The following sections of this BookRags Literature Study Guide is offprint from Gale's For Students Series: Presenting Analysis, Context, and Criticism on Commonly Studied Works: Introduction, Author Biography, Plot Summary, Characters, Themes, Style, Historical Context, Critical Overview, Criticism and Critical Essays, Media Adaptations, Topics for Further Study, Compare & Contrast, What Do I Read Next?, For Further Study, and Sources.
(c)1998-2002; (c)2002 by Gale. Gale is an imprint of The Gale Group, Inc., a division of Thomson Learning, Inc. Gale and Design and Thomson Learning are trademarks used herein under license.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Encyclopedia of Popular Fiction: "Social Concerns", "Thematic Overview", "Techniques", "Literary Precedents", "Key Questions", "Related Titles", "Adaptations", "Related Web Sites". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
The following sections, if they exist, are offprint from Beacham's Guide to Literature for Young Adults: "About the Author", "Overview", "Setting", "Literary Qualities", "Social Sensitivity", "Topics for Discussion", "Ideas for Reports and Papers". (c)1994-2005, by Walton Beacham.
All other sections in this Literature Study Guide are owned and copyrighted by BookRags, Inc.
CELTIC RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES
By
Edward Anwyl, M.A.
Late classical scholar of oriel
College, Oxford
professor of Welsh and comparative
philology at
the University College of Wales,
Aberystwyth
acting-chairman of the central
Welsh Board
for intermediate education
London
Archibald Constable & co Ltd
16 James Street Haymarket
1906
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty
It is only as prehistoric archaeology has come to throw more and more light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern viewpoint. The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to numerous writers on this subject, but his researches into some portions of the field especially have suggested to him the possibility of giving a new presentation to certain facts and groups of facts, which the existing evidence disclosed. It is to be hoped that a new interest in the religion of the Celts may thereby be aroused.
E. Anwyl.
Aberystwyth,
February 15, 1906.
In dealing with the subject of ‘Celtic Religion’ the first duty of the writer is to explain the sense in which the term ‘Celtic’ will be used in this work. It will be used in reference to those countries and districts which, in historic times, have been at one time or other mainly of Celtic speech. It does not follow that all the races which spoke a form of the Celtic tongue, a tongue of the Indo-European family, were all of the same stock. Indeed, ethnological and archaeological evidence tends to establish clearly that, in Gaul and Britain, for example, man had lived for ages before the introduction of any variety of Aryan or Indo-European speech, and this was probably the case throughout the whole of Western and Southern Europe. Further, in the light of comparative philology, it has now become abundantly clear that the forms of Indo-European speech which we call Celtic are most closely related to those of the Italic family, of which family Latin is the best known representative. From this it follows that we are to look for the centre of dissemination of Aryan Celtic speech in some district of Europe that could have been the natural centre of dissemination also for the Italic languages. From this common centre, through conquest and the commercial intercourse which followed it, the tribes which spoke the various
A more critical investigation has, however, enabled us to distinguish clearly between the development of various factors of human life which in their evolution can follow and often have followed more or less independent lines. The physical history of race, for instance, forms a problem by itself and must be studied by anthropological and ethnological methods. Language, again, has often spread along lines other than those of race, and its investigation appertains to the sphere of the philologist. Material civilisation, too, has not of necessity followed the lines either of racial or of linguistic development, and the search for its ancient trade-routes may be safely left to the archaeologist. Similarly the spread of ideas in religion and thought is one which has advanced on lines of its own, and its investigation must be conducted by the methods and along the lines of the comparative study of religions.
In the wide sense, then, in which the word ‘Celtic religion’ will be used in this work, it will cover the modes of religious thought prevalent in the countries and districts, which, in course of time, were mainly characterised by their Celtic speech. To the sum-total of these religious ideas contributions have been made from many sources. It would be rash to affirm that the various streams of Aryan Celtic conquest made no contributions to the conceptions of life and of the world which the countries of their conquest came to hold (and the evidence of language points, indeed, to some such contributions), but their quota appears to be small compared with that of their predecessors; nor is this surprising, in view of the immense period during which the lands of their conquest had been previously occupied. Nothing is clearer than the marvellous persistence of traditional and immemorial modes of thought, even in the face of conquest and subjugation, and, whatever ideas on religion the Aryan conquerors of Celtic lands may have brought with them, they whose conquests were often only partial could not eradicate the inveterate beliefs of their predecessors, and the result in the end was doubtless some compromise, or else the victory of the earlier faith.
