Anwyl E - Celtic Religion - 1906

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Religions Ancient and Modern

CELTIC RELIGION


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RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN.ANIMISM.By Edward Clodd, Author of Tht Story of Creation.PANTHEISM.

By James Allanson Picton, Author of The Religion of theUniverse.THE RELIGIONS OF ANCIENT CHINA.By Professor Giles, LL. D. , Professor of Chinese in the Universityof Cambridge.THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT GREECE.By Jane Harrison, Lecturer at Newnham College, Cambridge,Author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek Religion.ISLAM.

By Syed Ameer Ali, M.A., C.I.E., late of H.M.'s High Courtof Judicature in Bengal, Author of The Spirit of Islam and TheEthics ofIslam..MAGIC AND FETISHISM.By Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., Lecturer on Ethnology at Cam-bridge University.THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, F.R.S.THE RELIGION OF BABYLONIA AND ASSYRIA.By Theophilus G. Pinches, late of the British Museum.BUDDHISM. 2 vols.By Professor Rhys DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of The RoyalAsiatic Society.HINDUISM.By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental PrintedBooks and MSS., British Museum,SCANDINAVIAN RELIGION.By William A. Craigik, Joint Editor of the Oxford EnglishDictionary.CELTIC RELIGION.By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University College,Aberystwyth.

THE MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.By Charles Squire, Author of The Mythology of the BritishIslands.JUDAISM.By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature inCambridge University, Author oi Jewish Life in the Middle Ages.SHINTO. By W. G. Aston, C.M.G.THE RELIGION OF ANCIENT MEXICO AND PERU.By Lewis Spence, M.A.THE RELIGION OF THE HEBREWS.By Professor Yastrow.


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CELTIC RELIGIONIN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES

ByEDWARD ANWYL, M.A.LATE CLASSICAL SCHOLAR OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORDPROFESSOR OF WELSH AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY ATTHE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTHACTING-CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL WELSH BOARD

FOR INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION

CHICAGOTHE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY


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Edinburgh : T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty ,


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u FOREWORDIt is only as prehistoric archaeology has come tothrow more and more light on the early civilisa-tions of Celtic lands that it has become possible tointerpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modernviewpoint. The author cordially acknowledgeshis indebtedness to numerous writers on this sub-ject, but his researches into some portions of thefield especially have suggested to him the possi-bility of giving a new presentation to certain factsand groups of facts, which the existing evidencedisclosed. It is to be hoped that a new interest inthe religion of the Celts may thereby be aroused.

E. Anwyl.Aberystwyth,Fehniary 15, 1906.


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CONTENTSCHAP. PAGB

I. Introductory : The Celts, .... 1II. The Chief Phases of Celtic Civilisation, . 8in. The Correlation of Celtic Religion with

THE Growth of Celtic Civilisation, . . 19IV. Celtic Religion and the Development of

Individualised Deities, 29

V. The Humanised Gods of Celtic Religion, . 36VI. The Celtic Priesthood, 44VII. The Celtic Other-World, .... 57


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CELTIC RELIGIONCHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY : THE CELTSIn dealing with the subject of ' Celtic Religion 'the first duty of the writer is to explain thesense in which the term ' Celtic ' will be used inthis work. It will be used in reference to thosecountries and districts which, in historic times,have been at one time or other mainly of Celticspeech. It does not follow that all the raceswhich spoke a form of the Celtic tongue, a tongueof the Indo-European family, were all of thesame stock. Indeed, ethnological and archaeologi-cal evidence tends to establish clearly that, inGaul and Britain, for example, man had lived forages before the introduction of any variety ofAryan or Indo-European speech, and this Avasprobably the case throughout the whole ofWestern and Southern Europe. Further, in theA I


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CELTIC RELIGIONlight of comparative philology, it has now becomeabundantly clear that the forms of Indo-Europeanspeech which we call Celtic are most closelyrelated to those of the Italic family, of whichfamily Latin is the best known representative.From this it follows that we are to look for thecentre of dissemination of Aryan Celtic speech insome district of Europe that could have been thenatural centre of dissemination also for the Italiclanguages. From this common centre, throughconquest and the commercial intercourse whichfollowed it, the tribes which spoke the variousforms of Celtic and Italic speech spread into thedistricts occupied by them in historic times. Thecommon centre of radiation for Celtic and Italicspeech was probably in the districts of Noricumand Pannonia, the modern Carniola, Carinthia,etc., and the neighbouring parts of the Danubevalley. The conquering Aryan-speaking Celtsand Italians formed a military aristocracy, andtheir success in extending the range of theirlanguages was largely due to their skiU in arms,combined, in all probability, with a talent foradministration. This military aristocracy was ofkindred type to that which carried Aryan speechinto India and Persia, Armenia and Greece, notto speak of the original speakers of the Teutonic

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INTRODUCTORY: THE CELTSand Slavonic tongues. In view of the necessity ofdiscovering a centre, whence the Indo-Europeanor Aryan languages in general could haveradiated Eastwards, as well as AVestwards, thetendency to-day is to regard these tongues ashaving been spoken originally in some districtbetween the Carpathians and the Steppes, in theform of kindred dialects of a common speech.Some branches of the tribes which spoke thesedialects penetrated into Central Europe, doubt-less along the Danube, and, from the Danubevalley, extended their conquests together withtheir various forms of Aryan speech into South-ern and Western Europe. The proportion ofconquerors to conquered was not uniform in allthe countries where they held sway, so that theamount of Aryan blood in their resultant popula-tion varied greatly. In most cases, the familiesof the original conquerors, by their skill in the artof war and a certain instinct of government, suc-ceeded in making their own tongues the dominantmedia of communication in the lands where theyruled, with the result that most of the languagesof Europe to-day are of the Aryan or Indo-European type. It does not, however, follownecessarily from this that the early religiousideas or the artistic civilisation of countries now

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CELTIC RELIGIONAryan in speecli came necessarily from the con-querors rather than the conquered. In the lastcentury it was long held that in countries ofAryan speech the essential features of their civili-sation, their religious ideas, their social institu-tions, nay, more, their inhabitants themselves,were of Aryan origin.A more critical investigation has, however,enabled us to distinguish clearly between the de-velopment ofvarious factors ofhuman life which intheir evolution can follow and often have followedmore or less independent lines. The physicalhistory of race, for instance, forms a problem byitself and must be studied by anthropological andethnological methods. Language, again, hasoften spread along lines other than those of race,and its investigation appertains to the sphere ofthe philologist. Material civilisation, too, hasnot of necessity followed the lines either ofracial or of linguistic development, and the searchfor its ancient trade-routes may be safely left tothe archteologist. Similarly the spread of ideasin religion and thought is one which has advancedon lines of its own, and its investigation must beconducted by the methods and along the lines ofthe comparative study of religions.In the wide sense, then, in which the word

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INTRODUCTORY: THE CELTS' Celtic religion ' will be used in this work, it willcover the modes of religious thought prevalent inthe countries and districts, which, in course oftime, were mainly characterised by their Celticspeech. To the sum-total of these religiousideas contributions have been made from manysources. It would be rash to affirm that thevarious streams of Aryan Celtic conquest madeno contributions to the conceptions of life and ofthe world which the countries of their conquestcame to hold (and the evidence of languagepoints, indeed, to some such contributions), buttheir quota appears to be small compared withthat of their predecessors ; nor is this surprising,in view of the immense period during which thelands of their conquest had been previouslyoccupied. Nothing is clearer than the marvel-lous persistence of traditional and immemorialmodes of thought, even in the face of conquestand subjugation, and, whatever ideas on religionthe Aryan conquerors of Celtic lands may havebrought with them, they whose conquests wereoften only partial could not eradicate the inveter-ate beliefs of their predecessors, and the result inthe end was doubtless some compromise, or elsethe victory of the earlier faith.But the Aryan conquerors of Gaul and Italy

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CELTIC RELIGIONthemselves were not men who had advanced upthe Danube in one generation. Those men ofAryan speech who poured into the Italianpeninsula and into Gaul were doubtless inblood not unmixed with the older inhabitantsof Central

Europe, and had entered into thebody of ideas which formed the religious beliefsof the men of the Danube valley. The commonmodifications of the Aryan tongue, by Italiansand Celts alike, as compared with^Greek, suggestscontact with men of different speech. Amongthe names of Celtic gods, too, like those of othercountries, we find roots that are apparently irre-ducible to any found in Indo-European speech,and we know not what pre-Aryan tongues mayhave contributed them. Scholars, to-day, are farmore alive than they ever were before to thecomplexity of the contributory elements thathave entered into the tissue of the ancientreligions of mankind, and the more the relicsof Celtic religion are investigated, the more com-plex do its contributory factors become. In thelong ages before history there were unrecordedconquests and migrations innumerable, and ideasdo not fail to spread because there is no historianto record them.The more the scanty remnants of Celtic religion

