Goddess of the Otherworld: Identifying Lewis Carroll’s Alice through Celtic Mythology The poet-mathematician Charles Dodgson composed an ex tempore romance, in moments of inspiration on an excursion into nature, writing it all down for the very muse enlivening his creative literary endeavor of journeying through sublime and strange other-worlds. An analytical jumping-down into his rabbit holes and stepping through the looking-glasses of Lewis Carroll’s wonder-filled lands reveals the events of Alice’s odysseys into under realms as magical and mythological adventures; extensions of tales, lore, and traditions of early Celtic oral narratives. By putting Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well as Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There into contexts of Celtic mythic structure we see more than simple parallels between heroic female characters of Irish antiquity and Carroll’s Wonderland heroine; we see the same Indo-European theory of tripartite social function governing worlds of ancient mythology, showing this young girl of a dreamy, Victorian fantasy as an ancient Celtic sovereignty goddess. The foremost theorist of mythological structure, George Dumezil, brought forth a new methodology for the comparative study of mythology through thematic, linguistic, and narrative similarities and archetypal literary devices allowing easy classifications of universal labyrinthine plot problems facing characters. Alice’s stories can be read as a ‘Victorian myth’ depicting cultural and societal constructs fitting into the same tri-partite structure Dumezil perceived in Indo-European mythoi. Back then Dumezil’s new theories were liberally applied to extra- linguistic phenomena, specifically in the explanation of mythology. Today, closer analysis of the Alice narratives show Celtic myth lead the way for Carroll’s protagonist throughout her otherworldly Wonderland. The leading analytical theories of Dodgson’s time lead to Dumezil revolutionizing and defining the field of comparative mythology, “Dumezil perceived the first function: kingship, encompassing a sacred knowledge, presiding over a second function martial force or class of warrior aristocracy, above the third functionality of fertility, beauty, and abundance among commoners and artists, poets, and free men. Curiously, kings are not battle leaders often having a young champion as their rival or heir” (Littleton). Stemming from the golden age of philology in the 19th century, Dumezilian theories of Indo-European tripartite functionality have been heavily applied to Celtic myth, and specifically the “Ulster Cycle of Celtic mythology, and to their Welsh counterparts The Four Branches of the Mabinogi” (Littelton); these stories contain crucial plot points, and devices imbedded in Carroll’s Wonderland and the land of the Looking- Glass. Through locating character types and narrative parallels we can find accounts of Alice in Wonderland as far back as the Bronze Age. Preceding Carroll’s publications, Victorian children celebrated the marvelous and uncanny in the popular printings of ‘sensation fiction’ with Europeans and the world enthusiastically reading “Grimm Brothers’ fairy tales (1820s), nineteenth century adaptations of The Arabian Nights and stories of Hans Christian Andersen (1846), Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1851), Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring (1855), Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies (1863), George MacDonald’s Phantastes (1858) and The Princess and the Goblin (1870), all demonstrating rich experimentations in the field of fiction and expert handling of surreal effects, escapist nonsense, and psychological or social allegory” (Moran). Lady Charlotte Guest successfully translated and published the first English rendition of the Four Branches of The Mabinogi in 1838 and 1849 which helped revive Welsh and Celtic legends that had been incorporating those themes since before the written word. Despite materials printed in his time, it is the materials Dodgson collected and kept in his personal library where Carolinians have assembled an archive linking the author to his distant Irish heritage, one which might highlight Alice’s deeper connections to ancient Irish folktales: “Fairy Legends and Traditions of Southern Ireland (1834), Essays on Irish Bull Myths, Wit, and Eloquence (1802), Oxford Essays on The Land System of Ireland and Comparative Mythology (1855-58), Irish History and Character (1872), Realities of Irish Life (1868), and Ireland: Ur of the Chaldees (1873)” (Lovett). Balancing between contemporary tastes in children’s literature and classical texts of Irish myth Dodgson knew sequences and episodic structure of myth from his familiarity with