But the Aryan conquerors of Gaul and Italy themselves were not men who had advanced up the Danube in one generation. Those men of Aryan speech who poured into the Italian peninsula and into Gaul were doubtless in blood not unmixed with the older inhabitants of Central Europe, and had entered into the body of ideas which formed the religious beliefs of the men of the Danube valley. The common modifications of the Aryan tongue, by Italians and Celts alike, as compared with Greek, suggests contact with men of different speech. Among the names of Celtic gods, too, like those of other countries, we find roots that are apparently irreducible to any found in Indo-European speech, and we know not what pre-Aryan tongues may have contributed them. Scholars, to-day, are far more alive than they ever were before to the complexity of the contributory elements that have entered into the tissue of the ancient religions of mankind, and the more the relics of Celtic religion are investigated, the more complex do its contributory factors become. In the long ages before history there were unrecorded conquests and migrations innumerable, and ideas do not fail to spread because there is no historian to record them.
The more the scanty remnants of Celtic religion are examined, the clearer it becomes that many of its characteristic features had been evolved during the vast period of the ages of stone. During these millennia, men had evolved, concomitantly with their material civilisation, a kind of working philosophy of life, traces of which are found in every land where this form of civilisation has prevailed. Man’s religion can never be dissociated from his social experience, and the painful stages through which man
In the chief countries of Celtic civilisation, Gaul, Cisalpine and Transalpine, Britain and Ireland, abundant materials have been found for elucidating the stages of culture through which man passed in prehistoric times. In Britain, for example, palaeolithic man has left numerous specimens of his implements, but the forms even of these rude implements suggest that they, too, have been evolved from still more primitive types. Some antiquarians have thought to detect such earlier types in the stones that have been named ‘eoliths’ found in Kent, but, though these ‘eoliths’ may possibly show human use, the question of their history is far from being settled. It is certain, however, that man succeeded in maintaining himself for ages in the company of the mammoth, the cave-bear, and other animals now extinct. Whether palaeolithic man survived the Ice Age in Britain has not so far been satisfactorily decided. In Gaul, however, there is fair evidence of continuity between the Palaeolithic and Neolithic periods, and this continuity must obviously have existed somewhere. Still in spite of the indications of continuity, the civilisation of primitive man in Gaul presents one aspect that is without any analogues in the life of the palaeolithic men of the River Drift period, or in that of man of the New Stone Age. The feature in question is the remarkable artistic skill shown by the cave men of the Dordogne district. Some of the drawings and carvings of these men reveal a sense of form which would have done credit to men of a far later age. A feature such as this, whatever may have been its object, whether it arose from an effort by means of ‘sympathetic magic’ to catch animals, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests, or to the mere artistic impulse, is a standing reminder to us of the scantiness of our data for estimating the lines of man’s religious and other development in the vast epochs of prehistoric time.
We know that from the life of hunting man passed into the pastoral stage, having learned to tame animals. How he came to do so, and by what motives he was actuated, is still a mystery. It may be, as M. Salomon Reinach has also suggested, that it was some curious and indefinable sense of kinship with them that led him to do so, or more probably, as the present writer thinks, some sense of a need of the alliance of animals against hostile spirits. In all probability it was no motive which we can now fathom. The mind of early man was like the unfathomable mind of a boy. From the pastoral life again man passed after long ages into the life of agriculture, and the remains of neolithic man in Gaul and in Britain give us glimpses of his life as a farmer. The ox, the sheep, the pig, the goat, and the dog were his domestic animals; he could grow wheat and flax, and could supplement the produce of his farm by means of hunting and fishing. Neolithic man could spin and weave; he could obtain the necessary flint for his implements, which he made by chipping and polishing, and he could also make pottery of a rude variety. In its essentials we have here the beginnings of the agricultural civilisation of man all the world over. In life, neolithic man dwelt sometimes in pit-dwellings and sometimes in hut-circles, covered with a roof of branches supported by a central pole. In death, he was buried with his kin in long mounds of earth called barrows, in chambered cairns and cromlechs or dolmens. The latter usually consist of three standing stones covered by a cap-stone; forming the stony skeleton of a grave that has been exposed to view after the mound of earth that covered it has been washed away. In their graves the dead were buried in a crouching attitude, and fresh burials were made as occasion required. Sometimes the cromlech is double, and occasionally there is a hole in one of the stones, the significance of which is unknown, unless it may have been for the ingress and egress of souls. Graves of the dolmen or cromlech type are found in all the countries of Western Europe, North Africa, and elsewhere, wherever stone suitable for the purpose abounds, and in this we have a striking illustration of the way in which lines of development in man’s material civilisation are sooner or later correlated to his geographical, geological, and other surroundings. The religious ideas of man in neolithic times also came into correlation with the conditions of his development, and the uninterpreted stone circles and pillars of the world are a standing witness to the religious zeal of a mind that was haunted by stone. Before proceeding to exemplify this thesis the subsequent trend of Celtic civilisation may be briefly sketched.