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INTRODUCTORY: THE CELTSare examined, the clearer it becomes that many ofits characteristic features had been evolved duringthe vast period of the ages of stone. During thesemillennia, men had evolved, concomitantly withtheir material civilisation, a kind of workingphilosophy of life, traces of which are found inevery land where this form of civilisation hasprevailed. Man's religion can never be dissociatedfrom his social experience, and the painful stagesthrough which man reached the agricultural life,for example, have left their indelible impress onthe mind of man in Western Europe, as theyhave in every land. We are thus compelled,from the indications which we have of Celticreligion, in the names of its deities, its rites, andits survivals in folk-lore and legend, to come tothe conclusion, that its fundamental groundworkis a body of ideas, similar to those of other lands,which were the natural correlatives of the phasesof experience through which man passed in hisemergence into civilised life. To demonstrateand to illustrate these relations will be the aimof the following chapters. -^


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CHAPTER IITHE CHIEF PHASES OF CELTIC CIVILISATION

In the chief countries of Celtic civilisation, Gaul,Cisalpine and Transalpine, Britain and Ireland,abundant materials have been found for elucidat-ing the stages of culture through which manpassed in prehistoric times. In Britain, forexample, paheolithic man has left numerousspecimens of his implements, but the formseven of these rude implements suggest that they,too, have been evolved from still more primitivetypes. Some antiquarians have thought to detectsuch earlier types in the stones that have beennamed ' eoliths ' found in Kent, but, though these' eoliths

' may possibly show human use, thequestion of their history is far from being settled.It is certain, however, that man succeeded inmaintaining himself for ages in the company ofthe mammoth, the cave-bear, and other animalsnow extinct. Whether paleolithic man survivedthe Ice Age in Britain has not so far been satisfac-

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PALAEOLITHIC MANtorily decided. In Gaul, however, there is fairevidence of continuity between the Palaeolithicand Neolithic periods, and this continuity mustobviously have existed somewhere. Still in spiteof the indications of continuity, the civihsation ofprimitive man in Gaul presents one aspect thatis without any analogues in the life of the palaeo-lithic men of the River Drift period, or in that ofman of the New Stone Age. The feature inquestion is the remarkable artistic skill shownby the

cave men of the Dordogne district. Someof the drawings and carvings of these men reveala sense of form which would have done credit tomen of a far later age. A feature such as this,whatever may have been its object, whether itarose from an effort by means of 'sympatheticmagic ' to catch animals, as M. Salomon Reinachsuggests, or to the mere artistic impulse, is astanding reminder to us of the scantiness of ourdata for estimating the lines of man's religiousand other development in the vast epochs ofprehistoric time.We know that from the life of hunting manpassed into the pastoral stage, having learned totame animals. How he came to do so, and bywhat motives he was actuated, is still a mystery.It may be, as M. Salomon Reinach has also

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CELTIC RELIGIONsuggested, that it was some curious and inde-finable sense of kinship with them that led himto do so, or more probably, as the present writerthinks, some sense of a need of the alliance ofanimals against hostile spirits. In all probabilityit was no motive which we can now fathom. Themind of early man was like the unfathomablemind of a boy. From the pastoral life againman passed after long ages into the Kfe ofagriculture, and the remains of neoHthic manin Gaul and in Britain give us glimpses of hislife as a farmer. The ox, the sheep, the pig, thegoat, and the dog were his domestic animals ;he could grow wheat and flax, and could supple-ment the produce of his farm by means of hunt-ing and fishing. Neolithic man could spin andweave; he could obtain the necessary flint forhis implements, which he made by chipping andpolishing, and he could also make pottery of arude variety. In its essentials we have here thebeginnings of the agricultural civilisation of manall the world over. In life, neolithic man dweltsometimes in pit-dwellings and sometimes in hut-circles, covered with a roof of branches supportedby a central pole. In death, he was buried withliis kin in long mounds of earth called barrows,in chambered cairns and cromlechs or dolmens.

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BURIAL IN LATER STONE AGEThe latter usually consist of three standingstones covered by a cap-stone ; forming thestony skeleton of a grave that has been exposedto view after the mound of earth that covered ithas been washed away. In their graves the deadwere buried in a crouching attitude, and freshburials were made as occasion required. Some-times the cromlech is double, and occasionallythere is a hole in one of the stones, the signi-ficance of which is unknown, unless it may havebeen for the ingress and egress of souls. Gravesof the dolmen or cromlech type are found in allthe countries of Western Europe, North Africa,and elsewhere, wherever stone suitable for thepurpose abounds, and in this we have a strikingillustration of the way in which lines of develop-ment in man's material civilisation are sooner orlater correlated to his geographical, geological,and other surroundings. The religious ideas of |man in neolithic times also came into correlationwith the conditions of his development, and theuninterpreted stone circles and pillars of theworld are a standing witness to the religiouszeal of a mind that was haunted by stone. Be-Jfore proceeding to exemplify this thesis thesubsequent trend of Celtic civilisation may bebriefly sketched.

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CELTIC RELIGIONThrough the pacific intercourse of commerce,

bronze weapons and implements began to findtheir way, about 2000 B.C. or earlier, from Centraland Southern Europe into Gaul, and thence intoBritain, In Britain the Bronze Age begins atabout 1500 or 1400 B.C., and it is thought bysome archteologists that bronze was worked atthis period by the aid of native tin in Britainitself. There are indications, however, that theintroduction of bronze into Britain was not byway of commerce alone. About the beginningof the Bronze period are found evidences in thisisland of a race of different type from that ofneolithic man, being characterised by a roundskull and a powerful build, and by general indi-cations 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 wavethat reached Britain of Aryan conquerors of Celticspeech from the nearest part of the continent,where it must have arrived some time previously,probably along the Rhine valley. As the type ofCeltic speech that has penetrated farthest to thewest is that known as the Goidelic or Irish, it hasnot unreasonably been thought that this musthave been the type that arrived in Britain first,

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TYPES OF CELTIC SPEECHThere are indications, too, that it was this typethat penetrated furthest into the west of Gaul.Its most marked characteristic is its preservationof the pronunciation of U as ' oo ' and of QU,while the ' Brythonic ' or Welsh variety changedU to a sound pronounced like the French ' u ' orthe German ' ti ' and also QU to P. There is asimilar line of cleavage in the Italic languages,where Latin corresponds to Goidelic, and Oscanand Umbrian to Brythonic. Transalpine Gaulwas probably invaded by Aryan-speaking Celtsfrom more than one direction, and the infiltrationand invasion of new-comers, when it had oncebegun, Avas doubtless continuous through thesevarious channels. There are cogent reasons forthinking that ultimately the dominant type ofCeltic speech over the greater part of Gaul cameto be that of the P rather than the QU type,owing to the influx from the East and North-east of an overflow from the Rhhie valley oftribes speaking that dialect ; a dialect which, byforce of conquest and culture, tended to spreadfarther and farther West. Into Britain, too, astime went on, the P type of Celtic was carried,and has survived in Welsh and Cornish, theremnants of the tongue of ancient Britain. Weknow, too, from the name Eporedia (Yvrea), that

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CELTIC KELIGIONthis dialect of Celtic must have spread intoCisalpine Gaul. The latter district may havereceived its first Celtic invaders direct from theDanube valley, as M. Alexandre Bertrand held,but it would be rash to assume that all its in-vaders came from that direction. In connection,however, with the history of Celtic religion it isnot the spread of the varying types of Celticdialect that is important, but the changes in thecivilisation of Gaul and Britain, which reacted onreligious ideas or which introduced new factorsinto the religious development of these lands.The predatory expeditions and wars of conquestof military Celtic tribes in search for new homesfor their superfluous populations brought intoprominence the deities of war, as was the casealso with the ancient Romans, themselves anagricultural and at the same time a predatoryrace. The prominence of war in Celtic tribal lifeat one stage has left us the names of a largenumber of deities that were identified with Marsand Bellona, though all the war-gods were notoriginally such. In the Roman calendar thereis abundant evidence that Mars was at one timean agricultural god as well as a god of war. Thesame, as will be shown later, was the probablehistory of some of the Celtic deities, who were

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THE IRON AGE IN GAULidentified in Roman times with Mars and Bellona.Caesar tells us that Mars had at one time beenthe chief god of the Gauls, and that in Germanythat was still the case. In Britain, also, we findthat there were several deities identified withMars, notably Belatucadrus and Cocidius, andthis, too, points in the direction of a developmentof religion under military influence. The Gaulsappear to have made great strides in militarymatters and in material civilisation durinsr theIron Age. The culture of the Early Iron Age ofHallstatt had been developed in Gaul on charac-teristic lines of its own, resulting in the form nowknown as the La Tene or Marnian type. Thistype derives it name from the striking specimensof it that were discovered at La Tene on theshore of Lake Neuchafcel, and in the extensivecemeteries of the Marne valley, the burials ofwhich cover a period of from 350-200 B.C. Itwas during the third century B.C. that this char-acteristic culture of Gaul reached its zenith, andgave definite shape to the beautiful curved designsknown as those of Late-Celtic Art. Iron appearsto have been introduced into Britain about 300B.C., and the designs of Late-Celtic Art are hererepresented best of all. Excellent specimens ofLate-Celtic culture have been found in Yorkshire

