education, the functions of the Druids, as the successors of the primitive medicine men and magicians, doubtless varied greatly in different parts of Gaul and Britain according to the progress that had been made in the differentiation of functions in social life.  The more we investigate the state of the Celtic world in ancient times, the clearer it becomes, that in civilisation it was very far from being homogeneous, and this heterogeneity of civilisation must have had its influence on religion as well as on other social phenomena.  The natural conservatism of agricultural life, too, perpetuated many practices even into comparatively late times, and of these we catch a glimpse in Gregory of Tours, when he tells us that at Autun the goddess Berecyntia was worshipped, her image being carried on a wagon for the protection of the fields and the vines.  It is not impossible that by Berecyntia Gregory means the goddess Brigindu, whose name occurs on an inscription at Volnay in the same district of Gaul.  The belief in corn-spirits, and other ideas connected with the central thought of the farmer’s life, show, by their persistence in Celtic as well as other folklore, how deeply they had entered into the inner tissue of the agricultural mind, so as to be linked to its keenest emotions.  Here the rites of religion, whether persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory as in sympathetic magic, whether associated with communal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed to the earth or to the heaven, all had an intensely practical and terribly real character, due to man’s constant preoccupation with the growth and storage of food for man and beast.  In the hunting, the pastoral, and above all in the agricultural life, religion was not a matter merely of imagination or sentiment, but one most intimately associated with the daily practice of life, and this practical interest included in its purview rivers, springs, forests, mountains, and all the setting of man’s existence.  And what is true of agriculture is true also, in a greater or less degree, of the life of the Celtic metal-worker or the Celtic sailor.  Even in late Welsh legend Amaethon (old Celtic Ambactonos), the patron god of farming (Welsh Amaeth), and Gofannon, the patron god of the metal-worker (Welsh gof, Irish gobha), were not quite forgotten, and the prominence of the worship of the counterparts of Mercury and Minerva in Gaul in historic times was due to the sense of respect and gratitude, which each trade and each locality felt for the deity who had rid the land of monsters, and who had brought man into the comparative calm of civilised life.

CHAPTER V—­THE HUMANISED GODS OF CELTIC RELIGION