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+Project Gutenberg's The Religion of the Ancient Celts, by J. A. MacCulloch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Religion of the Ancient Celts
+
+Author: J. A. MacCulloch
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2005 [EBook #14672]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, David King, and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGION
+
+OF THE
+
+ANCIENT CELTS
+
+BY
+
+J.A. MACCULLOCH
+
+
+
+HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE CATHEDRAL
+
+AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY"
+"RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE"
+"THE CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND PRIMITIVE THOUGHT"
+
+Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
+
+1911
+
+Printed by
+
+MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED,
+
+FOR
+
+T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
+
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+TO
+
+ANDREW LANG
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent
+growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study,
+earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and
+connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains
+of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under
+polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois
+de Jubainville in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts
+by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to
+have dawned, and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of
+Celtic religion. In this country the place of honour among students of
+that religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures _On
+the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_
+(1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that
+time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable
+researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I
+would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his
+Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on _The Arthurian
+Legend_, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school,
+and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the
+darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host
+of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer,
+studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in
+the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement
+with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced
+that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in
+spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must
+remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently
+the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable
+little book on _Celtic Religion_, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh
+ground.[1]
+
+In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and have
+endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of view and
+in the light of the anthropological method. I have also interpreted the
+earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals over the Celtic area
+wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so. The results are summarised
+in the introductory chapter of the work, and students of religion, and
+especially of Celtic religion, must judge how far they form a true
+interpretation of the earlier faith of our Celtic forefathers, much of
+which resembles primitive religion and folk-belief everywhere.
+
+Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and we are
+left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the existing
+materials, and to the light shed on them by the comparative study of
+religions. As this book was written during a long residence in the Isle
+of Skye, where the old language of the people still survives, and where
+the _genius loci_ speaks everywhere of things remote and strange, it may
+have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than
+in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how
+much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited
+his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters
+which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not be!
+
+I have to thank Miss Turner and Miss Annie Gilchrist for valuable help
+rendered in the work of research, and the London Library for obtaining
+for me several works not already in its possession. Its stores are an
+invaluable aid to all students working at a distance from libraries.
+
+J.A. MACCULLOCH.
+
+THE RECTORY,
+BRIDGE OF ALLAN,
+_October_ 1911.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See also my article "Celts" in Hastings' _Encyclopćdia of Religion
+and Ethics_, vol. iii.
+
+[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Throughout this book, some characters are used
+which are not part of the Latin-1 character set used in this e-book. The
+string "[^y]" is used to represent a lower-case "Y" with a circumflex
+mark on top of it, "[=a]" is used to represent a lower-case "A" with a
+line on top of it, and "[oe]" is used to represent the "oe"-ligature.
+Numbers in braces such as "{3}" are used to represent the superscription
+of numbers, which was used in the book to give edition numbers to
+books.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.                                               PAGE
+
+I. INTRODUCTORY                                        1
+II. THE CELTIC PEOPLE                                  8
+III. THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS       22
+IV. THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE                      49
+V. THE TUATHA DÉ DANANN                               63
+VI. THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS                          95
+VII. THE CÚCHULAINN CYCLE                            127
+VIII. THE FIONN SAGA                                 142
+IX.  GODS AND MEN                                    158
+X.  THE CULT OF THE DEAD                             165
+XI. PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP                         171
+XII. RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP                          181
+XIII. TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP                         198
+XIV. ANIMAL WORSHIP                                  208
+XV. COSMOGONY                                        227
+XVI. SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION               233
+XVII. TABU                                           252
+XVIII. FESTIVALS                                     256
+XIX. ACCESSORIES OF CULT                             279
+XX. THE DRUIDS                                       293
+XXI. MAGIC                                           319
+XXII. THE STATE OF THE DEAD                          333
+XXIII. REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION                    348
+XXIV. ELYSIUM                                        362
+
+
+
+LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES THROUGHOUT THIS WORK
+
+(_This list is not a Bibliography._)
+
+BRAND: Rev. J. Brand, _Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great
+Britain._ 3 vols. 1870.
+
+BLANCHET: A. Blanchet, _Traité des monnaies gauloises._ 2 vols. Paris,
+1905.
+
+BERTRAND: A. Bertrand, _Religion des gaulois._ Paris, 1897.
+
+CAMPBELL, _WHT_: J.F. Campbell, _Popular Tales of the West Highlands._ 4
+vols. Edinburgh, 1890.
+
+CAMPBELL _LF_: J.F. Campbell, _Leabhar na Feinne._ London, 1872.
+
+CAMPBELL, _Superstitions_: J.G. Campbell, _Superstitions of the
+Highlands and Islands of Scotland._ 1900.
+
+CAMPBELL, _Witchcraft_: J.G. Campbell, _Witchcraft and Second Sight in
+the Highlands and Islands of Scotland._ 1902.
+
+CORMAC: _Cormac's Glossary._ Tr. by J. O'Donovan. Ed. by W. Stokes.
+Calcutta, 1868.
+
+COURCELLE--SENEUIL.: J.L. Courcelle-Seneuil, _Les dieux gaulois d'aprčs
+les monuments figurés._ Paris, 1910.
+
+_CIL_: _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum._ Berlin, 1863 f.
+
+_CM_: _Celtic Magazine._ Inverness, 1875 f.
+
+CURTIN, _HTI_: J. Curtin, _Hero Tales of Ireland._ 1894.
+
+CURTIN, _Tales_: J. Curtin, _Tales of the Fairies and Ghost World._
+1895.
+
+DALZELL: Sir J.G. Dalzell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland._ 1835.
+
+D'ARBOIS: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Cours de litterature celtique._
+12 vols. Paris, 1883-1902.
+
+D'ARBOIS _Les Celtes_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les Celtes._ Paris,
+1904.
+
+D'ARBOIS _Les Druides_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les Druides et les
+dieux celtiques ŕ formes d'animaux._ Paris, 1906.
+
+D'ARBOIS _PH_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les premiers habitants de
+l'Europe._ 2 vols. Paris, 1889-1894.
+
+DOM MARTIN: Dom Martin, _Le religion des gaulois._ 2 vols. Paris, 1727.
+
+DOTTIN: G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir a l'étude de l'antiquité
+celtique._ Paris, 1906.
+
+ELTON: C.I. Elton, _Origins of English History._ London, 1890.
+
+FRAZER, _GB_{2}: J.G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}. 3 vols. 1900.
+
+GUEST: Lady Guest, _The Mabinogion._ 3 vols. Llandovery, 1849.
+
+HAZLITT: W.C. Hazlitt, _Faiths and Folk-lore: A Dictionary of National
+Beliefs, Superstitions, and Popular Customs._ 2 vols. 1905.
+
+HOLDER: A. Holder, _Altceltischer Sprachschatz._ 3 vols. Leipzig, 1891
+f.
+
+HULL: Miss E. Hull, _The Cuchullin Saga._ London, 1898.
+
+_IT_: See Windisch-Stokes.
+
+_JAI_: _Journal of the Anthropological Institute._ London, 1871 f.
+
+JOYCE, _OCR_: P.W. Joyce, _Old Celtic Romances_{2}. London, 1894.
+
+JOYCE, _PN_: P.W. Joyce, _History of Irish Names of Places_{4}. 2 vols.
+London, 1901.
+
+JOYCE, _SH_: P.W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland._ 2 vols.
+London, 1903.
+
+JULLIAN: C. Jullian, _Recherches sur la religion gauloise._ Bordeaux,
+1903.
+
+KEATING: Keating, _History of Ireland._ Tr. O'Mahony. London, 1866.
+
+KENNEDY: P. Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts._ 1866.
+
+LARMINIE: W. Larminie, _West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances._ 1893.
+
+LEAHY: Leahy, _Heroic Romances of Ireland._ 2 vols. London, 1905.
+
+LE BRAZ: A. Le Braz, _La Legende de la Mort chez les Bretons
+armoricains._ 2 vols. Paris, 1902.
+
+_LL_: _Leabhar Laignech_ (Book of Leinster), facsimile reprint. London,
+1880.
+
+LOTH: Loth, _Le Mabinogion._ 2 vols. Paris, 1889.
+
+_LU_: _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ (Book of the Dun Cow), facsimile reprint.
+London, 1870.
+
+MACBAIN: A. MacBain, _Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language._
+Inverness, 1896.
+
+MACDOUGALL: Macdougall, _Folk and Hero Tales._ London, 1891.
+
+MACKINLAY: J.M. Mackinlay, _Folk-lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs._
+Glasgow, 1893.
+
+MARTIN: M. Martin, _Description of the Western Islands of Scotland_{2}.
+London, 1716.
+
+MAURY: A. Maury, _Croyances et legendes du Moyen Age._ Paris, 1896.
+
+MONNIER: D. Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparées._ Paris, 1854.
+
+MOORE: A.W. Moore, _Folk-lore of the Isle of Man._ 1891.
+
+NUTT-MEYER: A. Nutt and K. Meyer, _The Voyage of Bran._ 2 vols. London,
+1895-1897.
+
+O'CURRY _MC_: E. O'Curry, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish._ 4
+vols. London, 1873.
+
+O'CURRY _MS. Mat_: E. O'Curry, _MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History._
+Dublin, 1861.
+
+O'GRADY: S.H. O'Grady, _Silva Gadelica._ 2 vols. 1892.
+
+REES: Rev. W.J. Rees, _Lives of Cambro-British Saints._ Llandovery,
+1853.
+
+REINACH, BF: S. Reinach, _Bronzes Figurés de la Gaule romaine._ Paris,
+1900.
+
+REINACH, BF _Catal. Sommaire_: S. Reinach, _Catalogue Commaire du Musée
+des Antinquitée Nationales_{4}. Paris.
+
+REINACH, BF CMR: S. Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions._ 2 vols.
+Paris, 1905.
+
+RC: _Revue Celtique._ Paris, 1870 f.
+
+RENEL: C. Renel, _Religions de la Gaule._ Paris 1906.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _AL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _The Arthurian Legend._ Oxford, 1891.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _CB_{4}: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Celtic Britain_{4}. London, 1908.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _CFL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Celtic Folk-Lore._ 2 vols. Oxford,
+1901.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _HL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Hibbert Lectures on Celtic
+Heathendom._ London, 1888.
+
+SÉBILLOT: P. Sebillot, _La Folk-lore de la France._ 4 vols. Paris, 1904
+f.
+
+SKENE: W.F. Skene, _Four Ancient Books of Wales._ 2 vols. Edinburgh,
+1868.
+
+STOKES, _TIG_: Whitley Stokes, _Three Irish Glossaries._ London, 1862.
+
+STOKES, _Trip. Life_: Whitley Stokes, _The Tripartite Life of Patrick._
+London 1887.
+
+STOKES, _US_: Whitley Stokes, _Urkeltischer Sprachschatz._ Göttingen,
+1894 (in Fick's _Vergleichende Wörterbuch_{4}).
+
+TAYLOR: I. Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans._ London, n.d.
+
+_TSC_: _Transactions of Society of Cymmrodor._
+
+_TOS_: _Transactions of the Ossianic Society._ Dublin 1854-1861.
+
+_Trip. Life_: See Stokes.
+
+WILDE: Lady Wilde, _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland._ 2
+vols. 1887.
+
+WINDISCH, _Táin_: E. Windisch, _Die altirische Heldensage Táin Bó
+Cúalgne._ Leipzig, 1905.
+
+WINDISCH-STOKES, _IT_: E. Windisch and W. Stokes, _Irische Texte._
+Leipzig, 1880 f.
+
+WOOD-MARTIN: Wood-Martin, _Elder Faiths of Ireland._ 2 vols. London,
+1903.
+
+_ZCP_: _Zeitschrift für Celtische Philologie._ Halle, 1897 f.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell
+its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of
+Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case
+liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult,
+remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and
+aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic
+religion! The bygone faith of a people who have inspired the world with
+noble dreams must be constructed painfully, and often in fear and
+trembling, out of fragmentary and, in many cases, transformed remains.
+
+We have the surface observations of classical observers, dedications in
+the Romano-Celtic area to gods mostly assimilated to the gods of the
+conquerors, figured monuments mainly of the same period, coins, symbols,
+place and personal names. For the Irish Celts there is a mass of written
+material found mainly in eleventh and twelfth century MSS. Much of this,
+in spite of alteration and excision, is based on divine and heroic
+myths, and it also contains occasional notices of ritual. From Wales
+come documents like the _Mabinogion_, and strange poems the personages
+of which are ancient gods transformed, but which tell nothing of rite or
+cult.[2] Valuable hints are furnished by early ecclesiastical documents,
+but more important is existing folk-custom, which preserves so much of
+the old cult, though it has lost its meaning to those who now use it.
+Folk-tales may also be inquired of, if we discriminate between what in
+them is Celtic and what is universal. Lastly, Celtic burial-mounds and
+other remains yield their testimony to ancient belief and custom.
+
+From these sources we try to rebuild Celtic paganism and to guess at its
+inner spirit, though we are working in the twilight on a heap of
+fragments. No Celt has left us a record of his faith and practice, and
+the unwritten poems of the Druids died with them. Yet from these
+fragments we see the Celt as the seeker after God, linking himself by
+strong ties to the unseen, and eager to conquer the unknown by religious
+rite or magic art. For the things of the spirit have never appealed in
+vain to the Celtic soul, and long ago classical observers were struck
+with the religiosity of the Celts. They neither forgot nor transgressed
+the law of the gods, and they thought that no good befell men apart from
+their will.[3] The submission of the Celts to the Druids shows how they
+welcomed authority in matters of religion, and all Celtic regions have
+been characterised by religious devotion, easily passing over to
+superstition, and by loyalty to ideals and lost causes. The Celts were
+born dreamers, as their exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much
+that is spiritual and romantic in more than one European literature is
+due to them.
+
+The analogy of religious evolution in other faiths helps us in
+reconstructing that of the Celts. Though no historic Celtic group was
+racially pure, the profound influence of the Celtic temperament soon
+"Celticised" the religious contributions of the non-Celtic element which
+may already have had many Celtic parallels. Because a given Celtic rite
+or belief seems to be "un-Aryan," it need not necessarily be borrowed.
+The Celts had a savage past, and, conservative as they were, they kept
+much of it alive. Our business, therefore, lies with Celtic religion as
+a whole. These primitive elements were there before the Celts migrated
+from the old "Aryan" home; yet since they appear in Celtic religion to
+the end, we speak of them as Celtic. The earliest aspect of that
+religion, before the Celts became a separate people, was a cult of
+nature spirits, or of the life manifested in nature. But men and women
+probably had separate cults, and, of the two, perhaps that of the latter
+is more important. As hunters, men worshipped the animals they slew,
+apologising to them for the slaughter. This apologetic attitude, found
+with all primitive hunters, is of the nature of a cult. Other animals,
+too sacred to be slain, would be preserved and worshipped, the cult
+giving rise to domestication and pastoral life, with totemism as a
+probable factor. Earth, producing vegetation, was the fruitful mother;
+but since the origin of agriculture is mainly due to women, the Earth
+cult would be practised by them, as well as, later, that of vegetation
+and corn spirits, all regarded as female. As men began to interest
+themselves in agriculture, they would join in the female cults, probably
+with the result of changing the sex of the spirits worshipped. An
+Earth-god would take the place of the Earth-mother, or stand as her
+consort or son. Vegetation and corn spirits would often become male,
+though many spirits, even when they were exalted into divinities,
+remained female.
+
+With the growth of religion the vaguer spirits tended to become gods and
+goddesses, and worshipful animals to become anthropomorphic divinities,
+with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims. And as the
+cult of vegetation spirits centred in the ritual of planting and sowing,
+so the cult of the divinities of growth centred in great seasonal and
+agricultural festivals, in which the key to the growth of Celtic
+religion is to be found. But the migrating Celts, conquering new lands,
+evolved divinities of war; and here the old female influence is still at
+work, since many of these are female. In spite of possessing so many
+local war-gods, the Celts were not merely men of war. Even the _equites_
+engaged in war only when occasion arose, and agriculture as well as
+pastoral industry was constantly practised, both in Gaul and Britain,
+before the conquest.[4] In Ireland, the belief in the dependence of
+fruitfulness upon the king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished
+there.[5] Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave rise to culture
+divinities, perhaps evolved from gods of growth, since later myths
+attributed to them both the origin of arts and crafts, and the
+introduction of domestic animals among men. Possibly some culture gods
+had been worshipful animals, now worshipped as gods, who had given these
+animals to man. Culture-goddesses still held their place among
+culture-gods, and were regarded as their mothers. The prominence of
+these divinities shows that the Celts were more than a race of warriors.
+
+The pantheon was thus a large one, but on the whole the divinities of
+growth were more generally important. The older nature spirits and
+divine animals were never quite forgotten, especially by the folk, who
+also preserved the old rituals of vegetation spirits, while the gods of
+growth were worshipped at the great festivals. Yet in essence the lower
+and the higher cults were one and the same, and, save where Roman
+influence destroyed Celtic religion, the older primitive strands are
+everywhere apparent. The temperament of the Celt kept him close to
+nature, and he never quite dropped the primitive elements of his
+religion. Moreover, the early influence of female cults of female
+spirits and goddesses remained to the end as another predominant factor.
+
+Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character, each tribe
+possessing its own group, each god having functions similar to those of
+other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more universal character,
+absorbing divinities with similar functions. Still this local character
+must be borne in mind. The numerous divinities of Gaul, with differing
+names--but, judging by their assimilation to the same Roman divinity,
+similar functions, are best understood as gods of local groups. This is
+probably true also of Britain and Ireland. But those gods worshipped far
+and wide over the Celtic area may be gods of the undivided Celts, or
+gods of some dominant Celtic group extending their influence on all
+sides, or, in some cases, popular gods whose cult passed beyond the
+tribal bounds. If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the
+local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be made
+to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere the
+same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in
+local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul. Moreover, the comparison of the
+various testimonies of onlookers points to a general similarity, while
+the permanence of the primitive elements in Celtic religion must have
+tended to keep it everywhere the same. Though in Gaul we have only
+inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those testimonies,
+as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both regions, point to the
+similarity of religious phenomena. The Druids, as a more or less
+organised priesthood, would assist in preserving the general likeness.
+
+Thus the primitive nature-spirits gave place to greater or lesser gods,
+each with his separate department and functions. Though growing
+civilisation tended to separate them from the soil, they never quite
+lost touch with it. In return for man's worship and sacrifices, they
+gave life and increase, victory, strength, and skill. But these
+sacrifices, had been and still often were rites in which the
+representative of a god was slain. Some divinities were worshipped over
+a wide area, most were gods of local groups, and there were spirits of
+every place, hill, wood, and stream. Magic rites mingled with the cult,
+but both were guided by an organised priesthood. And as the Celts
+believed in unseen gods, so they believed in an unseen region whither
+they passed after death.
+
+Our knowledge of the higher side of Celtic religion is practically a
+blank, since no description of the inner spiritual life has come down to
+us. How far the Celts cultivated religion in our sense of the term, or
+had glimpses of Monotheism, or were troubled by a deep sense of sin, is
+unknown. But a people whose spiritual influence has later been so great,
+must have had glimpses of these things. Some of them must have known the
+thirst of the soul for God, or sought a higher ethical standard than
+that of their time. The enthusiastic reception of Christianity, the
+devotion of the early Celtic saints, and the character of the old Celtic
+church, all suggest this.
+
+The relation of the Celtic church to paganism was mainly intolerant,
+though not wholly so. It often adopted the less harmful customs of the
+past, merging pagan festivals in its own, founding churches on the sites
+of the old cult, dedicating sacred wells to a saint. A saint would visit
+the tomb of a pagan to hear an old epic rehearsed, or would call up
+pagan heroes from hell and give them a place in paradise. Other saints
+recall dead heroes from the Land of the Blessed, and learn the nature of
+that wonderland and the heroic deeds
+
+  "Of the old days, which seem to be
+   Much older than any history
+   That is written in any book."
+
+Reading such narratives, we gain a lesson in the fine spirit of
+Christian tolerance and Christian sympathy.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Some writers saw in the bardic poetry a Druidic-esoteric system and
+traces of a cult practised secretly by the bards--the "Neo-Druidic
+heresy"; see Davies, _Myth. of the Brit. Druids_, 1809; Herbert, _The
+Neo-Druidic Heresy_, 1838. Several French writers saw in "Druidism" a
+monotheistic faith, veiled under polytheism.
+
+[3] Livy, v. 46; Cćsar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, _Cyneg_.
+xxxv. 1.
+
+[4] Cćsar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained there and
+cultivated the lands."
+
+[5] Cf. Pliny, _HN_ xvii. 7, xviii. 18 on the wheeled ploughs and
+agricultural methods of Gauls and Britons. Cf. also Strabo, iv. 1. 2,
+iv. 5. 5; Girald. Camb. _Top. Hib._ i. 4, _Descr. Camb._ i. 8; Joyce,
+_SH_ ii. 264.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE CELTIC PEOPLE.
+
+
+Scrutiny reveals the fact that Celtic-speaking peoples are of differing
+types--short and dark as well as tall and fairer Highlanders or
+Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types of Irishmen. Men
+with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But all alike have
+the same character and temperament, a striking witness to the influence
+which the character as well as the language of the Celts, whoever they
+were, made on all with whom they mingled. Ethnologically there may not
+be a Celtic race, but something was handed down from the days of
+comparative Celtic purity which welded different social elements into a
+common type, found often where no Celtic tongue is now spoken. It
+emerges where we least expect it, and the stolid Anglo-Saxon may
+suddenly awaken to something in himself due to a forgotten Celtic strain
+in his ancestry.
+
+Two main theories of Celtic origins now hold the field:
+
+(1) The Celts are identified with the progenitors of the short,
+brachycephalic "Alpine race" of Central Europe, existing there in
+Neolithic times, after their migrations from Africa and Asia. The type
+is found among the Slavs, in parts of Germany and Scandinavia, and in
+modern France in the region of Cćsar's "Celtć," among the Auvergnats,
+the Bretons, and in Lozčre and Jura. Representatives of the type have
+been found in Belgian and French Neolithic graves.[6] Professor Sergi
+calls this the "Eurasiatic race," and, contrary to general opinion,
+identifies it with the Aryans, a savage people, inferior to the
+dolichocephalic Mediterranean race, whose language they Aryanised.[7]
+Professor Keane thinks that they were themselves an Aryanised folk
+before reaching Europe, who in turn gave their acquired Celtic and
+Slavic speech to the preceding masses. Later came the Belgć, Aryans, who
+acquired the Celtic speech of the people they conquered.[8]
+
+Broca assumed that the dark, brachycephalic people whom he identified
+with Cćsar's "Celtć," differed from the Belgć, were conquered by them,
+and acquired the language of their conquerors, hence wrongly called
+Celtic by philologists. The Belgć were tall and fair, and overran Gaul,
+except Aquitaine, mixing generally with the Celtć, who in Cćsar's time
+had thus an infusion of Belgic blood.[9] But before this conquest, the
+Celtć had already mingled with the aboriginal dolichocephalic folk of
+Gaul, Iberians, or Mediterraneans of Professor Sergi. The latter had
+apparently remained comparatively pure from admixture in Aquitaine, and
+are probably the Aquitani of Cćsar.[10]
+
+But were the short, brachycephalic folk Celts? Cćsar says the people who
+call themselves "Celtć" were called Gauls by the Romans, and Gauls,
+according to classical writers, were tall and fair.[11] Hence the Celtć
+were not a short, dark race, and Cćsar himself says that Gauls
+(including Celtć) looked with contempt on the short Romans.[12] Strabo
+also says that Celtć and Belgć had the same Gaulish appearance, i.e.
+tall and fair. Cćsar's statement that Aquitani, Galli, and Belgć differ
+in language, institutions, and laws is vague and unsupported by
+evidence, and may mean as to language no more than a difference in
+dialects. This is also suggested by Strabo's words, Celtć and Belgć
+"differ a little" in language.[13] No classical writer describes the
+Celts as short and dark, but the reverse. Short, dark people would have
+been called Iberians, without respect to skulls. Classical observers
+were not craniologists. The short, brachycephalic type is now prominent
+in France, because it has always been so, eliminating the tall, fair
+Celtic type. Conquering Celts, fewer in number than the broad and
+narrow-headed aborigines, intermarried or made less lasting alliances
+with them. In course of time the type of the more numerous race was
+bound to prevail. Even in Cćsar's day the latter probably outnumbered
+the tall and fair Celts, who had, however, Celticised them. But
+classical writers, who knew the true Celt as tall and fair, saw that
+type only, just as every one, on first visiting France or Germany, sees
+his generalised type of Frenchman or German everywhere. Later, he
+modifies his opinion, but this the classical observers did not do.
+Cćsar's campaigns must have drained Gaul of many tall and fair Celts.
+This, with the tendency of dark types to out-number fair types in South
+and Central Europe, may help to explain the growing prominence of the
+dark type, though the tall, fair type is far from uncommon.[14]
+
+(2) The second theory, already anticipated, sees in Gauls and Belgć a
+tall, fair Celtic folk, speaking a Celtic language, and belonging to the
+race which stretched from Ireland to Asia Minor, from North Germany to
+the Po, and were masters of Teutonic tribes till they were driven by
+them from the region between Elbe and Rhine.[15] Some Belgic tribes
+claimed a Germanic ancestry,[16] but "German" was a word seldom used
+with precision, and in this case may not mean Teutonic. The fair hair of
+this people has made many suppose that they were akin to the Teutons.
+But fairness is relative, and the dark Romans may have called brown hair
+fair, while they occasionally distinguished between the "fair" Gauls and
+fairer Germans. Their institutions and their religions (_pace_ Professor
+Rh[^y]s) differed, and though they were so long in contact the names of
+their gods and priests are unlike.[17] Their languages, again, though of
+"Aryan" stock, differ more from each other than does Celtic from Italic,
+pointing to a long period of Italo-Celtic unity, before Italiotes and
+Celts separated, and Celts came in contact with Teutons.[18] The typical
+German differs in mental and moral qualities from the typical Celt.
+Contrast an east country Scot, descendant of Teutonic stock, with a West
+Highlander, and the difference leaps to the eyes. Celts and Germans of
+history differ, then, in relative fairness, character, religion, and
+language.
+
+The tall, blonde Teutonic type of the Row graves is dolichocephalic. Was
+the Celtic type (assuming that Broca's "Celts" were not true Celts)
+dolicho or brachy? Broca thinks the Belgć or "Kymri" were
+dolichocephalic, but all must agree with him that the skulls are too few
+to generalise from. Celtic iron-age skulls in Britain are
+dolichocephalic, perhaps a recrudescence of the aboriginal type. Broca's
+"Kymric" skulls are mesocephalic; this he attributes to crossing with
+the short round-heads. The evidence is too scanty for generalisation,
+while the Walloons, perhaps descendants of the Belgć, have a high index,
+and some Gauls of classical art are broad-headed.[19]
+
+Skulls of the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age) are mainly
+broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic brachycephalic
+skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5 inches shorter),
+Selaigneaux, and Borreby.[20] Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled
+Belgć on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow
+folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belgć
+(Broca's Kymri), and thinks that Gaulish skulls were round, with
+beetling brows.[21] Professors Ripley and Sergi, disregarding their
+difference in stature and higher cephalic index, identify them with the
+short Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.[22]
+Might not both, however, have originally sprung from a common stock and
+reached Europe at different times?[23]
+
+But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching conclusions
+regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At some very remote
+period there may have been a Celtic type, as at some further period
+there may have been an Aryan type. But the Celts, as we know them, must
+have mingled with the aborigines of Europe and become a mixed race,
+though preserving and endowing others with their racial and mental
+characteristics. Some Gauls or Belgć were dolichocephalic, to judge by
+their skulls, others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a
+relative term. Classical observers probably generalised from the higher
+classes, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But the
+higher classes may have had varying skulls, as well as stature and
+colour of hair,[24] and Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed
+stock, and a short, dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those
+distant ages we must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed
+their characteristics, as well as the Celts themselves. What happened on
+the Eurasian steppe, the hypothetical cradle of the "Aryans," whence the
+Celts came "stepping westwards," seems clear to some, but in truth is a
+book sealed with seven seals. The men whose Aryan speech was to dominate
+far and wide may already have possessed different types of skull, and
+that age was far from "the very beginning."
+
+Thus the Celts before setting out on their _Wanderjahre_ may already
+have been a mixed race, even if their leaders were of purer stock. But
+they had the bond of common speech, institutions, and religion, and they
+formed a common Celtic type in Central and Western Europe. Intermarriage
+with the already mixed Neolithic folk of Central Europe produced further
+removal from the unmixed Celtic racial type; but though both reacted on
+each other as far as language, custom, and belief were concerned, on the
+whole the Celtic elements predominated in these respects. The Celtic
+migration into Gaul produced further racial mingling with descendants of
+the old palćolithic stock, dolichocephalic Iberians and Ligurians, and
+brachycephalic swarthy folk (Broca's Celts). Thus even the first Celtic
+arrivals in Britain, the Goidels, were a people of mixed race, though
+probably relatively purer than the late coming Brythons, the latest of
+whom had probably mingled with the Teutons. Hence among Celtic-speaking
+folk or their descendants--short, dark, broad-beaded Bretons, tall, fair
+or rufous Highlanders, tall chestnut-haired Welshmen or Irishmen,
+Highlanders of Norse descent, short, dark, narrow-headed Highlanders,
+Irishmen, and Welshmen--there is a common Celtic _facies_, the result of
+old Celtic characteristics powerful enough so to impress themselves on
+such varied peoples in spite of what they gave to the Celtic incomers.
+These peoples became Celtic, and Celtic in speech and character they
+have remained, even where ancestral physical types are reasserting
+themselves. The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or
+Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic
+characteristics--vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness,
+imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties,
+sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over easily to
+superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual morality. Some
+of these traits were already noted by classical observers.
+
+Celtic speech had early lost the initial _p_ of old Indo-European
+speech, except in words beginning with _pt_ and, perhaps, _ps_. Celtic
+_pare_ (Lat. _prć_) became _are_, met with in _Aremorici_, "the dwellers
+by the sea," _Arecluta_, "by the Clyde," the region watered by the
+Clyde. Irish _athair_, Manx _ayr_, and Irish _iasg_, represent
+respectively Latin _pater_ and _piscis_. _P_ occurring between vowels
+was also lost, e.g. Irish _caora_, "sheep," is from _kaperax_; _for_,
+"upon" (Lat. _super_), from _uper_. This change took place before the
+Goidelic Celts broke away and invaded Britain in the tenth century B.C.,
+but while Celts and Teutons were still in contact, since Teutons
+borrowed words with initial _p_, e.g. Gothic _fairguni_, "mountain,"
+from Celtic _percunion_, later _Ercunio_, the Hercynian forest. The loss
+must have occurred before 1000 B.C. But after the separation of the
+Goidelic group a further change took place. Goidels preserved the sound
+represented by _qu_, or more simply by _c_ or _ch_, but this was changed
+into _p_ by the remaining continental Celts, who carried with them into
+Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Britain (the Brythons) words in which _q_ became
+_p_. The British _Epidii_ is from Gaulish _epos_, "horse," which is in
+Old Irish _ech_ (Lat. _equus_). The Parisii take their name from
+_Qarisii_, the Pictones or Pictavi of Poictiers from _Pictos_ (which in
+the plural _Pidi_ gives us "Picts"), derived from _quicto_. This change
+took place after the Goidelic invasion of Britain in the tenth century
+B.C. On the other hand, some continental Celts may later have regained
+the power of pronouncing _q_. In Gaul the _q_ of _Sequana_ (Seine) was
+not changed to _p_, and a tribe dwelling on its banks was called the
+Sequani. This assumes that Sequana was a pre-Celtic word, possibly
+Ligurian.[25] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks, however, that Goidelic tribes,
+identified by him with Cćsar's Celtć, existed in Gaul and Spain before
+the coming of the Galli, and had preserved _q_ in their speech. To them
+we owe Sequana, as well as certain names with _q_ in Spain.[26] This at
+least is certain, that Goidelic Celts of the _q_ group occupied Gaul and
+Spain before reaching Britain and Ireland. Irish tradition and
+archćological data confirm this.[27] But whether their descendants were
+represented by Cćsar's "Celtć" must be uncertain. Celtć and Galli,
+according to Cćsar, were one and the same,[28] and must have had the
+same general form of speech.
+
+The dialects of Goidelic speech--Irish, Manx, Gaelic, and that of the
+continental Goidels--preserved the _q_ sound; those of Gallo-Brythonic
+speech--Gaulish, Breton, Welsh, Cornish--changed _q_ into _p_. The
+speech of the Picts, perhaps connected with the Pictones of Gaul, also
+had this _p_ sound. Who, then, were the Picts? According to Professor
+Rh[^y]s they were pre-Aryans,[29] but they must have been under the
+influence of Brythonic Celts. Dr. Skene regarded them as Goidels
+speaking a Goidelic dialect with Brythonic forms.[30] Mr. Nicholson
+thinks they were Goidels who had preserved the Indo-European _p_.[31]
+But might they not be descendants of a Brythonic group, arriving early
+in Britain and driven northwards by newcomers? Professor Windisch and
+Dr. Stokes regard them as Celts, allied to the Brythons rather than to
+the Goidels, the phonetics of their speech resembling those of Welsh
+rather than Irish.[32]
+
+The theory of an early Goidelic occupation of Britain has been contested
+by Professor Meyer,[33] who holds that the first Goidels reached Britain
+from Ireland in the second century, while Dr. MacBain[34] was of the
+opinion that England, apart from Wales and Cornwall, knew no Goidels,
+the place-names being Brythonic. But unless all Goidels reached Ireland
+from Gaul or Spain, as some did, Britain was more easily reached than
+Ireland by migrating Goidels from the Continent. Prominent Goidelic
+place-names would become Brythonic, but insignificant places would
+retain their Goidelic form, and to these we must look for decisive
+evidence.[35] A Goidelic occupation by the ninth century B.C. is
+suggested by the name "Cassiterides" (a word of the _q_ group) applied
+to Britain. If the Goidels occupied Britain first, they may have called
+their land _Qretanis_ or _Qritanis_, which Pictish invaders would change
+to _Pretanis_, found in Welsh "Ynys Pridain," Pridain's Isle, or Isle of
+the Picts, "pointing to the original underlying the Greek [Greek:
+Pretanikai Nęsoi] or Pictish Isles,"[36] though the change may be due to
+continental _p_ Celts trading with _q_ Celts in Britain. With the
+Pictish occupation would agree the fact that Irish Goidels called the
+Picts who came to Ireland _Cruithne=Qritani=Pre-tani_. In Ireland they
+almost certainly adopted Goidelic speech.
+
+Whether or not all the Pictish invaders of Britain were called
+"Pictavi," this word or Picti, perhaps from _quicto_ (Irish _cicht_,
+"engraver"),[37] became a general name for this people. _Q_ had been
+changed into _p_ on the Continent; hence "Pictavi" or "Pictones," "the
+tattooed men," those who "engraved" figures on their bodies, as the
+Picts certainly did. Dispossessed and driven north by incoming Brythons
+and Belgć, they later became the virulent enemies of Rome. In 306
+Eumenius describes all the northern tribes as "Caledonii and other
+Picts," while some of the tribes mentioned by Ptolemy have Brythonic
+names or names with Gaulish cognates. Place-names in the Pictish area,
+personal names in the Pictish chronicle, and Pictish names like
+"Peanfahel,"[38] have Brythonic affinities. If the Picts spoke a
+Brythonic dialect, S. Columba's need of an interpreter when preaching to
+them would be explained.[39] Later the Picts were conquered by Irish
+Goidels, the Scotti. The Picts, however, must already have mingled with
+aboriginal peoples and with Goidels, if these were already in Britain,
+and they may have adopted their supposed non-Aryan customs from the
+aborigines. On the other hand, the matriarchate seems at one time to
+have been Celtic, and it may have been no more than a conservative
+survival in the Pictish royal house, as it was elsewhere.[40] Britons,
+as well as Caledonii, had wives in common.[41] As to tattooing, it was
+practised by the Scotti ("the scarred and painted men"?), and the
+Britons dyed themselves with woad, while what seem to be tattoo marks
+appear on faces on Gaulish coins.[42] Tattooing, painting, and
+scarifying the body are varieties of one general custom, and little
+stress can be laid on Pictish tattooing as indicating a racial
+difference. Its purpose may have been ornamental, or possibly to impart
+an aspect of fierceness, or the figures may have been totem marks, as
+they are elsewhere. Finally, the description of the Caledonii, a Pictish
+people, possessing flaming hair and mighty limbs, shows that they
+differed from the short, dark pre-Celtic folk.[43]
+
+The Pictish problem must remain obscure, a welcome puzzle to
+antiquaries, philologists, and ethnologists. Our knowledge of Pictish
+religion is too scanty for the interpretation of Celtic religion to be
+affected by it. But we know that the Picts offered sacrifice before
+war--a Celtic custom, and had Druids, as also had the Celts.
+
+The earliest Celtic "kingdom" was in the region between the upper waters
+of the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube, where probably in Neolithic
+times the formation of their Celtic speech as a distinctive language
+began. Here they first became known to the Greeks, probably as a
+semi-mythical people, the Hyperboreans--the folk dwelling beyond the
+Ripoean mountains whence Boreas blew--with whom Hecatćus in the fourth
+century identifies them. But they were now known as Celts, and their
+territory as Celtica, while "Galatas" was used as a synonym of "Celtć,"
+in the third century B.C.[44] The name generally applied by the Romans
+to the Celts was "Galli" a term finally confined by them to the people
+of Gaul.[45] Successive bands of Celts went forth from this
+comparatively restricted territory, until the Celtic "empire" for some
+centuries before 300 B.C. included the British Isles, parts of the
+Iberian peninsula, Gaul, North Italy, Belgium, Holland, great part of
+Germany, and Austria. When the German tribes revolted, Celtic bands
+appeared in Asia Minor, and remained there as the Galatian Celts.
+Archćological discoveries with a Celtic _facies_ have been made in most
+of these lands but even more striking is the witness of place-names.
+Celtic _dunon_, a fort or castle (the Gaelic _dun_), is found in
+compound names from Ireland to Southern Russia. _Magos_, "a field," is
+met with in Britain, France, Switzerland, Prussia, Italy, and Austria.
+River and mountain names familiar in Britain occur on the Continent. The
+Pennine range of Cumberland has the same name as the Appenines. Rivers
+named for their inherent divinity, _devos_, are found in Britain and on
+the Continent--Dee, Deva, etc.
+
+Besides this linguistic, had the Celts also a political unity over their
+great "empire," under one head? Such a unity certainly did not prevail
+from Ireland to the Balkan peninsula, but it prevailed over a large part
+of the Celtic area. Livy, following Timagenes, who perhaps cited a lost
+Celtic epos, speaks of king Ambicatus ruling over the Celts from Spain
+to Germany, and sending his sister's sons, Bellovesus and Segovesus,
+with many followers, to found new colonies in Italy and the Hercynian
+forest.[46] Mythical as this may be, it suggests the hegemony of one
+tribe or one chief over other tribes and chiefs, for Livy says that the
+sovereign power rested with the Bituriges who appointed the king of
+Celticum, viz. Ambicatus. Some such unity is necessary to explain Celtic
+power in the ancient world, and it was made possible by unity of race or
+at least of the congeries of Celticised peoples, by religious
+solidarity, and probably by regular gatherings of all the kings or
+chiefs. If the Druids were a Celtic priesthood at this time, or already
+formed a corporation as they did later in Gaul, they must have
+endeavoured to form and preserve such a unity. And if it was never so
+compact as Livy's words suggest, it must have been regarded as an ideal
+by the Celts or by their poets, Ambicatus serving as a central figure
+round which the ideas of empire crystallised. The hegemony existed in
+Gaul, where the Arverni and their king claimed power over the other
+tribes, and where the Romans tried to weaken the Celtic unity by
+opposing to them the Aedni.[47] In Belgium the hegemony was in the hands
+of the Suessiones, to whose king Belgic tribes in Britain submitted.[48]
+In Ireland the "high king" was supreme over other smaller kings, and in
+Galatia the unity of the tribes was preserved by a council with regular
+assemblies.[49]
+
+The diffusion of the Ambicatus legend would help to preserve unity by
+recalling the mythic greatness of the past. The Boii and Insubri
+appealed to transalpine Gauls for aid by reminding them of the deeds of
+their ancestors.[50] Nor would the Druids omit to infuse into their
+pupils' minds the sentiment of national greatness. For this and for
+other reasons, the Romans, to whom "the sovereignty of all Gaul" was an
+obnoxious watch-word, endeavoured to suppress them.[51] But the Celts
+were too widely scattered ever to form a compact empire.[52] The Roman
+empire extended itself gradually in the consciousness of its power; the
+cohesion of the Celts in an empire or under one king was made impossible
+by their migrations and diffusion. Their unity, such as it was, was
+broken by the revolt of the Teutonic tribes, and their subjugation was
+completed by Rome. The dreams of wide empire remained dreams. For the
+Celts, in spite of their vigour, have been a race of dreamers, their
+conquests in later times, those of the spirit rather than of the mailed
+fist. Their superiority has consisted in imparting to others their
+characteristics; organised unity and a vast empire could never be
+theirs.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] Ripley, _Races of Europe_; Wilser, _L'Anthropologie_, xiv. 494;
+Collignon, _ibid._ 1-20; Broca, _Rev. d'Anthrop._ ii. 589 ff.
+
+[7] Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, 241 ff., 263 ff.
+
+[8] Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, 511 ff., 521, 528.
+
+[9] Broca, _Mem. d'Anthrop._ i. 370 ff. Hovelacque thinks, with Keane,
+that the Gauls learned Celtic from the dark round-heads. But Galatian
+and British Celts, who had never been in contact with the latter, spoke
+Celtic. See Holmes, _Cćsar's Conquest of Gaul_, 311-312.
+
+[10] Cćsar, i. 1; Collignon, _Mem. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_, 3{me} ser.
+i. 67.
+
+[11] Cćsar, i. 1.
+
+[12] Cćsar, ii. 30.
+
+[13] Cćsar, i. 1; Strabo, iv. 1. 1.
+
+[14] Cf. Holmes, 295; Beddoe, _Scottish Review_, xix. 416.
+
+[15] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 175.
+
+[16] Cćsar, ii. 4; Strabo, vii. 1. 2. Germans are taller and fairer than
+Gauls; Tacitus, _Agric._ ii. Cf. Beddoe, _JAI_ xx. 354-355.
+
+[17] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 374. Welsh Gwydion and Teutonic Wuotan may have
+the same root, see p. 105. Celtic Taranis has been compared to Donar,
+but there is no connection, and Taranis was not certainly a thunder-god.
+Much of the folk-religion was alike, but this applies to folk-religion
+everywhere.
+
+[18] D'Arbois, ii. 251.
+
+[19] Beddoe, _L'Anthropologie_, v. 516. Tall, fair, and highly
+brachycephalic types are still found in France, _ibid._ i. 213;
+Bortrand-Reinach, _Les Celtes_, 39.
+
+[20] Beddoe, 516; _L'Anthrop._, v. 63; Taylor, 81; Greenwell, _British
+Barrows_, 680.
+
+[21] _Fort. Rev._ xvi. 328; _Mem. of London Anthr. Soc._, 1865.
+
+[22] Ripley, 309; Sergi, 243; Keane, 529; Taylor, 112.
+
+[23] Taylor, 122, 295.
+
+[24] The Walloons are both dark and fair.
+
+[25] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 132.
+
+[26] Rh[^y]s, _Proc. Phil. Soc._ 1891; "Celtć and Galli," _Proc. Brit.
+Acad._ ii. D'Arbois points out that we do not know that these words are
+Celtic (_RC_ xii, 478).
+
+[27] See pp. 51, 376.
+
+[28] Cćsar, i. 1.
+
+[29] _CB_{4} 160.
+
+[30] Skene, i. ch. 8; see p. 135.
+
+[31] _ZCP_ iii. 308; _Keltic Researches_.
+
+[32] Windisch, "Kelt. Sprachen," Ersch-Gruber's _Encylopädie_; Stokes,
+_Linguistic Value of the Irish Annals_.
+
+[33] _THSC_ 1895-1896, 55 f.
+
+[34] _CM_ xii. 434.
+
+[35] In the Isle of Skye, where, looking at names of prominent places
+alone, Norse derivatives are to Gaelic as 3 to 2, they are as 1 to 5
+when names of insignificant places, untouched by Norse influence, are
+included.
+
+[36] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 241.
+
+[37] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 22.
+
+[38] Bede, _Eccl. Hist._ i. 12.
+
+[39] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._
+
+[40] See p. 222.
+
+[41] Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Cćsar, v. 14. See p. 223.
+
+[42] Isidore, _Etymol._ ix. 2, 103; Rh[^y]s, _CB_ 242-243; Cćsar, v. 14;
+Nicholson, _ZCP_ in. 332.
+
+[43] Tacitus, _Agric._ ii.
+
+[44] If _Celtć_ is from _qelo_, "to raise," it may mean "the lofty,"
+just as many savages call themselves "the men," _par excellence_.
+Rh[^y]s derives it from _qel_, "to slay," and gives it the sense of
+"warriors." See Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _US_ 83. _Galatć_ is from _gala_
+(Irish _gal_), "bravery." Hence perhaps "warriors."
+
+[45] "Galli" may be connected with "Galatć," but D'Arbois denies this.
+For all these titles see his _PH_ ii. 396 ff.
+
+[46] Livy, v. 31 f.; D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 304, 391.
+
+[47] Strabo, iv. 10. 3; Cćsar, i. 31, vii. 4; _Frag. Hist. Grćc._ i.
+437.
+
+[48] Cćsar, ii. 4.
+
+[49] Strabo, xii. 5. 1.
+
+[50] Polybius, ii. 22.
+
+[51] Cćsar, i. 2, 1-3.
+
+[52] On the subject of Celtic unity see Jullian, "Du patriotisme
+gaulois," _RC_ xxiii. 373.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS.
+
+
+The passage in which Cćsar sums up the Gaulish pantheon runs: "They
+worship chiefly the god Mercury; of him there are many symbols, and they
+regard him as the inventor of all the arts, as the guide of travellers,
+and as possessing great influence over bargains and commerce. After him
+they worship Apollo and Mars, Juppiter and Minerva. About these they
+hold much the same beliefs as other nations. Apollo heals diseases,
+Minerva teaches the elements of industry and the arts, Juppiter rules
+over the heavens, Mars directs war.... All the Gauls assert that they
+are descended from Dispater, their progenitor."[53]
+
+As will be seen in this chapter, the Gauls had many other gods than
+these, while the Roman gods, by whose names Cćsar calls the Celtic
+divinities, probably only approximately corresponded to them in
+functions. As the Greeks called by the names of their own gods those of
+Egypt, Persia, and Babylonia, so the Romans identified Greek, Teutonic,
+and Celtic gods with theirs. The identification was seldom complete, and
+often extended only to one particular function or attribute. But, as in
+Gaul, it was often part of a state policy, and there the fusion of cults
+was intended to break the power of the Druids. The Gauls seem to have
+adopted Roman civilisation easily, and to have acquiesced in the process
+of assimilation of their divinities to those of their conquerors. Hence
+we have thousands of inscriptions in which a god is called by the name
+of the Roman deity to whom he was assimilated and by his own Celtic
+name--Jupiter Taranis, Apollo Grannus, etc. Or sometimes to the name of
+the Roman god is added a descriptive Celtic epithet or a word derived
+from a Celtic place-name. Again, since Augustus reinstated the cult of
+the Lares, with himself as chief Lar, the epithet Augustus was given to
+all gods to whom the character of the Lares could be ascribed, e.g.
+Belenos Augustus. Cults of local gods became cults of the genius of the
+place, coupled with the genius of the emperor. In some cases, however,
+the native name stands alone. The process was aided by art. Celtic gods
+are represented after Greco-Roman or Greco-Egyptian models. Sometimes
+these carry a native divine symbol, or, in a few cases, the type is
+purely native, e.g. that of Cernunnos. Thus the native paganism was
+largely transformed before Christianity appeared in Gaul. Many Roman
+gods were worshipped as such, not only by the Romans in Gaul, but by the
+Gauls, and we find there also traces of the Oriental cults affected by
+the Romans.[54]
+
+There were probably in Gaul many local gods, tribal or otherwise, of
+roads and commerce, of the arts, of healing, etc., who, bearing
+different names, might easily be identified with each other or with
+Roman gods. Cćsar's Mercury, Mars, Minerva, etc., probably include many
+local Minervas, Mars, and Mercuries. There may, however, have been a few
+great gods common to all Gaul, universally worshipped, besides the
+numerous local gods, some of whom may have been adopted from the
+aborigines. An examination of the divine names in Holder's
+_Altceltischer Sprachschatz_ will show how numerous the local gods of
+the continental Celts must have been. Professor Anwyl reckons that 270
+gods are mentioned once on inscriptions, 24 twice, 11 thrice, 10 four
+times, 3 five times, 2 seven times, 4 fifteen times, 1 nineteen times
+(Grannos), and 1 thirty-nine times (Belenos).[55]
+
+The god or gods identified with Mercury were very popular in Gaul, as
+Cćsar's words and the witness of place-names derived from the Roman name
+of the god show. These had probably supplanted earlier names derived
+from those of the corresponding native gods. Many temples of the god
+existed, especially in the region of the Allobrogi, and bronze
+statuettes of him have been found in abundance. Pliny also describes a
+colossal statue designed for the Arverni who had a great temple of the
+god on the Puy de Dôme.[56] Mercury was not necessarily the chief god,
+and at times, e.g. in war, the native war-gods would be prominent. The
+native names of the gods assimilated to Mercury are many in number; in
+some cases they are epithets, derived from the names of places where a
+local "Mercury" was worshipped, in others they are derived from some
+function of the gods.[57] One of these titles is Artaios, perhaps
+cognate with Irish _art_, "god," or connected with _artos_, "bear."
+Professor Rh[^y]s, however, finds its cognate in Welsh _âr_, "ploughed
+land," as if one of the god's functions connected him with
+agriculture.[58] This is supported by another inscription to Mercurius
+Cultor at Wurtemberg. Local gods of agriculture must thus have been
+assimilated to Mercury. A god Moccus, "swine," was also identified with
+Mercury, and the swine was a frequent representative of the corn-spirit
+or of vegetation divinities in Europe. The flesh of the animal was often
+mixed with the seed corn or buried in the fields to promote fertility.
+The swine had been a sacred animal among the Celts, but had apparently
+become an anthropomorphic god of fertility, Moccus, assimilated to
+Mercury, perhaps because the Greek Hermes caused fertility in flocks and
+herds. Such a god was one of a class whose importance was great among
+the Celts as an agricultural people.
+
+Commerce, much developed among the settled Gauls, gave rise to a god or
+gods who guarded roads over which merchants travelled, and boundaries
+where their transactions took place. Hence we have an inscription from
+Yorkshire, "To the god who invented roads and paths," while another
+local god of roads, equated with Mercury, was Cimiacinus.[59]
+
+Another god, Ogmíos, a native god of speech, who draws men by chains
+fastened to the tip of his tongue, is identified in Lucian with
+Heracles, and is identical with the Goidelic Ogma.[60] Eloquence and
+speech are important matters among primitive peoples, and this god has
+more likeness to Mercury as a culture-god than to Heracles, Greek
+writers speaking of eloquence as binding men with the chains of Hermes.
+
+Several local gods, of agriculture, commerce, and culture, were thus
+identified with Mercury, and the Celtic Mercury was sometimes worshipped
+on hilltops, one of the epithets of the god, Dumias, being connected
+with the Celtic word for hill or mound. Irish gods were also associated
+with mounds.
+
+Many local gods were identified with Apollo both in his capacity of god
+of healing and also that of god of light.[61] The two functions are not
+incompatible, and this is suggested by the name Grannos, god of thermal
+springs both in Britain and on the Continent. The name is connected with
+a root which gives words meaning "burning," "shining," etc., and from
+which comes also Irish _grian_, "sun." The god is still remembered in a
+chant sung round bonfires in Auvergne. A sheaf of corn is set on fire,
+and called "Granno mio," while the people sing, "Granno, my friend;
+Granno, my father; Granno, my mother."[62] Another god of thermal
+springs was Borvo, Bormo, or Bormanus, whose name is derived from
+_borvo_, whence Welsh _berw_, "boiling," and is evidently connected with
+the bubbling of the springs.[63] Votive tablets inscribed Grannos or
+Borvo show that the offerers desired healing for themselves or others.
+
+The name Belenos found over a wide area, but mainly in Aquileia, comes
+from _belo-s_, bright, and probably means "the shining one." It is thus
+the name of a Celtic sun-god, equated with Apollo in that character. If
+he is the Belinus referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth,[64] his cult must
+have extended into Britain from the Continent, and he is often mentioned
+by classical writers, while much later Ausonius speaks of his priest in
+Gaul.[65] Many place and personal names point to the popularity of his
+cult, and inscriptions show that he, too, was a god of health and of
+healing-springs. The plant _Belinuntia_ was called after him and
+venerated for its healing powers.[66] The sun-god's functions of light
+and fertility easily passed over into those of health-giving, as our
+study of Celtic festivals will show.
+
+A god with the name Maponos, connected with words denoting
+"youthfulness," is found in England and Gaul, equated with Apollo, who
+himself is called _Bonus Puer_ in a Dacian inscription. Another god
+Mogons or Mogounos, whose name is derived from _Mago_, "to increase,"
+and suggests the idea of youthful strength, may be a form of the
+sun-god, though some evidence points to his having been a sky-god.[67]
+
+The Celtic Apollo is referred to by classical writers. Diodorus speaks
+of his circular temple in an island of the Hyperboreans, adorned with
+votive offerings. The kings of the city where the temple stood, and its
+overseers, were called "Boreads," and every nineteenth year the god
+appeared dancing in the sky at the spring equinox.[68] The
+identifications of the temple with Stonehenge and of the Boreads with
+the Bards are quite hypothetical. Apollonius says that the Celts
+regarded the waters of Eridanus as due to the tears of Apollo--probably
+a native myth attributing the creation of springs and rivers to the
+tears of a god, equated by the Greeks with Apollo.[69] The Celtic
+sun-god, as has been seen, was a god of healing springs.
+
+Some sixty names or titles of Celtic war-gods are known, generally
+equated with Mars.[70] These were probably local tribal divinities
+regarded as leading their worshippers to battle. Some of the names show
+that these gods were thought of as mighty warriors, e.g. Caturix,
+"battle-king," Belatu-Cadros--a common name in Britain--perhaps meaning
+"comely in slaughter,"[71] and Albiorix, "world-king."[72] Another name,
+Rigisamus, from _rix_ and _samus_, "like to," gives the idea of
+"king-like."[73]
+
+Toutatis, Totatis, and Tutatis are found in inscriptions from Seckau,
+York, and Old Carlisle, and may be identified with Lucan's Teutates, who
+with Taranis and Esus mentioned by him, is regarded as one of three
+pan-Celtic gods.[74] Had this been the case we should have expected to
+find many more inscriptions to them. The scholiast on Lucan identifies
+Teutates now with Mars, now with Mercury. His name is connected with
+_teuta_, "tribe," and he is thus a tribal war-god, regarded as the
+embodiment of the tribe in its warlike capacity.
+
+Neton, a war-god of the Accetani, has a name connected with Irish _nia_,
+"warrior," and may be equated with the Irish war-god Nét. Another god,
+Camulos, known from British and continental inscriptions, and figured on
+British coins with warlike emblems, has perhaps some connection with
+Cumal, father of Fionn, though it is uncertain whether Cumal was an
+Irish divinity.[75]
+
+Another god equated with Mars is the Gaulish Braciaca, god of malt.
+According to classical writers, the Celts were drunken race, and besides
+importing quantities of wine, they made their own native drinks, e.g.
+[Greek: chourmi], the Irish _cuirm_, and _braccat_, both made from malt
+(_braich_).[76] These words, with the Gaulish _brace_, "spelt,"[77] are
+connected with the name of this god, who was a divine personification of
+the substance from which the drink was made which produced, according to
+primitive ideas, the divine frenzy of intoxication. It is not clear why
+Mars should have been equated with this god.
+
+Cćsar says that the Celtic Juppiter governed heaven. A god who carries a
+wheel, probably a sun-god, and another, a god of thunder, called
+Taranis, seem to have been equated with Juppiter. The sun-god with the
+wheel was not equated with Apollo, who seems to have represented Celtic
+sun-gods only in so far as they were also gods of healing. In some cases
+the god with the wheel carries also a thunderbolt, and on some altars,
+dedicated to Juppiter, both a wheel and a thunderbolt are figured. Many
+races have symbolised the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman
+god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as
+his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel
+symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing
+wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god
+carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that
+lightning was a spark from the sun.
+
+Three divinities have claims to be the god whom Cćsar calls Dispater--a
+god with a hammer, a crouching god called Cernunnos, and a god called
+Esus or Silvanus. Possibly the native Dispater was differently envisaged
+in different districts, so that these would be local forms of one god.
+
+1. The god Taranis mentioned by Lucan is probably the Taranoos and
+Taranucnos of inscriptions, sometimes equated with Juppiter.[79] These
+names are connected with Celtic words for "thunder"; hence Taranis is a
+thunder-god. The scholiasts on Lucan identify him now with Juppiter, now
+with Dispater. This latter identification is supported by many who
+regard the god with the hammer as at once Taranis and Dispater, though
+it cannot be proved that the god with the hammer is Taranis. On one
+inscription the hammer-god is called Sucellos; hence we may regard
+Taranis as a distinct deity, a thunder-god, equated with Juppiter, and
+possibly represented by the Taran of the Welsh tale of _Kulhwych_.[80]
+
+Primitive men, whose only weapon and tool was a stone axe or hammer,
+must have regarded it as a symbol of force, then of supernatural force,
+hence of divinity. It is represented on remains of the Stone Age, and
+the axe was a divine symbol to the Mycenćans, a hieroglyph of Neter to
+the Egyptians, and a worshipful object to Polynesians and Chaldeans. The
+cult of axe or hammer may have been widespread, and to the Celts, as to
+many other peoples, it was a divine symbol. Thus it does not necessarily
+denote a thunderbolt, but rather power and might, and possibly, as the
+tool which shaped things, creative might. The Celts made _ex voto_
+hammers of lead, or used axe-heads as amulets, or figured them on altars
+and coins, and they also placed the hammer in the hand of a god.[81]
+
+The god with the hammer is a gracious bearded figure, clad in Gaulish
+dress, and he carries also a cup. His plastic type is derived from that
+of the Alexandrian Serapis, ruler of the underworld, and that of
+Hades-Pluto.[82] His emblems, especially that of the hammer, are also
+those of the Pluto of the Etruscans, with whom the Celts had been in
+contact.[83] He is thus a Celtic Dispater, an underworld god, possibly
+at one time an Earth-god and certainly a god of fertility, and ancestor
+of the Celtic folk. In some cases, like Serapis, he carries a _modius_
+on his head, and this, like the cup, is an emblem of chthonian gods, and
+a symbol of the fertility of the soil. The god being benevolent, his
+hammer, like the tool with which man forms so many things, could only be
+a symbol of creative force.[84] As an ancestor of the Celts, the god is
+naturally represented in Celtic dress. In one bas-relief he is called
+Sucellos, and has a consort, Nantosvelta.[85] Various meanings have been
+assigned to "Sucellos," but it probably denotes the god's power of
+striking with the hammer. M. D'Arbois hence regards him as a god of
+blight and death, like Balor.[86] But though this Celtic Dispater was a
+god of the dead who lived on in the underworld, he was not necessarily a
+destructive god. The underworld god was the god from whom or from whose
+kingdom men came forth, and he was also a god of fertility. To this we
+shall return.
+
+2. A bearded god, probably squatting, with horns from each of which
+hangs a torque, is represented on an altar found at Paris.[87] He is
+called Cernunnos, perhaps "the horned," from _cerna_, "horn," and a
+whole group of nameless gods, with similar or additional attributes,
+have affinities with him.
+
+(a) A bronze statuette from Autun represents a similar figure, probably
+horned, who presents a torque to two ram's-headed serpents. Fixed above
+his ears are two small heads.[88] On a monument from Vandoeuvres is a
+squatting horned god, pressing a sack. Two genii stand beside him on a
+serpent, while one of them holds a torque.[89]
+
+(b) Another squatting horned figure with a torque occurs on an altar
+from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox
+and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on
+either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a
+squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a
+goddess with a cornucopia, and a smaller divinity with a cornucopia and
+an apple. A similar squatting figure, supported by male and female
+deities, is represented on the other side of the altar.[91] On the altar
+of Beaune are three figures, one horned with a cornucopia, another
+three-headed, holding a basket.[92] Three figures, one female and two
+male, are found on the Dennevy altar. One god is three-faced, the other
+has a cornucopia, which he offers to a serpent.[93]
+
+(c) Another image represents a three-faced god, holding a serpent with a
+ram's head.[94]
+
+(d) Above a seated god and goddess on an altar from Malmaison is a block
+carved to represent three faces. To be compared with these are seven
+steles from Reims, each with a triple face but only one pair of eyes.
+Above some of these is a ram's head. On an eighth stele the heads are
+separated.[95]
+
+Cernunnos may thus have been regarded as a three-headed, horned,
+squatting god, with a torque and ram's-headed serpent. But a horned god
+is sometimes a member of a triad, perhaps representing myths in which
+Cernunnos was associated with other gods. The three-headed god may be
+the same as the horned god, though on the Beaune altar they are
+distinct. The various representations are linked together, but it is not
+certain that all are varying types of one god. Horns, torque, horned
+snake, or even the triple head may have been symbols pertaining to more
+than one god, though generally associated with Cernunnos.
+
+The squatting attitude of the god has been differently explained, and
+its affinities regarded now as Buddhist, now as Greco-Egyptian.[96] But
+if the god is a Dispater, and the ancestral god of the Celts, it is
+natural, as M. Mowat points out, to represent him in the typical
+attitude of the Gauls when sitting, since they did not use seats.[97]
+While the horns were probably symbols of power and worn also by chiefs
+on their helmets,[98] they may also show that the god was an
+anthropomorphic form of an earlier animal god, like the wolf-skin of
+other gods. Hence also horned animals would be regarded as symbols of
+the god, and this may account for their presence on the Reims monument.
+Animals are sometimes represented beside the divinities who were their
+anthropomorphic forms.[99] Similarly the ram's-headed serpent points to
+animal worship. But its presence with three-headed and horned gods is
+enigmatic, though, as will be seen later, it may have been connected
+with a cult of the dead, while the serpent was a chthonian animal.[100]
+These gods were gods of fertility and of the underworld of the dead.
+While the bag or purse (interchangeable with the cornucopia) was a
+symbol of Mercury, it was also a symbol of Pluto, and this may point to
+the fact that the gods who bear it had the same character as Pluto. The
+significance of the torque is also doubtful, but the Gauls offered
+torques to the gods, and they may have been regarded as vehicles of the
+warrior's strength which passed from him to the god to whom the victor
+presented it.
+
+Though many attempts have been made to prove the non-Celtic origin of
+the three-headed divinities or of their images,[101] there is no reason
+why the conception should not be Celtic, based on some myth now lost to
+us. The Celts had a cult of human heads, and fixed them up on their
+houses in order to obtain the protection of the ghost. Bodies or heads
+of dead warriors had a protective influence on their land or tribe, and
+myth told how the head of the god Bran saved his country from invasion.
+In other myths human heads speak after being cut off.[102] It might thus
+easily have been believed that the representation of a god's head had a
+still more powerful protective influence, especially when it was
+triplicated, thus looking in all directions, like Janus.
+
+The significance of the triad on these monuments is uncertain but since
+the supporting divinities are now male, now female, now male and female,
+it probably represents myths of which the horned or three-headed god was
+the central figure. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in regarding such
+gods, on the whole, as Cernunnos, a god of abundance to judge by his
+emblems, and by the cornucopia held by his companions, probably
+divinities of fertility. In certain cases figures of squatting and
+horned goddesses with cornucopia occur.[103] These may be consorts of
+Cernunnos, and perhaps preceded him in origin. We may also go further
+and see in this god of abundance and fertility at once an Earth and an
+Under-earth god, since earth and under-earth are much the same to
+primitive thought, and fertility springs from below the earth's surface.
+Thus Cernunnos would be another form of the Celtic Dispater. Generally
+speaking, the images of Cernunnos are not found where those of the god
+with the hammer (Dispater) are most numerous. These two types may thus
+be different local forms of Dispater. The squatting attitude of
+Cernunnos is natural in the image of the ancestor of a people who
+squatted. As to the symbols of plenty, we know that Pluto was confounded
+with Plutus, the god of riches, because corn and minerals came out of
+the earth, and were thus the gifts of an Earth or Under-earth god.
+Celtic myth may have had the same confusion.
+
+On a Paris altar and on certain steles a god attacks a serpent with a
+club. The serpent is a chthonian animal, and the god, called Smertullos,
+may be a Dispater.[104] Gods who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier
+animal divinities, sometimes have the animals as symbols or attendants,
+or are regarded as hostile to them. In some cases Dispater may have
+outgrown the serpent symbolism, the serpent being regarded locally as
+his foe; this assumes that the god with the club is the same as the god
+with the hammer. But in the case of Cernunnos the animal remained as his
+symbol.
+
+Dispater was a god of growth and fertility, and besides being lord of
+the underworld of the dead, not necessarily a dark region or the abode
+of "dark" gods as is so often assumed by writers on Celtic religion, he
+was ancestor of the living. This may merely have meant that, as in other
+mythologies, men came to the surface of the earth from an underground
+region, like all things whose roots struck deep down into the earth. The
+lord of the underworld would then easily be regarded as their
+ancestor.[105]
+
+3. The hammer and the cup are also the symbols of a god called Silvanus,
+identified by M. Mowat with Esus,[106] a god represented cutting down a
+tree with an axe. Axe and hammer, however, are not necessarily
+identical, and the symbols are those of Dispater, as has been seen. A
+purely superficial connection between the Roman Silvanus and the Celtic
+Dispater may have been found by Gallo-Roman artists in the fact that
+both wear a wolf-skin, while there may once have been a Celtic wolf
+totem-god of the dead.[107] The Roman god was also associated with the
+wolf. This might be regarded as one out of many examples of a mere
+superficial assimilation of Roman and Celtic divinities, but in this
+case they still kept certain symbols of the native Dispater--the cup and
+hammer. Of course, since the latter was also a god of fertility, there
+was here another link with Silvanus, a god of woods and vegetation. The
+cult of the god was widespread--in Spain, S. Gaul, the Rhine provinces,
+Cisalpine Gaul, Central Europe and Britain. But one inscription gives
+the name Selvanos, and it is not impossible that there was a native god
+Selvanus. If so, his name may have been derived from _selva_,
+"possession," Irish _sealbh_, "possession," "cattle," and he may have
+been a chthonian god of riches, which in primitive communities consisted
+of cattle.[108] Domestic animals, in Celtic mythology, were believed to
+have come from the god's land. Selvanus would thus be easily identified
+with Silvanus, a god of flocks.
+
+Thus the Celtic Dispater had various names and forms in different
+regions, and could be assimilated to different foreign gods. Since Earth
+and Under-earth are so nearly connected, this divinity may once have
+been an Earth-god, and as such perhaps took the place of an earlier
+Earth-mother, who now became his consort or his mother. On a monument
+from Salzbach, Dispater is accompanied by a goddess called Aeracura,
+holding a basket of fruit, and on another monument from Ober-Seebach,
+the companion of Dispater holds a cornucopia. In the latter instance
+Dispater holds a hammer and cup, and the goddess may be Aeracura.
+Aeracura is also associated with Dispater in several inscriptions.[109]
+It is not yet certain that she is a Celtic goddess, but her presence
+with this evidently Celtic god is almost sufficient proof of the fact.
+She may thus represent the old Earth-goddess, whose place the native
+Dispater gradually usurped.
+
+Lucan mentions a god Esus, who is represented on a Paris altar as a
+woodman cutting down a tree, the branches of which are carried round to
+the next side of the altar, on which is represented a bull with three
+cranes--Tarvos Trigaranos. The same figure, unnamed, occurs on another
+altar at Trčves, but in this case the bull's head appears in the
+branches, and on them sit the birds. M. Reinach applies one formula to
+the subjects of these altars--"The divine Woodman hews the Tree of the
+Bull with Three Cranes."[110] The whole represents some myth unknown to
+us, but M. D'Arbois finds in it some allusion to events in the
+Cúchulainn saga. To this we shall return.[111] Bull and tree are perhaps
+both divine, and if the animal, like the images of the divine bull, is
+three-horned, then the three cranes (_garanus_, "crane") may be a rebus
+for three-horned (_trikeras_), or more probably three-headed
+(_trikarenos_).[112] In this case woodman, tree, and bull might all be
+representatives of a god of vegetation. In early ritual, human, animal,
+or arboreal representatives of the god were periodically destroyed to
+ensure fertility, but when the god became separated from these
+representatives, the destruction or slaying was regarded as a sacrifice
+to the god, and myths arose telling how he had once slain the animal. In
+this case, tree and bull, really identical, would be mythically regarded
+as destroyed by the god whom they had once represented. If Esus was a
+god of vegetation, once represented by a tree, this would explain why,
+as the scholiast on Lucan relates, human sacrifices to Esus were
+suspended from a tree. Esus was worshipped at Paris and at Trčves; a
+coin with the name Ćsus was found in England; and personal names like
+Esugenos, "son of Esus," and Esunertus, "he who has the strength of
+Esus," occur in England, France, and Switzerland.[113] Thus the cult of
+this god may have been comparatively widespread. But there is no
+evidence that he was a Celtic Jehovah or a member, with Teutates and
+Taranis, of a pan-Celtic triad, or that this triad, introduced by Gauls,
+was not accepted by the Druids.[114] Had such a great triad existed,
+some instance of the occurrence of the three names on one inscription
+would certainly have been found. Lucan does not refer to the gods as a
+triad, nor as gods of all the Celts, or even of one tribe. He lays
+stress merely on the fact that they were worshipped with human
+sacrifice, and they were apparently more or less well-known local
+gods.[115]
+
+The insular Celts believed that some of their gods lived on or in hills.
+We do not know whether such a belief was entertained by the Gauls,
+though some of their deities were worshipped on hills, like the Puy de
+Dôme. There is also evidence of mountain worship among them. One
+inscription runs, "To the Mountains"; a god of the Pennine Alps,
+Poeninus, was equated with Juppiter; and the god of the Vosges mountains
+was called Vosegus, perhaps still surviving in the giant supposed to
+haunt them.[116]
+
+Certain grouped gods, _Dii Casses_, were worshipped by Celts on the
+right bank of the Rhine, but nothing is known regarding their functions,
+unless they were road gods. The name means "beautiful" or "pleasant,"
+and _Cassi_ appears in personal and tribal names, and also in
+_Cassiterides_, an early name of Britain, perhaps signifying that the
+new lands were "more beautiful" than those the Celts had left. When tin
+was discovered in Britain, the Mediterranean traders called it [Greek:
+chassiteros], after the name of the place where it was found, as
+_cupreus_, "copper," was so called from Cyprus.[117]
+
+Many local tutelar divinities were also worshipped. When a new
+settlement was founded, it was placed under the protection of a tribal
+god, or the name of some divinised river on whose banks the village was
+placed, passed to the village itself, and the divinity became its
+protector. Thus Dea Bibracte, Nemausus, and Vasio were tutelar
+divinities of Bibracte, Nimes, and Vaison. Other places were called
+after Belenos, or a group of divinities, usually the _Matres_ with a
+local epithet, watched over a certain district.[118] The founding of a
+town was celebrated in an annual festival, with sacrifices and libations
+to the protecting deity, a practice combated by S. Eloi in the eighth
+century. But the custom of associating a divinity with a town or region
+was a great help to patriotism. Those who fought for their homes felt
+that they were fighting for their gods, who also fought on their side.
+Several inscriptions, "To the genius of the place," occur in Britain,
+and there are a few traces of tutelar gods in Irish texts, but generally
+local saints had taken their place.
+
+The Celtic cult of goddesses took two forms, that of individual and that
+of grouped goddesses, the latter much more numerous than the grouped
+gods. Individual goddesses were worshipped as consorts of gods, or as
+separate personalities, and in the latter case the cult was sometimes
+far extended. Still more popular was the cult of grouped goddesses. Of
+these the _Matres_, like some individual goddesses, were probably early
+Earth-mothers, and since the primitive fertility-cults included all that
+might then be summed up as "civilisation," such goddesses had already
+many functions, and might the more readily become divinities of special
+crafts or even of war. Many individual goddesses are known only by their
+names, and were of a purely local character.[119] Some local goddesses
+with different names but similar functions are equated with the same
+Roman goddess; others were never so equated.
+
+The Celtic Minerva, or the goddesses equated with her, "taught the
+elements of industry and the arts,"[120] and is thus the equivalent of
+the Irish Brigit. Her functions are in keeping with the position of
+woman as the first civiliser--discovering agriculture, spinning, the art
+of pottery, etc. During this period goddesses were chiefly worshipped,
+and though the Celts had long outgrown this primitive stage, such
+culture-goddesses still retained their importance. A goddess equated
+with Minerva in Southern France and Britain is Belisama, perhaps from
+_qval_, "to burn" or "shine."[121] Hence she may have been associated
+with a cult of fire, like Brigit and like another goddess Sul, equated
+with Minerva at Bath and in Hesse, and in whose temple perpetual fires
+burned.[122] She was also a goddess of hot springs. Belisama gave her
+name to the Mersey,[123] and many goddesses in Celtic myth are
+associated with rivers.
+
+Some war-goddesses are associated with Mars--Nemetona (in Britain and
+Germany), perhaps the same as the Irish Nemon, and Cathubodua, identical
+with the Irish war-goddess Badb-catha, "battle-crow," who tore the
+bodies of the slain.[124] Another goddess Andrasta, "invincible,"
+perhaps the same as the Andarta of the Voconces, was worshipped by the
+people of Boudicca with human sacrifices, like the native Bellona of the
+Scordisci.[125]
+
+A goddess of the chase was identified with Artemis in Galatia, where she
+had a priestess Camma, and also in the west. At the feast of the
+Galatian goddess dogs were crowned with flowers, her worshippers feasted
+and a sacrifice was made to her, feast and sacrifice being provided out
+of money laid aside for every animal taken in the chase.[126] Other
+goddesses were equated with Diana, and one of her statues was destroyed
+in Christian times at Trčves.[127] These goddesses may have been thought
+of as rushing through the forest with an attendant train, since in later
+times Diana, with whom they were completely assimilated, became, like
+Holda, the leader of the "furious host" and also of witches'
+revels.[128] The Life of Cćsarius of Arles speaks of a "demon" called
+Diana by the rustics. A bronze statuette represents the goddess riding a
+wild boar,[129] her symbol and, like herself, a creature of the forest,
+but at an earlier time itself a divinity of whom the goddess became the
+anthropomorphic form.
+
+Goddesses, the earlier spirits of the waters, protected rivers and
+springs, or were associated with gods of healing wells. Dirona or Sirona
+is associated with Grannos mainly in Eastern Gaul and the Rhine
+provinces, and is sometimes represented carrying grapes and grain.[130]
+Thus this goddess may once have been connected with fertility, perhaps
+an Earth-mother, and if her name means "the long-lived,"[131] this would
+be an appropriate title for an Earth-goddess. Another goddess, Stanna,
+mentioned in an inscription at Perigueux, is perhaps "the standing or
+abiding one," and thus may also have been Earth-goddess.[132] Grannos
+was also associated with the local goddesses Vesunna and Aventia, who
+gave their names to Vesona and Avanche. His statue also stood in the
+temple of the goddess of the Seine, Sequana.[133] With Bormo were
+associated Bormana in Southern Gaul, and Damona in Eastern Gaul--perhaps
+an animal goddess, since the root of her name occurs in Irish _dam_,
+"ox," and Welsh _dafad_, "sheep." Dea Brixia was the consort of
+Luxovius, god of the waters of Luxeuil. Names of other goddesses of the
+waters are found on _ex votos_ and plaques which were placed in or near
+them. The Roman Nymphć, sometimes associated with Bormo, were the
+equivalents of the Celtic water-goddesses, who survived in the
+water-fairies of later folk-belief. Some river-goddesses gave their
+names to many rivers in the Celtic area--the numerous Avons being named
+from Abnoba, goddess of the sources of the Danube, and the many Dees and
+Dives from Divona. Clota was goddess of the Clyde, Sabrina had her
+throne "beneath the translucent wave" of the Severn, Icauna was goddess
+of the Yonne, Sequana of the Seine, and Sinnan of the Shannon.
+
+In some cases forests were ruled by goddesses--that of the Ardennes by
+Dea Arduinna, and the Black Forest, perhaps because of the many waters
+in it, by Dea Abnoba.[134] While some goddesses are known only by being
+associated with a god, e.g. Kosmerta with Mercury in Eastern Gaul,
+others have remained separate, like Epona, perhaps a river-goddess
+merged with an animal divinity, and known from inscriptions as a
+horse-goddess.[135] But the most striking instance is found in the
+grouped goddesses.
+
+Of these the _Deoe Matres_, whose name has taken a Latin form and whose
+cult extended to the Teutons, are mentioned in many inscriptions all
+over the Celtic area, save in East and North-West Gaul.[136] In art they
+are usually represented as three in number, holding fruit, flowers, a
+cornucopia, or an infant. They were thus goddesses of fertility, and
+probably derived from a cult of a great Mother-goddess, the Earth
+personified. She may have survived as a goddess Berecynthia; worshipped
+at Autun, where her image was borne through the fields to promote
+fertility, or as the goddesses equated with Demeter and Kore, worshipped
+by women on an island near Britain.[137] Such cults of a Mother-goddess
+lie behind many religions, but gradually her place was taken by an
+Earth-god, the Celtic Dispater or Dagda, whose consort the goddess
+became. She may therefore be the goddess with the cornucopia on
+monuments of the horned god, or Aeracura, consort of Dispater, or a
+goddess on a monument at Epinal holding a basket of fruit and a
+cornucopia, and accompanied by a ram's-headed serpent.[138] These
+symbols show that this goddess was akin to the _Matres_. But she
+sometimes preserved her individuality, as in the case of Berecynthia and
+the _Matres_, though it is not quite clear why she should have been thus
+triply multiplied. A similar phenomenon is found in the close connection
+of Demeter and Persephone, while the Celts regarded three as a sacred
+number. The primitive division of the year into three seasons--spring,
+summer, and winter--may have had its effect in triplicating a goddess of
+fertility with which the course of the seasons was connected.[139] In
+other mythologies groups of three goddesses are found, the Hathors in
+Egypt, the Moirai, Gorgons, and Graić of Greece, the Roman Fates, and
+the Norse Nornć, and it is noticeable that the _Matres_ were sometimes
+equated with the Parcć and Fates.[140]
+
+In the _Matres_, primarily goddesses of fertility and plenty, we have
+one of the most popular and also primitive aspects of Celtic religion.
+They originated in an age when women cultivated the ground, and the
+Earth was a goddess whose cult was performed by priestesses. But in
+course of time new functions were bestowed on the _Matres_. Possibly
+river-goddesses and others are merely mothers whose functions have
+become specialised. The _Matres_ are found as guardians of individuals,
+families, houses, of towns, a province, or a whole nation, as their
+epithets in inscriptions show. The _Matres Domesticć_ are household
+goddesses; the _Matres Treverć_, or _Gallaicć_, or _Vediantć_, are the
+mothers of Trčves, of the Gallaecć, of the Vediantii; the _Matres
+Nemetiales_ are guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields
+as _Matres Campestrć_ they brought prosperity to towns and people.[141]
+They guarded women, especially in childbirth, as _ex votos_ prove, and
+in this aspect they are akin to the _Junones_ worshipped also in Gaul
+and Britain. The name thus became generic for most goddesses, but all
+alike were the lineal descendants of the primitive Earth-mother.[142]
+
+Popular superstition has preserved the memory of these goddesses in the
+three _bonnes dames_, _dames blanches_, and White Women, met by
+wayfarers in forests, or in the three fairies or wise women of
+folk-tales, who appear at the birth of children. But sometimes they have
+become hateful hags. The _Matres_ and other goddesses probably survived
+in the beneficent fairies of rocks and streams, in the fairy Abonde who
+brought riches to houses, or Esterelle of Provence who made women
+fruitful, or Aril who watched over meadows, or in beings like Melusine,
+Viviane, and others.[143] In Gallo-Roman Britain the cult of the
+_Matres_ is found, but how far it was indigenous there is uncertain. A
+Welsh name for fairies, _Y Mamau_, "the Mothers," and the phrase, "the
+blessing of the Mothers" used of a fairy benediction, may be a
+reminiscence of such goddesses.[144] The presence of similar goddesses
+in Ireland will be considered later.[145] Images of the _Matres_ bearing
+a child have sometimes been taken for those of the Virgin, when found
+accidentally, and as they are of wood blackened with age, they are known
+as _Vierges Noires_, and occupy an honoured place in Christian
+sanctuaries. Many churches of Nôtre Dame have been built on sites where
+an image of the Virgin is said to have been miraculously found--the
+image probably being that of a pagan Mother. Similarly, an altar to the
+_Matres_ at Vaison is now dedicated to the Virgin as the "good
+Mother."[146]
+
+In inscriptions from Eastern and Cisalpine Gaul, and from the Rhine and
+Danube region, the _Matronć_ are mentioned, and this name is probably
+indicative of goddesses like the _Matres_.[147] It is akin to that of
+many rivers, e.g. the Marne or Meyrone, and shows that the Mothers were
+associated with rivers. The Mother river fertilised a large district,
+and exhibited the characteristic of the whole group of goddesses.
+
+Akin also to the _Matres_ are the _Sulević_, guardian goddesses called
+_Matres_ in a few inscriptions; the _Comedovć_, whose name perhaps
+denotes guardianship or power; the _Dominć_, who watched over the home,
+perhaps the _Dames_ of medićval folk-lore; and the _Virgines_, perhaps
+an appellative of the _Matres_, and significant when we find that virgin
+priestesses existed in Gaul and Ireland.[148] The _Proxumć_ were
+worshipped in Southern Gaul, and the _Quadrivić_, goddesses of
+cross-roads, at Cherbourg.[149]
+
+Some Roman gods are found on inscriptions without being equated with
+native deities. They may have been accepted by the Gauls as new gods, or
+they had perhaps completely ousted similar native gods. Others, not
+mentioned by Cćsar, are equated with native deities, Juno with Clivana,
+Saturn with Arvalus, and to a native Vulcan the Celts vowed spoils of
+war.[150] Again, many native gods are not equated with Roman deities on
+inscriptions. Apart from the divinities of Pyrenćan inscriptions, who
+may not be Celtic, the names of over 400 native deities, whether equated
+with Roman gods or not, are known. Some of these names are mere
+epithets, and most of the gods are of a local character, known here by
+one name, there by another. Only in a very few cases can it be asserted
+that a god was worshipped over the whole Celtic area by one name, though
+some gods in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland with different names have
+certainly similar functions.[151]
+
+The pantheon of the continental Celts was a varied one. Traces of the
+primitive agricultural rites, and of the priority of goddesses to gods,
+are found, and the vaguer aspects of primitive nature worship are seen
+behind the cult of divinities of sky, sun, thunder, forests, rivers, or
+in deities of animal origin. We come next to evidence of a higher stage,
+in divinities of culture, healing, the chase, war, and the underworld.