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CELTIC RELIGIONand elsewhere, and important links with con-tinental developments have been discovered atAylesford, Aesica, Limavady, and other places.Into the development of this typical Gaulishculture elements are believed to have entered byway of the important commercial avenue of theRhone valley from Massilia (Marseilles), fromGreece (via Venetia), and possibly from Etruria.Prehistoric archaeology affords abundant proofsthat, in countries of Celtic speech, metal-workingin bronze, iron, and gold reached a remarkably'high pitch of perfection, and this is a clear in-dication that Celtic countries and districts whichwere on the line of trade routes, like the Rhonevalley, had attained to a material ci\^lisation ofno mean character before the Roman conquest.In Britain, too, the districts that were in touchwith continental commerce had, as Csesar tellsus, also developed in the same direction. Thereligious counterpart of this development in civi-lisation is the growth in many parts of Gaul, asattested by Ceesar and by many inscriptions andplace-names, of the worship of gods identifiedwith Mercury and Minerva, the deities of civili-sation and commerce. It is no accident that oneof the districts most conspicuous for this worshipwas the territory of the Allobrogic confederation,

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CIVILISATION NOT HOMOGENEOUSwhere the commerce of the Rhone valley foundits most remarkable development. From thissketch of Celtic civilisation it will readily beseen how here as elsewhere the religious develop-ment of the Celts stood closely related to thedevelopment of their civilisation generally. Itmust be borne in mind, however, that all parts ofthe Celtic world were not equally affected by thematerial development in question. Part of thecomplexity of the history of Celtic religion arisesfrom the fact that we cannot be always certainof the degree of progress in civilisation whichany given district had made, of the ideas whichpervaded it, or of the absorbing interests of itslife. Another difficulty, too, is that the accountsof Celtic religion given by ancient authorities donot always harmonise with the indisputableevidence of inscriptions. The probability is thatthe religious practices of the Celtic world wereno more homogeneous than its general civilisa-tion, and that the ancient authorities are sub-stantially true in their statements about certaindistricts, certain periods, or certain sections ofsociety, while the inscriptions, springing asthey do from the influence of the Gallo-Romancivilisation, especially of Eastern Gaul andmilitary Britain, give us most valuable supple-

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CELTIC RELIGIONmentary evidence for districts and environmentsof a different kind. The inscriptions, especiallyby the names of deities which they reveal, haveafforded most valuable clues to the history ofCeltic religion, even in stages of civilisationearlier than those to which they themselvesbelong. In the next chapter the correlation ofCeltic religious ideas to the stages of Celticcivilisation will be further developed.

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CHAPTER IIITHE CORRELATION OF CELTIC RELIGION WITH

THE GROWTH OF CELTIC CIVILISATIONIn dealing with the long vista of prehistoric time,it is very difficult for us, in our effort after per-spective, not to shorten unduly in our thoughtsthe vast epochs of its duration. We tend, too, toforget, that in these unnumbered millennia therewas ample time for it to be possible over certainareas of Europe to evolve what were practicallynew races, through the prepotency of particularstocks and the annihilation of others. Duringthese epochs, again, after speech had arisen, therewas time enough to recast completely many alanguage, for before the dawn of history languagewas no more free from change than it is now, andin these immense epochs whatever ideas as to theworld of their surroundings were vaguely felt byprehistoric men and formulated for them by theirkinsmen of genius, had abundant time in whichto die or to win supremacy. There must havebeen asons before the dawn even of conscious

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CELTIC RELIGIONanimism, and the experiment of trying sympa-thetic magic was, when first attempted, probablyregarded as a master-stroke of genius. The StoneAge itself was a long era of great if slow progressin civilisation, and the evolution of the practicesand ideas which emerge as the concomitants ofits agricultural stage, when closely regarded, beartestimony to the mind's capacity for religiousprogress in the light of experience and intelligentexperiment, and at the same time to the errorsinto which it fell. The Stone Age has left itssediment in all the folk-lore of the world. Tothe casual observer many of the ideas embeddedin it may seem a mass of error, and so they arewhen judged unhistorically, but when viewedcritically, and at the same time historically, theyafford many glimpses of prehistoric genius in aworld where life was of necessity a great experi-ment. The folk-lore of the world reveals for thesame stages of civilisation a wonderful uni-formity and homogeneity, as Dr. J. G. Frazerhas abundantly shown in his Golden Bough.This uniformity is not, however, due to necessaryuniformity of origin, but to a great extent to thefact that it

represents the state of equilibriumarrived at between minds at a certain level andtheir environment, along lines of thought directed

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MAN AND HIS PROBLEMSby the momentum given by the traditions ofmillennia, and the survival in history of the menwho carefully regarded them. The apparently Junreasoned prohibitions often known as ' taboos/man)^ of which still persist even in modern civil-ised life, have their roots in ideas and experienceswhich no speculation of ours can now completelyfathom, however much we may guess at theirorigin. Many of these ancient prohibitions havevanished under new conditions, others have oftensurvived from a real or supposed harmony withnew experiences, that have arisen in the course ofman's history. After passing through a stagewhen he was too preoccupied with his materialcares and wants to consider whether he washaunted or not, early man in the Celtic world aselsewhere, after long epochs of vague unrest, cameto realise that he was somehow haunted in thedaytime as well as at night, and it was this senseof being haunted that impelled his intellect andhis imagination to seek some explanation of hisfeelings. Primitive man came to seek a solutionnot of the Universe as a whole (for of this he hadno conception), but of the local Universe, in whichhe played a part. In dealing with Celtic folk- lore,"^it is very remarkable how it mirrors the charac-teristic local colouring and scenery of the districts

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CELTIC RELIGIONin which it has originated. In a country likeWales, for example, it is the folk-lore of springs,caves, mountains, lakes, islands, and the forms ofits imagination, here as elsewhere, reflect unmis-takably the land of its origin. Where it depictsan ' other world,' that ' other world ' is either onan island or it is a land beneath the sea, a lake,or a river, or it is approachable only through somecave or opening in the earth. In the hunting-grounds of the Celtic world the primitive hunterknew every cranny of the greater part of hisenvironment with the accuracy born of longfamiliarity, but there were some peaks which hecould not scale, some caves which he could notpenetrate, some jungles into which he could notenter, and in these he knew not what monstersmight lurk or unknown beings might live. InCeltic folk-lore the belief in fabulous monstershas nob yet ceased. Man was surrounded bydangers visible and invisible, and the time camewhen some prehistoric man of genius propoundedthe view that all the objects around him were noless living than himself This animistic view ofthe world, once adopted, made great headwayfrom the various centres where it originated, andman derived from it a new sense of kinship withhis world, but also new terrors from it. Knowing

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SPIRITS IN CELTIC RELIGIONfrom the experience of dreams that he himselfseemed able to wander away from himself, hethought in course of time that other living thingswere somehow double, and the world around himcame to be occupied, not merely with things thatwere aUve, but with other selves of these things,that could remain in them or leave them at will.Here, again, this new prehistoric philosophy gavean added interest to life, but it was none the lessa source of fresh terrors. The world swarmedwith invisible spirits, some friendly, some hostile,and, in view of these beings, life had to be regu-lated by strict rules of actions and prohibitions.Even in the neolithic stage the inhabitants ofCeltic countries had attained to the religiousideas in question, as is seen not only by theirfolk-lore and by the names of groups of goddessessuch as the Matres (or mothers), but by the factthat in historic times they had advanced wellbeyond this stage to that of named and indi-vidualised gods. As in all countries where thegods were individualised, the men of Celtic lands,whether aborigines or invaders, had toiled alongthe steep ascent from the primitive vague senseof

beinghaunted to a belief in

gods who, likeEsus, Teutates, Grannos, Bormanus, Litavis, hadnames of a definite character.