Through the pacific intercourse of commerce, bronze weapons and implements began to find their way, about 2000 B.C. or earlier, from Central and Southern Europe into Gaul, and thence into Britain. In Britain the Bronze Age begins at about 1500 or 1400 B.C., and it is thought by some archaeologists that bronze was worked at this period by the aid of native tin in Britain itself. There are indications, however, that the introduction of bronze into Britain was not by way of commerce alone. About the beginning of the Bronze period are found evidences in this island of a race of different type from that of neolithic man, being characterised by a round skull and a powerful build, and by general indications of a martial bearing. The remains of this race are usually found in round barrows.
This race, which certainly used bronze weapons, is generally believed to have been the first wave that reached Britain of Aryan conquerors of Celtic speech from the nearest part of the continent, where it must have arrived some time previously, probably along the Rhine valley. As the type of Celtic speech that has penetrated farthest to the west is that known as the Goidelic or Irish, it has not unreasonably been thought that this must have been the type that arrived in Britain first. There are indications, too, that it was this type that penetrated furthest into the west of Gaul. Its most marked characteristic is its preservation of the pronunciation of U as ‘oo’ and of QU, while the ‘Brythonic’ or Welsh variety changed U to a sound pronounced like the French ‘u’ or the German ‘u’ and also QU to P. There is a similar line of cleavage in the Italic languages, where Latin corresponds to Goidelic, and Oscan and Umbrian to Brythonic. Transalpine Gaul was probably invaded by Aryan-speaking Celts from more than one direction, and the infiltration and invasion of new-comers, when it had once begun, was doubtless continuous through these various channels. There are cogent reasons for thinking that ultimately the dominant type of Celtic speech over the greater part of Gaul came to be that of the P rather than the QU type, owing to the influx from the East and Northeast of an overflow from the Rhine valley of tribes speaking that dialect; a dialect which, by force of conquest and culture, tended to spread farther and farther West. Into Britain, too, as time went on, the P type of Celtic was carried, and has survived in Welsh and Cornish, the remnants of the tongue of ancient Britain. We know, too, from the name Eporedia (Yvrea), that this dialect of Celtic must have spread into Cisalpine Gaul. The latter district may have received its first Celtic invaders direct from the Danube valley, as M. Alexandre Bertrand held, but it would be rash to assume that all its invaders came from that direction. In connection, however, with the history of Celtic religion it is not the spread of the varying types of Celtic dialect that is important, but the changes in the civilisation of Gaul and Britain, which reacted on religious ideas or which introduced new factors into the religious development of these lands.