Celtic narratives, and Alice follows Irish epic traditions the moment she follows the White Rabbit. “She had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under a hedge / In another moment down went Alice after it” (Carroll). For Celtic mythologists, this inciting incident recalls the graphic imagery of the oldest Irish manuscripts on multiple levels; “Adventures in the Otherworld are common enough in romance, but in medieval Celtic literature they play a large role” (Ford). The Mabinogian Tales such as Cullwch and Olwen, Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed, and Manawydan Son of Llyr, reach back into Celtic antiquity and hold Oxford to be the central point in an evenly measured British isle, but these myths also center their formations around the chase or the hunt of a white or sometimes red otherworldly animal leading their pursuers into the alternate planes typically by crossing a liminal boundary such as a field, a stream, or hedge, as Alice is all too eager to emulate. Carroll’s utilization of the rabbit hole could define early Celtic mythological tales with burial mounds as their settings due to Irish placements of the Side, or Otherworld, underground; “Other than the hunt, no other territorial markers signal the entry into the Otherworld, nor is the return demarcated with any precise indicators for the audience, though one clear marker is color, for red and white are the colors of animals and inhabitants of the Otherworld in Celtic tradition” (Ford). Welsh translations of Mabinogi tales inherited from Ireland show these rich mythological themes in ancient Gaul of, “The White Book of Rydderch A.D. 1300-1325 and the Red Book of Hergest, 1375-1425” (Ford). Wonderland’s focus on expressing red and white is colored Irish green when viewing the Queen of Hearts’ castle, her red and white rose garden, as well as Through the Looking Glass’ pronounced presence of Red and White Royalty, Red and White knights, and a white unicorn and red lion embroiled in battle over a crown, perhaps signifying the prominent ‘Irish Question’ heating up relations between the Irish and the British in Dodgson’s Victorian times. The Britain and Ireland of mythological times comprises two worlds the ‘real’ and the other, “A stylized, idealized version of our own real one, where inhabitants are distinguished primarily by powers of transformation, many of them appearing as birds, some move invisibly, and they extract no moral authority, often they seem just like ordinary humans, a place with endless food and drink, heavenly music, absence of pain and sorrow, and timelessness with feasting and drinking, and all types of entertainments and poets” (Ford). Carroll’s characters from the Caucus Race, the Cheshire Cat, Mad Tea-Parties all come to mind as Alice’s size issues, many recitations of poetics, and ultimate overthrow of monarchies, in both Wonderland and Looking Glass worlds, recall for audiences that, “A number of motifs known to students of Celtic folklore are clustered here: the unknown maiden, helper animals, and the accomplishing of impossible tasks, all belong to ancient Irish myth” (Ford). Carroll’s Wonderland and the Celtic Otherworld are difficult to tell apart. The interactions of Alice and characters of Irish myth while in the alternate realms are heavily impacted by time which all but stands still in the Otherworld and Wonderland, with coming and going relying on crucial Celtic calendar celebrations known as Beltene and Samuin. Entering Wonderland during Beltene, or the first days in May, Alice discovers, “The beginning of summer was a period of Otherworldly visitation, suggesting it was a time when the real and the fantastic merged” (Gantz). The first days of November, Samuin, representing the commencement of winter and the first days of the new year, are celebrated with feast days of great change, when doors between the real and Otherworld stand wide open; “Samuin is a partial return to primordial chaos, an appropriate setting for myths symbolizing the dissolution of an established order as a prelude to its recreation of a new period of time, the most important day in re-creation and Irish rebirth” (Gantz). The Tain Bo Culinge, Cathe Maige Tuired, The Wooing of Etain, The Dream of Oengus, Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel, The Wasting Sickness of Cu Chulaind, and The Intoxication of the Ulaid, and the tales of The Mabinogi all commencing on these annual days of deep spiritual significance; “The Irish Otherworld was not simply anticipated joy in the afterlife, it was primarily an alternative to reality, a world that the hero might enter upon that is beautiful but not quite human, there is no winter, the hero never stays, and tension is always present” (Gantz). Alice’s