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CELTIC RELIGIONAmong the prohibitions which had estabhshedthemselves among the races of Celtic lands, as

elsewhere, was that directed against the sheddingof the blood of one's own kin. There are indi-cations, too, that some at any rate of the tribesinhabiting these countries reckoned kinshipthrough the mother, as in fact continued to bethe case among the Picts of Scotland into historictimes. It does not follow, as we know from othercountries, that the pre-Aryan tribes of Gaul andBritain, or indeed the Aryan tribes themselves intheir earhest stage, regarded their original ances-tors as human. Certain names of deities such asTarvos (the bull), Moccos (the pig), Epona (thegoddess of horses), Damona (the goddess ofcattle), Mullo (the ass), as well as the fact thatthe ancient Britons, according to Cassar, preservedthe hen, the goose, and the hare, but did not killand eat them, all point to the fact that in thesecountries as elsewhere certain animals were heldin supreme respect and were carefully guardedfrom harm. Judging from the analogy of kindredphenomena in other countries, the practice ofrespecting certain animals was often associatedwith the belief that all the members of certainclans were descended from one or other of them,but how far this system was elaborated in the

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TRACES OF ANIMAL WORSHIPCeltic world it is hard to say. This phenomenon,which is widely known as totemism, appears to besuggested by the prominence given to the wildboar on Celtic coins and ensigns, and by the placeassigned on some inscriptions and bas-reliefs tothe figure of a horned snake as well as by theeffiofies of other animals that have been dis-covered. It is not easy to explain the beginningsof totemism in Gaul or elsewhere, but it shouldalways be borne in mind that early man could notregard it as an axiomatic truth that he was thesuperior of every other animal. To reach thatproud consciousness is a very high step in thedevelopment of the human perspective, and it isto the credit of the Celts that, when we knowthem in historic times, they appear to haveattained to this height, inasmuch as the humanform is given to their deities. It is not always 'remembered how great a step in religious evolu-tion is implied

when the gods are clothed withhuman attributes. M. Salomon Reinach, in hisaccount of the vestiges of totemism among theCelts, suggests that totemism was merely thehypertrophy of early man's social sense, whichextended from man to the animals around him.This may possibly be the case, but it is notimprobable that man also thought to discover in

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CELTIC RELIGIONcertain animals much-needed allies against someof the visible and invisible enemies that beset him.In his conflict with the malign powers aroundhim, he might well have regarded certain animalsas being in some respects stronger combatantsagainst those powers than himself; and where theywere not physically stronger, some of them, likethe snake, had a cunning and a subtlety thatseemed far to surpass his own. In course of timecertain bodies of men came to regard themselvesas being in special alliance with some one animal,and as being descended from that animal as theircommon ancestor. The existence side by side ofvarious tribes, each with its definite totem, hasnot yet been fully proved for the Gaulish system,and may well have been a developed socialarrangement that was not an essential part ofsuch a mode of thought in its primary forms.The place of animal-worship in the Celtic religionwill be more fully considered in a later chapter.Here it is only indicated as a necessary stage inrelation to man's civilisation in the hunting andthe pastoral stages, which had to be passedthrough before the historic deities of Gaul andBritain in Roman times could have come intobeing. Certain of the divine names of the historicperiod, like Artio (the bear-goddess), Moccus (the

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TOTEMISM AND ANIMALSpig), Epona (the mare), and Damona (the sheep),bear the unmistakable impress of having been atone time those of animals.As for the stage of civilisation at which totemism

originated, there is much difference of opinion.The stage of mind which it implies would suggestthat it reflects a time when man's mind was pre-occupied with wild beasts, and when the alliancesand friendships, which he would value in life,might be found in that sphere. There is muchplausibility in the view put forward by M. SalomonReinach, that the domestication of animals itselfimplies a totemistic habit of thought, and theconsequent protection of these animals by meansof taboos from harm and death. It may well bethat, after all, the usefulness of domestic animalsfrom a material point of view was only a secondaryconsideration for man, and a happy discovery afterunsuccessful totemistic attentions to other animals.We know not how many creatures early man triedto associate with himself but failed.

In all stages of man's history the alternation ofthe seasons must have brought some rudiments oforder and system into his thoughts, though for along time he was too preoccupied to reflect uponthe regularly recurring vicissitudes of his life. Inthe pastoral stage, the sense of order came to

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CELTIC RELIGIONbe more marked than in that of hunting, and[quickened the mind to fresh thought. The earthcame to be regarded as the Mother from whomall things came, and there are abundant indica-tions that the earth as the Mother, the Queen, theLong-lived one, etc., found her natural place as agoddess among the Celts. Her names and titles

"^were probably not in all places or in all tribes thesame. But it is in the agricultural stage thatshe entered in Celtic lands, as she did in othercountries, into her completest religious heritage,and this aspect of Celtic religion will be dealtwith more fully in connection with the spiritsof vegetation. This phase of religion in Celticcountries is one which appears to underlie someof its most characteristic forms, and the onewhich has survived longest in Celtic folk-lore.The Earth-mother with her progeny of spirits, ofsprings, rivers, mountains, forests, trees, and corn,appears to have supplied most of the grouped andindividualised gods of the Celtic pantheon. TheDis, of whom Csesar speaks as the ancient god ofthe Gauls, was probably regarded as her son, towhom the dead returned in death. Whether heis the Gaulish god depicted with a hammer, or asa huge dog swallowing the dead, has not yet beenestablished with any degree of certainty.

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CHAPTER IVCELTIC RELIGION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF

INDIVIDUALISED DEITIESLike other religions, those of the Celtic lands ofEurope supplemented the earlier animism by abelief in spirits, who belonged to trees, animals,rocks, mountains, springs, rivers, and other naturalphenomena, and in folk-lore there still survivesabundant evidence that the Celt regarded spiritsas taking upon themselves a variety of forms,animal and human. It was this idea of spirits inanimal form that helped to preserve the memoryof the older totemism into historic times. It isthus that we have names of the type of Branno-genos (son of the raven), Artogenos (son of thebear), and the like, not to speak of simpler nameslike Bran (raven), March (horse), surviving intohistoric times. Bronze images, too, have beenfound at Neuvy-en-SuUias, of a horse and a stag(now in the Orleans museum), provided withrings, which were, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests,

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CELTIC RELIGIONprobably used for the purpose of carrying theseimages in procession. The wild boar, too, was afavourite emblem of Gaul, and there is extant abronze figure of a Celtic Diana riding on a boar'sback. At Bolar, near Nuits, there was discovereda bronze mule. In the museum at Mayence is abas-relief of the goddess of horses, Epona (fromthe Gaulish Epos= Lit. equus, horse), riding onhorseback. One of the most important monu-ments of this kind is a figure of Artio, the bear-goddess (from Celtic Artos, a bear), found atMuri near Berne. In front of her stood a figureof a bear, which was also found with her. Thebull of the Tarvos Trigaranos bas-relief of NotreDame was also in all likelihood originally a totem,and similarly the horned serpents of other bas-reliefs, as Avell as the boar found on Gaulishensigns and coins, especially in Belgic territory.There is a representation, too, of a raven on abas-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 sanDalmazzo, is undoubtedly the philological equiva-lent of the Welsh mock (swine). In Britain, too,the boar is frequently found on the coins of theIceni and other tribes. In Italy, according to

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SURVIVALS OF ANIMAL WORSHIPMr. Warde Fowler, the pig was an appropriateoffering to deities of the earth, so that in thewidespread use of the pig as a symbol in theCeltic world, there may be some ancient echo ofa connection between it and the earth-spirit. Itsdiet of acorns, too, may have marked it out, inthe early days of life in forest- clearings, as theanimal embodiment of tlie oak-spirit. In thelegends of the Celtic races, even in historic times,the pig, and especially the boar, finds an honouredplace. In addition to the animals aforementioned,the ass, too, was probably at one time veneratedin one of the districts of Gaul, and it is not im-probable that Mullo, the name of a god identifiedAvith Mars and regarded as the patron of muleteers,mentioned on inscriptions (at Nantes, Craon, andLes Provencheres near Craon), meant originally' an ass.' The goddess Epona, also, whose worshipwas widely spread, was probably at one time ananimal goddess in the form of a mare, and thename of another goddess, Damona, either fromthe root dain=lY. dam, (ox); or Welsh daf-ad(sheep), may similarly be that of an ancient totemsheep or cow. Nor was it in the animal worldalone that the Celts saw indications of the divine.While the chase and the pastoral life concentratedthe mind's attention on the life of animals, the

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CELTIC RELIGIONI growth of agriculture fixed man's thoughts onthe life of the earth, and all that grew upon it,while at the same time he was led to think moreand more of the mj^sterious world beneath theearth, from which all things came and to whichall

things returned. Nor could he forget thetrees of the forest, especially those which, like theoak, had provided him with their fruit as food intime of need. The name Druid, as well as that ofthe centre of worship of the Gauls of Asia Minor,Drunemeton (the oak-grove), the statement ofMaximus of Tyre that the representation of Zeusto the Celts was a high oak, Pliny's account ofDruidism {Nat. Hist., xvi. 95), the numerousinscriptions to Silvanus and Silvana, the mentionof Dervones or Dervonnae on an inscription atCavalzesio near Brescia, and the abundant evidenceof survivals in folk-lore as collected by Dr. J. G.Frazer and others, all point to the fact that tree-worship, and especially that of the oak, hadcontributed its full share to the development ofCeltic religion, at any rate in some districts and in

\ some epochs. The development of martial andcommercial civilisation in later times tended torestrict its typical and more primitive develop-ments to the more conservative parts of the Celticworld. The fact that in Caesar's time its main