+We see divinities of Celtic groups--gods of individuals, the family, the
+tribe. Sometimes war-gods assumed great prominence, in time of war, or
+among the aristocracy, but with the development of commerce, gods
+associated with trade and the arts of peace came to the front.[152] At
+the same time the popular cults of agricultural districts must have
+remained as of old. With the adoption of Roman civilisation, enlightened
+Celts separated themselves from the lower aspects of their religion, but
+this would have occurred with growing civilisation had no Roman ever
+entered Gaul. In rural districts the more savage aspects of the cult
+would still have remained, but that these were entirely due to an
+aboriginal population is erroneous. The Celts must have brought such
+cults with them or adopted cults similar to their own wherever they
+came. The persistence of these cults is seen in the fact that though
+Christianity modified them, it could not root them out, and in
+out-of-the-way corners, survivals of the old ritual may still be found,
+for everywhere the old religion of the soil dies hard.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[53] Cćsar, _de Bell. Gall._ vi. 17, 18.
+
+[54] Bloch (Lavisse), _Hist, de France_, i. 2, 419; Reinaoh, _BF_ 13,
+23.
+
+[55] _Trans. Gaelic Soc. of Inverness_, xxvi. p. 411 f.
+
+[56] Vallentin, _Les Dieux de la cité des Allobroges_, 15; Pliny, _HN_
+xxxiv. 7.
+
+[57] These names are Alaunius, Arcecius, Artaius, Arvernorix, Arvernus,
+Adsmerius, Canetonensis, Clavariatis, Cissonius, Cimbrianus, Dumiatis,
+Magniacus, Moecus, Toeirenus, Vassocaletus, Vellaunus, Visuoius,
+Biausius, Cimiacinus, Naissatis. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[58] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 6.
+
+[59] Hübner, vii. 271; _CIL_ iii. 5773.
+
+[60] Lucian, _Heracles_, 1 f. Some Gaulish coins figure a head to which
+are bound smaller heads. In one case the cords issue from the mouth
+(Blanchet, i. 308, 316-317). These may represent Lucian's Ogmíos, but
+other interpretations have been put upon them. See Robert, _RC_ vii.
+388; Jullian, 84.
+
+[61] The epithets and names are Anextiomarus, Belenos, Bormo, Borvo, or
+Bormanus, Cobledulitavus, Cosmis (?), Grannos, Livicus, Maponos, Mogo or
+Mogounos, Sianus, Toutiorix, Viudonnus, Virotutis. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[62] Pommerol, _Ball. de Soc. d'ant. de Paris_, ii. fasc. 4.
+
+[63] See Holder, _s.v._ Many place-names are derived from _Borvo, e.g._
+Bourbon l'Archambaut, which gave its name to the Bourbon dynasty, thus
+connected with an old Celtic god.
+
+[64] See p. 102, _infra_.
+
+[65] Jul. Cap. _Maxim._ 22; Herodian, viii. 3; Tert. _Apol._ xxiv. 70;
+Auson. _Prof._ xi. 24.
+
+[66] Stokes derives _belinuntia_ from _beljo_-, a tree or leaf, Irish
+_bile_, _US_ 174.
+
+[67] Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _US_ 197; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 23; see p. 180,
+_infra_.
+
+[68] Diod. Sic. ii. 47.
+
+[69] Apoll. Rhod. iv. 609.
+
+[70] Albiorix, Alator, Arixo, Beladonnis, Barrex, Belatucadros,
+Bolvinnus, Braciaca, Britovis, Buxenus, Cabetius, Camulus, Cariocecius,
+Caturix, Cemenelus, Cicollius, Carrus, Cocosus, Cociduis, Condatis,
+Cnabetius, Corotiacus, Dinomogetimarus, Divanno, Dunatis, Glarinus,
+Halamardus, Harmogius, Ieusdriuus, Lacavus, Latabius, Leucetius,
+Leucimalacus, Lenus, Mullo, Medocius, Mogetius, Nabelcus, Neton, Ocelos,
+Ollondios, Rudianus, Rigisamus, Randosatis, Riga, Segomo, Sinatis,
+Smertatius, Toutates, Tritullus, Vesucius, Vincius, Vitucadros,
+Vorocius. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[71] D'Arbois, ii. 215; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 37.
+
+[72] So Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 42.
+
+[73] Hübner, 61.
+
+[74] Holder, _s.v._; Lucan, i. 444 f. The opinions of writers who take
+this view are collected by Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 137.
+
+[75] Holder, _s.v._ The Gaulish name Camulogenus, "born of Cumel,"
+represents the same idea as in Fionn's surname, MacCumall.
+
+[76] Athen. iv. 36; Dioscorides, ii. 110; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 116, 120; _IT_
+i. 437, 697.
+
+[77] Pliny, _HN_ xviii. 7.
+
+[78] Gaidoz, _Le Dieu Gaulois de Soleil_; Reinach, _CS_ 98, _BF_ 35;
+Blanchet, i. 27.
+
+[79] Lucan, _Phar._ i. 444. Another form, Tanaros, may be simply the
+German Donar.
+
+[80] Loth, i. 270.
+
+[81] Gaidoz, _RC_ vi. 457; Reinach, _OS_ 65, 138; Blanchet, i. 160. The
+hammer is also associated with another Celtic Dispater, equated with
+Sylvanus, who was certainly not a thunder-god.
+
+[82] Reinach, _BF_ 137 f.; Courcelle-Seneuil, 115 f.
+
+[83] Barthelemy, _RC_ i. l f.
+
+[84] See Flouest, _Rev. Arch._ v. 17.
+
+[85] Reinach, _RC_ xvii. 45.
+
+[86] D'Arbois, ii. 126. He explains Nantosvelta as meaning "She who is
+brilliant in war." The goddess, however, has none of the attributes of a
+war-goddess. M. D'Arbois also saw in a bas-relief of the hammer-god, a
+female figure, and a child, the Gaulish equivalents of Balor, Ethne, and
+Lug (_RC_ xv. 236). M. Reinach regards Sucellos, Nantosvelta, and a bird
+which is figured with them, as the same trio, because pseudo-Plutarch
+(_de Fluv._ vi. 4) says that _lougos_ means "crow" in Celtic. This is
+more than doubtful. In any case Ethne has no warlike traits in Irish
+story, and as Lug and Balor were deadly enemies, it remains to be
+explained why they appear tranquilly side by side. See _RC_ xxvi. 129.
+Perhaps Nantosvelta, like other Celtic goddesses, was a river nymph.
+_Nanto_ Gaulish is "valley," and _nant_ in old Breton is "gorge" or
+"brook." Her name might mean "shining river." See Stokes, _US_ 193, 324.
+
+[87] _RC_ xviii. 254. Cernunnos may be the Juppiter Cernenos of an
+inscription from Pesth, Holder, _s.v._
+
+[88] Reinach, _BF_ 186, fig. 177.
+
+[89] _Rev. Arch._ xix. 322, pl. 9.
+
+[90] Bertrand, _Rev. Arch._ xv. 339, xvi. pl. 12.
+
+[91] Ibid. xv. pl. 9, 10.
+
+[92] Ibid. xvi. 9.
+
+[93] Ibid. pl. 12 _bis_.
+
+[94] Bertrand, _Rev. Arch._ xvi. 8.
+
+[95] Ibid. xvi. 10 f.
+
+[96] Ibid. xv., xvi.; Reinach, _BF_ 17, 191.
+
+[97] _Bull. Epig._ i. 116; Strabo, iv. 3; Diod. Sic. v. 28.
+
+[98] Diod. Sic. v. 30; Reinach, _BF_ 193.
+
+[99] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[100] See p. 166, _infra_.
+
+[101] See, e.g., Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 29; de Witte, _Rev. Arch._ ii.
+387, xvi. 7; Bertrand, _ibid._ xvi. 3.
+
+[102] See pp. 102, 242, _infra_; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 554; Curtin, 182; _RC_
+xxii. 123, xxiv. 18.
+
+[103] Dom Martin, ii. 185; Reinach, _BF_ 192, 199.
+
+[104] See, however, p. 136, _infra_; and for another interpretation of
+this god as equivalent of the Irish Lug slaying Balor, see D'Arbois, ii.
+287.
+
+[105] See p. 229, _infra_.
+
+[106] Reinach, _BF_ 162, 184; Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 62, _Rev. Epig._
+1887, 319, 1891, 84.
+
+[107] Reinach, _BF_ 141, 153, 175, 176, 181; see p. 218, _infra_.
+Flouest, _Rev. Arch._ 1885, i. 21, thinks that the identification was
+with an earlier chthonian Silvanus. Cf. Jullian, 17, note 3, who
+observes that the Gallo-Roman assimilations were made "sur le doinaine
+archaisant des faits populaires et rustiques de l'Italie." For the
+inscriptions, see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[108] Stokes, _US_ 302; MacBain, 274; _RC_ xxvi. 282.
+
+[109] Gaidoz, _Rev. Arch._ ii. 1898; Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 119;
+Courcelle-Seneuil, 80 f.; Pauly-Wissowa, _Real. Lex._ i. 667;
+Daremberg-Saglio, _Dict._ ii., _s.v._ "Dispater."
+
+[110] Lucan, i. 444; _RC_ xviii. 254, 258.
+
+[111] See p. 127, _infra_.
+
+[112] For a supposed connection between this bas-relief and the myth of
+Geryon, see Reinach, _BF_ 120; _RC_ xviii. 258 f.
+
+[113] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, 386; Holder, i. 1475, 1478.
+
+[114] For these theories see Dom Martin, ii. 2; Bertrand, 335 f.
+
+[115] Cf. Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 149.
+
+[116] Orelli, 2107, 2072; Monnier, 532; Tacitus, xxi. 38.
+
+[117] Holder, i. 824; Reinach, _Rev. Arch._ xx. 262; D'Arbois, _Les
+Celtes_, 20. Other grouped gods are the Bacucei, Castoeci, Icotii,
+Ifles, Lugoves, Nervini, and Silvani. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[118] For all these see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[119] Professor Anwyl gives the following statistics: There are 35
+goddesses mentioned once, 2 twice, 3 thrice, 1 four times, 2 six times,
+2 eleven times, 1 fourteen times (Sirona), 1 twenty-one times
+(Rosmerta), 1 twenty-six times (Epona) (_Trans. Gael. Soc. Inverness_,
+xxvi. 413).
+
+[120] Cćsar, vi. 17.
+
+[121] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 54; _Rev. Arch._ i. 201. See Holder,
+_s.v._
+
+[122] Solinus, xxii. 10; Holder, _s.v._
+
+[123] Ptolemy, ii. 2.
+
+[124] See p. 71, _infra_.
+
+[125] Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Amm. Mare, xxvii. 4. 4.
+
+[126] Plutarch, _de Vir. Mul._ 20; Arrian, _Cyneg._ xxxiv. 1.
+
+[127] S. Greg. _Hist._ viii. 15.
+
+[128] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 283, 933; Reinach, _RC_ xvi. 261.
+
+[129] Reinach, _BF_ 50.
+
+[130] Holder, i. 1286; Robert, _RC_ iv. 133.
+
+[131] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 27.
+
+[132] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 43.
+
+[133] Holder, _s.v._; Bulliot, _RC_ ii. 22.
+
+[134] Holder, i. 10, 89.
+
+[135] Holder, _s.v._; see p. 213, _infra_.
+
+[136] Holder, ii. 463. They are very numerous in South-East Gaul, where
+also three-headed gods are found.
+
+[137] See pp. 274-5, _infra_.
+
+[138] Courcelle-Seneuil, 80-81.
+
+[139] See my article "Calendar" in Hastings' _Encyclop. of Religion and
+Ethics_, iii. 80.
+
+[140] _CIL_ v. 4208, 5771, vii. 927; Holder, ii. 89.
+
+[141] For all these titles see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[142] There is a large literature devoted to the _Matres_. See De Wal,
+_Die Mćder Gottinem_; Vallentin, _Le Culte des Matrć_; Daremberg-Saglio,
+_Dict. s.v. Matres_; Ihm, _Jahrbuch. des Vereins von Alterth. in
+Rheinlande_, No. 83; Roscher, _Lexicon_, ii. 2464 f.
+
+[143] See Maury, _Fées du Moyen Age_; Sébillot, i. 262; Monnier, 439 f.;
+Wright, _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_, 286 f.; Vallentin, _RC_ iv. 29. The
+_Matres_ may already have had a sinister aspect in Roman times, as they
+appear to be intended by an inscription _Lamiis Tribus_ on an altar at
+Newcastle. Hübner, 507.
+
+[144] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 28. Cf. _Y Foel Famau_, "the hill of the
+Mothers," in the Clwydian range.
+
+[145] See p. 73, _infra_.
+
+[146] Vallentin, _op. cit._ iv. 29; Maury, _Croyances du Moyen Age_,
+382.
+
+[147] Holder, _s.v._
+
+[148] See pp. 69, 317, _infra_.
+
+[149] For all these see Holder, _s.v._; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 103; _RC_ iv. 34.
+
+[150] Florus, ii. 4.
+
+[151] See the table of identifications, p. 125, _infra_.
+
+[152] We need not assume with Jullian, 18, that there was one supreme
+god, now a war-god, now a god of peace. Any prominent god may have
+become a war-god on occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE.
+
+
+Three divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland, one
+telling of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the others of Cúchulainn and of the
+Fians. They are distinct in character and contents, but the gods of the
+first cycle often help the heroes of the other groups, as the gods of
+Greece and India assisted the heroes of the epics. We shall see that
+some of the personages of these cycles may have been known in Gaul; they
+are remembered in Wales, but, in the Highlands, where stories of
+Cúchulainn and Fionn are still told, the Tuatha Dé Danann are less known
+now than in 1567, when Bishop Carsewell lamented the love of the
+Highlanders for "idle, turbulent, lying, worldly stories concerning the
+Tuatha Dédanans."[153]
+
+As the new Achćan religion in Greece and the Vedic sacred books of India
+regarded the aboriginal gods and heroes as demons and goblins, so did
+Christianity in Ireland sometimes speak of the older gods there. On the
+other hand, it was mainly Christian scribes who changed the old
+mythology into history, and made the gods and heroes kings. Doubtless
+myths already existed, telling of the descent of rulers and people from
+divinities, just as the Gauls spoke of their descent from Dispater, or
+as the Incas of Peru, the Mikados of Japan, and the kings of Uganda
+considered themselves offspring of the gods. This is a universal
+practice, and made it the more easy for Christian chroniclers to
+transmute myth into history. In Ireland, as elsewhere, myth doubtless
+told of monstrous races inhabiting the land in earlier days, of the
+strife of the aborigines and incomers, and of their gods, though the
+aboriginal gods may in some cases have been identified with Celtic gods,
+or worshipped in their own persons. Many mythical elements may therefore
+be looked for in the euhemerised chronicles of ancient Ireland. But the
+chroniclers themselves were but the continuers of a process which must
+have been at work as soon as the influence of Christianity began to be
+felt.[154] Their passion, however, was to show the descent of the Irish
+and the older peoples from the old Biblical personages, a process dear
+to the modern Anglo-Israelite, some of whose arguments are based on the
+wild romancing of the chroniclers.
+
+Various stories were told of the first peopling of Ireland. Banba, with
+two other daughters of Cain, arrived with fifty women and three men,
+only to die of the plague. Three fishermen next discovered Ireland, and
+"of the island of Banba of Fair Women with hardihood they took
+possession." Having gone to fetch their wives, they perished in the
+deluge at Tuath Inba.[155] A more popular account was that of the coming
+of Cessair, Noah's granddaughter, with her father, husband, a third man,
+Ladru, "the first dead man of Erin," and fifty damsels. Her coming was
+the result of the advice of a _laimh-dhia_, or "hand-god," but their
+ship was wrecked, and all save her husband, Finntain, who survived for
+centuries, perished in the flood.[156] Cessair's ship was less
+serviceable than her grandparent's! Followed the race of Partholan, "no
+wiser one than the other," who increased on the land until plague swept
+them away, with the exception of Tuan mac Caraill, who after many
+transformations, told the story of Ireland to S. Finnen centuries
+after.[157] The survival of Finntain and Tuan, doubles of each other,
+was an invention of the chroniclers, to explain the survival of the
+history of colonists who had all perished. Keating, on the other hand,
+rejecting the sole survivor theory as contradictory to Scripture,
+suggests that "aerial demons," followers of the invaders, revealed all
+to the chroniclers, unless indeed they found it engraved with "an iron
+pen and lead in the rocks."[158]
+
+Two hundred years before Partholan's coming, the Fomorians had
+arrived,[159] and they and their chief Cichol Gricenchos fought
+Partholan at Mag Itha, where they were defeated. Cichol was footless,
+and some of his host had but one arm and one leg.[160] They were demons,
+according to the chroniclers, and descendants of the luckless Ham.
+Nennius makes Partholan and his men the first Scots who came from Spain
+to Ireland. The next arrivals were the people of Nemed who returned to
+Spain, whence they came (Nennius), or died to a man (Tuan). They also
+were descendants of the inevitable Noah, and their sojourn in Ireland
+was much disturbed by the Fomorians who had recovered from their defeat,
+and finally overpowered the Nemedians after the death of Nemed.[161]
+From Tory Island the Fomorians ruled Ireland, and forced the Nemedians
+to pay them annually on the eve of Samhain (Nov. 1st) two-thirds of
+their corn and milk and of the children born during the year. If the
+Fomorians are gods of darkness, or, preferably, aboriginal deities, the
+tribute must be explained as a dim memory of sacrifice offered at the
+beginning of winter when the powers of darkness and blight are in the
+ascendant. The Fomorians had a tower of glass in Tory Island. This was
+one day seen by the Milesians, to whom appeared on its battlements what
+seemed to be men. A year after they attacked the tower and were
+overwhelmed in the sea.[162] From the survivors of a previously wrecked
+vessel of their fleet are descended the Irish. Another version makes the
+Nemedians the assailants. Thirty of them survived their defeat, some of
+them going to Scotland or Man (the Britons), some to Greece (to return
+as the Firbolgs), some to the north, where they learned magic and
+returned as the Tuatha Dé Danann.[163] The Firbolgs, "men of bags,"
+resenting their ignominious treatment by the Greeks, escaped to Ireland.
+They included the Firbolgs proper, the Fir-Domnann, and the
+Galioin.[164] The Fomorians are called their gods, and this, with the
+contemptuous epithets bestowed on them, may point to the fact that the
+Firbolgs were the pre-Celtic folk of Ireland and the Fomorians their
+divinities, hostile to the gods of the Celts or regarded as dark
+deities. The Firbolgs are vassals of Ailill and Medb, and with the Fir
+Domnann and Galioin are hostile to Cúchulainn and his men,[165] just as
+Fomorians were to the Tuatha Dé Danann. The strifes of races and of
+their gods are inextricably confused.
+
+The Tuatha Dé Danann arrived from heaven--an idea in keeping with their
+character as beneficent gods, but later legend told how they came from
+the north. They reached Ireland on Beltane, shrouded in a magic mist,
+and finally, after one or, in other accounts, two battles, defeated the
+Firbolgs and Fomorians at Magtured. The older story of one battle may be
+regarded as a euhemerised account of the seeming conflict of nature
+powers.[166] The first battle is described in a fifteenth to sixteenth
+century MS.,[167] and is referred to in a fifteenth century account of
+the second battle, full of archaic reminiscences, and composed from
+various earlier documents.[168] The Firbolgs, defeated in the first
+battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile Nuada, leader
+of the Tuatha Dé Danann, lost his hand, and as no king with a blemish
+could sit on the throne, the crown was given to Bres, son of the
+Fomorian Elatha and his sister Eri, a woman of the Tuatha Dé Danann. One
+day Eri espied a silver boat speeding to her across the sea. From it
+stepped forth a magnificent hero, and without delay the pair, like the
+lovers in Theocritus, "rejoiced in their wedlock." The hero, Elatha,
+foretold the birth of Eri's son, so beautiful that he would be a
+standard by which to try all beautiful things. He gave her his ring, but
+she was to part with it only to one whose finger it should fit. This was
+her child Bres, and by this token he was later, as an exile, recognised
+by his father, and obtained his help against the Tuatha Dé Danann. Like
+other wonderful children, Bres grew twice as quickly as any other child
+until he was seven.[169] Though Elatha and Eri are brother and sister,
+she is among the Tuatha Dé Danann.[170] There is the usual inconsistency
+of myth here and in other accounts of Fomorian and Tuatha Dé Danann
+unions. The latter had just landed, but already had united in marriage
+with the Fomorians. This inconsistency escaped the chroniclers, but it
+points to the fact that both were divine not human, and that, though in
+conflict, they united in marriage as members of hostile tribes often do.
+
+The second battle took place twenty-seven years after the first, on
+Samhain. It was fought like the first on the plain of Mag-tured, though
+later accounts made one battle take place at Mag-tured in Mayo, the
+other at Mag-tured in Sligo.[171] Inconsistently, the conquering Tuatha
+Dé Danann in the interval, while Bres is their king, must pay tribute
+imposed by the Fomorians. Obviously in older accounts this tribute must
+have been imposed before the first battle and have been its cause. But
+why should gods, like the Tuatha Dé Danann, ever have been in
+subjection? This remains to be seen, but the answer probably lies in
+parallel myths of the subjection or death of divinities like Ishtar,
+Adonis, Persephone, and Osiris. Bres having exacted a tribute of the
+milk of all hornless dun cows, the cows of Ireland were passed through
+fire and smeared with ashes--a myth based perhaps on the Beltane fire
+ritual.[172] The avaricious Bres was satirised, and "nought but decay
+was on him from that hour,"[173] and when Nuada, having recovered,
+claimed the throne, he went to collect an army of the Fomorians, who
+assembled against the Tuatha Dé Danann. In the battle Indech wounded
+Ogma, and Balor slew Nuada, but was mortally wounded by Lug. Thereupon
+the Fomorians fled to their own region.
+
+The Tuatha Dé Danann remained masters of Ireland until the coming of the
+Milesians, so named from an eponymous Mile, son of Bile. Ith, having
+been sent to reconnoitre, was slain, and the Milesians now invaded
+Ireland in force. In spite of a mist raised by the Druids, they landed,
+and, having met the three princes who slew Ith, demanded instant battle
+or surrender of the land. The princes agreed to abide by the decision of
+the Milesian poet Amairgen, who bade his friends re-embark and retire
+for the distance of nine waves. If they could then effect a landing,
+Ireland was theirs. A magic storm was raised, which wrecked many of
+their ships, but Amairgen recited verses, fragments, perhaps, of some
+old ritual, and overcame the dangers. After their defeat the survivors
+of the Tuatha Dé Danann retired into the hills to become a fairy folk,
+and the Milesians (the Goidels or Scots) became ancestors of the Irish.
+
+Throughout the long story of the conquests of Ireland there are many
+reduplications, the same incidents being often ascribed to different
+personages.[174] Different versions of similar occurrences, based on
+older myths and traditions, may already have been in existence, and
+ritual practices, dimly remembered, required explanation. In the hands
+of the chroniclers, writing history with a purpose and combining their
+information with little regard to consistency, all this was reduced to a
+more or less connected narrative. At the hands of the prosaic
+chroniclers divinity passed from the gods, though traces of it still
+linger.
+
+  "Ye are gods, and, behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at
+     last.
+   In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
+     things,
+   Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for
+     kings."
+
+From the annalistic point of view the Fomorians are sea demons or
+pirates, their name being derived from _muir_, "sea," while they are
+descended along with other monstrous beings from them. Professor
+Rh[^y]s, while connecting the name with Welsh _foawr_, "giant" (Gaelic
+_famhair_), derives the name from _fo_, "under," and _muir_, and regards
+them as submarine beings.[175] Dr. MacBain connected them with the
+fierce powers of the western sea personified, like the _Muireartach_, a
+kind of sea hag, of a Fionn ballad.[176] But this association of the
+Fomorians with the ocean may be the result of a late folk-etymology,
+which wrongly derived their name from _muir_. The Celtic experience of
+the Lochlanners or Norsemen, with whom the Fomorians are
+associated,[177] would aid the conception of them as sea-pirates of a
+more or less demoniacal character. Dr. Stokes connects the second
+syllable _mor_ with _mare_ in "nightmare," from _moro_, and regards them
+as subterranean as well as submarine.[178] But the more probable
+derivation is that of Zimmer and D'Arbois, from _fo_ and _morio_ (_mor_,
+"great"),[179] which would thus agree with the tradition which regarded
+them as giants. They were probably beneficent gods of the aborigines,
+whom the Celtic conquerors regarded as generally evil, perhaps equating
+them with the dark powers already known to them. They were still
+remembered as gods, and are called "champions of the _síd_," like the
+Tuatha Dé Danann.[180] Thus King Bres sought to save his life by
+promising that the kine of Ireland would always be in milk, then that
+the men of Ireland would reap every quarter, and finally by revealing
+the lucky days for ploughing, sowing, and reaping.[181] Only an
+autochthonous god could know this, and the story is suggestive of the
+true nature of the Fomorians. The hostile character attributed to them
+is seen from the fact that they destroyed corn, milk, and fruit. But in
+Ireland, as elsewhere, this destructive power was deprecated by begging
+them not to destroy "corn nor milk in Erin beyond their fair
+tribute."[182] Tribute was also paid to them on Samhain, the time when
+the powers of blight feared by men are in the ascendant. Again, the
+kingdom of Balor, their chief, is still described as the kingdom of
+cold.[183] But when we remember that a similar "tribute" was paid to
+Cromm Cruaich, a god of fertility, and that after the conquest of the
+Tuatha Dé Danann they also were regarded as hostile to agriculture,[184]
+we realise that the Fomorians must have been aboriginal gods of
+fertility whom the conquering Celts regarded as hostile to them and
+their gods. Similarly, in folk-belief the beneficent corn-spirit has
+sometimes a sinister and destructive aspect.[185] Thus the stories of
+"tribute" would be distorted reminiscences of the ritual of gods of the
+soil, differing little in character from that of the similar Celtic
+divinities. What makes it certain that the Fomorians were aboriginal
+gods is that they are found in Ireland before the coming of the early
+colonist Partholan. They were the gods of the pre-Celtic folk--Firbolgs,
+Fir Domnann, and Galioin[186]--all of them in Ireland before the Tuatha
+Dé Danaan arrived, and all of them regarded as slaves, spoken of with
+the utmost contempt. Another possibility, however, ought to be
+considered. As the Celtic gods were local in character, and as groups of
+tribes would frequently be hostile to other groups, the Fomorians may
+have been local gods of a group at enmity with another group,
+worshipping the Tuatha Dé Danaan.
+
+The strife of Fomorians and Tuatha Dé Danann suggests the dualism of all
+nature religions. Demons or giants or monsters strive with gods in
+Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic mythology, and in Persia the primitive
+dualism of beneficent and hurtful powers of nature became an ethical
+dualism--the eternal opposition of good and evil. The sun is vanquished
+by cloud and storm, but shines forth again in vigour. Vegetation dies,
+but undergoes a yearly renewal. So in myth the immortal gods are wounded
+and slain in strife. But we must not push too far the analogy of the
+apparent strife of the elements and the wars of the gods. The one
+suggested the other, especially where the gods were elemental powers.
+But myth-making man easily developed the suggestion; gods were like men
+and "could never get eneuch o' fechtin'." The Celts knew of divine
+combats before their arrival in Ireland, and their own hostile powers
+were easily assimilated to the hostile gods of the aborigines.
+
+The principal Fomorians are described as kings. Elatha was son of Nét,
+described by Cormac as "a battle god of the heathen Gael," i.e. he is
+one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, and has as wives two war-goddesses, Badb
+and Nemaind.[187] Thus he resembles the Fomorian Tethra whose wife is a
+_badb_ or "battle-crow," preying on the slain.[188] Elatha's name,
+connected with words meaning "knowledge," suggests that he was an
+aboriginal culture-god.[189] In the genealogies, Fomorians and Tuatha Dé
+Danann are inextricably mingled. Bres's temporary position as king of
+the Tuatha Déa may reflect some myth of the occasional supremacy of the
+powers of blight. Want and niggardliness characterise his reign, and
+after his defeat a better state of things prevails. Bres's consort was
+Brigit, and their son Ruadan, sent to spy on the Tuatha Dé Danann, was
+slain. His mother's wailing for him was the first mourning wail ever
+heard in Erin.[190] Another god, Indech, was son of Déa Domnu, a
+Fomorian goddess of the deep, i.e. of the underworld and probably also
+of fertility, who may hold a position among the Fomorians similar to
+that of Danu among the Tuatha Dé Danann. Indech was slain by Ogma, who
+himself died of wounds received from his adversary.
+
+Balor had a consort Cethlenn, whose venom killed Dagda. His one eye had
+become evil by contact with the poisonous fumes of a concoction which
+his father's Druids were preparing. The eyelid required four men to
+raise it, when his evil eye destroyed all on whom its glance fell. In
+this way Balor would have slain Lug at Mag-tured, but the god at once
+struck the eye with a sling-stone and slew him.[191] Balor, like the
+Greek Medusa, is perhaps a personification of the evil eye, so much
+feared by the Celts. Healthful influences and magical charms avert it;
+hence Lug, a beneficent god, destroys Balor's maleficence.
+
+Tethra, with Balor and Elatha, ruled over Erin at the coming of the
+Tuatha Dé Danann. From a phrase used in the story of Connla's visit to
+Elysium, "Thou art a hero of the men of Tethra," M. D'Arbois assumes
+that Tethra was ruler of Elysium, which he makes one with the land of
+the dead. The passage, however, bears a different interpretation, and
+though a Fomorian, Tethra, a god of war, might be regarded as lord of
+all warriors.[192] Elysium was not the land of the dead, and when M.
+D'Arbois equates Tethra with Kronos, who after his defeat became ruler
+of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like other analogies with Greek
+mythology, is misleading. He also equates Bres, as temporary king of the
+Tuatha Dé Danann, with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold.
+Kronos, again, slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson
+Lug. Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god
+equivalent to Kronos.[193] Yet their personalities are quite distinct.
+Each race works out its mythology for itself, and, while parallels are
+inevitable, we should not allow these to override the actual myths as
+they have come down to us.
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s makes Bile, ancestor of the Milesians who came from
+Spain, a Goidelic counterpart of the Gaulish Dispater, lord of the dead,
+from whom the Gauls claimed descent. But Bile, neither a Fomorian nor of
+the Tuatha Dé Danann, is an imaginary and shadowy creation. Bile is next
+equated with a Brythonic Beli, assumed to be consort of Dôn, whose
+family are equivalent to the Tuatha Dé Danann.[194] Beli was a mythic
+king whose reign was a kind of golden age, and if he was father of Dôn's
+children, which is doubtful, Bile would then be father of the Tuatha Dé
+Danann. But he is ancestor of the Milesians, their opponents according
+to the annalists. Beli is also equated with Elatha, and since Dôn,
+reputed consort of Beli, was grandmother of Llew, equated with Irish
+Lug, grandson of Balor, Balor is equivalent to Beli, whose name is
+regarded by Professor Rh[^y]s as related etymologically to Balor's.[195]
+Bile, Balor, and Elatha are thus Goidelic equivalents of the shadowy
+Beli. But they also are quite distinct personalities, nor are they ever
+hinted at as ancestral gods of the Celts, or gods of a gloomy
+underworld. In Celtic belief the underworld was probably a fertile
+region and a place of light, nor were its gods harmful and evil, as
+Balor was.
+
+On the whole, the Fomorians came to be regarded as the powers of nature
+in its hostile aspect. They personified blight, winter, darkness, and
+death, before which men trembled, yet were not wholly cast down, since
+the immortal gods of growth and light, rulers of the bright other-world,
+were on their side and fought against their enemies. Year by year the
+gods suffered deadly harm, but returned as conquerors to renew the
+struggle once more. Myth spoke of this as having happened once for all,
+but it went on continuously.[196] Gods were immortal and only seemed to
+die. The strife was represented in ritual, since men believe that they
+can aid the gods by magic, rite, or prayer. Why, then, do hostile
+Fomorians and Tuatha Dé Danann intermarry? This happens in all
+mythologies, and it probably reflects, in the divine sphere, what takes
+place among men. Hostile peoples carry off each the other's women, or
+they have periods of friendliness and consequent intermarriage. Man
+makes his gods in his own image, and the problem is best explained by
+facts like these, exaggerated no doubt by the Irish annalists.
+
+The Tuatha Dé Danann, in spite of their euhemerisation, are more than
+human. In the north where they learned magic, they dwelt in four cities,
+from each of which they brought a magical treasure--the stone of Fal,
+which "roared under every king," Lug's unconquerable spear, Nuada's
+irresistible sword, the Dagda's inexhaustible cauldron. But they are
+more than wizards or Druids. They are re-born as mortals; they have a
+divine world of their own, they interfere in and influence human
+affairs. The euhemerists did not go far enough, and more than once their
+divinity is practically acknowledged. When the Fian Caoilte and a woman
+of the Tuatha Dé Danann appear before S. Patrick, he asks, "Why is she
+youthful and beautiful, while you are old and wrinkled?" And Caoilte
+replies, "She is of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who are unfading and whose
+duration is perennial. I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable
+and fade away."[197]
+
+After their conversion, the Celts, sons of Milesius, thought that the
+gods still existed in the hollow hills, their former dwellings and
+sanctuaries, or in far-off islands, still caring for their former
+worshippers. This tradition had its place with that which made them a
+race of men conquered by the Milesians--the victory of Christianity over
+paganism and its gods having been transmuted into a strife of races by
+the euhemerists. The new faith, not the people, conquered the old gods.
+The Tuatha Dé Danann became the _Daoine-sidhe_, a fairy folk, still
+occasionally called by their old name, just as individual fairy kings or
+queens bear the names of the ancient gods. The euhemerists gave the
+Fomorians a monstrous and demoniac character, which they did not always
+give to the Tuatha Dé Danann; in this continuing the old tradition that
+Fomorians were hostile and the Tuatha Dé Danann beneficent and mild.
+
+The mythological cycle is not a complete "body of divinity"; its
+apparent completeness results from the chronological order of the
+annalists. Fragments of other myths are found in the _Dindsenchas_;
+others exist as romantic tales, and we have no reason to believe that
+all the old myths have been preserved. But enough remains to show the
+true nature of the Tuatha Dé Danann--their supernatural character, their
+powers, their divine and unfailing food and drink, their mysterious and
+beautiful abode. In their contents, their personages, in the actions
+that are described in them, the materials of the "mythological cycle,"
+show how widely it differs from the Cúchulainn and Fionn cycles.[198]
+"The white radiance of eternity" suffuses it; the heroic cycles, magical
+and romantic as they are, belong far more to earth and time.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[153] For some Highland references to the gods in saga and _Märchen_,
+see _Book of the Dean of Lismore_, 10; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 77. The
+sea-god Lir is probably the Liur of Ossianic ballads (Campbell, _LF_
+100, 125), and his son Manannan is perhaps "the Son of the Sea" in a
+Gaelic song (Carmichael, _CG_ ii. 122). Manannan and his daughters are
+also known (Campbell, _witchcraft_, 83).
+
+[154] The euhemerising process is first seen in tenth century poems by
+Eochaid hua Flainn, but was largely the work of Flainn Manistrech, _ob._
+1056. It is found fully fledged in the _Book of Invasions_.
+
+[155] Keating, 105-106.
+
+[156] Keating, 107; _LL_ 4_b_. Cf. _RC_ xvi. 155.
+
+[157] _LL_ 5.
+
+[158] Keating, 111. Giraldus Cambrensis, _Hist. Irel._ c. 2, makes
+Roanus survive and tell the tale of Partholan to S. Patrick. He is the
+Caoilte mac Ronan of other tales, a survivor of the Fians, who held many
+racy dialogues with the Saint. Keating abuses Giraldus for equating
+Roanus with Finntain in his "lying history," and for calling him Roanus
+instead of Ronanus, a mistake in which he, "the guide bull of the herd,"
+is followed by others.
+
+[159] Keating, 164.
+
+[160] _LL_ 5_a_.
+
+[161] Keating, 121; _LL_ 6_a_; _RC_ xvi. 161.
+
+[162] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ 13.
+
+[163] _LL_ 6, 8_b_.
+
+[164] _LL_ 6_b_, 127_a_; _IT_ iii. 381; _RC_ xvi. 81.
+
+[165] _LL_ 9_b_, 11_a_.
+
+[166] See Cormac, _s.v._ "Nescoit," _LU_ 51.
+
+[167] _Harl. MSS._ 2, 17, pp. 90-99. Cf. fragment from _Book of
+Invasions_ in _LL_ 8.
+
+[168] _Harl. MS._ 5280, translated in _RC_ xii. 59 f.
+
+[169] _RC_ xii. 60; D'Arbois, v. 405 f.
+
+[170] For Celtic brother-sister unions see p. 224.
+
+[171] O'Donovan, _Annals_, i. 16.
+
+[172] _RC_ xv. 439.
+
+[173] _RC_ xii. 71.
+
+[174] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks the Partholan story is the aboriginal,
+the median the Celtic version of the same event. Partholan, with initial
+_p_ cannot be Goidelic (_Scottish Review_, 1890, "Myth. Treatment of
+Celtic Ethnology").
+
+[175] _HL_ 591.
+
+[176] _CM_ ix. 130; Campbell _LF_ 68.
+
+[177] _RC_ xii. 75.
+
+[178] _US_ 211.
+
+[179] D'Arbois, ii. 52; _RC_ xii. 476.
+
+[180] _RC_ xii. 73.
+
+[181] _RC_ xii. 105.
+
+[182] _RC_ xxii. 195.
+
+[183] Larmime, "Kian, son of Kontje."
+
+[184] See p. 78; _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[185] Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ 310 f.
+
+[186] "Fir Domnann," "men of Domna," a goddess (Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 597), or a
+god (D'Arbois, ii. 130). "Domna" is connected with Irish-words meaning
+"deep" (Windisch, _IT_ i. 498; Stokes, _US_ 153). Domna, or Domnu, may
+therefore have been a goddess of the deep, not the sea so much as the
+underworld, and so perhaps an Earth-mother from whom the Fir Domnann
+traced their descent.
+
+[187] Cormac, _s.v._ "Neith"; D'Arbois, v. 400; _RC_ xii. 61.
+
+[188] _LU_ 50. Tethra is glossed _badb_ (_IT_ i. 820).
+
+[189] _IT_ i. 521; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 274 f.
+
+[190] _RC_ xii. 95.
+
+[191] _RC_ xii. 101.
+
+[192] See p. 374.
+
+[193] D'Arbois, ii. 198, 375.
+
+[194] _HL_ 90-91.
+
+[195] _HL_ 274, 319, 643. For Beli, see p. 112, _infra_.
+
+[196] Whatever the signification of the battle of Mag-tured may be, the
+place which it was localised is crowded with Neolithic megaliths,
+dolmens, etc. To later fancy these were the graves of warriors slain in
+a great battle fought there, and that battle became the fight between
+Fomorians and Tuatha Dé Dananns. Mag-tured may have been the scene of a
+battle between their respective worshippers.
+
+[197] O'Grady, ii. 203.
+
+[198] It should be observed that, as in the Vedas, the Odyssey, the
+Japanese _Ko-ji-ki_, as well as in barbaric and savage mythologies,
+_Märchen_ formulć abound in the Irish mythological cycle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE TUATHA DÉ DANANN
+
+
+The meaning formerly given to _Tuatha Dé Danann_ was "the men of science
+who were gods," _danann_ being here connected with _dán_, "knowledge."
+But the true meaning is "the tribes _or_ folk of the goddess Danu,"[199]
+which agrees with the cognates _Tuatha_ or _Fir Dea_, "tribes _or_ men
+of the goddess." The name was given to the group, though Danu had only
+three sons, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharbar. Hence the group is also called
+_fir tri ndea_, "men of the three gods."[200] The equivalents in Welsh
+story of Danu and her folk are Dôn and her children. We have seen that
+though they are described as kings and warriors by the annalists, traces
+of their divinity appear. In the Cúchulainn cycle they are supernatural
+beings and sometimes demons, helping or harming men, and in the Fionn
+cycle all these characteristics are ascribed to them. But the theory
+which prevailed most is that which connected them with the hills or
+mounds, the last resting-places of the mighty dead. Some of these bore
+their names, while other beings were also associated with the mounds
+(_síd_)--Fomorians and Milesian chiefs, heroes of the sagas, or those
+who had actually been buried in them.[201] Legend told how, after the
+defeat of the gods, the mounds were divided among them, the method of
+division varying in different versions. In an early version the Tuatha
+Dé Danann are immortal and the Dagda divides the _síd_.[202] But in a
+poem of Flann Manistrech (_ob._ 1056) they are mortals and die.[203] Now
+follows a regular chronology giving the dates of their reigns and their
+deaths, as in the poem of Gilla Coemain (eleventh century).[204] Hence
+another legend told how, Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divided the _síd_,
+yet even here Manannan is said to have conferred immortality upon the
+Tuatha Dé Danann.[205] The old pagan myths had shown that gods might
+die, while in ritual their representatives were slain, and this may have
+been the starting-point of the euhemerising process. But the divinity of
+the Tuatha Dé Danann is still recalled. Eochaid O'Flynn (tenth century),
+doubtful whether they are men or demons, concludes, "though I have
+treated of these deities in order, yet have I not adored them."[206]
+Even in later times they were still thought of as gods in exile, a view
+which appears in the romantic tales and sagas existing side by side with
+the notices of the annalists. They were also regarded as fairy kings and
+queens, and yet fairies of a different order from those of ordinary
+tradition. They are "fairies or sprites with corporeal forms, endowed
+with immortality," and yet also _dei terreni_ or _síde_ worshipped by
+the folk before the coming of S. Patrick. Even the saint and several
+bishops were called by the fair pagan daughters of King Loegaire, _fir
+síde_, "men of the _síd_," that is, gods.[207] The _síd_ were named
+after the names of the Tuatha Dé Danann who reigned in them, but the
+tradition being localised in different places, several mounds were
+sometimes connected with one god. The _síd_ were marvellous underground
+palaces, full of strange things, and thither favoured mortals might go
+for a time or for ever. In this they correspond exactly to the oversea
+Elysium, the divine land.
+
+But why were the Tuatha Dé Danann associated with the mounds? If fairies
+or an analogous race of beings were already in pagan times connected
+with hills or mounds, gods now regarded as fairies would be connected
+with them. Dr. Joyce and O'Curry think that an older race of aboriginal
+gods or _síd-folk_ preceded the Tuatha Déa in the mounds.[208] These may
+have been the Fomorians, the "champions of the _síd_," while in _Mesca
+Ulad_ the Tuatha Déa go to the underground dwellings and speak with the
+_síde_ already there. We do not know that the fairy creed as such
+existed in pagan times, but if the _síde_ and the Tuatha Dé Danann were
+once distinct, they were gradually assimilated. Thus the Dagda is called
+"king of the _síde_"; Aed Abrat and his daughters, Fand and Liban, and
+Labraid, Liban's husband, are called _síde_, and Manannan is Fand's
+consort.[209] Labraid's island, like the _síd_ of Mider and the land to
+which women of the _síde_ invite Connla, differs but little from the
+usual divine Elysium, while Mider, one of the _síde_, is associated with
+the Tuatha Dé Danann.[210] The _síde_ are once said to be female, and
+are frequently supernatural women who run away or marry mortals.[211]
+Thus they may be a reminiscence of old Earth goddesses. But they are not
+exclusively female, since there are kings of the _síde_, and as the name
+_Fir síde_, "men of the _síde_," shows, while S. Patrick and his friends
+were taken for _síd_-folk.
+
+The formation of the legend was also aided by the old cult of the gods
+on heights, some of them sepulchral mounds, and now occasionally sites
+of Christian churches.[212] The Irish god Cenn Cruaich and his Welsh
+equivalent Penn Cruc, whose name survives in _Pennocrucium_, have names
+meaning "chief _or_ head of the mound."[213] Other mounds or hills had
+also a sacred character. Hence gods worshipped at mounds, dwelling or
+revealing themselves there, still lingered in the haunted spots; they
+became fairies, or were associated with the dead buried in the mounds,
+as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and
+been buried there. The haunting of the mounds by the old gods is seen in
+a prayer of S. Columba's, who begs God to dispel "this host (i.e. the
+old gods) around the cairns that reigneth."[214] An early MS also tells
+how the Milesians allotted the underground part of Erin to the Tuatha
+Déa who now retired within the hills; in other words, they were gods of
+the hills worshipped by the Milesians on hills.[215] But, as we shall
+see, the gods dwelt elsewhere than in hills.[216]
+
+Tumuli may already in pagan times have been pointed out as tombs of gods
+who died in myth or ritual, like the tombs of Zeus in Crete and of
+Osiris in Egypt. Again, fairies, in some aspects, are ghosts of the
+dead, and haunt tumuli; hence, when gods became fairies they would do
+the same. And once they were thought of as dead kings, any notable
+tumuli would be pointed out as theirs, since it is a law in folk-belief
+to associate tumuli or other structures not with the dead or with their
+builders, but with supernatural or mythical or even historical
+personages. If _síde_ ever meant "ghosts," it would be easy to call the
+dead gods by this name, and to connect them with the places of the
+dead.[217]
+
+Many strands went to the weaving of the later conception of the gods,
+but there still hung around them an air of mystery, and the belief that
+they were a race of men was never consistent with itself.
+
+Danu gave her name to the whole group of gods, and is called their
+mother, like the Egyptian Neith or the Semitic Ishtar.[218] In the
+annalists she is daughter of Dagda, and has three sons. She may be akin
+to the goddess Anu, whom Cormac describes as "_mater deorum
+hibernensium_. It was well she nursed the gods." From her name he
+derives _ana_, "plenty," and two hills in Kerry are called "the Paps of
+Anu."[219] Thus as a goddess of plenty Danu or Anu may have been an
+early Earth-mother, and what may be a dim memory of Anu in
+Leicestershire confirms this view. A cave on the Dane Hills is called
+"Black Annis' Bower," and she is said to have been a savage woman who
+devoured human victims.[220] Earth-goddesses usually have human victims,
+and Anu would be no exception. In the cult of Earth divinities Earth and
+under-Earth are practically identical, while Earth-goddesses like
+Demeter and Persephone were associated with the underworld, the dead
+being Demeter's folk. The fruits of the earth with their roots below the
+surface are then gifts of the earth- or under-earth goddess. This may
+have been the case with Danu, for in Celtic belief the gifts of
+civilisation came from the underworld or from the gods. Professor
+Rh[^y]s finds the name Anu in the dat. _Anoniredi_, "chariot of Anu," in
+an inscription from Vaucluse, and the identification is perhaps
+established by the fact that goddesses of fertility were drawn through
+the fields in a vehicle.[221] Cormac also mentions Buanann as mother and
+nurse of heroes, perhaps a goddess worshipped by heroes.[222]
+
+Danu is also identified with Brigit, goddess of knowledge (_dán_),
+perhaps through a folk-etymology. She was worshipped by poets, and had
+two sisters of the same name connected with leechcraft and
+smithwork.[223] They are duplicates or local forms of Brigit, a goddess
+of culture and of poetry, so much loved by the Celts. She is thus the
+equivalent of the Gaulish goddess equated with Minerva by Cćsar, and
+found on inscriptions as Minerva Belisama and Brigindo. She is the Dea
+Brigantia of British inscriptions.[224] One of the seats of her worship
+was the land of the Brigantes, of whom she was the eponymous goddess,
+and her name (cf. Ir. _brig_, "power" or "craft"; Welsh _bri_, "honour,"
+"renown") suggests her high functions. But her popularity is seen in the
+continuation of her personality and cult in those of S. Brigit, at whose
+shrine in Kildare a sacred fire, which must not be breathed on, or
+approached by a male, was watched daily by nineteen nuns in turn, and on
+the twentieth day by the saint herself.[225] Similar sacred fires were
+kept up in other monasteries,[226] and they point to the old cult of a
+goddess of fire, the nuns being successors of a virgin priesthood like
+the vestals, priestesses of Vesta. As has been seen, the goddesses
+Belisama and Sul, probably goddesses of fire, resembled Brigit in
+this.[227] But Brigit, like Vesta, was at once a goddess of fire and of
+fertility, as her connection with Candlemas and certain ritual survivals
+also suggest. In the Hebrides on S. Bride's day (Candlemas-eve) women
+dressed a sheaf of oats in female clothes and set it with a club in a
+basket called "Briid's bed." Then they called, "Briid is come, Briid is
+welcome." Or a bed was made of corn and hay with candles burning beside
+it, and Bride was invited to come as her bed was ready. If the mark of
+the club was seen in the ashes, this was an omen of a good harvest and a
+prosperous year.[228] It is also noteworthy that if cattle cropped the
+grass near S. Brigit's shrine, next day it was as luxuriant as ever.
+
+Brigit, or goddesses with similar functions, was regarded by the Celts
+as an early teacher of civilisation, inspirer of the artistic, poetic,
+and mechanical faculties, as well as a goddess of fire and fertility. As
+such she far excelled her sons, gods of knowledge. She must have
+originated in the period when the Celts worshipped goddesses rather than
+gods, and when knowledge--leechcraft, agriculture, inspiration--were
+women's rather than men's. She had a female priesthood, and men were
+perhaps excluded from her cult, as the tabued shrine at Kildare
+suggests. Perhaps her fire was fed from sacred oak wood, for many
+shrines of S. Brigit were built under oaks, doubtless displacing pagan
+shrines of the goddess.[229] As a goddess, Brigit is more prominent than
+Danu, also a goddess of fertility, even though Danu is mother of the
+gods.
+
+Other goddesses remembered in tradition are Cleena and Vera, celebrated
+in fairy and witch lore, the former perhaps akin to a river-goddess
+Clota, the Clutoida (a fountain-nymph) of the continental Celts; the
+latter, under her alternative name Dirra, perhaps a form of a goddess of
+Gaul, Dirona.[230] Aine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has
+her seat at Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former
+cult are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If they were
+neglected she and her troops performed them, according to local
+legend.[231] She is thus an old goddess of fertility, whose cult, even
+at a festival in which gods were latterly more prominent, is still
+remembered. She is also associated with the waters as a water-nymph
+captured for a time as a fairy-bride by the Earl of Desmond.[232] But
+older legends connect her with the _síd_. She was daughter of Eogabal,
+king of the _síd_ of Knockainy, the grass on which was annually
+destroyed at Samhain by his people, because it had been taken from them,
+its rightful owners. Oilill Olomm and Ferchus resolved to watch the
+_síd_ on Samhain-eve. They saw Eogabal and Aine emerge from it. Ferchus
+killed Eogabal, and Oilill tried to outrage Aine, who bit the flesh from
+his ear. Hence his name of "Bare Ear."[233] In this legend we see how
+earlier gods of fertility come to be regarded as hostile to growth.
+Another story tells of the love of Aillén, Eogabal's son, for Manannan's
+wife and that of Aine for Manannan. Aine offered her favours to the god
+if he would give his wife to her brother, and "the complicated bit of
+romance," as S. Patrick calls it, was thus arranged.[234]
+
+Although the Irish gods are warriors, and there are special war-gods,
+yet war-goddesses are more prominent, usually as a group of
+three--Morrigan, Neman, and Macha. A fourth, Badb, sometimes takes the
+place of one of these, or is identical with Morrigan, or her name, like
+that of Morrigan, may be generic.[235] _Badb_ means "a scald-crow,"
+under which form the war-goddesses appeared, probably because these
+birds were seen near the slain. She is also called Badbcatha,
+"battle-Badb," and is thus the equivalent of _-athubodua,_ or, more
+probably, _Cathubodua_, mentioned in an inscription from Haute-Savoie,
+while this, as well as personal names like _Boduogenos_, shows that a
+goddess Bodua was known to the Gauls.[236] The _badb_ or battle-crow is
+associated with the Fomorian Tethra, but Badb herself is consort of a
+war-god Nét, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, who may be the equivalent of
+Neton, mentioned in Spanish inscriptions and equated with Mars.
+Elsewhere Neman is Nét's consort, and she may be the Nemetona of
+inscriptions, e.g. at Bath, the consort of Mars. Cormac calls Nét and
+Neman "a venomous couple," which we may well believe them to have
+been.[237] To Macha were devoted the heads of slain enemies, "Macha's
+mast," but she, according to the annalists, was slain at Mag-tured,
+though she reappears in the Cúchulainn saga as the Macha whose
+ill-treatment led to the "debility" of the Ulstermen.[238] The name
+Morrigan may mean "great queen," though Dr. Stokes, connecting _mor_
+with the same syllable in "Fomorian," explains it as
+"nightmare-queen."[239] She works great harm to the Fomorians at
+Mag-tured, and afterwards proclaims the victory to the hills, rivers,
+and fairy-hosts, uttering also a prophecy of the evils to come at the
+end of time.[240] She reappears prominently in the Cúchulainn saga,
+hostile to the hero because he rejects her love, yet aiding the hosts of
+Ulster and the Brown Bull, and in the end trying to prevent the hero's
+death.[241]
+
+The prominent position of these goddesses must be connected with the
+fact that women went out to war--a custom said to have been stopped by
+Adamnan at his mother's request, and that many prominent heroines of the
+heroic cycles are warriors, like the British Boudicca, whose name may be
+connected with _boudi_, "victory." Specific titles were given to such
+classes of female warriors--_bangaisgedaig_, _banfeinnidi_, etc.[242]
+But it is possible that these goddesses were at first connected with
+fertility, their functions changing with the growing warlike tendencies
+of the Celts. Their number recalls that of the threefold _Matres_, and
+possibly the change in their character is hinted in the Romano-British
+inscription at Benwell to the _Lamiis Tribus_, since Morrigan's name is
+glossed _lamia_.[243] She is also identified with Anu, and is mistress
+of Dagda, an Earth-god, and with Badb and others expels the Fomorians
+when they destroyed the agricultural produce of Ireland.[244] Probably
+the scald-crow was at once the symbol and the incarnation of the
+war-goddesses, who resemble the Norse Valkyries, appearing sometimes as
+crows, and the Greek Keres, bird-like beings which drank the blood of
+the slain. It is also interesting to note that Badb, who has the
+character of a prophetess of evil, is often identified with the "Washer
+at the Ford," whose presence indicates death to him whose armour or
+garments she seems to cleanse.[245]
+
+The _Matres_, goddesses of fertility, do not appear by name in Ireland,
+but the triplication of such goddesses as Morrigan and Brigit, the
+threefold name of Dagda's wife, or the fact that Arm, Danu, and Buanan
+are called "mothers," while Buanan's name is sometimes rendered "good
+mother," may suggest that such grouped goddesses were not unknown. Later
+legend knows of white women who assist in spinning, or three hags with
+power over nature, or, as in the _Battle of Ventry_, of three
+supernatural women who fall in love with Conncrithir, aid him in fight,
+and heal his wounds. In this document and elsewhere is mentioned the
+"_síd_ of the White Women."[246] Goddesses of fertility are usually
+goddesses of love, and the prominence given to females among the _síde_,
+the fact that they are often called _Be find_, "White Women," like
+fairies who represent the _Matres_ elsewhere, and that they freely offer
+their love to mortals, may connect them with this group of goddesses.
+Again, when the Milesians arrived in Ireland, three kings of the Tuatha
+Déa had wives called Eriu, Banba, and Fotla, who begged that Ireland
+should be called after them. This was granted, but only Eriu (Erin)
+remained in general use.[247] The story is an ćtiological myth
+explaining the names of Ireland, but the three wives may be a group like
+the _Matres_, guardians of the land which took its name from them.
+
+Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba, who give a title to the whole group, are
+called _tri dee Donand_, "the three gods (sons of) Danu," or, again,
+"gods of _dán_" (knowledge), perhaps as the result of a folk-etymology,
+associating _dân_ with their mother's name Danu.[248] Various attributes
+are personified as their descendants, Wisdom being son of all
+three.[249] Though some of these attributes may have been actual gods,
+especially Ecne or Wisdom, yet it is more probable that the
+personification is the result of the subtleties of bardic science, of
+which similar examples occur.[250] On the other hand, the fact that Ecne
+is the son of three brothers, may recall some early practice of
+polyandry of which instances are met with in the sagas.[251] M. D'Arbois
+has suggested that Iuchar and Iucharba are mere duplicates of Brian, who
+usually takes the leading place, and he identifies them with three kings
+of the Tuatha Déa reigning at the time of the Milesian invasion--
+MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne, so called, according to Keating,
+because the hazel (_coll_), the plough (_cecht_), and the sun (_grian_)
+were "gods of worship" to them. Both groups are grandsons of Dagda, and
+M. D'Arbois regards this second group as also triplicates of one god,
+because their wives Fotla, Banba, and Eriu all bear names of Ireland
+itself, are personifications of the land, and thus may be "reduced to
+unity."[252] While this reasoning is ingenious, it should be remembered
+that we must not lay too much stress upon Irish divine genealogies,
+while each group of three may have been similar local gods associated at
+a later time as brothers. Their separate personality is suggested by the
+fact that the Tuatha Dé Danann are called after them "the Men of the
+Three Gods," and their supremacy appears in the incident of Dagda, Lug,
+and Ogma consulting them before the fight at Mag-tured--a natural
+proceeding if they were gods of knowledge or destiny.[253] The brothers
+are said to have slain the god Cian, and to have been themselves slain
+by Lug, and on this seems to have been based the story of _The Children
+of Tuirenn_, in which they perish through their exertions in obtaining
+the _eric_ demanded by Lug.[254] Here they are sons of Tuirenn, but more
+usually their mother Danu or Brigit is mentioned.
+
+Another son of Brigit's was Ogma, master of poetry and inventor of
+_ogham_ writing, the word being derived from his name.[255] It is more
+probable that Ogma's name is a derivative from some word signifying
+"speech" or "writing," and that the connection with "ogham" may be a
+mere folk-etymology. Ogma appears as the champion of the gods,[256] a
+position given him perhaps from the primitive custom of rousing the
+warriors' emotions by eloquent speeches before a battle. Similarly the
+Babylonian Marduk, "seer of the gods," was also their champion in fight.
+Ogma fought and died at Mag-tured; but in other accounts he survives,
+captures Tethra's sword, goes on the quest for Dagda's harp, and is
+given a _síd_ after the Milesian victory. Ogma's counterpart in Gaul is
+Ogmíos, a Herakles and a god of eloquence, thus bearing the dual
+character of Ogma, while Ogma's epithet _grianainech_, "of the smiling
+countenance," recalls Lucian's account of the "smiling face" of
+Ogmíos.[257] Ogma's high position is the result of the admiration of
+bardic eloquence among the Celts, whose loquacity was proverbial, and to
+him its origin was doubtless ascribed, as well as that of poetry. The
+genealogists explain his relationship to the other divinities in
+different ways, but these confusions may result from the fact that gods
+had more than one name, of which the annalists made separate
+personalities. Most usually Ogma is called Brigit's son. Her functions
+were like his own, but in spite of the increasing supremacy of gods over
+goddesses, he never really eclipsed her.
+
+Among other culture gods were those associated with the arts and
+crafts--the development of Celtic art in metal-work necessitating the
+existence of gods of this art. Such a god is Goibniu, eponymous god of
+smiths (Old Ir. _goba_, "smith"), and the divine craftsman at the battle
+of Mag-tured, making spears which never failed to kill.[258] Smiths have
+everywhere been regarded as uncanny--a tradition surviving from the
+first introduction of metal among those hitherto accustomed to stone
+weapons and tools. S. Patrick prayed against the "spells of women,
+smiths, and Druids," and it is thus not surprising to find that Goibniu
+had a reputation for magic, even among Christians. A spell for making
+butter, in an eighth century MS. preserved at S. Gall, appeals to his
+"science."[259] Curiously enough, Goibniu is also connected with the
+culinary art in myth, and, like Hephaistos, prepares the feast of the
+gods, while his ale preserves their immortality.[260] The elation
+produced by heady liquors caused them to be regarded as draughts of
+immortality, like Soma, Haoma, or nectar. Goibniu survives in tradition
+as the _Gobhan Saer_, to whom the building of round towers is ascribed.
+
+Another god of crafts was Creidne the brazier (Ir. _cerd_, "artificer";
+cf. Scots _caird_, "tinker"), who assisted in making a silver hand for
+Nuada, and supplied with magical rapidity parts of the weapons used at
+Mag-tured.[261] According to the annalists, he was drowned while
+bringing golden ore from Spain.[262] Luchtine, god of carpenters,
+provided spear-handles for the battle, and with marvellous skill flung
+them into the sockets of the spear-heads.[263]
+
+Diancecht, whose name may mean "swift in power," was god of medicine,
+and, with Creidne's help, fashioned a silver hand for Nuada.[264] His
+son Miach replaced this by a magic restoration of the real hand, and in
+jealousy his father slew him--a version of the _Märchen_ formula of the
+jealous master. Three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew from his grave,
+and were arranged according to their properties by his sister Airmed,
+but Diancecht again confused them, "so that no one knows their proper
+cures."[265] At the second battle of Mag-tured, Diancecht presided over
+a healing-well containing magic herbs. These and the power of spells
+caused the mortally wounded who were placed in it to recover. Hence it
+was called "the spring of health."[266] Diancecht, associated with a
+healing-well, may be cognate with Grannos. He is also referred to in the
+S. Gall MS., where his healing powers are extolled.
+
+An early chief of the gods is Dagda, who, in the story of the battle of
+Mag-tured, is said to be so called because he promised to do more than
+all the other gods together. Hence they said, "It is thou art the _good
+hand_" (_dag-dae_). The _Cóir Anmann_ explains _Dagda_ as "fire of god"
+(_daig_ and _déa_). The true derivation is from _dagos_, "good," and
+_deivos_, "god," though Dr. Stokes considers _Dagda_ as connected with
+_dagh_, whence _daghda_, "cunning."[267] Dagda is also called Cera, a
+word perhaps derived from _kar_ and connected with Lat. _cerus_,
+"creator" and other names of his are _Ruad-rofhessa_, "lord of great
+knowledge," and _Eochaid Ollathair_, "great father," "for a great father
+to the Tuatha Dé Danann was he."[268] He is also called "a beautiful
+god," and "the principal god of the pagans."[269] After the battle he
+divides the _brugs_ or _síd_ among the gods, but his son Oengus, having
+been omitted, by a stratagem succeeded in ousting his father from
+his _síd_, over which he now himself reigned[270]--possibly the survival
+of an old myth telling of a superseding of Dagda's cult by that of
+Oengus, a common enough occurrence in all religions. In another version,
+Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divides the _síd_, and Manannan makes the
+Tuatha Déa invisible and immortal. He also helps Oengus to drive out his
+foster-father Elemar from his _brug_, where Oengus now lives as a
+god.[271] The underground _brugs_ are the gods' land, in all respects
+resembling the oversea Elysium, and at once burial-places of the
+euhemerised gods and local forms of the divine land. Professor Rh[^y]s
+regards Dagda as an atmospheric god; Dr. MacBain sees in him a sky-god.
+More probably he is an early Earth-god and a god of agriculture. He has
+power over corn and milk, and agrees to prevent the other gods from
+destroying these after their defeat by the Milesians--former beneficent
+gods being regarded as hurtful, a not uncommon result of the triumph of
+a new faith.[272] Dagda is called "the god of the earth" "because of the
+greatness of his power."[273] Mythical objects associated with him
+suggest plenty and fertility--his cauldron which satisfied all comers,
+his unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
+vessel of ale, and three trees always laden with fruit. These were in
+his _síd_, where none ever tasted death;[274] hence his _síd_ was a
+local Elysium, not a gloomy land of death, but the underworld in its
+primitive aspect as the place of gods of fertility. In some myths he
+appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D'Arbois suggests that he may
+thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god with the mallet.[275] This is
+probable, since the Gaulish god may have been a form of Dispater, an
+Earth or under-Earth god of fertility.
+
+If Dagda was a god of fertility, he may have been an equivalent of a god
+whose image was called _Cenn_ or _Cromm Cruaich_, "Head _or_ Crooked One
+of the Mound," or "Bloody Head _or_ Crescent."[276] Vallancey, citing a
+text now lost, says that _Crom-eocha_ was a name of Dagda, and that a
+motto at the sacrificial place at Tara read, "Let the altar ever blaze
+to Dagda."[277] These statements may support this identification. The
+cult of Cromm is preserved in some verses:
+
+  "He was their god,
+   The withered Cromm with many mists...
+   To him without glory
+   They would kill their piteous wretched offspring,
+   With much wailing and peril,
+   To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
+   Milk and corn
+   They would ask from him speedily
+   In return for a third of their healthy issue,
+   Great was the horror and fear of him.
+   To him noble Gaels would prostrate themselves."[278]
+
+Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts of corn
+and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on one occasion
+the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused three-fourths of them
+to die. Again, "they beat their palms, they pounded their bodies ...
+they shed falling showers of tears."[279] These are reminiscences of
+orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one. The god must
+have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was poured on the
+image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and folk-survivals, may
+have been buried in the fields to promote fertility. If so, the victims'
+flesh was instinct with the power of the divinity, and, though their
+number is obviously exaggerated, several victims may have taken the
+place of an earlier slain representative of the god. A mythic _Crom
+Dubh_, "Black Crom," whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in
+August, may be another form of Cromm Cruaich. In one story the name is
+transferred to S. Patrick's servant, who is asked by the fairies when
+they will go to Paradise. "Not till the day of judgment," is the answer,
+and for this they cease to help men in the processes of agriculture. But
+in a variant Manannan bids Crom ask this question, and the same result
+follows.[280] These tales thus enshrine the idea that Crom and the
+fairies were ancient gods of growth who ceased to help men when they
+deserted them for the Christian faith. If the sacrifice was offered at
+the August festival, or, as the texts suggest, at Samhain, after
+harvest, it must have been on account of the next year's crop, and the
+flesh may have been mingled with the seed corn.
+
+Dagda may thus have been a god of growth and fertility. His wife or
+mistress was the river-goddess, Boand (the Boyne),[281] and the children
+ascribed to him were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma.
+The euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn's venom, long after the battle
+of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.[282] Irish mythology is
+remarkably free from obscene and grotesque myths, but some of these
+cluster round Dagda. We hear of the Gargantuan meal provided for him in
+sport by the Fomorians, and of which he ate so much that "not easy was
+it for him to move and unseemly was his apparel," as well as his conduct
+with a Fomorian beauty. Another amour of his was with Morrigan, the
+place where it occurred being still known as "The Couple's Bed."[283] In
+another tale Dagda acts as cook to Conaire the great.[284]
+
+The beautiful and fascinating Oengus is sometimes called _Mac Ind Oc_,
+"Son of the Young Ones," i.e. Dagda and Boand, or _In Mac Oc_, "The
+Young Son." This name, like the myth of his disinheriting his father,
+may point to his cult superseding that of Dagda. If so, he may then have
+been affiliated to the older god, as was frequently done in parallel
+cases, e.g. in Babylon. Oengus may thus have been the high god of some
+tribe who assumed supremacy, ousting the high god of another tribe,
+unless we suppose that Dagda was a pre-Celtic god with functions similar
+to those of Oengus, and that the Celts adopted his cult but gave that of
+Oengus a higher place. In one myth the supremacy of Oengus is seen.
+After the first battle of Mag-tured, Dagda is forced to become the slave
+of Bres, and is much annoyed by a lampooner who extorts the best pieces
+of his rations. Following the advice of Oengus, he not only causes the
+lampooner's death, but triumphs over the Fomorians.[285] On insufficient
+grounds, mainly because he was patron of Diarmaid, beloved of women, and
+because his kisses became birds which whispered love thoughts to youths
+and maidens, Oengus has been called the Eros of the Gaels. More probably
+he was primarily a supreme god of growth, who occasionally suffered
+eclipse during the time of death in nature, like Tammuz and Adonis, and
+this may explain his absence from Mag-tured. The beautiful story of his
+vision of a maiden with whom he fell violently in love contains too many
+_Märchen_ formulć to be of any mythological or religious value. His
+mother Boand caused search to be made for her, but without avail. At
+last she was discovered to be the daughter of a semi-divine lord of a
+_síd_, but only through the help of mortals was the secret of how she
+could be taken wrung from him. She was a swan-maiden, and on a certain
+day only would Oengus obtain her. Ultimately she became his wife. The
+story is interesting because it shows how the gods occasionally required
+mortal aid.[286]
+
+Equally influenced by _Märchen_ formulć is the story of Oengus and
+Etain. Etain and Fuamnach were wives of Mider, but Fuamnach was jealous
+of Etain, and transformed her into an insect. In this shape Oengus found
+her, and placed her in a glass _grianan_ or bower filled with flowers,
+the perfume of which sustained her. He carried the _grianan_ with him
+wherever he went, but Fuamnach raised a magic wind which blew Etain away
+to the roof of Etair, a noble of Ulster. She fell through a smoke-hole
+into a golden cup of wine, and was swallowed by Etair's wife, of whom
+she was reborn.[287] Professor Rh[^y]s resolves all this into a sun and
+dawn myth. Oengus is the sun, Etain the dawn, the _grianan_ the expanse
+of the sky.[288] But the dawn does not grow stronger with the sun's
+influence, as Etain did under that of Oengus. At the sun's appearance
+the dawn begins
+
+    "to faint in the light of the sun she loves,
+  To faint in his light and to die."
+
+The whole story is built up on the well-known _Mărchen_ formulć of the
+"True Bride" and the "Two Brothers," but accommodated to well-known
+mythic personages, and the _grianan_ is the Celtic equivalent of various
+objects in stories of the "Cinderella" type, in which the heroine
+conceals herself, the object being bought by the hero and kept in his
+room.[289] Thus the tale reveals nothing of Etain's divine functions,
+but it illustrates the method of the "mythological" school in
+discovering sun-heroes and dawn-maidens in any incident, mythical or
+not.
+
+Oengus appears in the Fionn cycle as the fosterer and protector of
+Diarmaid.[290] With Mider, Bodb, and Morrigan, he expels the Fomorians
+when they destroy the corn, fruit, and milk of the Tuatha Dé
+Danann.[291] This may point to his functions as a god of fertility.
+
+Although Mider appears mainly as a king of the _síde_ and ruler of the
+_brug_ of Bri Léith, he is also connected with the Tuatha Déa.[292]
+Learning that Etain had been reborn and was now married to King Eochaid,
+he recovered her from him, but lost her again when Eochaid attacked his
+_brug_. He was ultimately avenged in the series of tragic events which
+led to the death of Eochaid's descendant Conaire. Though his _síd_ is
+located in Ireland, it has so much resemblance to Elysium that Mider
+must be regarded as one of its lords. Hence he appears as ruler of the
+Isle of Falga, i.e. the Isle of Man regarded as Elysium. Thence his
+daughter Bláthnat, his magical cows and cauldron, were stolen by
+Cúchulainn and Curoi, and his three cranes from Bri Léith by
+Aitherne[293]--perhaps distorted versions of the myths which told how
+various animals and gifts came from the god's land. Mider may be the
+Irish equivalent of a local Gaulish god, Medros, depicted on bas-reliefs
+with a cow or bull.[294]
+
+The victory of the Tuatha Déa at the first battle of Mag-tured, in June,
+their victory followed, however, by the deaths of many of them at the
+second battle in November, may point to old myths dramatising the
+phenomena of nature, and connected with the ritual of summer and winter
+festivals. The powers of light and growth are in the ascendant in
+summer; they seem to die in winter. Christian euhemerists made use of
+these myths, but regarded the gods as warriors who were slain, not as
+those who die and revive again. At the second battle, Nuada loses his
+life; at the first, though his forces are victorious, his hand was cut
+off by the Fomorian Sreng, for even when victorious the gods must
+suffer. A silver hand was made for him by Diancecht, and hence he was
+called Nuada _Argetlám_, "of the silver hand." Professor Rh[^y]s regards
+him as a Celtic Zeus, partly because he is king of the Tuatha Dé Danann,
+partly because he, like Zeus or Tyr, who lost tendons or a hand through
+the wiles of evil gods, is also maimed.[295] Similarly in the _Rig-Veda_
+the Açvins substitute a leg of iron for the leg of Vispala, cut off in
+battle, and the sun is called "golden-handed" because Savitri cut off
+his hand and the priests replaced it by one of gold. The myth of Nuada's
+hand may have arisen from primitive attempts at replacing lopped-off
+limbs, as well as from the fact that no Irish king must have any bodily
+defect, or possibly because an image of Nuada may have lacked a hand or
+possessed one of silver. Images were often maimed or given artificial
+limbs, and myths then arose to explain the custom.[296] Nuada appears to
+be a god of life and growth, but he is not a sun-god. His Welsh
+equivalent is Llűd Llawereint, or "silver-handed," who delivers his
+people from various scourges. His daughter Creidylad is to be wedded to
+Gwythur, but is kidnapped by Gwyn. Arthur decides that they must fight
+for her yearly on 1st May until the day of judgment, when the victor
+would gain her hand.[297] Professor Rh[^y]s regards Creidylad as a
+Persephone, wedded alternately to light and dark divinities.[298] But
+the story may rather be explanatory of such ritual acts as are found in
+folk-survivals in the form of fights between summer and winter, in which
+a Queen of May figures, and intended to assist the conflict of the gods
+of growth with those of blight.[299] Creidylad is daughter of a probable
+god of growth, nor is it impossible that the story of the battle of
+Mag-tured is based on mythic explanations of such ritual combats.
+
+The Brythons worshipped Nuada as Nodons in Romano-British times. The
+remains of his temple exist near the mouth of the Severn, and the god
+may have been equated with Mars, though certain symbols seem to connect
+him with the waters as a kind of Neptune.[300] An Irish mythic poet
+Nuada Necht may be the Nechtan who owned a magic well whence issued the
+Boyne, and was perhaps a water-god. If such a water-god was associated
+with Nuada, he and Nodons might be a Celtic Neptune.[301] But the
+relationship and functions of these various personages are obscure, nor
+is it certain that Nodons was equated with Neptune or that Nuada was a
+water-god. His name may be cognate with words meaning "growth,"
+"possession," "harvest," and this supports the view taken here of his
+functions.[302] The Welsh Nudd Hael, or "the Generous," who possessed a
+herd of 21,000 milch kine, may be a memory of this god, and it is
+possible that, as a god of growth, Nuada had human incarnations called
+by his name.[303]
+
+Ler, whose name means "sea," and who was a god of the sea, is father of
+Manannan as well as of the personages of the beautiful story called _The
+Children of Lir_, from which we learn practically all that is known of
+him. He resented not being made ruler of the Tuatha Déa, but was later
+reconciled when the daughter of Bodb Dearg was given to him as his wife.
+On her death, he married her sister, who transformed her step-children
+into swans.[304] Ler is the equivalent of the Brythonic Llyr, later
+immortalised by Shakespeare as King Lear.
+
+The greatness of Manannan mac Lir, "son of the sea," is proved by the
+fact that he appears in many of the heroic tales, and is still
+remembered in tradition and folk-tale. He is a sea-god who has become
+more prominent than the older god of the sea, and though not a supreme
+god, he must have had a far-spreading cult. With Bodb Dearg he was
+elected king of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He made the gods invisible and
+immortal, gave them magical food, and assisted Oengus in driving out
+Elemar from his _síd_. Later tradition spoke of four Manannans, probably
+local forms of the god, as is suggested by the fact that the true name
+of one of them is said to be Orbsen, son of Allot. Another, the son of
+Ler, is described as a renowned trader who dwelt in the Isle of Man, the
+best of pilots, weather-wise, and able to transform himself as he
+pleased. The _Cóir Anmann_ adds that the Britons and the men of Erin
+deemed him god of the sea.[305] That position is plainly seen in many
+tales, e.g. in the magnificent passage of _The Voyage of Bran_, where he
+suddenly sweeps into sight, riding in a chariot across the waves from
+the Land of Promise; or in the tale of _Cúchulainn's Sickness_, where
+his wife Fand sees him, "the horseman of the crested sea," coming across
+the waves. In the _Agallamh na Senorach_ he appears as a cavalier
+breasting the waves. "For the space of nine waves he would be submerged
+in the sea, but would rise on the crest of the tenth without wetting
+chest or breast."[306] In one archaic tale he is identified with a great
+sea wave which swept away Tuag, while the waves are sometimes called
+"the son of Lir's horses"--a name still current in Ireland, or, again,
+"the locks of Manannan's wife."[307] His position as god of the sea may
+have given rise to the belief that he was ruler of the oversea Elysium,
+and, later, of the other-world as a magical domain coterminous with this
+earth. He is still remembered in the Isle of Man, which may owe its name
+to him, and which, like many another island, was regarded by the Goidels
+as the island Elysium under its name of Isle of Falga. He is also the
+Manawyddan of Welsh story.
+
+Manannan appears in the Cúchulainn and Fionn cycles, usually as a ruler
+of the Other-world. His wife Fand was Cúchulainn's mistress, Diarmaid
+was his pupil in fairyland, and Cormac was his guest there. Even in
+Christian times surviving pagan beliefs caused legend to be busy with
+his name. King Fiachna was fighting the Scots and in great danger, when
+a stranger appeared to his wife and announced that he would save her
+husband's life if she would consent to abandon herself to him. She
+reluctantly agreed, and the child of the _amour_ was the seventh-century
+King Mongan, of whom the annalist says, "every one knows that his real
+father was Manannan."[308] Mongan was also believed to be a rebirth of
+Fionn. Manannan is still remembered in folk-tradition, and in the Isle
+of Man, where his grave is to be seen, some of his ritual survived until
+lately, bundles of rushes being placed for him on midsummer eve on two
+hills.[309] Barintus, who steers Arthur to the fortunate isles, and S.
+Barri, who crossed the sea on horseback, may have been legendary forms
+of a local sea-god akin to Manannan, or of Manannan himself.[310] His
+steed was Enbarr, "water foam _or_ hair," and Manannan was "the horseman
+of the manéd sea." "Barintus," perhaps connected with _barr find_,
+"white-topped," would thus be a surname of the god who rode on Enbarr,
+the foaming wave, or who was himself the wave, while his mythic
+sea-riding was transferred to the legend of S. Barri, if such a person
+ever existed.
+
+Various magical possessions were ascribed to Manannan--his armour and
+sword, the one making the wearer invulnerable, the other terrifying all
+who beheld it; his horse and canoe; his swine, which came to life again
+when killed; his magic cloak; his cup which broke when a lie was spoken;
+his tablecloth, which, when waved, produced food. Many of these are
+found everywhere in _Märchen_, and there is nothing peculiarly Celtic in
+them. We need not, therefore, with the mythologists, see in his armour
+the vapoury clouds or in his sword lightning or the sun's rays. But
+their magical nature as well as the fact that so much wizardry is
+attributed to Manannan, points to a copious mythology clustering round
+the god, now for ever lost.
+
+The parentage of Lug is differently stated, but that account which makes
+him son of Cian and of Ethne, daughter of Balor, is best attested.[311]
+Folk-tradition still recalls the relation of Lug and Balor. Balor, a
+robber living in Tory Island, had a daughter whose son was to kill her
+father. He therefore shut her up in an inaccessible place, but in
+revenge for Balor's stealing MacIneely's cow, the latter gained access
+to her, with the result that Ethne bore three sons, whom Balor cast into
+the sea. One of them, Lug, was recovered by MacIneely and fostered by
+his brother Gavida. Balor now slew MacIneely, but was himself slain by
+Lug, who pierced his single eye with a red-hot iron.[312] In another
+version, Kian takes MacIneely's place and is aided by Manannan, in
+accordance with older legends.[313] But Lug's birth-story has been
+influenced in these tales by the _Märchen_ formula of the girl hidden
+away because it has been foretold that she will have a son who will slay
+her father.
+
+Lug is associated with Manannan, from whose land he comes to assist the
+Tuatha Déa against the Fomorians. His appearance was that of the sun,
+and by this brilliant warrior's prowess the hosts were utterly
+defeated.[314] This version, found in _The Children of Tuirenn_, differs
+from the account in the story of Mag-tured. Here Lug arrives at the
+gates of Tara and offers his services as a craftsman. Each offer is
+refused, until he proclaims himself "the man of each and every art," or
+_samildánach_, "possessing many arts." Nuada resigns his throne to him
+for thirteen days, and Lug passes in review the various craftsmen (i.e.
+the gods), and though they try to prevent such a marvellous person
+risking himself in fight, he escapes, heads the warriors, and sings his
+war-song. Balor, the evil-eyed, he slays with a sling-stone, and his
+death decided the day against the Fomorians. In this account Lug
+_samildánach_ is a patron of the divine patrons of crafts; in other
+words, he is superior to a whole group of gods. He was also inventor of
+draughts, ball-play, and horsemanship. But, as M. D'Arbois shows,
+_samildánach_ is the equivalent of "inventor of all arts," applied by
+Cćsar to the Gallo-Roman Mercury, who is thus an equivalent of Lug.[315]
+This is attested on other grounds. As Lug's name appears in Irish Louth
+(_Lug-magh_) and in British Lugu-vallum, near Hadrian's Wall, so in Gaul
+the names Lugudunum (Lyons), Lugudiacus, and Lugselva ("devoted to
+Lugus") show that a god Lugus was worshipped there. A Gaulish feast of
+Lugus in August--the month of Lug's festival in Ireland--was perhaps
+superseded by one in honour of Augustus. No dedication to Lugus has yet
+been found, but images of and inscriptions to Mercury abound at
+Lugudunum Convenarum.[316] As there were three Brigits, so there may
+have been several forms of Lugus, and two dedications to the _Lugoves_
+have been found in Spain and Switzerland, one of them inscribed by the
+shoemakers of Uxama.[317] Thus the Lugoves may have been multiplied
+forms of Lugus or _Lugovos_, "a hero," the meaning given to "Lug" by
+O'Davoren.[318] Shoe-making was not one of the arts professed by Lug,
+but Professor Rh[^y]s recalls the fact that the Welsh Lleu, whom he
+equates with Lug, disguised himself as a shoemaker.[319] Lugus, besides
+being a mighty hero, was a great Celtic culture-god, superior to all
+other culture divinities.
+
+The euhemerists assigned a definite date to Lug's death, but side by
+side with this the memory of his divinity prevailed, and he appears as
+the father and helper of Cúchulainn, who was possibly a rebirth of the
+god.[320] His high position appears in the fact that the Gaulish
+assembly at Lugudunum was held in his honour, like the festival of
+Lugnasad in Ireland. Craftsmen brought their wares to sell at this
+festival of the god of crafts, while it may also have been a harvest
+festival.[321] Whether it was a strictly solar feast is doubtful, though
+Professor Rh[^y]s and others insist that Lug is a sun-god. The name of
+the Welsh Lleu, "light," is equated with Lug, and the same meaning
+assigned to the latter.[322] This equation has been contested and is
+doubtful, Lugus probably meaning "hero."[323] Still the sun-like traits
+ascribed to Lug before Mag-tured suggest that he was a sun-god, and
+solar gods elsewhere, e.g. the Polynesian Maui, are culture-gods as
+well. But it should be remembered that Lug is not associated with the
+true solar festivals of Beltane and Midsummer.
