visible form, not necessarily human, preferably that of some winged creature.