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DRUIDISMcentre in Gaul was in the territory of the Carnutes,the tribe which has given its name to Chartres,suggests that its chief votaries were mainly inthat part of the country. This, too, was thedistrict of the god Esus (the eponymous god ofthe Essuvii), and in some degree of Teutates, thecruelty of whose rites is mentioned by Lucan. Ithad occurred to the present writer, before findingthe same view expressed by M. Salomon Reinach,that the worship of Esus in Gaul was almostentirely local in character. With regard to the~lrites of the Druids, Caesar tells us that it wascustomary to make huge images of wickerwork,into which human beings, usually criminals,were placed and burnt. The use of wickerwork,and the suggestion that the rite was for purifyingthe land, indicates a combination of the ideas oftree-worship with those of early agricultural life. JWhen the Emperor Claudius is said by Suetoniusto have suppressed Druidism, what is meant is, inall probabiHty, that the more inhuman rites weresuppressed, leading, as the Scholiasts on Lucanseem to suggest, to a substitution of animalvictims for men. On the side of civil administra-tion and education, the functions of the Druids,as the successors of the primitive medicine menand magicians, doubtless varied greatly in different

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CELTIC RELIGIONparts of Gaul and Britain; according to theprogress that had been made in the differentiationof functions in social life. The more we investi-gate the state of the Celtic world in ancienttimes, the clearer it becomes, that in civilisation itwas very far from being homogeneous, and thisheterogeneity of civilisation must have had itsinfluence on relisjion as well as on other socialphenomena. The natural conservatism of agri-cultural life, too, perpetuated many practices eveninto comparatively late times, and of these wecatch a glimpse in Gregory of Tours, when hetells us ihat at Autun the goddess Berecyntia wasworshipped, her image being carried on a wagonfor the protection of the fields and the vines. It isnot impossible that by Berecyntia Gregory meansthe goddess Brigindu, whose name occurs on aninscription at Volnay in the same district of Gaul.The belief in corn-spirits, and other ideas connectedwith the central thought of the farmer's life, show,by their persistence in Celtic as well as other folk-lore, how deepl}^ they had entered into the innertissue of the agricultural mind, so as to be linkedto its keenest emotions. '' Here the rites of religion,whether persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory asin sympathetic magic, whether associated with com-munal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed

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PRACTICAL IN CHARACTERto the earth or to the heaven, all had an intenselypractical and terribly real character, due to man'sconstant preoccupation with the growth andstorage of food for man and beast. In the hunt-ing, the pastoral, and above all in the agriculturallife, religion was not a matter merely of imagi-nation or sentiment, but one most intimatelyassociated with the daily practice of life, and thispractical interest included in its purview rivers,springs, forests, mountains, and all the setting ofman's existence/ And what is true of agricultureis true also, in a greater or less degree, of the lifeof the Celtic metal-worker or the Celtic sailor.Even in late Welsh legend Amaethon (old CelticAmhactonos), the patron god of farming (WelshAmaeth), and Gofannon, the patron god of themetal-worker (Welsh gof, Irish gobha), were notquite forgotten, and the prominence of the worshipof the counterparts of Mercury and Minerva inGaul in historic times vv'as due to the sense ofrespect and gratitude, which each trade and eachlocality felt for the deity who had rid the landot monsters, and who had brought man into thecomparative calm of civilised life.

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CHAPTER VTHE HUMANISED GODS OF CELTIC RELIGION

One of the most striking facts connected withthe Celtic religion is the large number of names ofdeities which it includes. These names are knownto us almost entirely from inscriptions, for themost part votive tablets, in acknowledgment ofsome benefit, usually that of health, conferredby the god on man. In Britain these votivetablets are chiefly found in the neighbourhood ofthe Roman walls and camps, but we cannot bealways certain that the deities mentioned areindigenous. In Gaul, however, we are on surerground in associating certain deities with certaindistricts, inasmuch as the evidence of place-names is often a guide. These inscriptions arevery unevenly distributed over Gaulish territory,the Western and the North-Western districtsbeing very sparsely represented.In the present brief sketch it is impossible toenter into a full discussion of the relations of the

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LOCAL AND NON-LOCAL DEITIESnames found on inscriptions to particularlocalities, and the light thus thrown on Celticreligion ; but it may be here stated that investiga-tion 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 ofevolution, gained a wider field of worshippers,while others, like Lugus, may even have beenat one time more widely worshipped than theycame to be in later times. Occasionally a namelike Lugus (Irish Lug), Segomo (Irish, in thegenitive, Segamonas), Camulos, whence Camulo-dunum (Colchester), Belenos (Welsh Belyn),Mapunos (Welsh Mahon), Litavis (Welsh Llydaw),by its existence in Britain as well as in Gaul, sug-gests that it was either one of the ancient deitiesof the Aryan Celts, or one whose worship cameto extend over a larger area than its fellows.Apart from a few exceptional considerations ofthis kind, however, the local character of thedeities 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 Belisiima (either the Kibble orthe Mersey), a name meaning ' the most warlike

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CELTIC RELIGIONgoddess,' are of this type. We have again Axonathe goddess of the river Aisne, Sequana, thegoddess of the Seine, Rituna of the river Rieu,numerous nymphs and many other deities offountains. Doubtless many other names of localdeities are of this kind. Aerial phenomenaappear to have left very few clear traces on thenames of Celtic deities. Vintios, a god identifiedwith Mars, was probably a god of the wind,Taranucus, a god of thunder, Leucetios, a god oflightning, Sulis (of Bath) a sun-goddess, butbeyond these there are few, if any, reflections of thephenomena of the heavens. Of the gods namedon inscriptions nearly all are identified withMercury, Mars, or Apollo. The gods who came tobe regarded as culture-deities appear from theirnames to be of various origins : some are human-ised totems, others are in origin deities of vegeta-tion or local natural phenomena. As alreadyindicated, it is clear that the growth of com-mercial and civilised life in certain districts hadbrought into prominence deities identified withMercury and Minerva as the patrons of civilisa-tion. Military men, especially in Britain, appearto have favoured deities like Belatucadros (thebrilliant in war), identified with Mars.About fourteen inscriptions mentioning him have

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DEITIES IDENTIFIEDbeen found in the North of England and the Southof Scotland. The goddess Brigantia (the patron-deity of the Brigantes), too, is mentioned on fourinscriptions: Cocidius, identified with Mars, ismentioned on thirteen : while another populargod appears to have been Silvanus. Among themost noticeable names of the Celtic gods identifiedwith Mercury are Adsmerius or Atesmerius,Dumiatis (the god of the Puy de Dome), lovantu-carus (the lover of youth), Teutates (the god ofthe people), Caletos (the hard), and Moccus (theboar). Several deities are identified with Mars,and of these some of the most noticeable namesare Albiorix (world-king), Caturix (battle-king),Dunatis (the god of the fort), Belatucadrus (thebrilliant in war), Leucetius (the god of lightning),Mullo (the mule), Ollovidius (the all-knowing)Vintius (the wind-god), and Vitucadrus (thebrilliant in energy). The large number of namesidentified with Mars reflects the prominent place!at one time given to war in the ideas that affected iO'the growth of the religion of the Celtic tribes. !Of the gods identified with Hercules, the mostinteresting name is Ogmios (the god of thefurrow) given by Lucian, but not found on anyinscription. The following gods too, amongothers, are identified with Jupiter : Aramo (the

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CELTIC RELIGIONgentle), Ambisagrus (the persistent), Bussumarus(the large-Hpped), Taranucus (the thunderer),Uxellimus (the highest). It would seem fromthis that in historic times at any rate Jupiterdid not play a large part in Celtic religiousideas.There remains another striking feature of Celticreligion which has not yet been mentioned,piamely the identification of several deities with' Apollo. These deities are essentially the presid-ing deities of certain heahng-springs and health-resorts, and the growth of their worship intopopularity is a further striking index to thedevelopment of religion side by side with certainaspects of civiHsation. One of the names of aCeltic Apollo is Borvo (whence Bourbon), thedeity of certain hot springs. This name is Indo-European, and was given to the local fountain-god by the Celtic-speaking invaders of Gaul : itsimply means 'the Boiler.' Other forms of thename are also found, as Bormo and Bormanus.At AquiB Granni (Aix-la-Chapelle) and elsewherethe name identified with Apollo is Grannos. Wefind also Mogons, and Mogounus, the patrondeity of Moguntiacum (Mainz), and, once or twice,/Maponos (the great youth). The essential feature

( of the Apollo worship was its association in40


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CELTIC GODDESSESGallo-Roman civilisation with the idea of healing,an idea which, through the revival of the worshipof ^sculapius, affected religious views verystrongly in other quarters of the empire. It wasin this conception of the gods as the guides ofcivilisation and the restorers of health, thatCeltic religion, in some districts at any rate, showsitself emerging into a measure of light after along and toilsome progress from the darkness ofprehistoric ideas. What Csesar says of thepractice of the Gauls of beginning the year withthe night rather than with the day, and theirancient belief that they were sprung from Dis, thegod of the lower world, is thus typified in theirreligious history.,AKln dealing with the deities of the Celtic worldwe must not, however, forget the goddesses,though their history presents several problemsof great difficulty. Of these goddesses some areknown to us by groupsProximoe (the kins-women), Dervonnse (the oak-spirits), Niskai (thewater-sprites), Mairse, Matronse, Matres or Matrse(the mothers), Quadrivise (the goddesses of crossroads). The Matres, Matrse, and Matronse areoften qualified by some local name. Deities ofthis type appear to have been popular in Britain,in the neighbourhood of Cologne and in Provence.