+
+While our knowledge of the Tuatha Dé Danann is based upon a series of
+mythic tales and other records, that of the gods of the continental
+Celts, apart from a few notices in classical authors and elsewhere,
+comes from inscriptions. But as far as can be judged, though the names
+of the two groups seldom coincide, their functions must have been much
+alike, and their origins certainly the same. The Tuatha Dé Danann were
+nature divinities of growth, light, agriculture--their symbols and
+possessions suggesting fertility, e.g. the cauldron. They were
+divinities of culture and crafts, and of war. There must have been many
+other gods in Ireland than those described here, while some of those may
+not have been worshipped all over Ireland. Generally speaking, there
+were many local gods in Gaul with similar functions but different names,
+and this may have been true of Ireland. Perhaps the different names
+given to Dagda, Manannan, and others were simply names of similar local
+gods, one of whom became prominent, and attracted to himself the names
+of the others. So, too, the identity of Danu and Brigit might be
+explained, or the fact that there were three Brigits. We read also in
+the texts of the god of Connaught, or of Ulster, and these were
+apparently regional divinities, or of "the god of Druidism"--perhaps a
+god worshipped specially by Druids.[324] The remote origin of some of
+these divinities may be sought in the primitive cult of the Earth
+personified as a fertile being, and in that of vegetation and
+corn-spirits, and the vague spirits of nature in all its aspects. Some
+of these still continued to be worshipped when the greater gods had been
+evolved. Though animal worship was not lacking in Ireland, divinities
+who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier animal-gods are less in
+evidence than on the Continent. The divinities of culture, crafts, and
+war, and of departments of nature, must have slowly assumed the definite
+personality assigned them in Irish religion. But, doubtless, they
+already possessed that before the Goidels reached Ireland. Strictly
+speaking, the underground domain assigned later to the Tuatha Dé Danann
+belongs only to such of them as were associated with fertility. But in
+course of time most of the group, as underground dwellers, were
+connected with growth and increase. These could be blighted by their
+enemies, or they themselves could withhold them when their worshippers
+offended them.[325]
+
+Irish mythology points to the early pre-eminence of goddesses. As
+agriculture and many of the arts were first in the hands of women,
+goddesses of fertility and culture preceded gods, and still held their
+place when gods were evolved. Even war-goddesses are prominent in
+Ireland. Celtic gods and heroes are often called after their mothers,
+not their fathers, and women loom largely in the tales of Irish
+colonisation, while in many legends they play a most important part.
+Goddesses give their name to divine groups, and, even where gods are
+prominent, their actions are free, their personalities still clearly
+defined. The supremacy of the divine women of Irish tradition is once
+more seen in the fact that they themselves woo and win heroes; while
+their capacity for love, their passion, their eternal youthfulness and
+beauty are suggestive of their early character as goddesses of
+ever-springing fertility.[326]
+
+This supremacy of goddesses is explained by Professor Rh[^y]s as
+non-Celtic, as borrowed by the Celts from the aborigines.[327] But it is
+too deeply impressed on the fabric of Celtic tradition to be other than
+native, and we have no reason to suppose that the Celts had not passed
+through a stage in which such a state of things was normal. Their innate
+conservatism caused them to preserve it more than other races who had
+long outgrown such a state of things.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[199] _HL_ 89; Stokes, _RC_ xii. 129. D'Arbois, ii. 125, explains it as
+"Folk of the god whose mother is called Danu."
+
+[200] _RC_ xii. 77. The usual Irish word for "god" is _dia_; other names
+are _Fiadu_, _Art_, _Dess_.
+
+[201] See Joyce, _SII_. i. 252, 262; _PN_ i. 183.
+
+[202] _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[203] _LL_ 11.
+
+[204] _LL_ 127. The mounds were the sepulchres of the euhemerised gods.
+
+[205] _Book of Fermoy_, fifteenth century.
+
+[206] _LL_ 11_b_.
+
+[207] _IT_ i. 14, 774; Stokes, _TL_ i. 99, 314, 319. _Síd_ is a fairy
+hill, the hill itself or the dwelling within it. Hence those who dwell
+in it are _Aes_ or _Fir síde_, "men of the mound," or _síde_, fairy
+folk. The primitive form is probably _sędos_, from _sęd_, "abode" or
+"seat"; cf. Greek [Greek: edos] "a temple." Thurneysen suggests a
+connection with a word equivalent to Lat. _sidus_, "constellation," or
+"dwelling of the gods."
+
+[208] Joyce, _SH_ i. 252; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 505.
+
+[209] "Vision of Oengus," _RC_ iii. 344; _IT_ i. 197 f.
+
+[210] Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 118; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 71; see p. 363,
+_infra_.
+
+[211] Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 118, § 6; _IT_ iii. 407; _RC_ xvi. 139.
+
+[212] Shore, _JAI_ xx. 9.
+
+[213] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 203 f. _Pennocrucium_ occurs in the _Itinerary_ of
+Antoninus.
+
+[214] Keating, 434.
+
+[215] Joyce, _SH_ i. 252.
+
+[216] See p. 228. In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived
+feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of
+ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a
+fairy. "Elf" and _síde_ may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the _síd_ or
+mound, have a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet.
+Boreale_, i. 413 f.
+
+[217] Tuan MacCairill (_LU_ 166) calls the Tuatha Déa, "dée ocus andée,"
+and gives the meaning as "poets and husbandmen." This phrase, with the
+same meaning, is used in "Cóir Anmann" (_IT_ iii. 355), but there we
+find that it occurred in a pagan formula of blessing--"The blessing of
+gods and not-gods be on thee." But the writer goes on to say--"These
+were their gods, the magicians, and their non-gods, the husbandmen."
+This may refer to the position of priest-kings and magicians as gods.
+Rh[^y]s compares Sanskrit _deva_ and _adeva_ (_HL_ 581). Cf. the phrase
+in a Welsh poem (Skene, i. 313), "Teulu Oeth et Anoeth," translated by
+Rh[^y]s as "Household of Power and Not-Power" (_CFL_ ii. 620), but the
+meaning is obscure. See Loth, i. 197.
+
+[218] _LL_ 10_b_.
+
+[219] Cormac, 4. Stokes (_US_ 12) derives Anu from _(p)an_, "to
+nourish"; cf. Lat. _panis_.
+
+[220] _Leicester County Folk-lore_, 4. The _Cóir Anmann_ says that Anu
+was worshipped as a goddess of plenty (_IT_ iii. 289).
+
+[221] Rh[^y]s, _Trans. 3rd Inter. Cong. Hist. of Rel._ ii. 213. See
+Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 251 ff., and p. 275, _infra_.
+
+[222] Rh[^y]s, _ibid._ ii. 213. He finds her name in the place-name
+_Bononia_ and its derivatives.
+
+[223] Cormac, 23.
+
+[224] Cćsar, vi. 17; Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _TIG_ 33.
+
+[225] Girald. Cambr. _Top. Hib._ ii. 34 f. Vengeance followed upon rash
+intrusion. For the breath tabu see Frazer, _Early Hist. of the
+Kingship_, 224.
+
+[226] Joyce, _SH_ i. 335.
+
+[227] P. 41, _supra_.
+
+[228] Martin, 119; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 248.
+
+[229] Frazer, _op. cit._ 225.
+
+[230] Joyce, _PN_ i. 195; O'Grady, ii. 198; Wood-Martin, i. 366; see p.
+42, _supra_.
+
+[231] Fitzgerald, _RC_ iv. 190. Aine has no connection with Anu, nor is
+she a moon-goddess, as is sometimes supposed.
+
+[232] _RC_ iv. 189.
+
+[233] Keating, 318; _IT_ iii. 305; _RC_ xiii. 435.
+
+[234] O'Grady, ii. 197.
+
+[235] _RC_ xii. 109, xxii. 295; Cormac, 87; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxiii.
+
+[236] Holder, i. 341; _CIL_ vii. 1292; Cćsar, ii. 23.
+
+[237] _LL_ 11_b_; Cormac, s.v. _Neit_; _RC_ iv. 36; _Arch. Rev._ i. 231;
+Holder, ii. 714, 738.
+
+[238] Stokes, _TIG, LL_ 11_a_.
+
+[239] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 43; Stokes, _RC_ xii. 128.
+
+[240] _RC_ xii. 91, 110.
+
+[241] See p. 131.
+
+[242] Petrie, _Tara_, 147; Stokes, _US_ 175; Meyer, _Cath Finntrága_,
+Oxford, 1885, 76 f.; _RC_ xvi. 56, 163, xxi. 396.
+
+[243] _CIL_ vii. 507; Stokes, _US_ 211.
+
+[244] _RC_ i. 41, xii. 84.
+
+[245] _RC_ xxi. 157, 315; Miss Hull, 247. A _baobh_ (a common Gaelic
+name for "witch") appears to Oscar and prophesies his death in a Fionn
+ballad (Campbell, _The Fians_, 33). In Brittany the "night-washers,"
+once water-fairies, are now regarded as _revenants_ (Le Braz, i. 52).
+
+[246] Joyce, _SH_ i. 261; Miss Hull, 186; Meyer, _Cath Finntraga_, 6,
+13; _IT_ i. 131, 871.
+
+[247] _LL_ 10_a_.
+
+[248] _LL_ 10_a_, 30_b_, 187_c_.
+
+[249] _RC_ xxvi. 13; _LL_ 187_c_.
+
+[250] Cf. the personification of the three strains of Dagda's harp
+(Leahy, ii. 205).
+
+[251] See p. 223, _infra_.
+
+[252] D'Arbois, ii. 372.
+
+[253] _RC_ xii. 77, 83.
+
+[254] _LL_ 11; _Atlantis_, London, 1858-70, iv. 159.
+
+[255] O'Donovan, _Grammar_, Dublin, 1845, xlvii.
+
+[256] _RC_ xii. 77.
+
+[257] Lucian, _Herakles_.
+
+[258] _RC_ xii. 89. The name is found in Gaulish Gobannicnos, and in
+Welsh Abergavenny.
+
+[259] _IT_ i. 56; Zimmer, _Glossć Hibernicć_, 1881, 270.
+
+[260] _Atlantis_, 1860, iii. 389.
+
+[261] _RC_ xii. 89.
+
+[262] _LL_ ll_a_.
+
+[263] _RC_ xii. 93.
+
+[264] Connac, 56, and _Cóir Anmann_ (_IT_ iii. 357) divide the name as
+_día-na-cecht_ and explain it as "god of the powers."
+
+[265] _RC_ xii. 67. For similar stories of plants springing from graves,
+see my _Childhood of Fiction_, 115.
+
+[266] _RC_ xii, 89, 95.
+
+[267] _RC_ vi. 369; Cormac, 23.
+
+[268] Cormac, 47, 144; _IT_ iii. 355, 357.
+
+[269] _IT_ iii. 355; D'Arbois, i. 202.
+
+[270] _LL_ 246_a_.
+
+[271] _Irish MSS. Series_, i. 46; D'Arbois, ii. 276. In a MS. edited by
+Dr. Stirn, Oengus was Dagda's son by Elemar's wife, the amour taking
+place in her husband's absence. This incident is a parallel to the
+birth-stories of Mongan and Arthur, and has also the Fatherless Child
+theme, since Oengus goes in tears to Mider because he has been taunted
+with having no father or mother. In the same MS. it is the Dagda who
+instructs Oengus how to obtain Elemar's _síd_. See _RC_ xxvii. 332,
+xxviii. 330.
+
+[272] _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[273] _IT_ iii. 355.
+
+[274] O'Donovan, _Battle of Mag-Rath_, Dublin, 1842, 50; _LL_ 246_a_.
+
+[275] D'Arbois, v. 427, 448.
+
+[276] The former is Rh[^y]s's interpretation (_HL_ 201) connecting
+_Cruaich_ with _crúach_, "a heap"; the latter is that of D'Arbois (ii.
+106), deriving _Cruaich_ from _cru_, "blood." The idea of the image
+being bent or crooked may have been due to the fact that it long stood
+ready to topple over, as a result of S. Patrick's miracle. See p. 286,
+_infra_.
+
+[277] Vallancey, in _Coll. de Rebus Hib._ 1786, iv. 495.
+
+[278] _LL_ 213_b_. D'Arbois thinks Cromm was a Fomorian, the equivalent
+of Taranis (ii. 62). But he is worshipped by Gaels. _Crin_, "withered,"
+probably refers to the idol's position after S. Patrick's miracle, no
+longer upright but bent like an old man. Dr. Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of
+Ireland_, 87, with exaggerated patriotism, thinks the sacrificial
+details are copied by a Christian scribe from the Old Testament, and are
+no part of the old ritual.
+
+[279] _RC_ xvi. 35, 163.
+
+[280] Fitzgerald, _RL_ iv. 175.
+
+[281] _RC_ xxvi. 19.
+
+[282] _Annals of the Four Masters_, A.M. 3450.
+
+[283] _RC_ xii. 83, 85; Hyde, _op. cit._ 288.
+
+[284] _LU_ 94.
+
+[285] _RC_ xii. 65. Elsewhere three supreme "ignorances" are ascribed to
+Oengus (_RL_ xxvi. 31).
+
+[286] _RC_ iii. 342.
+
+[287] _LL_ 11_c_; _LU_ 129; _IT_ i. 130. Cf. the glass house, placed
+between sky and moon, to which Tristan conducts the queen. Bedier,
+_Tristan et Iseut_, 252. In a fragmentary version of the story Oengus is
+Etain's wooer, but Mider is preferred by her father, and marries her. In
+the latter half of the story, Oengus does not appear (see p. 363,
+_infra_). Mr. Nutt (_RC_ xxvii. 339) suggests that Oengus, not Mider,
+was the real hero of the story, but that its Christian redactors gave
+Mider his place in the second part. The fragments are edited by Stirn
+(_ZCP_ vol. v.).
+
+[288] _HL_ 146.
+
+[289] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, 114, 153. The tale has some unique
+features, as it alone among Western _Märchen_ and saga variants of the
+"True Bride" describes the malicious woman as the wife of Mider. In
+other words, the story implies polygamy, rarely found in European
+folk-tales.
+
+[290] O'Grady, _TOS_ iii.
+
+[291] _RC_ i. 41.
+
+[292] O'Curry, _MC_ i. 71.
+
+[293] _LL_ 117_a_. See p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[294] Cumont, _RC_ xxvi. 47; D'Arbois, _RC_ xxvii. 127, notes the
+difficulty of explaining the change of _e_ to _i_ in the names.
+
+[295] _HL_ 121.
+
+[296] See Crooke, _Folk-Lore_, viii. 341. Cf. Herod, ii. 131.
+
+[297] Loth, i. 269.
+
+[298] _HL_ 563.
+
+[299] Train, _Isle of Man_, Douglas, 1845, ii. 118; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._
+ii. ch. 24; Frazer, _GB_{2} ii. 99 f.
+
+[300] Bathurst, _Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park_, 1879; Holder, _s.v._
+"Nodons."
+
+[301] See Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 122; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 30.
+
+[302] Stokes, _US_ 194-195; Rh[^y]s, _HL_, 128, _IT_ i. 712.
+
+[303] Loth, ii. 235, 296. See p. 160, _infra_.
+
+[304] Joyce, _OCR_.
+
+[305] For these four Manannans see Cormac 114, _RC_ xxiv. 270, _IT_ iii.
+357.
+
+[306] O'Grady, ii.
+
+[307] _Bodley Dindsenchas_, No. 10, _RC_ xii. 105; Joyce, _SH_ i. 259;
+_Otia Merseiana_, ii. "Song of the Sea."
+
+[308] _LU_ 133.
+
+[309] Moore, 6.
+
+[310] Geoffrey, _Vita Merlini_, 37; Rees, 435. Other saintly legends are
+derived from myths, e.g. that of S. Barri in his boat meeting S.
+Scuithne walking on the sea. Scuithne maintains he is walking on a
+field, and plucks a flower to prove it, while Barri confutes him by
+pulling a salmon out of the sea. This resembles an episode in the
+meeting of Bran and Manannan (Stokes, _Félire_, xxxix.; Nutt-Meyer, i.
+39). Saints are often said to assist men just as the gods did.
+Columcille and Brigit appeared over the hosts of Erin assisting and
+encouraging them _(RC_ xxiv. 40).
+
+[311] _RC_ xii. 59.
+
+[312] _Folk-Lore Journal_, v. 66; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 314.
+
+[313] Larminie, "Kian, son of Kontje."
+
+[314] Joyce, _OCR_ 37.
+
+[315] D'Arbois, vi. 116, _Les Celtes_, 39, _RC_ xii. 75, 101, 127, xvi.
+77. Is the defaced inscription at Geitershof, _Deo M ... Sam ..._
+(Holder, ii. 1335), a dedication to Mercury Samildánach? An echo of
+Lug's story is found in the Life of S. Herve, who found a devil in his
+monastery in the form of a man who said he was a good carpenter, mason,
+locksmith, etc., but who could not make the sign of the cross. Albert le
+Grand, _Saints de la Bretagne_, 49, _RC_ vii. 231.
+
+[316] Holder, _s.v._; D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 44, _RC_ vii. 400.
+
+[317] Holder, _s.v._ "Lugus."
+
+[318] Stokes, _TIG_ 103. Gaidoz contests the identification of the
+Lugoves and of Lug with Mercury, and to him the Lugoves are grouped
+divinities like the _Matres_ (_RC_ vi. 489).
+
+[319] _HL_ 425.
+
+[320] See p. 349, _infra_.
+
+[321] See p. 272, _infra_.
+
+[322] _HL_ 409.
+
+[323] See Loth, _RC_ x. 490.
+
+[324] Leahy, i. 138, ii. 50, 52, _LU_ 124_b_.
+
+[325] _LL_ 215_a_; see p. 78, _supra_.
+
+[326] See, further, p. 385, _infra_.
+
+[327] _The Welsh People_, 61. Professor Rh[^y]s admits that the theory
+of borrowing "cannot easily be proved."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS
+
+
+Our knowledge of the gods of the Brythons, i.e. as far as Wales is
+concerned, is derived, apart from inscriptions, from the _Mabinogion_,
+which, though found in a fourteenth century MS., was composed much
+earlier, and contains elements from a remote past. Besides this, the
+_Triads_, probably of twelfth-century origin, the _Taliesin_, and other
+poems, though obscure and artificial, the work of many a "confused bard
+drivelling" (to cite the words of one of them), preserve echoes of the
+old mythology.[328] Some of the gods may lurk behind the personages of
+Geoffrey of Monmouth's _Historia Britonum_ and of the Arthurian cycle,
+though here great caution is required. The divinities have become heroes
+and heroines, kings and princesses, and if some of the episodes are
+based on ancient myths, they are treated in a romantic spirit. Other
+episodes are mere _Märchen_ formulć. Like the wreckage of some rich
+galleon, the _débris_ of the old mythology has been used to construct a
+new fabric, and the old divinities have even less of the god-like traits
+of the personages of the Irish texts.
+
+Some of the personages bear similar names to the Irish divinities, and
+in some cases there is a certain similarity of incidents to those of the
+Irish tales.[329] Are, then, the gods dimly revealed in Welsh literature
+as much Goidelic as Brythonic? Analysing the incidents of the
+_Mabinogion_, Professor Anwyl has shown that they have an entirely local
+character, and are mainly associated with the districts of Dyfed and
+Gwent, of Anglesey, and of Gwynedd, of which Pryderi, Branwen, and
+Gwydion are respectively the heroic characters.[330] These are the
+districts where a strong Goidelic element prevailed, whether these
+Goidels were the original inhabitants of Britain, driven there by
+Brythons,[331] or tribes who had settled there from Ireland,[332] or
+perhaps a mixture of both. In any case they had been conquered by
+Brythons and had become Brythonic in speech from the fifth century
+onwards. On account of this Goidelic element, it has been claimed that
+the personages of the _Mabinogion_ are purely Goidelic. But examination
+proves that only a few are directly parallel in name with Irish
+divinities, and while here there are fundamental likenesses, the
+_incidents_ with Irish parallels may be due to mere superficial
+borrowings, to that interchange of _Märchen_ and mythical _données_
+which has everywhere occurred. Many incidents have no Irish parallels,
+and most of the characters are entirely different in name from Irish
+divinities. Hence any theory which would account for the likenesses,
+must also account for the differences, and must explain why, if the
+_Mabinogion_ is due to Irish Goidels, there should have been few or no
+borrowings in Welsh literature from the popular Cúchulainn and Ossianic
+sagas,[333] and why, at a time when Brythonic elements were uppermost,
+such care should have been taken to preserve Goidelic myths. If the
+tales emanated from native Welsh Goidels, the explanation might be that
+they, the kindred of the Irish Goidels, must have had a certain
+community with them in divine names and myths, while others of their
+gods, more local in character, would differ in name. Or if they are
+Brythonic, the likenesses might be accounted for by an early community
+in myth and cult among the common ancestors of Brythons and
+Goidels.[334] But as the date of the composition of the _Mabinogion_ is
+comparatively late, at a time when Brythons had overrun these Goidelic
+districts, more probably the tales contain a mingling of Goidelic (Irish
+or Welsh) and Brythonic divinities, though some of these may be
+survivals of the common Celtic heritage.[335] Celtic divinities were
+mainly of a local, tribal character. Hence some would be local Goidelic
+divinities, others, classed with these, local Brythonic divinities. This
+would explain the absence of divinities and heroes of other local
+Brythonic groups, e.g. Arthur, from the _Mabinogion_. But with the
+growing importance of these, they attracted to their legend the folk of
+the _Mabinogion_ and other tales. These are associated with Arthur in
+_Kulhwych_, and the Dôn group mingles with that of Taliesin in the
+_Taliesin_ poems.[336] Hence Welsh literature, as far as concerns the
+old religion, may be regarded as including both local Goidelic and
+Brythonic divinities, of whom the more purely Brythonic are Arthur,
+Gwynn, Taliesin, etc.[337] They are regarded as kings and queens, or as
+fairies, or they have magical powers. They are mortal and die, and the
+place of their burial is pointed out, or existing tumuli are associated
+with them, All this is parallel to the history of the Tuatha Dé Danann,
+and shows how the same process of degradation had been at work in Wales
+as in Ireland.
+
+The story of the Llyr group is told in the _Mabinogion_ of Branwen and
+of Manawyddan. They are associated with the Pwyll group, and apparently
+opposed to that of Dôn. Branwen is married to Matholwych, king of
+Ireland, but is ill-treated by him on account of the insults of the
+mischievous Evnissyen, in spite of the fact that Bran had atoned for the
+insult by many gifts, including that of a cauldron of regeneration. Now
+he crosses with an army to Ireland, where Evnissyen throws Branwen's
+child, to whom the kingdom is given, on the fire. A fight ensues; the
+dead Irish warriors are resuscitated in the cauldron, but Evnissyen, at
+the cost of his life, destroys it. Bran is slain, and by his directions
+his head is cut off and carried first to Harlech, then to Gwales, where
+it will entertain its bearers for eighty years. At the end of that time
+it is to be taken to London and buried. Branwen, departing with the
+bearers, dies of a broken heart at Anglesey, and meanwhile Caswallyn,
+son of Beli, seizes the kingdom.[338] Two of the bearers of the head are
+Manawyddan and Pryderi, whose fortunes we follow in the _Mabinogi_ of
+the former. Pryderi gives his mother Rhiannon to Manawyddan as his wife,
+along with some land which by magic art is made barren. After following
+different crafts, they are led by a boar to a strange castle, where
+Rhiannon and Pryderi disappear along with the building. Manawyddan, with
+Pryderi's wife Kieva, set out as shoemakers, but are forced to abandon
+this craft on account of the envy of the craftsmen. Finally, we learn
+how Manawyddan overcame the enchanter Llwyt, who, because of an insult
+offered by Pryderi's father to his friend Gwawl, had made Rhiannon and
+Pryderi disappear. They are now restored, and Llwyt seeks no further
+revenge.
+
+The story of Branwen is similar to a tale of which there are variants in
+Teutonic and Scandinavian sagas, but the resemblance is closer to the
+latter.[339] Possibly a similar story with their respective divinities
+or heroes for its characters existed among Celts, Teutons, and Norsemen,
+but more likely it was borrowed from Norsemen who occupied both sides of
+the Irish Sea in the ninth and tenth century, and then naturalised by
+furnishing it with Celtic characters. But into this framework many
+native elements were set, and we may therefore scrutinise the story for
+Celtic mythical elements utilised by its redactor, who probably did not
+strip its Celtic personages of their earlier divine attributes. In the
+two _Mabinogi_ these personages are Llyr, his sons Bran and Manawyddan,
+his daughter Branwen, their half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, sons of
+Llyr's wife Penardim, daughter of Beli, by a previous marriage with
+Eurosswyd.
+
+Llyr is the equivalent of the Irish Ler, the sea-god, but two other
+Llyrs, probably duplicates of himself, are known to Welsh story--Llyr
+Marini, and the Llyr, father of Cordelia, of the chroniclers.[340] He is
+constantly confused with Lludd Llawereint, e.g. both are described as
+one of three notable prisoners of Britain, and both are called fathers
+of Cordelia or Creiddylad.[341] Perhaps the two were once identical, for
+Manannan is sometimes called son of Alloid (= Lludd), in Irish texts, as
+well as son of Ler.[342] But the confusion may be accidental, nor is it
+certain that Nodons or Lludd was a sea-god. Llyr's prison was that of
+Eurosswyd,[343] whose wife he may have abducted and hence suffered
+imprisonment. In the _Black Book of Caermarthen_ Bran is called son of Y
+Werydd or "Ocean," according to M. Loth's interpretation of the name,
+which would thus point to Llyr's position as a sea-god. But this is
+contested by Professor Rh[^y]s who makes Ywerit wife of Llyr, the name
+being in his view a form of the Welsh word for Ireland. In Geoffrey and
+the chroniclers Llyr becomes a king of Britain whose history and that of
+his daughters was immortalised by Shakespeare. Geoffrey also refers to
+Llyr's burial in a vault built in honour of Janus.[344] On this
+Professor Rh[^y]s builds a theory that Llyr was a form of the Celtic Dis
+with two faces and ruler of a world of darkness.[345] But there is no
+evidence that the Celtic Dispater was lord of a gloomy underworld, and
+it is best to regard Llyr as a sea-divinity.
+
+Manawyddan is not god-like in these tales in the sense in which the
+majestic Manannan of Irish story is, though elsewhere we learn that
+"deep was his counsel."[346] Though not a magician, he baffles one of
+the great wizards of Welsh story, and he is also a master craftsman, who
+instructs Pryderi in the arts of shoe-making, shield-making, and
+saddlery. In this he is akin to Manannan, the teacher of Diarmaid.
+Incidents of his career are reflected in the _Triads_, and his union
+with Rhiannon may point to an old myth in which they were from the first
+a divine pair, parents of Pryderi. This would give point to his
+deliverance of Pryderi and Rhiannon from the hostile magician.[347]
+Rhiannon resembles the Irish Elysium goddesses, and Manawyddan, like
+Manannan, is lord of Elysium in a _Taliesin_ poem.[348] He is a
+craftsman and follows agriculture, perhaps a reminiscence of the old
+belief that fertility and culture come from the god's land. Manawyddan,
+like other divinities, was drawn into the Arthurian cycle, and is one of
+those who capture the famous boar, the _Twrch Trwyth_.[349]
+
+Bran, or Bendigeit Vran ("Bran the Blessed"), probably an old pagan
+title which appropriately enough denotes one who figured later in
+Christian hagiology, is so huge that no house or ship can hold him.
+Hence he wades over to Ireland, and as he draws near is thought to be a
+mountain. This may be an archaic method of expressing his divinity--a
+gigantic non-natural man like some of the Tuatha Déa and Ossianic
+heroes. But Bran also appears as the _Urdawl Ben_, or "Noble Head,"
+which makes time pass to its bearers like a dream, and when buried
+protects the land from invasion. Both as a giant squatting on a rock and
+as a head, Bran is equated by Professor Rh[^y]s with Cernunnos, the
+squatting god, represented also as a head, and also with the Welsh Urien
+whose attribute was a raven, the supposed meaning of Bran's name.[350]
+He further equates him with Uthr Ben, "Wonderful Head," the superior
+bard, harper and piper of a _Taliesin_ poem.[351] Urien, Bran, and Uthr
+are three forms of a god worshipped by bards, and a "dark" divinity,
+whose wading over to Ireland signifies crossing to Hades, of which he,
+like Yama, who first crossed the rapid waters to the land of death, is
+the ruler.[352] But Bran is not a "dark" god in the sense implied here.
+Cernunnos is god of a happy underworld, and there is nothing dark or
+evil in him or in Bran and his congeners. Professor Rh[^y]s's "dark"
+divinities are sometimes, in his view, "light" gods, but they cannot be
+both. The Celtic lords of the dead had no "dark" character, and as gods
+of fertility they were, so to speak, in league with the sun-god, the
+slayer of Bran, according to Professor Rh[^y]s's ingenious theory. And
+although to distracted Irish secretaries Ireland may be Hades, its
+introduction into this _Mabinogi_ merely points to the interpretation of
+a mythico-historic connection between Wales and Ireland. Thus if Bran is
+Cernunnos, this is because he is a lord of the underworld of fertility,
+the counterpart of which is the distant Elysium, to which Bran seems
+rather to belong. Thus, in presence of his head, time passes as a dream
+in feasting and joy. This is a true Elysian note, and the tabued door of
+the story is also suggestive of the tabus of Elysium, which when broken
+rob men of happiness.[353] As to the power of the head in protecting the
+land, this points to actual custom and belief regarding the relics of
+the dead and the power of divine images or sculptured heads.[354] The
+god Bran has become a king and law-giver in the _Mabinogion_ and the
+_Triads_,[355] while Geoffrey of Monmouth describes how Belinus and
+Brennus, in the Welsh version Beli and Bran, dispute the crown of
+Britain, are reconciled, and finally conquer Gaul and Rome.[356] The
+mythic Bran is confused with Brennus, leader of the Gauls against Rome
+in 390 B.C., and Belinus may be the god Belenos, as well as Beli, father
+of Lludd and Caswallawn. But Bran also figures as a Christian
+missionary. He is described as hostage at Rome for his son Caradawc,
+returning thence as preacher of Christianity to the Cymry--a legend
+arising out of a misunderstanding of his epithet "Blessed" and a
+confusing of his son with the historic Caractacus.[357] Hence Bran's
+family is spoken of as one of the three saintly families of Prydein, and
+he is ancestor of many saints.[358]
+
+Branwen, "White Bosom," daughter of a sea-god, may be a sea-goddess,
+"Venus of the northern sea,"[359] unless with Mr. Nutt we connect her
+with the cauldron described in her legend,[360] symbol of an orgiastic
+cult, and regard her as a goddess of fertility. But the connection is
+not clear in the story, though in some earlier myth the cauldron may
+have been her property. As Brangwaine, she reappears in romance, giving
+a love-potion to Tristram--perhaps a reminiscence of her former
+functions as a goddess of love, or earlier of fertility. In the
+_Mabinogion_ she is buried in Anglesey at Ynys Bronwen, where a cairn
+with bones discovered in 1813 was held to be the grave and remains of
+Branwen.[361]
+
+The children of Dôn, the equivalent of Danu, and probably like her, a
+goddess of fertility, are Gwydion, Gilvćthwy, Amćthon, Govannon, and
+Arianrhod, with her sons, Dylan and Llew.[362] These correspond,
+therefore, in part to the Tuatha Déa, though the only members of the
+group who bear names similar to the Irish gods are Govannon (= Goibniu)
+and possibly Llew (= Lug). Gwydion as a culture-god corresponds to Ogma.
+In the _Triads_ Beli is called father of Arianrhod,[363] and assuming
+that this Arianrhod is identical with the daughter of Dôn, Professor
+Rh[^y]s regards Beli as husband of Dôn. But the identification is far
+from certain, and the theory built upon it that Beli is one with the
+Irish Bile, and that both are lords of a dark underworld, has already
+been found precarious.[364] In later belief Dôn was associated with the
+stars, the constellation Cassiopeia being called her court. She is
+described as "wise" in a _Taliesin_ poem.[365]
+
+This group of divinities is met with mainly in the _Mabinogi_ of Math,
+which turns upon Gilvćthwy's illicit love of Math's "foot-holder"
+Goewin. To assist him in his _amour_, Gwydion, by a magical trick,
+procures for Math from the court of Pryderi certain swine sent him by
+Arawn, king of Annwfn. In the battle which follows when the trick is
+discovered, Gwydion slays Pryderi by enchantment. Math now discovers
+that Gilvćthwy has seduced Goewin, and transforms him and Gwydion
+successively into deer, swine, and wolves. Restored to human form,
+Gwydion proposes that Arianrhod should be Math's foot-holder, but Math
+by a magic test discovers that she is not a virgin. She bears two sons,
+Dylan, fostered by Math, and another whom Gwydion nurtures and for whom
+he afterwards by a trick obtains a name from Arianrhod, who had sworn
+never to name him. The name is Llew Llaw Gyffes, "Lion of the Sure
+Hand." By magic, Math and Gwydion form a wife for Llew out of flowers.
+She is called Blodeuwedd, and later, at the instigation of a lover,
+Gronw, she discovers how Llew can be killed. Gronw attacks and wounds
+him, and he flies off as an eagle. Gwydion seeks for Llew, discovers
+him, and retransforms him to human shape. Then he changes Blodeuwedd
+into an owl, and slays Gronw.[366] Several independent tales have gone
+to the formation of this _Mabinogi_, but we are concerned here merely
+with the light it may throw on the divine characters who figure in it.
+
+Math or Math Hen, "the Ancient,"[367] is probably an old divinity of
+Gwyned, of which he is called lord. He is a king and a magician,
+pre-eminent in wizardry, which he teaches to Gwydion, and in a _Triad_
+he is called one of the great men of magic and metamorphosis of
+Britain.[368] More important are his traits of goodness to the
+suffering, and justice with no trace of vengeance to the wrong-doer.
+Whether these are derived from his character as a god or from the Celtic
+kingly ideal, it is impossible to say, though the former is by no means
+unlikely. Possibly his supreme magical powers make him the equivalent of
+the Irish "god of Druidism," but this is uncertain, since all gods were
+more or less dowered with these.
+
+Gwydion's magical powers are abundantly illustrated in the tale. At
+Pryderi's court he changes fungus into horses and dogs, and afterwards
+slays Pryderi by power of enchantments; he produces a fleet by magic
+before Arianrhod's castle; with Math's help he forms Blodeuwedd out of
+flowers; he gives Llew his natural shape when he finds him as a wasted
+eagle on a tree, his flesh and the worms breeding in it dropping from
+him; he transforms the faithless Blodeuwedd into an owl. Some of these
+and other deeds are referred to in the _Taliesin_ poems, while Taliesin
+describes himself as enchanted by Gwydion.[369] In the _Triads_ he is
+one of the three great astrologers of Prydein, and this emphasis laid on
+his powers of divination is significant when it is considered that his
+name may be derived from a root _vet_, giving words meaning "saying" or
+"poetry," while cognate words are Irish _fáith_, "a prophet" or "poet,"
+German _wuth_, "rage," and the name of Odinn.[370] The name is
+suggestive of the ecstasy of inspiration producing prophetic and poetic
+utterance. In the _Mabinogion_ he is a mighty bard, and in a poem, he,
+under the name of Gweir, is imprisoned in the Other-world, and there
+becomes a bard, thus receiving inspiration from the gods' land.[371] He
+is the ideal _fáith_--diviner, prophet, and poet, and thus the god of
+those professing these arts. Strabo describes how the Celtic _vates_
+(_fáith_) was also a philosopher, and this character is given in a poem
+to Seon (probably = Gwydion), whose artists are poets and
+magicians.[372] But he is also a culture-god, bringing swine to men from
+the gods' land. For though Pryderi is described as a mortal who has
+himself received the swine from Annwfn (Elysium), there is no doubt that
+he himself was a lord of Annwfn, and it was probably on account of
+Gwydion's theft from Annwfn that he, as Gweir, was imprisoned there
+"through the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi."[373] A raid is here made
+directly on the god's land for the benefit of men, and it is
+unsuccessful, but in the _Mabinogi_ a different version of the raid is
+told. Perhaps Gwydion also brought kine from Annwfn, since he is called
+one of the three herds of Britain,[374] while he himself may once have
+been an animal god, then an anthropomorphic deity associated with
+animals. Thus in the _Mabinogi_, when Gwydion flees with the swine, he
+rests each night at a place one of the syllables of which is _Moch_,
+"swine"--an ćtiological myth explaining why places which were once sites
+of the cult of a swine-god, afterwards worshipped as Gwydion, were so
+called.
+
+Gwydion has also a tricky, fraudulent character in the _Mabinogi_, and
+although "in his life there was counsel," yet he had a "vicious
+muse."[375] It is also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod
+and father of Dylan and Llew--the mythic reflections of a time when such
+unions, perhaps only in royal houses, were permissible. Instances occur
+in Irish tales, and Arthur was also his sister's lover.[376] In later
+belief Gwydion was associated with the stars; and the Milky Way was
+called Caer Gwydion. Across it he had chased the faithless
+Blodeuwedd.[377] Professor Rh[^y]s equates him with Odinn, and regards
+both as representing an older Celto-Teutonic hero, though many of the
+alleged similarities in their respective mythologies are not too
+obvious.[378]
+
+Amćthon the good is described in _Kulhwych_ as the only husbandman who
+could till or dress a certain piece of land, though Kulhwych will not be
+able to force him or to make him follow him.[379] This, together with
+the name Amćthon, from Cymric _amćth_, "labourer" or "ploughman," throws
+some light on his functions.[380] He was a god associated with
+agriculture, either as one who made waste places fruitful, or possibly
+as an anthropomorphic corn divinity. But elsewhere his taking a roebuck
+and a whelp, and in a _Triad_, a lapwing from Arawn, king of Annwfn, led
+to the battle of Godeu, in which he fought Arawn, aided by Gwydion, who
+vanquished one of Arawn's warriors, Bran, by discovering his name.[381]
+Amćthon, who brings useful animals from the gods' land, plays the same
+part as Gwydion, bringer of the swine. The dog and deer are frequent
+representatives of the corn-spirit, of which Amćthon may have been an
+anthropomorphic form, or they, with the lapwing, may have been earlier
+worshipful animals, associated with Amćthon as his symbols, while later
+myth told how he had procured them from Annwfn.
+
+The divine functions of Llew Llaw Gyffes are hardly apparent in the
+_Mabinogi_. The incident of Blodeuwedd's unfaithfulness is simply that
+of the _Märchen_ formula of the treacherous wife who discovers the
+secret of her husband's life, and thus puts him at her lover's
+mercy.[382] But since Llew is not slain, but changes to eagle form, this
+unusual ending may mean that he was once a bird divinity, the eagle
+later becoming his symbol. Some myth must have told of his death, or he
+was afterwards regarded as a mortal who died, for a poem mentions his
+tomb, and adds, "he was a man who never gave justice to any one." Dr.
+Skene suggests that truth, not justice, is here meant, and finds in this
+a reference to Llew's disguises.[383] Professor Rh[^y]s, for reasons not
+held convincing by M. Loth, holds that _Llew_, "lion," was a
+misapprehension for his true name _Lleu_, interpreted by him
+"light."[384] This meaning he also gives to _Lug_, equating Lug and
+Llew, and regarding both as sun-gods. He also equates _Llaw Gyffes_,
+"steady _or_ strong hand," with Lug's epithet _Lám fada_, "long hand,"
+suggesting that _gyffes_ may have meant "long," although it was Llew's
+steadiness of hand in shooting which earned him the title.[385] Again,
+Llew's rapid growth need not make him the sun, for this was a privilege
+of many heroes who had no connection with the sun. Llew's unfortunate
+matrimonial affairs are also regarded as a sun myth. Blodeuwedd is a
+dawn goddess dividing her love between the sun-god and the prince of
+darkness. Llew as the sun is overcome by the latter, but is restored by
+the culture-hero Gwydion, who slays the dark rival. The transformation
+of Blodeuwedd into an owl means that the Dawn has become the Dusk.[386]
+As we have seen, all this is a _Märchen_ formula with no mythical
+significance. Evidence of the precariousness of such an interpretation
+is furnished from the similar interpretation of the story of Curoi's
+wife, Blathnat, whose lover Cúchulainn slew Curoi.[387] Here a supposed
+sun-god is the treacherous villain who kills a dark divinity, husband of
+a dawn goddess.
+
+If Llew is a sun-god, the equivalent of Lug, it is curious that he is
+never connected with the August festival in Wales which corresponds to
+Lugnasad in Ireland. There may be some support to the theory which makes
+him a sun-god in a _Triad_ where he is one of the three _ruddroawc_ who
+cause a year's sterility wherever they set their feet, though in this
+Arthur excels them, for he causes seven years' sterility![388] Does this
+point to the scorching of vegetation by the summer sun? The mythologists
+have not made use of this incident. On the whole the evidence for Llew
+as a sun-god is not convincing. The strongest reason for identifying him
+with Lug rests on the fact that both have uncles who are smiths and have
+similar names--Govannon and Gavida (Goibniu). Like Amćthon, Govannon,
+the artificer or smith (_gôf_, "smith"), is mentioned in _Kulhwych_ as
+one whose help must be gained to wait at the end of the furrows to
+cleanse the iron of the plough.[389] Here he is brought into connection
+with the plough, but the myth to which the words refer is lost. A
+_Taliesin_ poem associates him with Math--"I have been with artificers,
+with the old Math and with Govannon," and refers to his _Caer_ or
+castle.[390]
+
+Arianrhod, "silver wheel," has a twofold character. She pretends to be a
+virgin, and disclaims all knowledge of her son Llew, yet she is mistress
+of Gwydion. In the _Triads_ she appears as one of the three blessed (or
+white) ladies of Britain.[391] Perhaps these two aspects of her
+character may point to a divergence between religion and mythology, the
+cult of a virgin goddess of whom myth told discreditable things. More
+likely she was an old Earth-goddess, at once a virgin and a fruitful
+mother, like Artemis, the virgin goddess, yet neither chaste nor fair,
+or like a Babylonian goddess addressed as at once "mother, wife, and
+maid." Arianrhod, "beauty famed beyond summer's dawn," is mentioned in a
+_Taliesin_ poem, and she was later associated with the constellation
+Corona Borealis.[392] Possibly her real name was forgotten, and that of
+Arianrhod derived from a place-name, "Caer Arianrhod," associated with
+her. The interpretation which makes her a dawn goddess, mother of light,
+Lleu, and darkness, Dylan, is far from obvious.[393] Dylan, after his
+baptism, rushed into the sea, the nature of which became his. No wave
+ever broke under him; he swam like a fish; and hence was called Dylan
+Eil Ton or "son of the wave." Govannon, his uncle, slew him, an incident
+interpreted as the defeat of darkness, which "hies away to lurk in the
+sea." Dylan, however, has no dark traits and is described as a blonde.
+The waves lament his death, and, as they dash against the shore, seek to
+avenge it. His grave is "where the wave makes a sullen sound," but
+popular belief identifies him with the waves, and their noise as they
+press into the Conway is his dying groan. Not only is he _Eil Ton_, "son
+of the wave," but also _Eil Mor_, "son of the sea."[394] He is thus a
+local sea-god, and like Manannan identified with the waves, and yet
+separate from them, since they mourn his death. The _Mabinogi_ gives us
+the _débris_ of myths explaining how an anthropomorphic sea-god was
+connected with the goddess Arianrhod and slain by a god Govannon.
+
+Another _Mabinogion_ group is that of Pwyll, prince of Dyved, his wife
+Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi.[395] Pwyll agrees with Arawn, king of
+Annwfn (Elysium), to reign over his kingdom for a year. At the end of
+that time he slays Arawn's rival Havgan. Arawn sends him gifts, and
+Pwyll is now known as Pen or Head of Annwfn, a title showing that he was
+once a god, belonging to the gods' land, later identified with the
+Christian Hades. Pwyll now agrees with Rhiannon,[396] who appears
+mysteriously on a magic hillock, and whom he captures, to rid her of an
+unwelcome suitor Gwawl. He imprisons him in a magical bag, and Rhiannon
+weds Pwyll. The story thus resolves itself into the formula of the Fairy
+Bride, but it paves the way for the vengeance taken on Pryderi and
+Rhiannon by Gwawl's friend Llwyt. Rhiannon has a son who is stolen as
+soon as born. She is accused of slaying him and is degraded, but Teyrnon
+recovers the child from its super-human robber and calls him Gwri. As he
+grows up, Teyrnon notices his resemblance to Pwyll, and takes him to his
+court. Rhiannon is reinstated, and because she cries that her anguish
+(_pryderi_) is gone, the boy is now called Pryderi. Here, again, we have
+_Märchen_ incidents, which also appear in the Fionn saga.[397]
+
+Though there is little that is mythological here, it is evident that
+Pwyll is a god and Rhiannon a goddess, whose early importance, like that
+of other Celtic goddesses, appears from her name, a corruption of
+Rigantona, "great queen." Elsewhere we hear of her magic birds whose
+song charmed Bran's companions for seven years, and of her marriage to
+Manawyddan--an old myth in which Manawyddan may have been Pryderi's
+father, while possibly in some other myth Pryderi may have been child of
+Rigantona and Teyrnon (=Tigernonos, "king").[398] We may postulate an
+old Rhiannon saga, fragments of which are to be found in the _Mabinogi_,
+and there may have been more than one goddess called Rigantona, later
+fused into one. But in the tales she is merely a queen of old romance.
+
+Pryderi, as has been seen, was despoiled of his swine by Gwydion. They
+were the gift of Arawn, but in the _Triads_ they seem to have been
+brought from Annwfn by Pwyll, while Pryderi acted as swineherd.[399]
+Both Pwyll and Pryderi are thus connected with those myths which told of
+the bringing of domestic animals from the gods' land. But since they are
+certainly gods, associated with the gods' land, this is perhaps the
+result of misunderstanding. A poem speaks of the magic cauldron of Pen
+Annwfn, i.e. Pwyll, and this points to a myth explaining his connection
+with Annwfn in a different way from the account in the _Mabinogi_. The
+poem also tells how Gweir was imprisoned in Caer Sidi (=Annwfn) "through
+the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi."[400] They are thus lords of Annwfn,
+whose swine Gweir (Gwydion) tries to steal. Elsewhere Caer Sidi is
+associated with Manawyddan and Pryderi, perhaps a reference to their
+connection as father and son.[401] Thus Pryderi and Pwyll belong to the
+bright Elysium, and may once have been gods of fertility associated with
+the under-earth region, which was by no means a world of darkness.
+Whatever be the meaning of the death of Pryderi at the hands of Gwydion,
+it is connected with later references to his grave.[402]
+
+A fourth group is that of Beli and his sons, referred to in the
+_Mabinogi_ of Branwen, where one of them, Caswallawn, usurps the throne,
+and thus makes Manawyddan, like MacGregor, landless. In the _Dream of
+Maxen_, the sons of Beli are Lludd, Caswallawn, Nynnyaw, and
+Llevelys.[403] Geoffrey calls Beli Heli, and speaks of an earlier king
+Belinus, at enmity with his brother Brennius.[404] But probably Beli or
+Heli and Belinus are one and the same, and both represent the earlier
+god Belenos. Caswellawn becomes Cassivellaunus, opponent of Cćsar, but
+in the _Mabinogi_ he is hostile to the race of Llyr, and this may be
+connected with whatever underlies Geoffrey's account of the hostility of
+Belinus and Brennius (=Bran, son of Llyr), perhaps, like the enmity of
+the race of D[^o]n to Pryderi, a reminiscence of the strife of rival
+tribes or of Goidel and Brython.[405] As has been seen, the evidence for
+regarding Beli as D[^o]n's consort or the equivalent of Bile is slender.
+Nor, if he is Belenos, the equivalent of Apollo, is he in any sense a
+"dark" god. He is regarded as a victorious champion, preserver of his
+"honey isle" and of the stability of his kingdom, in a _Taliesin_ poem
+and in the _Triads_.[406]
+
+The personality of Casswallawn is lost in that of the historic
+Cassivellaunus, but in a reference to him in the _Triads_ where, with
+Caradawc and Gweirydd, he bears the title "war king," we may see a
+glimpse of his divine character, that of a god of war, invisibly leading
+on armies to battle, and as such embodied in great chiefs who bore his
+name.[407] Nynnyaw appears in Geoffrey's pages as Nennius, who dies of
+wounds inflicted by Cćsar, to the great grief of Cassivellaunus.[408]
+
+The theory that Lludd Llaw Ereint or _Lodens Lamargentios_ represents
+_Nodens_ (Nuada) _L[=a]margentios_, the change being the result of
+alliteration, has been contested,[409] while if the Welsh Lludd and Nudd
+were identical it is strange that they should have become distinct
+personalities, Gwyn, son of Nudd, being the lover of Creiddylad,
+daughter of Lludd,[410] unless in some earlier myth their love was that
+of brother and sister. Lludd is also confused or is identical with Llyr,
+just as the Irish Ler is with Alloid. He is probably the son of Beli
+who, in the tale of _Lludd and Llevelys_, by the advice of Llevelys rids
+his country of three plagues.[411] These are, first, the Coranians who
+hear every whisper, and whom he destroys by throwing over them water in
+which certain insects given him by Levelys have been bruised. The second
+is a shriek on May-eve which makes land and water barren, and is caused
+by a dragon which attacks the dragon of the land. These Lludd captures
+and imprisons at Dinas Emreis, where they afterwards cause trouble to
+Vortigern at the building of his castle. The third is that of the
+disappearance of a year's supply of food by a magician, who lulls every
+one to sleep and who is captured by Lludd. Though the Coranians appear
+in the _Triads_ as a hostile tribe,[412] they may have been a
+supernatural folk, since their name is perhaps derived from _cňr_,
+"dwarf," and they are now regarded as mischievous fairies.[413] They may
+thus be analogous to the Fomorians, and their story, like that of the
+dragon and the magician who produce blight and loss of food, may be
+based on older myth or ritual embodying the belief in powers hostile to
+fertility, though it is not clear why those powers should be most active
+on May-day. But this may be a misunderstanding, and the dragons are
+overcome on May-eve. The references in the tale to Lludd's generosity
+and liberality in giving food may reflect his function as a god of
+growth, but, like other euhemerised gods, he is also called a mighty
+warrior, and is said to have rebuilt the walls of Caer Ludd (London),
+his name still surviving in "Ludgate Hill," where he was buried.[414]
+This legend doubtless points to some ancient cult of Lludd at this spot.
+
+Nudd already discussed under his title Nodons, is less prominent than
+his son Gwyn, whose fight with Gwthur we have explained as a mythic
+explanation of ritual combats for the increase of fertility. He also
+appears as a hunter and as a great warrior,[415] "the hope of armies,"
+and thus he may be a god of fertility who became a god of war and the
+chase. But legend associated him with Annwfn, and regarded him, like the
+Tuatha Déa, as a king of fairyland.[416] In the legend of S. Collen, the
+saint tells two men, whom he overhears speaking of Gwyn and the fairies,
+that these are demons. "Thou shalt receive a reproof from Gwyn," said
+one of them, and soon after Collen was summoned to meet the king of
+Annwfn on Glastonbury Tor. He climbed the hill with a flask of holy
+water, and saw on its top a splendid castle, with crowds of beautiful
+and youthful folk, while the air resounded with music. He was brought to
+Gwyn, who politely offered him food, but "I will not eat of the leaves
+of the tree," cried the saint; and when he was asked to admire the
+dresses of the crowd, all he would say was that the red signified
+burning, the blue coldness. Then he threw the holy water over them, and
+nothing was left but the bare hillside.[417] Though Gwyn's court on
+Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium, which was actually located there,
+the story marks the hostility of the Church to the cult of Gwyn, perhaps
+practised on hilltops, and this is further seen in the belief that he
+hunts souls of the wicked and is connected with Annwfn in its later
+sense of hell. But a mediant view is found in _Kulhwych_, where it is
+said of him that he restrains the demons of hell lest they should
+destroy the people of this world. In the _Triads_ he is, like other
+gods, a great magician and astrologer.[418]
+
+Another group, unknown to the _Mabinogion_, save that Taliesin is one of
+the bearers of Bran's head, is found in the _Book of Taliesin_ and in
+the late story of Taliesin. These, like the _Arthur_ cycle, often refer
+to personages of the _Mabinogion_; hence we gather that local groups of
+gods, originally distinct, were later mingled in story, the references
+in the poems reflecting this mingling. Late as is the _Hanes Taliesin_
+or story of Taliesin, and expressed as much of it is in a _Märchen_
+formula, it is based on old myths about Cerridwen and Taliesin of which
+its compiler made use, following an old tradition already stereotyped in
+one of the poems in the _Märchen_ formula of the Transformation
+Combat.[419] But the mythical fragments are also mingled with traditions
+regarding the sixth century poet Taliesin. The older saga was perhaps
+developed in a district south of the Dyfi estuary.[420] In Lake Tegid
+dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their children--the fair maiden
+Creirwy, Morvran, and the ugly Avagddu. To give Avagddu knowledge, his
+mother prepares a cauldron of inspiration from which three drops of
+inspiration will be produced. These fall on the finger of Gwion, whom
+she set to stir it. He put the finger in his mouth, and thus acquired
+the inspiration. He fled, and Cerridwen pursued, the rest of the story
+being accommodated to the Transformation Combat formula. Finally,
+Cerridwen as a hen swallows Gwion as a grain of wheat, and bears him as
+a child, whom she throws into the sea. Elphin, who rescues him, calls
+him Taliesin, and brings him up as a bard.[421]
+
+The water-world of Tegid is a submarine Elysium with the customary
+cauldron of inspiration, regeneration, and fertility, like the cauldron
+associated with a water-world in the _Mabinogion_. "Shall not my chair
+be defended from the cauldron of Cerridwen," runs a line in a Taliesin
+poem, while another speaks of her chair, which was probably in Elysium
+like that of Taliesin himself in Caer Sidi.[422] Further references to
+her connection with poetry show that she may have been worshipped by
+bards, her cauldron being the source of their inspiration.[423] Her
+anger at Gwion may point to some form of the Celtic myth of the theft of
+the elements of culture from the gods' land. But the cauldron was first
+of all associated with a fertility cult,[424] and Cerridwen must
+therefore once have been a goddess of fertility, who, like Brigit, was
+later worshipped by bards. She may also have been a corn-goddess, since
+she is called a goddess of grain, and tradition associates the pig--a
+common embodiment of the corn-spirit--with her.[425] If the tradition is
+correct, this would be an instance, like that of Demeter and the pig, of
+an animal embodiment of the corn-spirit being connected with a later
+anthropomorphic corn-goddess.
+
+Taliesin was probably an old god of poetic inspiration confused with the
+sixth century poet of the same name, perhaps because this boastful poet
+identified himself or was identified by other bards with the gods. He
+speaks of his "splendid chair, inspiration of fluent and urgent song" in
+Caer Sidi or Elysium, and, speaking in the god's name or identifying
+himself with him, describes his presence with Llew, Bran, Gwydion, and
+others, as well as his creation and his enchantment before he became
+immortal.[426] He was present with Arthur when a cauldron was stolen
+from Aunwfn, and basing his verses on the mythic transformations and
+rebirths of the gods, recounts in highly inflated language his own
+numerous forms and rebirths.[427] His claims resemble those of the
+_Shaman_ who has the entree of the spirit-world and can transform
+himself at will. Taliesin's rebirth is connected with his acquiring of
+inspiration. These incidents appear separately in the story of Fionn,
+who acquired his inspiration by an accident, and was also said to have
+been reborn as Mongan. They are myths common to various branches of the
+Celtic people, and applied in different combinations to outstanding gods
+or heroes.[428] The _Taliesin_ poems show that there may have been two
+gods or two mythic aspects of one god, later combined together. He is
+the son of the goddess and dwells in the divine land, but he is also a
+culture-hero stealing from the divine land. Perhaps the myths reflect
+the encroachment of the cult of a god on that of a goddess, his
+worshippers regarding him as her son, her worshippers reflecting their
+hostility to the new god in a myth of her enmity to him. Finally, the
+legend of the rescue of Taliesin the poet from the waves became a myth
+of the divine outcast child rescued by Elphin, and proving himself a
+bard when normal infants are merely babbling.
+
+The occasional and obscure references to the other members of this group
+throw little light on their functions, save that Morvran, "sea-crow," is
+described in _Kulhwych_ as so ugly and terrible that no one would strike
+him at the battle of Camlan. He may have been a war-god, like the
+scald-crow goddesses of Ireland, and he is also spoken of in the
+_Triads_ as an "obstructor of slaughter" or "support of battle."[429]
+
+Ingenuity and speculation have busied themselves with trying to prove
+that the personages of the Arthurian cycle are the old gods of the
+Brythons, and the incidents of the romances fragments of the old
+mythology. While some of these personages--those already present in
+genuinely old Welsh tales and poems or in Geoffrey's _History_--are
+reminiscent of the old gods, the romantic presentment of them in the
+cycle itself is so largely imaginative, that nothing certain can be
+gained from it for the understanding of the old mythology, much less the
+old religion. Incidents which are the common stock of real life as well
+as of romance are interpreted mythologically, and it is never quite
+obvious why the slaying of one hero by another should signify the
+conquest of a dark divinity by a solar hero, or why the capture of a
+heroine by one knight when she is beloved of another, should make her a
+dawn-goddess sharing her favours, now with the sun-god, now with a
+"dark" divinity. Or, even granting the truth of this method, what light
+does it throw on Celtic religion?
+
+We may postulate a local Arthur saga fusing an old Brythonic god with
+the historic sixth century Arthur. From this or from Geoffrey's handling
+of it sprang the great romantic cycle. In the ninth century Nennius
+Arthur is the historic war-chief, possibly Count of Britain, but in the
+reference to his hunting the _Porcus Troit_ (the _Twrch Trwyth_) the
+mythic Arthur momentarily appears.[430] Geoffrey's Arthur differs from
+the later Arthur of romance, and he may have partially rationalised the
+saga, which was either of recent formation or else local and obscure,
+since there is no reference to Arthur in the _Mabinogion_--a fact which
+shows that "in the legends of Gwynedd and Dyfedd he had no place
+whatever,"[431] and also that Arthur the god or mythic hero was also
+purely local. In Geoffrey Arthur is the fruit of Igerna's _amour_ with
+Uther, to whom Merlin has given her husband's shape. Arthur conquers
+many hosts as well as giants, and his court is the resort of all
+valorous persons. But he is at last wounded by his wife's seducer, and
+carried to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, and nothing
+more is ever heard of him.[432] Some of these incidents occur also in
+the stories of Fionn and Mongan, and those of the mysterious begetting
+of a wonder child and his final disappearance into fairyland are local
+forms of a tale common to all branches of the Celts.[433] This was
+fitted to the history of the local god or hero Arthur, giving rise to
+the local saga, to which was afterwards added events from the life of
+the historic Arthur. This complex saga must then have acquired a wider
+fame long before the romantic cycle took its place, as is suggested by
+the purely Welsh tales of _Kulhwych_ and the _Dream of Rhonabwy_, in the
+former of which the personages (gods) of the _Mabinogion_ figure in
+Arthur's train, though he is far from being the Arthur of the romances.
+Sporadic references to Arthur occur also in Welsh literature, and to the
+earlier saga belongs the Arthur who spoils Elysium of its cauldron in a
+_Taliesin_ poem.[434] In the _Triads_ there is a mingling of the
+historic, the saga, and the later romance Arthur, but probably as a
+result of the growing popularity of the saga Arthur he is added to many
+Triads as a more remarkable person than the three whom they
+describe.[435] Arthurian place-names over the Brythonic area are more
+probably the result of the popularity of the saga than that of the later
+romantic cycle, a parallel instance being found in the extent of
+Ossianic place-names over the Goidelic area as a result of the spread of
+the Fionn saga.
+
+The character of the romance Arthur--the flower of knighthood and a
+great warrior--and the blending of the historic war-leader Arthur with
+the mythic Arthur, suggest that the latter was the ideal hero of certain
+Brythonic groups, as Fionn and Cúchulainn of certain Goidelic groups. He
+may have been the object of a cult as these heroes perhaps were, or he
+may have been a god more and more idealised as a hero. If the earlier
+form of his name was Artor, "a ploughman," but perhaps with a wider
+significance, and having an equivalent in Artaius, a Gaulish god equated
+with Mercury,[436] he may have been a god of agriculture who became a
+war-god. But he was also regarded as a culture-hero, stealing a cauldron
+and also swine from the gods' land, the last incident euhemerised into
+the tale of an unsuccessful theft from March, son of Meirchion,[437]
+while, like other culture-heroes, he is a bard. To his story was easily
+fitted that of the wonder-child, who, having finally disappeared into
+Elysium (later located at Glastonbury), would reappear one day, like
+Fionn, as the Saviour of his people. The local Arthur finally attained a
+fame far exceeding that of any Brythonic god or hero.
+
+Merlin, or Myrddin, appears in the romances as a great magician who is
+finally overcome by the Lady of the Lake, and is in Geoffrey son of a
+mysterious invisible personage who visits a woman, and, finally taking
+human shape, begets Merlin. As a son who never had a father he is chosen
+as the foundation sacrifice for Vortigern's tower by his magicians, but
+he confutes them and shows why the tower can never be built, namely,
+because of the dragons in the pool beneath it. Then follow his
+prophecies regarding the dragons and the future of the country, and the
+story of his removal of the Giant's Dance, or Stonehenge, from Ireland
+to its present site--an ćtiological myth explaining the origin of the
+great stone circle. His description of how the giants used the water
+with which they washed the stones for the cure of sickness or wounds,
+probably points to some ritual for healing in connection with these
+megaliths. Finally, we hear of his transformation of the lovelorn Uther
+and of his confidant Ulfin, as well as of himself.[438] Here he appears
+as little more than an ideal magician, possibly an old god, like the
+Irish "god of Druidism," to whose legend had been attached a story of
+supernatural conception. Professor Rh[^y]s regards him as a Celtic Zeus
+or as the sun, because late legends tell of his disappearance in a glass
+house into the sea. The glass house is the expanse of light travelling
+with the sun (Merlin), while the Lady of the Lake who comes daily to
+solace Merlin in his enchanted prison is a dawn-goddess. Stonehenge was
+probably a temple of this Celtic Zeus "whose late legendary self we have
+in Merlin."[439] Such late romantic episodes and an ćtiological myth can
+hardly be regarded as affording safe basis for these views, and their
+mythological interpretation is more than doubtful. The sun is never
+prisoner of the dawn as Merlin is of Viviane. Merlin and his glass house
+disappear for ever, but the sun reappears every morning. Even the most
+poetic mythology must conform in some degree to actual phenomena, but
+this cannot be said of the systems of mythological interpretation. If
+Merlin belongs to the pagan period at all, he was probably an ideal
+magician or god of magicians, prominent, perhaps, in the Arthur saga as
+in the later romances, and credited with a mysterious origin and an
+equally mysterious ending, the latter described in many different ways.
+
+The boastful Kei of the romances appears already in _Kulhwych_, while in
+Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.[440] Nobler traits are his in later
+Welsh poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a hundred,
+though his powers as a toper are also great. Here, too, his death is
+lamented.[441] He may thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury
+may be poetically described in a curious passage referring to him in
+_Kulhwych_: "His breath lasted nine days and nine nights under water. He
+could remain without sleep for the same period. No physician could heal
+a wound inflicted by his sword. When he pleased he could make himself as
+tall as the tallest tree in the wood. And when it rained hardest,
+whatever he carried remained dry above and below his hand to the
+distance of a handbreadth, so great was his natural heat. When it was
+coldest he was as glowing fuel to his companions."[442] This almost
+exactly resembles Cúchulainn's aspect in his battle-fury. In a curious
+poem Gwenhyvar (Guinevere) extols his prowess as a warrior above that of
+Arthur, and in _Kulhwych_ and elsewhere there is enmity between the
+two.[443] This may point to Kei's having been a god of tribes hostile to
+those of whom Arthur was hero.
+
+Mabon, one of Arthur's heroes in _Kulhwych_ and the _Dream of Rhonabwy_,
+whose name, from _mab_ (_map_), means "a youth," may be one with the god
+Maponos equated with Apollo in Britain and Gaul, perhaps as a god of
+healing springs.[444] His mother's name, Modron, is a local form of
+_Matrona_, a river-goddess and probably one of the mother-goddesses as
+her name implies. In the _Triads_ Mabon is one of the three eminent
+prisoners of Prydein. To obtain his help in hunting the magic boar his
+prison must be found, and this is done by animals, in accordance with a
+_Märchen_ formula, while the words spoken by them show the immense
+duration of his imprisonment--perhaps a hint of his immortality.[445]
+But he was also said to have died and been buried at Nantlle,[446]
+which, like Gloucester, the place of his prison, may have been a site of
+his widely extended cult.[447]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Taken as a whole the various gods and heroes of the Brythons, so far as
+they are known to us, just as they resemble the Irish divinities in
+having been later regarded as mortals, magicians, and fairies, so they
+resemble them in their functions, dimly as these are perceived. They are
+associated with Elysium, they are lords of fertility and growth, of the
+sea, of the arts of culture and of war. The prominent position of
+certain goddesses may point to what has already been discovered of them
+in Gaul and Ireland--their pre-eminence and independence. But, like the
+divinities of Gaul and Ireland, those of Wales were mainly local in
+character, and only in a few cases attained a wider popularity and cult.
+
+Certain British gods mentioned on inscriptions may be identified with
+some of those just considered--Nodons with Nudd or Lludd, Belenos with
+Belinus or Beli, Maponos with Mabon, Taranos (in continental
+inscriptions only), with a Taran mentioned in _Kulhwych_.[448] Others
+are referred to in classical writings--Andrasta, a goddess of victory,
+to whom Boudicca prayed;[449] Sul, a goddess of hot springs, equated
+with Minerva at Bath.[450] Inscriptions also mention Epona, the
+horse-goddess; Brigantia, perhaps a form of Brigit; Belisama (the Mersey
+in Ptolemy),[451] a goddess in Gaulish inscriptions. Others refer to the
+group goddesses, the _Matres_. Some gods are equated with Mars--Camulos,
+known also on the Continent and perhaps the same as Cumal, father of
+Fionn; Belatucadros, "comely in slaughter"; Cocidius, Corotiacus,
+Barrex, and Totatis (perhaps Lucan's Teutates). Others are equated with
+Apollo in his character as a god of healing--Anextiomarus, Grannos (at
+Musselburgh and in many continental inscriptions), Arvalus, Mogons, etc.
+Most of these and many others found on isolated inscriptions were
+probably local in character, though some, occurring also on the
+Continent, had attained a wider popularity.[452] But some of the
+inscriptions referring to the latter may be due to Gaulish soldiers
+quartered in Britain.
+
+COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DIVINITIES WITH SIMILAR NAMES IN IRELAND, BRITAIN,
+AND GAUL.
+
+_Italics denote names found in Inscriptions._
+
+IRELAND.      BRITAIN.            GAUL.
+              _Anextiomarus_      _Anextiomarus_
+Anu           Anna (?)            _Anoniredi_, "chariot of Anu"
+Badb                              _Bodua_
+              Beli, Belinus       _Belenos_
+              Belisama            _Belisama_
+Brigit        _Brigantia_         _Brigindu_
+Bron          Bran                Brennus (?)
+Buanann                           _Buanu_
+Cumal         _Camulos_           _Camulos_
+Danu          Dôn
+              _Epona_             _Epona_
+Goibniu       Govannon
+              _Grannos_           _Grannos_
+Ler           Llyr
+Lug           Llew or Lleu (?)    Lugus, _Lugores_
+              Mabon, _Maponos_    _Maponos_
+Manannan      Manawyddan
+              _Matres_            _Matres_
+Mider                             _Medros_ (?)
+              Modron              _Matrona_ (?)
+Nemon                             _Nemetona_
+Nét                               _Neton_
+Nuada         _Nodons_, Nudd
+              Hael, Llűdd (?)
+Ogma                              Ogmíos
+              _Silvanus_          _Silvanus_
+              Taran               _Taranis_
+              _Totatis, Tutatis_  Teutates
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[328] The text of the _Mabinogion_ has been edited by Rh[^y]s and Evans,
+1887, and it has been translated into English by Lady Guest, and more
+critically, into French, by Loth. Many of the _Triads_ will be found in
+Loth's second volume. For the poetry see Skene, _Four Ancient Books of
+Wales_.
+
+[329] These incidents are found mainly in the story of Branwen, e.g.
+those of the cauldron, a frequent accessory in Irish tales; the
+regeneration of the warriors, also found in the story of Mag-tured,
+though no cauldron is used; the red-hot house, occurring also in _Mesca
+Ulad_; the description of Bran paralleled by that of MacCecht.
+
+[330] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 277, ii. 124, iii. 122.
+
+[331] Bp. of S. Davids, _Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynned_, 1851;
+Rh[^y]s, _TSC_ 1894-1895, 21.
+
+[332] Skene, i. 45; Meyer, _TSC_ 1895-1896, 55.
+
+[333] Cf. John, _The Mabinogion_, 1901, 19. Curoi appears as Kubert, and
+Conchobar as Knychur in _Kulhwych_ (Loth, i. 202). A poem of _Taliesin_
+has for subject the death of Corroi, son of Dayry (Curoi mac Daire),
+Skene, i. 254.
+
+[334] Loth, _RC_ x. 356; John, _op. cit._ 19; Nutt, _Arch. Rev._ i. 331.
+
+[335] The giant Ysppadden in _Kulhwych_ resembles Balor, but has no evil
+eye.
+
+[336] Anwyl, _ZCP_ ii. 127-128, "The merging of the two legends [of Dôn
+and Taliesin] may have arisen through the fusion of Penllyn with Ardudwy
+and Arvon."
+
+[337] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks that the Llyr family may be pre-Celtic,
+_TSC_ 1894-1895, 29 f.; _CFL_ 552.
+
+[338] Loth, i. 97 f.; Lady Guest, iii. 143 f.
+
+[339] See Nutt, _Folk-lore Record_, v. 1 f.
+
+[340] Loth, i. 298, ii. 243-244; Geoffrey, _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11.
+
+[341] Loth, i. 224, 265, ii. 215, 244; Geoff. ii. 11.
+
+[342] Skene, i. 81; Rh[^y]s, _Academy_, Jan. 7, 1882.
+
+[343] _Triads_, Loth, ii. 293; Nutt, _Folk-lore Record_, v. 9.
+
+[344] _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11-14.
+
+[345] _AL_ 131.
+
+[346] Skene, i. 262.
+
+[347] See Nutt-Meyer, ii. 17.
+
+[348] Skene, i. 276.
+
+[349] Loth, i. 208, 280; see also i. 197, ii. 245, 294.
+
+[350] See Skene i. 355. The raven is rather the bird of prey come to
+devour Urien than his "attribute."
+
+[351] Skene, i. 298.
+
+[352] For these theories see Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 90_f_.; _AL_ ch. 11; _CFL_
+552.
+
+[353] See Ch. XXIV.
+
+[354] See p. 242.
+
+[355] Loth, i. 65, ii. 285.
+
+[356] _Hist. Brit._ iii. 1_f_. Geoffrey says that Billingsgate was
+called after Belinus, and that his ashes were preserved in the gate, a
+tradition recalling some connection of the god with the gate.
+
+[357] An early Caradawc saga may have become mingled with the story of
+Caractacus.
+
+[358] Rees, 77.
+
+[359] So Elton, 291.
+
+[360] _Folk-lore Record_, v. 29.
+
+[361] Lady Guest, iii. 134.
+
+[362] Dôn is sometimes held to be male, but she is distinctly called
+sister of Math (Loth, i. 134), and as the equivalent of Danu she must be
+female.
+
+[363] Loth, ii. 209.
+
+[364] See p. 60, _supra_, and Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 90_f_.
+
+[365] Lady Guest, iii. 255; Skene, i. 297, 350.
+
+[366] For this _Mabinogi_ see Loth, i. 117f.; Guest, iii. 189f.
+
+[367] Skene, i. 286.
+
+[368] Loth, ii. 229, 257; and for other references to Math, Skene, i.
+281, 269, 299.
+
+[369] Skene, i. 296, 281.
+
+[370] Loth, ii. 297; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 276.
+
+[371] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[372] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 270. Skene, i. 430, 537, gives a different meaning
+to _seon_.
+
+[373] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[374] Loth, ii. 296.
+
+[375] Skene, i. 299, 531.
+
+[376] See p. 224, _infra_.
+
+[377] Guest, iii. 255; Morris, _Celtic Remains_, 231.
+
+[378] _HL_ 283 _f_. See also Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ i. 131.
+
+[379] Loth, i. 240.
+
+[380] Stokes, _US_ 34.
+
+[381] _Myvyrian Archćol._ i. 168; Skene, i. 275, 278 f.; Loth, ii. 259.
+
+[382] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, 127. Llew's vulnerability does not
+depend on the discovery of his separable soul, as is usual. The earliest
+form of this _Märchen_ is the Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, and
+that of Samson and Delilah is another old form of it.
+
+[383] Skene, i. 314, ii. 342.
+
+[384] _HL_ 408; _RC_ x. 490.
+
+[385] _HL_ 237, 319, 398, 408.
+
+[386] _HL_ 384.
+
+[387] _HL_ 474, 424.
+
+[388] Loth, ii. 231.
+
+[389] Loth, i. 240.
+
+[390] Skene, i, 286-287.
+
+[391] Loth, ii. 263.
+
+[392] Skene, ii. 159; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 157; Guest, iii. 255.
+
+[393] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 161, 566.
+
+[394] Skene, i. 282, 288, 310, 543, ii. 145; Loth, i. 135; Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+387.
+
+[395] Loth, i. 27 f.; Guest, iii. 7 f.
+
+[396] Rhiannon is daughter of Heveidd Hen or "the Ancient," probably an
+old divinity.
+
+[397] In the _Mabinogi_ and in Fionn tales a mysterious hand snatches
+away newly-born children. Cf. _ZCP_ i. 153.
+
+[398] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 288.
+
+[399] Loth, ii. 247.
+
+[400] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[401] Ibid. i. 276.
+
+[402] Ibid. i. 310.
+
+[403] Loth, i. 166.
+
+[404] _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11, iii. 1, 20, iv. 3.
+
+[405] Cf. Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 287.
+
+[406] Skene, i. 431; Loth, ii. 278. Some phrases seem to connect Beli
+with the sea--the waves are his cattle, the brine his liquor.
+
+[407] Loth, ii. 209, 249, 260, 283.
+
+[408] Geoffrey, _Brit. Hist._ iv. 3. 4.
+
+[409] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 125 f.; Loth, i. 265; MacBain, _CM_ ix. 66.
+
+[410] See Loth, i. 269; and Skene, i. 293.
+
+[411] Loth, i. 173 f.
+
+[412] Loth, ii. 256, 274.
+
+[413] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 606. Cf. the Breton fairies, the _Korr_ and
+_Korrigan_.
+
+[414] Geoffrey, iii. 20.
+
+[415] Loth, i. 253-254; Skene, i. 293.
+
+[416] Guest, iii. 323.
+
+[417] Ibid. 325.
+
+[418] Loth, i. 253, ii. 297.
+
+[419] See p. 353, _infra_.; Skene, i. 532.
+
+[420] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 293.
+
+[421] Guest, iii. 356 f.
+
+[422] Skene, i. 275, 296.
+
+[423] Ibid. i. 498, 500.
+
+[424] See p. 382, _infra_.
+
+[425] _Mon. Hist. Brit._ i. 698, ii.; Thomas, _Revue de l'hist. des
+Religions_, xxxviii. 339.
+
+[426] Skene, i. 263, 274-276, 278, 281-282, 286-287. His "chair" bestows
+immortal youth and freedom from sickness.
+
+[427] Skene, i. 264, 376 f., 309, 532. See p. 356, _infra_.
+
+[428] See pp. 350-1, _infra_. Fionn and Taliesin are examples of the
+_Märchen_ formula of a hero expelled and brought back to honour,
+Nutt-Meyer, ii. 88.
+
+[429] Loth, i. 209, ii. 238; Skene, ii. 459.
+
+[430] Nennius, ch. 50, 79.
+
+[431] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 293.
+
+[432] Geoffrey, viii. 9-xi. 3.
+
+[433] Nutt-Meyer, ii. 22 f.
+
+[434] See p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[435] Loth, ii. 232, 245.
+
+[436] Rh[^y]s, _AL_, 39 f. Others derive the name from _arto-s_, "bear."
+MacBain, 357.
+
+[437] Loth. ii. 247; Skene, ii. 459.
+
+[438] Geoffrey, vi. 17-19, vii. viii. 1, 10-12, 19. In a poem (Skene, i.
+478), Myrddin is called "the man who speaks from the grave"--a
+conception familiar to the Celts, who thought of the dead as living on
+in the grave. See p. 340, _infra_.
+
+[439] Rh[^y]s, _HL_, 154 f., 158-159, 194.
+
+[440] Geoffrey, ix. 12, etc.
+
+[441] Skene, ii. 51.
+
+[442] Loth. i. 225; cf. p. 131, _infra_. From this description Elton
+supposes Kei to have been a god of fire.
+
+[443] _Myv. Arch._ i. 175; Loth, i. 269. Rh[^y]s, _AL_ 59, thinks Merlin
+may have been Guinevere's ravisher.
+
+[444] Holder, i. 414.
+
+[445] Loth i. 250, 260 f., 280, ii. 215, 244.
+
+[446] Skene, i. 363, ii. 406; _Myv. Arch._ i. 78.
+
+[447] Hu Gadarn is mentioned in the _Triads_ as a leader of the Cymry
+from the east and their teacher in ploughing. He divided them into
+clans, and invented music and song. The monster _avanc_ was drawn by him
+from the lake which had burst and caused the flood (see p. 231,
+_infra_). Perhaps Hu is an old culture-god of some tribes, but the
+_Triads_ referring to him are of late date (Loth, ii. 271, 289, 290-291,
+298-299). For the ridiculous Neo-Druidic speculations based on Hu, see
+Davies, _Celtic Researches_ and _Mythology and Rites of the Druids_.
+
+Gurgiunt, son of Belinus, in Geoffrey, iii. 11, may be the French
+legendary Gargantua, perhaps an old god. See the works of Sébillot and
+Gaidoz on _Gargantua_.
+
+[448] Loth, i. 270.
+
+[449] Dio Cassius, lxii. 6.
+
+[450] Solinus, xxii. 10. See p. 2, _supra_.
+
+[451] Ptol. ii. 3. 2.
+
+[452] For all these see Holder, _s.v._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE CÚCHULAINN CYCLE.
+
+
+The events of the Cúchulainn cycle are supposed to date from the
+beginning of the Christian era--King Conchobar's death synchronising
+with the crucifixion. But though some personages who are mentioned in
+the Annals figure in the tales, on the whole they deal with persons who
+never existed. They belong to a world of romance and myth, and embody
+the ideals of Celtic paganism, modified by Christian influences and
+those of classical tales and romantic sagas of other regions, mainly
+Scandinavian. The present form of the tales as they exist in the _Book
+of the Dun Cow_ and the _Book of Leinster_ must have been given them in
+the seventh or eighth century, but they embody materials of a far older
+date. At an early time the saga may have had a more or less definite
+form, but new tales were being constantly added to it, and some of the
+longer tales are composed of incidents which once had no connection with
+each other.
+
+Cúchulainn is the central figure of the cycle, and its central episode
+is that of the _Táin bó Cuailgne_, or "Cattle Spoil of Cooley." Other
+personages are Conchobar and Dechtire, Ailill and Medb, Fergus, Conall
+Cernach, Cúroi, Deirdre, and the sons of Usnach. Some of these are of
+divine descent, some are perhaps euhemerised divinities; Conchobar is
+called _día talmaide_, "a terrestrial god," and Dechtire a goddess. The
+cycle opens with the birth of Conchobar, son of Cathbad and of Nessa,
+daughter of one of the Tuatha Dé Danann, though in an older rescension
+of the tale he is Nessa's son by the god Lug. During Conchobar's reign
+over Ulster Cúchulainn was born. He was son of Dechtire, either by
+Sualtaim, or by her brother Conchobar, or by the god Lug, of whom he may
+also be a reincarnation.[453] Like other heroes of saga, he possesses
+great strength and skill at a tender age, and, setting out for
+Conchobar's court, overpowers the king's "boy corps," and then becomes
+their chief. His next adventure is the slaying of the watch-dog of
+Culann the smith, and his appeasing the anger of its owner by offering
+to act as his watch-dog. Cathbad now announced that his name would
+henceforth be Cú Chulainn, "Culann's hound."[454] At the mature age of
+seven he obtained Conchobar's spears, sword, shield, and chariot, and
+with these he overcame three mighty champions, returning in the
+distortion of his "battle-fury" to Emania. To prevent mischief from his
+rage, the women went forth naked to meet him. He modestly covered his
+eyes, for it was one of his _geasa_ not to look on a woman's breast.
+Thus taken unawares, he was plunged into three successive vats of cold
+water until his natural appearance was restored to him, although the
+water boiled and hissed from his heat.[455]
+
+As Cúchulainn grew up, his strength, skill, wisdom, and beauty were
+unsurpassed. All women fell in love with him, and to forestall a series
+of _bonnes fortunes_, the men of Ulster sought a wife for him. But the
+hero's heart was set on Emer, daughter of Forgall, whom he wooed in a
+strange language which none but she could understand. At last she
+consented to be his wife if he would slay a number of warriors. Forgall
+was opposed to the match, and with a view to Cúchulainn's destruction
+suggested that he should go to Donall in Alba to increase his skill, and
+to Scathach if he would excel all other warriors. He agreed, provided
+that Forgall would give him whatever he asked for on his return. Arrived
+in Alba, he refused the love of Donall's daughter, Dornolla, who swore
+to be avenged. Thence he went to Scathach, overcoming all the dangers of
+the way, leaping in safety the gulf surrounding her island, after
+essaying in vain to cross a narrow, swinging bridge. From Scathach he
+learned supreme skill in arms, and overcame her Amazonian rival Aife. He
+begat a son by Aife, and instructed her to call him Conla, to give him
+his father's ring, to send him to seek Cúchulainn, and to forbid him to
+reveal his name. In the sequel, Cúchulainn, unaware that Conla was his
+son, slew him in single combat, too late discovering his identity from
+the ring which he wore. This is the well-known saga formula of Sohrab
+and Rustum, of Theseus and Hippolytus. On his return from Scathach's
+isle Cúchulainn destroyed Forgall's _rath_ with many of its inmates,
+including Forgall, and carried off Emer. To the ten years which
+followed, during which he was the great champion of Ulster, belong many
+tales in which he figures prominently. One of these is _The Debility of
+the Ultonians_. This was caused by Macha, who, during her pregnancy, was
+forced to run a race with Conchobar's horses. She outran them, but gave
+birth immediately to twins, and, in her pangs, cursed the men of Ulster,
+with a curse that, in time of oppression, they would be overcome with
+the weakness of childbirth. From this Cúchulainn was exempt, for he was
+not of Ulster, but a son of Lug.[456] Various attempts have been made to
+explain this "debility." It may be a myth explaining a Celtic use of the
+"couvade," though no example of a simultaneous tribal couvade is known,
+unless we have here an instance of Westermarck's "human pairing season
+in primitive times," with its consequent simultaneous birth-period for
+women and couvade for men.[457] Others, with less likelihood, explain it
+as a period of tabu, with cessation from work and warfare, at a funeral
+or festival.[458] In any case Macha's curse is a myth explanatory of the
+origin of some existing custom, the duration of which is much
+exaggerated by the narrator. To this period belong also the tale of
+Cúchulainn's visit to Elysium, and others to be referred to later.
+Another story describes his attack upon Morrigan because she would
+neither yield up the cows which she was driving away nor tell her true
+name--an instance of the well-known name tabu. Morrigan took the form of
+a bird, and was then recognised by Cúchulainn, who poured scorn upon
+her, while she promised to oppose him during the fight of the _Táin_ in
+the forms of an eel, a wolf, and a cow, all of which he vowed to
+destroy.[459] Like many others in the saga, this story is introductory
+to the main episode of the _Táin_. To this we now turn.