The predatory expeditions and wars of conquest of military Celtic tribes in search for new homes for their superfluous populations brought into prominence the deities of war, as was the case also with the ancient Romans, themselves an agricultural and at the same time a predatory race. The prominence of war in Celtic tribal life at one stage has left us the names of a large number of deities that were identified with Mars and Bellona, though all the war-gods were not originally such. In the Roman calendar there is abundant evidence that Mars was at one time an agricultural god as well as a god of war. The same, as will be shown later, was the probable history of some of the Celtic deities, who were identified in Roman times with Mars and Bellona. Caesar tells us that Mars had at one time been the chief god of the Gauls, and that in Germany that was still the case. In Britain, also, we find that there were several deities identified with Mars, notably Belatucadrus and Cocidius, and this, too, points in the direction of a development of religion under military influence. The Gauls appear to have made great strides in military matters and in material civilisation during the Iron Age. The culture of the Early Iron Age of Hallstatt had been developed in Gaul on characteristic lines of its own, resulting in the form now known as the La Tene or Marnian type. This type derives it name from the striking specimens of it that were discovered at La Tene on the shore of Lake Neuchatel, and in the extensive cemeteries of the Marne valley, the burials of which cover a period of from 350-200 B.C. It was during the third century B.C. that this characteristic culture of Gaul reached its zenith, and gave definite shape to the beautiful curved designs known as those of Late-Celtic Art. Iron appears to have been introduced into Britain about 300 B.C., and the designs of Late-Celtic Art are here represented best of all. Excellent specimens of Late-Celtic culture have been found in Yorkshire and elsewhere, and important links with continental developments have been discovered at Aylesford, Aesica, Limavady, and other places. Into the development of this typical Gaulish culture elements are believed to have entered by way of the important commercial avenue of the Rhone valley from Massilia (Marseilles), from Greece (via Venetia), and possibly from Etruria. Prehistoric archaeology affords abundant proofs that, in countries of Celtic speech, metal-working in bronze, iron, and gold reached a remarkably high pitch of perfection, and this is a clear indication that Celtic countries and districts which were on the line of trade routes, like the Rhone valley, had attained to a material civilisation of no mean character before the Roman conquest. In Britain, too, the districts that were in touch with continental commerce had, as Caesar tells us, also developed in the same direction. The religious counterpart of this development in civilisation is
CHAPTER III—THE CORRELATION OF CELTIC RELIGION WITH THE GROWTH OF CELTIC CIVILISATION
In dealing with the long vista of prehistoric time, it is very difficult for us, in our effort after perspective, not to shorten unduly in our thoughts the vast epochs of its duration. We tend, too, to forget, that in these unnumbered millennia there was ample time for it to be possible over certain areas of Europe to evolve what were practically new races, through the prepotency of particular stocks and the annihilation of others. During these epochs, again, after speech had arisen, there was time enough to recast completely many a language, for before the dawn of history language was no more free from change than it is now, and in these immense epochs whatever ideas as to the world of their surroundings were vaguely felt by prehistoric men and formulated for them by their kinsmen of genius, had abundant time in which
Among the prohibitions which had established themselves among the races of Celtic lands, as elsewhere, was that directed against the shedding of the blood of one’s own kin. There are indications, too, that some at any rate of the tribes inhabiting these countries reckoned kinship through the mother, as in fact continued to be the case among the Picts of Scotland into historic times. It does not follow, as we know from other countries, that the pre-Aryan tribes of Gaul and Britain, or indeed the Aryan tribes themselves in their earliest stage, regarded their original ancestors as human. Certain names of deities such as Tarvos (the bull), Moccos (the pig), Epona (the goddess of horses), Damona (the goddess
As for the stage of civilisation at which totemism originated, there is much difference of opinion. The stage of mind which it implies would suggest that it reflects a time when man’s mind was preoccupied with wild beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in life, might be found in that sphere. There is much plausibility in the view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death. It may well be that, after all, the usefulness of domestic animals from a material point of view was only a secondary consideration for man, and a happy discovery after unsuccessful totemistic attentions to other animals. We know not how many creatures early man tried to associate with himself but failed.
In all stages of man’s history the alternation of the seasons must have brought some rudiments of order and system into his thoughts, though for a long time he was too preoccupied to reflect upon the regularly recurring vicissitudes of his life. In the pastoral stage, the sense of order came to be more marked than in that of hunting, and quickened the mind to fresh thought. The earth came to be regarded as the Mother from whom all things came, and there are abundant indications that the earth as the Mother, the Queen, the Long-lived one, etc., found her natural place as a goddess among the Celts. Her names and titles were probably not in all places or in all tribes the same. But it is in the agricultural stage that she entered in Celtic lands, as she did in other countries, into her completest religious heritage, and this aspect of Celtic religion will be dealt with more fully in connection with the spirits of vegetation. This phase of religion in Celtic countries is one which appears to underlie some of its most characteristic forms, and the one which has survived longest in Celtic folk-lore. The Earth-mother with her progeny of spirits, of springs, rivers, mountains, forests, trees, and corn, appears to have supplied most of the grouped and individualised gods of the Celtic pantheon. The Dis, of whom Caesar speaks as the ancient god of the Gauls, was probably regarded as her son, to whom the dead returned in death. Whether he is the Gaulish god depicted with a hammer, or as a huge dog swallowing the dead, has not yet been established with any degree of certainty.