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CELTIC EELIGIONIn some cases it is uncertain whether some ofthese grouped goddesses are Celtic or Teutonic.It is an interesting parallel to the existence ofthese grouped goddesses, when we find that insome parts of Wales ' Y Mamau ' (the mothers)is the name for the fairies. These groupedgoddesses take us back to one of the most inte-resting stages in the early Celtic religion, whenthe earth-spirits or the corn-spirits had not yetbeen completely individualised. Of the indi-vidualised goddesses many are strictly local, beingthe names of springs or rivers. Others, again,appear to have emerged into greater individualprominence, and of these we find several asso-ciated on inscriptions, sometimes with a godof Celtic name, but sometimes with his Latincounterpart. It is by no means certain that thenames so linked together were thus associated inearly times, and the fashion may have been alater one, which, like other fashions, spread afterit had once begun. The relationship in somecases may have been regarded as that of motherand son, in others that of brother and sister, inothers that of husband and wife; the data arenot adequate for the final decision of the question.Of these associated pairs the following may benoted, Mercurius and Rosmerta, Mercurius and

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WELSH SURVIVALS OF NAMESDirona, Granniis (Apollo) and Sirona, Sucellusand Nantosvelta, Borvo and Damona, Cicolluis(Mars) and Litavis, Bormanus and Bormana,Savus and Adsalluta, Mars and Nemetona. Oneof 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 ancientnames of goddesses ; these are Rhiannon (Rigan-tona (the great queen), and Modron (Matruna, thegreat mother). The other British deities will bemore fully treated by another writer in this seriesin a work on the ancient mythology of the BritishIsles. It is enough to say that research tendsmore and more to confirm the view that the keyto the history of the Celtic deities is the realisa-tion of the local character of the vast majority ofthem.

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CHAPTER VITHE CELTIC PRIESTHOOD

No name in connection with Celtic religion ismore fahiiliar to the average reader than that ofthe Druids, yet there is no section of the historyof Celtic religion that has given rise to greaterdiscussion than that relating to this order. Eventhe association of the name with the Indo-European root dru-, which we find in the Greekword driis, an oak, has been questioned by sucha competent Celtic scholar as M. d'Arbois deJubainville, but on this point it cannot be saidthat his criticism is conclusive. The writers ofthe ancient world who refer to the Druids, do notalways make it sufficiently clear in what districtsthe rites, ceremonies, and functions which theywere describing prevailed. Nor was it so muchthe priestly character of the Druids that producedthe deepest impression on the ancients. To somephilosophical and theological writers of antiquitytheir doctrines and their apparent affinities with

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THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULSPythagoreanism were of miicli greater interestthan their ceremonial or other functions. Onething at any rate is clear, that the Druids andtheir doctrines, or supposed doctrines, had madea deep impression on the writers of the ancientworld. There is a reference to them in a frasf-ment of Aristotle (which may not, however, begenuine) that is of interest as assigning thema place in express terms both among the Celtsand the Galatse. The prominent feature of theirteaching which had attracted the attention ofother writers, such as the historian DiodorusSiculus and the Christian theologian Clement ofAlexandria, was the resemblance of their doctrineconcerning the immortality and transmigration ofthe soul to the views of Pythagoras. Ancient iwriters, however, did not always remember thata religious or philosophical doctrine must not betreated as a thing apart, but must be interpretedin its whole context in relation to its developmentin history and in the social life of the communityin which it has flourished. To some of theancients the superficial resemblance betweenthe Druidic doctrine of the soul's future andthe teaching attributed to Pythagoras was theessential point, and this was enough to givethe Druids a reputation for philosophy, so that

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CELTIC RELIGIONa writer like Clement of Alexandria goes so far asto regard the Druids of the ' Galatee ' along withthe prophets of the Egyptians, the ' ChaldiBans 'of the Assyrians, the ' philosophers of the Celts,'and the Magi of the Persians as the pioneers ofphilosophy among the barbarians before it spreadto the Greeks. The reason for the distinctiondrawn in this passage between the 'Druids ofthe Galatse ' and ' the philosophers of the Celts 'is not clear. Diodorus Siculus calls attention tothe Druidic doctrine that the souls of men wereimmortal, and that after the lapse of an appointednumber of years they came to life again, the soulthen entering into another body. He says thatthere were certain 'philosophers and theolo-gians' that Avere called Druids who were heldin exceptional honour. In addition to these, theCelts, he says, had also seers, who foretold thefuture from the flight of birds and by meansof the offering of sacrifices. According to him itwas these priestly seers who had the masses insubjection to them. In great affairs they had, hesays, the practice of divination by the slaughterof a human victim, and the observ^ation of theattitude in which he fell, the contortions of thelimbs, the spurting of the blood, and the like.This, he states, was an ancient and established

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THE DRUIDS AS THINKERSpractice. Moreover, it was the custom, accordingto Diodorus, to make no sacrifice without the

j

presence of a philosopher (apparently a Druid in !addition to the sacrificing seer), the theory being |that those who were authorities on the divine \nature were to the gods intelligible mediatorsfor the offering of gifts and the presentation ofpetitions. These philosophers were in great re-quest, together with their poets, in war as wellas in peace, and were consulted not merely bythe men of their own side, but also by those ofthe eneni}''. Even when two armies were on thepoint of joining battle, these philosophers hadbeen able, Diodorus says, to step into the spacebetween them and to stop them from fighting,exactly as if they had charmed wild beasts. Themoral which Diodorus draws from this is, thateven among the wildest of barbarians the spiritedprinciple of the soul yields to wisdom, and thatAres (the god of war) even there respects theMuses. It is clear from this account that Diodorushad in mind the three classes of non-militaryprofessional men among the Celts, to whom otherancient writers also refer, namely, the Bards, theSeers, and the Druids. His narrative is apparently*an expansion, in the light of his readmg andphilosophical meditation, of information supplied

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CELTIC RELIGIONby previous writers, notably Posidonius. Thelatter, too, appears to have been Julius Caesar'schief authority, in addition to his own observa-tion, but Caesar does not appear expressly toindicate the triple division here in question. Theaccount which he gives is important, and wouldbe even more valuable than it is had he told ushow far what he describes was written from his ownpersonal information, and the degree of variation(if any) of religious practice in different districts.However, Cesar's statements deserve the closestconsideration. After calling attention to thedivision of the Gaulish aristocracy into two mainsections, the Druids and the Knights, he proceedsto speak of the Druids. These were occupied, hesays, with religious matters, they attended to publicand private sacrifices, and interpreted omens.Moreover, they were the teachers of the country.To them the young men congregated for knowledge,and the pupils held their teachers in great respect.They, too, were the judges in public and private

; disputes : it was they who awarded damages andpenalties. Any contumacy in reference to theirjudgments was punished by exclusion from the

! sacrifices. This sentence of excommunication wasi

/ the severest punishment among the Gauls. Themen so punished were treated as outlaws, and48


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CiESAR'S ACCOUNT OF THE DRUIDScut off' from all human society, with its rightsand privileges. Over these Druids there was onehead, who wielded the highest influence amongthem. On his death the nearest of the othersin dignity succeeded him, or, if several were equal,the election of a successor was made by the voteof the Druids. Sometimes the primacy was notdecided without the arbitrament of arms. TheDruids met at a fixed time of the year in a con-secrated spot in the territory of the Carnutes, thedistrict which was regarded as being in the centreof the whole of Gaul. This assembly of Druidsformed a court for the decision of cases broughtto them from everywhere around. It was thought,Csesar says, that the doctrine of the Druids wasdiscovered in Britain and thence carried over intoGaul. At that time, too, those who wanted tomake a profounder study of it resorted thitherfor their training. The Druids had immunityfrom military service and from the payment oftribute. These privileges drew many into train-ing for the profession, some of their own accord,others at the instance of parents and relatives.While in training they were said to learn by hearta large number of verses, and some went so faras to spend twenty years in their course of pre-paration. The Druids held it wrong to put theirD 49


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CELTIC RELIGIONreligious teaching in writing, though, in almosteverything else, whether public or private affairs,they made use of Greek letters. Caesar thoughtthat they discouraged writing on the one hand,lest their teaching should become public property ;on the other, lest reliance upon writing shouldlessen the cultivation of the memory. To thisrisk Csesar could testify from his own knowledge.jTheir cardinal doctrine was that souls did notperish, but that after death they passed fromone person to another; and this they regardedas a supreme incentive to valour, since, with theprospect of immortality, the fear of death countedfor nothing. They carried on, moreover, manydiscussions about the stars and their motion, thesrreatness of the universe and the lands, the natureof things, the strength and power of the immortalgods, and communicated their knowledge to theirpupils. In another passage Csesar says that theGauls as a people were extremely devoted toreligious ideas and practices. Men who wereseriously ill, who were engaged in war, or whostood in any peril, offered, or promised to offer,human sacrifices, and made use of the Druidsas their agents for such sacrifices. Their theorywas, that the immortal gods could not beappeased unless a human life were given for a