+
+Medb had been wife of Conchobar, but, leaving him, had married in
+succession two chiefs called Ailill, the second of whom had a bull,
+Findbennach, the White-horned, which she resolved to match by one in
+every way its equal. Having been refused the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, she
+summoned all her forces to invade Ulster. The moment was inauspicious
+for Ulster, for all its men were suffering from their "debility."
+Cúchulainn, therefore, went out to encounter the host, and forced Medb
+to agree that a succession of her warriors should engage him in single
+combat. Among these was his old friend Ferdia, and nothing is so
+touching as his reluctance to fight him or so pathetic as his grief when
+Ferdia falls. The reluctance is primarily due to the tie of
+blood-brotherhood existing between them. Finally, the Ulstermen rose in
+force and defeated Medb, but not before she had already captured the
+bull and sent it into her own land. There it was fought by the
+Findbennach and slew it, rushing back to Ulster with the mangled body on
+its horns. But in its frenzy a rock seemed to be another bull, which it
+charged; its brains were dashed out, and it fell dead.
+
+The Morrigan had warned the bull of the approach of Medb's army, and she
+had also appeared in the form of a beautiful woman to Cúchulainn
+offering him her love, only to be repulsed. Hence she turned against
+him, and described how she would oppose him as an eel, a wolf, and a red
+heifer--an incident which is probably a variant of that already
+described.[460] In each of these shapes she was conquered and wounded by
+the hero, and knowing that none whom he hurt could be healed save by
+himself, she appeared to him as an old crone milking a cow. At each
+draught of the milk which he received from her he blessed her with "the
+blessing of gods and not-gods," and so her wounds were healed.[461] For
+this, at a later time, she tried to ward off his death, but
+unsuccessfully. During the progress of the _Táin_, one of Cúchulainn's
+"fairy kinsmen," namely, Lug, who announced himself as his father,
+appeared to aid him, while others of the Tuatha Déa threw "herbs of
+healing" into the streams in which his wounds were washed.[462]
+
+During the _Táin_, Cúchulainn slaughtered the wizard Calatin and his
+daughters. But Calatin's wife bore three posthumous sons and three
+daughters, and through their means the hero was at last slain.
+Everything was done to keep him back from the host which now advanced
+against Ulster, but finally one of Calatin's daughters took the form of
+Niamh and bade him go forth. As he passed to the fight, Calatin's
+daughters persuaded him to eat the flesh of a dog--a fatal deed, for it
+was one of his _geasa_ never to eat dog's flesh. So it was that in the
+fight he was slain by Lugaid,[463] and his soul appeared to the thrice
+fifty queens who had loved him, chanting a mystic song of the coming of
+Christ and the day of doom--an interesting example of a phantasm
+coincidental with death.[464] This and other Christian touches show that
+the Christian redactors of the saga felt tenderly towards the old pagan
+hero. This is even more marked in the story in which he appears to King
+Loegaire and S. Patrick, begging the former to believe in God and the
+saint, and praying Patrick to "bring me with thy faithful ones unto the
+land of the living."[465] A similar Christianising appears in the story
+of Conchobar's death, the result of his mad frenzy on hearing from his
+Druid that an earthquake is the result of the shameful crucifixion of
+Christ.[466]
+
+In the saga, Cúchulainn appears as the ideal Celtic warrior, but, like
+other ideal warriors, he is a "magnified, non-natural man," many of his
+deeds being merely exaggerations of those common among barbaric folk.
+Even his "distortion" or battle frenzy is but a magnifying of the wild
+frenzy of all wild fighters. To the person of this ideal warrior, some
+of whose traits may have been derived from traditional stories of actual
+heroes, _Märchen_ and saga episodes attached themselves. Of every ideal
+hero, Celtic, Greek, Babylonian, or Polynesian, certain things are
+told--his phenomenal strength as a child; his victory over enormous
+forces; his visits to the Other-world; his amours with a goddess; his
+divine descent. These belong to the common stock of folk-tale episodes,
+and accumulate round every great name. Hence, save in the colouring
+given to them or the use made of them by any race, they do not afford a
+key to the mythic character of the hero. Such deeds are ascribed to
+Cúchulainn, as they doubtless were to the ideal heroes of the "undivided
+Aryans," but though parallels may be found between him and the Greek
+Heracles, they might just as easily be found in non-Aryan regions, e.g.
+in Polynesia. Thus the parallels between Cúchulainn and Heracles throw
+little light on the personality of the former, though here and there in
+such parallels we observe a peculiarly Celtic touch. Thus, while the
+Greek hero rescues Hesione from a dragon, it is from three Fomorians
+that Cúchulainn rescues Devorgilla, namely, from beings to whom actual
+human sacrifice was paid. Thus a _Märchen_ formula of world-wide
+existence has been moulded by Celtic religious belief and ritual
+practice.[467]
+
+It was inevitable that the "mythological school" should regard
+Cúchulainn as a solar hero. Thus "he reaches his full development at an
+unusually early age," as the sun does,[468] but also as do many other
+heroes of saga and _Märchen_ who are not solar. The three colours of
+Cúchulainn's hair, dark near the skin, red in the middle, golden near
+the top, are claimed to be a description of the sun's rays, or of the
+three parts into which the Celts divided the day.[469] Elsewhere his
+tresses are yellow, like Prince Charlie's in fact and in song, yet he
+was not a solar hero. Again, the seven pupils of his eyes perhaps
+"referred to the days of the week."[470] Blindness befell all women who
+loved him, a reference to the difficulty of gazing at the sun.[471] This
+is prosaic! The blindness was a compliment paid to Cúchulainn the blind,
+by women who made themselves blind while talking to him, just as Conall
+Cernach's mistresses squinted as he did.[472] Cúchulainn's blindness
+arose from his habit of sinking one eye into his head and protruding the
+other--a well-known solar trait! His "distortion," during which, besides
+this "blindness," blood shot upwards from his head and formed a magic
+mist, and his anger caused showers of sparks to mount above him, points
+to dawn or sunset,[473] though the setting sun would rather suggest a
+hero sinking calmly to rest than a mad giant setting out to slaughter
+friend and foe. The "distortion," as already pointed out, is the
+exaggerated description of the mad warrior rage, just as the fear which
+produced death to those who saw him brandish his weapons, was also
+produced by Maori warrior methods.[474] Lug, who may be a sun-god, has
+no such "distortion." The cooling of the hero in three vats, the waters
+of which boil over, and his emergence from them pinky red in colour,
+symbolise the sun sinking into the waters and reappearing at dawn.[475]
+Might it not describe in an exaggerated way the refreshing bath taken by
+frenzied warriors, the water being supposed to grow warm from the heat
+of their bodies?[476] One of the hero's _geasa_ was not to see
+Manannan's horses, the waves; which, being interpreted, means that the
+sun is near its death as it approaches the sea. Yet Lug, a sun-god,
+rides the steed Enbarr, a personification of the waves, while Cúchulainn
+himself often crossed the sea, and also lived with the sea-god's wife,
+Fand, without coming to grief. Again, the magic horses which he drives,
+black and grey in colour, are "symbols of day and night,"[477] though it
+is not obvious why a grey horse should symbolise day, which is not
+always grey even in the isles of the west. Unlike a solar hero, too,
+Cúchulainn is most active in winter, and rests for a brief space from
+slaughtering at midday--the time of the sun's greatest activity both in
+summer and winter.
+
+Another theory is that every visit of the hero to a strange land
+signifies a descent to Hades, suggested by the sun sinking in the west.
+Scathach's island may be Hades, but it is more probably Elysium with
+some traits borrowed from the Christian idea of hell. But Emer's land,
+also visited by Cúchulainn, suggests neither Hades nor Elysium. Emer
+calls herself _ingen rig richis garta_, translated by Professor Rh[^y]s
+as "daughter of the coal-faced king," i.e. she is daughter of darkness.
+Hence she is a dawn-maiden and becomes the sun-hero's wife.[478] There
+is nothing in the story to corroborate this theory, apart from the fact
+that it is not clear, even to the hypothetical primitive mind, why dawn
+and sun should be a divine pair. Emer's words probably mean that she is
+"daughter of a king" and "a flame of hospitality" (_richis garta_.)[479]
+Cúchulainn, in visiting her, went from west to east, contrary to the
+apparent course of the sun. The extravagance of the solar theory is
+further seen in the hypothesis that because Cúchulainn has other wives,
+the sun-god made love to as many dawn-maidens as there are days in the
+year,[480] like the king in Louys' romance with his 366 wives, one for
+each day of the year, leap-year included.
+
+Further examples of the solar theory need not be cited. It is enough to
+see in Cúchulainn the ideal warrior, whose traits are bombastic and
+obscure exaggerations of actual custom and warfare, or are borrowed from
+folk-tale _motifs_ not exclusively Celtic. Possibly he may have been a
+war-god, since he is associated with Badb[481] and also with Morrigan.
+But he has also some traits of a culture hero. He claims superiority in
+wisdom, in law, in politics, in the art of the _Filid_, and in Druidism,
+while he brings various things from the world of the gods[482]. In any
+case the Celts paid divine honours to heroes, living or dead,[483] and
+Cúchulainn, god or ideal hero, may have been the subject of a cult. This
+lends point to the theory of M. D'Arbois that Cúchulainn and Conall
+Cernach are the equivalents of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, said by
+Diodorus to be worshipped among the Celts near the Ocean.[484]
+Cúchulainn, like Pollux, was son of a god, and was nursed, according to
+some accounts, by Findchoém, mother of Conall,[485] just as Leda was
+mother of Castor as well as of Pollux. But, on the other hand,
+Cúchulainn, unlike Pollux, was mortal. M. D'Arbois then identifies the
+two pairs of heroes with certain figures on an altar at Cluny. These are
+Castor and Pollux; Cernunnos and Smertullos. He equates Castor with
+Cernunnos, and Pollux with Smertullos. Smertullos is Cúchulainn, and the
+name is explained from an incident in the _Táin_, in which the hero,
+reproached for his youth, puts on a false beard before attacking
+Morrigan in her form as an eel. This is expressed by _smérthain_, "to
+attach", and is thus connected with and gave rise to the name
+Smertullos. On the altar Smertullos is attacking an eel or serpent.
+Hence Pollux is Smertullos-Cúchulainn.[486] Again, the name Cernunnos
+signifies "the horned one," from _cernu_, "horn," a word found in
+Conall's epithet Cernach. But this was not given him because he was
+horned, but because of the angular shape of his head, the angle (_cern_)
+being the result of a blow.[487] The epithet may mean "victorious."[488]
+On the whole, the theory is more ingenious than convincing, and we have
+no proof that the figures of Castor and Pollux on the altar were
+duplicates of the Celtic pair. Cernunnos was an underworld god, and
+Conall has no trace of such a character.
+
+M. D'Arbois also traces the saga in Gaul in the fact that on the menhir
+of Kervadel Mercury is figured with a child, Mercury, in his opinion,
+being Lug, and the child Cúchulainn.[489] On another altar are depicted
+(1) a woodman, Esus, cutting down a tree, and (2) a bull on which are
+perched three birds--Tarvos Trigaranos. The two subjects, as M. Reinach
+points out, are combined on another altar at Trčves, on which a woodman
+is cutting down a tree in which are perched three birds, while a bull's
+head appears in the branches.[490] These represent, according to M.
+D'Arbois, incidents of the _Táin_--the cutting down of trees by
+Cúchulainn and placing them in the way of his enemies, and the warning
+of the bull by Morrigan in the bird form which she shared with her
+sisters Badb and Macha.[491] Why, then, is Cúchulainn called Esus?
+"Esus" comes from a root which gives words meaning "rapid motion,"
+"anger," "strength"--all shown by the hero.[492] The altars were found
+in the land of the Belgic Treveri, and some Belgic tribes may have
+passed into Britain and Ireland carrying the Esus-Cúchulainn legend
+there in the second century B.C., e.g. the Setantii, dwelling by the
+Mersey, and bearing a name similar to that of the hero in his
+childhood--Setanta (_Setantios_) as well as the Menapii and Brigantes,
+located in Ireland by Ptolemy.[493] In other words, the divine Esus,
+with his surname Smertullos, was called in Ireland Setanta, after the
+Setantii, and at a later date, Cúchulainn. The princely name Donnotaurus
+resembles _Dond tarb_, the "Brown Bull" of the saga, and also suggests
+its presence in Gaul, while the name [Greek: dęiotaros], perhaps the
+equivalent of _De[^u]io-taruos_, "Divine Bull," is found in
+Galatia.[494] Thus the main elements of the saga may have been known to
+the continental Celts before it was localised in Ireland,[495] and, it
+may be added, if it was brought there by Gallo-British tribes, this
+might account for the greater popularity of the native, possibly
+pre-Celtic, Fionn saga among the folk, as well as for the finer literary
+quality of the Cúchulainn saga. But the identification of Esus with
+Cúchulainn rests on slight grounds; the names Esus and Smertullos are
+not found in Ireland, and the Gaulish Esus, worshipped with human
+sacrifice, has little affinity with the hero, unless his deeds of
+slaughter are reminiscent of such rites. It is possible, however, that
+the episode of the _Táin_ came from a myth explaining ritual acts. This
+myth may have been the subject of the bas-reliefs, carried to Ireland,
+and there worked into the saga.
+
+The folk-versions of the saga, though resembling the literary versions,
+are less elaborate and generally wilder, and perhaps represent its
+primitive form.[496] The greatest differences are found in versions of
+the _Táin_ and of Cúchulainn's death, which, separate in the saga, are
+parts of one folk-tale, the death occurring during the fighting over the
+bull. The bull is his property, and Medb sends Garbh mac Stairn to take
+it from him. He pretends to be a child, goes to bed, and tricks Garbh,
+who goes off to get the bull. Cúchulainn arrives before him and
+personates the herdsman. Each seizes a horn, and the bull is torn in
+two.[497] Does this represent the primitive form of the _Táin_, and,
+further, were the bull and Cúchulainn once one and the same--a bull, the
+incarnation of a god or vegetation spirit, being later made
+anthropomorphic--a hero-god whose property or symbol was a bull?
+Instances of this process are not unknown among the Celts.[498] In
+India, Indra was a bull and a divine youth, in Greece there was the
+bull-Dionysos, and among the Celts the name of the divine bull was borne
+by kings.[499] In the saga Morrigan is friendly to the bull, but fights
+for Medb; but she is now friendly, now hostile to Cúchulainn, finally,
+however, trying to avert his doom. If he had once been the bull, her
+friendliness would not be quite forgotten, once he became human and
+separate from the bull. When she first met Cúchulainn she had a cow on
+whom the Brown Bull was to beget a calf, and she told the hero that "So
+long as the calf which is in this cow's body is a yearling, it is up to
+that time that thou art in life; and it is this that will lead to the
+_Táin_."[500] This suggests that the hero was to die in the battle, but
+it shows that the Brown Bull's calf is bound up his life. The Bull was a
+reincarnation of a divine swineherd, and if, as in the case of
+Cúchulainn, "his rebirth could only be of himself,"[501] the calf was
+simply a duplicate of the bull, and, as it was bound up with the hero's
+life, bull and hero may well have been one. The life or soul was in the
+calf, and, as in all such cases, the owner of the soul and that in which
+it is hidden are practically identical. Cúchulainn's "distortion" might
+then be explained as representing the bull's fury in fight, and the
+folk-tales would be popular forms of an old myth explaining ritual in
+which a bull, the incarnation of a tree or vegetation spirit, was slain,
+and the sacred tree cut down and consumed, as in Celtic agricultural
+ritual. This would be the myth represented on the bas-reliefs, and in
+the ritual the bull would be slain, rent, and eaten by his worshippers.
+Why, then, should Cúchulainn rend the bull? In the later stages of such
+rites the animal was slain, not so much as a divine incarnation as a
+sacrifice to the god once incarnated in him. And when a god was thus
+separated from his animal form, myths often arose telling how he himself
+had slain the animal.[502] In the case of Cúchulainn and the bull, the
+god represented by the bull became separate from it, became
+anthropomorphic, and in that form was associated with or actually was
+the hero Cúchulainn. Bull sacrifices were common among the Celts with
+whom the bull had been a divine animal.[503] Possibly a further echo of
+this myth and ritual is to be found in the folk-belief that S. Martin
+was cut up and eaten in the form of an ox--the god incarnate in the
+animal being associated with a saint.[504] Thus the literary versions of
+the _Táin_, departing from the hypothetical primitive versions, kept the
+bull as the central figure, but introduced a rival bull, and described
+its death differently, while both bulls are said to be reincarnations of
+divine swine-herds.[505] The idea of a fight for a bull is borrowed from
+actual custom, and thus the old form of the story was further distorted.
+
+The Cúchulainn saga is more coherent than the Fionn saga, because it
+possesses one central incident. The "canon" of the saga was closed at an
+early date, while that of Fionn has practically never been closed,
+mainly because it has been more a saga of the folk than that of
+Cúchulainn. In some respects the two may have been rivals, for if the
+Cúchulainn saga was introduced by conquerors from Britain or Gaul, it
+would not be looked on with favour by the folk. Or if it is the saga of
+Ulster as opposed to that of Leinster, rivalry would again ensue. The
+Fionn saga lives more in the hearts of the people, though it sometimes
+borrows from the other. This borrowing, however, is less than some
+critics, e.g. Zimmer, maintain. Many of the likenesses are the result of
+the fact that wherever a hero exists a common stock of incidents becomes
+his. Hence there is much similarity in all sagas wherever found.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[453] _IT_ i. 134; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 38 f.; Windisch, _Táin_, 342; L.
+Duvau, "La Legende de la Conception de Cúchulainn," _RC_ ix. 1 f.
+
+[454] Windisch, _Táin_, 118 f. For a similar reason Finnchad was called
+Cú Cerca, "the hound of Cerc" (_IT_ iii. 377).
+
+[455] For the boyish exploits, see Windisch, _Táin_, 106 f.
+
+[456] _RC_ vii. 225; Windisch, _Táin_, 20. Macha is a granddaughter of
+Ler, but elsewhere she is called Mider's daughter (_RC_ xvi. 46).
+
+[457] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ ii. 654; Westermarck, _Hist. of Human Marriage_,
+ch. 2.
+
+[458] Miss Hull, _Folk-Lore_, xii. 60, citing instances from Jevons,
+_Hist. of Religion_, 65.
+
+[459] Windisch, _IT_ ii. 239.
+
+[460] Windisch, 184, 312, 330; cf. _IT_ iii. 355; Miss Hull, 164 f.;
+Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 468.
+
+[461] _LL_ 119_a_; _RC_ iii. 175.
+
+[462] Windisch, 342.
+
+[463] _RC_ iii. 175 f.
+
+[464] Ibid. 185.
+
+[465] Crowe, _Jour. Kilkenny Arch. Soc._ 1870-1871, 371 f.
+
+[466] _LL_ 79_a_; O'Curry, _MS. Mat_, 640.
+
+[467] _LL_ 125_a_. See my _Childhood of fiction_, ch. 14.
+
+[468] Miss Hull, lxxvi.
+
+[469] "Da Derga's Hostel," _RC_ xxii. 283; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 438.
+
+[470] _LL_ 68_a_; Rh[^y]s, 437; Ingcel the one-eyed has also many pupils
+(_RC_ xxii. 58).
+
+[471] Miss Hull, lxiii.
+
+[472] _RC_ viii. 49.
+
+[473] _LL_ 77_b_; Miss Hull, lxii.
+
+[474] Other Celtic heroes undergo this distortion, which resembles the
+Scandinavian warrior rage followed by languor, as in the case of
+Cúchulainn.
+
+[475] Miss Hull, p. lxvi.
+
+[476] Irish saints, standing neck deep in freezing water, made it hot.
+
+[477] _IT_ i. 268; D'Arbois, v. 103; Miss Hull, lxvi.
+
+[478] _HL_ 448.
+
+[479] See Meyer, _RC xi_. 435; Windisch, _IT_ i. 589, 740. Though
+_richis_ means "charcoal," it is also glossed "flame," hence it could
+only be glowing charcoal, without any idea of darkness.
+
+[480] _HL_ 458.
+
+[481] _IT_ i. 107.
+
+[482] _Arch. Rev._ i. 1 f.; _IT_ i. 213; see p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[483] See p. 164, _infra_.
+
+[484] Diod. Siculus, iv. 56.
+
+[485] _IT_ iii. 393.
+
+[486] _Les Celtes_, 58 f. Formerly M. D'Arbois identified Smertullos
+with Lug, ii. 217; Holder, i. 46, 262. For the incident of the beard,
+see Windisch, _Táin_, 308.
+
+[487] _IT_ iii. 395.
+
+[488] _IT_ i. 420.
+
+[489] _RC_ xxvii. 319 f.
+
+[490] _RC_ xviii. 256.
+
+[491] _Les Celtes_, 63; _RC_ xix. 246.
+
+[492] D'Arbois, _RC_ xx. 89.
+
+[493] D'Arbois, _RC_ xxvii. 321; _Les Celtes_, 65.
+
+[494] _Les Celtes_, 49; Cćsar, vi. 14.
+
+[495] In contradiction to this, M. D'Arbois elsewhere thinks that Druids
+from Britain may have taught the Cúchulainn legend in Gaul (_RC_ xxvii.
+319).
+
+[496] See versions in _Book of the Dean of Lismore_; _CM_ xiii.;
+Campbell, _The Fians_, 6 f.
+
+[497] _CM_ xiii. 327, 514. The same story is told of Fionn, _ibid._ 512.
+See also ballad versions in Campbell, _LF_ 3 f.
+
+[498] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[499] A Galatian king was called Brogitaros, probably a form of
+_Brogitaruos_, "bull of the province," a title borne by Conchobar, _tarb
+in chóicid_ (_IT_ i. 72). This with the epithets applied to heroes in
+the _Triads_, "bull-phantom," "prince bull of combat" (Loth, ii. 232,
+243), may be an appellative denoting great strength.
+
+[500] _IT_ ii. 241 f.; D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 168.
+
+[501] Miss Hull, 58.
+
+[502] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[503] See p. 208, _infra_.
+
+[504] Fitzgerald, _RC_ vi. 254.
+
+[505] See p. 243, _infra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE FIONN SAGA.
+
+
+The most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death of
+Fionn's father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson Oscar, his
+nephew Diarmaid with his _ball-seire_, or "beauty-spot," which no woman
+could resist; Fergus famed for wisdom and eloquence; Caoilte mac Ronan,
+the swift; Conan, the comic character of the saga; Goll mac Morna, the
+slayer of Cumal, but later the devoted friend of Fionn, besides a host
+of less important personages. Their doings, like those of the heroes of
+saga and epos everywhere, are mainly hunting, fighting, and love-making.
+They embody much of the Celtic character--vivacity, valour, kindness,
+tenderness, as well as boastfulness and fiery temper. Though dating from
+pagan times, the saga throws little light upon pagan beliefs, but
+reveals much concerning the manners of the period. Here, as always in
+early Celtdom, woman is more than a mere chattel, and occupies a
+comparatively high place. The various parts of the saga, like those of
+the Finnish _Kalevala_, always existed separately, never as one complete
+epos, though always bearing a certain relation to each other. Lonnrot,
+in Finland, was able, by adding a few connecting links of his own, to
+give unity to the _Kalevala_, and had MacPherson been content to do this
+for the Fionn saga, instead of inventing, transforming, and serving up
+the whole in the manner of the sentimental eighteenth century, what a
+boon would he have conferred on Celtic literature. The various parts of
+the saga belong to different centuries and come from different authors,
+all, however, imbued with the spirit of the Fionn tradition.
+
+A date cannot be given to the beginnings of the saga, and additions have
+been made to it even down to the eighteenth century, Michael Comyn's
+poem of Oisin in Tir na n-Og being as genuine a part of it as any of the
+earlier pieces. Its contents are in part written, but much more oral.
+Much of it is in prose, and there is a large poetic literature of the
+ballad kind, as well as _Märchen_ of the universal stock made purely
+Celtic, with Fionn and the rest of the heroic band as protagonists. The
+saga embodies Celtic ideals and hopes; it was the literature of the
+Celtic folk on which was spent all the riches of the Celtic imagination;
+a world of dream and fancy into which they could enter at all times and
+disport themselves. Yet, in spite of its immense variety, the saga
+preserves a certain unity, and it is provided with a definite framework,
+recounting the origin of the heroes, the great events in which they were
+concerned, their deaths or final appearances, and the breaking up of the
+Fionn band.
+
+The historic view of the Fians is taken by the annalists, by Keating,
+O'Curry, Dr. Joyce, and Dr. Douglas Hyde.[506] According to this view,
+they were a species of militia maintained by the Irish kings for the
+support of the throne and the defence of the country. From Samhain to
+Beltane they were quartered on the people, and from Beltane to Samhain
+they lived by hunting. How far the people welcomed this billeting, we
+are not told. Their method of cooking the game which they hunted was one
+well known to all primitive peoples. Holes were dug in the ground; in
+them red-hot stones were placed, and on the stones was laid venison
+wrapped in sedge. All was then covered over, and in due time the meat
+was done to a turn. Meanwhile the heroes engaged in an elaborate
+toilette before sitting down to eat. Their beds were composed of
+alternate layers of brushwood, moss, and rushes. The Fians were divided
+into _Catha_ of three thousand men, each with its commander, and
+officers to each hundred, each fifty, and each nine, a system not unlike
+that of the ancient Peruvians. Each candidate for admission to the band
+had to undergo the most trying ordeals, rivalling in severity those of
+the American Indians, and not improbably genuine though exaggerated
+reminiscences of actual tests of endurance and agility. Once admitted he
+had to observe certain _geasa_ or "tabus," e.g. not to choose his wife
+for her dowry like other Celts, but solely for her good manners, not to
+offer violence to a woman, not to flee when attacked before less than
+nine warriors, and the like.
+
+All this may represent some genuine tradition with respect to a warrior
+band, with many exaggerations in details and numbers. Some of its
+outstanding heroes may have had names derived from or corresponding to
+those of the heroes of an existing saga. But as time went on they became
+as unhistorical as their ideal prototypes; round their names
+crystallised floating myths and tales; things which had been told of the
+saga heroes were told of them; their names were given to the personages
+of existing folk-tales. This might explain the great divergence between
+the "historical" and the romantic aspects of the saga as it now exists.
+Yet we cannot fail to see that what is claimed as historical is full of
+exaggeration, and, in spite of the pleading of Dr. Hyde and other
+patriots, little historic fact can be found in it. Even if this exists,
+it is the least important part of the saga. What is important is that
+part--nine-tenths of the whole--which "is not true because it cannot be
+true." It belongs to the region of the supernatural and the unreal. But
+personages, nine-tenths of whose actions belong to this region, must
+bear the same character themselves, and for that reason are all the more
+interesting, especially when we remember that the Celts firmly believed
+in them and in their exploits. A Fionn myth arose as all myths do,
+increasing as time went on, and the historical nucleus, if it ever
+existed, was swamped and lost. Throughout the saga the Fians are more
+than mere mortals, even in those very parts which are claimed as
+historical. They are giants; their story "bristles with the
+supernatural"; they are the ideal figures of Celtic legend throwing
+their gigantic shadows upon the dim and misty background of the past. We
+must therefore be content to assume that whether personages called
+Fionn, Oisin, Diarmaid, or Conan, ever existed, what we know of them now
+is purely mythical.
+
+Bearing in mind that they are the cherished heroes of popular fancy in
+Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, we have now to inquire whether they
+were Celtic in origin. We have seen that the Celts were a conquering
+people in Ireland, bringing with them their own religion and mythology,
+their own sagas and tales reflected now in the mythological and
+Cúchulainn cycles, which found a local habitation in Ireland. Cúchulainn
+was the hero of a saga which flourished more among the aristocratic and
+lettered classes than among the folk, and there are few popular tales
+about him. But it is among the folk that the Fionn saga has always been
+popular, and for every peasant who could tell a story of Cúchulainn a
+thousand could tell one of Fionn. Conquerors often adopt beliefs,
+traditions, and customs of the aboriginal folk, after hostilities have
+ceased, and if the pre-Celtic people had a popular hero and a saga
+concerning him, it is possible that in time it was accepted by the Celts
+or by the lower classes among them. But in the process it must have been
+completely Celticised, like the aborigines themselves; to its heroes
+were given Celtic names, or they may have been associated with existing
+Celtic personages like Cumal, and the whole saga was in time adapted to
+the conceptions and legendary history of the Celts. Thus we might
+account for the fact that it has so largely remained without admixture
+with the mythological and Cúchulainn cycles, though its heroes are
+brought into relation with the older gods. Thus also we might account
+for its popularity as compared with the Cúchulainn saga among the
+peasantry in whose veins must flow so much of the aboriginal blood both
+in Ireland and the Highlands. In other words, it was the saga of a
+non-Celtic people occupying both Ireland and Scotland. If Celts from
+Western Europe occupied the west of Scotland at an early date, they may
+have been so few in number that their own saga or sagas died out. Or if
+the Celtic occupation of the West Highlands originated first from
+Ireland, the Irish may have been unable to impose their Cúchulainn saga
+there, or if they themselves had already adopted the Fionn saga and
+found it again in the Highlands, they would but be the more attached to
+what was already localised there. This would cut the ground from the
+theory that the Fionn saga was brought to Scotland from Ireland, and it
+would account for its popularity in the Highlands, as well as for the
+fact that many Fionn stories are attached to Highland as well as to
+Irish localities, while many place-names in both countries have a Fian
+origin. Finally, the theory would explain the existence of so many
+_Märchen_ about Fionn and his men, so few about Cúchulainn.
+
+Returning to the theory of the historic aspect of the Fians, it should
+be noted that, while, when seen through the eyes of the annalists, the
+saga belongs to a definite historical period, when viewed by itself it
+belongs to a mythic age, and though the Fians are regarded as champions
+of Ireland, their foes are usually of a supernatural kind, and they
+themselves move in a magic atmosphere. They are also brought into
+connection with the unhistoric Tuatha Dé Danann; they fight with them or
+for them; they have amours with or wed their women; and some of the gods
+even become members of the Fian band. Diarmaid was the darling of the
+gods Oengus and Manannan, and in his direst straits was assisted by the
+former. In all this we are in the wonderland of myth, not the _terra
+firma_ of history. There is a certain resemblance between the Cúchulainn
+and Fionn sagas, but no more than that which obtains between all sagas
+everywhere. Both contain similar incidents, but these are the stock
+episodes of universal saga belief, fitted to the personages of
+individual sagas. Hence we need not suppose with Professor Windisch that
+the mythic incidents of the Fionn saga are derived from the Cúchulainn
+cycle.
+
+The personages against whom Fionn and his men fight show the mythic
+nature of the saga. As champions of Leinster they fight the men of
+Ulster and Connaught, but they also war against oversea invaders--the
+Lochlanners. While Lochlann may mean any land beyond the sea, like the
+Welsh _Llychlyn_ it probably meant "the fabulous land beneath the lakes
+or the waves of the sea," or simply the abode of hostile, supernatural
+beings. Lochlanners would thus be counterparts of the Fomorians, and the
+conflicts of the Fians with them would reflect old myths. But with the
+Norse invasions, the Norsemen became the true Lochlanners, against whom
+Fionn and his men fight as Charlemagne fought Muhammadans--a sheer
+impossibility. Professor Zimmer, however, supposes that the Fionn saga
+took shape during the Norse occupation from the ninth century onwards.
+Fionn is half Norse, half Irish, and equivalent to Caittil Find, who
+commanded the apostate Irish in the ninth century, while Oisin and Oscar
+are the Norse Asvin and Asgeirr. But it is difficult to understand why
+one who was half a Norseman should become the chosen hero of the Celts
+in the very age in which Norsemen were their bitter enemies, and why
+Fionn, if of Norse origin, fights against Lochlanners, i.e. Norsemen. It
+may also be inquired why the borrowing should have affected the saga
+only, not the myths of the gods. No other Celtic scholar has given the
+slightest support to this brilliant but audacious theory. On the other
+hand, if the saga has Norse affinities, and if it is, in origin,
+pre-Celtic, these may be sought in an earlier connection of Ireland with
+Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age. Ireland had a flourishing
+civilisation then, and exported beautiful gold ornaments to Scandinavia,
+where they are still found in Bronze Age deposits.[507] This flourishing
+civilisation was overwhelmed by the invasion of the Celtic barbarians.
+But if the Scandinavians borrowed gold and artistic decorations from
+Ireland, and if the Fionn saga or part of it was already in existence,
+why should they not have borrowed some of its incidents, or why, on the
+other hand, should not some episodes have found their way from the north
+to Ireland? We should also consider, however, that similar incidents may
+have been evolved in both countries on similar lines and quite
+independently.
+
+The various contents of the saga can only be alluded to in the briefest
+manner. Fionn's birth-story belongs to the well-known "Expulsion and
+Return" formula, applied to so many heroes of saga and folk-tale, but
+highly elaborated in his case at the hands of the annalists. Thus his
+father Cumal, uncle of Conn the Hundred Fighter, 122-157 A.D., wished to
+wed Muirne, daughter of Conn's chief druid, Tadg. Tadg refused, knowing
+that through this marriage he would lose his ancestral seat. Cumal
+seized Muirne and married her, and the king, on Tadg's appeal, sent an
+army against him. Cumal was slain; Muirne fled to his sister, and gave
+birth to Demni, afterwards known as Fionn. Perhaps in accordance with
+old matriarchal usage, Fionn's descent through his mother is emphasised,
+while he is related to the ancient gods, Tadg being son of Nuada. This
+at once points to the mythical aspect of the saga. Cumal may be
+identical with the god Camulos. In a short time, Fionn, now a marauder
+and an outlaw, appeared at Conn's Court, and that same night slew one of
+the Tuatha Déa, who came yearly and destroyed the palace. For this he
+received his rightful heritage--the leadership of the Fians, formerly
+commanded by Cumal.[508] Another incident of Fionn's youth tells how he
+obtained his "thumb of knowledge." The eating of certain "salmon of
+knowledge" was believed to give inspiration, an idea perhaps derived
+from earlier totemistic beliefs. The bard Finnéces, having caught one of
+the coveted salmon, set his pupil Fionn to cook it, forbidding him to
+taste it. But as he was turning the fish Fionn burnt his thumb and
+thrust it into his mouth, thus receiving the gift of inspiration.
+Hereafter he had only to suck his thumb in order to obtain secret
+information.[509] In another story the inspiration is already in his
+thumb, as Samson's strength was in his hair, but the power is also
+partly in his tooth, under which, after ritual preparation, he has to
+place his thumb and chew it.[510]
+
+Fionn had many wives and sweethearts, one of them, Saar, being mother of
+Oisin. Saar was turned into a fawn by a Druid, and fled from Fionn's
+house. Long after he found a beast-child in the forest and recognised
+him as his son. He nourished him until his beast nature disappeared, and
+called him Oisin, "little fawn." Round this birth legend many stories
+sprang up--a sure sign of its popularity.[511] Oisin's fame as a poet
+far excelled that of Fionn, and he became the ideal bard of the Gaels.
+
+By far the most passionate and tragic story of the saga is that of
+Diarmaid and Grainne, to whom Fionn was betrothed. Grainne put _geasa_
+upon Diarmaid to elope with her, and these he could not break. They
+fled, and for many days were pursued by Fionn, who at last overtook
+them, but was forced by the Fians to pardon the beloved hero. Meanwhile
+Fionn waited for his revenge. Knowing that it was one of Diarmaid's
+_geasa_ never to hunt a wild boar, he invited him to the chase of the
+boar of Gulban. Diarmaid slew it, and Fionn then bade him measure its
+length with his foot. A bristle pierced his heel, and he fell down in
+agony, beseeching Fionn to bring him water in his hand, for if he did
+this he would heal him. In spite of repeated appeals, Fionn, after
+bringing the water, let it drip from his hands. Diarmaid's brave soul
+passed away, and on Fionn's character this dire blot was fixed for
+ever.[512]
+
+Other tales relate how several of the Fians were spirited away to the
+Land beyond the Seas, how they were rescued, how Diarmaid went to Land
+under Waves, and how Fionn and his men were entrapped in a Fairy Palace.
+Of greater importance are those which tell the end of the Fian band.
+This, according to the annalists, was the result of their exactions and
+demands. Fionn was told by his wife, a wise woman, never to drink out of
+a horn, but coming one day thirsty to a well, he forgot this tabu, and
+so brought the end near. He encountered the sons of Uirgrenn, whom he
+had slain, and in the fight with them he fell.[513] Soon after were
+fought several battles, culminating in that of Gabhra in which all but a
+few Fians perished. Among the survivors were Oisin and Caoilte, who
+lingered on until the coming of S. Patrick. Caoilte remained on earth,
+but Oisin, whose mother was of the _síd_ folk, went to fairyland for a
+time, ultimately returning and joining S. Patrick's company.[514] But a
+different version is given in the eighteenth century poem of Michael
+Comyn, undoubtedly based on popular tales. Oisin met the Queen of Tir na
+n-Og and went with her to fairyland, where time passed as a dream until
+one day he stood on a stone against which she had warned him. He saw his
+native land and was filled with home-sickness. The queen tried to
+dissuade him, but in vain. Then she gave him a horse, warning him not to
+set foot on Irish soil. He came to Ireland; and found it all changed.
+Some puny people were trying in vain to raise a great stone, and begged
+the huge stranger to help them. He sprang from his horse and flung the
+stone from its resting-place. But when he turned, his horse was gone,
+and he had become a decrepit old man. Soon after he met S. Patrick and
+related the tale to him.
+
+Of most of the tales preserved in twelfth to fifteenth century MSS. it
+may be said that in essence they come down to us from a remote
+antiquity, like stars pulsing their clear light out of the hidden depths
+of space. Many of them exist as folk-tales, often wild and weird in
+form, while some folk-tales have no literary parallels. Some are
+_Märchen_ with members of the Fian band as heroes, and of these there
+are many European parallels. But it is not unlikely that, as in the case
+of the Cúchulainn cycle, the folk versions may be truer to the original
+forms of the saga than the rounded and polished literary versions.
+Whatever the Fians were in origin--gods, mythic heroes, or actual
+personages--it is probable that a short _Heldensage_ was formed in early
+times. This slowly expanded, new tales were added, and existing
+_Märchen_ formulć were freely made use of by making their heroes the
+heroes of the saga. Then came the time when many of the tales were
+written down, while later they were adapted to a scheme of Irish
+history, the heroes becoming warriors of a definite historic period, or
+perhaps connected with such warriors. But these heroes belonged to a
+timeless world, whose margins are "the shore of old romance," and it was
+as if they, who were not for an age but for all time, scorned to become
+the puppets of the page of history.
+
+The earliest evidence of the attitude of the ecclesiastical world to
+these heroes is found in the _Agallamh na Senorach_, or "Colloquy of the
+Ancients."[515] This may have been composed in the thirteenth century,
+and its author knew scores of Fionn legends. Making use of the tradition
+that Caoilte and Oisin had met S. Patrick, he makes Caoilte relate many
+of the tales, usually in connection with some place-name of Fian origin.
+The saint and his followers are amazed at the huge stature of the Fians,
+but Patrick asperges them with holy water, and hosts of demons flee from
+them. At each tale which Caoilte tells, the saint says, "Success and
+benediction, Caoilte. All this is to us a recreation of spirit and of
+mind, were it only not a destruction of devotion and a dereliction of
+prayer." But presently his guardian angel appears, and bids him not only
+listen to the tales but cause them to be written down. He and his
+attendant clerics now lend a willing ear to the recital and encourage
+the narrator with their applause. Finally, baptism is administered to
+Caoilte and his men, and by Patrick's intercessions Caoilte's relations
+and Fionn himself are brought out of hell. In this work the
+representatives of paganism are shown to be on terms of friendliness
+with the representatives of Christianity.
+
+But in Highland ballads collected in the sixteenth century by the Dean
+of Lismore, as well as in Irish ballads found in MSS. dating from the
+seventeenth century onwards, the saint is a sour and intolerant cleric,
+and the Fians are equally intolerant and blasphemous pagans. There is no
+attempt at compromise; the saint rejoices that the Fian band are in
+hell, and Oisin throws contempt on the God of the shaven priests. But
+sometimes this contempt is mingled with humour and pathos. Were the
+heroes of Oisin's band now alive, scant work would be made of the monks'
+bells, books, and psalm-singing. It is true that the saint gives the
+weary old man hospitality, but Oisin's eyes are blinded with tears as he
+thinks of the departed glories of the Fians, and his ears are tormented
+"by jangling bells, droning psalms, and howling clerics." These ballads
+probably represent one main aspect of the attitude of the Church to
+Celtic paganism. How, then, did the more generous _Colloquy_ come into
+being? We must note first that some of the ballads have a milder tone.
+Oisin is urged to accept the faith, and he prays for salvation. Probably
+these represent the beginning of a reaction in favour of the old heroes,
+dating from a time when the faith was well established. There was no
+danger of a pagan revival, and, provided the Fians were Christianised,
+it might be legitimate to represent them as heroic and noble. The
+_Colloquy_ would represent the high-water mark of this reaction among
+the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge by popular tales, the
+Fians had never been regarded in other than a favourable light. The
+_Colloquy_ re-established the dignity of the Fian band in the eyes of
+official Christianity. They are baptized or released from hell, and in
+their own nature they are virtuous and follow lofty ideals. "Who or what
+was it that maintained you in life?" asks Patrick. And Caoilte gives the
+noble reply, "Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms,
+and fulfilment in our tongues." Patrick says of Fionn: "He was a king, a
+seer, a poet, a lord with a manifold and great train; our magician, our
+knowledgeable one, our soothsayer; all whatsoever he said was sweet with
+him. Excessive, perchance, as ye deem my testimony of Fionn, although ye
+hold that which I say to be overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King
+that is above me, he was three times better still." Not only so, but
+Caoilte maintains that Fionn and his men were aware of the existence of
+the true God. They possessed the _anima naturaliter Christiana_. The
+growing appreciation of a wider outlook on life, and possibly
+acquaintance with the romances of chivalry, made the composition of the
+_Colloquy_ possible, but, again, it may represent a more generous
+conception of paganism existing from the time of the first encounter of
+Christianity with it in Ireland.
+
+The strife of creeds in Ireland, the old order changing, giving place to
+new, had evidently impressed itself on the minds of Celtic poets and
+romancers. It suggested itself to them as providing an excellent
+"situation"; hence we constantly hear of the meeting of gods, demigods,
+or heroes with the saints of the new era. Frequently they bow before the
+Cross, they are baptized and receive the Christian verity, as in the
+_Colloquy_ and in some documents of the Cúchulainn cycle. Probably no
+other European folk-literature so takes advantage of just this
+situation, this meeting of creeds, one old and ready to vanish away, the
+other with all the buoyant freshness of youth.
+
+Was MacPherson's a genuine Celtic epic unearthed by him and by no one
+else? No mortal eye save his has ever seen the original, but no one who
+knows anything of the contents of the saga can deny that much of his
+work is based on materials collected by him. He knew some of the tales
+and ballads current among the folk, possibly also some of the Irish MS.
+versions. He saw that there was a certain unity among them, and he saw
+that it was possible to make it more evident still. He fitted the
+floating incidents into an epic framework, adding, inventing, altering,
+and moulding the whole into an English style of his own. Later he seems
+to have translated the whole into Gaelic. He gave his version to the
+world, and found himself famous, but he gave it as the genuine
+translation of a genuine Celtic epic. Here was his craft; here he was
+the "charlatan of genius." His genius lay in producing an epic which
+people were willing to read, and in making them believe it to be not his
+work but that of the Celtic heroic age. Any one can write an epic, but
+few can write one which thousands will read, which men like
+Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon, Byron, and Coleridge will admire and
+love, and which will, as it were, crystallise the aspirations of an age
+weary with classical formalism. MacPherson introduced his readers to a
+new world of heroic deeds, romantic adventure, deathless love, exquisite
+sentiments sentimentally expressed. He changed the rough warriors and
+beautiful but somewhat unabashed heroines of the saga into sentimental
+personages, who suited the taste of an age poised between the bewigged
+and powdered formalism of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of
+new ideals which was to follow. His _Ossian_ is a cross between Pope's
+_Homer_ and Byron's _Childe Harold_. His heroes and heroines are not on
+their native heath, and are uncertain whether to mince and strut with
+Pope or to follow nature with Rousseau's noble savages and Saint
+Pierre's Paul and Virginia. The time has gone when it was heresy to cast
+doubt upon the genuineness of MacPherson's epic, but if any one is still
+doubtful, let him read it and then turn to the existing versions,
+ballads, and tales. He will find himself in a totally different
+atmosphere, and will recognise in the latter the true epic note--the
+warrior's rage and the warrior's generosity, dire cruelty yet infinite
+tenderness, wild lust yet also true love, a world of magic
+supernaturalism, but an exact copy of things as they were in that
+far-off age. The barbarism of the time is in these old tales--deeds
+which make one shiver, customs regarding the relations of the sexes now
+found only among savages, social and domestic arrangements which are
+somewhat lurid and disgusting. And yet, withal, the note of bravery, of
+passion, of authentic life is there; we are held in the grip of genuine
+manhood and womanhood. MacPherson gives a picture of the Ossianic age as
+he conceived it, an age of Celtic history that "never was on sea or
+land." Even his ghosts are un-Celtic, misty and unsubstantial phantasms,
+unlike the embodied _revenants_ of the saga which are in agreement with
+the Celtic belief that the soul assumed a body in the other world.
+MacPherson makes Fionn invariably successful, but in the saga tales he
+is often defeated. He mingles the Cúchulainn and Ossianic cycles, but
+these, save in a few casual instances, are quite distinct in the old
+literature. Yet had not his poem been so great as it is, though so
+un-Celtic, it could not have influenced all European literature. But
+those who care for genuine Celtic literature, the product of a people
+who loved nature, romance, doughty deeds, the beauty of the world, the
+music of the sea and the birds, the mountains, valour in men, beauty in
+women, will find all these in the saga, whether in its literary or its
+popular forms. And through it all sounds the undertone of Celtic pathos
+and melancholy, the distant echo
+
+  "Of old unhappy, far-off things
+   And battles long ago."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[506] See Joyce, _OCR_ 447.
+
+[507] Montelius, _Les Temps Préhistoriques_, 57, 151; Reinach, _RC_ xxi.
+8.
+
+[508] The popular versions of this early part of the saga differ much in
+detail, but follow the main outlines in much the same way. See Curtin,
+_HTI_ 204; Campbell, _LF_ 33 f.; _WHT_ iii. 348.
+
+[509] In a widespread group of tales supernatural knowledge is obtained
+by eating part of some animal, usually a certain snake. In many of these
+tales the food is eaten by another person than he who obtained it, as in
+the case of Fionn. Cf. the Welsh story of Gwion, p. 116, and the
+Scandinavian of Sigurd, and other parallels in Miss Cox, _Cinderella_,
+496; Frazer, _Arch. Rev._ i. 172 f. The story is thus a folk-tale
+formula applied to Fionn, doubtless because it harmonised with Celtic or
+pre-Celtic totemistic ideas. But it is based on ancient ideas regarding
+the supernatural knowledge possessed by reptiles or fish, and among
+American Indians, Maoris, Solomon Islanders, and others there are
+figured representations of a man holding such an animal, its tongue
+being attached to his tongue. He is a _shaman_, and American Indians
+believe that his inspiration comes from the tongue of a mysterious river
+otter, caught by him. See Dall, _Bureau of Ethnol._ 3rd report; and Miss
+Buckland, _Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxii. 29.
+
+[510] _TOS_ iv.; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 396; Joyce, _OCR_ 194, 339.
+
+[511] For ballad versions see Campbell, _LF_ 198.
+
+[512] Numerous ballad versions are given in Campbell _LF_ 152 f. The
+tale is localised in various parts of Ireland and the Highlands, many
+dolmens in Ireland being known as Diarmaid and Grainne's beds.
+
+[513] For an account differing from this annalistic version, see _ZCP_
+i. 465.
+
+[514] O'Grady, ii. 102. This, on the whole, agrees with the Highland
+ballad version, _LF_ 198.
+
+[515] _IT_ iv.; O'Grady, _Silva Gad._ text and translation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+GODS AND MEN.
+
+
+Though man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are unlike as
+well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes
+whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been gods.
+One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature. No house could
+contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn
+had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants,
+and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have
+also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom
+they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing
+themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in
+mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can
+also transform themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The
+animal names of certain divinities show that they had once been animals
+pure and simple, but when they became anthropomorphic, myths would arise
+telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in
+part, accounts for these transformation myths. The gods are also
+immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The Tuatha Dé Danann
+are "unfading," their "duration is perennial."[517] This immortality is
+sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is the result of eating
+immortal food--Manannan's swine, Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal
+ale, or the apples of Elysium. The stories telling of the deaths of the
+gods in the annalists may be based on old myths in which they were said
+to die, these myths being connected with ritual acts in which the human
+representatives of gods were slain. Such rites were an inherent part of
+Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of gods like Osiris or Adonis,
+based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was connected with
+elaborate myths telling of their death and revival. Something akin to
+this may have occurred among the Celts.
+
+The divinities often united with mortals. Goddesses sought the love of
+heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the gods, and gods had
+amours with the daughters of men.[518] Frequently the heroes of the
+sagas are children of a god or goddess and a mortal,[519] and this
+divine parentage was firmly believed in by the Celts, since personal
+names formed of a divine name and _-genos_ or _-gnatos_, "born of," "son
+of," are found in inscriptions over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic
+documents--Boduogenos, Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these
+names were believed to be of divine descent on one side. Spirits of
+nature or the elements of nature personified might also be parents of
+mortals, as a name like Morgen, from _Morigenos_, "Son of the Sea," and
+many others suggest. For this and for other reasons the gods frequently
+interfere in human affairs, assisting their children or their
+favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the heroes of
+the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as when Morrigan
+besought healing from Cúchulainn.
+
+As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who bore
+divine names were probably believed to be representatives or
+incarnations of gods. Perhaps this explains why a chief of the Boii
+called himself a god and was revered after his death, and why the Gauls
+so readily accepted the divinity of Augustus. Irish kings bear divine
+names, and of these Nuada occurs frequently, one king, Irél Fáith, being
+identified with Nuada Airgetlam, while in one text _nuadat_ is glossed
+_in ríg_, "of the king," as if _Nuada_ had come to be a title meaning
+"king." Welsh kings bear the name Nudd (Nodons), and both the actual and
+the mythic leader Brennus took their name from the god Bran. King
+Conchobar is called _día talmaide_, "a terrestrial god." If kings were
+thought to be god-men like the Pharaohs, this might account for the
+frequency of tales about divine fatherhood or reincarnation, while it
+would also explain the numerous _geasa_ which Irish kings must observe,
+unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with their observance,
+though this prosperity was later thought to depend on the king's
+goodness. The nature of the prosperity--mild seasons, abundant crops,
+fruit, fish, and cattle--shows that the king was associated with
+fertility, like the gods of growth.[520] Hence they had probably been
+once regarded as incarnations of such gods. Wherever divine kings are
+found, fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance of
+their tabus. To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain before
+they grow old and weak, and their vigour passes on to their successors.
+Their death benefits their people.[521] But frequently the king might
+reign as long as he could hold his own against all comers, or, again, a
+slave or criminal was for a time treated as a mock king, and slain as
+the divine king's substitute. Scattered hints in Irish literature and in
+folk survivals show that some such course as this had been pursued by
+the Celts with regard to their divine kings, as it was also
+elsewhere.[522] It is not impossible that some at least of the Druids
+stood in a similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably
+at first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually
+with three hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great national
+council.[523] This council at a consecrated place (_nemeton_), its
+likeness to the annual Druidic gathering in Gaul, and the possibility
+that _Dru_- has some connection with the name "Druid," point to a
+religious as well as political aspect of this council. The "tetrarchs"
+may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the kingly prerogative of
+acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul. The wife of one of them was
+a priestess,[524] the office being hereditary in her family, and it may
+have been necessary that her husband should also be a priest. One
+tetrarch, Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the
+priest-kingship of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the second
+century B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic
+institution.[525] Mythic Celtic kings consulted the gods without any
+priestly intervention, and Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.[526]
+Without giving these hints undue emphasis, we may suppose that the
+differentiation of the two offices would not be simultaneous over the
+Celtic area. But when it did take effect priests would probably lay
+claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as incarnate god. Kings
+were not likely to give these up, and where they retained them priests
+would be content with seeing that the tabus and ritual and the slaying
+of the mock king were duly observed. Irish kings were perhaps still
+regarded as gods, though certain Druids may have been divine priests,
+since they called themselves creators of the universe, and both
+continental and Irish Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the
+name [Greek: semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic
+priests, though its meaning is obscure, points to divine pretensions on
+their part.[527]
+
+The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of
+earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic
+branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who
+used oak branches in their rites.[528] King and tree would be connected,
+the king's life being bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one
+time both perished together. But as kings were represented by a
+substitute, so the sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down,
+may also have had its _succedaneum_. The Irish _bile_ or sacred tree,
+connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand, and
+it was sacrilege to cut it down.[529] Probably before cutting down the
+tree a branch or something growing upon it, e.g. mistletoe, had to be
+cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he could be slain.
+This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or
+branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the
+divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
+down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account
+is incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were
+not known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of
+the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though
+he says nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it
+is not unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his
+time, the oxen which were slain during the rite took the place of the
+latter. Later romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some
+personage, the mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a
+branch carried by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked
+from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point to an old belief
+in tree and king as divine representatives, and to a ritual like that
+associated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic
+tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits.
+Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might
+penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded as
+romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the divine
+tree.
+
+If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her
+representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals
+by the female worshippers. This would explain the slaying of one of
+their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or
+gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place
+of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess
+became the consort of the god, a female representative would continue as
+the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of
+later folk-custom. Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female
+cults with female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the
+May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals
+from which men were excluded.[531]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[516] O'Grady, ii. 228.
+
+[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Cćsar, vi. 14, "the immortal gods" of Gaul.
+
+[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.
+
+[519] Leahy, ii. 6.
+
+[520] _IT_ iii. 203; _Trip. Life_, 507; _Annals of the Four Masters_,
+A.D. 14; _RC_ xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced
+fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that
+herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle
+there, and in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato famine
+that his fairy banner should be waved.
+
+[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill,
+"If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).
+
+[522] See Frazer, _Kingship_; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, 1906, "The European
+Sky-God." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic
+incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his
+inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in his view, a
+sky-god; he was more likely to have been the representative of a god or
+spirit of growth or vegetation.
+
+[523] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.
+
+[524] Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._ 20.
+
+[525] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin,
+_Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater._
+
+[526] Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[527] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p.
+301, _infra_.
+
+[528] Pliny, xvi. 95.
+
+[529] P. 201, _infra_.
+
+[530] Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough,
+and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by
+Gramoplanz (Weston, _Legend of Sir Gawain_, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale
+of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and
+the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its
+branches (_TOS_ vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 441.
+
+[531] See Chap. XVIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE CULT OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or
+slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead,
+yet when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form
+of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in
+connection with the reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point
+to a worship of ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes.
+Heads of the slain were offered to the "strong shades"--the ghosts of
+tribal heroes whose praises were sung by bards.[532] When such heads
+were placed on houses, they may have been devoted to the family ghosts.
+The honour in which mythic or real heroes were held may point to an
+actual cult, the hero being worshipped when dead, while he still
+continued his guardianship of the tribe. We know also that the tomb of
+King Cottius in the Alps was a sacred place, that Irish kings were often
+inaugurated on ancestral burial cairns, and that Irish gods were
+associated with barrows of the dead.[533]
+
+The cult of the dead culminated at the family hearth, around which the
+dead were even buried, as among the Aeduii; this latter custom may have
+been general.[534] In any case the belief in the presence of ancestral
+ghosts around the hearth was widespread, as existing superstitions show.
+In Brittany the dead seek warmth at the hearth by night, and a feast is
+spread for them on All Souls' eve, or crumbs are left for them after a
+family gathering.[535] But generally the family ghost has become a
+brownie, lutin, or pooka, haunting the hearth and doing the household
+work.[536] Fairy corresponds in all respects to old ancestral ghost, and
+the one has succeeded to the place of the other, while the fairy is even
+said to be the ghost of a dead person.[537] Certain archćological
+remains have also a connection with this ancient cult. Among Celtic
+remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with a ram's
+head. M. Dechelette sees in this "the symbol of sacrifice offered to the
+souls of ancestors on the altar of the hearth."[538] The ram was already
+associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth,
+and by an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead
+there. It is found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar
+was purified by the immolation of a ram.[539] Figurines of a ram have
+been found in Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the
+underworld.[540] The ram of the andirons was thus a permanent
+representative of the victim offered in the cult of the dead. A
+mutilated inscription on one of them may stand for _Laribus augustis_,
+and certain markings on others may represent the garlands twined round
+the victim.[541] Serpents with rams' heads occur on the monuments of the
+underworld god. The serpent was a chthonian god or the emblem of such a
+god, and it may have been thought appropriate to give it the head of an
+animal associated with the cult of the dead.
+
+The dead were also fed at the grave or in the house. Thus cups were
+placed in the recess of a well in the churchyard of Kilranelagh by those
+interring a child under five, and the ghost of the child was supposed to
+supply the other spirits with water from these cups.[542] In Ireland,
+after a death, food is placed out for the spirits, or, at a burial, nuts
+are placed in the coffin.[543] In some parts of France, milk is poured
+out on the grave, and both in Brittany and in Scotland the dead are
+supposed to partake of the funeral feast.[544] These are survivals from
+pagan times and correspond to the rites in use among those who still
+worship ancestors. In Celtic districts a cairn or a cross is placed over
+the spot where a violent or accidental death has occurred, the purpose
+being to appease the ghost, and a stone is often added to the cairn by
+all passers-by.[545]
+
+Festivals were held in Ireland on the anniversaries of the death of
+kings or chiefs, and these were also utilised for purposes of trade,
+pleasure, or politics. They sometimes occurred on the great festivals,
+e.g. Lugnasad and Samhain, and were occasionally held at the great
+burial-places.[546] Thus the gathering at Taillti on Lugnasad was said
+to have been founded by Lug in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, and
+the Leinstermen met at Carman on the same day to commemorate King
+Garman, or in a variant account, a woman called Carman. She and her sons
+had tried to blight the corn of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but the sons were
+driven off and she died of grief, begging that a fair should always be
+held in her name, and promising abundance of milk, fruit, and fish for
+its observance.[547] These may be ćtiological myths explaining the
+origin of these festivals on the analogy of funeral festivals, but more
+likely, since Lugnasad was a harvest festival, they are connected with
+the custom of slaying a representative of the corn-spirit. The festival
+would become a commemoration of all such victims, but when the custom
+itself had ceased it would be associated with one particular personage,
+the corn-goddess regarded as a mortal.
+
+This would be the case where the victim was a woman, but where a male
+was slain, the analogy of the slaying of the divine king or his
+_succedaneum_ would lead to the festivals being regarded as
+commemorative of a king, e.g. Garman. This agrees with the statement
+that observance of the festival produced plenty; non-observance, dearth.
+The victims were slain to obtain plenty, and the festival would also
+commemorate those who had died for this good cause, while it would also
+appease their ghosts should these be angry at their violent deaths.
+Certain of the dead were thus commemorated at Lugnasad, a festival of
+fertility. Both the corn-spirit or divinity slain in the reaping of the
+corn, and the human victims, were appeased by its observance.[548] The
+legend of Carman makes her hostile to the corn--a curious way of
+regarding a corn-goddess. But we have already seen that gods of
+fertility were sometimes thought of as causing blight, and in
+folk-belief the corn-spirit is occasionally believed to be dangerous.
+Such inversions occur wherever revolutions in religion take place.
+
+The great commemoration of the dead was held on Samhain eve, a festival
+intended to aid the dying powers of vegetation, whose life, however, was
+still manifested in evergreen shrubs, in the mistletoe, in the sheaf of
+corn from last harvest--the abode of the corn-spirit.[549] Probably,
+also, human representatives of the vegetation or corn-spirit were slain,
+and this may have suggested the belief in the presence of their ghosts
+at this festival. Or the festival being held at the time of the death of
+vegetation, the dead would naturally be commemorated then. Or, as in
+Scandinavia, they may have been held to have an influence on fertility,
+as an extension of the belief that certain slain persons represented
+spirits of fertility, or because trees and plants growing on the barrows
+of the dead were thought to be tenanted by their spirits.[550] In
+Scandinavia, the dead were associated with female spirits or _fylgjur_,
+identified with the _disir_, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in hollow
+hills.[551] The nearest Celtic analogy to these is the _Matres_,
+goddesses of fertility. Bede says that Christmas eve was called
+_Modranicht_, "Mothers' Night,"[552] and as many of the rites of Samhain
+were transferred to Yule, the former date of _Modranicht_ may have been
+Samhain, just as the Scandinavian _Disablot_, held in November, was a
+festival of the _disir_ and of the dead.[553] It has been seen that the
+Celtic Earth-god was lord of the dead, and that he probably took the
+place of an Earth-goddess or goddesses, to whom the _Matres_ certainly
+correspond. Hence the connection of the dead with female Earth-spirits
+would be explained. Mother Earth had received the dead before her place
+was taken by the Celtic Dispater. Hence the time of Earth's decay was
+the season when the dead, her children, would be commemorated. Whatever
+be the reason, Celts, Teutons, and others have commemorated the dead at
+the beginning of winter, which was the beginning of a new year, while a
+similar festival of the dead at New Year is held in many other lands.
+
+Both in Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid out for
+the dead who come to visit the houses and to warm themselves at the fire
+in the stillness of the night, and in Brittany a huge log burns on the
+hearth. We have here returned to the cult of the dead at the
+hearth.[554] Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the
+hearth--the place of the family ghosts--at Samhain, when new fire was
+kindled in each house. On it libations were poured, which would then
+have been meant for the dead. The Yule log and the log of the Breton
+peasants would thus be the domestic aspect of the fire ritual, which had
+its public aspect in the Samhain bonfires.
+
+All this has been in part affected by the Christian feast of All Souls.
+Dr. Frazer thinks that the feast of All Saints (November 1st) was
+intended to take the place of the pagan cult of the dead. As it failed
+to do this, All Souls, a festival of all the dead, was added on November
+2nd.[555] To some extent, but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan
+rites, for the old ideas connected with Samhain still survive here and
+there. It is also to be noted that in some cases the friendly aspect of
+the dead has been lost sight of, and, like the _síd_-folk, they are
+popularly connected with evil powers which are in the ascendant on
+Samhain eve.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[532] Silius Italicus, v. 652; Lucan, i. 447. Cf. p. 241, _infra_.
+
+[533] Ammian. Marcell. xv. 10. 7; Joyce, _SH_ i. 45.
+
+[534] Bulliot, _Fouilles du Mont Beuvray_, Autun, 1899, i. 76, 396.
+
+[535] Le Braz, ii. 67; Sauvé, _Folk-lore des Hautes Vosges_, 295;
+Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_, i. 11.
+
+[536] Hearn, _Aryan Household_, 43 f.; Bérenger-Féraud, i. 33; _Rev. des
+Trad._ i. 142; Carmichael, ii. 329; Cosquin, _Trad. Pop. de la
+Lorraine_, i. 82.
+
+[537] Kennedy, 126. The mischievous brownie who overturns furniture and
+smashes crockery is an exact reproduction of the Poltergeist.
+
+[538] Dechelette, _Rev. Arch._ xxxiii, (1898), 63, 245, 252.
+
+[539] Cicero, _De Leg._ ii. 22.
+
+[540] Dechelette, 256; Reinach, _BF_ 189.
+
+[541] Dechelette, 257-258. In another instance the ram is marked with
+crosses like those engraved on images of the underworld god with the
+hammer.
+
+[542] Kennedy, 187.
+
+[543] Lady Wilde, 118; Curtin, _Tales_, 54.
+
+[544] Le Braz, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, _Voyage dans le Finistčre_,
+i. 229.
+
+[545] Le Braz, ii. 47; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 357; MacCulloch, _Misty Isle of
+Skye_, 254; Sébillot, i. 235-236.
+
+[546] Names of places associated with the great festivals are also those
+of the chief pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc. (O'Curry,
+_MC_ ii. 523).
+
+[547] _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 313-314.
+
+[548] Cf. Frazer, _Adonis_, 134.
+
+[549] Cf. Chambers, _Medićval Stage_, i. 250, 253.
+
+[550] See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 405, 419. Perhaps
+for a similar reason a cult of the dead may have occurred at the
+Midsummer festival.
+
+[551] Miss Faraday, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 398 f.
+
+[552] Bede, _de Temp. Rat._ c. xv.
+
+[553] Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.
+
+[554] Curtin, _Tales_, 157; Haddon, _Folk-Lore_, iv. 359; Le Braz, ii.
+115 _et passim._
+
+[555] Frazer, _Adonis_, 253 f.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.
+
+
+In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then
+possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped--
+earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete
+personification, and the sun or earth divinity or spirit was more or
+less separated from the sun or earth themselves. Some Celtic divinities
+were thus evolved, but there still continued a veneration of the objects
+of nature in themselves, as well as a cult of nature spirits or
+secondary divinities who peopled every part of nature. "Nor will I call
+out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which
+are now subservient to the use of man, but once were an abomination and
+destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honours,"
+cries Gildas.[556] This was the true cult of the folk, the "blind
+people," even when the greater gods were organised, and it has survived
+with modifications in out-of-the-way places, in spite of the coming of
+Christianity.
+
+S. Kentigern rebuked the Cambrians for worshipping the elements, which
+God made for man's use.[557] The question of the daughters of Loegaire
+also throws much light on Celtic nature worship. "Has your god sons or
+daughters?... Have many fostered his sons? Are his daughters dear and
+beautiful to men? Is he in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in the
+rivers, in the mountains, in the valleys?"[558] The words suggest a
+belief in divine beings filling heaven, earth, sea, air, hills, glens,
+lochs, and rivers, and following human customs. A naďve faith, full of
+beauty and poetry, even if it had its dark and grim aspects! These
+powers or personalities had been invoked from time immemorial, but the
+invocations were soon stereotyped into definite formulas. Such a formula
+is put into the mouth of Amairgen, the poet of the Milesians, when they
+were about to invade Erin, and it may have been a magical invocation of
+the powers of nature at the beginning of an undertaking or in times of
+danger:
+
+  "I invoke the land of Ireland!
+   Shining, shining sea!
+   Fertile, fertile mountain!
+   Wooded vale!
+   Abundant river, abundant in waters!
+   Fish abounding lake!
+   Fish abounding sea!
+   Fertile earth!
+   Irruption of fish! Fish there!
+   Bird under wave! Great fish!
+   Crab hole! Irruption of fish!
+   Fish abounding sea!"[559]
+
+A similar formula was spoken after the destruction of Da Derga's Hostel
+by MacCecht on his finding water. He bathed in it and sang--
+
+  "Cold fountain! Surface of strand ...
+   Sea of lake, water of Gara, stream of river;
+   High spring well; cold fountain!"[560]
+
+The goddess Morrigan, after the defeat of the Fomorians, invokes the
+powers of nature and proclaims the victory to "the royal mountains of
+Ireland, to its chief waters, and its river mouths."[561] It was also
+customary to take oaths by the elements--heaven, earth, sun, fire, moon,
+sea, land, day, night, etc., and these punished the breaker of the
+oath.[562] Even the gods exacted such an oath of each other. Bres swore
+by sun, moon, sea, and land, to fulfil the engagement imposed on him by
+Lug.[563] The formulć survived into Christian times, and the faithful
+were forbidden to call the sun and moon gods or to swear by them, while
+in Breton folk-custom at the present day oaths by sun, moon, or earth,
+followed by punishment of the oath-breaker by the moon, are still in
+use.[564] These oaths had originated in a time when the elements
+themselves were thought to be divine, and similar adjurations were used
+by Greeks and Scandinavians.
+
+While the greater objects of nature were worshipped for themselves
+alone, the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits, benevolent or
+malevolent, of rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes, and streams,[565]
+and while greater divinities of growth had been evolved, they still
+believed in lesser spirits of vegetation, of the corn, and of fertility,
+connected, however, with these gods. Some of these still survive as
+fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or streams, or as demoniac beings
+haunting lonely places. And even now, in French folk-belief, sun, moon,
+winds, etc., are regarded as actual personages. Sun and moon are husband
+and wife; the winds have wives; they are addressed by personal names and
+reverenced.[566] Some spirits may already have had a demoniac aspect in
+pagan times. The Tuatha Déa conjured up _meisi_, "spectral bodies that
+rise from the ground," against the Milesians, and at their service were
+malignant sprites--_urtrochta_, and "forms, spectres, and great queens"
+called _guidemain_ (false demons). The Druids also sent forth
+mischievous spirits called _siabra_. In the _Táin_ there are references
+to _bocânachs_, _banânaichs_, and _geniti-glinni_, "goblins, eldritch
+beings, and glen-folk."[567] These are twice called Tuatha Dé Danann,
+and this suggests that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater
+gods.[568] The _geniti-glinni_ would be spirits haunting glen and
+valley. They are friendly to Cúchulainn in the _Táin_, but in the _Feast
+of Bricriu_ he and other heroes fight and destroy them.[569] In modern
+Irish belief they are demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.[570]
+
+Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it held its
+ground because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They upheld the
+aboriginal cults resembling those which, in the lands whence they came,
+had been native and local with themselves. Such cults are as old as the
+world, and when Christianity expelled the worship of the greater gods,
+younger in growth, the ancient nature worship, dowered with immortal
+youth,
+
+      "bowed low before the blast
+  In patient deep disdain,"
+
+to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed against
+it. The old rites continued to be practised, or survived under a
+Christian dress and colouring. They are found in Breton villages, in
+Highland glens, in Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish townships, and
+only the spread of school-board education, with its materialism and
+uninviting common sense, is forcing them at last to yield.
+
+The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them. Offerings
+at trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the lighting of fires or
+candles there, and vows or incantations addressed to them, are
+forbidden, as is also the worship of trees, groves, stones, rivers, and
+wells. The sun and moon are not to be called lords. Wizardry, and
+divination, and the leapings and dancings, songs and choruses of the
+pagans, i.e. their orgiastic cults, are not to be practised.
+Tempest-raisers are not to ply their diabolical craft.[571] These
+denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and legend told
+how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the power of the
+Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in wooded hollows,
+secluded valleys, and shores of lake and river.[572] Their power, though
+limited, was not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults
+often continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were
+identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism with
+dark and grisly demons.[573] This culminated in the medićval witch
+persecutions, for witchcraft was in part the old paganism in a new
+guise. Yet even that did not annihilate superstition, which still lives
+and flourishes among the folk, though the actual worship of
+nature-spirits has now disappeared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps the most important object in nature to the early Celts as to
+most primitive folk was the moon. The phases of the moon were apparent
+before men observed the solstices and equinoxes, and they formed an easy
+method of measuring time. The Celtic year was at first lunar--Pliny
+speaks of the Celtic method of counting the beginning of months and
+years by the moon--and night was supposed to precede day.[574] The
+festivals of growth began, not at sunrise, but on the previous evening
+with the rising of the moon, and the name _La Lunade_ is still given to
+the Midsummer festival in parts of France.[575] At Vallon de la Suille a
+wood on the slope where the festival is held is called _Bois de la
+Lune_; and in Ireland, where the festival begins on the previous
+evening, in the district where an ascent of Cnoc Aine is made, the
+position of the moon must be observed. A similar combination of sun and
+moon cults is found in an inscription at Lausanne--_To the genius of the
+sun and moon._[576]
+
+Possibly sun festivals took the place of those of the moon. Traces of
+the connection of the moon with agriculture occur in different regions,
+the connection being established through the primitive law of
+sympathetic magic. The moon waxes and wanes, therefore it must affect
+all processes of growth or decay. Dr. Frazer has cited many instances of
+this belief, and has shown that the moon had a priority to the sun in
+worship, e.g. in Egypt and Babylon.[577] Sowing is done with a waxing
+moon, so that, through sympathy, there may be a large increase. But
+harvesting, cutting timber, etc., should be done with a waning moon,
+because moisture being caused by a waxing moon, it was necessary to
+avoid cutting such things as would spoil by moisture at that time.
+Similar beliefs are found among the Celts. Mistletoe and other magical
+plants were culled with a waxing moon, probably because their power
+would thus be greater. Dr. Johnson noted the fact that the Highlanders
+sowed their seed with a waxing moon, in the expectation of a better
+harvest. For similar occult reasons, it is thought in Brittany that
+conception during a waxing moon produces a male child, during a waning
+moon a female, while _accouchements_ at the latter time are dangerous.
+Sheep and cows should be killed at the new moon, else their flesh will
+shrink, but peats should be cut in the last quarter, otherwise they will
+remain moist and give out "a power of smoke."[578]
+
+These ideas take us back to a time when it was held that the moon was
+not merely the measurer of time, but had powerful effects on the
+processes of growth and decay. Artemis and Diana, moon-goddesses, had
+power over all growing things, and as some Celtic goddesses were equated
+with Diana, they may have been connected with the moon, more especially
+as Gallo-Roman images of Diana have the head adorned with a crescent
+moon. In some cases festivals of the moon remained intact, as among the
+Celtiberians and other peoples to the north of them, who at the time of
+full moon celebrated the festival of a nameless god, dancing all night
+before the doors of their houses.[579] The nameless god may have been
+the moon, worshipped at the time of her intensest light. Moonlight
+dances round a great stone, with singing, on the first day of the year,
+occurred in the Highlands in the eighteenth century.[580] Other
+survivals of cult are seen in the practices of bowing or baring the head
+at new moon, or addressing it with words of adoration or supplication.
+In Ireland, Camden found the custom at new moon of saying the Lord's
+Prayer with the addition of the words, "Leave us whole and sound as Thou
+hast found us." Similar customs exist in Brittany, where girls pray to
+the moon to grant them dreams of their future husbands.[581] Like other
+races, the Celts thought that eclipses were caused by a monster
+attacking the moon, while it could be driven off with cries and shouts.
+In 218 B.C. the Celtic allies of Attalus were frightened by an eclipse,
+and much later Christian legislation forbade the people to assemble at
+an eclipse and shout, _Vince, Luna!_[582] Such a practice was observed
+in Ireland in the seventeenth century. At an earlier time, Irish poets
+addressed sun and moon as divinities, and they were represented on
+altars even in Christian times.[583]
+
+While the Celts believed in sea-gods--Manannan, Morgen, Dylan--the sea
+itself was still personified and regarded as divine. It was thought to
+be a hostile being, and high tides were met by Celtic warriors, who
+advanced against them with sword and spear, often perishing in the
+rushing waters rather than retreat. The ancients regarded this as
+bravado. M. Jullian sees in it a sacrifice by voluntary suicide; M.
+D'Arbois, a tranquil waiting for death and the introduction to another
+life.[584] But the passages give the sense of an actual attack on the
+waves--living things which men might terrify, and perhaps with this was
+combined the belief that no one could die during a rising tide.
+Similarly French fishermen threaten to cut a fog in two with a knife,
+while the legend of S. Lunaire tells how he threw a knife at a fog, thus
+causing its disappearance.[585] Fighting the waves is also referred to
+in Irish texts. Thus Tuirbe Trágmar would "hurl a cast of his axe in the
+face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not
+come over the axe." Cúchulainn, in one of his fits of anger, fought the
+waves for seven days, and Fionn fought and conquered the Muireartach, a
+personification of the wild western sea.[586] On the French coast
+fishermen throw harpoons at certain harmful waves called the Three Witch
+Waves, thus drawing their blood and causing them to subside.[587] In
+some cases human victims may have been offered to the rising waters,
+since certain tales speak of a child set floating on the waves, and
+this, repeated every seven years, kept them in their place.[588]
+
+The sea had also its beneficent aspects. The shore was "a place of
+revelation of science," and the sea sympathised with human griefs. At
+the Battle of Ventry "the sea chattered, telling the losses, and the
+waves raised a heavy, woeful great moan in wailing them."[589] In other
+cases in Ireland, by a spell put on the waves, or by the intuitive
+knowledge of the listener, it was revealed that they were wailing for a
+death or describing some distant event.[590] In the beautiful song sung
+by the wife of Cael, "the wave wails against the shore for his death,"
+and in Welsh myth the waves bewailed the death of Dylan, "son of the
+wave," and were eager to avenge it. The noise of the waves rushing into
+the vale of Conwy were his dying groans.[591] In Ireland the roaring of
+the sea was thought to be prophetic of a king's death or the coming of
+important news; and there, too, certain great waves were celebrated in
+story--Clidna's, Tuaithe's, and Rudhraidhe's.[592] Nine waves, or the
+ninth wave, partly because of the sacred nature of the number nine,
+partly because of the beneficent character of the waves, had a great
+importance. They formed a barrier against invasion, danger, or
+pestilence, or they had a healing effect.[593]
+
+The wind was also regarded as a living being whose power was to be
+dreaded. It punished King Loegaire for breaking his oath. But it was
+also personified as a god Vintius, equated with Pollux and worshipped by
+Celtic sailors, or with Mars, the war-god who, in his destructive
+aspect, was perhaps regarded as the nearest analogue to a god of stormy
+winds.[594] Druids and Celtic priestesses claimed the power of
+controlling the winds, as did wizards and witches in later days. This
+they did, according to Christian writers, by the aid of demons, perhaps
+the old divinities of the air. Bishop Agobard describes how the
+_tempestarii_ raised tempests which destroyed the fruits of the earth,
+and drew "aerial ships" from Magonia, whither the ships carried these
+fruits.[595] Magonia may be the upper air ruled over by a sky god
+Magounos or Mogounos, equated with Apollo.[596] The winds may have been
+his servants, ruled also by earthly magicians. Like Yahweh, as conceived
+by Hebrew poets, he "bringeth the winds out of his treasures," and
+"maketh lightnings with rain."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[556] Gildas ii. 4.
+
+[557] Jocelyn, _Vila Kentig._ c. xxxii.
+
+[558] _Trip. Life_, 315.
+
+[559] _LL_ 12_b_. The translation is from D'Arbois, ii. 250 f; cf.
+O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 190.
+
+[560] _RC_ xxii. 400.
+
+[561] _RC_ xii. 109.
+
+[562] Petrie, _Tara_, 34; _RC_ vi. 168; _LU_ 118.
+
+[563] Joyce, _OCR_ 50.
+
+[564] D'Achery, _Spicelegium_, v. 216; Sébillot, i. 16 f., 56, 211.
+
+[565] Gregory of Tours, _Hist._ ii. 10, speaks of the current belief in
+the divinity of waters, birds, and beasts.
+
+[566] Sébillot, i. 9, 35, 75, 247, etc.
+
+[567] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 273; Cormac, 87; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxiii., _RC_ xv.
+307.
+
+[568] Miss Hull, 170, 187, 193; _IT_ i. 214; Leahy, i. 126.
+
+[569] _IT_ i. 287.
+
+[570] Henderson, _Irish Texts_, ii. 210.
+
+[571] _Capit. Karoli Magni_, i. 62; _Leges Luitprand._ ii. 38; Canon 23,
+2nd Coun. of Arles, Hefele, _Councils_, iii. 471; D'Achery, v. 215. Some
+of these attacks were made against Teutonic superstitions, but similar
+superstitions existed among the Celts.
+
+[572] See Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ ii. 498.
+
+[573] A more tolerant note is heard, e.g., in an Irish text which says
+that the spirits which appeared of old were divine ministrants not
+demoniacal, while angels helped the ancients because they followed
+natural truth. "Cormac's Sword," _IT_ iii. 220-221. Cf. p. 152, _supra_.
+
+[574] Cćsar, vi. 18; Pliny xxii. 14. Pliny speaks of culling mistletoe
+on the sixth day of the moon, which is to them the beginning of months
+and years (_sexta luna, quae principia_, etc.). This seems to make the
+sixth, not the first, day of the moon that from which the calculation
+was made. But the meaning is that mistletoe was culled on the sixth day
+of the moon, and that the moon was that by which months and years were
+measured. _Luna_, not _sexta luna_, is in apposition with _quae_. Traces
+of the method of counting by nights or by the moon survive locally in
+France, and the usage is frequent in Irish and Welsh literature. See my
+article "Calendar" (Celtic) in Hastings' _Encyclop. of Religion and
+Ethics_, iii. 78 f.
+
+[575] Delocke, "La Procession dite La Lunade," _RC_ ix. 425.
+
+[576] Monnier, 174, 222; Fitzgerald, _RC_ iv. 189.
+
+[577] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 154 f.
+
+[578] Pliny, xvi. 45; Johnson, _Journey_, 183; Ramsay, _Scotland in the
+Eighteenth Century_, ii. 449; Sébillot, i. 41 f.; MacCulloch, _Misty
+Isle of Skye_, 236. In Brittany it is thought that girls may conceive by
+the moon's power (_RC_ iii. 452).
+
+[579] Strabo, iii. 4. 16.
+
+[580] Brand, _s.v._ "New Year's Day."
+
+[581] Chambers, _Popular Rhymes_, 35; Sébillot, i. 46, 57 f.
+
+[582] Polybius, v. 78; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 15.
+
+[583] Osborne, _Advice to his Son_ (1656), 79; _RC_ xx. 419, 428.
+
+[584] Aristotle, _Nic. Eth._ iii. 77; _Eud. Eth._ iii. 1. 25; Stobćus,
+vii. 40; Ćlian, xii. 22; Jullian, 54; D'Arbois, vi. 218.
+
+[585] Sébillot, i. 119. The custom of throwing something at a "fairy
+eddy," i.e. a dust storm, is well known on Celtic ground and elsewhere.
+
+[586] _Folk-Lore,_ iv. 488; Curtin, _HTI_ 324; Campbell, _The Fians_,
+158. Fian warriors attacked the sea when told it was laughing at them.
+
+[587] _Mélusine_, ii. 200.
+
+[588] Sébillot, ii. 170.
+
+[589] Meyer, _Cath. Finntraga_, 40.
+
+[590] _RC_ xvi. 9; _LB_ 32_b_, 55.
+
+[591] Meyer, _op. cit._ 55; Skene, i. 282, 288, 543; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 387.
+
+[592] Meyer, 51; Joyce, _PN_ i. 195, ii. 257; _RC_ xv. 438.
+
+[593] See p. 55, _supra_; _IT_ i. 838, iii. 207; _RC_ ii. 201, ix. 118.
+
+[594] Holder, _s.v._ "Vintius."
+
+[595] Agobard, i. 146.
+
+[596] See Stokes, _RC_ vi. 267.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP.
+
+
+Among the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses, inscriptions,
+votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance of the cult of
+waters and of water divinities. Mr. Gomme argues that Celtic
+water-worship was derived from the pre-Celtic aborigines,[597] but if
+so, the Celts must have had a peculiar aptitude for it, since they were
+so enthusiastic in its observance. What probably happened was that the
+Celts, already worshippers of the waters, freely adopted local cults of
+water wherever they came. Some rivers or river-goddesses in Celtic
+regions seem to posses pre-Celtic names.[598]
+
+Treasures were flung into a sacred lake near Toulouse to cause a
+pestilence to cease. Caepion, who afterwards fished up this treasure,
+fell soon after in battle--a punishment for cupidity, and _aurum
+Tolosanum_ now became an expression for goods dishonestly acquired.[599]
+A yearly festival, lasting three days, took place at Lake Gévaudan.