Like other religions, those of the Celtic lands of Europe supplemented the earlier animism by a belief in spirits, who belonged to trees, animals, rocks, mountains, springs, rivers, and other natural phenomena, and in folk-lore there still survives abundant evidence that the Celt regarded spirits as taking upon themselves a variety of forms, animal and human. It was this idea of spirits in animal form that helped to preserve the memory of the older totemism into historic times. It is thus that we have names of the type of Brannogenos (son of the raven), Artogenos (son of the bear), and the like, not to speak of simpler names like Bran (raven), March (horse), surviving into historic times. Bronze images, too, have been found at Neuvy-en-Sullias, of a horse and a stag (now in the Orleans museum), provided with rings, which were, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests, probably used for the purpose of carrying these images in procession. The wild boar, too, was a favourite emblem of Gaul, and there is extant a bronze figure of a Celtic Diana riding on a boar’s back. At Bolar, near Nuits, there was discovered a bronze mule. In the museum at Mayence is a bas-relief of the goddess of horses, Epona (from the Gaulish Epos=Lat. equus, horse), riding on horseback. One of the most important monuments of this kind is a figure of Artio, the bear-goddess (from Celtic Artos, a bear), found at Muri near Berne. In front of her stood a figure of a bear, which was also found with her. The bull of the Tarvos Trigaranos bas-relief of Notre Dame was also in all likelihood originally a totem, and similarly the horned serpents of other bas-reliefs, as well as the boar found on Gaulish ensigns and coins, especially in Belgic territory. There is a representation, too, of a raven on a bas-relief at Compiegne. The name ‘Moccus,’ which is identified with Mercury, on inscriptions, and which is found inscribed at Langres, Trobaso, the valley of the Ossola and the Borgo san Dalmazzo, is undoubtedly the philological equivalent of the Welsh moch (swine). In Britain, too, the boar is frequently found on the coins of the Iceni and other tribes. In Italy, according to Mr. Warde Fowler, the pig was an appropriate offering to deities of the earth, so that in the widespread use of the pig as a symbol in the Celtic world, there may be some ancient echo of a connection between it and the earth-spirit. Its diet of acorns, too, may have marked it out, in the early days of life in forest-clearings, as the animal embodiment of the oak-spirit. In the legends of the Celtic races, even in historic times, the pig, and especially the boar, finds an honoured place. In addition to the animals aforementioned, the ass, too, was probably at one time venerated in one of the districts of Gaul, and it is not improbable that Mullo, the name of a god identified with Mars and regarded as the patron of muleteers, mentioned on inscriptions (at Nantes, Craon, and Les Provencheres near Craon), meant originally
One of the most striking facts connected with the Celtic religion is the large number of names of deities which it includes. These names are known to us almost entirely from inscriptions, for the most part votive tablets, in acknowledgment of some benefit, usually that of health, conferred by the god on man. In Britain these votive tablets are chiefly found in the neighbourhood of the Roman walls and camps, but we cannot be always certain that the deities mentioned are indigenous. In Gaul, however, we are on surer ground in associating certain deities with certain districts, inasmuch as the evidence of place-names is often a guide. These inscriptions are very unevenly distributed over Gaulish territory, the Western and the North-Western districts being very sparsely represented.
In the present brief sketch it is impossible to enter into a full discussion of the relations of the names found on inscriptions to particular localities, and the light thus thrown on Celtic religion; but it may be here stated that investigation tends to confirm the local character of most of the deities which the inscriptions name. Out of these deities, some, it is true, in the process of evolution, gained a wider field of worshippers, while others, like Lugus, may even have been at one time more widely worshipped than they came to be in later times. Occasionally a name like Lugus (Irish Lug), Segomo (Irish, in the genitive, Segamonas), Camulos, whence Camulodunum (Colchester), Belenos (Welsh Belyn), Maponos (Welsh Mabon), Litavis (Welsh Llydaw), by its existence in Britain as well as in Gaul, suggests that it was either one of the ancient deities of the Aryan Celts, or one whose worship came to extend over a larger area than its fellows. Apart from a few exceptional considerations of this kind, however, the local character of the deities is most marked.