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THE DRUIDS AND PYTHAGORAShuman life. In addition to these private sacrifices,they had also similar human sacrifices of a publiccharacter. Cassar further contrasts the Germanswith the Gauls, saying that the former had noDruids to preside over matters of religion, andthat they paid no attention to sacrifices.In his work on divination, Cicero, too, refers tothe profession which the Druids made of naturalscience, and of the power of foretelling the future,and instances the case of the ^duan Diviciacus,his brother's guest and friend. Nothing is heresaid by Cicero of the three classes imiilied inDiodorus, but Timagenes (quoted in Ammianus)refers to the three classes under the names'bardi,' 'euhages' (a mistake for 'vates'), and' drasidse ' (a mistake for ' druidse '). The study ofnature and of the heavens is here attributed tothe second class of seers (vates). The highestclass, that of the Druids, were, he says, in accord-ance with the rule of Pythagoras, closely linkedtogether in confraternities, and by acquiring acertain loftiness of mind from their investigationsinto things that were hidden and exalted, theydespised human affairs and declared the soulimmortal. We see here the view expressed thatsocially as well as intellectually the Druids livedaccording to the Pythagorean philosophy. Origen

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CELTIC RELIGIONalso refers to the view that was prevalent in histime, that Zamolxis, the servant of Pythagoras,had taught the Druids the philosophy of Pytha-goras. He further states that the Druids practisedsorcery. The triple division of the non-militaryaristocracy is perhaps best given by Strabo, theGreek geographer, who here follows Posidonius.

i The three classes are the Bards, the SeersI (ouateis=vates), and Druids. The Bards were/ hymn-writers and poets, the Seers sacrificers andi men of science, while the Druids, in addition tonatural science, practised also moral philosophy.They were regarded as the justest of men, and onthis account were intrusted with the settlementof private and pubhc disputes. They had been themeans of preventing armies from fighting whenon the very verge of battle, and were especiallyintrusted with the judgment of cases involvinghuman life. According to Strabo, they andtheir fellow-countrymen held that souls and theuniverse were immortal, but that fire and waterwould sometime prevail. Sacrifices were nevermade, Strabo says, without the intervention ofthe Druids. Pomponius Mela says that in histime (c. 44 A.D.), though the ancient savagery wasno more, and the Gauls abstained from humansacrifices, some traces of their former practices

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THE DRUIDS AS TEACHERSstill remained, notably in their habit of cutting aportion of the flesh of those condemned to deathafter bringing them to the altars. The Gauls,he says, in spite of their traces of barbarism,had an eloquence of their own, and had theDruids as their teachers in philosophy. Theseprofessed to know the size and form of the earthand of the universe, the motions of the sky andstars, and the will of the gods. He refers, asCaisar does, to their work in education, and saysthat it was carried on in caves " or in secludedgroves. Mela speaks of their doctrine of im-mortality, but says nothing as to the entry ofsouls into other bodies. As a proof of thisbelief he speaks of the practice of burning andburying with the dead things appropriate to theneeds of the living. Lucan, the Latin poet, inhis Pharsalia, refers to the seclusion of theDruids' groves and to their doctrine of immor-tality. The Scholiasts' notes on this passage areafter the manner of their kind, and add verylittle to our knowledge. In Pliny's NaturalHistory (xvi, 249), however, we seem to be faceto face with another, though perhaps a distorted,tradition. Pliny Avas an indefatigable compiler,and appears partly by reading, partly by personalobservation, to have noticed phases of Celtic

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CELTIC RELIGIONreligious practices which other writers had over-looked. In the iirst place he calls attention to

\ the veneration in which the Gauls held the\ mistletoe and the tree on which it grew, provided\ that that tree was the oak. Hence their pre-I dilection for oak groves and their requirement' of oak leaves for all religious rites. Pliny hereremarks on the consonance of this practice withthe etymology of the name Druid as interpretedeven through Greek (the Greek for an oak beingdrts). Were not this respect for the oak andfor the mistletoe paralleled by numerous examplesof tree and plant-worship given by Dr. Frazerand others, it might well have been suspectedthat Pliny was here quoting some writer whohad tried to argue from the etymology of thename Druid. Another suspicious circumstancein Pliny's account is his reference to the serpent'segg composed of snakes rolled together into aball. He states that he himself had seen suchan 'egg,' of about the size of an apple. Pliny,too, states that Tiberius Ca?sar abolished by adecree of the Senate the Druids and the kindof seers and physicians the Gauls then had.This statement, when read in its context, pro-bably refers to the prohibition of human sacri-fices. The historian Suetonius, in his account

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A^ARYING USE OF THE NAME DRUIDof the Emperor Claudius, also states that Augustushad prohibited ' the religion of the Druids '(which, he says, ' Avas one of fearful savagery ')to Roman citizens, but that Claudius had entirelyabolished it. What is here also meant, in viewof the description given of Druidism, is doubtlessthe abolishing of its human sacrifices. In laterLatin writers there are several references toDruidesses, but these were probably only sor-ceresses. In Irish the name drui (genitivedruad) meant a magician, and the Avord derwyddin medicieval Welsh Avas especially used in refer-ence to the vaticinations Avhich Avere then popularin Wales.When Ave analyse the testimony of ancient

writers concerning the Druids, Ave see in thefirst place that to different minds the name con-noted different things. To Ctesar it is the generalname for the non-military professional class,Avhether priests, seers, teachers, laAvyers, or judges.To others the Druids are pre-eminently the philo-sophers and teachers of the Gauls, and are dis-tinguished from the seers designated rates. Toothers again, such as Pliny, they Avere the priestsof the oak-ritual, Avhence their name Avas derived.In vicAv of the variety of grades of civilisationthen co-existing in Gaul and Britain, it is not

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CELTIC RELIGIONimprobable that the development of the

non-military professional class varied very considerablyin different districts, and that all the aspects ofDruidism which the ancient writers specify foundtheir appropriate places in the social system ofthe Celts. In Gaul and Britain, as elsewhere,the office of the primitive tribal medicine-man was capable of indefinite development, andall the forms of its evolution could not haveproceeded pari passu where the sociological con-ditions found such scope for variation. It maywell be that the oak and mistletoe ceremonies,for example, lingered in remote agricultural dis-tricts long after they had ceased to interest menalongf the main routes of Celtic civilisation. Thebucolic mind does not readily abandon the prac-tices of millennia.

In addition to the term Druid, we find inAulus Hirtius' continuation of Coesar's GallicWar (Bk. viii., c. xxxviii., 2), as well as on twoinscriptions, one at Le-Puy-en-Velay (Dep. Haute-Loire), and the other at Macon (Dep. Saone-et-Loire), another priestly title, ' gutuater.' At Maconthe office is that of a ' gutuater Martis,' but of itsspecial features nothing is known.

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CHAPTER VIITHE CELTIC OTHER-WORLD

In the preceding chapter we have seen that thebehef was widely prevalent among Greek andRoman writers that the Druids taught the im-mortality of the soul. Some of these writers,too, point out the undoubted fact, attested byArcheology, that objects which would be service- \able to the living were buried with the dead, and Ithis was regarded as a confirmation of the view )that the immortality of souls was to the Celts an fobject of belief. The stud}^ of Archasology on theone hand, and of Comparative Religion on theother, certainly leads to the conclusion that inthe Bronze and the Early Iron Age, and in allprobability in the Stone Age, the idea prevailedthat death was not the end of man. The holedcromlechs of the later Stone Age were probablydesigned for the egress and ingress of souls. Thefood and the weapons that were buried withthe dead were thought to be objects of genuine

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CELTIC KELIGIONneed. Roman religion, too, in some of its ritesprovided means for the periodical expulsion ofhungry and hostile spirits of the dead, and fortheir pacification by the offer of food. A tomband its adjuncts were meant not merely for thehonour of the dead, but also for the protectionof the living. A clear line of distinction wasdrawn between satisfied and beneficent ghostslike the Manes, and the unsatisfied and hostileghosts like the Lemures and Larvae. To theCeltic mind, when its analytical powers hadcome to birth, and man was sufficiently self-conscious to reflect upon himself, the problem ofhis own nature pressed for some solution. Inthese solutions the breath, the blood, the name,the head, and even the hair generally played apart, but these would not in themselves explainthe mysterious phenomena of sleep, of dreams, ofepileps}^ of madness, of disease, of man's shadowand his reflection, and of man's death. By longfamiliarity with the scientific or quasi-scientificexplanations of these things, we find it difficultto realise fully their constant fascination for early]nan, who had his thinkers and philosophies

\ like ourselves. One very widely accepted solution1 of early man in the Celtic Avorld was, that withinhim there was another self which could live a

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EARLY IDEAS OF THE SOULlife of its own apart from the body, and whichsurvived even death, burial, and burning. Some-times this inner self was associated with the breath,whence, for example, the Latin ' anima ' and theWelsh 'enaid,' both meaning the soul, from theroot an-, to breathe. At other times the termemployed for the second self had reference toman's shadow : the Greek ' skia,' the Latin 'umbra,'the Welsh ' ysgawd,' the English ' shade.' Thereare abundant evidences, too, that the life-prin-ciple was frequently regarded as being especiallyassociated with the blood. Another tendency, ofwhich Principal Rhj^s has given numerous ex-amples in his Welsh folk-lore, was to regard thesoul as callable of taking a visible form, notnecessarily human, preferably that of some wingedcreature. In ancient writers there is no informa-tion as to the views prevalent among the Celtsregarding the forms or the abodes of the spiritsof the dead, beyond the statement that the Druidstaught the doctrine of their re-birth. We arethus compelled to look to the evidence affordedby myth, legend, and folk-lore. These give fairindications as to the types of earlier popularbelief in these matters, but it Avould be a mistaketo assume that the ideas embodied in them hadremained entirely unchanged from remote times.