+Garments, food, and wax were thrown into the waters, and animals were
+sacrificed. On the fourth day, it is said, there never failed to spring
+up a tempest of rain, thunder, and lightning--a strange reward for this
+worship of the lake.[600] S. Columba routed the spirits of a Scottish
+fountain which was worshipped as a god, and the well now became sacred,
+perhaps to the saint himself, who washed in it and blessed it so that it
+cured diseases.[601]
+
+On inscriptions a river name is prefixed by some divine epithet--_dea_,
+_augusta_, and the worshipper records his gratitude for benefits
+received from the divinity or the river itself. Bormanus, Bormo or
+Borvo, Danuvius (the Danube), and Luxovius are found on inscriptions as
+names of river or fountain gods, but goddesses are more
+numerous--Acionna, Aventia, Bormana, Brixia, Carpundia, Clutoida,
+Divona, Sirona, Ura--well-nymphs; and Icauna (the Yonne), Matrona, and
+Sequana (the Seine)--river-goddesses.[602] No inscription to the goddess
+of a lake has yet been found. Some personal names like Dubrogenos (son
+of the Dubron), Enigenus (son of the Aenus), and the belief of
+Virdumarus that one of his ancestors was the Rhine,[603] point to the
+idea that river-divinities might have amours with mortals and beget
+progeny called by their names. In Ireland, Conchobar was so named from
+the river whence his mother Nessa drew water, perhaps because he was a
+child of the river-god.[604]
+
+The name of the water-divinity was sometimes given to the place of his
+or her cult, or to the towns which sprang up on the banks of rivers--the
+divinity thus becoming a tutelary god. Many towns (e.g. Divonne or
+Dyonne, etc.) have names derived from a common Celtic river name Deuona,
+"divine." This name in various forms is found all over the Celtic
+area,[605] and there is little doubt that the Celts, in their onward
+progress, named river after river by the name of the same divinity,
+believing that each new river was a part of his or her kingdom. The name
+was probably first an appellative, then a personal name, the divine
+river becoming a divinity. Deus Nemausus occurs on votive tablets at
+Nimes, the name Nemausus being that of the clear and abundant spring
+there whence flowed the river of the same name. A similar name occurs in
+other regions--Nemesa, a tributary of the Moselle; Nemh, the source of
+the Tara and the former name of the Blackwater; and Nimis, a Spanish
+river mentioned by Appian. Another group includes the Matrona (Marne),
+the Moder, the Madder, the Maronne and Maronna, and others, probably
+derived from a word signifying "mother."[606] The mother-river was that
+which watered a whole region, just as in the Hindu sacred books the
+waters are mothers, sources of fertility. The Celtic mother-rivers were
+probably goddesses, akin to the _Matres_, givers of plenty and
+fertility. In Gaul, Sirona, a river-goddess, is represented like the
+_Matres_. She was associated with Grannos, perhaps as his mother, and
+Professor Rh[^y]s equates the pair with the Welsh Modron and Mabon;
+Modron is probably connected with Matrona.[607] In any case the Celts
+regarded rivers as bestowers of life, health, and plenty, and offered
+them rich gifts and sacrifices.[608]
+
+Gods like Grannos, Borvo, and others, equated with Apollo, presided over
+healing springs, and they are usually associated with goddesses, as
+their husbands or sons. But as the goddesses are more numerous, and as
+most Celtic river names are feminine, female divinities of rivers and
+springs doubtless had the earlier and foremost place, especially as
+their cult was connected with fertility. The gods, fewer in number, were
+all equated with Apollo, but the goddesses were not merged by the Romans
+into the personality of one goddess, since they themselves had their
+groups of river-goddesses, Nymphs and Naiads. Before the Roman conquest
+the cult of water-divinities, friends of mankind, must have formed a
+large part of the popular religion of Gaul, and their names may be
+counted by hundreds. Thermal springs had also their genii, and they were
+appropriated by the Romans, so that the local gods now shared their
+healing powers with Apollo, Ćsculapius, and the Nymphs. Thus every
+spring, every woodland brook, every river in glen or valley, the roaring
+cataract, and the lake were haunted by divine beings, mainly thought of
+as beautiful females with whom the _Matres_ were undoubtedly associated.
+There they revealed themselves to their worshippers, and when paganism
+had passed away, they remained as _fées_ or fairies haunting spring, or
+well, or river.[609] Scores of fairy wells still exist, and by them
+medićval knights had many a fabled amour with those beautiful beings
+still seen by the "ignorant" but romantic peasant.
+
+Sanctuaries were erected at these springs by grateful worshippers, and
+at some of them festivals were held, or they were the resort of
+pilgrims. As sources of fertility they had a place in the ritual of the
+great festivals, and sacred wells were visited on Midsummer day, when
+also the river-gods claimed their human victims. Some of the goddesses
+were represented by statues or busts in Gallo-Roman times, if not
+earlier, and other images of them which have been found were of the
+nature of _ex votos_, presented by worshippers in gratitude for the
+goddess's healing gifts. Money, ingots of gold or silver, and models of
+limbs or other parts of the body which had been or were desired to be
+healed, were also presented. Gregory of Tours says of the Gauls that
+they "represent in wood or bronze the members in which they suffer, and
+whose healing they desire, and place them in a temple."[610] Contact of
+the model with the divinity brought healing to the actual limbs on the
+principle of sympathetic magic. Many such models have been discovered.
+Thus in the shrine of Dea Sequana was found a vase with over a hundred;
+another contained over eight hundred. Inscriptions were engraved on
+plaques which were fastened to the walls of temples, or placed in
+springs.[611] Leaden tablets with inscriptions were placed in springs by
+those who desired healing or when the waters were low, and on some the
+actual waters are hardly discriminated from the divinities. The latter
+are asked to heal or flow or swell--words which apply more to the waters
+than to them, while the tablets, with their frank animism, also show
+that, in some cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well, only
+some of whom were rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called
+collectively _Niskas_--the Nixies of later tradition, but some have
+personal names--Lerano, Dibona, Dea--showing that they were tending to
+become separate divine personalities. The Peisgi are also appealed to,
+perhaps the later Piskies, unless the word is a corrupt form of a Celtic
+_peiskos_, or the Latin _piscus_, "fish."[612] This is unlikely, as fish
+could not exist in a warm sulphurous spring, though the Celts believed
+in the sacred fish of wells or streams. The fairies now associated with
+wells or with a water-world beneath them, are usually nameless, and only
+in a few cases have a definite name. They, like the older spirits of the
+wells, have generally a beneficent character.[613] Thus in the fountains
+of Logres dwelt damsels who fed the wayfarer with meat and bread, until
+grievous wrong was done them, when they disappeared and the land became
+waste.[614] Occasionally, however, they have a more malevolent
+character.[615]
+
+The spirit of the waters was often embodied in an animal, usually a
+fish. Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring has the form of
+an eel, while in the seventeenth century Highland wells contained fish
+so sacred that no one dared to catch them.[616] In Wales S. Cybi's well
+contained a huge eel in whose virtues the villagers believed, and terror
+prevailed when any one dared to take it from the water. Two sacred fish
+still exist in a holy well at Nant Peris, and are replaced by others
+when they die, the dead fish being buried.[617] This latter act,
+solemnly performed, is a true sign of the divine or sacred character of
+the animal. Many wells with sacred fish exist in Ireland, and the fish
+have usually some supernatural quality--they never alter in size, they
+become invisible, or they take the form of beautiful women.[618] Any one
+destroying such fish was regarded as a sacrilegious person, and
+sometimes a hostile tribe killed and ate the sacred fish of a district
+invaded by them, just as Egyptians of one nome insulted those of another
+by killing their sacred animals.[619] In old Irish beliefs the salmon
+was the fish of knowledge. Thus whoever ate the salmon of Connla's well
+was dowered with the wisdom which had come to them through eating nuts
+from the hazels of knowledge around the well. In this case the sacred
+fish was eaten, but probably by certain persons only--those who had the
+right to do so. Sinend, who went to seek inspiration from the well,
+probably by eating one of its salmon, was overwhelmed by its waters. The
+legend of the salmon is perhaps based on old ritual practices of the
+occasional eating of a divine animal. In other cases, legends of a
+miraculous supply of fish from sacred wells are perhaps later Christian
+traditions of former pagan beliefs or customs concerning magical methods
+of increasing a sacred or totem animal species, like those used in
+Central Australia and New Guinea.[620] The frog is sometimes the sacred
+animal, and this recalls the _Märchen_ of the Frog Bridegroom living in
+a well, who insisted on marrying the girl who drew its waters. Though
+this tale is not peculiar to the Celts, it is not improbable that the
+divine animal guardian of a well may have become the hero of a
+folk-tale, especially as such wells were sometimes tabu to women.[621] A
+fly was the guardian spirit of S. Michael's well in Banffshire. Auguries
+regarding health were drawn from its movements, and it was believed that
+the fly, when it grew old, transmigrated into another.[622]
+
+Such beliefs were not peculiarly Celtic. They are found in all European
+folk-lore, and they are still alive among savages--the animal being
+itself divine or the personification of a divinity. A huge sacred eel
+was worshipped by the Fijians; in North America and elsewhere there were
+serpent guardians of the waters; and the Semites worshipped the fish of
+sacred wells as incarnations or symbols of a god.
+
+Later Celtic folk-belief associated monstrous and malevolent beings with
+rivers and lakes. These may be the older divinities to whom a demoniac
+form has been given, but even in pagan times such monstrous beings may
+have been believed in, or they may be survivals of the more primitive
+monstrous guardians of the waters. The last were dragons or serpents,
+conventional forms of the reptiles which once dwelt in watery places,
+attacking all who came near. This old idea certainly survived in Irish
+and Highland belief, for the Fians conquered huge dragons or serpents in
+lochs, or saints chained them to the bottom of the waters. Hence the
+common place-name of Loch na piast, "Loch of the Monster." In other
+tales they emerge and devour the impious or feast on the dead.[623] The
+_Dracs_ of French superstition--river monsters who assume human form and
+drag down victims to the depths, where they devour them--resemble these.
+
+The _Each Uisge_, or "Water-horse," a horse with staring eyes, webbed
+feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and
+lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to
+women, some of whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of
+water-weed in his hair, and only escape with difficulty. Such a
+water-horse was forced to drag the chariot of S. Fechin of Fore, and
+under his influence became "gentler than any other horse."[624] Many
+Highland lochs are still haunted by this dreaded being, and he is also
+known in Ireland and France, where, however, he has more of a tricky and
+less of a demoniac nature.[625] His horse form is perhaps connected with
+the similar form ascribed to Celtic water-divinities. Manannan's horses
+were the waves, and he was invariably associated with a horse. Epona,
+the horse-goddess, was perhaps originally goddess of a spring, and, like
+the _Matres_, she is sometimes connected with the waters.[626] Horses
+were also sacrificed to river-divinities.[627] But the beneficent
+water-divinities in their horse form have undergone a curious
+distortion, perhaps as the result of later Christian influences. The
+name of one branch of the Fomorians, the Goborchinn, means the
+"Horse-headed," and one of their kings was Eochaid Echchenn, or
+"Horse-head."[628] Whether these have any connection with the
+water-horse is uncertain.
+
+The foaming waters may have suggested another animal personification,
+since the name of the Boyne in Ptolemy, [Greek: bououinda], is derived
+from a primitive _bóu-s_, "ox," and _vindo-s_, "white," in Irish _bó
+find_, "white cow."[629] But it is not certain that this or the Celtic
+cult of the bull was connected with the belief in the _Tarbh Uisge_, or
+"Water-bull," which had no ears and could assume other shapes. It dwells
+in lochs and is generally friendly to man, occasionally emerging to mate
+with ordinary cows. In the Isle of Man the _Tarroo Ushtey_, however,
+begets monsters.[630] These Celtic water-monsters have a curious
+resemblance to the Australian _Bunyip_.
+
+The _Uruisg_, often confused with the brownie, haunts lonely places and
+waterfalls, and, according to his mood, helps or harms the wayfarer. His
+appearance is that of a man with shaggy hair and beard.[631] In Wales
+the _afanc_ is a water-monster, though the word first meant "dwarf,"
+then "water-dwarf," of whom many kinds existed. They correspond to the
+Irish water-dwarfs, the _Luchorpáin_, descended with the Fomorians and
+Goborchinn from Ham.[632]
+
+In other cases the old water beings have a more pleasing form, like the
+syrens and other fairy beings who haunt French rivers, or the mermaids
+of Irish estuaries.[633] In Celtic France and Britain lake fairies are
+connected with a water-world like that of Elysium tales, the region of
+earlier divinities.[634] They unite with mortals, who, as in the
+Swan-maiden tales, lose their fairy brides through breaking a tabu. In
+many Welsh tales the bride is obtained by throwing bread and cheese on
+the waters, when she appears with an old man who has all the strength of
+youth. He presents his daughter and a number of fairy animals to the
+mortal. When she disappears into the waters after the breaking of the
+tabu, the lake is sometimes drained in order to recover her; the father
+then appears and threatens to submerge the whole district. Father and
+daughters are earlier lake divinities, and in the bread and cheese we
+may see a relic of the offerings to these.[635]
+
+Human sacrifice to water-divinities is suggested by the belief that
+water-monsters devour human beings, and by the tradition that a river
+claims its toll of victims every year. In popular rhymes the annual
+character of the sacrifice is hinted at, and Welsh legend tells of a
+voice heard once a year from rivers or lakes, crying, "The hour is come,
+but the man is not."[636] Here there is the trace of an abandoned custom
+of sacrifice and of the traditional idea of the anger of the divinity at
+being neglected. Such spirits or gods, like the water-monsters, would be
+ever on the watch to capture those who trespassed on their domain. In
+some cases the victim is supposed to be claimed on Midsummer eve, the
+time of the sacrifice in the pagan period.[637] The spirits of wells had
+also a harmful aspect to those, at least, who showed irreverence in
+approaching them. This is seen in legends about the danger of looking
+rashly into a well or neglecting to cover it, or in the belief that one
+must not look back after visiting the well. Spirits of wells were also
+besought to do harm to enemies.
+
+Legends telling of the danger of removing or altering a well, or of the
+well moving elsewhere because a woman washed her hands in it, point to
+old tabus concerning wells. Boand, wife of Nechtain, went to the fairy
+well which he and his cup-bearers alone might visit, and when she showed
+her contempt for it, the waters rose and destroyed her. They now flow as
+the river Boyne. Sinend met with a similar fate for intruding on
+Connla's well, in this case the pursuing waters became the Shannon.[638]
+These are variants of a story which might be used to explain the origin
+of any river, but the legends suggest that certain wells were tabu to
+women because certain branches of knowledge, taught by the well, must be
+reserved for men.[639] The legends said in effect, "See what came of
+women obtruding beyond their proper sphere." Savage "mysteries" are
+usually tabu to women, who also exclude men from their sacred rites. On
+the other hand, as all tribal lore was once in the hands of the wise
+woman, such tabus and legends may have arisen when men began to claim
+such lore. In other legends women are connected with wells, as the
+guardians who must keep them locked up save when water was drawn. When
+the woman neglected to replace the cover, the waters burst forth,
+overwhelming her, and formed a loch.[640] The woman is the priestess of
+the well who, neglecting part of its ritual, is punished. Even in recent
+times we find sacred wells in charge of a woman who instructs the
+visitors in the due ritual to be performed.[641] If such legends and
+survivals thus point to former Celtic priestesses of wells, these are
+paralleled by the Norse Horgabrudar, guardians of wells, now elves
+living in the waters.[642] That such legends are based on the ritual of
+well-worship is suggested by Boand's walking three times _widdershins_
+round the well, instead of the customary _deiseil_. The due ritual must
+be observed, and the stories are a warning against its neglect.
+
+In spite of twenty centuries of Christianity and the anathemas of saints
+and councils, the old pagan practices at healing wells have survived--a
+striking instance of human conservatism. S. Patrick found the pagans of
+his day worshipping a well called _Slán_, "health-giving," and offering
+sacrifices to it,[643] and the Irish peasant to-day has no doubt that
+there is something divine about his holy wells. The Celts brought the
+belief in the divinity of springs and wells with them, but would
+naturally adopt local cults wherever they found them. Afterwards the
+Church placed the old pagan wells under the protection of saints, but
+part of the ritual often remained unchanged. Hence many wells have been
+venerated for ages by different races and through changes in religion
+and polity. Thus at the thermal springs of Vicarello offerings have been
+found which show that their cult has continued from the Stone Age,
+through the Bronze Age, to the days of Roman civilisation, and so into
+modern times; nor is this a solitary instance.[644] But it serves to
+show that all races, high and low, preserve the great outlines of
+primitive nature religion unchanged. In all probability the ritual of
+the healing wells has also remained in great part unaltered, and
+wherever it is found it follows the same general type. The patient
+perambulated the well three times _deiseil_ or sun-wise, taking care not
+to utter a word. Then he knelt at the well and prayed to the divinity
+for his healing. In modern times the saint, but occasionally the well
+itself, is prayed to.[645] Then he drank of the waters, bathed in them,
+or laved his limbs or sores, probably attended by the priestess of the
+well. Having paid her dues, he made an offering to the divinity of the
+well, and affixed the bandage or part of his clothing to the well or a
+tree near by, that through it he might be in continuous _rapport_ with
+the healing influences. Ritual formulć probably accompanied these acts,
+but otherwise no word was spoken, and the patient must not look back on
+leaving the well. Special times, Beltane, Midsummer, or August 1st, were
+favourable for such visits,[646] and where a patient was too ill to
+present himself at the well, another might perform the ritual for
+him.[647]
+
+The rag or clothing hung on the tree seems to connect the spirit of the
+tree with that of the well, and tree and well are often found together.
+But sometimes it is thrown into the well, just as the Gaulish villagers
+of S. Gregory's day threw offerings of cloth and wool into a sacred
+lake.[648] The rag is even now regarded in the light of an offering, and
+such offerings, varying from valuable articles of clothing to mere rags,
+are still hung on sacred trees by the folk. It thus probably has always
+had a sacrificial aspect in the ritual of the well, but as magic and
+religion constantly blend, it had also its magical aspect. The rag, once
+in contact with the patient, transferred his disease to the tree, or,
+being still subtly connected with him, through it the healing properties
+passed over to him.
+
+The offering thrown into the well--a pin, coin, etc., may also have this
+double aspect. The sore is often pricked or rubbed with the pin as if to
+transfer the disease to the well, and if picked up by another person,
+the disease may pass to him. This is also true of the coin.[649] But
+other examples show the sacrificial nature of the pin or other trifle,
+which is probably symbolic or a survival of a more costly offering. In
+some cases it is thought that those who do not leave it at the well from
+which they have drunk will die of thirst, and where a coin is offered it
+is often supposed to disappear, being taken by the spirit of the
+well.[650] The coin has clearly the nature of an offering, and sometimes
+it must be of gold or silver, while the antiquity of the custom on
+Celtic ground is seen by the classical descriptions of the coins
+glittering in the pool of Clitumnus and of the "gold of Toulouse" hid in
+sacred tanks.[651] It is also an old and widespread belief that all
+water belongs to some divine or monstrous guardian, who will not part
+with any of it without a _quid pro quo_. In many cases the two rites of
+rag and pin are not both used, and this may show that originally they
+had the same purpose--magical or sacrificial, or perhaps both. Other
+sacrifices were also made--an animal, food, or an _ex voto_, the last
+occurring even in late survivals as at S. Thenew's Well, Glasgow, where
+even in the eighteenth century tin cut to represent the diseased member
+was placed on the tree, or at S. Winifred's Well in Wales, where
+crutches were left.
+
+Certain waters had the power of ejecting the demon of madness. Besides
+drinking, the patient was thrown into the waters, the shock being
+intended to drive the demon away, as elsewhere demons are exorcised by
+flagellation or beating. The divinity of the waters aided the process,
+and an offering was usually made to him. In other cases the sacred
+waters were supposed to ward off disease from the district or from those
+who drank of them. Or, again, they had the power of conferring
+fertility. Women made pilgrimages to wells, drank or bathed in the
+waters, implored the spirit or saint to grant them offspring, and made a
+due offering.[652] Spirit or saint, by a transfer of his power, produced
+fruitfulness, but the idea was in harmony with the recognised power of
+water to purify, strengthen, and heal. Women, for a similar reason,
+drank or washed in the waters or wore some articles dipped in them, in
+order to have an easy delivery or abundance of milk.[653]
+
+The waters also gave oracles, their method of flowing, the amount of
+water in the well, the appearance or non-appearance of bubbles at the
+surface when an offering was thrown in, the sinking or floating of
+various articles, all indicating whether a cure was likely to occur,
+whether fortune or misfortune awaited the inquirer, or, in the case of
+girls, whether their lovers would be faithful. The movements of the
+animal guardian of the well were also ominous to the visitor.[654]
+Rivers or river divinities were also appealed to. In cases of suspected
+fidelity the Celts dwelling by the Rhine placed the newly-born child in
+a shield on the waters. If it floated the mother was innocent; if it
+sank it was allowed to drown, and she was put to death.[655] Girls whose
+purity was suspected were similarly tested, and S. Gregory of Tours
+tells how a woman accused of adultery was proved by being thrown into
+the Saône.[656] The medićval witch ordeal by water is connected with
+this custom, which is, however, widespread.[657]
+
+The malevolent aspect of the spirit of the well is seen in the "cursing
+wells" of which it was thought that when some article inscribed with an
+enemy's name was thrown into them with the accompaniment of a curse, the
+spirit of the well would cause his death. In some cases the curse was
+inscribed on a leaden tablet thrown into the waters, just as, in other
+cases, a prayer for the offerer's benefit was engraved on it. Or, again,
+objects over which a charm had been said were placed in a well that the
+victim who drew water might be injured. An excellent instance of a
+cursing-well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once have
+had a guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had charge of it
+presided at the ceremony. She wrote the name of the victim in a book,
+receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was dropped into the well in
+the name of the victim, and through it and through knowledge of his
+name, the spirit of the well acted upon him to his hurt.[658] Obviously
+rites like these, in which magic and religion mingle, are not purely
+Celtic, but it is of interest to note their existence in Celtic lands
+and among Celtic folk.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[597] _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 104 f.
+
+[598] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 132, 169; Dottin, 240.
+
+[599] Justin, xxxii. 3; Strabo, iv. 1. 13.
+
+[600] S. Gregory, _In Glor. Conf._ ch. 2. Perhaps the feast and
+offerings were intended to cause rain in time of drought. See p. 321,
+_infra_.
+
+[601] Adamman, _Vita Colum._ ii. 10.
+
+[602] See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[603] D'Arbois, _RC_ x. 168, xiv. 377; _CIL_ xii. 33; Propertius, iv.
+10. 41.
+
+[604] See p. 349, _infra_.
+
+[605] Cf. Ptolemy's [Greek: Dęouana] and [Greek: Dęouna] (ii. 3. 19, 11.
+29); the Scots and English Dee; the Divy in Wales; Dęve, Dive, and
+Divette in France; Devon in England; Deva in Spain (Ptolemy's [Greek:
+Dęoua], ii. 6. 8). The Shannon is surnamed even in the seventh century
+"the goddess" (_Trip. Life_, 313).
+
+[606] Holder, _s.v._; D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 119, thinks _Matrona_ is
+Ligurian. But it seems to have strong Celtic affinities.
+
+[607] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 27-29, _RC_ iv. 137.
+
+[608] On the whole subject see Pictet, "Quelques noms celtiques de
+rivičres," _RC_ ii. 1 f. Orosius, v. 15. 6, describes the sacrifices of
+gold, silver, and horses, made to the Rhône.
+
+[609] Maury, 18. By extension of this belief any divinity might appear
+by the haunted spring. S. Patrick and his synod of bishops at an Irish
+well were supposed to be _síd_ or gods (p. 64, _supra_.) By a fairy well
+Jeanne d'Arc had her first vision.
+
+[610] Greg. Tours, _Vita Patr._ c. 6.
+
+[611] See Reinach, _Catal. Sommaire_, 23, 115; Baudot, _Rapport sur les
+fouilles faits aux sources de la Seine_, ii. 120; _RC_ ii. 26.
+
+[612] For these tablets see Nicolson, _Keltic Studies_, 131 f.; Jullian,
+_RC_ 1898.
+
+[613] Sébillot, ii. 195.
+
+[614] Prologue to Chrestien's _Conte du Graal_.
+
+[615] Sébillot, ii. 202 f.
+
+[616] Ibid. 196-197; Martin, 140-141; Dalyell, 411.
+
+[617] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 366; _Folk-Lore_, viii. 281. If the fish
+appeared when an invalid drank of the well, this was a good omen. For
+the custom of burying sacred animals, see Herod, ii. 74; Ćlian, xiii.
+26.
+
+[618] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 92.
+
+[619] _Trip. Life_, 113; Tigernach, _Annals_, A.D. 1061.
+
+[620] Mackinley, 184.
+
+[621] Burne, _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, 416; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 145.
+
+[622] _Old Stat. Account_, xii. 465.
+
+[623] S. Patrick, when he cleared Ireland of serpents, dealt in this way
+with the worst specimens. S. Columba quelled a monster which terrified
+the dwellers by the Ness. Joyce, _PN_ i. 197; Adamnan, _Vita Columb._
+ii. 28; Kennedy, 12, 82, 246; _RC_ iv. 172, 186.
+
+[624] _RC_ xii. 347.
+
+[625] For the water-horse, see Campbell, _WHT_ iv. 307; Macdongall, 294;
+Campbell, _Superstitions_, 203; and for the Manx _Glashtyn_, a kind of
+water-horse, see Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 285. For French cognates, see
+Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_, i. 349 f.
+
+[626] Reinach, _CMR_ i. 63.
+
+[627] Orosius, v. 15. 6.
+
+[628] _LU_ 2_a_. Of Eochaid is told a variant of the Midas story--the
+discovery of his horse's ears. This is also told of Labraid Lore (_RC_
+ii. 98; Kennedy, 256) and of King Marc'h in Brittany and in Wales (Le
+Braz, ii. 96; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ 233). Other variants are found in
+non-Celtic regions, so the story has no mythological significance on
+Celtic ground.
+
+[629] Ptol. ii. 2. 7.
+
+[630] Campbell, _WHT_ iv. 300 f.; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 284; Waldron, _Isle
+of Man_, 147.
+
+[631] Macdougall, 296; Campbell, _Superstitions_, 195. For the Uruisg as
+Brownie, see _WHT_ ii. 9; Graham, _Scenery of Perthshire_, 19.
+
+[632] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ ii. 431, 469, _HL_, 592; _Book of Taliesin_, vii.
+135.
+
+[633] Sébillot, ii. 340; _LL_ 165; _IT_ i. 699.
+
+[634] Sébillot, ii. 409.
+
+[635] See Pughe, _The Physicians of Myddfai_, 1861 (these were
+descendants of a water-fairy); Rh[^y]s, _Y Cymmrodor_, iv. 164;
+Hartland, _Arch. Rev._ i. 202. Such water-gods with lovely daughters are
+known in most mythologies--the Greek Nereus and the Nereids, the
+Slavonic Water-king, and the Japanese god Ocean-Possessor (Ralston,
+_Songs of the Russian People_, 148; Chamberlain, _Ko-ji-ki_, 120).
+Manannan had nine daughters (Wood-Martin, i. 135).
+
+[636] Sébillot, ii. 338, 344; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 243; Henderson,
+_Folk-Lore of the N. Counties_, 262. Cf. the rhymes, "L'Arguenon veut
+chaque année son poisson," the "fish" being a human victim, and
+
+  "Blood-thirsty Dee
+   Each year needs three,
+   But bonny Don,
+   She needs none."
+
+[637] Sébillot, ii. 339.
+
+[638] _Rendes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 315, 457. Other instances of
+punishment following misuse of a well are given in Sébillot, ii. 192;
+Rees, 520, 523. An Irish lake no longer healed after a hunter swam his
+mangy hounds through it (Joyce, _PN_ ii. 90). A similar legend occurs
+with the Votiaks, one of whose sacred lakes was removed to its present
+position because a woman washed dirty clothes in it (_L'Anthropologie_,
+xv. 107).
+
+[639] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 392.
+
+[640] Girald. Cambr. _Itin. Hib._ ii. 9; Joyce, _OCR_ 97; Kennedy, 281;
+O'Grady, i. 233; Skene, ii. 59; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 147. The waters
+often submerge a town, now seen below the waves--the town of Is in
+Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In
+some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 379). In
+the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on
+in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the
+baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a
+water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of
+the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified (O'Grady,
+ii. 184, 265).
+
+[641] Roberts, _Cambrian Pop. Antiq._ 246; Hunt, _Popular Romances_,
+291; _New Stat. Account_, x. 313.
+
+[642] Thorpe, _Northern Myth._ ii. 78.
+
+[643] Joyce, _PN_ ii. 84. _Slán_ occurs in many names of wells.
+Well-worship is denounced in the canons of the Fourth Council of Arles.
+
+[644] Cartailhac, _L'Age de Pierre_, 74; Bulliot et Thiollier, _Mission
+de S. Martin_, 60.
+
+[645] Sébillot, ii. 284.
+
+[646] Dalyell, 79-80; Sébillot, ii. 282, 374; see p. 266, _infra_.
+
+[647] I have compiled this account of the ritual from notices of the
+modern usages in various works. See, e.g., Moore, _Folk-Lore_, v. 212;
+Mackinley, _passim_; Hope, _Holy Wells_; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_; Sébillot, 175
+f.; Dixon, _Gairloch_, 150 f.
+
+[648] Brand, ii. 68; Greg. _In Glor. Conf._ c. 2.
+
+[649] Sébillot, ii. 293, 296; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 55.
+
+[650] Mackinley, 194; Sébillot, ii. 296.
+
+[651] _Folk-Lore_, iii. 67; _Athenćum_, 1893, 415; Pliny, _Ep._ viii. 8;
+Strabo, iv. 287; Diod. Sic. v. 9.
+
+[652] Walker, _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._ vol. v.; Sébillot, ii. 232. In
+some early Irish instances a worm swallowed with the waters by a woman
+causes pregnancy. See p. 352, _infra_.
+
+[653] Sébillot, ii. 235-236.
+
+[654] See Le Braz, i. 61; _Folk-Lore_, v. 214; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 364;
+Dalyell, 506-507; Scott, _Minstrelsy_, Introd. xliii; Martin, 7;
+Sébillot, ii. 242 f.; _RC_ ii. 486.
+
+[655] Jullian, _Ep. to Maximin_, 16. The practice may have been
+connected with that noted by Aristotle, of plunging the newly-born into
+a river, to strengthen it, as he says (_Pol._ vii. 15. 2), but more
+probably as a baptismal or purificatory rite. See p. 309, _infra_.
+
+[656] Lefevre, _Les Gaulois_, 109; Michelet, _Origines du droit
+français_, 268.
+
+[657] See examples of its use in Post, _Grundriss der Ethnol.
+Jurisprudenz_, ii. 459 f.
+
+[658] Roberts, _Cambrian Popular Antiquities_, 246.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP.
+
+
+The Celts had their own cult of trees, but they adopted local
+cults--Ligurian, Iberian, and others. The _Fagus Deus_ (the divine
+beech), the _Sex arbor_ or _Sex arbores_ of Pyrenean inscriptions, and
+an anonymous god represented by a conifer on an altar at Toulouse,
+probably point to local Ligurian tree cults continued by the Celts into
+Roman times.[659] Forests were also personified or ruled by a single
+goddess, like _Dea Arduinna_ of the Ardennes and _Dea Abnoba_ of the
+Black Forest.[660] But more primitive ideas prevailed, like that which
+assigned a whole class of tree-divinities to a forest, e.g. the _Fatć
+Dervones_, spirits of the oak-woods of Northern Italy.[661] Groups of
+trees like _Sex arbores_ were venerated, perhaps for their height,
+isolation, or some other peculiarity.
+
+The Celts made their sacred places in dark groves, the trees being hung
+with offerings or with the heads of victims. Human sacrifices were hung
+or impaled on trees, e.g. by the warriors of Boudicca.[662] These, like
+the offerings still placed by the folk on sacred trees, were attached to
+them because the trees were the abode of spirits or divinities who in
+many cases had power over vegetation.
+
+Pliny said of the Celts: "They esteem nothing more sacred than the
+mistletoe and the tree on which it grows. But apart from this they
+choose oak-woods for their sacred groves, and perform no sacred rite
+without using oak branches."[663] Maximus of Tyre also speaks of the
+Celtic (? German) image of Zeus as a lofty oak, and an old Irish
+glossary gives _daur_, "oak," as an early Irish name for "god," and
+glosses it by _dia_, "god."[664] The sacred need-fire may have been
+obtained by friction from oak-wood, and it is because of the old
+sacredness of the oak that a piece of its wood is still used as a
+talisman in Brittany.[665] Other Aryan folk besides the Celts regarded
+the oak as the symbol of a high god, of the sun or the sky,[666] but
+probably this was not its earliest significance. Oak forests were once
+more extensive over Europe than they are now, and the old tradition that
+men once lived on acorns has been shown to be well-founded by the
+witness of archćological finds, e.g. in Northern Italy.[667] A people
+living in an oak region and subsisting in part on acorns might easily
+take the oak as a representative of the spirit of vegetation or growth.
+It was long-lived, its foliage was a protection, it supplied food, its
+wood was used as fuel, and it was thus clearly the friend of man. For
+these reasons, and because it was the most abiding and living thing men
+knew, it became the embodiment of the spirits of life and growth.
+Folk-lore survivals show that the spirit of vegetation in the shape of
+his representative was annually slain while yet in full vigour, that his
+life might benefit all things and be passed on undiminished to his
+successor.[668] Hence the oak or a human being representing the spirit
+of vegetation, or both together, were burned in the Midsummer fires.
+How, then, did the oak come to symbolise a god equated with Zeus. Though
+the equation may be worthless, it is possible that the connection lay in
+the fact that Zeus and Juppiter had agricultural functions, or that,
+when the equation was made, the earlier spirit of vegetation had become
+a divinity with functions resembling those of Zeus. The fires were
+kindled to recruit the sun's life; they were fed with oak-wood, and in
+them an oak or a human victim representing the spirit embodied in the
+oak was burned. Hence it may have been thought that the sun was
+strengthened by the fire residing in the sacred oak; it was thus "the
+original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which was from time to time
+drawn out to feed the sun."[669] The oak thus became the symbol of a
+bright god also connected with growth. But, to judge by folk survivals,
+the older conception still remained potent, and tree or human victim
+affected for good all vegetable growth as well as man's life, while at
+the same time the fire strengthened the sun.
+
+Dr. Evans argues that "the original holy object within the central
+triliths of Stonehenge was a sacred tree," an oak, image of the Celtic
+Zeus. The tree and the stones, once associated with ancestor worship,
+had become symbols of "a more celestial Spirit or Spirits than those of
+departed human beings."[670] But Stonehenge has now been proved to have
+been in existence before the arrival of the Celts, hence such a cult
+must have been pre-Celtic, though it may quite well have been adopted by
+the Celts. Whether this hypothetical cult was practised by a tribe, a
+group of tribes, or by the whole people, must remain obscure, and,
+indeed, it may well be questioned whether Stonehenge was ever more than
+the scene of some ancestral rites.
+
+Other trees--the yew, the cypress, the alder, and the ash, were
+venerated, to judge by what Lucan relates of the sacred grove at
+Marseilles. The Irish Druids attributed special virtues to the hazel,
+rowan, and yew, the wood of which was used in magical ceremonies
+described in Irish texts.[671] Fires of rowan were lit by the Druids of
+rival armies, and incantations said over them in order to discomfit the
+opposing host,[672] and the wood of all these trees is still believed to
+be efficacious against fairies and witches.
+
+The Irish _bile_ was a sacred tree, of great age, growing over a holy
+well or fort. Five of them are described in the _Dindsenchas_, and one
+was an oak, which not only yielded acorns, but nuts and apples.[673] The
+mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in
+both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the
+place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or
+"acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all
+these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish _bile_ was a
+yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in
+this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment of origin," "spell of
+knowledge," may have some reference to the custom of writing divinations
+in ogham on rods of yew. The other _bile_ were ash-trees, and from one
+of them the _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree," were named--perhaps a
+totem-clan.[674] The lives of kings and chiefs appear to have been
+connected with these trees, probably as representatives of the spirit of
+vegetation embodied in the tree, and under their shadow they were
+inaugurated. But as a substitute for the king was slain, so doubtless
+these pre-eminent sacred trees were too sacred, too much charged with
+supernatural force, to be cut down and burned, and the yearly ritual
+would be performed with another tree. But in time of feud one tribe
+gloried in destroying the _bile_ of another; and even in the tenth
+century, when the _bile maighe Adair_ was destroyed by Maelocohlen the
+act was regarded with horror. "But, O reader, this deed did not pass
+unpunished."[675] Of another _bile_, that of Borrisokane, it was said
+that any house in which a fragment of it was burned would itself be
+destroyed by fire.[676]
+
+Tribal and personal names point to belief in descent from tree gods or
+spirits and perhaps to totemism. The Eburones were the yew-tree tribe
+(_eburos_); the Bituriges perhaps had the mistletoe for their symbol,
+and their surname Vivisci implies that they were called "Mistletoe
+men."[677] If _bile_ (tree) is connected with the name Bile, that of the
+ancestor of the Milesians, this may point to some myth of descent from a
+sacred tree, as in the case of the _Fir Bile_, or "men of the
+tree."[678] Other names like Guidgen (_Viduo-genos_, "son of the tree"),
+Dergen (_Dervo-genos_, "son of the oak"), Guerngen (_Verno-genos_, "son
+of the alder"), imply filiation to a tree. Though these names became
+conventional, they express what had once been a living belief. Names
+borrowed directly from trees are also found---Eburos or Ebur, "yew,"
+Derua or Deruacus, "oak," etc.
+
+The veneration of trees growing beside burial mounds or megalithic
+monuments was probably a pre-Celtic cult continued by the Celts. The
+tree embodied the ghost of the person buried under it, but such a ghost
+could then hardly be differentiated from a tree spirit or divinity. Even
+now in Celtic districts extreme veneration exists for trees growing in
+cemeteries and in other places. It is dangerous to cut them down or to
+pluck a leaf or branch from them, while in Breton churchyards the yew is
+thought to spread a root to the mouth of each corpse.[679] The story of
+the grave of Cyperissa, daughter of a Celtic king in the Danube region,
+from which first sprang the "mournful cypress,"[680] is connected with
+universal legends of trees growing from the graves of lovers until their
+branches intertwine. These embody the belief that the spirit of the dead
+is in the tree, which was thus in all likelihood the object of a cult.
+Instances of these legends occur in Celtic story. Yew-stakes driven
+through the bodies of Naisi and Deirdre to keep them apart, became
+yew-trees the tops of which embraced over Armagh Cathedral. A yew sprang
+from the grave of Bailé Mac Buain, and an apple-tree from that of his
+lover Aillinn, and the top of each had the form of their heads.[681] The
+identification of tree and ghost is here complete.
+
+The elder, rowan, and thorn are still planted round houses to keep off
+witches, or sprigs of rowan are placed over doorways--a survival from
+the time when they were believed to be tenanted by a beneficent spirit
+hostile to evil influences. In Ireland and the Isle of Man the thorn is
+thought to be the resort of fairies, and they, like the woodland fairies
+or "wood men" are probably representatives of the older tree spirits and
+gods of groves and forests.[682]
+
+Tree-worship was rooted in the oldest nature worship, and the Church had
+the utmost difficulty in suppressing it. Councils fulminated against the
+cult of trees, against offerings to them or the placing of lights before
+them and before wells or stones, and against the belief that certain
+trees were too sacred to be cut down or burned. Heavy fines were levied
+against those who practised these rites, yet still they continued.[683]
+Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, tried to stop the worship of a large
+pear-tree standing in the centre of the town and on which the
+semi-Christian inhabitants hung animals' heads with much ribaldry. At
+last S. Germanus destroyed it, but at the risk of his life. S. Martin of
+Tours was allowed to destroy a temple, but the people would not permit
+him to attack a much venerated pine-tree which stood beside it--an
+excellent example of the way in which the more official paganism fell
+before Christianity, while the older religion of the soil, from which it
+sprang, could not be entirely eradicated.[684] The Church often effected
+a compromise. Images of the gods affixed to trees were replaced by those
+of the Virgin, but with curious results. Legends arose telling how the
+faithful had been led to such trees and there discovered the image of
+the Madonna miraculously placed among the branches.[685] These are
+analogous to the legends of the discovery of images of the Virgin in the
+earth, such images being really those of the _Matres_.
+
+Representations of sacred trees are occasionally met with on coins,
+altars, and _ex votos_.[686] If the interpretation be correct which sees
+a representation of part of the Cúchulainn legend on the Paris and
+Trčves altars, the trees figured there would not necessarily be sacred.
+But otherwise they may depict sacred trees.
+
+We now turn to Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The Druids held
+nothing more sacred than this plant and the tree on which it grew,
+probably an oak. Of it groves were formed, while branches of the oak
+were used in all religious rites. Everything growing on the oak had been
+sent from heaven, and the presence of the mistletoe showed that God had
+selected the tree for especial favour. Rare as it was, when found the
+mistletoe was the object of a careful ritual. On the sixth day of the
+moon it was culled. Preparations for a sacrifice and feast were made
+beneath the tree, and two white bulls whose horns had never been bound
+were brought there. A Druid, clad in white, ascended the tree and cut
+the mistletoe with a golden sickle. As it fell it was caught in a white
+cloth; the bulls were then sacrificed, and prayer was made that God
+would make His gift prosperous to those on whom He had bestowed it. The
+mistletoe was called "the universal healer," and a potion made from it
+caused barren animals to be fruitful. It was also a remedy against all
+poisons.[687] We can hardly believe that such an elaborate ritual merely
+led up to the medico-magical use of the mistletoe. Possibly, of course,
+the rite was an attenuated survival of something which had once been
+more important, but it is more likely that Pliny gives only a few
+picturesque details and passes by the _rationale_ of the ritual. He does
+not tell us who the "God" of whom he speaks was, perhaps the sun-god or
+the god of vegetation. As to the "gift," it was probably in his mind the
+mistletoe, but it may quite well have meant the gift of growth in field
+and fold. The tree was perhaps cut down and burned; the oxen may have
+been incarnations of a god of vegetation, as the tree also may have
+been. We need not here repeat the meaning which has been given to the
+ritual,[688] but it may be added that if this meaning is correct, the
+rite probably took place at the time of the Midsummer festival, a
+festival of growth and fertility. Mistletoe is still gathered on
+Midsummer eve and used as an antidote to poisons or for the cure of
+wounds. Its Druidic name is still preserved in Celtic speech in words
+signifying "all-healer," while it is also called _sůgh an daraich_, "sap
+of the oak," and _Druidh lus_, "Druid's weed."[689]
+
+Pliny describes other Celtic herbs of grace. _Selago_ was culled without
+use of iron after a sacrifice of bread and wine--probably to the spirit
+of the plant. The person gathering it wore a white robe, and went with
+unshod feet after washing them. According to the Druids, _Selago_
+preserved one from accident, and its smoke when burned healed maladies
+of the eye.[690] _Samolus_ was placed in drinking troughs as a remedy
+against disease in cattle. It was culled by a person fasting, with the
+left hand; it must be wholly uprooted, and the gatherer must not look
+behind him.[691] _Vervain_ was gathered at sunrise after a sacrifice to
+the earth as an expiation--perhaps because its surface was about to be
+disturbed. When it was rubbed on the body all wishes were gratified; it
+dispelled fevers and other maladies; it was an antidote against
+serpents; and it conciliated hearts. A branch of the dried herb used to
+asperge a banquet-hall made the guests more convivial[692]
+
+The ritual used in gathering these plants--silence, various tabus,
+ritual purity, sacrifice--is found wherever plants are culled whose
+virtue lies in this that they are possessed by a spirit. Other plants
+are still used as charms by modern Celtic peasants, and, in some cases,
+the ritual of gathering them resembles that described by Pliny.[693] In
+Irish sagas plants have magical powers. "Fairy herbs" placed in a bath
+restored beauty to women bathing therein.[694] During the _Táin_
+Cúchulainn's wounds were healed with "balsams and healing herbs of fairy
+potency," and Diancecht used similar herbs to restore the dead at the
+battle of Mag-tured.[695]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[659] Sacaze, _Inscr. des Pyren._ 255; Hirschfeld, _Sitzungsberichte_
+(Berlin, 1896), 448.
+
+[660] _CIL_ vi. 46; _CIR_ 1654, 1683.
+
+[661] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 52.
+
+[662] Lucan, _Phar._ Usener's ed., 32; Orosius, v. 16. 6; Dio Cass.
+lxii. 6.
+
+[663] Pliny, xvi. 44. The Scholiast on Lucan says that the Druids
+divined with acorns (Usener, 33).
+
+[664] Max. Tyr. _Diss._ viii. 8; Stokes, _RC_ i. 259.
+
+[665] Le Braz, ii. 18.
+
+[666] Mr. Chadwick (_Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxx. 26) connects this high god
+with thunder, and regards the Celtic Zeus (Taranis, in his opinion) as a
+thunder-god. The oak was associated with this god because his
+worshippers dwelt under oaks.
+
+[667] Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, 16 f.
+
+[668] Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2} iii. 198.
+
+[669] Frazer, _loc. cit._
+
+[670] Evans, _Arch. Rev._ i. 327 f.
+
+[671] Joyce, _SH_ i. 236.
+
+[672] O'Curry, _MC_ i. 213.
+
+[673] _LL_ 199_b_; _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 420.
+
+[674] _RC_ xv. 455, xvi. 279; Hennessey, _Chron. Scot._ 76.
+
+[675] Keating, 556; Joyce, _PN_ i. 499.
+
+[676] Wood-Martin, ii. 159.
+
+[677] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 51; Jullian, 41.
+
+[678] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 60.
+
+[679] See Sébillot, i. 293; Le Braz, i. 259; _Folk-Lore Journal_, v.
+218; _Folk-Lore Record_, 1882.
+
+[680] Val. Probus, _Comm. in Georgica_, ii. 84.
+
+[681] Miss Hull, 53; O'Ourry, _MS. Mat._ 465. Writing tablets, made from
+each of the trees when they were cut down, sprang together and could not
+be separated.
+
+[682] _Stat. Account_, iii. 27; Moore, 151; Sébillot, i. 262, 270.
+
+[683] Dom Martin, i. 124; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 16.
+
+[684] _Acta Sanct._ (Bolland.), July 31; Sulp. Sever. _Vita S. Mart._
+457.
+
+[685] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 76; Maury, 13, 299. The story of beautiful
+women found in trees may be connected with the custom of placing images
+in trees, or with the belief that a goddess might be seen emerging from
+the tree in which she dwelt.
+
+[686] De la Tour, _Atlas des Monnaies Gaul_, 260, 286; Reinach, _Catal.
+Sommaire_, 29.
+
+[687] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 44.
+
+[688] See p. 162, _supra_.
+
+[689] See Cameron, _Gaelic Names of Plants_, 45. In Gregoire de Rostren,
+_Dict. françois-celt._ 1732, mistletoe is translated by _dour-dero_,
+"oak-water," and is said to be good for several evils.
+
+[690] Pliny, xxiv. 11.
+
+[691] Ibid.
+
+[692] Ibid. xxv. 9.
+
+[693] See Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_; De Nore, _Coutumes ... des
+Provinces de France_, 150 f.; Sauvé, _RC_ vi. 67, _CM_ ix. 331.
+
+[694] O'Grady, ii. 126.
+
+[695] Miss Hull, 172; see p. 77, _supra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ANIMAL WORSHIP.
+
+
+Animal worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of historic
+times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or attributes of
+divinities. The older cult had been connected with the pastoral stage in
+which the animals were divine, or with the agricultural stage in which
+they represented the corn-spirit, and perhaps with totemism. We shall
+study here (1) traces of the older animal cults; (2) the transformation
+of animal gods into symbols; and (3) traces of totemism.
+
+
+1.
+
+
+The presence of a bull with three cranes (_Tarvos Trigaranos_) on the
+Paris altar, along with the gods Esus, Juppiter, and Vulcan, suggests
+that it was a divine animal, or the subject of a divine myth. As has
+been seen, this bull may be the bull of the _Táin bó Cuailgne_. Both it
+and its opponent were reincarnations of the swine-herds of two gods. In
+the Irish sagas reincarnation is only attributed to gods or heroes, and
+this may point to the divinity of the bulls. We have seen that this and
+another altar may depict some myth in which the bull was the incarnation
+of a tree or vegetation spirit. The divine nature of the bull is
+attested by its presence on Gaulish coins as a religious symbol, and by
+images of the animal with three horns--an obvious symbol of
+divinity.[696] On such an image in bronze the Cimbri, Celticised
+Germans, swore. The images are pre-Roman, since they are found at
+Hallstadt and La Tčne. Personal names like Donnotaurus (the equivalent
+of the _Donn Taruos_ of the _Táin_) or Deiotaros ("divine bull"), show
+that men were called after the divine animal.[697] Similarly many
+place-names in which the word _taruos_ occurs, in Northern Italy, the
+Pyrenees, Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere, suggest that the places
+bearing these names were sites of a bull cult or that some myth, like
+that elaborated in the _Táin_, had been there localised.[698] But, as
+possibly in the case of Cúchulainn and the bull, the animal tended to
+become the symbol of a god, a tendency perhaps aided by the spread of
+Mithraism with its symbolic bull. A god Medros leaning on a bull is
+represented at Haguenau, possibly a form of Mider or of Meduris, a
+surname of Toutatis, unless Medros is simply Mithras.[699] Echoes of the
+cult of the bull or cow are heard in Irish tales of these animals
+brought from the _síd_, or of magic bulls or of cows which produced
+enormous supplies of milk, or in saintly legends of oxen leading a saint
+to the site of his future church.[700] These legends are also told of
+the swine,[701] and they perhaps arose when a Christian church took the
+place of the site of a local animal cult, legend fusing the old and the
+new cult by making the once divine animal point out the site of the
+church. A late relic of a bull cult may be found in the carnival
+procession of the _Boeuf Gras_ at Paris.
+
+A cult of a swine-god Moccus has been referred to. The boar was a divine
+symbol on standards, coins, and altars, and many bronze images of the
+animal have been found. These were temple treasures, and in one case the
+boar is three-horned.[702] But it was becoming the symbol of a goddess,
+as is seen by the altars on which it accompanies a goddess, perhaps of
+fertility, and by a bronze image of a goddess seated on a boar. The
+altars occur in Britain, of which the animal may be the emblem--the
+"Caledonian monster" of Claudian's poem.[703] The Galatian Celts
+abstained from eating the swine, and there has always been a prejudice
+against its flesh in the Highlands. This has a totemic appearance.[704]
+But the swine is esteemed in Ireland, and in the texts monstrous swine
+are the staple article of famous feasts.[705] These may have been
+legendary forms of old swine-gods, the feasts recalling sacrificial
+feasts on their flesh. Magic swine were also the immortal food of the
+gods. But the boar was tabu to certain persons, e.g. Diarmaid, though
+whether this is the attenuated memory of a clan totem restriction is
+uncertain. In Welsh story the swine comes from Elysium--a myth
+explaining the origin of its domestication, while domestication
+certainly implies an earlier cult of the animal. When animals come to be
+domesticated, the old cult restrictions, e.g. against eating them,
+usually pass away. For this reason, perhaps, the Gauls, who worshipped
+an anthropomorphic swine-god, trafficked in the animal and may have
+eaten it.[706] Welsh story also tells of the magic boar, the _Twrch
+Trwyth_, hunted by Arthur, possibly a folk-tale reminiscence of a boar
+divinity.[707] Place-names also point to a cult of the swine, and a
+recollection of its divinity may underlie the numerous Irish tales of
+magical swine.[708] The magic swine which issued from the cave of
+Cruachan and destroyed the young crops are suggestive of the
+theriomorphic corn-spirit in its occasional destructive aspect.[709]
+Bones of the swine, sometimes cremated, have been found in Celtic graves
+in Britain and at Hallstadt, and in one case the animal was buried alone
+in a tumulus at Hallstadt, just as sacred animals were buried in Egypt,
+Greece, and elsewhere.[710] When the animal was buried with the dead, it
+may have been as a sacrifice to the ghost or to the god of the
+underworld.
+
+The divinity of the serpent is proved by the occurrence of a horned
+serpent with twelve Roman gods on a Gallo-Roman altar.[711] In other
+cases a horned or ram's-headed serpent appears as the attribute of a
+god, and we have seen that the ram's-headed serpent may be a fusion of
+the serpent as a chthonian animal with the ram, sacrificed to the dead.
+In Greece Dionysus had the form both of a bull and a horned serpent, the
+horn being perhaps derived from the bull symbol. M. Reinach claims that
+the primitive elements of the Orphic myth of the Thracian
+Dionysos-Zagreus--divine serpents producing an egg whence came the
+horned snake Zagreus, occur in dislocated form in Gaul. There enlacing
+serpents were believed to produce a magic egg, and there a horned
+serpent was worshipped, but was not connected with the egg. But they may
+once have been connected, and if so, there may be a common foundation
+both for the Greek and the Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in
+Thrace.[712] The resemblances, however, may be mere coincidences, and
+horned serpents are known in other mythologies--the horn being perhaps a
+symbol of divinity. The horned serpent sometimes accompanies a god who
+has horns, possibly Cernunnos, the underworld god, in accordance with
+the chthonian character of the serpent.[713] In the Cůchulainn cycle
+Loeg on his visit to the Other-world saw two-headed serpents--perhaps a
+further hint of this aspect of the animal.[714]
+
+In all these instances of animal cults examples of the tendency to make
+the divine animal anthropomorphic have been seen. We have now to
+consider some instances of the complete anthropomorphic process.
+
+
+2.
+
+
+An old bear cult gave place to the cult of a bear goddess and probably
+of a god. At Berne--an old Celtic place-name meaning "bear"--was found a
+bronze group of a goddess holding a patera with fruit, and a bear
+approaching her as if to be fed. The inscription runs, _Deae Artioni
+Licinia Sabinilla_.[715] A local bear-cult had once existed at Berne,
+and is still recalled in the presence of the famous bears there, but the
+divine bear had given place to a goddess whose name and symbol were
+ursine. From an old Celtic _Artos_, fem. _Arta_, "bear," were derived
+various divine names. Of these _Dea Artio(n)_ means "bear goddess," and
+_Artaios_, equated with Mercury, is perhaps a bear god.[716] Another
+bear goddess, Andarta, was honoured at Die (Drôme), the word perhaps
+meaning "strong bear"--_And_- being an augmentive.[717] Numerous
+place-names derived from _Artos_ perhaps witness to a widespread cult of
+the bear, and the word also occurs in Welsh, and Irish personal
+names--Arthmael, Arthbiu, and possibly Arthur, and the numerous Arts of
+Irish texts. Descent from the divine bear is also signified in names
+like Welsh _Arthgen_, Irish _Artigan_, from _Artigenos_, "son of the
+bear." Another Celtic name for "bear" was the Gaulish _matu_, Irish
+_math_, found in _Matugenos_, "son of the bear," and in MacMahon, which
+is a corrupt form of _Mac-math-ghamhain_, "son of the bear's son," or
+"of the bear."[718]
+
+Similarly a cult of the stag seems to have given place to that of a god
+with stag's horns, represented on many bas-reliefs, and probably
+connected with the underworld.[719] The stag, as a grain-eater, may have
+been regarded as the embodiment of the corn-spirit, and then associated
+with the under-earth region whence the corn sprang, by one of those
+inversions of thought so common in the stage of transition from animal
+gods to gods with animal symbols. The elk may have been worshipped in
+Ireland, and a three antlered stag is the subject of a story in the
+Fionn saga.[720] Its third antler, like the third horn of bull or boar,
+may be a sign of divinity.
+
+The horse had also been worshipped, but a goddess Epona (Gaul. _epo-s_,
+"horse"), protectress of horses and asses, took its place, and had a
+far-spread cult. She rides a horse or mare with its foal, or is seated
+among horses, or feeds horses. A representation of a mare suckling a
+foal--a design analogous to those in which Epona feeds foals--shows that
+her primitive equine nature had not been forgotten.[721] The Gauls were
+horse-rearers, and Epona was the goddess of the craft; but, as in other
+cases, a cult of the horse must have preceded its domestication, and its
+flesh may not have been eaten, or, if so, only sacramentally.[722]
+Finally, the divine horse became the anthropomorphic horse-goddess. Her
+images were placed in stables, and several inscriptions and statuettes
+have been found in such buildings or in cavalry barracks.[723] The
+remains of the cult have been found in the Danube and Rhine valleys, in
+Eastern Gaul, and in Northern Italy, all Celtic regions, but it was
+carried everywhere by Roman cavalry recruited from the Celtic
+tribes.[724] Epona is associated with, and often has, the symbols of the
+_Matres_, and one inscription reads _Eponabus_, as if there were a group
+of goddesses called Epona.[725] A goddess who promoted the fertility of
+mares would easily be associated with goddesses of fertility. Epona may
+also have been confused with a river-goddess conceived of as a spirited
+steed. Water-spirits took that shape, and the _Matres_ were also
+river-goddesses.
+
+A statuette of a horse, with a dedication to a god Rudiobus, otherwise
+unknown, may have been carried processionally, while a mule has a
+dedication to Segomo, equated elsewhere with Mars. A mule god Mullo,
+also equated with Mars, is mentioned on several inscriptions.[726] The
+connection with Mars may have been found in the fact that the October
+horse was sacrificed to him for fertility, while the horse was probably
+associated with fertility among the Celts. The horse was sacrificed both
+by Celts and Teutons at the Midsummer festival, undoubtedly as a divine
+animal. Traces of the Celtic custom survive in local legends, and may be
+interpreted in the fuller light of the Teutonic accounts. In Ireland a
+man wearing a horse's head rushed through the fire, and was supposed to
+represent all cattle; in other words, he was a surrogate for them. The
+legend of Each Labra, a horse which lived in a mound and issued from it
+every Midsummer eve to give oracles for the coming year, is probably
+connected with the Midsummer sacrifice of the horse.[727] Among the
+Teutons the horse was a divine sacrificial animal, and was also sacred
+to Freyr, the god of fertility, while in Teutonic survivals a horse's
+head was placed in the Midsummer fire.[728] The horse was sporadically
+the representative of the corn-spirit, and at Rome the October horse was
+sacrificed in that capacity and for fertility.[729] Among the Celts, the
+horse sacrificed at Midsummer may have represented the vegetation-spirit
+and benefited all domestic animals--the old rite surviving in an
+attenuated form, as described above.
+
+Perhaps the goddess Damona was an animal divinity, if her name is
+derived from _damatos_, "sheep," cognate to Welsh _dafad_, "sheep," and
+Gaelic _damh_, "ox." Other divine animals, as has been seen, were
+associated with the waters, and the use of beasts and birds in
+divination doubtless points to their divine character. A cult of
+bird-gods may lurk behind the divine name Bran, "raven," and the
+reference to the magic birds of Rhiannon in the _Triads_.
+
+
+3.
+
+
+Animal worship is connected with totemism, and certain things point to
+its existence among the Celts, or to the existence of conditions out of
+which totemism was elsewhere developed. These are descent from animals,
+animal tabus, the sacramental eating of an animal, and exogamy.
+
+(1) _Descent from animals._--Celtic names implying descent from animals
+or plants are of two classes, clan and personal names. If the latter are
+totemistic, they must be derived from the former, since totemism is an
+affair of the clan, while the so-called "personal totem," exemplified by
+the American Indian _manitou_, is the guardian but never the ancestor of
+a man. Some clan names have already been referred to. Others are the
+Bibroci of south-east Britain, probably a beaver clan (_bebros_), and
+the Eburones, a yew-tree clan (_eburos_).[730] Irish clans bore animal
+names: some groups were called "calves," others "griffins," others "red
+deer," and a plant name is seen in _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree."[731]
+Such clan totemism perhaps underlies the stories of the "descendants of
+the wolf" at Ossory, who became wolves for a time as the result of a
+saintly curse. Other instances of lycanthropy were associated with
+certain families.[732] The belief in lycanthropy might easily attach
+itself to existing wolf-clans, the transformation being then explained
+as the result of a curse. The stories of Cormac mac Art, suckled by a
+she-wolf, of Lughaid mac Con, "son of a wolf-dog," suckled by that
+animal, and of Oisin, whose mother was a fawn, and who would not eat
+venison, are perhaps totemistic, while to totemism or to a cult of
+animals may be ascribed what early travellers in Ireland say of the
+people taking wolves as god-fathers and praying to them to do them no
+ill.[733] In Wales bands of warriors at the battle of Cattraeth are
+described in Oneurin's _Gododin_ as dogs, wolves, bears, and ravens,
+while Owein's band of ravens which fought against Arthur, may have been
+a raven clan, later misunderstood as actual ravens.[734] Certain groups
+of Dalriad Scots bore animal names--Cinel Gabran, "Little goat clan,"
+and Cinel Loarn, "Fox clan." Possibly the custom of denoting Highland
+clans by animal or plant badges may be connected with a belief in
+descent from plants or animals. On many coins an animal is represented
+on horseback, perhaps leading a clan, as birds led the Celts to the
+Danube area, and these may depict myths telling how the clan totem
+animal led the clan to its present territory.[735] Such myths may
+survive in legends relating how an animal led a saint to the site of his
+church.[736] Celtic warriors wore helmets with horns, and Irish story
+speaks of men with cat, dog, or goat heads.[737] These may have been men
+wearing a head-gear formed of the skin or head of the clan totem, hence
+remembered at a later time as monstrous beings, while the horned helmets
+would be related to the same custom. Solinus describes the Britons as
+wearing animal skins before going into battle.[738] Were these skins of
+totem animals under whose protection they thus placed themselves? The
+"forms of beasts, birds, and fishes" which the Cruithne or Picts
+tattooed on their bodies may have been totem marks, while the painting
+of their bodies with woad among the southern Britons may have been of
+the same character, though Cćsar's words hardly denote this. Certain
+marks on faces figured on Gaulish coins seem to be tattoo marks.[739]
+
+It is not impossible that an early wolf-totem may have been associated,
+because of the animal's nocturnal wanderings in forests, with the
+underworld whence, according to Celtic belief, men sprang and whither
+they returned, and whence all vegetation came forth. The Gallo-Roman
+Silvanus, probably an underworld god, wears a wolf-skin, and may thus be
+a wolf-god. There were various types of underworld gods, and this
+wolf-type--perhaps a local wolf-totem ancestor assimilated to a local
+"Dispater"--may have been the god of a clan who imposed its mythic wolf
+origin on other clans. Some Celtic bronzes show a wolf swallowing a man
+who offers no resistance, probably because he is dead. The wolf is much
+bigger than the man, and hence may be a god.[740] These bronzes would
+thus represent a belief setting forth the return of men to their totem
+ancestor after death, or to the underworld god connected with the totem
+ancestor, by saying that he devoured the dead, like certain Polynesian
+divinities and the Greek Eurynomos.
+
+In many individual names the first part is the name of an animal or
+plant, the second is usually _genos_, "born from," or "son of," e.g.
+Artigenos, Matugenos, "son of the bear" (_artos_, _matu_-); Urogenos,
+occurring as Urogenertos, "he who has the strength of the son of the
+urus"; Brannogenos, "son of the raven"; Cunogenos, "son of the
+dog."[741] These names may be derived from clan totem names, but they
+date back to a time when animals, trees, and men were on a common
+footing, and the possibility of human descent from a tree or an animal
+was believed in. Professor Rh[^y]s has argued from the frequency of
+personal names in Ireland, like Cúrói, "Hound of Rói," Cú Corb, "Corb's
+Hound," Mac Con, "Hound's Son," and Maelchon, "Hound's Slave," that
+there existed a dog totem or god, not of the Celts, but of a pre-Celtic
+race.[742] This assumes that totemism was non-Celtic, an assumption
+based on preconceived notions of what Celtic institutions ought to have
+been. The names, it should be observed, are personal, not clan names.
+
+(2) _Animal tabus._--Besides the dislike of swine's flesh already noted
+among certain Celtic groups, the killing and eating of the hare, hen,
+and goose were forbidden among the Britons. Cćsar says they bred these
+animals for amusement, but this reason assigned by him is drawn from his
+knowledge of the breeding of rare animals by rich Romans as a pastime,
+since he had no knowledge of the breeding of sacred animals which were
+not eaten--a common totemic or animal cult custom.[743] The hare was
+used for divination by Boudicca,[744] doubtless as a sacred animal, and
+it has been found that a sacred character still attaches to these
+animals in Wales. A cock or hen was ceremonially killed and eaten on
+Shrove Tuesday, either as a former totemic animal, or, less likely, as a
+representative of the corn-spirit. The hare is not killed in certain
+districts, but occasionally it is ceremonially hunted and slain
+annually, while at yearly fairs the goose is sold exclusively and
+eaten.[745] Elsewhere, e.g. in Devon, a ram or lamb is ceremonially
+slain and eaten, the eating being believed to confer luck.[746] The
+ill-luck supposed to follow the killing of certain animals may also be
+reminiscent of totemic tabus. Fish were not eaten by the Pictish Meatć
+and Caledonii, and a dislike of eating certain fresh-water fish was
+observed among certain eighteenth century Highlanders.[747] It has been
+already seen that certain fish living in sacred wells were tabu, and
+were believed to give oracles. Heron's flesh was disliked in Ireland,
+and it was considered unlucky to kill a swan in the Hebrides.[748] Fatal
+results following upon the killing or eating of an animal with which the
+eater was connected by name or descent are found in the Irish sagas.
+Conaire was son of a woman and a bird which could take human shape, and
+it was forbidden to him to hunt birds. On one occasion he did so, and
+for this as well as the breaking of other tabus, he lost his life.[749]
+It was tabu to Cúchulainn, "the hound of Culann," to eat dog's flesh,
+and, having been persuaded to do this, his strength went from him, and
+he perished. Diarmaid, having been forbidden to hunt a boar with which
+his life was connected, was induced by Fionn to break this tabu, and in
+consequence he lost his life by one of the boar's bristles entering his
+foot, or (in a variant) by the boar's killing him. Another instance is
+found in a tale of certain men transformed to badgers. They were slain
+by Cormac, and brought to his father Tadg to eat. Tadg unaccountably
+loathed them, because they were transformed men and his cousins.[750] In
+this tale, which may contain the _débris_ of totemic usage, the loathing
+arises from the fact that the badgers are men--a common form of myths
+explanatory of misunderstood totemic customs, but the old idea of the
+relation between a man and his totem is not lost sight of. The other
+tales may also be reminiscent of a clan totem tabu, later centred in a
+mythic hero. Perhaps the belief in lucky or unlucky animals, or in omens
+drawn from their appearance, may be based on old totem beliefs or in
+beliefs in the divinity of the animals.
+
+(3) _Sacramental eating of an animal._--The custom of "hunting the
+wren," found over the whole Celtic area, is connected with animal
+worship and may be totemistic in origin. In spite of its small size, the
+wren was known as the king of birds, and in the Isle of Man it was
+hunted and killed on Christmas or S. Stephen's day. The bird was carried
+in procession from door to door, to the accompaniment of a chant, and
+was then solemnly buried, dirges being sung. In some cases a feather was
+left at each house and carefully treasured, and there are traces of a
+custom of boiling and eating the bird.[751] In Ireland, the hunt and
+procession were followed by a feast, the materials of which were
+collected from house to house, and a similar usage obtained in France,
+where the youth who killed the bird was called "king."[752] In most of
+these districts it was considered unlucky or dangerous to kill the bird
+at any other time, yet it might be ceremonially killed once a year, the
+dead animal conferred luck, and was solemnly eaten or buried with signs
+of mourning. Similar customs with animals which are actually worshipped
+are found elsewhere,[753] and they lend support to the idea that the
+Celts regarded the wren as a divine animal, or perhaps a totem animal,
+that it was necessary to slay it ritually, and to carry it round the
+houses of the community to obtain its divine influence, to eat it
+sacramentally or to bury it. Probably like customs were followed in the
+case of other animals,[754] and these may have given rise to such
+stories as that of the eating of MacDatho's wonderful boar, as well as
+to myths which regarded certain animals, e.g. the swine, as the immortal
+food of the gods. Other examples of ritual survivals of such sacramental
+eating have already been noted, and it is not improbable that the eating
+of a sacred pastoral animal occurred at Samhain.
+
+(4) _Exogamy._--Exogamy and the counting of descent through the mother
+are closely connected with totemism, and some traces of both are found
+among the Celts. Among the Picts, who were, perhaps, a Celtic group of
+the Brythonic stock, these customs survived in the royal house. The
+kingship passed to a brother of the king by the same mother, or to a
+sister's son, while the king's father was never king and was frequently
+a "foreigner." Similar rules of succession prevailed in early Aryan
+royal houses--Greek and Roman,--and may, as Dr. Stokes thought, have
+existed at Tara in Ireland, while in a Fian tale of Oisin he marries the
+daughter of the king of Tír na n-Og, and succeeds him as king partly for
+that reason, and partly because he had beaten him in the annual race for
+the kingship.[755] Such an athletic contest for the kingship was known
+in early Greece, and this tale may support the theory of the Celtic
+priest-kingship, the holder of the office retaining it as long as he was
+not defeated or slain. Traces of succession through a sister's son are
+found in the _Mabinogion_, and Livy describes how the mythic Celtic king
+Ambicatus sent not his own but his sister's sons to found new
+kingdoms.[756] Irish and Welsh divine and heroic groups are named after
+the mother, not the father--the children of Danu and of Dôn, and the men
+of Domnu. Anu is mother of the gods, Buanann of heroes. The eponymous
+ancestor of the Scots is a woman, Scota, and the earliest colonisers of
+Ireland are women, not men. In the sagas gods and heroes have frequently
+a matronymic, and the father's name is omitted--Lug mac Ethnend,
+Conchobar mac Nessa, Indech, son of De Domnann, Corpre, son of Etain,
+and others. Perhaps parallel to this is the custom of calling men after
+their wives--e.g. the son of Fergus is Fer Tlachtga, Tlachtga's
+husband.[757] In the sagas, females (goddesses and heroines) have a high
+place accorded to them, and frequently choose their own lovers or
+husbands--customs suggestive of the matriarchate. Thus what was once a
+general practice was later confined to the royal house or told of divine
+or heroic personages. Possibly certain cases of incest may really be
+exaggerated accounts of misunderstood unions once permissible by totemic
+law. Cćsar speaks of British polyandry, brothers, sons, and fathers
+sharing a wife in common.[758] Strabo speaks of Irish unions with
+mothers and sisters, perhaps referring not to actual practice but to
+reports of saga tales of incest.[759] Dio Cassius speaks of community of
+wives among the Caledonians and Meatć, and Jerome says much the same of
+the Scoti and Atecotti.[760] These notices, with the exception of
+Cćsar's, are vague, yet they refer to marriage customs different from
+those known to their reporters. In Irish sagas incest legends circle
+round the descendants of Etain--fathers unite with daughters, a son with
+his mother, a woman has a son by her three brothers (just as Ecne was
+son of Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba), and is also mother of Crimthan by
+that son.[761] Brother and sister unions occur both in Irish and Welsh
+story.[762]
+
+In these cases incest with a mother cannot be explained by totemic
+usage, but the cases may be distorted reminiscences of what might occur
+under totemism, namely, a son taking the wives of his father other than
+his own mother, when those were of a different totem from his own. Under
+totemism, brothers and sisters by different mothers having different
+totems, might possibly unite, and such unions are found in many
+mythologies. Later, when totemism passed away, the unions, regarded with
+horror, would be supposed to take place between children by the same
+mother. According to totem law, a father might unite with his daughter,
+since she was of her mother's totem, but in practice this was frowned
+upon. Polygamy also may co-exist with totemism, and of course involves
+the counting of descent through the mother as a rule. If, as is
+suggested by the "debility" of the Ultonians, and by other evidence, the
+couvade was a Celtic institution, this would also point to the existence
+of the matriarchate with the Celts. To explain all this as pre-Aryan, or
+to say that the classical notices refer to non-Aryan tribes and that the
+evidence in the Irish sagas only shows that the Celts had been
+influenced by the customs of aboriginal tribes among whom they
+lived,[763] is to neglect the fact that the customs are closely bound up
+with Celtic life, while it leaves unexplained the influence of such
+customs upon a people whose own customs, according to this theory, were
+so totally different. The evidence, taken as a whole, points to the
+existence of totemism among the early Celts, or, at all events, of the
+elements which elsewhere compose it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Celtic animal worship dates back to the primitive hunting and pastoral
+period, when men worshipped the animals which they hunted or reared.
+They may have apologised to the animal hunted and slain--a form of
+worship, or, where animals were not hunted or were reared and
+worshipped, one of them may have been slain annually and eaten to obtain
+its divine power. Care was taken to preserve certain sacred animals
+which were not hunted, and this led to domestication, the abstinence of
+earlier generations leading to an increased food supply at a later time,
+when domesticated animals were freely slain. But the earlier sacramental
+slaying of such animals survived in the religious aspect of their
+slaughter at the beginning of winter.[764] The cult of animals was also
+connected with totemic usage, though at a later stage this cult was
+replaced by that of anthropomorphic divinities, with the older divine
+animals as their symbols, sacrificial victims, and the like. This
+evolution now led to the removal of restrictions upon slaying and eating
+the animals. On the other hand, the more primitive animal cults may have
+remained here and there. Animal cults were, perhaps, largely confined to
+men. With the rise of agriculture mainly as an art in the hands of
+women, and the consequent cult of the Earth-mother, of fertility and
+corn-spirits probably regarded as female, the sacramental eating of the
+divine animal may have led to the slaying and eating of a human or
+animal victim supposed to embody such a spirit. Later the two cults were
+bound to coalesce, and the divine animal and the animal embodiment of
+the vegetation spirit would not be differentiated. On the other hand,
+when men began to take part in women's fertility cults, the fact that
+such spirits were female or were perhaps coming to be regarded as
+goddesses, may have led men to envisage certain of the anthropomorphic
+animal divinities as goddesses, since some of these, e.g. Epona and
+Damona, are female. But with the increasing participation of men in
+agriculture, the spirits or goddesses of fertility would tend to become
+male, or the consorts or mothers of gods of fertility, though the
+earlier aspect was never lost sight of, witness the Corn-Mother. The
+evolution of divine priest-kings would cause them to take the place of
+the earlier priestesses of these cults, one of whom may have been the
+divine victim. Yet in local survivals certain cults were still confined
+to women, and still had their priestesses.[765]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[696] Reinach, _BF_ 66, 244. The bull and three cranes may be a rebus on
+the name of the bull, _Tarvos Trikarenos_, "the three-headed," or
+perhaps _Trikeras_, "three-horned."
+
+[697] Plutarch, _Marius_, 23; Cćsar, vii. 65; D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_,
+49.
+
+[698] Holder, _s.v._ _Tarba_, _Tarouanna_, _Tarvisium_, etc.; D'Arbois,
+_Les Druides_, 155; S. Greg. _In Glor. Conf._ 48.
+
+[699] _CIL_ xiii. 6017; _RC_ xxv. 47; Holder, ii. 528.
+
+[700] Leahy, ii. 105 f.; Curtin, _MFI_ 264, 318; Joyce, _PN_ i. 174;
+Rees, 453. Cf. Ailred, _Life of S. Ninian_, c. 8.
+
+[701] Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kentig._ c. 24; Rees, 293, 323.
+
+[702] Tacitus, _Germ._ xlv.; Blanchet, i. 162, 165; Reinach, _BF_ 255
+f., _CMR_ i. 168; Bertrand, _Arch. Celt._ 419.
+
+[703] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, 268; Reinach, _RC_ xxii. 158, _CMR_
+i. 67.
+
+[704] Pausan, vii. 17, 18; Johnson, _Journey_, 136.
+
+[705] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 127; _IT_ i. 99, 256 (Bricriu's feast and the tale
+of Macdatho's swine).
+
+[706] Strabo, iv. 4. 3, says these swine attacked strangers. Varro, _de
+Re Rustica_, ii. 4, admires their vast size. Cf. Polyb. ii. 4.
+
+[707] The hunt is first mentioned in Nennius, c. 79, and then appears as
+a full-blown folk-tale in _Kulhwych_, Loth, i. 185 f. Here the boar is a
+transformed prince.
+
+[708] I have already suggested, p. 106, _supra_, that the places where
+Gwydion halted with the swine of Elysium were sites of a swine-cult.
+
+[709] _RC_ xiii. 451. Cf. also _TOS_ vi. "The Enchanted Pigs of Oengus,"
+and Campbell, _LF_ 53.
+
+[710] _L'Anthropologie_, vi. 584; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 274,
+283, 454; _Arch. Rev._ ii. 120.
+
+[711] _Rev. Arch._ 1897, 313.
+
+[712] Reinach, "Zagreus le serpent cornu," _Rev. Arch_. xxxv. 210.
+
+[713] Reinach, _BF_ 185; Bertrand, 316.
+
+[714] "Cúchulainn's Sick-bed," D'Arbois, v. 202.
+
+[715] See Reinach, _CMR_ i. 57.
+
+[716] _CIL_ xiii. 5160, xii. 2199. Rh[^y]s, however, derives Artaios
+from _ar_, "ploughed land," and equates the god with Mercurius Cultor.
+
+[717] _CIL_ xii. 1556-1558; D'Arbois, _RC_ x. 165.
+
+[718] For all these place and personal names, see Holder and D'Arbois,
+_op. cit. Les Celtes_, 47 f., _Les Druides_, 157 f.
+
+[719] See p. 32, _supra_; Reinach, _CMR_ i. 72, _Rev. Arch._ ii. 123.
+
+[720] O'Grady, ii. 123.
+
+[721] Epona is fully discussed by Reinach in his _Epona_, 1895, and in
+articles (illustrated) in _Rev. Arch._ vols. 26, 33, 35, 40, etc. See
+also ii. [1898], 190.
+
+[722] Reinach suggests that this may explain why Vercingetorix, in view
+of siege by the Romans, sent away his horses. They were too sacred to be
+eaten. Cćsar, vii. 71; Reinach, _RC_ xxvii. 1 f.
+
+[723] Juvenal, viii. 154; Apul. _Metam._ iii. 27; Min. Felix, _Octav._
+xxvii. 7.
+
+[724] For the inscriptions, see Holder, _s.v._ "Epona."
+
+[725] _CIL_ iii. 7904.
+
+[726] _CIL_ xiii. 3071; Reinach, _BF_ 253, _CMR_ i. 64, _Répert. de la
+Stat._ ii. 745; Holder, ii. 651-652.
+
+[727] Granger, _Worship of the Romans_, 113; Kennedy, 135.
+
+[728] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 49, 619, 657, 661-664.
+
+[729] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 281, 315.
+
+[730] Cćsar, v. 21, 27. Possibly the Dea Bibracte of the Aeduans was a
+beaver goddess.
+
+[731] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 207; Elton, 298.
+
+[732] Girald. Cambr. _Top. Hib._ ii. 19, _RC_ ii. 202; _Folk-Lore_, v.
+310; _IT_ iii. 376.
+
+[733] O'Grady, ii. 286, 538; Campbell, _The Fians_, 78; Thiers, _Traité
+des Superstitions_, ii. 86.
+
+[734] Lady Guest, ii. 409 f.
+
+[735] Blanchet, i. 166, 295, 326, 390.
+
+[736] See p. 209, _supra_.
+
+[737] Diod. Sic. v. 30; _IT_ iii. 385; _RC_ xxvi. 139; Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+593.
+
+[738] _Man. Hist. Brit._ p. x.
+
+[739] Herodian, iii. 14, 8; Duald MacFirbis in Irish _Nennius_, p. vii;
+Cćsar, v. 10; _ZCP_ iii. 331.
+
+[740] See Reinach, "Les Carnassiers androphages dans l'art
+gallo-romain," _CMR_ i. 279.
+
+[741] See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[742] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 267.
+
+[743] Cćsar, v. 12.
+
+[744] Dio Cassius, lxii. 2.
+
+[745] See a valuable paper by N.W. Thomas, "Survivance du Culte des
+Animaux dans le Pays de Galles," in _Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions_,
+xxxviii. 295 f., and a similar paper by Gomme, _Arch. Rev._ 1889, 217 f.
+Both writers seem to regard these cults as pre-Celtic.
+
+[746] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 30, _Village Community_, 113.
+
+[747] Dio Cass. lxxii. 21; Logan, _Scottish Gael_, ii. 12.
+
+[748] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 529; Martin, 71.
+
+[749] _RC_ xxii. 20, 24, 390-1.
+
+[750] _IT_ iii. 385.
+
+[751] Waldron, _Isle of Man_, 49; Train, _Account of the Isle of Man_,
+ii. 124.
+
+[752] Vallancey, _Coll. de Reb. Hib._ iv. No. 13; Clément, _Fétes_, 466.
+For English customs, see Henderson, _Folklore of the Northern Counties_,
+125.
+
+[753] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 380, 441, 446.
+
+[754] For other Welsh instances of the danger of killing certain birds,
+see Thomas, _op. cit._ xxxviii. 306.
+
+[755] Frazer, _Kingship_, 261; Stokes, _RC_ xvi. 418; Larminie, _Myths
+and Folk-tales_, 327.
+
+[756] See Rh[^y]s, _Welsh People_, 44; Livy, v. 34.
+
+[757] Cf. _IT_ iii. 407, 409.
+
+[758] Cćsar, v. 14.
+
+[759] Strabo, iv. 5. 4.
+
+[760] Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Jerome, _Adv. Jovin._ ii. 7. Giraldus has
+much to say of incest in Wales, probably actual breaches of moral law
+among a barbarous people (_Descr. Wales_, ii. 6).
+
+[761] _RC_ xii. 235, 238, xv. 291, xvi. 149; _LL_ 23_a_, 124_b_. In
+various Irish texts a child is said to have three fathers--probably a
+reminiscence of polyandry. See p. 74, _supra_, and _RC_ xxiii. 333.
+
+[762] _IT_ i. 136; Loth, i. 134 f.; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 308.
+
+[763] Zimmer, "Matriarchy among the Picts," in Henderson, _Leabhar nan
+Gleann_.
+
+[764] See p. 259, _infra_.
+
+[765] See p. 274, _infra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+COSMOGONY.
+
+
+Whether the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and wife is
+uncertain. Such a conception is world-wide, and myth frequently explains
+in different ways the reason of the separation of the two. Among the
+Polynesians the children of heaven and earth--the winds, forests, and
+seas personified--angry at being crushed between their parents in
+darkness, rose up and separated them. This is in effect the Greek myth
+of Uranus, or Heaven, and Gća, or Earth, divorced by their son Kronos,
+just as in Hindu myth Dyaus, or Sky, and Prithivi, or Earth, were
+separated by Indra. Uranus in Greece gave place to Zeus, and, in India,
+Dyaus became subordinate to Indra. Thus the primitive Heaven personified
+recedes, and his place is taken by a more individualised god. But
+generally Mother Earth remains a constant quantity. Earth was nearer man
+and was more unchanging than the inconstant sky, while as the producer
+of the fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the source of all
+things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of
+other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of
+agricultural peoples, who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her
+with orgiastic rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing
+civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of man,
+and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and rejoicing like
+man himself. Or where a higher religion ousts the older one, the ritual
+is still retained among the folk, though its meaning may be forgotten.