A very considerable number are the deities of springs and rivers. In Noricum, for example, we have Adsalluta, a goddess associated with Savus (the river Save). In Britain ‘the goddess’ Deva (the Dee), and Belisama (either the Ribble or the Mersey), a name meaning ’the most warlike goddess,’ are of this type. We have again Axona the goddess of the river Aisne, Sequana, the goddess of the Seine, Ritona of the river Rieu, numerous nymphs and many other deities of fountains. Doubtless many other names of local deities are of this kind. Aerial phenomena appear to have left very few clear traces on the names of Celtic deities. Vintios, a god identified with Mars, was probably a god of the wind, Taranucus, a god of thunder, Leucetios, a god of lightning, Sulis (of Bath) a sun-goddess, but beyond these there are few, if any, reflections of the phenomena of the heavens. Of the gods named on inscriptions nearly all are identified with Mercury, Mars, or Apollo. The gods who came to be regarded as culture-deities appear from their names to be of various origins:
About fourteen inscriptions mentioning him have been found in the North of England and the South of Scotland. The goddess Brigantia (the patron-deity of the Brigantes), too, is mentioned on four inscriptions: Cocidius, identified with Mars, is mentioned on thirteen: while another popular god appears to have been Silvanus. Among the most noticeable names of the Celtic gods identified with Mercury are Adsmerius or Atesmerius, Dumiatis (the god of the Puy de Dome), Iovantucarus (the lover of youth), Teutates (the god of the people), Caletos (the hard), and Moccus (the boar). Several deities are identified with Mars, and of these some of the most noticeable names are Albiorix (world-king), Caturix (battle-king), Dunatis (the god of the fort), Belatucadrus (the brilliant in war), Leucetius (the god of lightning), Mullo (the mule), Ollovidius (the all-knowing) Vintius (the wind-god), and Vitucadrus (the brilliant in energy). The large number of names identified with Mars reflects the prominent place at one time given to war in the ideas that affected the growth of the religion of the Celtic tribes. Of the gods identified with Hercules, the most interesting name is Ogmios (the god of the furrow) given by Lucian, but not found on any inscription. The following gods too, among others, are identified with Jupiter: Aramo (the gentle), Ambisagrus (the persistent), Bussumarus (the large-lipped), Taranucus (the thunderer), Uxellimus (the highest). It would seem from this that in historic times at any rate Jupiter did not play a large part in Celtic religious ideas.
There remains another striking feature of Celtic religion which has not yet been mentioned, namely the identification of several deities with Apollo. These deities are essentially the presiding deities of certain healing-springs and health-resorts, and the growth of their worship into popularity is a further striking index to the development of religion side by side with certain aspects of civilisation. One of the names of a Celtic Apollo is Borvo (whence Bourbon), the deity of certain hot springs. This name is Indo-European, and was given to the local fountain-god by the Celtic-speaking invaders of Gaul: it simply means ’the Boiler.’ Other forms of the name are also found, as Bormo and Bormanus. At Aquae Granni (Aix-la-Chapelle) and elsewhere the name identified with Apollo is Grannos. We find also Mogons, and Mogounus, the patron deity of Moguntiacum (Mainz), and, once or twice, Maponos (the great youth). The essential feature of the Apollo worship was its
In dealing with the deities of the Celtic world we must not, however, forget the goddesses, though their history presents several problems of great difficulty. Of these goddesses some are known to us by groups—Proximae (the kinswomen), Dervonnae (the oak-spirits), Niskai (the water-sprites), Mairae, Matronae, Matres or Matrae (the mothers), Quadriviae (the goddesses of cross roads). The Matres, Matrae, and Matronae are often qualified by some local name. Deities of this type appear to have been popular in Britain, in the neighbourhood of Cologne and in Provence. In some cases it is uncertain whether some of these grouped goddesses are Celtic or Teutonic. It is an interesting parallel to the existence of these grouped goddesses, when we find that in some parts of Wales ‘Y Mamau’ (the mothers) is the name for the fairies. These grouped goddesses take us back to one of the most interesting stages in the early Celtic religion, when the earth-spirits or the corn-spirits had not yet been completely individualised. Of the individualised goddesses many are strictly local, being the names of springs or rivers. Others, again, appear to have emerged into greater individual prominence, and of these we find several associated on inscriptions, sometimes with a god of Celtic name, but sometimes with his Latin counterpart. It is by no means certain that the names so linked together were thus associated in early times, and the fashion may have been a later one, which, like other fashions, spread after it had once begun. The relationship in some cases may have been regarded as that of mother and son, in others that of brother and sister, in others that of husband and wife, the data are not adequate for the final decision of the question. Of these associated pairs the following may be noted, Mercurius and Rosmerta, Mercurius and Dirona, Grannus (Apollo) and Sirona, Sucellus and Nantosvelta, Borvo and Damona, Cicolluis (Mars) and Litavis, Bormanus and Bormana, Savus and Adsalluta, Mars and Nemetona. One of these names, Sirona, probably meant the long-lived one, and was applied to the earth-mother. In Welsh one or two names have survived which, by their structure, appear to have been ancient names of goddesses; these are Rhiannon (Rigantona, the great queen), and Modron (Matrona, the great mother). The other British deities will be more fully treated by another writer in this series in a work on the ancient mythology of the British Isles. It is enough to say that research tends more and more to confirm the view that the key to the history of the Celtic deities is the realisation of the local character of the vast majority of them.