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CELTIC RELIGIONThe mind of man at certain levels is quite capableof evolving new myths and fresh folk-lore alongthe lines of its own psychology and its own logic.The forms which the soul could take doubtlessvaried greatly in men's opinions in different dis-tricts and in different mental perspectives, butfolk-lore tends to confirm the view that earlyman, in the Celtic world as elsewhere, tended toemphasise his conception of the subtlety andmobility of the soul as contrasted with the body.Sooner or later the primitive philosopher wasbound to consider whither the soul went in dreamsor in death. He may not at first have thoughtof any other sphere than that of his own normallife, but other questions, such as the home of thespirits of vegetation in or under the earth, wouldsuggest, even if this thought had not occurredto him before, that the spirits of men, too, hadentrance to the world below. Whether this worldwas further

picturedin

imagination dependedlargely on the poetic genius of any given people.The folk-lore of the Celtic races bears abundanttestimony to their belief that beneath this worldthere was another. The 'annwfn' of the Welshwas distinctly conceived in the folk-lore embodiedin mediseval poetry as being ' is elfydd ' (beneaththe world). In medieval Welsh legend, again,

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THE HOME OF THE DEADthis lower world is regarded as divided intokingdoms, like this world, and its kings, likeArawn and Hafgan in the Mabinogi of Pwyll,are represented as being sometimes engaged inconflict. From this lower world had come to mansome of the blessings of civilisation, and amongthem the much prized gift of swine. The lowerAvorld could be even plundered by enterprisingheroes. Marriages like that of Pwyll and Rhiannonwere possible between the dwellers of the oneworld and the other. The other-world of theCelts does not seem, however, to have been alwayspictured as beneath the earth. Irish and Welshlegend combine in viewing it at times as situatedon distant islands, and Welsh folk-lore containsseveral suggestions of another world situated be-neath the waters of a lake, a river, or a sea. Inone or two passages also ofWelsh mediseval poetrythe shades are represented as wandering in thewoods of Caledonia (Coed Celyddon). This wasno doubt a traditional idea in those families thatmigrated to Wales in post-Roman times fromStrathclyde. To those who puzzled over the fateof the souls of the dead the idea of their re-birthwas a very natural solution, and Mr. Alfred Nutt,in his Voyage of Bran, has called attention tothe occurrence of this idea in Irish legend. It

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CELTIC RELIGIONdoes not follow, however, that the souls of allmen would enjoy the privilege of this re-birth.As Mr. Alfred Nutt points out, Irish legend seemsto regard this re-birth only as the privilege ofthe truly great. It is of interest to note thecurious persistence of similar ideas as to deathand the other-world in literature written even inChristian times and by monastic scribes. InWelsh, in addition to Annwfn, a term whichseems to mean the 'Not-world,' we have othernames for the world below, such as ' anghar,'the loveless place ; ' difant,' the unrimmed place(whence the modern Welsh word ' difancoU,' lostfor ever) ; ' aft'wys,' the abyss ; ' affan,' the landinvisible. The upper-world is sometimes caUed' elfydd,' sometimes ' adfant,' the latter termmeaning the place whose rim is turned back.Apparently it implies a picture of the earth asa disc, whose rim or lip is curved back so as toprevent

men from falling over into the ' difant,'or the rimless place. In modern Celtic folk-lorethe various local other-worlds are the abodes offairies, and in these traditions there may possiblybe, as Principal Rhj^s has suggested, some inter-mixture of reminiscences of the earlier inhabit-ants of the various districts. Modern folk-lore,like mediaeval legend, has its stories of the inter-

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CELTIC COXCEPTION OF OTHER-WORLDmarriages of natives of this world with those ofthe other-world, often located underneath a lake.The curious reader Avill find several examples ofsuch stories in Princi^^al Rhys's collection of Welshand Manx folk-lore, i In Irish legend one ofthe most classical of these stories is that of thebetrothal of Etain, a story which has severalpoints of contact with the narrative of the meet-ing of Pwyll and Rhiannon in the Welsh Ma-binogi. The name of Arthur's wife, Gwenhw}^ar,which means ' the White Spectre,' also suggeststhat originally she too played a part in a storyof the same kind. In all these and similarnarratives, it is important to note the way inwhich the Celtic conceptions of the other-world,in Britain and in Ireland, have been coloured bythe geographical aspects of these two countries,by their seas, their islands, their caves, theirmounds, their lakes, and their mountains. Thelocal other-worlds of these lands bear, as wemight have expected, the clear impress of theirorigin. On the whole the conceptions of theother-world which we meet in Celtic legend arejoyous ; it is a land of youth and beauty. Cuchu-lainn, the Irish hero, for example, is broughtin a boat to an exceedingly fair island roundwhich there is a silver wall and a bronze palisade.

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CELTIC RELIGIONIn one Welsh legend the cauldron of the Headof Annwfn has around it a rim of pearls. OneIrish story has a naive description of the gloriesof the Celtic Elysium in the words ' Admirablewas that land : there are three trees there alwaysbearing fruit, one pig always alive, and anotherready cooked.' Occasionally, however, we finda different picture. In the Welsh poem called' Y Gododin ' the poet Aneirin is represented asexpressing his gratitude at being rescued by theson of Llywarch Hen from 'the cruel prison ofthe earth, from the abode of death, from theloveless land.' The salient features, therefore, ofthe Celtic conceptions of the other-world aretheir consonance with the suggestions made byCeltic scenery to the Celtic imagination, thevagueness and variability of these conceptionsin different minds and in different moods, theabsence of any ethical considerations beyond theincentive given to bravery by the thought ofimmortality, and the remarkable developmentof a sense of possible inter-relations between the

/ two worlds, whether pacific or hostile. Suchconceptions, as we see from Celtic legend, provedan admirable stimulus and provided excellentmaterial for the development of Celtic narrative,and the weird and romantic effect was further

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CELTIC SCENERY AND CHARACTERheightened by the general beUef in the possi-biUties of magic and metamorphosis. Moreover,the association with innumerable place-names oflegends of this type gave the beautiful scenery ofCeltic lands an added charm, which has attachedtheir inhabitants to them with a subtle and un-conquerable attachment scarcely intelligible tothe more prosaic inhabitants of prosaic lands.To the' poetic Celt the love of country tendsto become almost a religion. The Celtic mindcannot remain indifferent to lands and seas whosevery beauty compels the eyes of man to gazeupon them to their very horizon, and the linesof observation thus drawn to the horizon arefor the Celt continual temptations to the thoughtof an infinity beyond. The preoccupation of theCeltic mind with the deities of his scenerj^, hissprings, his rivers, his seas, his forests, his moun-tains, his lakes, was in thorough keeping with thetenour of his mind, when tuned to its naturalsurroundings. j^In dealing with Celtic religion, \ "^mythology, and legend, it is not so much thevarying local and temporal forms that demandour attention, as the all-pervading and animatingspirit, which shows its essential character eventhrough the scanty remains of the ancient Celticworld. ICeltic religion bears the impress of \

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CELTIC RELIGIONnature on earth far more than nature in theheavens. The sense of the heaven above hasperhaps survived in some of the general Indo-European Celtic terms for the divine principle,and there are some traces of a religious interestin the sun and the god of thunder and lightning,but every student of Celtic religion must feeljthat the main and characteristic elements areIassociated with the earth in all the variety of itslocal phenomena. The great earth-mother andher varied offspring ever come to vieAv inCeltic religion under many names, and thefeatures even of the other-world could not be dis-sociated for the Celt from those of his mother-

' earth. The festivals of his year, too, were associ-ated Avith the decay and the renewal of herannual life. The bonfires of November, May,Midsummer, and August were doubtless meantto be associated with the vicissitudes of herlife and the spirits that were her children.For the Celt the year began in November, sothat its second half-year commenced with thefirst of May. The idea to which Csesar refers,that the Gauls believed themselves descendedfrom Dis, the god of the lower world, and beganthe year with the night, counting their timenot by days but by nights, points in the same

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CELTIC RELIGION AND NATURE'S LIFEdirection, namely that the darkness of the earthlhad a greater hold on the mind than the bright-ness of the sky. The Welsh ter

Documents

Anwyl E - Celtic Religion - 1906