+
+The Celts may thus have possessed the Heaven and Earth myth, but all
+trace of it has perished. There are, however, remnants of myths showing
+how the sky is supported by trees, a mountain, or by pillars. A high
+mountain near the sources of the Rhone was called "the column of the
+sun," and was so lofty as to hide the sun from the people of the
+south.[766] It may have been regarded as supporting the sky, while the
+sun moved round it. In an old Irish hymn and its gloss, Brigit and
+Patrick are compared to the two pillars of the world, probably alluding
+to some old myth of sky or earth resting on pillars.[767] Traces of this
+also exist in folk-belief, as in the accounts of islands resting on four
+pillars, or as in the legend of the church of Kernitou which rests on
+four pillars on a congealed sea and which will be submerged when the sea
+liquefies--a combination of the cosmogonic myth with that of a great
+inundation.[768] In some mythologies a bridge or ladder connects heaven
+and earth. There may be a survival of some such myth in an Irish poem
+which speaks of the _drochet bethad_, or "bridge of life," or in the
+_drochaid na flaitheanas_, or "bridge of heaven," of Hebridean
+folk-lore.[769]
+
+Those gods who were connected with the sky may have been held to dwell
+there or on the mountain supporting it. Others, like the Celtic
+Dispater, dwelt underground. Some were connected with mounds and hills,
+or were supposed to have taken up their abode in them. Others, again,
+dwelt in a distant region, the Celtic Elysium, which, once the Celts
+reached the sea, became a far-off island. Those divinities worshipped in
+groves were believed to dwell there and to manifest themselves at midday
+or midnight, while such objects of nature as rivers, wells, and trees
+were held to be the abode of gods or spirits. Thus it is doubtful
+whether the Celts ever thought of their gods as dwelling in one Olympus.
+The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to have come from heaven, but this may be
+the mere assertion of some scribe who knew not what to make of this
+group of beings.
+
+In Celtic belief men were not so much created by gods as descended from
+them. "All the Gauls assert that they are descended from Dispater, and
+this, they say, has been handed down to them by the Druids."[770]
+Dispater was a Celtic underworld god of fertility, and the statement
+probably presupposes a myth, like that found among many primitive
+peoples, telling how men once lived underground and thence came to the
+surface of the earth. But it also points to their descent from the god
+of the underworld. Thither the dead returned to him who was ancestor of
+the living as well as lord of the dead.[771] On the other hand, if the
+earth had originally been thought of as a female, she as Earth-mother
+would be ancestress of men. But her place in the myth would easily be
+taken by the Earth or Under-earth god, perhaps regarded as her son or
+her consort. In other cases, clans, families, or individuals often
+traced their descent to gods or divine animals or plants. Classical
+writers occasionally speak of the origin of branches of the Celtic race
+from eponymous founders, perhaps from their knowledge of existing Celtic
+myths.[772] Ammianus Marcellinus also reports a Druidic tradition to the
+effect that some Gauls were indigenous, some had come from distant
+islands, and others from beyond the Rhine.[773] But this is not so much
+a myth of origins, as an explanation of the presence of different
+peoples in Gaul--the aborigines, the Celtć, and the Belgic Gauls. M.
+D'Arbois assumes that "distant islands" means the Celtic Elysium, which
+he regards as the land of the dead,[774] but the phrase is probably no
+more than a distorted reminiscence of the far-off lands whence early
+groups of Celts had reached Gaul.
+
+Of the creation of the world no complete myth has survived, though from
+a gloss to the _Senchus Mór_ we learn that the Druids, like the
+Br[=a]hmans, boasted that they had made sun, moon, earth, and sea--a
+boast in keeping with their supposed powers over the elements.[775]
+Certain folk-beliefs, regarding the origin of different parts of nature,
+bear a close resemblance to primitive cosmogonic myths, and they may be
+taken as _disjecta membra_ of similar myths held by the Celts and
+perhaps taught by the Druids. Thus sea, rivers, or springs arose from
+the micturition of a giant, fairy, or saint, or from their sweat or
+blood. Islands are rocks cast by giants, and mountains are the material
+thrown up by them as they were working on the earth. Wells sprang up
+from the blood of a martyr or from the touch of a saint's or a fairy's
+staff.[776] The sea originated from a magic cask given by God to a
+woman. The spigot, when opened, could not be closed again, and the cask
+never ceased running until the waters covered the earth--a tale with
+savage parallels.[777] In all these cases, giant, saint, or fairy has
+doubtless taken the place of a god, since the stories have a very
+primitive _facies_. The giant is frequently Gargantua, probably himself
+once a divinity. Other references in Irish texts point to the common
+cosmogonic myth of the earth having gradually assumed its present form.
+Thus many new lakes and plains are said to have been formed in Ireland
+during the time of Partholan and Nemed, the plains being apparently
+built up out of existing materials.[778] In some cases the formation of
+a lake was the result of digging the grave of some personage after whom
+the lake was then named.[779] Here we come upon the familiar idea of the
+danger of encroaching on the domain of a deity, e.g. that of the
+Earth-god, by digging the earth, with the consequent punishment by a
+flood. The same conception is found in Celtic stories of a lake or river
+formed from the overflowing of a sacred well through human carelessness
+or curiosity, which led to the anger of the divinity of the well.[780]
+Or, again, a town or castle is submerged on account of the wickedness of
+its inhabitants, the waters being produced by the curse of God or a
+saint (replacing a pagan god) and forming a lake.[781] These may be
+regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in one case, that of
+the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved Dwyvan and Dwyfach and
+a pair of all kinds of animals when Lake Llion overflowed, has
+apparently borrowed from the Biblical story.[782] In other cases lakes
+are formed from the tears of a god, e.g. Manannan, whose tears at the
+death of his son formed three lochs in Erin.[783] Apollonius reports
+that the waters of Eridanus originated from the tears of Apollo when
+driven from heaven by his father.[784] This story, which he says is
+Celtic, has been clothed by him in a Greek form, and the god in question
+may have been Belenos, equated with Apollo. Sometimes the formation of
+streams was ascribed to great hail-storms--an evident mythic rendering
+of the damage done by actual spates, while the Irish myths of
+"illimitable sea-bursts," of which three particular instances are often
+mentioned, were doubtless the result of the experience of tidal waves.
+
+Although no complete account of the end of all things, like that of the
+Scandinavian Ragnarok, has survived, scattered hints tell of its former
+existence. Strabo says that the Druids taught that "fire and water must
+one day prevail"--an evident belief in some final cataclysm.[785] This
+is also hinted at in the words of certain Gauls to Alexander, telling
+him that what they feared most of all was the fall of the heavens upon
+their heads.[786] In other words, they feared what would be the signal
+of the end of all things. On Irish ground the words of Conchobar may
+refer to this. He announced that he would rescue the captives and spoil
+taken by Medb, unless the heavens fell, and the earth burst open, and
+the sea engulphed all things.[787] Such a myth mingled with Christian
+beliefs may underlie the prophecy of Badb after Mag-tured regarding the
+evils to come and the end of the world, and that of Fercertne in the
+_Colloquy of the Two Sages_.[788] Both have a curious resemblance to the
+Sybil's prophecy of doom in the Voluspa. If the gods themselves were
+involved in such a catastrophe, it would not be surprising, since in
+some aspects their immortality depended on their eating and drinking
+immortal food and drink.[789]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[766] Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 644 f.
+
+[767] _IT_ i. 25; Gaidoz, _ZCP_ i. 27.
+
+[768] _Annales de Bretagne_, x. 414.
+
+[769] _IT_ i. 50, cf. 184; _Folk-Lore_, vi. 170.
+
+[770] Cćsar, vi. 18.
+
+[771] See p. 341, _infra_.
+
+[772] Diod. Sic. v. 24; Appian, _Illyrica_, 2.
+
+[773] Amm. Marcel, xv. 9.
+
+[774] D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.
+
+[775] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is said to have
+been created thus--his body of earth, his blood of the sea, his face of
+the sun, his breath of the wind, etc. This is also found in a Frisian
+tale (Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Bor._ i. 479), and both stories
+present an inversion of well-known myths about the creation of the
+universe from the members of a giant.
+
+[776] Sébillot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf. _RC_ xv.
+482, xvi. 152.
+
+[777] Sébillot, ii. 6.
+
+[778] _LL_ 56; Keating, 117, 123.
+
+[779] _RC_ xv. 429, xvi. 277.
+
+[780] See p. 191, _supra_.
+
+[781] Sébillot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. 372, _infra_.
+
+[782] _Triads_ in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 583, 663.
+
+[783] _RC_ xvi. 50, 146.
+
+[784] Apoll. iv. 609 f.
+
+[785] Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[786] Arrian, _Anab._ i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian, 85.
+
+[787] _LL_ 94; Miss Hull, 205.
+
+[788] _RC_ xii. 111, xxvi. 33.
+
+[789] A possible survival of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da
+Derga's Hostel" (_RC_ xxii. 54), where we hear of Leviathan that
+surrounds the globe and strikes with his tail to overwhelm the world.
+But this may be a reflection of Norse myths of the Midgard serpent,
+sometimes equated with Leviathan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION.
+
+
+The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of
+human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were
+closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the
+principle of a life for a life, or to propitiate the gods, or in order
+to divine the future from the entrails of the victim. We shall examine
+the Celtic custom of human sacrifice from these points of view first.
+
+Cćsar says that those afflicted with disease or engaged in battle or
+danger offer human victims or vow to do so, because unless man's life be
+given for man's life, the divinity of the gods cannot be appeased.[790]
+The theory appears to have been that the gods sent disease or ills when
+they desired a human life, but that any life would do; hence one in
+danger might escape by offering another in his stead. In some cases the
+victims may have been offered to disease demons or diseases personified,
+such as Celtic imagination still believes in,[791] rather than to gods,
+or, again, they may have been offered to native gods of healing. Coming
+danger could also be averted on the same principle, and though the
+victims were usually slaves, in times of great peril wives and children
+were sacrificed.[792] After a defeat, which showed that the gods were
+still implacable, the wounded and feeble were slain, or a great leader
+would offer himself.[793] Or in such a case the Celts would turn their
+weapons against themselves, making of suicide a kind of sacrifice,
+hoping to bring victory to the survivors.[794]
+
+The idea of the victim being offered on the principle of a life for a
+life is illustrated by a custom at Marseilles in time of pestilence. One
+of the poorer classes offered himself to be kept at the public expense
+for some time. He was then led in procession, clad in sacred boughs, and
+solemnly cursed, and prayer was made that on him might fall the evils of
+the community. Then he was cast headlong down. Here the victim stood for
+the lives of the city and was a kind of scape-victim, like those at the
+Thargelia.[795]
+
+Human victims were also offered by way of thanksgiving after victory,
+and vows were often made before a battle, promising these as well as
+part of the spoil. For this reason the Celts would never ransom their
+captives, but offered them in sacrifice, animals captured being
+immolated along with them.[796] The method of sacrifice was slaughter by
+sword or spear, hanging, impaling, dismembering, and drowning. Some gods
+were propitiated by one particular mode of sacrifice--Taranis by
+burning, Teutates by suffocation, Esus (perhaps a tree-god) by hanging
+on a tree. Drowning meant devoting the victim to water-divinities.[797]
+
+Other propitiatory sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a general
+or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves or even
+members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude outline of a
+human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as well as some animal
+victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says that the victims were
+malefactors who had been kept in prison for five years, and that some of
+them were impaled.[798] This need not mean that the holocausts were
+quinquennial, for they may have been offered yearly, at Midsummer, to
+judge by the ritual of modern survivals.[799] The victims perished in
+that element by which the sun-god chiefly manifested himself, and by the
+sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility were
+promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an earlier
+slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation, though their
+value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence. This is suggested
+by Strabo's words that the greater the number of murders the greater
+would be the fertility of the land, probably meaning that there would
+then be more criminals as sacrificial victims.[800] Varro also speaks of
+human sacrifice to a god equated with Saturn, offered because of all
+seeds the human race is the best, i.e. human victims are most productive
+of fertility.[801] Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a
+propitiatory sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious
+ritual springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both
+points of view the intention was the same--the promotion of fertility in
+field and fold.
+
+Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by Tacitus, who
+says that "the Druids consult the gods in the palpitating entrails of
+men," and by Strabo, who describes the striking down of the victim by
+the sword and the predicting of the future from his convulsive
+movements.[802] To this we shall return.
+
+Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were amazed at
+its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole religion in a
+phrase--_druidarum religionem dirć immanitatis_.[803] By the year 40
+A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered symbolically, the Druids
+pretending to strike them and drawing a little blood from them.[804]
+Only the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called
+philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the Celts
+of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D.[805] Dio Cassius
+describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims
+(prisoners of war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta--their breasts cut
+off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their
+bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.[806] Tacitus speaks of
+the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish
+Celts, patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such
+practices,[807] but there is no _a priori_ reason which need set them
+apart from other races on the same level of civilisation in this custom.
+The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate the number of the victims, but they
+certainly attest the existence of the practice. From the _Dindsenchas_,
+which describes many archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of
+every issue and the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm
+Cruaich--a sacrifice of the first-born,--and that at one festival the
+prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that three-fourths of
+them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic
+rites.[808] Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the
+mythic tales in the _Dindsenchas_. Yet the tales were doubtless quite
+credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly
+founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices
+in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not
+have been offered on other occasions also.
+
+The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in the
+poetical version of the cult of Cromm--
+
+  "Milk and corn
+   They would ask from him speedily,
+   In return for one-third of their healthy issue."[809]
+
+The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been two-thirds
+of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk[810]--an
+obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain
+corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,[811] but there can be no
+doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice--the offering of an agricultural
+folk to the divinities who helped or retarded growth. Possibly part of
+the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the god, was
+buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote
+fertility. The blood was sprinkled on the image of the god. Such
+practices were as obnoxious to Christian missionaries as they had been
+to the Roman Government, and we learn that S. Patrick preached against
+"the slaying of yoke oxen and milch cows and the burning of the
+first-born progeny" at the Fair of Taillte.[812] As has been seen, the
+Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda story, in which the victim is
+offered not to a dragon, but to the Fomorians, may have received this
+form from actual ritual in which human victims were sacrificed to the
+Fomorians.[813] In a Japanese version of the same story the maiden is
+offered to the sea-gods. Another tale suggests the offering of human
+victims to remove blight. In this case the land suffers from blight
+because the adulteress Becuma, married to the king of Erin, has
+pretended to be a virgin. The Druids announced that the remedy was to
+slay the son of an undefiled couple and sprinkle the doorposts and the
+land with his blood. Such a youth was found, but at his mother's request
+a two-bellied cow, in which two birds were found, was offered in his
+stead.[814] In another instance in the _Dindsenchas_, hostages,
+including the son of a captive prince, are offered to remove plagues--an
+equivalent to the custom of the Gauls.[815]
+
+Human sacrifices were also offered when the foundation of a new building
+was laid. Such sacrifices are universal, and are offered to propitiate
+the Earth spirits or to provide a ghostly guardian for the building. A
+Celtic legend attaches such a sacrifice to the founding of the monastery
+at Iona. S. Oran agrees to adopt S. Columba's advice "to go under the
+clay of this island to hallow it," and as a reward he goes straight to
+heaven.[816] The legend is a semi-Christian form of the memory of an old
+pagan custom, and it is attached to Oran probably because he was the
+first to be buried in the island. In another version, nothing is said of
+the sacrifice. The two saints are disputing about the other world, and
+Oran agrees to go for three days into the grave to settle the point at
+issue. At the end of that time the grave is opened, and the triumphant
+Oran announces that heaven and hell are not such as they are alleged to
+be. Shocked at his latitudinarian sentiments, Columba ordered earth to
+be piled over him, lest he cause a scandal to the faith, and Oran was
+accordingly buried alive.[817] In a Welsh instance, Vortigern's castle
+cannot be built, for the stones disappear as soon as they are laid. Wise
+men, probably Druids, order the sacrifice of a child born without a
+father, and the sprinkling of the site with his blood.[818] "Groaning
+hostages" were placed under a fort in Ireland, and the foundation of the
+palace of Emain Macha was also laid with a human victim.[819] Many
+similar legends are connected with buildings all over the Celtic area,
+and prove the popularity of the pagan custom. The sacrifice of human
+victims on the funeral pile will be discussed in a later chapter.
+
+Of all these varieties of human sacrifice, those offered for fertility,
+probably at Beltane or Midsummer, were the most important. Their
+propitiatory nature is of later origin, and their real intention was to
+strengthen the divinity by whom the processes of growth were directed.
+Still earlier, one victim represented the divinity, slain that his life
+might be revived in vigour. The earth was sprinkled with his blood and
+fed with his flesh in order to fertilise it, and possibly the
+worshippers partook sacramentally of the flesh. Propitiatory holocausts
+of human victims had taken the place of the slain representative of a
+god, but their value in promoting fertility was not forgotten. The
+sacramental aspect of the rite is perhaps to be found in Pliny's words
+regarding "the slaying of a human being as a most religious act and
+eating the flesh as a wholesome remedy" among the Britons.[820] This may
+merely refer to "medicinal cannibalism," such as still survives in
+Italy, but the passage rather suggests sacramental cannibalism, the
+eating of part of a divine victim, such as existed in Mexico and
+elsewhere. Other acts of cannibalism are referred to by classical
+writers. Diodorus says the Irish ate their enemies, and Pausanias
+describes the eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children among
+the Galatian Celts. Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain
+(sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and Livy, and Solinus
+describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain
+and drinking it.[821] In some of these cases the intention may simply
+have been to obtain the dead enemy's strength, but where a sacrificial
+victim was concerned, the intention probably went further than this. The
+blood of dead relatives was also drunk in order to obtain their virtues,
+or to be brought into closer _rapport_ with them.[822] This is analogous
+to the custom of blood brotherhood, which also existed among the Celts
+and continued as a survival in the Western Isles until a late date.[823]
+
+One group of Celtic human sacrifices was thus connected with primitive
+agricultural ritual, but the warlike energies of the Celts extended the
+practice. Victims were easily obtained, and offered to the gods of war.
+Yet even these sacrifices preserved some trace of the older rite, in
+which the victim represented a divinity or spirit.
+
+Head-hunting, described in classical writings and in Irish texts, had
+also a sacrificial aspect. The heads of enemies were hung at the
+saddle-bow or fixed on spears, as the conquerors returned home with
+songs of victory.[824] This gruesome picture often recurs in the texts.
+Thus, after the death of Cúchulainn, Conall Cernach returned to Emer
+with the heads of his slayers strung on a withy. He placed each on a
+stake and told Emer the name of the owner. A Celtic _oppidum_ or a
+king's palace must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island
+village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of
+houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such
+a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it.[825] A room in the
+palace was sometimes a store for such heads, or they were preserved in
+cedar-wood oil or in coffers. They were proudly shown to strangers as a
+record of conquest, but they could not be sold for their weight in
+gold.[826] After a battle a pile of heads was made and the number of the
+slain was counted, and at annual festivals warriors produced the tongues
+of enemies as a record of their prowess.[827]
+
+These customs had a religious aspect. In cutting off a head the Celt
+saluted the gods, and the head was offered to them or to ancestral
+spirits, and sometimes kept in grove or temple.[828] The name given to
+the heads of the slain in Ireland, the "mast of Macha," shows that they
+were dedicated to her, just as skulls found under an altar had been
+devoted to the Celtic Mars.[829] Probably, as among Dayaks, American
+Indians, and others, possession of a head was a guarantee that the ghost
+of its owner would be subservient to its Celtic possessor, either in
+this world or in the next, since they are sometimes found buried in
+graves along with the dead.[830] Or, suspended in temples, they became
+an actual and symbolical offering of the life of their owners, if, as is
+probable, the life or soul was thought to be in the head. Hence, too,
+the custom of drinking from the skull of the slain had the intention of
+transferring his powers directly to the drinker.[831] Milk drunk from
+the skull of Conall Cernach restored to enfeebled warriors their
+pristine strength,[832] and a folk-survival in the Highlands--that of
+drinking from the skull of a suicide (here taking the place of the slain
+enemy) in order to restore health--shows the same idea at work. All
+these practices had thus one end, that of the transference of spirit
+force--to the gods, to the victor who suspended the head from his house,
+and to all who drank from the skull. Represented in bas-relief on houses
+or carved on dagger-handles, the head may still have been thought to
+possess talismanic properties, giving power to house or weapon. Possibly
+this cult of human heads may have given rise to the idea of a divine
+head like those figured on Gaulish images, or described, e.g., in the
+story of Bran. His head preserved the land from invasion, until Arthur
+disinterred it,[833] the story being based on the belief that heads or
+bodies of great warriors still had a powerful influence.[834] The
+representation of the head of a god, like his whole image, would be
+thought to possess the same preservative power.
+
+A possible survival of the sacrifice of the aged may be found in a
+Breton custom of applying a heavy club to the head of old persons to
+lighten their death agonies, the clubs having been formerly used to kill
+them. They are kept in chapels, and are regarded with awe.[835]
+
+Animal victims were also frequently offered. The Galatian Celts made a
+yearly sacrifice to their Artemis of a sheep, goat, or calf, purchased
+with money laid by for each animal caught in the chase. Their dogs were
+feasted and crowned with flowers.[836] Further details of this ritual
+are unfortunately lacking. Animals captured in war were sacrificed to
+the war-gods by the Gauls, or to a river-god, as when the horses of the
+defeated host were thrown into the Rhine by the Gaulish conquerors of
+Mallius.[837] We have seen that the white oxen sacrificed at the
+mistletoe ritual may once have been representatives of the
+vegetation-spirit, which also animated the oak and the mistletoe. Among
+the insular Celts animal sacrifices are scarcely mentioned in the texts,
+probably through suppression by later scribes, but the lives of Irish
+saints contain a few notices of the custom, e.g. that of S. Patrick,
+which describes the gathering of princes, chiefs, and Druids at Tara to
+sacrifice victims to idols.[838] In Ireland the peasantry still kill a
+sheep or heifer for S. Martin on his festival, and ill-luck is thought
+to follow the non-observance of the rite.[839] Similar sacrifices on
+saints' days in Scotland and Wales occurred in Christian times.[840] An
+excellent instance is that of the sacrifice of bulls at Gairloch for the
+cure of lunatics on S. Maelrubha's day (August 25th). Libations of milk
+were also poured out on the hills, ruined chapels were perambulated,
+wells and stones worshipped, and divination practised. These rites,
+occurring in the seventeenth century, were condemned by the Presbytery
+of Dingwall, but with little effect, and some of them still
+survive.[841] In all these cases the saint has succeeded to the ritual
+of an earlier god. Mr. Cook surmises that S. Maelrubha was the successor
+of a divine king connected with an oak and sacred well, the god or
+spirit of which was incarnate in him. These divine kings may at one time
+have been slain, or a bull, similarly incarnating the god or spirit, may
+have been killed as a surrogate. This slaying was at a later time
+regarded as a sacrifice and connected with the cure of madness.[842] The
+rite would thus be on a parallel with the slaying of the oxen at the
+mistletoe gathering, as already interpreted. Eilean Maree (Maelrubha),
+where the tree and well still exist, was once known as Eilean mo righ
+("the island of my king"), or Eilean a Mhor Righ ("of the great king"),
+the king having been worshipped as a god. This piece of corroborative
+evidence was given by the oldest inhabitant to Sir Arthur Mitchell.[843]
+The people also spoke of the god Mourie.
+
+Other survivals of animal sacrifice are found in cases of cattle-plague,
+as in Morayshire sixty years ago, in Wales, Devon, and the Isle of Man.
+The victim was burned and its ashes sprinkled on the herd, or it was
+thrown into the sea or over a precipice.[844] Perhaps it was both a
+propitiatory sacrifice and a scape-animal, carrying away the disease,
+though the rite may be connected with the former slaying of a divine
+animal whose death benefited all the cattle of the district. In the
+Hebrides the spirits of earth and air were propitiated every quarter by
+throwing outside the door a cock, hen, duck, or cat, which was supposed
+to be seized by them. If the rite was neglected, misfortune was sure to
+follow. The animal carried away evils from the house, and was also a
+propitiatory sacrifice.
+
+The blood of victims was sprinkled on altars, images, and trees, or, as
+among the Boii, it was placed in a skull adorned with gold.[845] Other
+libations are known mainly from folk-survivals. Thus Breton fishermen
+salute reefs and jutting promontories, say prayers, and pour a glass of
+wine or throw a biscuit or an old garment into the sea.[846] In the
+Hebrides a curious rite was performed on Maundy Thursday. After midnight
+a man walked into the sea, and poured ale or gruel on the waters, at the
+same time singing:
+
+  "O God of the sea,
+   Put weed in the drawing wave,
+   To enrich the ground,
+   To shower on us food."
+
+Those on shore took up the strain in chorus.[847] Thus the rite was
+described by one who took part in it a century ago, but Martin, writing
+in the seventeenth century, gives other details. The cup of ale was
+offered with the words, "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that
+you will be so kind as to send plenty of seaweed for enriching our
+ground for the ensuing year." All then went in silence to the church and
+remained there for a time, after which they indulged in an orgy
+out-of-doors. This orgiastic rite may once have included the intercourse
+of the sexes--a powerful charm for fertility. "Shony" was some old
+sea-god, and another divinity of the sea, Brianniul, was sometimes
+invoked for the same purpose.[848] Until recently milk was poured on
+"Gruagach stones" in the Hebrides, as an offering to the Gruagach, a
+brownie who watched over herds, and who had taken the place of a
+god.[849]
+
+
+PRAYER.
+
+
+Prayer accompanied most rites, and probably consisted of traditional
+formulć, on the exact recital of which depended their value. The Druids
+invoked a god during the mistletoe rite, and at a Galatian sacrifice,
+offered to bring birds to destroy grasshoppers, prayer was made to the
+birds themselves.[850] In Mona, at the Roman invasion, the Druids raised
+their arms and uttered prayers for deliverance, at the same time cursing
+the invaders, and Boudicca invoked the protection of the goddess
+Andrasta in a similar manner.[851] Chants were sung by the "priestesses"
+of Sena to raise storms, and they were also sung by warriors both before
+and after a battle, to the accompaniment of a measured dance and the
+clashing of arms.[852] These warrior chants were composed by bards, and
+probably included invocations of the war-gods and the recital of famous
+deeds. They may also have been of the nature of spells ensuring the help
+of the gods, like the war-cries uttered by a whole army to the sound of
+trumpets.[853] These consisted of the name of a god, of a tribe or clan,
+or of some well-known phrase. As the recital of a divine name is often
+supposed to force the god to help, these cries had thus a magical
+aspect, while they also struck terror into the foe.[854] Warriors also
+advanced dancing to the fray, and they are depicted on coins dancing on
+horseback or before a sword, which was worshipped by the Celts.[855] The
+Celtiberian festival at the full moon consisted entirely of dancing. The
+dance is a primitive method of expressing religious emotion, and where
+it imitates certain actions, it is intended by magical influence to
+crown the actions themselves with success. It is thus a kind of acted
+prayer with magical results.
+
+
+DIVINATION.
+
+
+A special class of diviners existed among the Celts, but the Druids
+practised divination, as did also the unofficial layman. Classical
+writers speak of the Celts as of all nations the most devoted to, and
+the most experienced in, the science of divination. Divination with a
+human victim is described by Diodorus. Libations were poured over him,
+and he was then slain, auguries being drawn from the method of his fall,
+the movements of his limbs, and the flowing of his blood. Divination
+with the entrails was used in Galatia, Gaul, and Britain.[856] Beasts
+and birds also provided omens. The course taken by a hare let loose gave
+an omen of success to the Britons, and in Ireland divination was used
+with a sacrificial animal.[857] Among birds the crow was pre-eminent,
+and two crows are represented speaking into the ears of a man on a
+bas-relief at Compičgne. The Celts believed that the crow had shown
+where towns should be founded, or had furnished a remedy against poison,
+and it was also an arbiter of disputes.[858] Artemidorus describes how,
+at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set
+out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped
+down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had
+been scattered won the case.[859] Birds were believed to have guided the
+migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as
+Deiotaurus gravely said, birds never lie. Divination by the voices of
+birds was used by the Irish Druids.[860]
+
+Omens were drawn from the direction of the smoke and flames of sacred
+fires and from the condition of the clouds.[861] Wands of yew were
+carried by Druids--"the wand of Druidism" of many folk-tales--and were
+used perhaps as divining-rods. Ogams were also engraved on rods of yews,
+and from these Druids divined hidden things. By this means the Druid
+Dalan discovered where Etain had been hidden by the god Mider. The
+method used may have been that of drawing one of the rods by lot and
+then divining from the marks upon it. A similar method was used to
+discover the route to be taken by invaders, the result being supposed to
+depend on divine interposition.[862] The knowledge of astronomy ascribed
+by Cćsar to the Druids was probably of a simple kind, and much mixed
+with astrology, and though it furnished the data for computing a simple
+calendar, its use was largely magical.[863] Irish diviners forecast the
+time to build a house by the stars, and the date at which S. Columba's
+education should begin, was similarly discovered.[864]
+
+The _Imbas Forosnai_, "illumination between the hands," was used by the
+_Filé_ to discover hidden things. He chewed a piece of raw flesh and
+placed it as an offering to the images of the gods whom he desired to
+help him. If enlightenment did not come by the next day, he pronounced
+incantations on his palms, which he then placed on his cheeks before
+falling asleep. The revelation followed in a dream, or sometimes after
+awaking.[865] Perhaps the animal whose flesh was eaten was a sacred one.
+Another method was that of the _Teinm Laegha_. The _Filé_ made a verse
+and repeated it over some person or thing regarding which he sought
+information, or he placed his staff on the person's body and so obtained
+what he sought. The rite was also preceded by sacrifice; hence S.
+Patrick prohibited both it and the _Imbas Forosnai_.[866] Another
+incantation, the _Cétnad_, was sung through the fist to discover the
+track of stolen cattle or of the thief. If this did not bring
+enlightenment, the _Filé_ went to sleep and obtained the knowledge
+through a dream.[867] Another _Cétnad_ for obtaining information
+regarding length of life was addressed to the seven daughters of the
+sea. Perhaps the incantation was repeated mechanically until the seer
+fell into a kind of trance. Divination by dreams was also used by the
+continental Celts.[868]
+
+Other methods resemble "trance-utterance." "A great obnubilation was
+conjured up for the bard so that he slept a heavy sleep, and things
+magic-begotten were shewn to him to enunciate," apparently in his sleep.
+This was called "illumination by rhymes," and a similar method was used
+in Wales. When consulted, the seer roared violently until he was beside
+himself, and out of his ravings the desired information was gathered.
+When aroused from this ecstatic condition, he had no remembrance of what
+he had uttered. Giraldus reports this, and thinks, with the modern
+spiritualist, that the utterance was caused by spirits.[869] The
+resemblance to modern trance-utterance and to similar methods used by
+savages is remarkable, and psychological science sees in it the
+promptings of the subliminal self in sleep.
+
+The _taghairm_ of the Highlanders was a survival from pagan times. The
+seer was usually bound in a cow's hide--the animal, it may be
+conjectured, having been sacrificed in earlier times. He was left in a
+desolate place, and while he slept spirits were supposed to inspire his
+dreams.[870] Clothing in the skin of a sacrificial animal, by which the
+person thus clothed is brought into contact with it and hence with the
+divinity to which it is offered, or with the divine animal itself where
+the victim is so regarded, is a widespread custom. Hence, in this Celtic
+usage, contact with divinity through the hide would be expected to
+produce enlightenment. For a like reason the Irish sacrificed a sheep
+for the recovery of the sick, and clothed the patient in its skin.[871]
+Binding the limbs of the seer is also a widespread custom, perhaps to
+restrain his convulsions or to concentrate the psychic force.
+
+Both among the continental and Irish Celts those who sought hidden
+knowledge slept on graves, hoping to be inspired by the spirits of the
+dead.[872] Legend told how, the full version of the _Táin_ having been
+lost, Murgan the _Filé_ sang an incantation over the grave of Fergus mac
+Roig. A cloud hid him for three days, and during that time the dead man
+appeared and recited the saga to him.
+
+In Ireland and the Highlands, divination by looking into the
+shoulder-blade of a sheep was used to discover future events or things
+happening at a distance, a survival from pagan times.[873] The scholiast
+on Lucan describes the Druidic method of chewing acorns and then
+prophesying, just as, in Ireland, eating nuts from the sacred hazels
+round Connla's well gave inspiration.[874] The "priestesses" of Sena and
+the "Druidesses" of the third century had the gift of prophecy, and it
+was also ascribed freely to the _Filid_, the Druids, and to Christian
+saints. Druids are said to have prophesied the coming of S. Patrick, and
+similar prophecies are put in the mouths of Fionn and others, just as
+Montezuma's priests foretold the coming of the Spaniards.[875] The word
+used for such prophecies--_baile_, means "ecstasy," and it suggests that
+the prophet worked himself into a frenzy and then fell into a trance, in
+which he uttered his forecast. Prophecies were also made at the birth of
+a child, describing its future career.[876] Careful attention was given
+to the utterances of Druidic prophets, e.g. Medb's warriors postponed
+their expedition for fifteen days, because the Druids told them they
+would not succeed if they set out sooner.[877]
+
+Mythical personages or divinities are said in the Irish texts to have
+stood on one leg, with one arm extended, and one eye closed, when
+uttering prophecies or incantations, and this was doubtless an attitude
+used by the seer.[878] A similar method is known elsewhere, and it may
+have been intended to produce greater force. From this attitude may have
+originated myths of beings with one arm, one leg, and one eye, like some
+Fomorians or the _Fachan_ whose weird picture Campbell of Islay drew
+from verbal descriptions.[879]
+
+Early Celtic saints occasionally describe lapses into heathenism in
+Ireland, not characterised by "idolatry," but by wizardry, dealing in
+charms, and _fidlanna_, perhaps a kind of divination with pieces of
+wood.[880] But it is much more likely that these had never really been
+abandoned. They belong to the primitive element of religion and magic
+which people cling to long after they have given up "idolatry."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[790] Cćsar, vi. 16.
+
+[791] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 68.
+
+[792] Justin, xxvi. 2; Pomp. Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[793] Diod. Sic. xxii. 9.
+
+[794] See Jullian, 53.
+
+[795] Servius on _Ćneid_, iii. 57.
+
+[796] Cćsar, vi. 16; Livy, xxxviii. 47; Diod. Sic. v. 32, xxxi. 13;
+Athenćus, iv. 51; Dio Cass., lxii. 7.
+
+[797] Diod. Sic, xxxiv. 13; Strabo, iv. 4; Orosius, v. 16; Schol. on
+Lucan, Usener's ed. 32.
+
+[798] Cćsar, vi. 16; Strabo, iv. 4; Diod. Sic. v. 32; Livy, xxxviii. 47.
+
+[799] Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 529 f.
+
+[800] Strabo, _ibid._ 4. 4.
+
+[801] S. Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, vii. 19.
+
+[802] Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[803] Suet. _Claud._ 25.
+
+[804] Pomp. Mela, iii. 2. 18.
+
+[805] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 4. 13.
+
+[806] Dio. Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[807] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 222; Joyce, _SH_ i. ch. 9.
+
+[808] _RC_ xvi. 35.
+
+[809] _LL_ 213_b_.
+
+[810] See p. 52, _supra_.
+
+[811] See, however, accounts of reckless child sacrifices in Ellis,
+_Polynesian Researches_, i. 252, and Westermarck, _Moral Ideas_, i. 397.
+
+[812] O'Curry, _MC_ Intro, dcxli.
+
+[813] _LU_ 126_a_. A folk-version is given by Larminie, _West Irish
+Folk-Tales_, 139.
+
+[814] _Book of Fermoy_, 89_a_.
+
+[815] O'Curry, _MC_ Intro. dcxl, ii. 222.
+
+[816] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ Reeve's ed. 288.
+
+[817] Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_, ii. 317.
+
+[818] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ 40.
+
+[819] Stokes, _TIG_ xli.; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 9.
+
+[820] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 1. The feeding of Ethni, daughter of Crimthann,
+on human flesh that she might sooner attain maturity may be an instance
+of "medicinal cannibalism" (_IT_ iii. 363). The eating of parents among
+the Irish, described by Strabo (iv. 5), was an example of "honorific
+cannibalism." See my article "Cannibalism" in Hastings' _Encycl. of Rel.
+and Ethics_, iii, 194.
+
+[821] Diod. Sic. vi. 12; Paus. x. 22. 3; Amm. Marc. xxvii. 4; Livy,
+xxiii. 24; Solin. xxii. 3.
+
+[822] This custom continued in Ireland until Spenser's time.
+
+[823] Leahy, i. 158; Giraldus, _Top. Hib._ iii. 22; Martin, 109.
+
+[824] Sil. Ital. iv. 213; Diod. Sic. xiv. 115; Livy, x. 26; Strabo, iv.
+4. 5; Miss Hull, 92.
+
+[825] Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.
+
+[826] D'Arbois, v. 11; Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, _loc. cit._
+
+[827] _Annals of the Four Masters_, 864; _IT_ i. 205.
+
+[828] Sil. Ital. iv. 215, v. 652; Lucan, _Phar._ i. 447; Livy, xxiii.
+24.
+
+[829] See p. 71, _supra_; _CIL_ xii. 1077. A dim memory of head-taking
+survived in the seventeenth century in Eigg, where headless skeletons
+were found, of which the islanders said that an enemy had cut off their
+heads (Martin, 277).
+
+[830] Belloguet, _Ethnol. Gaul._ iii. 100.
+
+[831] Sil. Ital. xiii. 482; Livy, xxiii. 24; Florus, i. 39.
+
+[832] _ZCP_ i. 106.
+
+[833] Loth, i. 90 f., ii. 218-219. Sometimes the weapons of a great
+warrior had the same effect. The bows of Gwerthevyr were hidden in
+different parts of Prydein and preserved the land from Saxon invasion,
+until Gwrtheyrn, for love of a woman, dug them up (Loth, ii. 218-219).
+
+[834] See p. 338, _infra_. In Ireland, the brain of an enemy was taken
+from the head, mixed with lime, and made into a ball. This was allowed
+to harden, and was then placed in the tribal armoury as a trophy.
+
+[835] _L'Anthropologie_, xii. 206, 711. Cf. the English tradition of the
+"Holy Mawle," said to have been used for the same purpose. Thorns,
+_Anecdotes and Traditions_, 84.
+
+[836] Arrian, _Cyneg._ xxxiii.
+
+[837] Cćsar, vi. 17; Orosius, v. 16. 6.
+
+[838] D'Arbois, i. 155.
+
+[839] Curtin, _Tales of the Fairies_, 72; _Folk-Lore_, vii. 178-179.
+
+[840] Mitchell, _Past in the Present_, 275.
+
+[841] Mitchell, _op. cit._ 271 f.
+
+[842] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 332.
+
+[843] Mitchell, _loc. cit._ 147. The corruption of "Maelrubha" to
+"Maree" may have been aided by confusing the name with _mo_ or _mhor
+righ_.
+
+[844] Mitchell, _loc. cit._; Moore, 92, 145; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 305;
+Worth, _Hist. of Devonshire_, 339; Dalyell, _passim_.
+
+[845] Livy, xxiii. 24.
+
+[846] Sébillot, ii. 166-167; _L'Anthrop._ xv. 729.
+
+[847] Carmichael, _Carm. Gad._ i. 163.
+
+[848] Martin, 28. A scribe called "Sonid," which might be the equivalent
+of "Shony," is mentioned in the Stowe missal (_Folk-Lore_, 1895).
+
+[849] Campbell, _Superstitions_, 184 f; _Waifs and Strays of Celtic
+Trad._ ii. 455.
+
+[850] Aelian, xvii. 19.
+
+[851] Tacitus, _Ann._ xiv. 30; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[852] Appian, _Celtica_, 8; Livy, xxi. 28, xxxviii. 17, x. 26.
+
+[853] Livy, v. 38, vii. 23; Polybius, ii. 29. Cf. Watteville, _Le cri de
+guerre chez les differents peuples_, Paris, 1889.
+
+[854] Livy, v. 38.
+
+[855] Appian, vi. 53; Muret et Chabouillet, _Catalogue des monnaies
+gauloises_, 6033 f., 6941 f.
+
+[856] Diod. v. 31; Justin, xxvi. 2, 4; Cicero, _de Div._ ii. 36, 76;
+Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30; Strabo, iii. 3. 6.
+
+[857] Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[858] Reinach, _Catal. Sommaire_, 31; Pseudo-Plutarch, _de Fluviis_, vi.
+4; _Mirab. Auscult._ 86.
+
+[859] Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[860] Justin, xxiv, 4; Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15. 26. (Cf. the two magic
+crows which announced the coming of Cúchulainn to the other world
+(D'Arbois, v. 203); Irish _Nennius_, 145; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 224; cf. for
+a Welsh instance, Skene, i. 433.)
+
+[861] Joyce, _SH_ i. 229; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 224, _MS Mat._ 284.
+
+[862] _IT_ i. 129; Livy, v. 34; Loth, _RC_ xvi. 314. The Irish for
+consulting a lot is _crann-chur_, "the act of casting wood."
+
+[863] Cćsar, vi. 14.
+
+[864] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 46, 224; Stokes, _Three Irish Homilies_, 103.
+
+[865] Cormac, 94. Fionn's divination by chewing his thumb is called
+_Imbas Forosnai_ (_RC_ xxv. 347).
+
+[866] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 45.
+
+[867] Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 241.
+
+[868] Justin, xliii. 5.
+
+[869] O'Grady, ii. 362; Giraldus, _Descr. Camb._ i. 11.
+
+[870] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, i. 311; Martin, 111.
+
+[871] Richardson, _Folly of Pilgrimages_, 70.
+
+[872] Tertullian, _de Anima_, 57; _Coll. de Reb. Hib._ iii. 334.
+
+[873] Campbell, _Superstitions_, 263; Curtin, _Tales_, 84.
+
+[874] Lucan, ed. Usener, 33.
+
+[875] See examples in O'Curry, _MS Mat._ 383 f.
+
+[876] Miss Hull, 19, 20, 23.
+
+[877] _LU_ 55.
+
+[878] _RC_ xii. 98, xxi. 156, xxii. 61.
+
+[879] _RC_ xv. 432; _Annals of the Four Masters_, A.M. 2530; Campbell,
+_WHT_ iv. 298.
+
+[880] See "Adamnan's Second Vision." _RC_ xii. 441.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+TABU.
+
+
+The Irish _geis_, pl. _geasa_, which may be rendered by Tabu, had two
+senses. It meant something which must not be done for fear of disastrous
+consequences, and also an obligation to do something commanded by
+another.
+
+As a tabu the _geis_ had a large place in Irish life, and was probably
+known to other branches of the Celts.[881] It followed the general
+course of tabu wherever found. Sometimes it was imposed before birth, or
+it was hereditary, or connected with totemism. Legends, however, often
+arose giving a different explanation to _geasa_, long after the customs
+in which they originated had been forgotten. It was one of Diarmaid's
+_geasa_ not to hunt the boar of Ben Gulban, and this was probably
+totemic in origin. But legend told how his father killed a child, the
+corpse being changed into a boar by the child's father, who said its
+span of life would be the same as Diarmaid's, and that he would be slain
+by it. Oengus put _geasa_ on Diarmaid not to hunt it, but at Fionn's
+desire he broke these, and was killed.[882] Other _geasa_--those of
+Cúchulainn not to eat dog's flesh, and of Conaire never to chase
+birds--also point to totemism.
+
+In some cases _geasa_ were based on ideas of right and wrong, honour or
+dishonour, or were intended to cause avoidance of unlucky days. Others
+are unintelligible to us. The largest number of _geasa_ concerned kings
+and chiefs, and are described, along with their corresponding
+privileges, in the _Book of Rights_. Some of the _geasa_ of the king of
+Connaught were not to go to an assembly of women at Leaghair, not to sit
+in autumn on the sepulchral mound of the wife of Maine, not to go in a
+grey-speckled garment on a grey-speckled horse to the heath of Cruachan,
+and the like.[883] The meaning of these is obscure, but other examples
+are more obvious and show that all alike corresponded to the tabus
+applying to kings in primitive societies, who are often magicians,
+priests, or even divine representatives. On them the welfare of the
+tribe and the making of rain or sunshine, and the processes of growth
+depend. They must therefore be careful of their actions, and hence they
+are hedged about with tabus which, however unmeaning, have a direct
+connection with their powers. Out of such conceptions the Irish kingly
+_geasa_ arose. Their observance made the earth fruitful, produced
+abundance and prosperity, and kept both the king and his land from
+misfortune. In later times these were supposed to be dependent on the
+"goodness" or the reverse of the king, but this was a departure from the
+older idea, which is clearly stated in the _Book of Rights_.[884] The
+kings were divinities on whom depended fruitfulness and plenty, and who
+must therefore submit to obey their _geasa_. Some of their prerogatives
+seem also to be connected with this state of things. Thus they might eat
+of certain foods or go to certain places on particular days.[885] In
+primitive societies kings and priests often prohibit ordinary mortals
+from eating things which they desire for themselves by making them
+_tabu_, and in other cases the fruits of the earth can only be eaten
+after king or priest has partaken of them ceremonially. This may have
+been the case in Ireland. The privilege relating to places may have
+meant that these were sacred and only to be entered by the king at
+certain times and in his sacred capacity.
+
+As a reflection from this state of things, the heroes of the sagas,
+Cúchulainn and Fionn, had numerous _geasa_ applicable to themselves,
+some of them religious, some magical, others based on primitive ideas of
+honour, others perhaps the invention of the narrators.[886]
+
+_Geasa_, whether in the sense of tabus or of obligations, could be
+imposed by any one, and must be obeyed, for disobedience produced
+disastrous effects. Probably the obligation was framed as an incantation
+or spell, and the power of the spell being fully believed in, obedience
+would follow as a matter of course.[887] Examples of such _geasa_ are
+numerous in Irish literature. Cúchulainn's father-in-law put _geasa_ on
+him that he should know no rest until he found out the cause of the
+exile of the sons of Doel. And Grainne put _geasa_ on Diarmaid that he
+should elope with her, and this he did, though the act was repugnant to
+him.
+
+Among savages the punishment which is supposed to follow tabu-breaking
+is often produced through auto-suggestion when a tabu has been
+unconsciously infringed and this has afterwards been discovered. Fear
+produces the result which is feared. The result is believed, however, to
+be the working of divine vengeance. In the case of Irish _geasa_,
+destruction and death usually followed their infringement, as in the
+case of Diarmaid and Cúchulainn. But the best instance is found in the
+tale of _The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel_, in which the _síd_-folk
+avenge themselves for Eochaid's action by causing the destruction of his
+descendant Conaire, who is forced to break his _geasa_. These are first
+minutely detailed; then it is shown how, almost in spite of himself,
+Conaire was led on to break them, and how, in the sequel, his tragic
+death occurred.[888] Viewed in this light as the working of divine
+vengeance to a remote descendant of the offender by forcing him to break
+his tabus, the story is one of the most terrible in the whole range of
+Irish literature.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[881] The religious interdictions mentioned by Cćsar (vi. 13) may be
+regarded as tabus, while the spoils of war placed in a consecrated place
+(vi. 18), and certain animals among the Britons (v. 12), were clearly
+under tabu.
+
+[882] Joyce, _OCR_ 332 f.
+
+[883] _Book of Rights_, ed. O'Donovan, 5.
+
+[884] _Book of Rights_, 7.
+
+[885] Ibid. 3 f.
+
+[886] _LL_ 107; O'Grady, ii. 175.
+
+[887] In Highland tales _geasa_ is translated "spells."
+
+[888] _RC_ xxii. 27 f. The story of _Da Choca's Hostel_ has for its
+subject the destruction of Cormac through breaking his _geasa_ (_RC_
+xxi. 149 f.).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+FESTIVALS.
+
+
+The Celtic year was not at first regulated by the solstices and
+equinoxes, but by some method connected with agriculture or with the
+seasons. Later, the year was a lunar one, and there is some evidence of
+attempts at synchronising solar and lunar time. But time was mainly
+measured by the moon, while in all calculations night preceded day.[889]
+Thus _oidhche Samhain_ was the night preceding Samhain (November 1st),
+not the following night. The usage survives in our "sennight" and
+"fortnight." In early times the year had two, possibly three divisions,
+marking periods in pastoral or agricultural life, but it was afterwards
+divided into four periods, while the year began with the winter
+division, opening at Samhain. A twofold, subdivided into a fourfold
+division is found in Irish texts,[890] and may be tabulated as
+follows:--
+
+                       1st quarter, _Geimredh_, beginning with the
+_A_. Geimredh          festival of _Samhain_, November 1st.
+     (winter half)
+                       2nd quarter, _Earrach_, beginning February
+                       1st (sometimes called _Oimelc_).
+
+
+                       3rd quarter, _Samradh_, beginning with the
+_B_. Samhradh          festival of _Beltane_, May 1st (called also
+     (summer half)     _Cét-soman_ or _Cét-samain_, 1st day of
+                       _Samono-s_; cf. Welsh _Cyntefyn_).
+
+                       4th quarter, _Foghamhar_, beginning with
+                       the festival of _Lugnasadh_, August 1st
+                       (sometimes called _Brontroghain_).
+
+These divisions began with festivals, and clear traces of three of them
+occur over the whole Celtic area, but the fourth has now been merged in
+S. Brigit's day. Beltane and Samhain marked the beginning of the two
+great divisions, and were perhaps at first movable festivals, according
+as the signs of summer or winter appeared earlier or later. With the
+adoption of the Roman calendar some of the festivals were displaced,
+e.g. in Gaul, where the Calends of January took the place of Samhain,
+the ritual being also transferred.
+
+None of the four festivals is connected with the times of equinox and
+solstice. This points to the fact that originally the Celtic year was
+independent of these. But Midsummer day was also observed not only by
+the Celts, but by most European folk, the ritual resembling that of
+Beltane. It has been held, and an old tradition in Ireland gives some
+support to the theory, that under Christian influences the old pagan
+feast of Beltane was merged in that of S. John Baptist on Midsummer
+day.[891] But, though there are Christian elements in the Midsummer
+ritual, denoting a desire to bring it under Church influence, the pagan
+elements in folk-custom are strongly marked, and the festival is deeply
+rooted in an earlier paganism all over Europe. Without much acquaintance
+with astronomy, men must have noted the period of the sun's longest
+course from early times, and it would probably be observed ritually. The
+festivals of Beltane and Midsummer may have arisen independently, and
+entered into competition with each other. Or Beltane may have been an
+early pastoral festival marking the beginning of summer when the herds
+went out to pasture, and Midsummer a more purely agricultural festival.
+And since their ritual aspect and purpose as seen in folk-custom are
+similar, they may eventually have borrowed each from the other. Or they
+may be later separate fixed dates of an earlier movable summer festival.
+For our purpose we may here consider them as twin halves of such a
+festival. Where Midsummer was already observed, the influence of the
+Roman calendar would confirm that observance. The festivals of the
+Christian year also affected the older observances. Some of the ritual
+was transferred to saints' days within the range of the pagan festival
+days, thus the Samhain ritual is found observed on S. Martin's day. In
+other cases, holy days took the place of the old festivals--All Saints'
+and All Souls' that of Samhain, S. Brigit's day that of February 1st, S.
+John Baptist's day that of Midsummer, Lammas that of Lugnasad, and some
+attempt was made to hallow, if not to oust, the older ritual.
+
+The Celtic festivals being primarily connected with agricultural and
+pastoral life, we find in their ritual survivals traces not only of a
+religious but of a magical view of things, of acts designed to assist
+the powers of life and growth. The proof of this will be found in a
+detailed examination of the surviving customs connected with them.
+
+
+SAMHAIN.
+
+
+Samhain,[892] beginning the Celtic year, was an important social and
+religious occasion. The powers of blight were beginning their
+ascendancy, yet the future triumph of the powers of growth was not
+forgotten. Probably Samhain had gathered up into itself other feasts
+occurring earlier or later. Thus it bears traces of being a harvest
+festival, the ritual of the earlier harvest feast being transferred to
+the winter feast, as the Celts found themselves in lands where harvest
+is not gathered before late autumn. The harvest rites may, however, have
+been associated with threshing rather than ingathering. Samhain also
+contains in its ritual some of the old pastoral cults, while as a New
+Year feast its ritual is in great part that of all festivals of
+beginnings.
+
+New fire was brought into each house at Samhain from the sacred
+bonfire,[893] itself probably kindled from the need-fire by the friction
+of pieces of wood. This preserved its purity, the purity necessary to a
+festival of beginnings.[894] The putting away of the old fires was
+probably connected with various rites for the expulsion of evils, which
+usually occur among many peoples at the New Year festival. By that
+process of dislocation which scattered the Samhain ritual over a wider
+period and gave some of it to Christmas, the kindling of the Yule log
+may have been originally connected with this festival.
+
+Divination and forecasting the fate of the inquirer for the coming year
+also took place. Sometimes these were connected with the bonfire, stones
+placed in it showing by their appearance the fortune or misfortune
+awaiting their owners.[895] Others, like those described by Burns in his
+"Hallowe'en," were unconnected with the bonfire and were of an erotic
+nature.[896]
+
+The slaughter of animals for winter consumption which took place at
+Samhain, or, as now, at Martinmas, though connected with economic
+reasons, had a distinctly religious aspect, as it had among the Teutons.
+In recent times in Ireland one of the animals was offered to S. Martin,
+who may have taken the place of a god, and ill-luck followed the
+non-observance of the custom.[897] The slaughter was followed by general
+feasting. This later slaughter may be traced back to the pastoral stage,
+in which the animals were regarded as divine, and one was slain annually
+and eaten sacramentally. Or, if the slaughter was more general, the
+animals would be propitiated. But when the animals ceased to be
+worshipped, the slaughter would certainly be more general, though still
+preserving traces of its original character. The pastoral sacrament may
+also have been connected with the slaying and eating of an animal
+representing the corn-spirit at harvest time. In one legend S. Martin is
+associated with the animal slain at Martinmas, and is said to have been
+cut up and eaten in the form of an ox,[898] as if a former divine animal
+had become an anthropomorphic divinity, the latter being merged in the
+personality of a Christian saint.
+
+Other rites, connected with the Calends of January as a result of
+dislocation, point also in this direction. In Gaul and Germany riotous
+processions took place with men dressed in the heads and skins of
+animals.[899] This rite is said by Tille to have been introduced from
+Italy, but it is more likely to have been a native custom.[900] As the
+people ate the flesh of the slain animals sacramentally, so they clothed
+themselves in the skins to promote further contact with their divinity.
+Perambulating the township sunwise dressed in the skin of a cow took
+place until recently in the Hebrides at New Year, in order to keep off
+misfortune, a piece of the hide being burned and the smoke inhaled by
+each person and animal in the township.[901] Similar customs have been
+found in other Celtic districts, and these animal disguises can hardly
+be separated from the sacramental slaughter at Samhain.[902]
+
+Evils having been or being about to be cast off in the New Year ritual,
+a few more added to the number can make little difference. Hence among
+primitive peoples New Year is often characterised by orgiastic rites.
+These took place at the Calends in Gaul, and were denounced by councils
+and preachers.[903] In Ireland the merriment at Samhain is often
+mentioned in the texts,[904] and similar orgiastic rites lurk behind the
+Hallowe'en customs in Scotland and in the licence still permitted to
+youths in the quietest townships of the West Highlands at Samhain eve.
+
+Samhain, as has been seen, was also a festival of the dead, whose ghosts
+were fed at this time.[905]
+
+As the powers of growth were in danger and in eclipse in winter, men
+thought it necessary to assist them. As a magical aid the Samhain
+bonfire was chief, and it is still lit in the Highlands. Brands were
+carried round, and from it the new fire was lit in each house. In North
+Wales people jumped through the fire, and when it was extinct, rushed
+away to escape the "black sow" who would take the hindmost.[906] The
+bonfire represented the sun, and was intended to strengthen it. But
+representing the sun, it had all the sun's force, hence those who jumped
+through it were strengthened and purified. The Welsh reference to the
+hindmost and to the black sow may point to a former human sacrifice,
+perhaps of any one who stumbled in jumping through the fire. Keating
+speaks of a Druidic sacrifice in the bonfire, whether of man or beast is
+not specified.[907] Probably the victim, like the scapegoat, was laden
+with the accumulated evils of the year, as in similar New Year customs
+elsewhere. Later belief regarded the sacrifice, if sacrifice there was,
+as offered to the powers of evil--the black sow, unless this animal is a
+reminiscence of the corn-spirit in its harmful aspect. Earlier powers,
+whether of growth or of blight, came to be associated with Samhain as
+demoniac beings--the "malignant bird flocks" which blighted crops and
+killed animals, the _samhanach_ which steals children, and Mongfind the
+banshee, to whom "women and the rabble" make petitions on Samhain
+eve.[908] Witches, evil-intentioned fairies, and the dead were
+particularly active then.
+
+Though the sacrificial victim had come to be regarded as an offering to
+the powers of blight, he may once have represented a divinity of growth
+or, in earlier times, the corn-spirit. Such a victim was slain at
+harvest, and harvest is often late in northern Celtic regions, while the
+slaying was sometimes connected not with the harvest field, but with the
+later threshing. This would bring it near the Samhain festival. The
+slaying of the corn-spirit was derived from the earlier slaying of a
+tree or vegetation-spirit embodied in a tree and also in a human or
+animal victim. The corn-spirit was embodied in the last sheaf cut as
+well as in an animal or human being.[909] This human victim may have
+been regarded as a king, since in late popular custom a mock king is
+chosen at winter festivals.[910] In other cases the effigy of a saint is
+hung up and carried round the different houses, part of the dress being
+left at each. The saint has probably succeeded to the traditional ritual
+of the divine victim.[911] The primitive period in which the corn-spirit
+was regarded as female, with a woman as her human representative, is
+also recalled in folk-custom. The last sheaf is called the Maiden or the
+Mother, while, as in Northamptonshire, girls choose a queen on S.
+Catharine's day, November 26th, and in some Christmas pageants "Yule's
+wife," as well as Yule, is present, corresponding to the May queen of
+the summer festival.[912] Men also masqueraded as women at the Calends.
+The dates of these survivals may be explained by that dislocation of the
+Samhain festival already pointed out. This view of the Samhain human
+sacrifices is supported by the Irish offerings to the Fomorians--gods of
+growth, later regarded as gods of blight, and to Cromm Cruaich, in both
+cases at Samhain.[913] With the evolution of religious thought, the
+slain victim came to be regarded as an offering to evil powers.
+
+This aspect of Samhain, as a festival to promote and assist festivity,
+is further seen in the belief in the increased activity of fairies at
+that time. In Ireland, fairies are connected with the Tuatha Dé Danann,
+the divinities of growth, and in many folk-tales they are associated
+with agricultural processes. The use of evergreens at Christmas is
+perhaps also connected with the carrying of them round the fields in
+older times, as an evidence that the life of nature was not
+extinct.[914]
+
+Samhain may thus be regarded as, in origin, an old pastoral and
+agricultural festival, which in time came to be looked upon as affording
+assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of
+blight. Perhaps some myth describing this combat may lurk behind the
+story of the battle of Mag-tured fought on Samhain between the Tuatha Dé
+Danann and the Fomorians. While the powers of blight are triumphant in
+winter, the Tuatha Déa are represented as the victors, though they
+suffer loss and death. Perhaps this enshrines the belief in the
+continual triumph of life and growth over blight and decay, or it may
+arise from the fact that Samhain was both a time of rejoicing for the
+ingathered harvest, and of wailing for the coming supremacy of winter
+and the reign of the powers of blight.
+
+
+BELTANE.
+
+
+In Cormac's _Glossary_ and other texts, "Beltane" is derived from
+_bel-tene_, "a goodly fire," or from _bel-dine_, because newly-born
+(_dine_) cattle were offered to Bel, an idol-god.[915] The latter is
+followed by those who believe in a Celtic Belus, connected with Baal. No
+such god is known, however, and the god Belenos is in no way connected
+with the Semitic divinity. M. D'Arbois assumes an unknown god of death,
+Beltene (from _beltu_, "to die"), whose festival Beltane was.[916] But
+Beltane was a festival of life, of the sun shining in his strength. Dr.
+Stokes gives a more acceptable explanation of the word. Its primitive
+form was _belo-te_[_p_]_niâ_, from _belo-s_, "clear," "shining," the
+root of the names Belenos and Belisama, and _te_[_p_]_nos_, "fire." Thus
+the word would mean something like "bright fire," perhaps the sun or the
+bonfire, or both.[917]
+
+The folk-survivals of the Beltane and Midsummer festivals show that both
+were intended to promote fertility.
+
+One of the chief ritual acts at Beltane was the kindling of bonfires,
+often on hills. The house-fires in the district were often extinguished,
+the bonfire being lit by friction from a rotating wheel--the German
+"need-fire."[918] The fire kept off disease and evil, hence cattle were
+driven through it, or, according to Cormac, between two fires lit by
+Druids, in order to keep them in health during the year.[919] Sometimes
+the fire was lit beneath a sacred tree, or a pole covered with greenery
+was surrounded by the fuel, or a tree was burned in the fire.[920] These
+trees survive in the Maypole of later custom, and they represented the
+vegetation-spirit, to whom also the worshippers assimilated themselves
+by dressing in leaves. They danced sunwise round the fire or ran through
+the fields with blazing branches or wisps of straw, imitating the course
+of the sun, and thus benefiting the fields.[921] For the same reason the
+tree itself was probably borne through the fields. Houses were decked
+with boughs and thus protected by the spirit of vegetation.[922]
+
+An animal representing the spirit of vegetation may have been slain. In
+late survivals of Beltane at Dublin, a horse's skull and bones were
+thrown into the fire,[923] the attenuated form of an earlier sacrifice
+or slaying of a divine victim, by whom strength was transferred to all
+the animals which passed through the fire. In some cases a human victim
+may have been slain. This is suggested by customs surviving in
+Perthshire in the eighteenth century, when a cake was broken up and
+distributed, and the person who received a certain blackened portion was
+called the "Beltane carline" or "devoted." A pretence was made of
+throwing him into the fire, or he had to leap three times through it,
+and during the festival he was spoken of as "dead."[924] Martin says
+that malefactors were burned in the fire,[925] and though he cites no
+authority, this agrees with the Celtic use of criminals as victims.
+Perhaps the victim was at one time a human representative of the
+vegetation-spirit.
+
+Beltane cakes or bannocks, perhaps made of the grain of the sacred last
+sheaf from the previous harvest, and therefore sacramental in character,
+were also used in different ways in folk-survivals. They were rolled
+down a slope--a magical imitative act, symbolising and aiding the course
+of the sun. The cake had also a divinatory character. If it broke on
+reaching the foot of the slope this indicated the approaching death of
+its owner. In another custom in Perthshire, part of a cake was thrown
+over the shoulder with the words, "This I give to thee, preserve thou my
+horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; this to thee, O fox,
+preserve thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow; this to thee, O
+eagle." Here there is an appeal to beneficial and noxious powers,
+whether this was the original intention of the rite.[926] But if the
+cakes were made of the last sheaf, they were probably at one time eaten
+sacramentally, their sacrificial use emerging later.
+
+The bonfire was a sun-charm, representing and assisting the sun.
+Rain-charms were also used at Beltane. Sacred wells were visited and the
+ceremony performed with their waters, these perhaps being sprinkled over
+the tree or the fields to promote a copious rainfall for the benefit of
+vegetation. The use of such rites at Beltane and at other festivals may
+have given rise to the belief that wells were especially efficacious
+then for purposes of healing. The custom of rolling in the grass to
+benefit by May dew was probably connected with magical rites in which
+moisture played an important part.[927]
+
+The idea that the powers of growth had successfully combated those of
+blight may have been ritually represented. This is suggested by the
+mimic combats of Summer and Winter at this time, to which reference has
+already been made. Again, the May king and queen represent earlier
+personages who were regarded as embodying the spirits of vegetation and
+fertility at this festival, and whose marriage or union magically
+assisted growth and fertility, as in numerous examples of this ritual
+marriage elsewhere.[928] It may be assumed that a considerable amount of
+sexual licence also took place with the same magical purpose. Sacred
+marriage and festival orgy were an appeal to the forces of nature to
+complete their beneficial work, as well as a magical aid to them in that
+work. Analogy leads to the supposition that the king of the May was
+originally a priest-king, the incarnation of the spirit of vegetation.
+He or his surrogate was slain, while his bodily force was unabated, in
+order that it might be passed on undiminished to his successor. But the
+persistent place given to the May queen rather than to the king suggests
+the earlier prominence of women and of female spirits of fertility or of
+a great Mother-goddess in such rites. It is also significant that in the
+Perthshire ritual the man chosen was still called the _Beltane carlane_
+or _cailleach_ ("old woman"). And if, as Professor Pearson maintains,
+witch orgies are survivals of old sex-festivals, then the popular belief
+in the activity of witches on Beltane eve, also shows that the festival
+had once been mainly one in which women took part. Such orgies often
+took place on hills which had been the sites of a cult in former
+times.[929]
+
+
+MIDSUMMER.
+
+
+The ritual of the Midsummer festival did not materially differ from that
+of Beltane, and as folk-survivals show, it was practised not only by the
+Celts, but by many other European peoples. It was, in fact, a primitive
+nature festival such as would readily be observed by all under similar
+psychic conditions and in like surroundings. A bonfire was again the
+central rite of this festival, the communal nature of which is seen in
+the fact that all must contribute materials to it. In local survivals,
+mayor and priest, representing the earlier local chief and priest, were
+present, while a service in church preceded the procession to the scene
+of the bonfire. Dancing sunwise round the fire to the accompaniment of
+songs which probably took the place of hymns or tunes in honour of the
+Sun-god, commonly occurred, and by imitating the sun's action, may have
+been intended to make it more powerful. The livelier the dance the
+better would be the harvest.[930] As the fire represented the sun, it
+possessed the purifying and invigorating powers of the sun; hence
+leaping through the fire preserved from disease, brought prosperity, or
+removed barrenness. Hence also cattle were driven through the fire. But
+if any one stumbled as he leaped, ill-luck was supposed to follow him.
+He was devoted to the _fadets_ or spirits,[931] and perhaps, like the
+"devoted" Beltane victim, he may formerly have been sacrificed. Animal
+sacrifices are certainly found in many survivals, the victims being
+often placed in osier baskets and thrown into the fire. In other
+districts great human effigies of osier were carried in procession and
+burned.[932]
+
+The connection of such sacrifices with the periodical slaying of a
+representative of the vegetation-spirit has been maintained by Mannhardt
+and Dr. Frazer.[933] As has been seen, periodic sacrifices for the
+fertility of the land are mentioned by Cćsar, Strabo, and Diodorus,
+human victims and animals being enclosed in an osier image and
+burned.[934] These images survive in the osier effigies just referred
+to, while they may also be connected with the custom of decking the
+human representatives of the spirit of vegetation in greenery. The
+holocausts may be regarded as extensions of the earlier custom of
+slaying one victim, the incarnation of a vegetation-spirit. This slaying
+was gradually regarded as sacrificial, but as the beneficial effect of
+the sacrifice on growth was still believed in, it would naturally be
+thought that still better effects would be produced if many victims were
+offered. The victims were burned in a fire representing the sun, and
+vegetation was thus doubly benefited, by the victims and by the sun-god.
+
+The oldest conception of the vegetation-spirit was that of a tree-spirit
+which had power over rain, sunshine, and every species of fruitfulness.
+For this reason a tree had a prominent place both in the Beltane and
+Midsummer feasts. It was carried in procession, imparting its benefits
+to each house or field. Branches of it were attached to each house for
+the same purpose. It was then burned, or it was set up to procure
+benefits to vegetation during the year and burned at the next Midsummer
+festival.[935] The sacred tree was probably an oak, and, as has been
+seen, the mistletoe rite probably took place on Midsummer eve, as a
+preliminary to cutting down the sacred tree and in order to secure the
+life or soul of the tree, which must first be secured before the tree
+could be cut down. The life of the tree was in the mistletoe, still
+alive in winter when the tree itself seemed to be dead. Such beliefs as
+this concerning the detachable soul or life survive in _Märchen_, and
+are still alive among savages.[936]
+
+Folk-survivals show that a human or an animal representative of the
+vegetation-spirit, brought into connection with the tree, was also slain
+or burned along with the tree.[937] Thus the cutting of the mistletoe
+would be regarded as a preliminary to the slaying of the human victim,
+who, like the tree, was the representative of the spirit of vegetation.
+
+The bonfire representing the sun, and the victims, like the tree,
+representing the spirit of vegetation, it is obvious why the fire had
+healing and fertilising powers, and why its ashes and the ashes or the
+flesh of the victims possessed the same powers. Brands from the fire
+were carried through the fields or villages, as the tree had been, or
+placed on the fields or in houses, where they were carefully preserved
+for a year. All this aided growth and prosperity, just as the smoke of
+the fire, drifting over the fields, produced fertility. Ashes from the
+fire, and probably the calcined bones or even the flesh of the victims,
+were scattered on the fields or preserved and mixed with the seed corn.
+Again, part of the flesh may have been eaten sacramentally, since, as
+has been seen, Pliny refers to the belief of the Celts in the eating of
+human flesh as most wholesome.
+
+In the Stone Age, as with many savages, a circle typified the sun, and
+as soon as the wheel was invented its rolling motion at once suggested
+that of the sun. In the _Edda_ the sun is "the beautiful, the shining
+wheel," and similar expressions occur in the _Vedas_. Among the Celts
+the wheel of the sun was a favourite piece of symbolism, and this is
+seen in various customs at the Midsummer festival. A burning wheel was
+rolled down a slope or trundled through the fields, or burning brands
+were whirled round so as to give the impression of a fiery wheel. The
+intention was primarily to imitate the course of the sun through the
+heavens, and so, on the principle of imitative magic, to strengthen it.
+But also, as the wheel was rolled through the fields, so it was hoped
+that the direct beneficial action of the sun upon them would follow.
+Similar rites might be performed not only at Midsummer, but at other
+times, to procure blessing or to ward off evil, e.g. carrying fire round
+houses or fields or cattle or round a child _deiseil_ or sunwise,[938]
+and, by a further extension of thought, the blazing wheel, or the
+remains of the burning brands thrown to the winds, had also the effect
+of carrying off accumulated evils.[939]
+
+Beltane and Midsummer thus appear as twin halves of a spring or early
+summer festival, the intention of which was to promote fertility and
+health. This was done by slaying the spirit of vegetation in his
+representative--tree, animal, or man. His death quickened the energies
+of earth and man. The fire also magically assisted the course of the
+sun. Survival of the ancient rites are or were recently found in all
+Celtic regions, and have been constantly combated by the Church. But
+though they were continued, their true meaning was forgotten, and they
+were mainly performed for luck or out of sheer conservatism. Sometimes a
+Christian aspect was given to them, e.g. by connecting the fires with S.
+John, or by associating the rites with the service of the Church, or by
+the clergy being present at them. But their true nature was still
+evident as acts of pagan worship and magic which no veneer of
+Christianity could ever quite conceal.[940]
+
+
+LUGNASAD.
+
+
+The 1st of August, coming midway between Beltane and Samhain, was an
+important festival among the Celts. In Christian times the day became
+Lammas, but its name still survives in Irish as Lugnasad, in Gaelic as
+Lunasdal or Lunasduinn, and in Manx as Laa Luanys, and it is still
+observed as a fair or feast in many districts. Formerly assemblies at
+convenient centres were held on this day, not only for religious
+purposes, but for commerce and pleasure, both of these being of course
+saturated with religion. "All Ireland" met at Taillti, just as "all
+Gaul" met at Lugudunum, "Lug's town," or Lyons, in honour of Augustus,
+though the feast there had formerly been in honour of the god
+Lugus.[941] The festival was here Romanised, as it was also in Britain,
+where its name appears as _Goel-aoust_, _Gul-austus_, and _Gwyl Awst_,
+now the "August feast," but formerly the "feast of Augustus," the name
+having replaced one corresponding to Lugnasad.[942]
+
+Cormac explains the name Lugnasad as a festival of Lugh mac Ethlenn,
+celebrated by him in the beginning of autumn, and the _Rennes
+Dindsenchas_ accounts for its origin by saying that Lug's foster-mother,
+Tailtiu, having died on the Calends of August, he directed an assembly
+for lamentation to be held annually on that day at her tomb.[943] Lug is
+thus the founder of his own festival, for that it was his, and not
+Tailtiu's, is clear from the fact that his name is attached to it. As
+Lammas was a Christian harvest thanksgiving, so also was Lugnasad a
+pagan harvest feast, part of the ritual of which passed over to Samhain.
+The people made glad before the sun-god--Lug perhaps having that
+character--who had assisted them in the growth of the things on which
+their lives depended. Marriages were also arranged at this feast,
+probably because men had now more leisure and more means for entering
+upon matrimony. Possibly promiscuous love-making also occurred as a
+result of the festival gladness, agricultural districts being still
+notoriously immoral. Some evidence points to the connection of the feast
+with Lug's marriage, though this has been allegorised into his wedding
+the "sovereignty of Erin." Perhaps we have here a hint of the rite of
+the sacred marriage, for the purpose of magically fertilising the fields
+against next year's sowing.
+
+Due observance of the feast produced abundance of corn, fruit, milk, and
+fish. Probably the ritual observed included the preservation of the last
+sheaf as representing the corn-spirit, giving some of it to the cattle
+to strengthen them, and mingling it with next year's corn to impart to
+it the power of the corn-spirit. It may also have included the slaying
+of an animal or human incarnation of the corn-spirit, whose flesh and
+blood quickened the soil and so produced abundance next year, or, when
+partaken of by the worshippers, brought blessings to them. To neglect
+such rites, abundant instances of which exist in folk-custom, would be
+held to result in scarcity. This would also explain, as already
+suggested, why the festival was associated with the death of Tailtiu or
+of Carman. The euhemerised queen-goddess Tailtiu and the woman Carman
+had once been corn-goddesses, evolved from more primitive corn-spirits,
+and slain at the feast in their female representatives. The story of
+their death and burial at the festival was a dim memory of this ancient
+rite, and since the festival was also connected with the sun-god Lug, it
+was easy to bring him into relationship with the earlier goddess.
+Elsewhere the festival, in its memorial aspect, was associated with a
+king, probably because male victims had come to be representatives of a
+corn-god who had taken the place of the goddess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some of the ritual of these festivals is illustrated by scattered
+notices in classical writers, and on the whole they support our theory
+that the festivals originated in a female cult of spirits or goddesses
+of fertility. Strabo speaks of sacrifices offered to Demeter and Kore,
+according to the ritual followed at Samothrace, in an island near
+Britain, i.e. to native goddesses equated with them. He also describes
+the ritual of the Namnite women on an island in the Loire. They are
+called Bacchantes because they conciliated Bacchus with mysteries and
+sacrifices; in other words, they observed an orgiastic cult of a god
+equated with Bacchus. No man must set foot on the island, but the women
+left it once a year for intercourse with the other sex. Once a year the
+temple of the god was unroofed, and roofed again before sunset. If any
+woman dropped her load of materials (and it was said this always
+happened), she was torn in pieces and her limbs carried round the
+temple.[944] Dionysius Periegetes says the women were crowned with ivy,
+and celebrated their mysteries by night in honour of Earth and
+Proserpine with great clamour.[945] Pliny also makes a reference to
+British rites in which nude women and girls took part, their bodies
+stained with woad.[946]
+
+At a later time, S. Gregory of Tours speaks of the image of a goddess
+Berecynthia drawn on a litter through the streets, fields, and vineyards
+of Augustodunum on the days of her festival, or when the fields were
+threatened with scarcity. The people danced and sang before it. The
+image was covered with a white veil.[947] Berecynthia has been
+conjectured by Professor Anwyl to be the goddess Brigindu, worshipped at
+Valnay.[948]
+
+These rites were all directed towards divinities of fertility. But in
+harvest customs in Celtic Scotland and elsewhere two sheaves of corn
+were called respectively the Old Woman and the Maiden, the corn-spirit
+of the past year and that of the year to come, and corresponding to
+Demeter and Kore in early Greek agricultural ritual. As in Greece, so
+among the Celts, the primitive corn-spirits had probably become more
+individualised goddesses with an elaborate cult, observed on an island
+or at other sacred spots. The cult probably varied here and there, and
+that of a god of fertility may have taken the place of the cult of
+goddesses. A god was worshipped by the Namnite women, according to
+Strabo, goddesses according to Dionysius. The mangled victim was
+probably regarded as representative of a divinity, and perhaps part of
+the flesh was mixed with the seed-corn, like the grain of the Maiden
+sheaf, or buried in the earth. This rite is common among savages, and
+its presence in old European ritual is attested by survivals. That these
+rites were tabu to men probably points to the fact that they were
+examples of an older general custom, in which all such rites were in the
+hands of women who cultivated the earth, and who were the natural
+priestesses of goddesses of growth and fertility, of vegetation and the
+growing corn. Another example is found in the legend and procession of
+Godiva at Coventry--the survival of a pagan cult from which men were
+excluded.[949]
+
+Pliny speaks of the nudity of the women engaged in the cult. Nudity is
+an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites, and painting the
+body is also a widespread ritual act. Dressing with leaves or green
+stuff, as among the Namnite women, and often with the intention of
+personating the spirit of vegetation, is also customary. By unveiling
+the body, and especially the sexual organs, women more effectually
+represented the goddess of fertility, and more effectually as her
+representatives, or through their own powers, magically conveyed
+fertility to the fields. Nakedness thus became a powerful
+magico-religious symbol, and it is found as part of the ritual for
+producing rain.[950]
+
+There is thus abundant evidence of the cult of fertility, vegetation,
+and corn-spirits, who tended to become divinities, male or female. Here
+and there, through conservatism, the cult remained in the hands of
+women, but more generally it had become a ritual in which both men and
+women took part--that of the great agricultural festivals. Where a
+divinity had taken the place of the vaguer spirits, her image, like that
+of Berecynthia, was used in the ritual, but the image was probably the
+successor of the tree which embodied the vegetation-spirit, and was
+carried through the fields to fertilise them. Similar processions of
+images, often accompanied by a ritual washing of the image in order to
+invigorate the divinity, or, as in the similar May-day custom, to
+produce rain, are found in the Teutonic cult of Nerthus, the Phrygian of
+Cybele, the Hindu of Bhavani, and the Roman ritual of the Bona Dea. The
+image of Berecynthia was thus probably washed also. Washing the images
+of saints, usually to produce rain, has sometimes taken the place of the
+washing of a divine image, and similarly the relics of a saint are
+carried through a field, as was the tree or image. The community at Iona
+perambulated a newly sown field with S. Columba's relics in time of
+drought, and shook his tunic three times in the air, and were rewarded
+by a plentiful rain, and later, by a bounteous harvest.[951]
+
+Many of these local cults were pre-Celtic, but we need not therefore
+suppose that the Celts, or the Aryans as a whole, had no such
+cults.[952] The Aryans everywhere adopted local cults, but this they
+would not have done if, as is supposed, they had themselves outgrown
+them. The cults were local, but the Celts had similar local cults, and
+easily accepted those of the people they conquered. We cannot explain
+the persistence of such primitive cults as lie behind the great Celtic
+festivals, both in classical times and over the whole area of Europe
+among the peasantry, by referring them solely to a pre-Aryan folk. They
+were as much Aryan as pre-Aryan. They belong to those unchanging strata
+of religion which have so largely supplied the soil in which its later
+and more spiritual growths have flourished. And among these they still
+emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the gaunt outcrops of some
+ancient rock formation amid rich vegetation and fragrant flowers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[889] Pliny, xvi. 45; Cćsar, vi. 18. See my article "Calendar (Celtic)"
+in Hastings' _Encyclopćdia of Rel. and Ethics_, iii. 78 f., for a full
+discussion of the problems involved.
+
+[890] O'Donovan, _Book of Rights_, Intro. lii f.
+
+[891] O'Donovan, li.; Bertrand, 105; Keating, 300.
+
+[892] Samhain may mean "summer-end," from _sam_, "summer," and _fuin_,
+"sunset" or "end," but Dr. Stokes (_US_ 293) makes _samani_- mean
+"assembly," i.e. the gathering of the people to keep the feast.
+
+[893] Keating, 125, 300.
+
+[894] See MacBain, _CM_ ix. 328.
+
+[895] Brand, i. 390; Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth
+Century_, ii. 437; _Stat. Account_, xi. 621.
+
+[896] Hazlitt, 297-298, 340; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 285 f.
+
+[897] Curtin, 72.
+
+[898] Fitzgerald, _RC_ vi. 254.
+
+[899] See Chambers, _Medićval Stage_, App. N, for the evidence from
+canons and councils regarding these.
+
+[900] Tille, _Yule and Christmas_, 96.
+
+[901] Chambers, _Popular Rhymes_, 166.
+
+[902] Hutchinson, _View of Northumberland_, ii. 45; Thomas, _Rev. de
+l'Hist. des Rel._ xxxviii. 335 f.
+
+[903] _Patrol. Lot._ xxxix. 2001.
+
+[904] _IT_ i. 205; _RC_ v. 331; Leahy, i. 57.
+
+[905] See p. 169, _supra_.
+
+[906] The writer has himself seen such bonfires in the Highlands. See
+also Hazlitt, 298; Pennant, _Tour_, ii. 47; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 515, _CFL_ i.
+225-226. In Egyptian mythology, Typhon assailed Horus in the form of a
+black swine.
+
+[907] Keating, 300.
+
+[908] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 556; _RC_ x. 214, 225, xxiv. 172; O'Grady, ii.
+374; _CM_ ix. 209.
+
+[909] See Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forschung._ 333 f.; Frazer, _Adonis_,
+_passim_; Thomas, _Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel._ xxxviii. 325 f.
+
+[910] Hazlitt, 35; Chambers, _Medićval Stage_, i. 261.
+
+[911] Chambers, _Book of Days_, ii. 492; Hazlitt, 131.
+
+[912] Hazlitt, 97; Davies, _Extracts from Munic. Records of York_, 270.
+
+[913] See p. 237, _supra_; _LL_ 16, 213.
+
+[914] Chambers, _Med. Stage_, i. 250 f.
+
+[915] Cormac, _s.v._ "Belltaine," "Bel"; _Arch. Rev._ i. 232.
+
+[916] D'Arbois, ii. 136.
+
+[917] Stokes, _US_ 125, 164. See his earlier derivation, dividing the
+word into _belt_, connected with Lithuan. _baltas_, "white," and _aine_,
+the termination in _sechtmaine_, "week" (_TIG_ xxxv.).
+
+[918] Need-fire (Gael. _Teinne-eiginn_, "necessity fire") was used to
+kindle fire in time of cattle plague. See Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 608 f.;
+Martin, 113; Jamieson's _Dictionary_, _s.v._ "neidfyre."
+
+[919] Cormac, _s.v._; Martin, 105, says that the Druids extinguished all
+fires until their dues were paid. This may have been a tradition in the
+Hebrides.
+
+[920] Joyce, _PN_ i. 216; Hone, _Everyday Book_, i. 849, ii. 595.
+
+[921] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, i. 291.
+
+[922] Hazlitt, 339, 397.
+
+[923] Hone, _Everyday Book_, ii. 595. See p. 215, _supra_.
+
+[924] Sinclair, _Stat. Account_, xi. 620.
+
+[925] Martin, 105.
+
+[926] For these usages see Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the
+Eighteenth Century_, ii. 439 f.; Sinclair, _Stat. Account_, v. 84, xi.
+620, xv. 517. For the sacramental and sacrificial use of similar loaves,
+see Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, i. 94, ii. 78; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ iii.
+1239 f.
+
+[927] _New Stat. Account_, Wigtownshire, 208; Hazlitt, 38, 323, 340.