No name in connection with Celtic religion is more familiar to the average reader than that of the Druids, yet there is no section of the history of Celtic religion that has given rise to greater discussion than that relating to this order. Even the association of the name with the Indo-European root dru-, which we find in the Greek word drus, an oak, has been questioned by such a competent Celtic scholar as M. d’Arbois de Jubainville, but on this point it cannot be said that his criticism is conclusive. The writers of the ancient world who refer to the Druids, do not always make it sufficiently clear in what districts the rites, ceremonies, and functions which they were describing prevailed. Nor was it so much the priestly character of the Druids that produced the deepest impression on the ancients. To some philosophical and theological writers of antiquity their doctrines and their apparent affinities with Pythagoreanism were of much greater interest than their ceremonial or other functions. One thing at any rate is clear, that the Druids and their doctrines, or supposed doctrines, had made a deep impression on the writers of the ancient world. There is a reference to them in a fragment of Aristotle (which may not, however, be genuine) that is of interest as assigning them a place in express terms both among the Celts and the Galatae. The prominent feature of their teaching which had attracted the attention of other writers, such as the historian Diodorus Siculus and the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, was the resemblance of their doctrine concerning the immortality and transmigration of the soul to the views of Pythagoras. Ancient writers, however, did not always remember that a religious or philosophical doctrine must not be treated as a thing apart, but must be interpreted in its whole context in relation to its development in history and in the social life of the community in which it has flourished. To some of the ancients the superficial resemblance between the Druidic doctrine of the soul’s future and the teaching attributed to Pythagoras was the essential point, and this was enough to give the Druids a reputation for philosophy, so that a writer like Clement of Alexandria goes so far as to regard the Druids of the ‘Galatae’ along with the prophets of the Egyptians, the ‘Chaldaeans’ of the Assyrians, the ’philosophers of the Celts,’ and the Magi of the Persians as the pioneers of philosophy among the barbarians before it spread to the Greeks. The reason for the distinction drawn in this passage between the ‘Druids of the Galatae’ and ‘the philosophers of the Celts’ is not clear. Diodorus Siculus calls attention to the Druidic doctrine that the souls of men were immortal, and that after the lapse of an appointed number of years they came to life again, the soul then entering into another body. He says that there were certain
In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers to the profession which the Druids made of natural science, and of the power of foretelling the future, and instances the case of the AEduan Diviciacus, his brother’s guest and friend. Nothing is here said by Cicero of the three classes implied in Diodorus, but Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus) refers to the three classes under the names ‘bardi,’ ‘euhages’ (a mistake for ’vates’), and ‘drasidae’ (a mistake for ’druidae’). The study of nature and of the heavens is here attributed to the second class of seers (vates). The highest class, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accordance with the rule of Pythagoras, closely linked together in confraternities, and by acquiring a certain loftiness of mind from their investigations into things that were hidden and exalted, they despised human affairs and declared the soul immortal. We see here the view expressed that socially as well as intellectually the Druids lived according to the Pythagorean philosophy. Origen also refers to the view that was prevalent in his time, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras, had taught the Druids the philosophy of Pythagoras. He further states that the Druids practised sorcery. The triple division of the non-military aristocracy is perhaps best given by Strabo, the Greek geographer, who here follows Posidonius. The three classes are the Bards, the Seers (ouateis=vates), and Druids. The Bards were hymn-writers and poets, the Seers sacrificers and men of science, while the Druids, in addition to natural science, practised also moral philosophy. They were regarded as the justest of men, and on this account were intrusted with the settlement of private and public disputes. They had been the means of preventing armies from fighting when on the very