+
+[928] See Miss Owen, _Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians_, 50; Frazer,
+_Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 205.
+
+[929] For notices of Beltane survivals see Keating, 300; Campbell,
+_Journey from Edinburgh_, i. 143; Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii.
+439 f.; _Old Stat. Account_, v. 84, xi. 620, xv. 517; Gregor, _Folk-lore
+of N.E. of Scotland_, 167. The paganism of the survivals is seen in the
+fact that Beltane fires were frequently prohibited by Scottish
+ecclesiastical councils.
+
+[930] Meyrac, _Traditions ... des Ardennes_, 68.
+
+[931] Bertrand, 119.
+
+[932] Ibid. 407; Gaidoz, 21; Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 514, 523; Brand,
+i. 8, 323.
+
+[933] Mannhardt, _op. cit._ 525 f.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, iii. 319.
+
+[934] P. 234, _supra_.
+
+[935] Frazer, _op. cit._ i. 74; Brand, i. 222, 237, 246, 318; Hone,
+_Everyday Book_, ii. 595; Mannhardt, _op. cit._ 177; Grimm, _Teut.
+Myth._ 621, 777 f.
+
+[936] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, ch. v.
+
+[937] Frazer, i. 82, ii. 247 f., 275; Mannhardt, 315 f.
+
+[938] Martin, 117. The custom of walking _deiseil_ round an object still
+survives, and, as an imitation of the sun's course, it is supposed to
+bring good luck or ward off evil. For the same reason the right hand
+turn was of good augury. Medb's charioteer, as she departed for the war,
+made her chariot turn to the right to repel evil omens (_LU_ 55).
+Curiously enough, Pliny (xxviii. 2) says that the Gauls preferred the
+left-hand turn in their religious rites, though Athenćus refers to the
+right-hand turn among them. _Deiseil_ is from _dekso-s_, "right," and
+_svel_, "to turn."
+
+[939] Hone, i. 846; Hazlitt, ii. 346.
+
+[940] This account of the Midsummer ritual is based on notices found in
+Hone, _Everyday Book_; Hazlitt, ii. 347 f.; Gaidoz, _Le Dieu Soleil_;
+Bertrand; Deloche, _RC_ ix. 435; _Folk-Lore_, xii. 315; Frazer, _Golden
+Bough_{2}, iii. 266 f.; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ ii. 617 f.; Monnier, 186 f.
+
+[941] _RC_ xvi. 51; Guiraud, _Les Assemblées provinciales dans l'Empire
+Romain_.
+
+[942] D'Arbois, i. 215, _Les Celtes_, 44; Loth, _Annales de Bretagne_,
+xiii. No. 2.
+
+[943] _RC_ xvi. 51.
+
+[944] Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[945] Dion. Per. v. 570.
+
+[946] Pliny, xxii. 1.
+
+[947] Greg, _de Glor. Conf._ 477; Sulp. Sev. _Vita S. Martini_, 9; Pass.
+S. Symphor. Migne, _Pat. Graec._ v. 1463, 1466. The cult of Cybele had
+been introduced into Gaul, and the ritual here described resembles it,
+but we are evidently dealing here with the cult of a native goddess.
+See, however, Frazer, _Adonis_, 176.
+
+[948] Anwyl, _Celtic Religion_, 41.
+
+[949] See Hartland, _Science of Fairy-Tales_, 84 f.
+
+[950] Professor Rh[^y]s suggests that nudity, being a frequent symbol of
+submission to a conqueror, acquired a similar significance in religious
+rites (_AL_ 180). But the magical aspect of nudity came first in time.
+
+[951] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ ii. 45.
+
+[952] See Gomme, _Ethnology in Folk-lore_, 30 f., _Village Community_,
+114.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ACCESSORIES OF CULT.
+
+TEMPLES.
+
+
+In primitive religion the place of worship is seldom a temple made with
+hands, but rather an enclosed space in which the symbol or image of the
+god stands. The sacredness of the god makes the place of his cult
+sacred. Often an open space in the forest is the scene of the regular
+cult. There the priests perform the sacred rites; none may enter it but
+themselves; and the trembling worshipper approaches it with awe lest the
+god should slay him if he came too near.
+
+The earliest temples of the Gauls were sacred groves, one of which, near
+Massilia, is described by Lucan. No bird built in it, no animal lurked
+near, the leaves constantly shivered when no breeze stirred them. Altars
+stood in its midst, and the images of the gods were misshapen trunks of
+trees. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. The poet then
+describes marvels heard or seen in the grove--the earth groaning, dead
+yews reviving, trees surrounded with flame yet not consumed, and huge
+serpents twining round the oaks. The people feared to approach the
+grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight
+lest he should then meet its divine guardian.[953] Dio speaks of human
+sacrifices offered to Andrasta in a British grove, and in 61 A.D. the
+woods of Mona, devoted to strange rites, were cut down by Roman
+soldiers.[954] The sacred _Dru-nemeton_ of the Galatian Celts may have
+been a grove.[955] Place-names also point to the widespread existence of
+such groves, since the word _nemeton_, "grove," occurs in many of them,
+showing that the places so called had been sites of a cult. In Ireland,
+_fid-nemed_ stood for "sacred grove."[956] The ancient groves were still
+the objects of veneration in Christian times, though fines were levied
+against those who still clung to the old ways.[957]
+
+Sacred groves were still used in Gallo-Roman times, and the Druids may
+have had a preference for them, a preference which may underlie the
+words of the scholiast on Lucan, that "the Druids worship the gods
+without temples in woods." But probably more elaborate temples, great
+tribal sanctuaries, existed side by side with these local groves,
+especially in Cisalpine Gaul, where the Boii had a temple in which were
+stored the spoils of war, while the Insubri had a similar temple.[958]
+These were certainly buildings. The "consecrated place" in Transalpine
+Gaul, which Cćsar mentions, and where at fixed periods judgments were
+given, might be either a grove or a temple. Cćsar uses the same phrase
+for sacred places where the spoils of war were heaped; these may have
+been groves, but Diodorus speaks of treasure collected in "temples and
+sacred places" ([Greek: en tois hierois chai temenesin]), and Plutarch
+speaks of the "temple" where the Arverni hung Cćsar's sword.[959] The
+"temple" of the Namnite women, unroofed and re-roofed in a day, must
+have been a building. There is no evidence that the insular Celts had
+temples. In Gallo-Roman times, elaborate temples, perhaps occupying
+sites of earlier groves or temples, sprang up over the Romano-Celtic
+area. They were built on Roman models, many of them were of great size,
+and they were dedicated to Roman or Gallo-Roman divinities.[960] Smaller
+shrines were built by grateful worshippers at sacred springs to their
+presiding divinity, as many inscriptions show. In the temples stood
+images of the gods, and here were stored sacred vessels, sometimes made
+of the skulls of enemies, spoils of war dedicated to the gods, money
+collected for sacred purposes, and war standards, especially those which
+bore divine symbols.
+
+The old idea that stone circles were Druidic temples, that human
+sacrifices were offered on the "altar-stone," and libations of blood
+poured into the cup-markings, must be given up, along with much of the
+astronomical lore associated with the circles. Stonehenge dates from the
+close of the Neolithic Age, and most of the smaller circles belong to
+the early Bronze Age, and are probably pre-Celtic. In any case they were
+primarily places of sepulture. As such they would be the scene of
+ancestor worship, but yet not temples in the strict sense of the word.
+The larger circles, burial-places of great chiefs or kings, would become
+central places for the recurring rites of ghost-worship, possibly also
+rallying places of the tribe on stated occasions. But whether this
+ghost-worship was ever transmuted into the cult of a god at the circles
+is uncertain and, indeed, unlikely. The Celts would naturally regard
+these places as sacred, since the ghosts of the dead, even those of a
+vanquished people, are always dangerous, and they also took over the
+myths and legends[961] associated with them, such, e.g., as regarded the
+stones themselves, or trees growing within the circles, as embodiments
+of the dead, while they may also have used them as occasional places of
+secondary interment. Whether they were ever led to copy such circles
+themselves is uncertain, since their own methods of interment seem to
+have been different. We have seen that the gods may in some cases have
+been worshipped at tumuli, and that Lugnasad was, at some centres,
+connected with commemorative cults at burial-places (mounds, not
+circles). But the reasons for this are obscure, nor is there any hint
+that other Celtic festivals were held near burial mounds. Probably such
+commemorative rites at places of sepulture during Lugnasad were only
+part of a wider series occurring elsewhere, and we cannot assume from
+such vague notices that stone circles were Druidic temples where worship
+of an Oriental nature was carried on.
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s is disposed to accept the old idea that Stonehenge was
+the temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, mentioned by
+Diodorus, where the sun-god was worshipped.[962] But though that temple
+was circular, it had walls adorned with votive offerings. Nor does the
+temple unroofed yearly by the Namnite women imply a stone circle, for
+there is not the slightest particle of evidence that the circles were
+ever roofed in any way.[963] Stone circles with mystic trees growing in
+them, one of them with a well by which entrance was gained to Tír fa
+Tonn, are mentioned in Irish tales. They were connected with magic
+rites, but are not spoken of as temples.[964]
+
+
+ALTARS.
+
+
+Lucan describes realistically the awful sacrifices of the Gauls on cruel
+altars not a whit milder than those of Diana, and he speaks of "altars
+piled with offerings" in the sacred grove at Marseilles.[965] Cicero
+says that human victims were sacrificed on altars, and Tacitus describes
+the altars of Mona smeared with human blood.[966] "Druids' altars" are
+mentioned in the Irish "Expedition of Dathi," and Cormac speaks of
+_indelba_, or altars adorned with emblems.[967] Probably many of these
+altars were mere heaps of stone like the Norse _horg_, or a great block
+of stone. Some sacrifices, however, were too extensive to be offered on
+an altar, but in such cases the blood would be sprinkled upon it. Under
+Roman influence, Celtic altars took the form of those of the conquerors,
+with inscriptions containing names of native or Roman gods and
+bas-reliefs depicting some of these. The old idea that dolmens were
+Celtic altars is now abandoned. They were places of sepulture of the
+Neolithic or early Bronze Age, and were originally covered with a mound
+of earth. During the era of Celtic paganism they were therefore hidden
+from sight, and it is only in later times that the earth has been
+removed and the massive stones, arranged so as to form a species of
+chamber, have been laid bare.
+
+
+IMAGES.
+
+
+The Gauls, according to Cćsar, possessed _plurima simulacra_ of the
+native Mercury, but he does not refer to images of other gods. We need
+not infer from this that the Celts had a prejudice against images, for
+among the Irish Celts images are often mentioned, and in Gaul under
+Roman rule many images existed.
+
+The existence of images among the Celts as among other peoples, may owe
+something to the cult of trees and of stones set up over the dead. The
+stone, associated with the dead man's spirit, became an image of
+himself, perhaps rudely fashioned in his likeness. A rough-hewn tree
+trunk became an image of the spirit or god of trees. On the other hand,
+some anthropomorphic images, like the palćolithic or Mycenćan figurines,
+may have been fashioned without the intermediary of tree-trunk or stone
+pillar. Maximus of Tyre says that the Celtic image of Zeus was a lofty
+oak, perhaps a rough-hewn trunk rather than a growing tree, and such
+roughly carved tree-trunks, images of gods, are referred to by Lucan in
+his description of the Massilian grove.[968] Pillar stones set up over
+the graves of the dead are often mentioned in Irish texts. These would
+certainly be associated with the dead; indeed, existing legends show
+that they were believed to be tenanted by the ghosts and to have the
+power of motion. This suggests that they had been regarded as images of
+the dead. Other stones honoured in Ireland were the _cloch labrais_, an
+oracular stone; the _lia fail_, or coronation stone, which shouted when
+a king of the Milesian race seated himself upon it; and the _lia
+adrada_, or stone of adoration, apparently a boundary stone.[969] The
+_plurima simulacra_ of the Gaulish Mercury may have been boundary stones
+like those dedicated to Mercury or Hermes among the Romans and Greeks.
+Did Cćsar conclude, or was it actually the case, that the Gauls
+dedicated such stones to a god of boundaries who might be equated with
+Mercury? Many such standing stones still exist in France, and their
+number must have been greater in Cćsar's time. Seeing them the objects
+of superstitious observances, he may have concluded that they were
+_simulacra_ of a god. Other Romans besides himself had been struck by
+the resemblance of these stones to their Hermai, and perhaps the Gauls,
+if they did not already regard them as symbols of a god, acquiesced in
+the resemblance. Thus, on the menhir of Kervadel are sculptured four
+figures, one being that of Mercury, dating from Gallo-Roman times.
+Beneath another, near Peronne, a bronze statuette of Mercury was
+discovered.[970] This would seem to show that the Gauls had a cult of
+pillar stones associated with a god of boundaries. Cćsar probably uses
+the word _simulacrum_ in the sense of "symbol" rather than "image,"
+though he may have meant native images not fully carved in human shape,
+like the Irish _cérmand_, _cerstach_, ornamented with gold and silver,
+the "chief idol" of north Ireland, or like the similarly ornamented
+"images" of Cromm Cruaich and his satellites.[971] The adoration of
+sacred stones continued into Christian times and was much opposed by the
+Church.[972] S. Samson of Dol (sixth century) found men dancing round a
+_simulacrum abominabile_, which seems to have been a kind of standing
+stone, and having besought them to desist, he carved a cross upon
+it.[973] Several _menhirion_ in France are now similarly
+ornamented.[974]
+
+The number of existing Gallo-Roman images shows that the Celts had not
+adopted a custom which was foreign to them, and they must have already
+possessed rude native images. The disappearance of these would be
+explained if they were made of perishable material. Wooden images of the
+_Matres_ have been occasionally found, and these may be pre-Roman. Some
+of the images of the three-headed and crouching gods show no sign of
+Roman influences in their modelling, and they may have been copied from
+earlier images of wood. We also find divine figures on pre-Roman
+coins.[975] Certain passages in classical writings point to the
+existence of native images. A statue of a goddess existed in a temple at
+Marseilles, according to Justin, and the Galatian Celts had images of
+the native Juppiter and Artemis, while the conquering Celts who entered
+Rome bowed to the seated senators as to statues of the gods.[976] The
+Gauls placed rich ornaments on the images of the gods, and presumably
+these were native "idols."
+
+"Idols" are frequently mentioned in Irish texts, and there is no doubt
+that these mean images.[977] Cormac mac Art refused to worship "idols,"
+and was punished by the Druids.[978] The idols of Cromm Cruaich and his
+satellites, referred to in the _Dindsenchas_, were carved to represent
+the human form; the chief one was of gold, the others of stone. These
+were miraculously overthrown by S. Patrick; but in the account of the
+miracle the chief idol was of stone adorned with gold and silver, the
+others, numbering twelve, were ornamented with bronze.[979] They stood
+in Mag Slecht, and similar sacred places with groups of images evidently
+existed elsewhere, e.g. at Rath Archaill, "where the Druid's altars and
+images are."[980] The lady Cessair, before coming to Ireland, is said to
+have taken advice of her _laimh-dhia_, or "hand gods," perhaps small
+images used for divination.[981]
+
+For the British Celts the evidence is slender, but idolatry in the sense
+of "image-worship" is frequently mentioned in the lives of early
+saints.[982] Gildas also speaks of images "mouldering away within and
+without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features."[983]
+This pathetic picture of the forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may
+refer to Romano-Celtic images, but the "stiff and deformed features"
+suggest rather native art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing
+the human form, however artistic they may have been in other directions.
+
+If the native Celts of Ireland had images, there is no reason to
+suppose, especially considering the evidence just adduced, that the
+Gauls, or at least the Druids, were antagonistic to images. This last is
+M. Reinach's theory, part of a wider hypothesis that the Druids were
+pre-Celtic, but became the priests of the Celts, who till then had no
+priests. The Druids prohibited image-worship, and this prohibition
+existed in Gaul, _ex hypothesi_, from the end of palćolithic times.
+Pythagoras and his school were opposed to image-worship, and the
+classical writers claimed a connection between the Pythagoreans and the
+Druids. M. Reinach thinks there must have been some analogy between
+them, and that was hostility to anthropomorphism. But the analogy is
+distinctly stated to have lain in the doctrine of immortality or
+metempsychosis. Had the Druids been opposed to image-worship, classical
+observers could not have failed to notice the fact. M. Reinach then
+argues that the Druids caused the erection of the megalithic monuments
+in Gaul, symbols not images. They are thus Druidic, though not Celtic.
+The monuments argue a powerful priesthood; the Druids were a powerful
+priesthood; therefore the Druids caused the monuments to be built. This
+is not a powerful argument![984]
+
+As has been seen, some purely Celtic images existed in Gaul. The Gauls,
+who used nothing but wood for their houses, probably knew little of the
+art of carving stone. They would therefore make most of their images of
+wood--a perishable material. The insular Celts had images, and if, as
+Cćsar maintained, the Druids came from Britain to Gaul, this points at
+least to a similarity of cult in the two regions. Youthful Gauls who
+aspired to Druidic knowledge went to Britain to obtain it. Would the
+Druids of Gaul have permitted this, had they been iconoclasts? No single
+text shows that the Druids had any antipathy to images, while the Gauls
+certainly had images of worshipful animals. Further, even if the Druids
+were priests of a pre-Celtic folk, they must have permitted the making
+of images, since many "menhir-statues" exist on French soil, at Aveyron,
+Tarn, and elsewhere.[985] The Celts were in constant contact with
+image-worshipping peoples, and could hardly have failed to be influenced
+by them, even if such a priestly prohibition existed, just as Israel
+succumbed to images in spite of divine commands. That they would have
+been thus influenced is seen from the number of images of all kinds
+dating from the period after the Roman conquest.
+
+Incidental proofs of the fondness of the Celts for images are found in
+ecclesiastical writings and in late survivals. The procession of the
+image of Berecynthia has already been described, and such processions
+were common in Gaul, and imply a regular folk-custom. S. Martin of Tours
+stopped a funeral procession believing it to be such a pagan rite.[986]
+Councils and edicts prohibited these processions in Gaul, but a more
+effectual way was to Christianise them. The Rogation tide processions
+with crucifix and Madonna, and the carrying of S. John's image at the
+Midsummer festivals, were a direct continuation of the older practices.
+Images were often broken by Christian saints in Gaul, as they had been
+over-turned by S. Patrick in Ireland. "Stiff and deformed" many of them
+must have been, if one may judge from the _Groah-goard_ or "Venus of
+Quinipily," for centuries the object of superstitious rites in
+Brittany.[987] With it may be compared the fetich-stone or image of
+which an old woman in the island of Inniskea, the guardian of a sacred
+well, had charge. It was kept wrapped up to hide it from profane eyes,
+but at certain periods it was brought out for adoration.[988]
+
+The images and bas-reliefs of the Gallo-Roman period fall mainly into
+two classes. In the first class are those representing native
+divinities, like Esus, Tarvos Trigaranos, Smertullos, Cernunnos, the
+horned and crouching gods, the god with the hammer, and the god with the
+wheel. Busts and statues of some water-goddesses exist, but more
+numerous are the representations of Epona. One of these is provided with
+a box pedestal in which offerings might be placed. The _Matres_ are
+frequently figured, usually as three seated figures with baskets of
+fruit or flowers, or with one or more infants, like the Madonna. Images
+of triple-headed gods, supposed to be Cernunnos, have been found, but
+are difficult to place in any category.[989]
+
+To the images of the second class is usually attached the Roman name of
+a god, but generally the native Celtic name is added, but the images
+themselves are of the traditional Roman type. Among statues and
+statuettes of bronze, that of Mercury occurs most often. This may point
+to the fact that Cćsar's _simulacra_ of the native Mercury were images,
+and that the old preference for representing this god continued in Roman
+times. Small figures of divinities in white clay have been found in
+large numbers, and may have been _ex votos_ or images of household
+_lararia_.[990]
+
+
+SYMBOLS.
+
+
+Images of the gods in Gaul can be classified by means of their
+symbols--the mallet and cup (a symbol of plenty) borne by the god with
+the hammer, the wheel of the sun-god, the cornucopia and torque carried
+by Cernunnos. Other symbols occur on images, altars, monuments, and
+coins. These are the swastika and triskele, probably symbols of the
+sun;[991] single or concentric circles, sometimes with rays;[992]
+crosses; and a curious S figure. The triskele and the circles are
+sometimes found on faces figured on coins. They may therefore have been
+tattoo markings of a symbolic character. The circle and cross are often
+incised on bronze images of Dispater. Much speculation has been aroused
+by the S figure, which occurs on coins, while nine models of this symbol
+hang from a ring carried by the god with the wheel, but the most
+probable is that which sees in it a thunderbolt.[993] But lacking any
+old text interpreting these various symbols, all explanations of them
+must be conjectural. Some of them are not purely Celtic, but are of
+world-wide occurrence.
+
+
+CULT OF WEAPONS.
+
+
+Here some reference may be made to the Celtic cult of weapons. As has
+been seen, a hammer is the symbol of one god, and it is not unlikely
+that a cult of the hammer had preceded that of the god to whom the
+hammer was given as a symbol. Esus is also represented with an axe. We
+need not repeat what has already been said regarding the primitive and
+universal cult of hammer or axe,[994] but it is interesting to notice,
+in connection with other evidence for a Celtic cult of weapons, that
+there is every reason to believe that the phrase _sub ascia dedicare_,
+which occurs in inscriptions on tombs from Gallia Lugdunensis, usually
+with the figure of an axe incised on the stone, points to the cult of
+the axe, or of a god whose symbol the axe was.[995] In Irish texts the
+power of speech is attributed to weapons, but, according to the
+Christian scribe, this was because demons spoke from them, for the
+people worshipped arms in those days.[996] Thus it may have been
+believed that spirits tenanted weapons, or that weapons had souls.
+Evidence of the cult itself is found in the fact that on Gaulish coins a
+sword is figured, stuck in the ground, or driving a chariot, or with a
+warrior dancing before it, or held in the hand of a dancing
+warrior.[997] The latter are ritual acts, and resemble that described by
+Spenser as performed by Irish warriors in his day, who said prayers or
+incantations before a sword stuck in the earth.[998] Swords were also
+addressed in songs composed by Irish bards, and traditional remains of
+such songs are found in Brittany.[999] They represent the chants of the
+ancient cult. Oaths were taken by weapons, and the weapons were believed
+to turn against those who lied.[1000] The magical power of weapons,
+especially of those over which incantations had been said, is frequently
+referred to in traditional tales and Irish texts.[1001] A reminiscence
+of the cult or of the magical power of weapons may be found in the
+wonderful "glaives of light" of Celtic folk-tales, and the similar
+mystical weapon of the Arthurian romances.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[953] Lucan, _Pharsalia_, iii. 399 f.
+
+[954] Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30.
+
+[955] Strabo, xii. 51. _Drunemeton_ may mean "great temple" (D'Arbois,
+_Les Celtes_, 203).
+
+[956] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 164.
+
+[957] Holder, ii. 712. Cf. "Indiculus" in Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 1739, "de
+sacris silvarum, quas nimidas (= nemeta) vocant."
+
+[958] Livy, xxiii. 24; Polyb. ii. 32.
+
+[959] Cćsar, vi. 13, 17; Diod. Sic. v. 27; Plutarch, _Cćsar_, 26.
+
+[960] See examples in Dom Martin, i. 134 f.; cf. Greg. Tours, _Hist.
+Franc._ i. 30.
+
+[961] See Reinach, "Les monuments de pierre brute dans le langage et les
+croyances populaires," _Rev. Arch._ 1893, i. 339; Evans, "The Roll-Right
+Stones," _Folk-Lore_, vi. 20 f.
+
+[962] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 194; Diod. Sic. ii. 47.
+
+[963] Rh[^y]s, 197.
+
+[964] Joyce, _OCR_ 246; Kennedy, 271.
+
+[965] Lucan, i. 443, iii. 399f.
+
+[966] Cicero, _pro Fonteio_, x. 21; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30. Cf. Pomp. Mela,
+iii. 2. 18.
+
+[967] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 284; Cormac, 94. Cf. _IT_ iii. 211, for the
+practice of circumambulating altars.
+
+[968] Max. Tyr. _Dissert._ viii. 8; Lucan, iii. 412f.
+
+[969] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, iv. 142.
+
+[970] _Rev. Arch._ i. pl. iii-v.; Reinach, _RC_ xi. 224, xiii. 190.
+
+[971] Stokes, _Martyr. of Oengus_, 186-187.
+
+[972] See the Twenty-third Canon of Council of Arles, the Twenty-third
+of the Council of Tours, 567, and ch. 65 of the _Capitularia_, 789.
+
+[973] Mabillon, _Acta_, i. 177.
+
+[974] Reinach, _Rev. Arch._ 1893, xxi. 335.
+
+[975] Blanchet, i. 152-153, 386.
+
+[976] Justin, xliii. 5; Strabo, xii. 5. 2; Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._
+xx.; Livy, v. 41.
+
+[977] Cormac, 94.
+
+[978] Keating, 356. See also Stokes, _Martyr. of Oengus_, 186; _RC_ xii.
+427, § 15; Joyce, _SH_ 274 f.
+
+[979] _LL_ 213_b_; _Trip. Life_, i. 90, 93.
+
+[980] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 284.
+
+[981] Keating, 49.
+
+[982] Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kentig._ 27, 32, 34; Ailred, _Vita S. Ninian._
+6.
+
+[983] Gildas, § 4.
+
+[984] For the whole argument see Reinach, _RC_ xiii. 189 f. Bertrand,
+_Rev. Arch._ xv. 345, supports a similar theory, and, according to both
+writers, Gallo-Roman art was the result of the weakening of Druidic
+power by the Romans.
+
+[985] L'Abbé Hermet, Assoc. pour l'avancement des Sciences, _Compte
+Rendu_, 1900, ii. 747; _L'Anthropologie_, v. 147.
+
+[986] _Corp. Scrip. Eccl. Lat._ i. 122.
+
+[987] Monnier, 362. The image bears part of an inscription ... LIT...
+and it has been thought that this read ILITHYIA originally. The name is
+in keeping with the rites still in use before the image. This would make
+it date from Roman times. If so, it is a poor specimen of the art of the
+period. But it may be an old native image to which later the name of the
+Roman goddess was given.
+
+[988] Roden, _Progress of the Reformation in Ireland_, 51. The image was
+still existing in 1851.
+
+[989] For figures of most of these, see _Rev. Arch._ vols. xvi., xviii.,
+xix., xxxvi.; _RC_ xvii. 45, xviii. 254, xx. 309, xxii. 159, xxiv. 221;
+Bertrand, _passim_; Courcelle-Seneuil, _Les Dieux Gaulois d'apres les
+Monuments Figures_, Paris, 1910.
+
+[990] See Courcelle-Seneuil, _op. cit._; Reinach, _BF passim_,
+_Catalogue Sommaire du Musée des Ant. nat._{4} 115-116.
+
+[991] Reinach, _Catal._ 29, 87; _Rev. Arch._ xvi. 17; Blanchet, i. 169,
+316; Huchet, _L'art gaulois_, ii. 8.
+
+[992] Blanchet, i. 158; Reinach, _BF_ 143, 150, 152.
+
+[993] Blanchet, i. 17; Flouest, _Deux Stčles_ (Append.), Paris, 1885;
+Reinach, _BF_ 33.
+
+[994] P. 30, _supra_.
+
+[995] Hirschfeld in _CIL_ xiii. 256.
+
+[996] _RC_ xii. 107; Joyce, _SH_ i. 131.
+
+[997] Blanchet, i. 160 f.; Muret de la Tour, _Catalogue_, 6922, 6941,
+etc.
+
+[998] _View of the State of Ireland_, 57.
+
+[999] _RC_ xx. 7; Martin, _Études de la Myth. Celt._ 164.
+
+[1000] _IT_ i. 206; _RC_ ix. 144.
+
+[1001] _CM_ xiii. 168 f.; Miss Hull, 44, 221, 223.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE DRUIDS.
+
+
+Pliny thought that the name "Druid" was a Greek appellation derived from
+the Druidic cult of the oak ([Greek: _drus_]).[1002] The word, however,
+is purely Celtic, and its meaning probably implies that, like the
+sorcerer and medicine-man everywhere, the Druid was regarded as "the
+knowing one." It is composed of two parts--_dru_-, regarded by M.
+D'Arbois as an intensive, and _vids_, from _vid_, "to know," or
+"see."[1003] Hence the Druid was "the very knowing or wise one." It is
+possible, however, that _dru_- is connected with the root which gives
+the word "oak" in Celtic speech--Gaulish _deruo_, Irish _dair_, Welsh
+_derw_--and that the oak, occupying a place in the cult, was thus
+brought into relation with the name of the priesthood. The Gaulish form
+of the name was probably _druis_, the Old Irish was _drai_. The modern
+forms in Irish and Scots Gaelic, _drui_ and _draoi_ mean "sorcerer."
+
+M. D'Arbois and others, accepting Cćsar's dictum that "the system (of
+Druidism) is thought to have been devised in Britain, and brought thence
+into Gaul," maintain that the Druids were priests of the Goidels in
+Britain, who imposed themselves upon the Gaulish conquerors of the
+Goidels, and that Druidism then passed over into Gaul about 200
+B.C.[1004] But it is hardly likely that, even if the Druids were
+accepted as priests by conquering Gauls in Britain, they should have
+affected the Gauls of Gaul who were outside the reflex influence of the
+conquered Goidels, and should have there obtained that power which they
+possessed. Goidels and Gauls were allied by race and language and
+religion, and it would be strange if they did not both possess a similar
+priesthood. Moreover, the Goidels had been a continental people, and
+Druidism was presumably flourishing among them then. Why did it not
+influence kindred Celtic tribes without Druids, _ex hypothesi_, at that
+time? Further, if we accept Professor Meyer's theory that no Goidel set
+foot in Britain until the second century A.D., the Gauls could not have
+received the Druidic priesthood from the Goidels.
+
+Cćsar merely says, "it is thought (_existimatur_) that Druidism came to
+Gaul from Britain."[1005] It was a pious opinion, perhaps his own, or
+one based on the fact that those who wished to perfect themselves in
+Druidic art went to Britain. This may have been because Britain had been
+less open to foreign influences than Gaul, and its Druids, unaffected by
+these, were thought to be more powerful than those of Gaul. Pliny, on
+the other hand, seems to think that Druidism passed over into Britain
+from Gaul.[1006]
+
+Other writers--Sir John Rh[^y]s, Sir G.L. Gomme, and M. Reinach--support
+on different grounds the theory that the Druids were a pre-Celtic
+priesthood, accepted by the Celtic conquerors. Sir John Rh[^y]s thinks
+that the Druidism of the aborigines of Gaul and Britain made terms with
+the Celtic conquerors. It was accepted by the Goidels, but not by the
+Brythons. Hence in Britain there were Brythons without Druids,
+aborigines under the sway of Druidism, and Goidels who combined Aryan
+polytheism with Druidism. Druidism was also the religion of the
+aborigines from the Baltic to Gibraltar, and was accepted by the
+Gauls.[1007] But if so, it is difficult to see why the Brythons, akin to
+them, did not accept it. Our knowledge of Brythonic religion is too
+scanty for us to prove that the Druids had or had not sway over them,
+but the presumption is that they had. Nor is there any historical
+evidence to show that the Druids were originally a non-Celtic
+priesthood. Everywhere they appear as the supreme and dominant
+priesthood of the Celts, and the priests of a conquered people could
+hardly have obtained such power over the conquerors. The relation of the
+Celts to the Druids is quite different from that of conquerors, who
+occasionally resort to the medicine-men of the conquered folk because
+they have stronger magic or greater influence with the autochthonous
+gods. The Celts did not resort to the Druids occasionally; _ex
+hypothesi_ they accepted them completely, were dominated by them in
+every department of life, while their own priests, if they had any,
+accepted this order of things without a murmur. All this is incredible.
+The picture drawn by Cćsar, Strabo, and others of the Druids and their
+position among the Celts as judges, choosers of tribal chiefs and kings,
+teachers, as well as ministers of religion, suggests rather that they
+were a native Celtic priesthood, long established among the people.
+
+Sir G.L. Gomme supports the theory that the Druids were a pre-Celtic
+priesthood, because, in his opinion, much of their belief in magic as
+well as their use of human sacrifice and the redemption of one life by
+another, is opposed to "Aryan sentiment." Equally opposed to this are
+their functions of settling controversies, judging, settling the
+succession to property, and arranging boundaries. These views are
+supported by a comparison of the position of the Druids relatively to
+the Celts with that of non-Aryan persons in India who render occasional
+priestly services to Hindu village communities.[1008] Whether this
+comparison of occasional Hindu custom with Celtic usage two thousand
+years ago is just, may be questioned. As already seen, it was no mere
+occasional service which the Druids rendered to the Celts, and it is
+this which makes it difficult to credit this theory. Had the Celtic
+house-father been priest and judge in his own clan, would he so readily
+have surrendered his rights to a foreign and conquered priesthood? On
+the other hand, kings and chiefs among the Celts probably retained some
+priestly functions, derived from the time when the offices of the
+priest-king had not been differentiated. Cćsar's evidence certainly does
+not support the idea that "it is only among the rudest of the so-called
+Celtic tribes that we find this superimposing of an apparently official
+priesthood." According to him, the power of the Druids was universal in
+Gaul, and had their position really corresponded to that of the pariah
+priests of India, occasional priests of Hindu villages, the determined
+hostility of the Roman power to them because they wielded such an
+enormous influence over Celtic thought and life, is inexplainable. If,
+further, Aryan sentiment was so opposed to Druidic customs, why did
+Aryan Celts so readily accept the Druids? In this case the receiver is
+as bad as the thief. Sir G.L. Gomme clings to the belief that the Aryans
+were people of a comparatively high civilisation, who had discarded, if
+they ever possessed, a savage "past." But old beliefs and customs still
+survive through growing civilisation, and if the views of Professor
+Sergi and others are correct, the Aryans were even less civilised than
+the peoples whom they conquered.[1009] Shape-shifting, magic, human
+sacrifice, priestly domination, were as much Aryan as non-Aryan, and if
+the Celts had a comparatively pure religion, why did they so soon allow
+it to be defiled by the puerile superstitions of the Druids?
+
+M. Reinach, as we have seen, thinks that the Celts had no images,
+because these were prohibited by their priests. This prohibition was
+pre-Celtic in Gaul, since there are no Neolithic images, though there
+are great megalithic structures, suggesting the existence of a great
+religious aristocracy. This aristocracy imposed itself on the
+Celts.[1010] We have seen that there is no reason for believing that the
+Celts had no images, hence this argument is valueless. M. Reinach then
+argues that the Celts accepted Druidism _en bloc_, as the Romans
+accepted Oriental cults and the Greeks the native Pelasgic cults. But
+neither Romans nor Greeks abandoned their own faith. Were the Celts a
+people without priests and without religion? We know that they must have
+accepted many local cults, but that they adopted the whole aboriginal
+faith and its priests _en bloc_ is not credible. M. Reinach also holds
+that when the Celts appear in history Druidism was in its decline; the
+Celt, or at least the military caste among the Celts, was reasserting
+itself. But the Druids do not appear as a declining body in the pages of
+Cćsar, and their power was still supreme, to judge by the hostility of
+the Roman Government to them. If the military caste rebelled against
+them, this does not prove that they were a foreign body. Such a strife
+is seen wherever priest and soldier form separate castes, each desiring
+to rule, as in Egypt.
+
+Other writers argue that we do not find Druids existing in the Danube
+region, in Cisalpine territory, nor in Transalpine Gaul, "outside the
+limits of the region occupied by the Celtć."[1011] This could only have
+weight if any of the classical writers had composed a formal treatise on
+the Druids, showing exactly the regions where they existed. They merely
+describe Druidism as a general Celtic institution, or as they knew it in
+Gaul or Britain, and few of them have any personal knowledge of it.
+There is no reason to believe that Druids did not exist wherever there
+were Celts. The Druids and Semnotheoi of the Celts and Galatć referred
+to _c._ 200 B.C. were apparently priests of other Celts than those of
+Gaul, and Celtic groups of Cisalpine Gaul had priests, though these are
+not formally styled Druids.[1012] The argument _ex silentio_ is here of
+little value, since the references to the Druids are so brief, and it
+tells equally against their non-Celtic origin, since we do not hear of
+Druids in Aquitania, a non-Celtic region.[1013]
+
+The theory of the non-Celtic origin of the Druids assumes that the Celts
+had no priests, or that these were effaced by the Druids. The Celts had
+priests called _gutuatri_ attached to certain temples, their name
+perhaps meaning "the speakers," those who spoke to the gods.[1014] The
+functions of the Druids were much more general, according to this
+theory, hence M. D'Arbois supposes that, before their intrusion, the
+Celts had no other priests than the _gutuatri_.[1015] But the
+probability is that they were a Druidic class, ministers of local
+sanctuaries, and related to the Druids as the Levites were to the
+priests of Israel, since the Druids were a composite priesthood with a
+variety of functions. If the priests and servants of Belenos, described
+by Ausonius and called by him _oedituus Beleni_, were _gutuatri_, then
+the latter must have been connected with the Druids, since he says they
+were of Druidic stock.[1016] Lucan's "priest of the grove" may have been
+a _gutuatros_, and the priests (_sacerdotes_) and other ministers
+(_antistites_) of the Boii may have been Druids properly so called and
+_gutuatri_.[1017] Another class of temple servants may have existed.
+Names beginning with the name of a god and ending in _gnatos_,
+"accustomed to," "beloved of," occur in inscriptions, and may denote
+persons consecrated from their youth to the service of a grove or
+temple. On the other hand, the names may mean no more than that those
+bearing them were devoted to the cult of one particular god.
+
+Our supposition that the _gutuatri_ were a class of Druids is supported
+by classical evidence, which tends to show that the Druids were a great
+inclusive priesthood with different classes possessing different
+functions--priestly, prophetic, magical, medical, legal, and poetical.
+Cćsar attributes these to the Druids as a whole, but in other writers
+they are in part at least in the hands of different classes. Diodorus
+refers to the Celtic philosophers and theologians (Druids), diviners,
+and bards, as do also Strabo and Timagenes, Strabo giving the Greek form
+of the native name for the diviners, [Greek: ouateis], the Celtic form
+being probably _vátis_ (Irish, _fáith_).[1018] These may have been also
+poets, since _vátis_ means both singer and poet; but in all three
+writers the bards are a fairly distinct class, who sing the deeds of
+famous men (so Timagenes). Druid and diviner were also closely
+connected, since the Druids studied nature and moral philosophy, and the
+diviners were also students of nature, according to Strabo and
+Timagenes. No sacrifice was complete without a Druid, say Diodorus and
+Strabo, but both speak of the diviners as concerned with sacrifice.
+Druids also prophesied as well as diviners, according to Cicero and
+Tacitus.[1019] Finally, Lucan mentions only Druids and bards.[1020]
+Diviners were thus probably a Druidic sub-class, standing midway between
+the Druids proper and the bards, and partaking of some of the functions
+of both. Pliny speaks of "Druids and this race of prophets and
+doctors,"[1021] and this suggests that some were priests, some diviners,
+while some practised an empiric medical science.
+
+On the whole this agrees with what is met with in Ireland, where the
+Druids, though appearing in the texts mainly as magicians, were also
+priests and teachers. Side by side with them were the _Filid_, "learned
+poets,"[1022] composing according to strict rules of art, and higher
+than the third class, the Bards. The _Filid_, who may also have been
+known as _Fáthi_, "prophets,"[1023] were also diviners according to
+strict rules of augury, while some of these auguries implied a
+sacrifice. The Druids were also diviners and prophets. When the Druids
+were overthrown at the coming of Christianity, the _Filid_ remained as a
+learned class, probably because they had abandoned all pagan practices,
+while the Bards were reduced to a comparatively low status. M. D'Arbois
+supposes that there was rivalry between the Druids and the _Filid_, who
+made common cause with the Christian missionaries, but this is not
+supported by evidence. The three classes in Gaul--Druids, _Vates_, and
+Bards--thus correspond to the three classes in Ireland--Druids, _Fáthi_
+or _Filid_, and Bards.[1024]
+
+We may thus conclude that the Druids were a purely Celtic priesthood,
+belonging both to the Goidelic and Gaulish branches of the Celts. The
+idea that they were not Celtic is sometimes connected with the
+supposition that Druidism was something superadded to Celtic religion
+from without, or that Celtic polytheism was not part of the creed of the
+Druids, but sanctioned by them, while they had a definite theological
+system with only a few gods.[1025] These are the ideas of writers who
+see in the Druids an occult and esoteric priesthood. The Druids had
+grown up _pari passu_ with the growth of the native religion and magic.
+Where they had become more civilised, as in the south of Gaul, they may
+have given up many magical practices, but as a class they were addicted
+to magic, and must have taken part in local cults as well as in those of
+the greater gods. That they were a philosophic priesthood advocating a
+pure religion among polytheists is a baseless theory. Druidism was not a
+formal system outside Celtic religion. It covered the whole ground of
+Celtic religion; in other words, it was that religion itself.
+
+The Druids are first referred to by pseudo-Aristotle and Sotion in the
+second century B.C., the reference being preserved by Diogenes Laertius:
+"There are among the Celtć and Galatć those called Druids and
+Semnotheoi."[1026] The two words may be synonymous, or they may describe
+two classes of priests, or, again, the Druids may have been Celtic, and
+the Semnotheoi Galatic (? Galatian) priests. Cćsar's account comes next
+in time. Later writers gives the Druids a lofty place and speak vaguely
+of the Druidic philosophy and science. Cćsar also refers to their
+science, but both he and Strabo speak of their human sacrifices.
+Suetonius describes their religion as cruel and savage, and Mela, who
+speaks of their learning, regards their human sacrifices as
+savagery.[1027] Pliny says nothing of the Druids as philosophers, but
+hints at their priestly functions, and connects them with magico-medical
+rites.[1028] These divergent opinions are difficult to account for. But
+as the Romans gained closer acquaintance with the Druids, they found
+less philosophy and more superstition among them. For their cruel rites
+and hostility to Rome, they sought to suppress them, but this they never
+would have done had the Druids been esoteric philosophers. It has been
+thought that Pliny's phrase, "Druids and that race of prophets and
+doctors," signifies that, through Roman persecution, the Druids were
+reduced to a kind of medicine-men.[1029] But the phrase rather describes
+the varied functions of the Druids, as has been seen, nor does it refer
+to the state to which the repressive edict reduced them, but to that in
+which it found them. Pliny's information was also limited.
+
+The vague idea that the Druids were philosophers was repeated
+parrot-like by writer after writer, who regarded barbaric races as
+Rousseau and his school looked upon the "noble savage." Roman writers,
+sceptical of a future life, were fascinated by the idea of a barbaric
+priesthood teaching the doctrine of immortality in the wilds of Gaul.
+For this teaching the poet Lucan sang their praises. The Druids probably
+first impressed Greek and Latin observers by their magic, their
+organisation, and the fact that, like many barbaric priesthoods, but
+unlike those of Greece and Rome, they taught certain doctrines. Their
+knowledge was divinely conveyed to them; "they speak the language of the
+gods;"[1030] hence it was easy to read anything into this teaching. Thus
+the Druidic legend rapidly grew. On the other hand, modern writers have
+perhaps exaggerated the force of the classical evidence. When we read of
+Druidic associations we need not regard these as higher than the
+organised priesthoods of barbarians. Their doctrine of metempsychosis,
+if it was really taught, involved no ethical content as in
+Pythagoreanism. Their astronomy was probably astrological[1031]; their
+knowledge of nature a series of cosmogonic myths and speculations. If a
+true Druidic philosophy and science had existed, it is strange that it
+is always mentioned vaguely and that it exerted no influence upon the
+thought of the time.
+
+Classical sentiment also found a connection between the Druidic and
+Pythagorean systems, the Druids being regarded as conforming to the
+doctrines and rules of the Greek philosopher.[1032] It is not improbable
+that some Pythagorean doctrines may have reached Gaul, but when we
+examine the point at which the two systems were supposed to meet,
+namely, the doctrine of metempsychosis and immortality, upon which the
+whole idea of this relationship was founded, there is no real
+resemblance. There are Celtic myths regarding the rebirth of gods and
+heroes, but the eschatological teaching was apparently this, that the
+soul was clothed with a body in the other-world. There was no doctrine
+of a series of rebirths on this earth as a punishment for sin. The
+Druidic teaching of a bodily immortality was mistakenly assumed to be
+the same as the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul reincarnated in body
+after body. Other points of resemblance were then discovered. The
+organisation of the Druids was assumed by Ammianus to be a kind of
+corporate life--_sodaliciis adstricti consortiis_--while the Druidic
+mind was always searching into lofty things,[1033] but those who wrote
+most fully of the Druids knew nothing of this.
+
+The Druids, like the priests of all religions, doubtless sought after
+such knowledge as was open to them, but this does not imply that they
+possessed a recondite philosophy or a secret theology. They were
+governed by the ideas current among all barbaric communities, and they
+were at once priests, magicians, doctors, and teachers. They would not
+allow their sacred hymns to be written down, but taught them in
+secret,[1034] as is usual wherever the success of hymn or prayer depends
+upon the right use of the words and the secrecy observed in imparting
+them to others. Their ritual, as far as is known to us, differs but
+little from that of other barbarian folk, and it included human
+sacrifice and divination with the victim's body. They excluded the
+guilty from a share in the cult--the usual punishment meted out to the
+tabu-breaker in all primitive societies.
+
+The idea that the Druids taught a secret doctrine--monotheism,
+pantheism, or the like--is unsupported by evidence. Doubtless they
+communicated secrets to the initiated, as is done in barbaric mysteries
+everywhere, but these secrets consist of magic and mythic formulć, the
+exhibition of _Sacra_, and some teaching about the gods or about moral
+duties. These are kept secret, not because they are abstract doctrines,
+but because they would lose their value and because the gods would be
+angry if they were made too common. If the Druids taught religious and
+moral matters secretly, these were probably no more than an extension of
+the threefold maxim inculcated by them according to Diogenes Laertius:
+"To worship the gods, to do no evil, and to exercise courage."[1035] To
+this would be added cosmogonic myths and speculations, and magic and
+religious formulć. This will become more evident as we examine the
+position and power of the Druids.
+
+In Gaul, and to some extent in Ireland, the Druids formed a priestly
+corporation--a fact which helped classical observers to suppose that
+they lived together like the Pythagorean communities. While the words of
+Ammianus--_sodaliciis adstricti consortiis_--may imply no more than some
+kind of priestly organisation, M. Bertrand founds on them a theory that
+the Druids were a kind of monks living a community life, and that Irish
+monasticism was a transformation of this system.[1036] This is purely
+imaginative. Irish Druids had wives and children, and the Druid
+Diviciacus was a family man, while Cćsar says not a word of community
+life among the Druids. The hostility of Christianity to the Druids would
+have prevented any copying of their system, and Irish monasticism was
+modelled on that of the Continent. Druidic organisation probably denoted
+no more than that the Druids were bound by certain ties, that they were
+graded in different ranks or according to their functions, and that they
+practised a series of common cults. In Gaul one chief Druid had
+authority over the others, the position being an elective one.[1037] The
+insular Druids may have been similarly organised, since we hear of a
+chief Druid, _primus magus_, while the _Filid_ had an _Ard-file_, or
+chief, elected to his office.[1038] The priesthood was not a caste, but
+was open to those who showed aptitude for it. There was a long
+novitiate, extending even to twenty years, just as, in Ireland, the
+novitiate of the _File_ lasted from seven to twelve years.[1039]
+
+The Druids of Gaul assembled annually in a central spot, and there
+settled disputes, because they were regarded as the most just of
+men.[1040] Individual Druids also decided disputes or sat as judges in
+cases of murder. How far it was obligatory to bring causes before them
+is unknown, but those who did not submit to a decision were interdicted
+from the sacrifices, and all shunned them. In other words, they were
+tabued. A magico-religious sanction thus enforced the judgments of the
+Druids. In Galatia the twelve tetrarchs had a council of three hundred
+men, and met in a place called Drunemeton to try cases of murder.[1041]
+Whether it is philologically permissible to connect _Dru_- with the
+corresponding syllable in "Druid" or not, the likeness to the Gaulish
+assembly at a "consecrated place," perhaps a grove (_nemeton_), is
+obvious. We do not know that Irish Druids were judges, but the _Filid_
+exercised judgments, and this may be a relic of their connection with
+the Druids.[1042]
+
+Diodorus describes the Druids exhorting combatants to peace, and taming
+them like wild beasts by enchantment.[1043] This suggests interference
+to prevent the devastating power of the blood-feud or of tribal wars.
+They also appear to have exercised authority in the election of rulers.
+Convictolitanis was elected to the magistracy by the priests in Gaul,
+"according to the custom of the State."[1044] In Ireland, after
+partaking of the flesh of a white bull, probably a sacrificial animal, a
+man lay down to sleep, while four Druids chanted over him "to render his
+witness truthful." He then saw in a vision the person who should be
+elected king, and what he was doing at the moment.[1045] Possibly the
+Druids used hypnotic suggestion; the medium was apparently clairvoyant.
+
+Dio Chrysostom alleges that kings were ministers of the Druids, and
+could do nothing without them.[1046] This agrees on the whole with the
+witness of Irish texts. Druids always accompany the king, and have great
+influence over him. According to a passage in the _Táin_, "the men of
+Ulster must not speak before the king, the king must not speak before
+his Druid," and even Conchobar was silent until the Druid Cathbad had
+spoken.[1047] This power, resembling that of many other priesthoods,
+must have helped to balance that of the warrior class, and it is the
+more credible when we recall the fact that the Druids claimed to have
+made the universe.[1048] The priest-kingship may have been an old Celtic
+institution, and this would explain why, once the offices were
+separated, priests had or claimed so much political power.
+
+That political power must have been enhanced by their position as
+teachers, and it is safe to say that submission to their powers was
+inculcated by them. Both in Gaul and in Ireland they taught others than
+those who intended to become Druids.[1049] As has been seen, their
+teachings were not written down, but transmitted orally. They taught
+immortality, believing that thus men would be roused to valour,
+buttressing patriotism with dogma. They also imparted "many things
+regarding the stars and their motions, the extent of the universe and
+the earth, the nature of things, and the power and might of the immortal
+gods." Strabo also speaks of their teaching in moral science.[1050] As
+has been seen, it is easy to exaggerate all this. Their astronomy was
+probably of a humble kind and mingled with astrology; their natural
+philosophy a mass of cosmogonic myths and speculations; their theology
+was rather mythology; their moral philosophy a series of maxims such as
+are found in all barbaric communities. Their medical lore, to judge from
+what Pliny says, was largely magical. Some Druids, e.g. in the south of
+Gaul, may have had access to classical learning, and Cćsar speaks of the
+use of Greek characters among them. This could hardly have been general,
+and in any case must have superseded the use of a native script, to
+which the use of ogams in Ireland, and perhaps also in Gaul, was
+supplementary. The Irish Druids may have had written books, for King
+Loegaire desired that S. Patrick's books and those of the Druids should
+be submitted to the ordeal by water as a test of their owners'
+claims.[1051]
+
+In religious affairs the Druids were supreme, since they alone "knew the
+gods and divinities of heaven."[1052] They superintended and arranged
+all rites and attended to "public and private sacrifices," and "no
+sacrifice was complete without the intervention of a Druid."[1053] The
+dark and cruel rites of the Druids struck the Romans with horror, and
+they form a curious contrast to their alleged "philosophy." They used
+divination and had regular formulć of incantation as well as ritual acts
+by which they looked into the future.[1054] Before all matters of
+importance, especially before warlike expeditions, their advice was
+sought because they could scan the future.
+
+Name-giving and a species of baptism were performed by the Druids or on
+their initiative. Many examples of this occur in Irish texts, thus of
+Conall Cernach it is said, "Druids came to baptize the child into
+heathenism, and they sang the heathen baptism (_baithis geintlídhe_)
+over the little child", and of Ailill that he was "baptized in Druidic
+streams".[1055] In Welsh story we read that Gwri was "baptized with the
+baptism which was usual at that time".[1056] Similar illustrations are
+common at name-giving among many races,[1057] and it is probable that
+the custom in the Hebrides of the midwife dropping three drops of water
+on the child _in Nomine_ and giving it a temporary name, is a survival
+of this practice. The regular baptism takes place later, but this
+preliminary rite keeps off fairies and ensures burial in consecrated
+ground, just as the pagan rite was protective and admitted to the tribal
+privileges.[1058]
+
+In the burial rites, which in Ireland consisted of a lament, sacrifices,
+and raising a stone inscribed with ogams over the grave, Druids took
+part. The Druid Dergdamsa pronounced a discourse over the Ossianic hero
+Mag-neid, buried him with his arms, and chanted a rune. The ogam
+inscription would also be of Druidic composition, and as no sacrifice
+was complete without the intervention of Druids, they must also have
+assisted at the lavish sacrifices which occurred at Celtic funerals.
+
+Pliny's words, "the Druids and that race of prophets and doctors",
+suggest that the medical art may have been in the hands of a special
+class of Druids though all may have had a smattering of it. It was
+mainly concerned with the use of herbs, and was mixed up with magical
+rites, which may have been regarded as of more importance than the
+actual medicines used.[1059] In Ireland Druids also practised the
+healing art. Thus when Cúchulainn was ill, Emer said, "If it had been
+Fergus, Cúchulainn would have taken no rest till he had found a Druid
+able to discover the cause of that illness."[1060] But other persons,
+not referred to as Druids, are mentioned as healers, one of them a
+woman, perhaps a reminiscence of the time when the art was practised by
+women.[1061] These healers may, however, have been attached to the
+Druidic corporation in much the same way as were the bards.
+
+Still more important were the magical powers of the Druids--giving or
+withholding sunshine or rain, causing storms, making women and cattle
+fruitful, using spells, rhyming to death, exercising shape-shifting and
+invisibility, and producing a magic sleep, possibly hypnotic. They were
+also in request as poisoners.[1062] Since the Gauls went to Britain to
+perfect themselves in Druidic science, it is possible that the insular
+Druids were more devoted to magic than those of Gaul, but since the
+latter are said to have "tamed the people as wild beasts are tamed", it
+is obvious that this refers to their powers as magicians rather than to
+any recondite philosophy possessed by them. Yet they were clear-sighted
+enough to use every means by which they might gain political power, and
+some of them may have been open to the influence of classical learning
+even before the Roman invasion. In the next chapter the magic of the
+Druids will be described in detail.
+
+The Druids, both in Gaul (at the mistletoe rite) and in Ireland, were
+dressed in white, but Strabo speaks of their scarlet and gold
+embroidered robes, their golden necklets and bracelets.[1063] Again, the
+chief Druid of the king of Erin wore a coloured cloak and had earrings
+of gold, and in another instance a Druid wears a bull's hide and a
+white-speckled bird headpiece with fluttering wings.[1064] There was
+also some special tonsure used by the Druids,[1065] which may have
+denoted servitude to the gods, as it was customary for a warrior to vow
+his hair to a divinity if victory was granted him. Similarly the Druid's
+hair would be presented to the gods, and the tonsure would mark their
+minister.
+
+Some writers have tried to draw a distinction between the Druids of Gaul
+and of Ireland, especially in the matter of their priestly
+functions.[1066] But, while a few passages in Irish texts do suggest
+that the Irish Druids were priests taking part in sacrifices, etc.,
+nearly all passages relating to cult or ritual seem to have been
+deliberately suppressed. Hence the Druids appear rather as magicians--a
+natural result, since, once the people became Christian, the priestly
+character of the Druids would tend to be lost sight of. Like the Druids
+of Gaul, they were teachers and took part in political affairs, and this
+shows that they were more than mere magicians. In Irish texts the word
+"Druid" is somewhat loosely used and is applied to kings and poets,
+perhaps because they had been pupils of the Druids. But it is impossible
+to doubt that the Druids in Ireland fulfilled functions of a public
+priesthood. They appear in connection with all the colonies which came
+to Erin, the annalists regarding the priests or medicine-men of
+different races as Druids, through lack of historic perspective. But one
+fact shows that they were priests of the Celtic religion in Ireland. The
+euhemerised Tuatha Dé Danann are masters of Druidic lore. Thus both the
+gods and the priests who served them were confused by later writers. The
+opposition of Christian missionaries to the Druids shows that they were
+priests; if they were not, it remains to be discovered what body of men
+did exercise priestly functions in pagan Ireland. In Ireland their
+judicial functions may have been less important than in Gaul, and they
+may not have been so strictly organised; but here we are in the region
+of conjecture. They were exempt from military service in Gaul, and many
+joined their ranks on this account, but in Ireland they were "bonny
+fechters," just as in Gaul they occasionally fought like medićval
+bishops.[1067] In both countries they were present on the field of
+battle to perform the necessary religious or magical rites.
+
+Since the Druids were an organised priesthood, with powers of teaching
+and of magic implicitly believed in by the folk, possessing the key of
+the other-world, and dominating the whole field of religion, it is easy
+to see how much veneration must have been paid them. Connoting this with
+the influence of the Roman Church in Celtic regions and the power of the
+Protestant minister in the Highlands and in Wales, some have thought
+that there is an innate tendency in the Celt to be priest-ridden. If
+this be true, we can only say, "the people wish to have it so, and the
+priests--pagan, papist, or protestant--bear rule through their means!"
+
+Thus a close examination of the position and functions of the Druids
+explains away two popular misconceptions. They were not possessed of any
+recondite and esoteric wisdom. And the culling of mistletoe instead of
+being the most important, was but a subordinate part of their functions.
+
+In Gaul the Roman power broke the sway of the Druids, aided perhaps by
+the spread of Christianity, but it was Christianity alone which routed
+them in Ireland and in Britain outside the Roman pale. The Druidic
+organisation, their power in politics and in the administration of
+justice, their patriotism, and also their use of human sacrifice and
+magic, were all obnoxious to the Roman Government, which opposed them
+mainly on political grounds. Magic and human sacrifice were suppressed
+because they were contrary to Roman manners. The first attack was in the
+reign of Augustus, who prohibited Roman citizens from taking part in the
+religion of the Druids.[1068] Tiberius next interdicted the Druids, but
+this was probably aimed at their human sacrifices, for the Druids were
+not suppressed, since they existed still in the reign of Claudius, who
+is said to have abolished _Druidarum religionem dirae
+immanitatis_.[1069] The earlier legislation was ineffective; that of
+Claudius was more thorough, but it, too, was probably aimed mainly at
+human sacrifice and magic, since Aurelius Victor limits it to the
+"notorious superstitions" of the Druids.[1070] It did not abolish the
+native religion, as is proved by the numerous inscriptions to Celtic
+gods, and by the fact that, as Mela informs us, human victims were still
+offered symbolically,[1071] while the Druids were still active some
+years later. A parallel is found in the British abolition of S[=a]ti in
+India, while permitting the native religion to flourish.
+
+Probably more effective was the policy begun by Augustus. Magistrates
+were inaugurated and acted as judges, thus ousting the Druids, and
+native deities and native ritual were assimilated to those of Rome.
+Celtic religion was Romanised, and if the Druids retained priestly
+functions, it could only be by their becoming Romanised also. Perhaps
+the new State religion in Gaul simply ignored them. The annual assembly
+of deputies at Lugudunum round the altar of Rome and Augustus had a
+religious character, and was intended to rival and to supersede the
+annual gathering of the Druids.[1072] The deputies elected a flamen of
+the province who had surveillance of the cult, and there were also
+flamens for each city. Thus the power of the Druids in politics, law,
+and religion was quietly undermined, while Rome also struck a blow at
+their position as teachers by establishing schools throughout
+Gaul.[1073]
+
+M. D'Arbois maintains that, as a result of persecution, the Druids
+retired to the depths of the forests, and continued to teach there in
+secret those who despised the new learning of Rome, basing his opinion
+on passages of Lucan and Mela, both writing a little after the
+promulgation of the laws.[1074]. But neither Lucan nor Mela refer to an
+existing state of things, and do not intend their readers to suppose
+that the Druids fled to woods and caverns. Lucan speaks of them
+_dwelling_ in woods, i.e. their sacred groves, and resuming their rites
+after Cćsar's conquest not after the later edicts, and he does not speak
+of the Druids teaching there.[1075] Mela seems to be echoing Cćsar's
+account of the twenty years' novitiate, but adds to it that the teaching
+was given in secret, confusing it, however, with that given to others
+than candidates for the priesthood. Thus he says: "Docent multa
+nobilissimos gentis clam et diu vicenis annis aut in specu aut in
+abditis saltibus,"[1076] but there is not the slightest evidence that
+this secrecy was the result of the edicts. Moreover, the attenuated
+sacrificial rites which he describes were evidently practised quite
+openly. Probably some Druids continued their teaching in their secret
+and sacred haunts, but it is unlikely that noble Gauls would resort to
+them when Greco-Roman culture was now open to them in the schools, where
+they are found receiving instruction in 21 A.D.[1077] Most of the Druids
+probably succumbed to the new order of things. Some continued the old
+rites in a modified manner as long as they could obtain worshippers.
+Others, more fanatical, would suffer from the law when they could not
+evade its grasp. Some of these revolted against Rome after Nero's death,
+and it was perhaps to this class that those Druids belonged who
+prophesied the world-empire of the Celts in 70 A.D.[1078] The fact that
+Druids existed at this date shows that the proscription had not been
+complete. But the complete Romanising of Gaul took away their
+occupation, though even in the fourth century men still boasted of their
+Druidic descent.[1079]
+
+The insular Druids opposed the legions in Southern Britain, and in Mona
+in 62 A.D. they made a last stand with the warriors against the Romans,
+gesticulating and praying to the gods. But with the establishment of
+Roman power in Britain their fate must have resembled that of the Druids
+of Gaul. A recrudescence of Druidism is found, however, in the presence
+of _magi_ (Druids) with Vortigern after the Roman withdrawal.[1080]
+Outside the Roman pale the Druids were still rampant and practised their
+rites as before, according to Pliny.[1081] Much later, in the sixth
+century, they opposed Christian missionaries in Scotland, just as in
+Ireland they opposed S. Patrick and his monks, who combated "the
+hard-hearted Druids." Finally, Christianity was victorious and the
+powers of the Druids passed in large measure to the Christian clergy or
+remained to some extent with the _Filid_.[1082] In popular belief the
+clerics had prevailed less by the persuasive power of the gospel, than
+by successfully rivalling the magic of the Druids.
+
+Classical writers speak of _Dryades_ or "Druidesses" in the third
+century. One of them predicted his approaching death to Alexander
+Severus, another promised the empire to Diocletian, others were
+consulted by Aurelian.[1083] Thus they were divineresses, rather than
+priestesses, and their name may be the result of misconception, unless
+they assumed it when Druids no longer existed as a class. In Ireland
+there were divineresses--_ban-filid_ or _ban-fáthi_, probably a distinct
+class with prophetic powers. Kings are warned against "pythonesses" as
+well as Druids, and Dr. Joyce thinks these were Druidesses.[1084] S.
+Patrick also armed himself against "the spells of women" and of
+Druids.[1085] Women in Ireland had a knowledge of futurity, according to
+Solinus, and the women who took part with the Druids like furies at
+Mona, may have been divineresses.[1086] In Ireland it is possible that
+such women were called "Druidesses," since the word _ban-drui_ is met
+with, the women so called being also styled _ban-fili_, while the fact
+that they belonged to the class of the _Filid_ brings them into
+connection with the Druids.[1087] But _ban-drui_ may have been applied
+to women with priestly functions, such as certainly existed in
+Ireland--e.g. the virgin guardians of sacred fires, to whose functions
+Christian nuns succeeded.[1088] We know also that the British queen
+Boudicca exercised priestly functions, and such priestesses, apart from
+the _Dryades_, existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at
+Arles speak of an _antistita deae_, and at Le Prugnon of a _flaminica
+sacerdos_ of the goddess Thucolis.[1089] These were servants of a
+goddess like the priestess of the Celtic Artemis in Galatia, in whose
+family the priesthood was hereditary.[1090] The virgins called
+Gallizenć, who practised divination and magic in the isle of Sena, were
+priestesses of a Gaulish god, and some of the women who were "possessed
+by Dionysus" and practised an orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire,
+were probably of the same kind.[1091] They were priestesses of some
+magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the
+sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards the
+accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the story of
+Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to be based on
+actual observation and are paralleled from other regions.[1092]
+
+The existence of such priestesses and divineresses over the Celtic area
+is to be explained by our hypothesis that many Celtic divinities were at
+first female and served by women, who were possessed of the tribal lore.
+Later, men assumed their functions, and hence arose the great
+priesthoods, but conservatism sporadically retained such female cults
+and priestesses, some goddesses being still served by women--the
+Galatian Artemis, or the goddesses of Gaul, with their female servants.
+Time also brought its revenges, for when paganism passed away, much of
+its folk-ritual and magic remained, practised by wise women or witches,
+who for generations had as much power over ignorant minds as the
+Christian priesthood. The fact that Cćsar and Tacitus speak of Germanic
+but not of Celtic priestesses, can hardly, in face of these scattered
+notices, be taken as a proof that women had no priestly _rôle_ in Celtic
+religion. If they had not, that religion would be unique in the world's
+history.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1002] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 249.
+
+[1003] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 85, following Thurneysen.
+
+[1004] D'Arbois, _op. cit._ 12 f.; Deloche, _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
+xxxiv. 466; Desjardins, _Geog. de la Gaule Romaine_, ii. 518.
+
+[1005] Cćsar, vi. 13.
+
+[1006] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 1.
+
+[1007] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 69 f.
+
+[1008] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folk-lore_, 58, _Village Community_, 104.
+
+[1009] Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, 295.
+
+[1010] Reinach, "L'Art plastique en Gaule et le Druidisme," _RC_ xiii.
+189.
+
+[1011] Holmes, _Cćsar's Conquest of Gaul_, 15; Dottin, 270.
+
+[1012] Diog. Laert. i. 1; Livy xxiii. 24.
+
+[1013] Desjardins, _op. cit._ ii. 519; but cf. Holmes, 535.
+
+[1014] _Gutuatros_ is perhaps from _gutu_-, "voice" (Holder, i. 2046;
+but see Loth, _RC_ xxviii. 120). The existence of the _gutuatri_ is
+known from a few inscriptions (see Holder), and from Hirtius, _de Bell.
+Gall._ viii. 38, who mentions a _gutuatros_ put to death by Cćsar.
+
+[1015] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 2 f., _Les Celtes_, 32.
+
+[1016] Ausonius, _Professor._ v. 7, xi. 24.
+
+[1017] Lucan, iii. 424; Livy, xxiii. 24.
+
+[1018] Diod. Sic. v. 31; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Timagenes _apud_ Amm. Marc.
+xv. 9.
+
+[1019] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 41. 90; Tac. _Hist._ iv. 54.
+
+[1020] _Phars._ i. 449 f.
+
+[1021] _HN_ xxx. i.
+
+[1022] _Filid_, sing. _File_, is from _velo_, "I see" (Stokes, _US_
+277).
+
+[1023] _Fáthi_ is cognate with _Vates_.
+
+[1024] In Wales there had been Druids as there were Bards, but all trace
+of the second class is lost. Long after the Druids had passed away, the
+fiction of the _derwydd-vardd_ or Druid-bard was created, and the later
+bards were held to be depositories of a supposititious Druidic
+theosophy, while they practised the old rites in secret. The late word
+_derwydd_ was probably invented from _derw_, "oak," by some one who knew
+Pliny's derivation. See D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 81.
+
+[1025] For these views see Dottin, 295; Holmes, 17; Bertrand, 192-193,
+268-269.
+
+[1026] Diog. Laert. i. proem. 1. For other references see Cćsar, vi. 13,
+14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Diod. Sic, v. 28; Lucan, i. 460;
+Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1027] Suet. _Claud._ 25; Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1028] Pliny, xxx. 1.
+
+[1029] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 77.
+
+[1030] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 4.
+
+[1031] See Cicero, _de Div._ i. 41.
+
+[1032] Diod. Sic. v. 28; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Hippolytus, _Refut. Hćr._ i.
+22.
+
+[1033] Amm. Marc. xv. 9.
+
+[1034] Cćsar, vi. 14.
+
+[1035] Diog. Laert. 6. Celtic enthusiasts see in this triple maxim
+something akin to the Welsh triads, which they claim to be Druidic!
+
+[1036] Bertrand, 280.
+
+[1037] Cćsar, vi. 13.
+
+[1038] _Trip. Life_, ii. 325, i. 52, ii. 402; _IT_ i. 373; _RC_ xxvi.
+33. The title _rig-file_, "king poet," sometimes occurs.
+
+[1039] Cćsar, vi. 14.
+
+[1040] Cćsar, vi. 13; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[1041] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.
+
+[1042] Their judicial powers were taken from them because their speech
+had become obscure. Perhaps they gave their judgments in archaic
+language.
+
+[1043] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 5.
+
+[1044] Cćsar, vii. 33.
+
+[1045] _IT_ i. 213; D'Arbois, v. 186.
+
+[1046] Dio, _Orat._ xlix.
+
+[1047] _LL_ 93.
+
+[1048] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22.
+
+[1049] Cćsar, vi. 13, 14; Windisch, _Táin_, line 1070 f.; _IT_ i. 325;
+_Arch. Rev._ i. 74; _Trip. Life_, 99; cf. O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 201.
+
+[1050] Cćsar, vi. 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[1051] _Trip. Life_, 284.
+
+[1052] Lucan, i. 451.
+
+[1053] Diod. v. 31. 4; cf. Cćsar, vi. 13, 16; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.
+
+[1054] See p. 248, _supra_.
+
+[1055] _RC_ xiv. 29; Miss Hull, 4, 23, 141; _IT_ iii. 392, 423; Stokes,
+_Félire_, Intro. 23.
+
+[1056] Loth, i. 56.
+
+[1057] See my art. "Baptism (Ethnic)" in Hastings' _Encyclopćdia of
+Religion and Ethics_, ii. 367 f.
+
+[1058] Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._ i. 115.
+
+[1059] See p. 206, _supra_.
+
+[1060] _IT_ i. 215.
+
+[1061] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 221, 641.
+
+[1062] _RC_ xvi. 34.
+
+[1063] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 45; _Trip. Life_, ii. 325; Strabo, iv. 275.
+
+[1064] _RC_ xxii. 285; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 215.
+
+[1065] Reeves' ed. of Adamnan's _Life of S. Col._ 237; Todd, _S.
+Patrick_, 455; Joyce, _SH_ i. 234. For the relation of the Druidic
+tonsure to the peculiar tonsure of the Celtic Church, see Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+213, _CB_{4} 72; Gougaud, _Les Chrétientés Celtiques_, 198.
+
+[1066] See Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 88; Joyce, _SH_ i. 239.
+
+[1067] Cćsar, vi. 14, ii. 10.
+
+[1068] Suetonius, _Claud._ 25.
+
+[1069] Pliny _HN_ xxx. 1; Suet. _Claud._ 25.
+
+[1070] _de Cćsaribus_, 4, "famosć superstitiones"; cf. p. 328, _infra_.
+
+[1071] Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1072] Mommsen, _Rom. Gesch._ v. 94.
+
+[1073] Bloch (Lavisse), _Hist. de France_, i. 2, 176 f., 391 f.; Duruy,
+"Comment périt l'institution Druidique," _Rev. Arch._ xv. 347; de
+Coulanges, "Comment le Druidisme a disparu," _RC_ iv. 44.
+
+[1074] _Les Druides_, 73.
+
+[1075] _Phars._ i. 453, "Ye Druids, after arms were laid aside, sought
+once again your barbarous ceremonials.... In remote forests do ye
+inhabit the deep glades."
+
+[1076] Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1077] Tacit. iii. 43.
+
+[1078] Ibid. iv. 54.
+
+[1079] Ausonius, _Prof._ v. 12, xi. 17.
+
+[1080] Nennius, 40. In the Irish version they are called "Druids." See
+p. 238, _supra_.
+
+[1081] Pliny, xxx. 1.
+
+[1082] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._, i. 37. ii. 35, etc.; Reeves' _Adamnan_,
+247 f.; Stokes, _Three Homilies_, 24 f.; _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i.
+15; _RC_ xvii. 142 f.; _IT_ i. 23.
+
+[1083] Lampridius, _Alex. Sev._ 60; Vopiscus, _Numerienus_, 14,
+_Aurelianus_, 44.
+
+[1084] Windisch, _Táin_, 31, 221; cf. Meyer, _Contributions to Irish
+Lexicog._ 176 Joyce, _SH_ i. 238.
+
+[1085] _IT_ i. 56.
+
+[1086] Solinus, 35; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30.
+
+[1087] _RC_ xv. 326, xvi. 34, 277; Windisch, _Táin_, 331. In _LL_ 75_b_
+we hear of "three Druids and three Druidesses."
+
+[1088] See p. 69, _supra_; Keating, 331.
+
+[1089] Jullian, 100; Holder, _s.v._ "Thucolis."
+
+[1090] Plutarch, _Vir. mul._ 20.
+
+[1091] Mela, iii. 6; Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[1092] Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 1 f. The fact that the rites were called
+Dionysiac is no reason for denying the fact that some orgiastic rites
+were practised. Classical writers usually reported all barbaric rites in
+terms of their own religion. M. D'Arbois (vi. 325) points out that Circe
+was not a virgin, and had not eight companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MAGIC.
+
+
+The Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical practices, many
+of which could be used by any one, though, on the whole, they were in
+the hands of the Druids, who in many aspects were little higher than the
+shamans of barbaric tribes. But similar magical rites were also
+attributed to the gods, and it is probably for this reason that the
+Tuatha Dé Danann and many of the divinities who appear in the
+_Mabinogion_ are described as magicians. Kings are also spoken of as
+wizards, perhaps a reminiscence of the powers of the priest king. But
+since many of the primitive cults had been in the hands of women, and as
+these cults implied a large use of magic, they may have been the
+earliest wielders of magic, though, with increasing civilisation, men
+took their place as magicians. Still side by side with the
+magic-wielding Druids, there were classes of women who also dealt in
+magic, as we have seen. Their powers were feared, even by S. Patrick,
+who classes the "spells of women" along with those of Druids, and, in a
+mythic tale, by the father of Connla, who, when the youth was fascinated
+by a goddess, feared that he would be taken by the "spells of women"
+(_brichta ban_).[1093] In other tales women perform all such magical
+actions as are elsewhere ascribed to Druids.[1094] And after the Druids
+had passed away precisely similar actions--power over the weather, the
+use of incantations and amulets, shape-shifting and invisibility,
+etc.--were, and still are in remote Celtic regions, ascribed to witches.
+Much of the Druidic art, however, was also supposed to be possessed by
+saints and clerics, both in the past and in recent times. But women
+remained as magicians when the Druids had disappeared, partly because of
+female conservatism, partly because, even in pagan times, they had
+worked more or less secretly. At last the Church proscribed them and
+persecuted them.
+
+Each clan, tribe, or kingdom had its Druids, who, in time of war,
+assisted their hosts by magic art. This is reflected back upon the
+groups of the mythological cycle, each of which has its Druids who play
+no small part in the battles fought. Though Pliny recognises the
+priestly functions of the Druids, he associates them largely with magic,
+and applies the name _magus_ to them.[1095] In Irish ecclesiastical
+literature, _drui_ is used as the translation of _magus_, e.g. in the
+case of the Egyptian magicians, while _magi_ is used in Latin lives of
+saints as the equivalent of the vernacular _druides_.[1096] In the sagas
+and in popular tales _Druidecht_, "Druidism," stands for "magic," and
+_slat an draoichta_, "rod of Druidism," is a magic wand.[1097] The
+Tuatha Dé Danann were said to have learned "Druidism" from the four
+great master Druids of the region whence they had come to Ireland, and
+even now, in popular tales, they are often called "Druids" or "Danann
+Druids."[1098] Thus in Ireland at least there is clear evidence of the
+great magical power claimed by Druids.
+
+That power was exercised to a great extent over the elements, some of
+which Druids claimed to have created. Thus the Druid Cathbad covered the
+plain over which Deirdre was escaping with "a great-waved sea."[1099]
+Druids also produced blinding snow-storms, or changed day into
+night--feats ascribed to them even in the Lives of Saints.[1100] Or they
+discharge "shower-clouds of fire" on the opposing hosts, as in the case
+of the Druid Mag Ruith, who made a magic fire, and flying upwards
+towards it, turned it upon the enemy, whose Druid in vain tried to
+divert it.[1101] When the Druids of Cormac dried up all the waters in
+the land, another Druid shot an arrow, and where it fell there issued a
+torrent of water.[1102] The Druid Mathgen boasted of being able to throw
+mountains on the enemy, and frequently Druids made trees or stones
+appear as armed men, dismaying the opposing host in this way. They could
+also fill the air with the clash of battle, or with the dread cries of
+eldritch things.[1103] Similar powers are ascribed to other persons. The
+daughters of Calatin raised themselves aloft on an enchanted wind, and
+discovered Cúchulainn when he was hidden away by Cathbad. Later they
+produced a magic mist to discomfit the hero.[1104] Such mists occur
+frequently in the sagas, and in one of them the Tuatha Dé Danann arrived
+in Ireland. The priestesses of Sena could rouse sea and wind by their
+enchantments, and, later, Celtic witches have claimed the same power.
+
+In folk-survivals the practice of rain-making is connected with sacred
+springs, and even now in rural France processions to shrines, usually
+connected with a holy well, are common in time of drought. Thus people
+and priest go to the fountain of Baranton in procession, singing hymns,
+and there pray for rain. The priest then dips his foot in the water, or
+throws some of it on the rocks.[1105] In other cases the image of a
+saint is carried to a well and asperged, as divine images formerly were,
+or the waters are beaten or thrown into the air.[1106] Another custom
+was that a virgin should clean out a sacred well, and formerly she had
+to be nude.[1107] Nudity also forms part of an old ritual used in Gaul.
+In time of drought the girls of the village followed the youngest virgin
+in a state of nudity to seek the herb _belinuntia_. This she uprooted,
+and was then led to a river and there asperged by the others. In this
+case the asperging imitated the falling rain, and was meant to produce
+it automatically. While some of these rites suggest the use of magic by
+the folk themselves, in others the presence of the Christian priest
+points to the fact that, formerly, a Druid was necessary as the rain
+producer. In some cases the priest has inherited through long ages the
+rain-making or tempest-quelling powers of the pagan priesthood, and is
+often besought to exercise them.[1108]
+
+Causing invisibility by means of a spell called _feth fiada_, which made
+a person unseen or hid him in a magic mist, was also used by the Druids
+as well as by Christian saints. S. Patrick's hymn, called _Fâed Fiada_,
+was sung by him when his enemies lay in wait, and caused a glamour in
+them. The incantation itself, _fith-fath_, is still remembered in
+Highland glens.[1109] In the case of S. Patrick he and his followers
+appeared as deer, and this power of shape-shifting was wielded both by
+Druids and women. The Druid Fer Fidail carried off a maiden by taking
+the form of a woman, and another Druid deceived Cúchulainn by taking the
+form of the fair Niamh.[1110] Other Druids are said to have been able to
+take any shape that pleased them.[1111] These powers were reflected back
+upon the gods and mythical personages like Taliesin or Amairgen, who
+appear in many forms. The priestesses of Sena could assume the form of
+animals, and an Irish Circe in the _Rennes Dindsenchas_ called Dalb the
+Rough changed three men and their wives into swine by her spells.[1112]
+This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas. The
+children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel stepmother; Saar,
+the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the power of the Druid Fear
+Doirche when she rejected his love; and similarly Tuirrenn, mother of
+Oisin's hounds, was transformed into a stag-hound by the fairy mistress
+of her husband Iollann.[1113] In other instances in the sagas, women
+appear as birds.[1114] These transformation tales may be connected with
+totemism, for when this institution is decaying the current belief in
+shape-shifting is often made use of to explain descent from animals or
+the tabu against eating certain animals. In some of these Irish
+shape-shifting tales we find this tabu referred to. Thus, when the
+children of Lir were turned into swans, it was proclaimed that no one
+should kill a swan. The reason of an existing tabu seemed to be
+sufficiently explained when it was told that certain human beings had
+become swans. It is not impossible that the Druids made use of hypnotic
+suggestion to persuade others that they had assumed another form, as Red
+Indian shamans have been known to do, or even hallucinated others into
+the belief that their own form had been changed.
+
+By a "drink of oblivion" Druids and other persons could make one forget
+even the most dearly beloved. Thus Cúchulainn was made to forget Fand,
+and his wife Emer to forget her jealousy.[1115] This is a reminiscence
+of potent drinks brewed from herbs which caused hallucinations, e.g.
+that of the change of shape. In other cases they were of a narcotic
+nature and caused a deep sleep, an instance being the draught given by
+Grainne to Fionn and his men.[1116] Again, the "Druidic sleep" is
+suggestive of hypnotism, practised in distant ages and also by
+present-day savages. When Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast
+her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117]
+In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are
+hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of
+soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118]
+These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a
+spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force to whom it is an
+hallucinatory appearance--perhaps an exaggeration of natural hypnotic
+powers.[1119]
+
+Druids also made a "hedge," the _airbe druad_, round an army, perhaps
+circumambulating it and saying spells so that the attacking force might
+not break through. If any one could leap this "hedge," the spell was
+broken, but he lost his life. This was done at the battle of Cul Dremne,
+at which S. Columba was present and aided the heroic leaper with his
+prayers.[1120]
+
+A primitive piece of sympathetic magic used still by savages is recorded
+in the _Rennes Dindsenchas_. In this story one man says spells over his
+spear and hurls it into his opponent's shadow, so that he falls
+dead.[1121] Equally primitive is the Druidic "sending" a wisp of straw
+over which the Druid sang spells and flung it into his victim's face, so
+that he became mad. A similar method is used by the Eskimo _angekok_.
+All madness was generally ascribed to such a "sending."
+
+Several of these instances have shown the use of spells, and the Druid
+was believed to possess powerful incantations to discomfit an enemy or
+to produce other magical results. A special posture was
+adopted--standing on one leg, with one arm outstretched and one eye
+closed, perhaps to concentrate the force of the spell,[1122] but the
+power lay mainly in the spoken words, as we have seen in discussing
+Celtic formulć of prayer. Such spells were also used by the _Filid_, or
+poets, since most primitive poetry has a magical aspect. Part of the
+training of the bard consisted in learning traditional incantations,
+which, used with due ritual, produced the magic result.[1123] Some of
+these incantations have already come before our notice, and probably
+some of the verses which Cćsar says the Druids would not commit to
+writing were of the nature of spells.[1124] The virtue of the spell lay
+in the spoken formula, usually introducing the name of a god or spirit,
+later a saint, in order to procure his intervention, through the power
+inherent in the name. Other charms recount an effect already produced,
+and this, through mimetic magic, is supposed to cause its repetition.
+The earliest written documents bearing upon the paganism of the insular
+Celts contain an appeal to "the science of Goibniu" to preserve butter,
+and another, for magical healing, runs, "I admire the healing which
+Diancecht left in his family, in order to bring health to those he
+succoured." These are found in an eighth or ninth century MS., and, with
+their appeal to pagan gods, were evidently used in Christian
+times.[1125] Most Druidic magic was accompanied by a spell--
+transformation, invisibility, power over the elements, and the discovery
+of hidden persons or things. In other cases spells were used in medicine
+or for healing wounds. Thus the Tuatha Dé Danann told the Fomorians that
+they need not oppose them, because their Druids would restore the slain
+to life, and when Cúchulainn was wounded we hear less of medicines than
+of incantations used to stanch his blood.[1126] In other cases the Druid
+could remove barrenness by spells.