verge of battle, and were especially intrusted with the judgment of cases involving human life. According to Strabo, they and their fellow-countrymen held that souls and the universe were immortal, but that fire and water would sometime prevail. Sacrifices were never made, Strabo says, without the intervention of the Druids. Pomponius Mela says that in his time (c. 44 A.D.), though the ancient savagery was no more, and the Gauls abstained from human sacrifices, some traces of their former practices still remained, notably in their habit of cutting a portion of the flesh of those condemned to death after bringing them to the altars. The Gauls, he says, in spite of their traces of barbarism, had an eloquence of their own, and had the Druids as their teachers in philosophy. These professed to know the size and form of the earth and of the universe, the motions of the sky and stars, and the will of the gods. He refers, as Caesar does, to their work in education, and says that it was carried on in caves or in secluded groves. Mela speaks of their doctrine of immortality, but says nothing as to the entry of souls into other bodies. As a proof of this belief he speaks of
When we analyse the testimony of ancient writers concerning the Druids, we see in the first place that to different minds the name connoted different things. To Caesar it is the general name for the non-military professional class, whether priests, seers, teachers, lawyers, or judges. To others the Druids are pre-eminently the philosophers and teachers of the Gauls, and are distinguished from the seers designated vates. To others again, such as Pliny,
In addition to the term Druid, we find in Aulus Hirtius’ continuation of Caesar’s Gallic War (Bk. viii., c. xxxviii., 2), as well as on two inscriptions, one at Le-Puy-en-Velay (Dep. Haute-Loire), and the other at Macon (Dep. Saone-et-Loire), another priestly title, ‘gutuater.’ At Macon the office is that of a ‘gutuater Martis,’ but of its special features nothing is known.
In the preceding chapter we have seen that the belief was widely prevalent among Greek and Roman writers that the Druids taught the immortality of the soul. Some of these writers, too, point out the undoubted fact, attested by Archaeology, that objects which would be serviceable to the living were buried with the dead, and this was regarded as a confirmation of the view that the immortality of souls was to the Celts an object of belief. The study of Archaeology on the one hand, and of Comparative Religion on the other, certainly leads to the conclusion that in the Bronze and the Early Iron Age, and in all probability in the Stone Age, the idea prevailed that death was not the end of man. The holed cromlechs of the later Stone Age were probably designed for the egress and ingress of souls. The food and the weapons that were buried with the dead were thought to be objects of genuine need. Roman religion, too, in some of its rites provided means for the periodical expulsion of hungry and hostile spirits of the dead, and for their pacification by the offer of food. A tomb and its adjuncts were meant not merely for the honour of the dead, but also for the protection of the living. A clear line of distinction was drawn between satisfied and beneficent ghosts like the Manes, and the unsatisfied and hostile ghosts like the Lemures and Larvae. To the Celtic mind, when its analytical powers had come to birth, and man was sufficiently self-conscious to reflect upon himself, the problem of his own nature
In conclusion, the writer hopes that this brief sketch, which is based on an independent study of the main evidence for the religious ideas and practices of the Celtic peoples, will help to interest students of religion in the dominant modes of thought which from time immemorial held sway in these lands of the West of Europe, and which in folk-lore and custom occasionally show themselves even in the midst of our highly developed and complex civilisation of to-day. The thought of early man on the problems of his being—for after all his superstitions reveal thought—deserve respect, for in his efforts to think he was trying to grope towards the light.
RHYS, Hibbert Lectures on Celtic Heathendom.
RHYS, Celtic Folk-lore, Welsh and Manx.
REINACH, S., Cultes, Mythes et Religion.
NUTT, ALFRED, The Voyage of Bran.
SQUIRE, Mythology of the British Islands.
GAIDOZ, Esqiusse de Mythologie gauloise.
BERTRAND, La Religion des Gaulois, les Druides et le Druidisme.
FRAZER, The Golden Bough.
JOYCE, The Social History of Ireland.
D’ARBOIS DE JUBAINVILLE, Les Druides et les dieux celtiques a forme d’animaux.
WINDISCH, Irische Texte mit Worterbuch.
CYNDDELW, Cymru Fu.
FOULKES, Enwogion Cymru.
CAMPBELL, Popular Tales of the West Highlands.