+
+The survival of the belief in spells among modern Celtic peoples is a
+convincing proof of their use in pagan times, and throws light upon
+their nature. In Brittany they are handed down in certain families, and
+are carefully guarded from the knowledge of others. The names of saints
+instead of the old gods are found in them, but in some cases diseases
+are addressed as personal beings. In the Highlands similar charms are
+found, and are often handed down from male to female, and from female to
+male. They are also in common use in Ireland. Besides healing diseases,
+such charms are supposed to cause fertility or bring good luck, or even
+to transfer the property of others to the reciter, or, in the case of
+darker magic, to cause death or disease.[1127] In Ireland, sorcerers
+could "rime either a man or beast to death," and this recalls the power
+of satire in the mouth of _File_ or Druid. It raised blotches on the
+face of the victim, or even caused his death.[1128] Among primitive
+races powerful internal emotion affects the body in curious ways, and in
+this traditional power of the satire or "rime" we have probably an
+exaggerated reference to actual fact. In other cases the "curse of
+satire" affected nature, causing seas and rivers to sink back.[1129] The
+satires made by the bards of Gaul, referred to by Diodorus, may have
+been believed to possess similar powers.[1130] Contrariwise, the
+_Filid_, on uttering an unjust judgment, found their faces covered with
+blotches.[1131]
+
+A magical sleep is often caused by music in the sagas, e.g. by the harp
+of Dagda, or by the branch carried by visitants from Elysium.[1132] Many
+"fairy" lullabies for producing sleep are even now extant in Ireland and
+the Highlands.[1133] As music forms a part of all primitive religion,
+its soothing powers would easily be magnified. In orgiastic rites it
+caused varying emotions until the singer and dancer fell into a deep
+slumber, and the tales of those who joined in a fairy dance and fell
+asleep, awaking to find that many years had passed, are mythic
+extensions of the power of music in such orgiastic cults. The music of
+the _Filid_ had similar powers to that of Dagda's harp, producing
+laughter, tears, and a delicious slumber,[1134] and Celtic folk-tales
+abound in similar instances of the magic charm of music.
+
+We now turn to the use of amulets among the Celts. Some of these were
+symbolic and intended to bring the wearer under the protection of the
+god whom they symbolised. As has been seen, a Celtic god had as his
+symbol a wheel, probably representing the sun, and numerous small wheel
+discs made of different materials have been found in Gaul and
+Britain.[1135] These were evidently worn as amulets, while in other
+cases they were offered to river divinities, since many are met with in
+river beds or fords. Their use as protective amulets is shown by a stele
+representing a person wearing a necklace to which is attached one of
+these wheels. In Irish texts a Druid is called Mag Ruith, explained as
+_magus rotarum_, because he made his Druidical observations by
+wheels.[1136] This may point to the use of such amulets in Ireland. A
+curious amulet, connected with the Druids, became famous in Roman times
+and is described by Pliny. This was the "serpents' egg," formed from the
+foam produced by serpents twining themselves together. The serpents
+threw the "egg" into the air, and he who sought it had to catch it in
+his cloak before it fell, and flee to a running stream, beyond which the
+serpents, like the witches pursuing Tam o' Shanter, could not follow
+him. This "egg" was believed to cause its owner to obtain access to
+kings or to gain lawsuits, and a Roman citizen was put to death in the
+reign of Claudius for bringing such an amulet into court. Pliny had seen
+this "egg." It was about the size of an apple, with a cartilaginous skin
+covered with discs.[1137] Probably it was a fossil echinus, such as has
+been found in Gaulish tombs.[1138] Such "eggs" were doubtless connected
+with the cult of the serpent, or some old myth of an egg produced by
+serpents may have been made use of to account for their formation. This
+is the more likely, as rings or beads of glass found in tumuli in Wales,
+Cornwall, and the Highlands are called "serpents' glass" (_glain
+naidr_), and are believed to be formed in the same way as the "egg."
+These, as well as old spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in the
+Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, e.g. against the bite of a
+serpent, and are highly prized by their owners.[1139]
+
+Pliny speaks also of the Celtic belief in the magical virtues of coral,
+either worn as an amulet or taken in powder as a medicine, while it has
+been proved that the Celts during a limited period of their history
+placed it on weapons and utensils, doubtless as an amulet.[1140] Other
+amulets--white marble balls, quartz pebbles, models of the tooth of the
+boar, or pieces of amber, have been found buried with the dead.[1141]
+Little figures of the boar, the horse, and the bull, with a ring for
+suspending them to a necklet, were worn as amulets or images of these
+divine animals, and phallic amulets were also worn, perhaps as a
+protection against the evil eye.[1142]
+
+A cult of stones was probably connected with the belief in the magical
+power of certain stones, like the _Lia Fail_, which shrieked aloud when
+Conn knocked against it. His Druids explained that the number of the
+shrieks equalled the number of his descendants who should be kings of
+Erin.[1143] This is an ćtiological myth accounting for the use of this
+fetich-stone at coronations. Other stones, probably the object of a cult
+or possessing magical virtues, were used at the installation of chiefs,
+who stood on them and vowed to follow in the steps of their
+predecessors, a pair of feet being carved on the stone to represent
+those of the first chief.[1144] Other stones had more musical
+virtues--the "conspicuous stone" of Elysium from which arose a hundred
+strains, and the melodious stone of Loch Láig. Such beliefs existed into
+Christian times. S. Columba's stone altar floated on the waves, and on
+it a leper had crossed in the wake of the saint's coracle to Erin. But
+the same stone was that on which, long before, the hero Fionn had
+slipped.[1145]
+
+Connected with the cult of stones are magical observances at fixed rocks
+or boulders, regarded probably as the abode of a spirit. These
+observances are in origin pre-Celtic, but were practised by the Celts.
+Girls slide down a stone to obtain a lover, pregnant women to obtain an
+easy delivery, or contact with such stones causes barren women to have
+children or gives vitality to the feeble. A small offering is usually
+left on the stone.[1146] Similar rites are practised at megalithic
+monuments, and here again the custom is obviously pre-Celtic in origin.
+In this case the spirits of the dead must have been expected to assist
+the purposes of the rites, or even to incarnate themselves in the
+children born as a result of barren women resorting to these
+stones.[1147] Sometimes when the purpose of the stones has been
+forgotten and some other legendary origin attributed to them, the custom
+adapts itself to the legend. In Ireland many dolmens are known, not as
+places of sepulture, but as "Diarmaid and Grainne's beds"--the places
+where these eloping lovers slept. Hence they have powers of fruitfulness
+and are visited by women who desire children. The rite is thus one of
+sympathetic magic.
+
+Holed dolmens or naturally pierced blocks are used for the magical cure
+of sickness both in Brittany and Cornwall, the patient being passed
+through the hole.[1148] Similar rites are used with trees, a slit being
+often made in the trunk of a sapling, and a sickly child passed through
+it. The slit is then closed and bound, and if it joins together at the
+end of a certain time, this is a proof that the child will
+recover.[1149] In these rites the spirit in stone or tree was supposed
+to assist the process of healing, or the disease was transferred to
+them, or, again, there was the idea of a new birth with consequent
+renewed life, the act imitating the process of birth. These rites are
+not confined to Celtic regions, but belong to that universal use of
+magic in which the Celts freely participated.
+
+Since Christian writers firmly believed in the magical powers of the
+Druids, aided however by the devil, they taught that Christian saints
+had miraculously overcome them with their own weapons. S. Patrick
+dispelled snow-storms and darkness raised by Druids, or destroyed Druids
+who had brought down fire from heaven. Similar deeds are attributed to
+S. Columba and others.[1150] The moral victory of the Cross was later
+regarded also as a magical victory. Hence also lives of Celtic saints
+are full of miracles which are simply a reproduction of Druidic
+magic--controlling the elements, healing, carrying live coals without
+hurt, causing confusion by their curses, producing invisibility or
+shape-shifting, making the ice-cold waters of a river hot by standing in
+them at their devotions, or walking unscathed through the fiercest
+storms.[1151] They were soon regarded as more expert magicians than the
+Druids themselves. They may have laid claim to magical powers, or
+perhaps they used a natural shrewdness in such a way as to suggest
+magic. But all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my
+Druid"--the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they were imbued
+with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S. Columba sent a white
+stone to King Brude at Inverness for the cure of his Druid Broichan, who
+drank the water poured over it, and was healed.[1152] Soon similar
+virtues were ascribed to the relics of the saints themselves, and at a
+later time, when most Scotsmen ceased to believe in the saints, they
+thought that the ministers of the kirk had powers like those of pagan
+Druid and Catholic saint. Ministers were levitated, or shone with a
+celestial light, or had clairvoyant gifts, or, with dire results, cursed
+the ungodly or the benighted prelatist. They prophesied, used
+trance-utterance, and exercised gifts of healing. Angels ministered to
+them, as when Samuel Rutherford, having fallen into a well when a child,
+was pulled out by an angel.[1153] The substratum of primitive belief
+survives all changes of creed, and the folk impartially attributed
+magical powers to pagan Druid, Celtic saints, old crones and witches,
+and Presbyterian ministers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1093] _IT_ i. 56; D'Arbois, v. 387.
+
+[1094] See, e.g., "The Death of Muirchertach," _RC_ xxiii. 394.
+
+[1095] _HN_ xxx. 4, 13.
+
+[1096] Zimmer, _Gloss. Hibern._ 183; Reeves, _Adamnan_, 260.
+
+[1097] Kennedy, 175; cf. _IT_ i. 220.
+
+[1098] See _RC_ xii. 52 f.; D'Arbois, v. 403-404; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._
+505; Kennedy, 75, 196, 258.
+
+[1099] D'Arbois, v. 277.
+
+[1100] Stokes, _Three Middle Irish Homilies_, 24; _IT_ iii. 325.
+
+[1101] _RC_ xii. 83; Miss Hull, 215; D'Arbois, v. 424; O'Curry, _MC_ ii.
+215.
+
+[1102] Keating, 341; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 271.
+
+[1103] _RC_ xii. 81.
+
+[1104] Miss Hull, 240 f.
+
+[1105] Maury, 14.
+
+[1106] Sébillot, ii. 226 f., i. 101, ii. 225; Bérenger-Féraud,
+_Superstitions et Survivances_, iii. 169 f.; _Stat. Account_, viii. 52.
+
+[1107] _Rev. des Trad._ 1893, 613; Sébillot, ii. 224.
+
+[1108] Bérenger-Féraud, iii. 218 f.; Sébillot, i. 100, 109; _RC_ ii.
+484; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, i. 67.
+
+[1109] D'Arbois, v. 387; _IT_ i. 52; Dixon, _Gairloch_, 165; Carmichael,
+_Carm. Gad._ ii. 25.
+
+[1110] _RC_ xvi. 152; Miss Hull, 243.
+
+[1111] D'Arbois, v. 133; _IT_ ii. 373.
+
+[1112] Mela, iii. 6; _RC_ xv. 471.
+
+[1113] Joyce, _OCR_ 1 f.; Kennedy, 235.
+
+[1114] Bird-women pursued by Cúchulainn; D'Arbois, v. 178; for other
+instances see O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 426; Miss Hull, 82.
+
+[1115] D'Arbois, v. 215.
+
+[1116] Joyce, _OCR_ 279.
+
+[1117] Ibid. 86.
+
+[1118] _RC_ xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kent._ c. 1.
+
+[1119] _RC_ xv. 446.
+
+[1120] O'Conor, _Rer. Hib. Scrip._ ii. 142; Stokes, _Lives of Saints_,
+xxviii.
+
+[1121] _RC_ xv. 444.
+
+[1122] See p. 251, _supra_.
+
+[1123] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 240.
+
+[1124] See pp. 248, 304, _supra_; Cćsar, _vi_. 14.
+
+[1125] Zimmer, _Gloss. Hiber._ 271. Other Irish incantations, appealing
+to the saints, are found in the _Codex Regularum_ at Klosternenburg
+(_RC_ ii. 112).
+
+[1126] Leahy, i. 137; Kennedy, 301.
+
+[1127] Sauvé, _RC_ vi. 67 f.; Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._, _passim_; _CM_
+xii. 38; Joyce, _SH_ i. 629 f.; Camden, _Britannia_, iv. 488; Scot,
+_Discovery of Witchcraft_, iii. 15.
+
+[1128] For examples see O'Curry, _MS. Met._ 248; D'Arbois, ii. 190; _RC_
+xii. 71, xxiv. 279; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxvi. f.
+
+[1129] Windisch, _Táin_, line 3467.
+
+[1130] Diod. Sic. v. 31.
+
+[1131] D'Arbois, i. 271.
+
+[1132] _RC_ xii. 109; Nutt-Meyer, i. 2; D'Arbois, v. 445.
+
+[1133] Petrie, _Ancient Music of Ireland_, i. 73; _The Gael_, i. 235
+(fairy lullaby of MacLeod of MacLeod).
+
+[1134] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 255.
+
+[1135] _Archćologia_, xxxix. 509; _Proc. Soc. Ant._ iii. 92; Gaidoz, _Le
+Dieu Gaul. du Soleil_, 60 f.
+
+[1136] _IT_ iii. 409; but see Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 215.
+
+[1137] Pliny, _HN_ xxix. 3. 54.
+
+[1138] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227, xxxiii. 283.
+
+[1139] Hoare, _Modern Wiltshire_, 56; Camden, _Britannia_, 815; Hazlitt,
+194; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 84. In the Highlands spindle-whorls are
+thought to have been perforated by the adder, which then passes through
+the hole to rid itself of its old skin.
+
+[1140] Pliny, xxxii. 2. 24; Reinach, _RC_ xx. 13 f.
+
+[1141] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 165; Elton,
+66; Renel, 95f., 194f.
+
+[1142] Reinach, _BF_ 286, 289, 362.
+
+[1143] O'Curry, _MS Mat._ 387. See a paper by Hartland, "The Voice of
+the Stone of Destiny," _Folk-lore Journal_, xiv. 1903.
+
+[1144] Petrie, _Trans. Royal Irish Acad._ xviii. pt. 2.
+
+[1145] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 393 f.
+
+[1146] Sébillot, i. 334 f.
+
+[1147] Trollope, _Brittany_, ii. 229; Bérenger-Féraud, _Superstitions et
+Survivances_, i. 529 f.; Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 580, 689,
+841 f.
+
+[1148] _Rev. des Trad._ 1894, 494; Bérenger-Féraud, i. 529, ii. 367;
+Elworthy, _Evil Eye_, 70.
+
+[1149] Bérenger-Féraud, i. 523; Elworthy, 69, 106; Reinach,
+_L'Anthropologie_, iv. 33.
+
+[1150] Kennedy, 324; Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ ii. 35.
+
+[1151] Life of S. Fechin of Fore, _RC_ xii. 333; Life of S. Kieran,
+O'Grady, ii. 13; Amra Cholumbchille, _RC_ xx. 41; Life of S. Moling,
+_RC_ xxvii. 293; and other lives _passim_. See also Plummer, _Vitć
+Sanctorum Hibernić_.
+
+[1152] Adamnan, ii. 34. This pebble was long preserved, but mysteriously
+disappeared when the person who sought it was doomed to die.
+
+[1153] Wodrow, _Analecta_, _passim_; Walker, _Six Saints of the
+Covenant_, ed. by Dr. Hay Fleming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE STATE OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so
+appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a
+farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have
+doubted the existence of a future state, but their conceptions of it
+have differed greatly. But of all the races of antiquity, outside Egypt,
+the Celts seem to have cherished the most ardent belief in the world
+beyond the grave, and to have been preoccupied with its joys. Their
+belief, so far as we know it, was extremely vivid, and its chief
+characteristic was life in the body after death, in another
+region.[1154] This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a
+doctrine by the Druids, made it the admiration of classical onlookers.
+But besides this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a
+distant past, that the dead lived on in the grave--the two conceptions
+being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of belief
+in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul could exist
+apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that they believed in
+a future existence of the soul as a shade. This belief is certainly
+found in some late Welsh poems, where the ghosts are described as
+wandering in the Caledonian forest, but these can hardly be made use of
+as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may
+be gathered from classical observers, from archćology and from Irish
+texts.
+
+Cćsar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them
+that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another (_ab aliis ... ad
+alios_) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to
+valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at
+funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living
+creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time
+slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says:
+"Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men
+were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live
+again, the soul passing into another body. Hence at the burial of the
+dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile,
+believing that the dead would read them in the next world."[1156]
+Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls
+of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing
+folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the
+mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be
+repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal.[1157] These
+passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in
+transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite
+one common original, but Cćsar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A
+comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief
+differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls
+entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an
+expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body
+is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former
+sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The
+real point of connection was the insistence of both upon immortality,
+the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no
+more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the
+resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality
+_via_ a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine
+of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body
+meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or believing
+in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be struck with the
+vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon conduct. The only
+thing like it of which they knew was the Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at
+in this light, Cćsar's words need not convey the idea of transmigration,
+and it is possible that he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these
+writers meant that the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly
+have added the passages regarding debts being paid in the other world,
+or letters conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit
+the dead there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of
+the soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it
+may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was
+tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a
+region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier
+conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after
+the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received
+its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic,
+may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.
+
+This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the
+Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence
+is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, _in orbe
+alio_) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is
+but the centre of a long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic
+warrior had no fear of death.[1158] Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic
+doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region
+was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its
+rich and varied existence. Classical writers, of course, may have known
+of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old
+beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was
+not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths
+telling of the rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have
+been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But
+such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and
+Mela,[1159] speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their
+testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela
+appears to copy Cćsar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on
+to the next world.
+
+This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in
+which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who
+return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus,
+when Cúchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described
+exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black
+... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side
+of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His
+clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses
+are equally corporeal.[1160] Similar descriptions of the dead who return
+are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom
+every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich,
+who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and clad in
+his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the _Táin_.[1161]
+Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated
+the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions
+of the "Dead Debtor" folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape
+a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but
+in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as
+a living person in corporeal form.[1162] Equally substantial and
+corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine
+folk of the _síd_ or of Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in
+the texts. To the Celts, gods, _síde_, and the dead, all alike had a
+bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways
+differed from the earthly body.
+
+The archćological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears
+witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of
+grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots,
+utensils, ornaments, and coins.[1163] Some of the interments undoubtedly
+point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and
+female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of
+the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains
+of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly
+provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons,
+without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body,
+pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied
+behind the back.[1164] All this suggests, taken in connection with
+classical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was
+life in the body, and that it was a _replica_ of this life, with the
+same affections, needs, and energies. Certain passages in Irish texts
+also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with
+ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead
+warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies
+might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented
+their attack.[1165] Possibly this belief may account for the elevated
+position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were
+buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of
+heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead
+husbands.[1166]
+
+The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably
+linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared
+by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was
+never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of
+the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before
+burial. It appears from such practices as binding the dead with cords,
+or laying heavy stones or a mound of earth on the grave, probably to
+prevent their egress, or feeding the dead with sacrificial food at the
+grave, or from the belief that the dead come forth not as spirits, but
+in the body from the grave. This primitive conception, of which the
+belief in a subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long
+survived among various races, e.g. the Scandinavians, who believed in
+the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while they also had their
+conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the Slavs, side by side with
+Christian conceptions.[1167] It also survived among the Celts, though
+another belief in the _orbis alius_ had arisen. This can be shown from
+modern and ancient folk-belief and custom.
+
+In numerous Celtic folk-tales the dead rise in the body, not as ghosts,
+from the grave, which is sometimes described as a house in which they
+live. They perform their ordinary occupations in house or field; they
+eat with the living, or avenge themselves upon them; if scourged, blood
+is drawn from their bodies; and, in one curious Breton tale, a dead
+husband visits his wife in bed and she then has a child by him, because,
+as he said, "sa compte d'enfants" was not yet complete.[1168] In other
+stories a corpse becomes animated and speaks or acts in presence of the
+living, or from the tomb itself when it is disturbed.[1169] The earliest
+literary example of such a tale is the tenth century "Adventures of
+Nera," based on older sources. In this Nera goes to tie a withy to the
+foot of a man who has been hung. The corpse begs a drink, and then
+forces Nera to carry him to a house, where he kills two sleepers.[1170]
+All such stories, showing as they do that a corpse is really living,
+must in essence be of great antiquity. Another common belief, found over
+the Celtic area, is that the dead rise from the grave, not as ghosts,
+when they will, and that they appear _en masse_ on the night of All
+Saints, and join the living.[1171]
+
+As a result of such beliefs, various customs are found in use,
+apparently to permit of the corpse having freedom of movement, contrary
+to the older custom of preventing its egress from the grave. In the west
+of Ireland the feet of the corpse are left free, and the nails are drawn
+from the coffin at the grave. In the Hebrides the threads of the shroud
+are cut or the bindings of feet, hands, and face are raised when the
+body is placed in the coffin, and in Brittany the arms and feet are left
+free when the corpse is dressed.[1172] The reason is said to be that the
+spirit may have less trouble in getting to the spirit world, but it is
+obvious that a more material view preceded and still underlies this
+later gloss. Many stories are told illustrating these customs, and the
+earlier belief, Christianised, appears in the tale of a woman who
+haunted her friends because they had made her grave-clothes so short
+that the fires of Purgatory burnt her knees.[1173]
+
+Earlier customs recorded among the Celts also point to the existence of
+this primitive belief influencing actual custom. Nicander says that the
+Celts went by night to the tombs of great men to obtain oracles, so much
+did they believe that they were still living there.[1174] In Ireland,
+oracles were also sought by sleeping on funeral cairns, and it was to
+the grave of Fergus that two bards resorted in order to obtain from him
+the lost story of the _Táin_. We have also seen how, in Ireland, armed
+heroes exerted a sinister influence upon enemies from their graves,
+which may thus have been regarded as their homes--a belief also
+underlying the Welsh story of Bran's head.
+
+Where was the world of the dead situated? M. Reinach has shown, by a
+careful comparison of the different uses of the word _orbis_, that
+Lucan's words do not necessarily mean "another world," but "another
+region," i.e. of this world.[1175] If the Celts cherished so firmly the
+belief that the dead lived on in the grave, a belief in an underworld of
+the dead was bound in course of time to have been evolved as part of
+their creed. To it all graves and tumuli would give access. Classical
+observers apparently held that the Celtic future state was like their
+own in being an underworld region, since they speak of the dead Celts as
+_inferi_, or as going _ad Manes_, and Plutarch makes Camma speak of
+descending to her dead husband.[1176] What differentiated it from their
+own gloomy underworld was its exuberant life and immortality. This
+aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who
+had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and
+blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have
+been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the
+roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had
+descended,[1177] probably a myth of their coming forth from his
+subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful
+life.
+
+Several writers, notably M. D'Arbois, assume that the _orbis alius_ of
+the dead was the Celtic island Elysium. But that Elysium _never_ appears
+in the tales as a land of the dead. It is a land of gods and deathless
+folk who are not those who have passed from this world by death. Mortals
+may reach it by favour, but only while still in life. It might be argued
+that Elysium was regarded in pagan times as the land of the dead, but
+after Christian eschatological views prevailed, it became a kind of
+fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being
+carefully examined, they show that Elysium had always been a place
+distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a
+tendency to confuse the two.
+
+If there was a genuine Celtic belief in an island of the dead, it could
+have been no more than a local one, else Cćsar would not have spoken as
+he does of the Celtic Dispater. Such a local belief now exists on the
+Breton coast, but it is mainly concerned with the souls of the
+drowned.[1178] A similar local belief may explain the story told by
+Procopius, who says that Brittia (Britain), an island lying off the
+mouth of the Rhine, is divided from north to south by a wall beyond
+which is a noxious region. This is a distorted reminiscence of the Roman
+wall, which would appear to run in this direction if Ptolemy's map, in
+which Scotland lies at right angles to England, had been consulted.
+Thither fishermen from the opposite coast are compelled to ferry over at
+dead of night the shades of the dead, unseen to them, but marshalled by
+a mysterious leader.[1179] Procopius may have mingled some local belief
+with the current tradition that Ulysses' island of the shades lay in the
+north, or in the west.[1180] In any case his story makes of the gloomy
+land of the shades a very different region from the blissful Elysium of
+the Celts and from their joyous _orbis alius_, nor is it certain that he
+is referring to a Celtic people.
+
+Traces of the idea of an underworld of the dead exist in Breton
+folk-belief. The dead must travel across a subterranean ocean, and
+though there is scarcely any tradition regarding what happens on
+landing, M. Sébillot thinks that formerly "there existed in the
+subterranean world a sort of centralisation of the different states of
+the dead." If so, this must have been founded on pagan belief. The
+interior of the earth is also believed to be the abode of fabulous
+beings, of giants, and of fantastic animals, and there is also a
+subterranean fairy world. In all this we may see a survival of the older
+belief, modified by Christian teaching, since the Bretons suppose that
+purgatory and hell are beneath the earth and accessible from its
+surface.[1181]
+
+Some British folk-lore brought to Greece by Demetrius and reported by
+Plutarch might seem to suggest that certain persons--the mighty
+dead--were privileged to pass to the island Elysium. Some islands near
+Britain were called after gods and heroes, and the inhabitants of one of
+these were regarded as sacrosanct by the Britons, like the priestesses
+of Sena. They were visited by Demetrius, who was told that the storms
+which arose during his visit were caused by the passing away of some of
+the "mighty" or of the "great souls." It may have been meant that such
+mighty ones passed to the more distant islands, but this is certainly
+not stated. In another island, Kronos was imprisoned, watched over by
+Briareus, and guarded by demons.[1182] Plutarch refers to these islands
+in another work, repeating the story of Kronos, and saying that his
+island is mild and fragrant, that people live there waiting on the god
+who sometimes appears to them and prevents their departing. Meanwhile
+they are happy and know no care, spending their time in sacrificing and
+hymn-singing or in studying legends and philosophy.
+
+Plutarch has obviously mingled Celtic Elysium beliefs with the classical
+conception of the Druids.[1183] In Elysium there is no care, and
+favoured mortals who pass there are generally prevented from returning
+to earth. The reference to Kronos may also be based partly on myths of
+Celtic gods of Elysium, partly on tales of heroes who departed to
+mysterious islands or to the hollow hills where they lie asleep, but
+whence they will one day return to benefit their people. So Arthur
+passed to Avalon, but in other tales he and his warriors are asleep
+beneath Craig-y-Ddinas, just as Fionn and his men rest within this or
+that hill in the Highlands. Similar legends are told of other Celtic
+heroes, and they witness to the belief that great men who had died would
+return in the hour of their people's need. In time they were thought not
+to have died at all, but to be merely sleeping and waiting for their
+hour.[1184] The belief is based on the idea that the dead are alive in
+grave or barrow, or in a spacious land below the earth, or that dead
+warriors can menace their foes from the tomb.
+
+Thus neither in old sagas, nor in _Märchen_, nor in popular tradition,
+is the island Elysium a world of the dead. For the most part the pagan
+eschatology has been merged in that of Christianity, while the Elysium
+belief has remained intact and still survives in a whole series of
+beautiful tales.
+
+The world of the dead was in all respects a _replica_ of this world, but
+it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief--a survival of the
+older conception of the bodily state of the dead--they resume their
+tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings.
+Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their
+customary dress. Like the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid
+debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and
+the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed
+and clothe the dead in the other world.[1185] If the world of the dead
+was subterranean,--a theory supported by current folk-belief,[1186]--the
+Earth-goddess or the Earth-god, who had been first the earth itself,
+then a being living below its surface and causing fertility, could not
+have become the divinity of the dead until the multitude of single
+graves or barrows, in each of which the dead lived, had become a wide
+subterranean region of the dead. This divinity was the source of life
+and growth; hence he or she was regarded as the progenitor of mankind,
+who had come forth from the underworld and would return there at death.
+It is not impossible that the Breton conception of Ankou, death
+personified, is a reminiscence of the Celtic Dispater. He watches over
+all things beyond the grave, and carries off the dead to his kingdom.
+But if so he has been altered for the worse by medićval ideas of "Death
+the skeleton".[1187] He is a grisly god of death, whereas the Celtic Dis
+was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed a happy immortality. They
+were not cold phantasms, but alive and endowed with corporeal form and
+able to enjoy the things of a better existence, and clad in the
+beautiful raiment and gaudy ornaments which were loved so much on earth.
+Hence Celtic warriors did not fear death, and suicide was extremely
+common, while Spanish Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others
+celebrated the birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with
+joy.[1188] Lucan's words are thus the truest expression of Celtic
+eschatology--"In another region the spirit animates the members; death,
+if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring life."
+
+There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral
+retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since the
+hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor, it may
+have been held, as many other races have believed, that cowards would
+miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of the Irish
+Christian visions of the other-world and in existing folk-belief,
+certain characteristics of hell may not be derived from Christian
+eschatology, e.g. the sufferings of the dead from cold.[1189] This might
+point to an old belief in a cold region whither some of the dead were
+banished. In the _Adventures of S. Columba's Clerics_, hell is reached
+by a bridge over a glen of fire,[1190] and a narrow bridge leading to
+the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here it may
+be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such Christian writings
+as the _Dialogues_ of S. Gregory the Great.[1191] It might be contended
+that the Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory
+of retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in
+classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor is
+there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in which
+Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till "the day of
+Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the Lord," does not
+refer to such a judgment.[1192] If an ethical blindness be attributed to
+the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of retribution, it
+should be remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by
+their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up
+to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and
+the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from
+suggesting an ethical Deity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1154] Skene, i. 370.
+
+[1155] Cćsar, vi. 14, 19.
+
+[1156] Diod. Sic. v, 28.
+
+[1157] Val. Max. vi. 6. 10.
+
+[1158] _Phars._ i. 455 f.
+
+[1159] Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1160] Miss Hull, 275.
+
+[1161] Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293.
+
+[1162] Larminie, 155; Hyde, _Beside the Fire_, 21, 153; _CM_ xiii. 21;
+Campbell, _WHT_, ii. 21; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xii.
+
+[1163] Von Sacken, _Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt_; Greenwell, _British
+Barrows_; _RC_ x. 234; _Antiquary_, xxxvii. 125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.;
+Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_.
+
+[1164] _L'Anthropologie_, vi. 586; Greenwell, _op. cit._ 119.
+
+[1165] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, _Annals_, i. 145, 180; _RC_ xv. 28.
+In one case the enemy disinter the body of the king of Connaught, and
+rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a victory. This nearly
+coincides with the dire results following the disinterment of Bran's
+head (O'Donovan, i. 145; cf. p. 242, _supra_).
+
+[1166] _LU_ 130_a_; _RC_ xxiv. 185; O'Curry, _MC_ i. p. cccxxx;
+Campbell, _WHT_ iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.
+
+[1167] Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 167, 417-418, 420;
+and see my _Childhood of Fiction_, 103 f.
+
+[1168] Larminie, 31; Le Braz{2}, ii. 146, 159, 161, 184, 257 (the _rôle_
+of the dead husband is usually taken by a _lutin_ or _follet_, Luzel,
+_Veillées Bretons_, 79); _Rev. des Trad. Pop._ ii. 267; _Ann. de
+Bretagne_, viii. 514.
+
+[1169] Le Braz{2}, i. 313. Cf. also an incident in the _Voyage of
+Maelduin_.
+
+[1170] _RC_ x. 214f. Cf. Kennedy, 162; Le Braz{2}, i. 217, for variants.
+
+[1171] Curtin, _Tales_, 156; see p. 170, _supra_.
+
+[1172] Curtin, _Tales_, 156; Campbell, _Superstitions_, 241;
+_Folk-Lore_, xiii. 60; Le Braz{2}, i. 213.
+
+[1173] _Folk-Lore_, ii. 26; Yeats, _Celtic Twilight_, 166.
+
+[1174] Tertullian, _de Anima_, 21.
+
+[1175] Reinach, _RC_ xxii. 447.
+
+[1176] Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. _Virt. mul_ 20.
+
+[1177] See p. 229, _supra_.
+
+[1178] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many local
+beliefs (cf. Sébillot, ii. 149).
+
+[1179] Procop. _De Bello Goth._ vi. 20.
+
+[1180] Claudian, _In Rufin._ i. 123.
+
+[1181] Sébillot, i. 418 f.
+
+[1182] _de Defectu Orac._ 18. An occasional name for Britain in the
+_Mabinogion_ is "the island of the Mighty" (Loth, i. 69, _et passim_).
+To the storm incident and the passing of the mighty, there is a curious
+parallel in Fijian belief. A clap of thunder was explained as "the noise
+of a spirit, we being near the place in which spirits plunge to enter
+the other world, and a chief in the neighbourhood having just died"
+(Williams, _Fiji_, i. 204).
+
+[1183] _de Facie Lun[oe]_, 26.
+
+[1184] See Hartland, _Science of Fairy Tales_, 209; Macdougall, _Folk
+and Hero Tales_, 73, 263; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxx. Mortals sometimes
+penetrated to the presence of these heroes, who awoke. If the visitor
+had the courage to tell them that the hour had not yet come, they fell
+asleep again, and he escaped. In Brittany, rocky clefts are believed to
+be the entrance to the world of the dead, like the cave of Lough Dearg.
+Similar stories were probably told of these in pagan times, though they
+are now adapted to Christian beliefs in purgatory or hell.
+
+[1185] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xl, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail, _Folk-Lore_,
+vi. 170.
+
+[1186] See p. 338, _supra_, and Logan, _Scottish Gael_, ii. 374;
+_Folk-Lore,_ viii. 208, 253.
+
+[1187] Le Braz{2}, i. 96, 127, 136f., and Intro, xlv.
+
+[1188] Philostratus, _Apoll. of Tyana_, v. 4; Val. Max. ii. 6. 12.
+
+[1189] Le Braz{1}, ii. 91; Curtin, _Tales_, 146. The punishment of
+suffering from ice and snow appears in the _Apocalypse of Paul_ and in
+later Christian accounts of hell.
+
+[1190] _RC_ xxvi. 153.
+
+[1191] Bk. iv. ch. 36.
+
+[1192] _Erdathe_, according to D'Arbois, means (1) "the day in which the
+dead will resume his colour," from _dath_, "colour"; (2) "the agreeable
+day," from _data_, "agreeable" (D'Arbois, i. 185; cf. _Les Druides_,
+135).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION.
+
+
+In Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or heroes, and,
+probably because this belief was obnoxious to Christian scribes, while
+some MSS. tell of it in the case of certain heroic personages, in others
+these same heroes are said to have been born naturally. There is no
+textual evidence that it was attributed to ordinary mortals, and it is
+possible that, if classical observers did not misunderstand the Celtic
+doctrine of the future life, their references to rebirth may be based on
+mythical tales regarding gods or heroes. We shall study these tales as
+they are found in Irish texts.
+
+In the mythological cycle, as has been seen, Etain, in insect form, fell
+into a cup of wine. She was swallowed by Etar, and in due time was
+reborn as a child, who was eventually married by Eochaid Airem, but
+recognized and carried off by her divine spouse Mider. Etain, however,
+had quite forgotten her former existence as a goddess.[1193]
+
+In one version of Cúchulainn's birth story Dechtire and her women fly
+away as birds, but are discovered at last by her brother Conchobar in a
+strange house, where Dechtire gives birth to a child, of whom the god
+Lug is apparently the father. In another version the birds are not
+Dechtire and her women, for she accompanies Conchobar as his charioteer.
+They arrive at the house, the mistress of which gives birth to a child,
+which Dechtire brings up. It dies, and on her return from the burial
+Dechtire swallows a small animal when drinking. Lug appears to her by
+night, and tells her that he was the child, and that now she was with
+child by him (i.e. he was the animal swallowed by her). When he was born
+he would be called Setanta, who was later named Cúchulainn. Cúchulainn,
+in this version, is thus a rebirth of Lug, as well as his father.[1194]
+
+In the _Tale of the Two Swineherds_, Friuch and Rucht are herds of the
+gods Ochall and Bodb. They quarrel, and their fighting in various animal
+shapes is fully described. Finally they become two worms, which are
+swallowed by two cows; these then give birth to the Whitehorn and to the
+Black Bull of Cuailgne, the animals which were the cause of the _Táin._
+The swineherds were probably themselves gods in the older versions of
+this tale.[1195]
+
+Other stories relate the rebirth of heroes. Conchobar is variously said
+to be son of Nessa by her husband Cathbad, or by her lover Fachtna. But
+in the latter version an incident is found which points to a third
+account. Nessa brings Cathbad a draught from a river, but in it are two
+worms which he forces her to swallow. She gives birth to a son, in each
+of whose hands is a worm, and he is called Conchobar, after the name of
+the river into which he fell soon after his birth. The incident closes
+with the words, "It was from these worms that she became pregnant, say
+some."[1196] Possibly the divinity of the river had taken the form of
+the worms and was reborn as Conchobar. We may compare the story of the
+birth of Conall Cernach. His mother was childless, until a Druid sang
+spells over a well in which she bathed, and drank of its waters. With
+the draught she swallowed a worm, "and the worm was in the hand of the
+boy as he lay in his mother's womb; and he pierced the hand and consumed
+it."[1197]
+
+The personality of Fionn is also connected with the rebirth idea. In one
+story, Mongan, a seventh-century king, had a dispute with his poet
+regarding the death of the hero Fothad. The Fian Caoilte returns from
+the dead to prove Mongan right, and he says, "We were with thee, with
+Fionn." Mongan bids him be silent, because he did not wish his identity
+with Fionn to be made known. "Mongan, however, was Fionn, though he
+would not let it be told."[1198] In another story Mongan is son of
+Manannan, who had prophesied of this event. Manannan appeared to the
+wife of Fiachna when he was fighting the Saxons, and told her that
+unless she yielded herself to him her husband would be slain. On hearing
+this she agreed, and next day the god appeared fighting with Fiachna's
+forces and routed the slain. "So that this Mongan is a son of Manannan
+mac Lir, though he is called Mongan son of Fiachna."[1199] In a third
+version Manannan makes the bargain with Fiachna, and in his form sleeps
+with the woman. Simultaneously with Mongan's birth, Fiachna's attendant
+had a son who became Mongan's servant, and a warrior's wife bears a
+daughter who became his wife. Manannan took Mongan to the Land of
+Promise and kept him there until he was sixteen.[1200] Many magical
+powers and the faculty of shape-shifting are attributed to Mongan, and
+in some stories he is brought into connection with the _síd_.[1201]
+Probably a myth told how he went to Elysium instead of dying, for he
+comes from "the Land of Living Heart" to speak with S. Columba, who took
+him to see heaven. But he would not satisfy the saints' curiosity
+regarding Elysium, and suddenly vanished, probably returning
+there.[1202]
+
+This twofold account of Mongan's birth is curious. Perhaps the idea that
+he was a rebirth of Fionn may have been suggested by the fact that his
+father was called Fiachna Finn, while it is probable that some old myth
+of a son of Manannan's called Mongan was attached to the personality of
+the historic Mongan.
+
+About the era of Mongan, King Diarmaid had two wives, one of whom was
+barren. S. Finnen gave her holy water to drink, and she brought forth a
+lamb; then, after a second draught, a trout, and finally, after a third,
+Aed Slane, who became high king of Ireland in 594. This is a
+Christianised version of the story of Conall Cernach's birth.[1203]
+
+In Welsh mythology the story of Taliesin affords an example of rebirth.
+After the transformation combat of the goddess Cerridwen and Gwion,
+resembling that of the swine-herds, Gwion becomes a grain of wheat,
+which Cerridwen in the form of a hen swallows, with the result that he
+is reborn of her as Taliesin.[1204]
+
+Most of these stories no longer exist in their primitive form, and
+various ideas are found in them--conception by magical means, divine
+descent through the _amour_ of a divinity and a mortal, and rebirth.
+
+As to the first, the help of magician or priest is often invoked in
+savage society and even in European folk-custom in case of barrenness.
+Prayers, charms, potions, or food are the means used to induce
+conception, but perhaps at one time these were thought to cause it of
+themselves. In many tales the swallowing of a seed, fruit, insect, etc.,
+results in the birth of a hero or heroine, and it is probable that these
+stories embody actual belief in such a possibility. If the stories of
+Conall Cernach and Aed Slane are not attenuated instances of rebirth,
+say, of the divinity of a well, they are examples of this belief. The
+gift of fruitfulness is bestowed by Druid and saint, but in the story of
+Conall it is rather the swallowing of the worm than the Druid's
+incantation that causes conception, and is the real _motif_ of the tale.
+
+Where the rebirth of a divinity occurs as the result of the swallowing
+of a small animal, it is evident that the god has first taken this form.
+The Celt, believing in conception by swallowing some object, and in
+shape-shifting, combined his information, and so produced a third idea,
+that a god could take the form of a small animal, which, when swallowed,
+became his rebirth.[1205] If, as the visits of barren women to dolmens
+and megalithic monuments suggest, the Celts believed in the possibility
+of the spirit of a dead man entering a woman and being born of her or at
+least aiding conception,--a belief held by other races,[1206]--this may
+have given rise to myths regarding the rebirth of gods by human mothers.
+At all events this latter Celtic belief is paralleled by the American
+Indian myths, e.g. of the Thlinkeet god Yehl who transformed himself now
+into a pebble, now into a blade of grass, and, being thus swallowed by
+women, was reborn.
+
+In the stories of Etain and of Lud, reborn as Setanta, this idea of
+divine transformation and rebirth occurs. A similar idea may underlie
+the tale of Fionn and Mongan. As to the tales of Gwion and the
+Swineherds, the latter the servants of gods, and perhaps themselves
+regarded once as divinities, who in their rebirth as bulls are certainly
+divine animals, they present some features which require further
+consideration. The previous transformations in both cases belong to the
+Transformation Combat formula of many _Märchen_, and obviously were not
+part of the original form of the myths. In all such _Märchen_ the
+antagonists are males, hence the rebirth incident could not form part of
+them. In the Welsh tale of Gwion and in the corresponding Taliesin poem,
+the ingenious fusion of the _Märchen_ formula with an existing myth of
+rebirth must have taken place at an early date.[1207] This is also true
+of _The Two Swineherds_, but in this case, since the myth told how two
+gods took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to
+be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to the
+usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn. The fusion
+is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a remembrance of
+their former transformations,[1208] just as Mongan knows of his former
+existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such remembrance. Etain
+had forgotten her former existence, and Cúchulainn does not appear to
+know that he is a rebirth of Lug.
+
+The relation of Lug to Cúchulainn deserves further inquiry. While the
+god is reborn he is also existing as Lug, just as having been swallowed
+as a worm by Dechtire, he appears in his divine form and tells her he
+will be born of her. In the _Táin_ he appears fighting for Cúchulainn,
+whom he there calls his son. There are thus two aspects of the hero's
+relationship to Lug; in one he is a rebirth of the god, in the other he
+is his son, as indeed he seems to represent himself in _The Wooing of
+Emer_, and as he is called by Laborcham just before his death.[1209] In
+one of the birth-stories he is clearly Lug's son by Dechtire. But both
+versions may simply be different aspects of one belief, namely, that a
+god could be reborn as a mortal and yet continue his divine existence,
+because all birth is a kind of rebirth. The men of Ulster sought a wife
+for Cúchulainn, "knowing that his rebirth would be of himself," i.e. his
+son would be himself even while he continued to exist as his father.
+Examples of such a belief occur elsewhere, e.g. in the _Laws_ of Manu,
+where the husband is said to be reborn of his wife, and in ancient
+Egypt, where the gods were called "self-begotten," because each was
+father to the son who was his true image or himself. Likeness implied
+identity, in primitive belief. Thus the belief in mortal descent from
+the gods among the Celts may have involved the theory of a divine
+avatar. The god became father of a mortal by a woman, and part of
+himself passed over to the child, who was thus the god himself.
+
+Conchobar was also a rebirth of a god, but he was named from the river
+whence his mother had drawn water containing the worms which she
+swallowed. This may point to a lost version in which he was the son of a
+river-god by Nessa. This was quite in accordance with Celtic belief, as
+is shown by such names as Dubrogenos, from _dubron_, "water," and
+_genos_, "born of"; Divogenos, Divogena, "son or daughter of a god,"
+possibly a river-god, since _deivos_ is a frequent river name; and
+Rhenogenus, "son of the Rhine."[1210] The persons who first bore these
+names were believed to have been begotten by divinities. Mongan's
+descent from Manannan, god of the sea, is made perfectly clear, and the
+Welsh name Morgen = _Morigenos_, "son of the sea," probably points to a
+similar tale now lost. Other Celtic names are frequently pregnant with
+meaning, and tell of a once-existing rich mythology of divine _amours_
+with mortals. They show descent from deities--Camulogenus (son of
+Camulos), Esugenos (son of Esus), Boduogenus (son of Bodva); or from
+tree-spirits--Dergen (son of the oak), Vernogenus (son of the alder); or
+from divine animals--Arthgen (son of the bear), Urogenus (son of the
+urus).[1211] What was once an epithet describing divine filiation became
+later a personal name. So in Greece names like Apollogenes, Diogenes,
+and Hermogenes, had once been epithets of heroes born of Apollo, Zeus,
+and Hermes.
+
+Thus it was a vital Celtic belief that divinities might unite with
+mortals and beget children. Heroes enticed away to Elysium enjoyed the
+love of its goddesses--Cúchulainn that of Fand; Connla, Bran, and Oisin
+that of unnamed divinities. So, too, the goddess Morrigan offered
+herself to Cúchulainn. The Christian Celts of the fifth century retained
+this belief, though in a somewhat altered form. S. Augustine and others
+describe the shaggy demons called _dusii_ by the Gauls, who sought the
+couches of women in order to gratify their desires.[1212] The _dusii_
+are akin to the _incubi_ and _fauni_, and do not appear to represent the
+higher gods reduced to the form of demons by Christianity, but rather a
+species of lesser divinities, once the object of popular devotion.
+
+These beliefs are also connected with the Celtic notions of
+transformation and transmigration--the one signifying the assuming of
+another shape for a time, the other the passing over of the soul or the
+personality into another body, perhaps one actually existing, but more
+usually by actual rebirth. As has been seen, this power of
+transformation was claimed by the Druids and by other persons, or
+attributed to them, and they were not likely to minimise their powers,
+and would probably boast of them on all occasions. Such boasts are put
+into the mouths of the Irish Amairgen and the Welsh Taliesin. As the
+Milesians were approaching Ireland, Amairgen sang verses which were
+perhaps part of a ritual chant:
+
+  "I am the wind which blows over the sea,
+   I am the wave of the ocean,
+   I am the bull of seven battles,
+   I am the eagle on the rock...
+   I am a boar for courage,
+   I am a salmon in the water, etc."[1213]
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s points out that some of these verses need not mean
+actual transformation, but mere likeness, through "a primitive formation
+of predicate without the aid of a particle corresponding to such a word
+as 'like.'"[1214] Enough, however, remains to show the claim of the
+magician. Taliesin, in many poems, makes similar claims, and says, "I
+have been in a multitude of shapes before I assumed a consistent
+form"--that of a sword, a tear, a star, an eagle, etc. Then he was
+created, without father or mother.[1215] Similar pretensions are common
+to the medicine-man everywhere. But from another point of view they may
+be mere poetic extravagances such as are common in Celtic poetry.[1216]
+Thus Cúchulainn says: "I was a hound strong for combat ... their little
+champion ... the casket of every secret for the maidens," or, in another
+place, "I am the bark buffeted from wave to wave ... the ship after the
+losing of its rudder ... the little apple on the top of the tree that
+little thought of its falling."[1217] These are metaphoric descriptions
+of a comparatively simple kind. The full-blown bombast appears in the
+_Colloquy of the Two Sages_, where Nede and Fercertne exhaust language
+in describing themselves to each other.[1218] Other Welsh bards besides
+Taliesin make similar boasts to his, and Dr. Skene thinks that their
+claims "may have been mere bombast."[1219] Still some current belief in
+shape-shifting, or even in rebirth, underlies some of these boastings
+and gives point to them. Amairgen's "I am" this or that, suggests the
+inherent power of transformation; Taliesin's "I have been," the actual
+transformations. Such assertions do not involve "the powerful
+pantheistic doctrine which is at once the glory and error of Irish
+philosophy," as M. D'Arbois claims,[1220] else are savage medicine-men,
+boastful of their shape-shifting powers, philosophic pantheists. The
+poems are merely highly developed forms of primitive beliefs in
+shape-shifting, such as are found among all savages and barbaric folk,
+but expressed in the boastful language in which the Celt delighted.
+
+How were the successive shape-shiftings effected? To answer this we
+shall first look at the story of Tuan Mac Caraill, who survived from the
+days of Partholan to those of S. Finnen. He was a decrepit man at the
+coming of Nemed, and one night, having lain down to sleep, he awoke as a
+stag, and lived in this form to old age. In the same way he became a
+boar, a hawk, and a salmon, which was caught and eaten by Cairell's
+wife, of whom he was born as Tuan, with a perfect recollection of his
+different forms.[1221]
+
+This story, the invention of a ninth or tenth century Christian scribe
+to account for the current knowledge of the many invasions of
+Ireland,[1222] must have been based on pagan myths of a similar kind,
+involving successive transformations and a final rebirth. Such a myth
+may have been told of Taliesin, recounting his transformations and his
+final rebirth, the former being replaced at a later time by the episode
+of the Transformation Combat, involving no great lapse of time. Such a
+series of successive shapes--of every beast, a dragon, a wolf, a stag, a
+salmon, a seal, a swan--were ascribed to Mongan and foretold by
+Manannan, and Mongan refers to some of them in his colloquy with S.
+Columba--"when I was a deer ... a salmon ... a seal ... a roving wolf
+... a man."[1223] Perhaps the complete story was that of a fabulous hero
+in human form, who assumed different shapes, and was finally reborn. But
+the transformation of an old man, or an old animal, into new youthful
+and vigorous forms might be regarded as a kind of transmigration--an
+extension of the transformation idea, but involving no metempsychosis,
+no passing of the soul into another body by rebirth. Actual
+transmigration or rebirth occurs only at the end of the series, and, as
+in the case of Etain, Lug, etc., the pre-existent person is born of a
+woman after being swallowed by her. Possibly the transformation belief
+has reacted on the other, and obscured a belief in actual metempsychosis
+as a result of the soul of an ancestor passing into a woman and being
+reborn as her next child. Add to this that the soul is often thought of
+as a tiny animal, and we see how a _point d'appui_ for the more
+materialistic belief was afforded. The insect or worms of the rebirth
+stories may have been once forms of the soul. It is easy also to see
+how, a theory of conception by swallowing various objects being already
+in existence, it might be thought possible that eating a salmon--a
+transformed man--would cause his rebirth from the eater.
+
+The Celts may have had no consistent belief on this subject, the general
+idea of the future life being of a different kind. Or perhaps the
+various beliefs in transformation, transmigration, rebirth, and
+conception by unusual means, are too inextricably mingled to be
+separated. The nucleus of the tales seems to be the possibility of
+rebirth, and the belief that the soul was still clad in a bodily form
+after death and was itself a material thing. But otherwise some of them
+are not distinctively Celtic, and have been influenced by old _Märchen_
+formulć of successive changes adopted by or forced upon some person, who
+is finally reborn. This formulć is already old in the fourteenth century
+B.C. Egyptian story of the _Two Brothers_.
+
+Such Celtic stories as these may have been known to classical authors,
+and have influenced their statements regarding eschatology. Yet it can
+hardly be said that the tales themselves bear witness to a general
+transmigration doctrine current among the Celts, since the stories
+concern divine or heroic personages. Still the belief may have had a
+certain currency among them, based on primitive theories of soul life.
+Evidence that it existed side by side with the more general doctrines of
+the future life may be found in old or existing folk-belief. In some
+cases the dead have an animal form, as in the _Voyage of Maelduin_,
+where birds on an island are said to be souls, or in the legend of S.
+Maelsuthain, whose pupils appear to him after death as birds.[1224] The
+bird form of the soul after death is still a current belief in the
+Hebrides. Butterflies in Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France
+bats or butterflies, are believed to be souls of the dead.[1225] King
+Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been changed
+into the form of a raven, and in medićval Wales souls of the wicked
+appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels, or hares, or serve
+their term of penitence as cows or bulls, or remain as crows till the
+day of judgment.[1226] Unbaptized infants become birds; drowned sailors
+appear as beasts or birds; and the souls of girls deceived by lovers
+haunt them as hares.[1227]
+
+These show that the idea of transmigration may not have been foreign to
+the Celtic mind, and it may have arisen from the idea that men assumed
+their totem animal's shape at death. Some tales of shape-shifting are
+probably due to totemism, and it is to be noted that in Kerry peasants
+will not eat hares because they contain the souls of their
+grandmothers.[1228] On the other hand, some of these survivals may mean
+no more than that the soul itself has already an animal form, in which
+it would naturally be seen after death. In Celtic folk-belief the soul
+is seen leaving the body in sleep as a bee, butterfly, gnat, mouse, or
+mannikin.[1229] Such a belief is found among most savage races, and
+might easily be mistaken for transmigration, or also assist the
+formation of the idea of transmigration. Though the folk-survivals show
+that transmigration was not necessarily alleged of all the dead, it may
+have been a sufficiently vital belief to colour the mythology, as we see
+from the existing tales, adulterated though these may have been.
+
+The general belief has its roots in primitive ideas regarding life and
+its propagation--ideas which some hold to be un-Celtic and un-Aryan. But
+Aryans were "primitive" at some period of their history, and it would be
+curious if, while still in a barbarous condition, they had forgotten
+their old beliefs. In any case, if they adopted similar beliefs from
+non-Aryan people, this points to no great superiority on their part.
+Such beliefs originated the idea of rebirth and transmigration.[1230]
+Nevertheless this was not a characteristically Celtic eschatological
+belief; that we find in the theory that the dead lived on in the body or
+assumed a body in another region, probably underground.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1193] For textual details see Zimmer, _Zeit. für Vergl. Sprach._
+xxviii. 585 f. The tale is obviously archaic. For a translation see
+Leahy, i. 8 f.
+
+[1194] _IT_ i. 134 f.; D'Arbois, v. 22. There is a suggestion in one of
+the versions of another story, in which Setanta is child of Conchobar
+and his sister Dechtire.
+
+[1195] _IT_ iii. 245; _RC_ xv. 465; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 69.
+
+[1196] Stowe MS. 992, _RC_ vi. 174; _IT_ ii. 210; D'Arbois, v. 3f.
+
+[1197] _IT_ iii. 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was
+barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter (_RC_
+xxii. 18).
+
+[1198] Nutt-Meyer, i. 45 f., text and translation.
+
+[1199] Ibid. 42 f.
+
+[1200] Ibid. 58. The simultaneous birth formula occurs in many
+_Märchen_, though that of the future wife is not common.
+
+[1201] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52, 57, 85, 87.
+
+[1202] _ZCP_ ii. 316 f. Here Mongan comes directly from Elysium, as does
+Oisin before meeting S. Patrick.
+
+[1203] _IT_ iii. 345; O'Grady, ii. 88. Cf. Rees, 331.
+
+[1204] Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. 116, _supra_.
+
+[1205] In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently
+after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form.
+
+[1206] See my _Religion: Its Origin and Forms_, 76-77.
+
+[1207] Skene, i. 532. After relating various shapes in which he has
+been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received, and
+that he rested in her womb as a child. The reference in this early poem
+from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of the _Märchen_
+formula with a myth of rebirth was already well known. See also Guest,
+iii. 362, for verses in which the transformations during the combat are
+exaggerated.
+
+[1208] Skene, i. 276, 532.
+
+[1209] Miss Hull, 67; D'Arbois, v. 331.
+
+[1210] For various forms of _geno_-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes, _US_
+110.
+
+[1211] For all these names see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[1212] S. Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, xv. 23; Isidore, _Orat._ viii. 2. 103.
+_Dusios_ may be connected with Lithuanian _dvaese_, "spirit," and
+perhaps with [Greek: Thehos] (Holder, _s.v._). D'Arbois sees in the
+_dusii_ water-spirits, and compares river-names like Dhuys, Duseva,
+Dusius (vi. 182; _RC_ xix. 251). The word may be connected with Irish
+_duis_, glossed "noble" (Stokes, _TIG_ 76). The Bretons still believe in
+fairies called _duz_, and our word _dizzy_ may be connected with
+_dusios_, and would then have once signified the madness following on
+the _amour_, like Greek [Greek: nympholeptos], or "the inconvenience of
+their succubi," described by Kirk in his _Secret Commonwealth of the
+Elves_.
+
+[1213] _LL_ 12_b_; _TOS_ v. 234.
+
+[1214] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 549.
+
+[1215] Skene, i. 276, 309, etc.
+
+[1216] Sigerson, _Bards of the Gael_, 379.
+
+[1217] Miss Hull, 288; Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 300.
+
+[1218] _RC_ xxvi. 21.
+
+[1219] Skene, ii. 506.
+
+[1220] D'Arbois, ii. 246, where he also derives Erigena's pantheism from
+Celtic beliefs, such as he supposes to be exemplified by these poems.
+
+[1221] _LU_ 15_a_; D'Arbois, ii. 47 f.; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 294 f.
+
+[1222] Another method of accounting for this knowledge was to imagine a
+long-lived personage like Fintan who survived for 5000 years. D'Arbois,
+ii. ch. 4. Here there was no transformation or rebirth.
+
+[1223] Nutt-Meyer, i. 24; _ZCP_ ii. 316.
+
+[1224] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 78.
+
+[1225] Wood-Martin, _Pagan Ireland_, 140; _Choice Notes_, 61; Monnier,
+143; Maury, 272.
+
+[1226] _Choice Notes_, 69; Rees, 92; Le Braz{2}, ii. 82, 86, 307; _Rev.
+des Trad. Pop._ xii. 394.
+
+[1227] Le Braz{2}, ii. 80; _Folk-lore Jour._ v. 189.
+
+[1228] _Folk-Lore_, iv. 352.
+
+[1229] Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._ ii. 334; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ 602; Le
+Braz{2}, i. 179, 191, 200.
+
+[1230] Mr. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, derived the origin of the rebirth
+conception from orgiastic cults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ELYSIUM.
+
+
+The Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of religion,
+mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series of Irish and
+Welsh tales. We do not know that a similar conception existed among the
+continental Celts, but, considering the likeness of their beliefs in
+other matters to those of the insular Celts, there is a strong
+probability that it did. There are four typical presentations of the
+Elysium conception. In Ireland, while the gods were believed to have
+retired within the hills or _síd_, it is not unlikely that some of them
+had always been supposed to live in these or in a subterranean world,
+and it is therefore possible that what may be called the subterranean or
+_síd_ type of Elysium is old. But other types also appear--that of a
+western island Elysium, of a world below the waters, and of a world
+co-extensive with this and entered by a mist.
+
+The names of the Irish Elysium are sometimes of a general character--Mag
+Mór, "the Great Plain"; Mag Mell, "the Pleasant Plain"; Tír n'Aill, "the
+Other-world"; Tir na m-Beo, "the Land of the Living"; Tír na n-Og, "the
+Land of Youth"; and Tír Tairngiri, "the Land of Promise"--possibly of
+Christian origin. Local names are Tír fa Tonn, "Land under Waves";
+I-Bresail and the Land of Falga, names of the island Elysium. The last
+denotes the Isle of Man as Elysium, and it may have been so regarded by
+Goidels in Britain at an early time.[1231] To this period may belong the
+tales of Cúchulainn's raid on Falga, carried at a later time to Ireland.
+Tír Tairngiri is also identified with the Isle of Man.[1232]
+
+A brief résumé of the principal Elysium tales is necessary as a
+preliminary to a discussion of the problems which they involve, though
+it can give but little idea of the beauty and romanticism of the tales
+themselves. These, if not actually composed in pagan times, are based
+upon story-germs current before the coming of Christianity to Ireland.
+
+1. _The síd Elysium._--In the story of Etain, when Mider discovered her
+in her rebirth, he described the land whither he would carry her, its
+music and its fair people, its warm streams, its choice mead and wine.
+There is eternal youth, and love is blameless. It is within Mider's
+_síd_, and Etain accompanies him there. In the sequel King Eochaid's
+Druid discovers the _síd_, which is captured by the king, who then
+regains Etain.[1233] Other tales refer to the _síd_ in similar terms,
+and describe its treasures, its food and drink better than those of
+earth. It is in most respects similar to the island Elysium, save that
+it is localised on earth.
+
+2. _The island Elysium._--The story of the voyage of Bran is found
+fragmentarily in the eleventh century _LU_, and complete in the
+fourteenth and sixteenth century MSS. It tells how Bran heard mysterious
+music when asleep. On waking he found a silver branch with blossoms, and
+next day there appeared a mysterious woman singing the glory of the land
+overseas, its music, its wonderful tree, its freedom from pain and
+death. It is one of thrice fifty islands to the west of Erin, and there
+she dwells with thousands of "motley women." Before she disappears the
+branch leaps into her hand. Bran set sail with his comrades and met
+Manannan crossing the sea in his chariot. The god told him that the sea
+was a flowery plain, Mag Mell, and that all around, unseen to Bran, were
+people playing and drinking "without sin." He bade him sail on to the
+Land of Women. Then the voyagers went on and reached the Isle of Joy,
+where one of their number remained behind. At last they came to the Land
+of Women, and we hear of their welcome, the dreamlike lapse of time, the
+food and drink which had for each the taste he desired. Finally the tale
+recounts their home-sickness, the warning they received not to set foot
+on Erin, how one of their number leaped ashore and turned to ashes, how
+Bran from his boat told of his wanderings and then disappeared for
+ever.[1234]
+
+Another story tells how Connla was visited by a goddess from Mag Mell.
+Her people dwell in a _síd_ and are called "men of the _síd_." She
+invites him to go to the immortal land, and departs, leaving him an
+apple, which supports him for a month without growing less. Then she
+reappears and tells Connla that "the Ever-Living Ones" desire him to
+join them. She bids him come with her to the Land of Joy where there are
+only women. He steps into her crystal boat and vanishes from his father
+and the Druid who has vainly tried to exercise his spells against
+her.[1235] In this tale there is a confusion between the _síd_ and the
+island Elysium.
+
+The eighteenth century poem of Oisin in Tír na n-Og is probably based on
+old legends, and describes how Niam, daughter of the king of Tír na
+n-Og, placed _geasa_ on Oisin to accompany her to that land of immortal
+youth and beauty. He mounted on her steed, which plunged forwards across
+the sea, and brought them to the land where Oisin spent three hundred
+years before returning to Ireland, and there suffering, as has been
+seen, from the breaking of the tabu not to set foot on the soil of
+Erin.[1236]
+
+In _Serglige Conculaind_, "Cúchulainn's Sickness," the goddess Fand,
+deserted by Manannan, offers herself to the hero if he will help her
+sister's husband Labraid against his enemies in Mag Mell. Labraid lives
+in an island frequented by troops of women, and possessing an
+inexhaustible vat of mead and trees with magic fruit. It is reached with
+marvellous speed in a boat of bronze. After a preliminary visit by his
+charioteer Laeg, Cúchulainn goes thither, vanquishes Labraid's foes, and
+remains a month with Fand. He returns to Ireland, and now we hear of the
+struggle for him between his wife Emer and Fand. But Manannan suddenly
+appears, reawakens Fand's love, and she departs with him. The god shakes
+his cloak between her and Cúchulainn to prevent their ever meeting
+again.[1237] In this story Labraid, Fand, and Liban, Fand's sister,
+though dwellers on an island Elysium, are called _síd_-folk. The two
+regions are partially confused, but not wholly, since Manannan is
+described as coming from his own land (Elysium) to woo Fand. Apparently
+Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword (who, though called "chief of the
+_síde_", is certainly a war-god) is at enmity with Manannan's hosts, and
+it is these with whom Cúchulainn has to fight.[1238]
+
+In an Ossianic tale several of the Fians were carried off to the Land of
+Promise. After many adventures, Fionn, Diarmaid, and others discover
+them, and threaten to destroy the land if they are not restored. Its
+king, Avarta, agrees to the restoration, and with fifteen of his men
+carries the Fians to Erin on one horse. Having reached there, he bids
+them look at a certain field, and while they are doing so, he and his
+men disappear.[1239]
+
+3. _Land under Waves._--Fiachna, of the men of the _síd_, appeared to
+the men of Connaught, and begged their help against Goll, who had
+abducted his wife. Loegaire and his men dive with Fiachna into Loch
+Naneane, and reach a wonderful land, with marvellous music and where the
+rain is ale. They and the _síd_-folk attack the fort of Mag Mell and
+defeat Goll. Each then obtains a woman of the _síde_, but at the end of
+a year they become homesick. They are warned not to descend from
+horseback in Erin. Arrived among their own people, they describe the
+marvels of Tír fa Tonn, and then return there, and are no more
+seen.[1240] Here, again, the _síd_ Elysium and Land under Waves are
+confused, and the divine tribes are at war, as in the story of
+Cúchulainn.
+
+In a section of the Ossianic tale just cited, Fionn and his men arrive
+on an island, where Diarmaid reaches a beautiful country at the bottom
+of a well. This is Tír fa Tonn, and Diarmaid fights its king who has
+usurped his nephew's inheritance, and thus recovers it for him.[1241]
+
+4. _Co-extensive with this world._--An early example of this type is
+found in the _Adventures of Cormac_. A divine visitant appeared to
+Cormac and gave him in exchange for his wife, son, and daughter, his
+branch of golden apples, which when shaken produced sweetest music,
+dispelling sorrow. After a year Cormac set out to seek his family, and
+as he journeyed encountered a mist in which he discovered a strange
+house. Its master and mistress--Manannan and his consort--offered him
+shelter. The god brought in a pig, every quarter of which was cooked in
+the telling of a true tale, the pig afterwards coming to life again.
+Cormac, in his tale, described how he had lost his family, whereupon
+Manannan made him sleep, and brought his wife and children in. Later he
+produced a cup which broke when a lie was told, but became whole again
+when a true word was spoken. The god said Cormac's wife had now a new
+husband, and the cup broke, but was restored when the goddess declared
+this to be a lie. Next morning all had disappeared, and Cormac and his
+family found themselves in his own palace, with cup and branch by their
+side.[1242] Similarly, in _The Champion's Ecstasy_, a mysterious
+horseman appears out of a mist to Conn and leads him to a palace, where
+he reveals himself as the god Lug, and where there is a woman called
+"the Sovereignty of Erin." Beside the palace is a golden tree.[1243] In
+the story of Bran, Mag Mell is said to be all around the hero, though he
+knows it not--an analogous conception to what is found in these tales,
+and another instance is that of the mysterious house entered by
+Conchobar and Dechtire.[1244] Mag Mell may thus have been regarded as a
+mysterious district of Erin. This magic mist enclosing a marvellous
+dwelling occurs in many other tales, and it was in a mist that the
+Tuatha Déa came to Ireland.
+
+A certain correspondence to these Irish beliefs is found in Brythonic
+story, but here the Elysium conception has been influenced by Christian
+ideas. Elysium is called _Annwfn_, meaning "an abyss," "the state of the
+dead," "hell," and it is also conceived of as _is elfydd_, "beneath the
+earth."[1245] But in the tales it bears no likeness to these meanings of
+the word, save in so far as it has been confused by their Christian
+redactors with hell. It is a region on the earth's surface or an over-or
+under-sea world, in which some of the characteristics of the Irish
+Elysium are found--a cauldron, a well of drink sweeter than wine, and
+animals greatly desired by mortals, while it is of great beauty and its
+people are not subject to death or disease. Hence the name _Annwfn_ has
+probably taken the place of some earlier pagan title of Elysium.
+
+In the tale of Pwyll, the earliest reference to _Annwfn_ occurs. It is
+ruled by Arawn, at war with Hafgan. Arawn obtains the help of Pwyll by
+exchanging kingdoms with him for a year, and Pwyll defeats Hafgan. It is
+a beautiful land, where merriment and feasting go on continuously, and
+its queen is of great loveliness. It has no subterranean character, and
+is conceived apparently as contiguous to Pwyll's kingdom.[1246] In other
+tales it is the land whence Gwydion and others obtain various
+animals.[1247] The later folk-conception of the demoniac dogs of Annwfn
+may be based on an old myth of dogs with which its king hunted. These
+are referred to in the story of Pwyll.[1248]
+
+_Annwfn_ is also the name of a land under waves or over sea, called also
+_Caer Sidi_, "the revolving castle," about which "are ocean's streams."
+It is "known to Manawyddan and Pryderi," just as the Irish Elysium was
+ruled by Manannan.[1249] Another "Caer of Defence" is beneath the
+waves.[1250] Perhaps the two ideas were interchangeable. The people of
+this land are free from death and disease, and in it is "an abundant
+well, sweeter than white wine the drink in it." There also is a cauldron
+belonging to the lord of Annwfn, which was stolen by Arthur and his men.
+Such a cauldron is the property of people belonging to a water world in
+the _Mabinogion_.[1251]
+
+The description of the isle of Avallon (later identified with
+Glastonbury), whither Arthur was carried, completes the likeness to the
+Irish Elysium. No tempest, excess of heat or cold, nor noxious animal
+afflicts it; it is blessed with eternal spring and with fruit and
+flowers growing without labour; it is the land of eternal youth,
+unvisited by death or disease. It has a _regia virgo_ lovelier than her
+lovely attendants; she cured Arthur of his wounds, hence she is the
+Morgen of other tales, and she and her maidens may be identified with
+the divine women of the Irish isle of women. Morgen is called a _dea
+phantastica_, and she may be compared with Liban, who cured Cúchulainn
+of his sickness.[1252]
+
+The identification of Avallon with Glastonbury is probably post-pagan,
+and the names applied to Glastonbury--Avallon, _Insula Pomonum_, _Insula
+vitrea_--may be primitive names of Elysium. William of Malmesbury
+derives _Insula Pomonum_ in its application to Glastonbury from a native
+name _Insula Avallonioe_, which he connects with the Brythonic _avalla_,
+"apples," because Glastenig found an apple tree there.[1253] The name
+may thus have been connected with marvellous apple trees, like those of
+the Irish Elysium. But he also suggests that it may be derived from the
+name of Avalloc, living there with his daughters. Avalloc is evidently
+the "Rex Avallon" (Avallach) to whose palace Arthur was carried and
+healed by the _regia virgo_.[1254] He may therefore have been a mythic
+lord of Elysium, and his daughters would correspond to the maidens of
+the isle. William also derives "Glastonbury" from the name of an
+eponymous founder Glastenig, or from its native name _Ynesuuitron_,
+"Glass Island." This name reappears in Chretien's _Eric_ in the form
+"l'isle de verre." Giraldus explains the name from the glassy waters
+around Glastonbury, but it may be an early name of Elysium.[1255] Glass
+must have appealed to the imagination of Celt, Teuton, and Slav, for we
+hear of Merlin's glass house, a glass fort discovered by Arthur, a glass
+tower attacked by the Milesians, Etain's glass _grianan_, and a boat of
+glass which conveyed Connla to Elysium. In Teutonic and Slavonic myth
+and _Märchen_, glass mountains, on which dwell mysterious personages,
+frequently occur.
+
+The origin of the Celtic Elysium belief may be found in universal myths
+of a golden age long ago in some distant Elysian region, where men had
+lived with the gods. Into that region brave mortals might still
+penetrate, though it was lost to mankind as a whole. In some mythologies
+this Elysium is the land whither men go after death. Possibly the Celtic
+myth of man's early intercourse with the gods in a lost region took two
+forms. In one it was a joyful subterranean region whither the Celt hoped
+to go after death. In the other it was not recoverable, nor was it the
+land of the dead, but favoured mortals might reach it in life. The
+Celtic Elysium belief, as known through the tales just cited, is always
+of this second kind. We surmise, however, that the land of the dead was
+a joyous underworld ruled over by a god of fertility and of the dead,
+and from that region men had originally come forth. The later
+association of gods with the _síd_ was a continuation of this belief,
+but now the _síd_ are certainly not a land of the dead, but Elysium pure
+and simple. There must therefore have been at an early period a tendency
+to distinguish between the happy region of the dead, and the distant
+Elysium, if the two were ever really connected. The subject is obscure,
+but it is not impossible that another origin of the Elysium idea may be
+found in the phenomenon of the setting sun: it suggested to the
+continental Celts that far off there was a divine land where the sun-god
+rested. When the Celts reached the coast this divine western land would
+necessarily be located in a far-off island, seen perhaps on the horizon.
+Hence it would also be regarded as connected with the sea-god, Manannan,
+or by whatsoever name he was called. The distant Elysium, whether on
+land or across the sea, was conceived in identical terms, and hence also
+whenever the hollow hills or _síd_ were regarded as an abode of the
+gods, they also were described just as Elysium was.
+
+The idea of a world under the waters is common to many mythologies, and,
+generally speaking, it originated in the animistic belief that every
+part of nature has its indwelling spirits. Hence the spirits or gods of
+the waters were thought of as dwelling below the waters. Tales of
+supernatural beings appearing out of the waters, the custom of throwing
+offerings therein, the belief that human beings were carried below the
+surface or could live in the region beneath the waves, are all connected
+with this animistic idea. Among the Celts this water-world assumed many
+aspects of Elysium, and it has names in common with it, e.g. it is
+called Mag Mell. Hence in many popular tales it is hardly differentiated
+from the island Elysium; oversea and under-waves are often synonymous.
+Hence, too, the belief that such water-worlds as I-Bresail, or Welsh
+fairy-lands, or sunken cities off the Breton coast, rise periodically to
+the surface, and would remain there permanently, like an island Elysium,
+if some mortal would fulfil certain conditions.[1256]
+
+The Celtic belief in Tír fa Tonn is closely connected with the current
+belief in submerged towns or lands, found in greatest detail on the
+Breton coast. Here there are many such legends, but most prominent are
+those which tell how the town of Is was submerged because of the
+wickedness of its people, or of Dahut, its king's daughter, who
+sometimes still seeks the love of mortals. It is occasionally seen below
+the waves or even on their surface.[1257] Elsewhere in Celtic regions
+similar legends are found, and the submersion is the result of a curse,
+of the breaking of a tabu, or of neglect to cover a sacred well.[1258]
+Probably the tradition of actual cataclysms or inroads of the sea, such
+as the Celts encountered on the coasts of Holland, may account for some
+of these legends, which then mingled with myths of the divine
+water-world.
+
+The idea that Elysium is co-extensive with this world and hidden in a
+mist is perhaps connected with the belief in the magical powers of the
+gods. As the Druids could raise a mist at will, so too might the gods,
+who then created a temporary Elysium in it. From such a mist, usually on
+a hill, supernatural beings often emerged to meet mortals, and in
+_Märchen_ fairyland is sometimes found within a mist.[1259] It was
+already believed that part of the gods' land was not far off; it was
+invisibly on or within the hills on whose slopes men saw the mist
+swirling mysteriously. Hence the mist may simply have concealed the
+_síd_ of the gods. But there may also have been a belief that this world
+was actually interpenetrated by the divine world, for this is believed
+of fairyland in Welsh and Irish folk-lore. Men may unwittingly interfere
+with it, or have it suddenly revealed to them, or be carried into it and
+made invisible.[1260]
+
+In most of the tales Elysium is a land without grief or death, where
+there is immortal youth and peace, and every kind of delight. But in
+some, while the sensuous delights are still the same, the inhabitants
+are at war, invite the aid of mortals to overcome their foes, and are
+even slain in fight. Still in both groups Elysium is a land of gods and
+supernatural folk whither mortals are invited by favour. It is never the
+world of the dead; its people are not mortals who have died and gone
+thither. The two conceptions of Elysium as a land of peace and
+deathlessness, and as a land where war and death may occur, may both be
+primitive. The latter may have been formed by reflecting back on the
+divine world the actions of the world of mortals, and it would also be
+on a parallel with the conception of the world of the dead where
+warriors perhaps still fought, since they were buried with their
+weapons. There were also myths of gods warring with each other. But men
+may also have felt that the gods were not as themselves, that their land
+must be one of peace and deathlessness. Hence the idea of the peaceful
+Elysium, which perhaps found most favour with the people. Mr. Nutt
+thought that the idea of a warlike Elysium may have resulted from
+Scandinavian influence acting on existing tales of a peaceful
+Elysium,[1261] but we know that old myths of divine wars already
+existed. Perhaps this conception arose among the Celts as a warlike
+people, appealing to their warrior instincts, while the peaceful Elysium
+may have been the product of the Celts as an agricultural folk, for we
+have seen that the Celt was now a fighter, now a farmer. In its peaceful
+aspect Elysium is "a familiar, cultivated land," where the fruits of the
+earth are produced without labour, and where there are no storms or
+excess of heat or cold--the fancies which would appeal to a toiling,
+agricultural people. There food is produced magically, yet naturally,
+and in agricultural ritual men sought to increase their food supply
+magically. In the tales this process is, so to speak, heightened.[1262]
+
+Some writers have maintained that Elysium is simply the land of the
+dead, although nothing in the existing tales justifies this
+interpretation. M. D'Arbois argues for this view, resting his theory
+mainly on a passage in the story of Connla, interpreted by him in a way
+which does not give its real meaning.[1263] The words are spoken by the
+goddess to Connla, and their sense is--"The Ever-Living Ones invite
+thee. Thou art a champion to Tethra's people. They see thee every day in
+the assemblies of thy fatherland, among thy familiar loved ones."[1264]
+M. D'Arbois assumes that Tethra, a Fomorian, is lord of Elysium, and
+that after his defeat by the Tuatha Déa, he, like Kronos, took refuge
+there, and now reigns as lord of the dead. By translating _ar-dot-chiat_
+("they see thee," 3rd plur., pres. ind.) as "on t'y verra," he maintains
+that Connla, by going to Elysium, will be seen among the gatherings of
+his dead kinsfolk. But the words, "Thou art a champion to Tethra's
+people," cannot be made to mean that Tethra is a god of the dead. It
+means simply that Connla is a mighty warrior, one of those whom Tethra,
+a war-god, would have approved. The phrase, "Tethra's mighty men," used
+elsewhere,[1265] is a conventional one for warriors. The rest of the
+goddess's words imply that the Immortals from afar, or perhaps "Tethra's
+mighty men," i.e. warriors in this world, see Connla in the assemblies
+of his fatherland in Erin, among his familiar friends. Dread death
+awaits _them_, she has just said, but the Immortals desire Connla to
+escape that by coming to Elysium. Her words do not imply that he will
+meet his dead ancestors there, nor is she in any sense a goddess of
+death. If the dead went to Elysium, there would be little need for
+inviting a living person to go there. Had Connla's dead ancestors or
+Tethra's people (warriors) been in Elysium, this would contradict the
+picture drawn by the goddess of the land whither she desires him to
+go--a land of women, not of men. Moreover, the rulers of Elysium are
+always members of the Tuatha Dé Danann or the _síd_-folk, never a
+Fomorian like Tethra.[1266]
+
+M. D'Arbois also assumes that "Spain" in Nennius' account of the Irish
+invasions and in Irish texts means the land of the dead, and that it was
+introduced in place of some such title as Mag Mór or Mag Mell by "the
+euhemerising process of the Irish Christians." But in other documents
+penned by Irish Christians these and other pagan titles of Elysium
+remain unchanged. Nor is there the slightest proof that the words used
+by Tuan MacCaraill about the invaders of Ireland, "They all died," were
+rendered in an original text, now lost according to M. D'Arbois, "They
+set sail for Mag Mór or Mag Mell," a formula in which Nennius saw
+indications of a return to Spain.[1267] Spain, in this hypothetical
+text, was the Land of the Dead or Elysium, whence the invaders came.
+This "lost original" exists in M. D'Arbois imagination, and there is not
+the slightest evidence for these alterations. Once, indeed, Tailtiu is
+called daughter of Magh Mór, King of Spain, but here a person, not a
+place, is spoken of.[1268] Sir John Rh[^y]s accepts the identification
+of Spain with Elysium as the land of the dead, and finds in every
+reference to Spain a reference to the Other-world, which he regards as a
+region ruled by "dark divinities." But neither the lords of Elysium nor
+the Celtic Dispater were dark or gloomy deities, and the land of the
+dead was certainly not a land of darkness any more than Elysium. The
+numerous references to Spain probably point to old traditions regarding
+a connection between Spain and Ireland in early times, both commercial
+and social, and it is not impossible that Goidelic invaders did reach
+Ireland from Spain.[1269] Early maps and geographers make Ireland and
+Spain contiguous; hence in an Irish tale Ireland is visible from Spain,
+and this geographical error would strengthen existing traditions.[1270]
+"Spain" was used vaguely, but it does not appear to have meant Elysium
+or the Land of the Dead. If it did, it is strange that the Tuatha Dé
+Danann are never brought into connection with it.
+
+One of the most marked characteristics of the Celtic Elysium is its
+deathlessness. It is "the land of the living" or of "the Ever-Living
+Ones," and of eternal youth. Most primitive races believe that death is
+an accident befalling men who are naturally immortal; hence freedom from
+such an accident naturally characterises the people of the divine land.
+But, as in other mythologies, that immortality is more or less dependent
+on the eating or drinking of some food or drink of immortality. Manannan
+had immortal swine, which, killed one day, came alive next day, and with
+their flesh he made the Tuatha Dé Danann immortal. Immortality was also
+conferred by the drinking of Goibniu's ale, which, either by itself or
+with the flesh of swine, formed his immortal feast. The food of Elysium
+was inexhaustible, and whoever ate it found it to possess that taste
+which he preferred. The fruit of certain trees in Elysium was also
+believed to confer immortality and other qualities. Laeg saw one hundred
+and fifty trees growing in Mag Mell; their nuts fed three hundred
+people. The apple given by the goddess to Connla was inexhaustible, and
+he was still eating it with her when Teigue, son of Cian, visited
+Elysium. "When once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could
+affect them."[1271] Apples, crimson nuts, and rowan berries are
+specifically said to be the food of the gods in the tale of _Diarmaid
+and Grainne_. Through carelessness one of the berries was dropped on
+earth, and from it grew a tree, the berries of which had the effect of
+wine or mead, and three of them eaten by a man of a hundred years made
+him youthful. It was guarded by a giant.[1272] A similar tree growing on
+earth--a rowan guarded by a dragon, is found in the tale of Fraoch, who
+was bidden to bring a branch of it to Ailill. Its berries had the virtue
+of nine meals; they healed the wounded, and added a year to a man's
+life.[1273] At the wells which were the source of Irish rivers were
+supposed to grow hazel-trees with crimson nuts, which fell into the
+water and were eaten by salmon.[1274] If these were caught and eaten,
+the eater obtained wisdom and knowledge. These wells were in Erin, but
+in some instances the well with its hazels and salmon is in the
+Other-world,[1275] and it is obvious that the crimson nuts are the same
+as the food of the gods in _Diarmaid and Grainne_.
+
+Why should immortality be dependent on the eating of certain foods? Most
+of man's irrational ideas have some reason in them, and probably man's
+knowledge that without food life would come to an end, joined to his
+idea of deathlessness, led him to believe that there was a certain food
+which produced immortality just as ordinary food supported life. On it
+gods and deathless beings were fed. Similarly, as water cleansed and
+invigorated, it was thought that some special kind of water had these
+powers in a marvellous degree. Hence arose the tales of the Fountain of
+Youth and the belief in healing wells. From the knowledge of the
+nourishing power of food, sprang the idea that some food conferred the
+qualities inherent in it, e.g. the flesh of divine animals eaten
+sacramentally, and that gods obtained their immortality from eating or
+drinking. This idea is widespread. The Babylonian gods had food and
+water of Life; Egyptian myth spoke of the bread and beer of eternity
+which nourished the gods; the Hindus and Iranians knew of the divine
+_soma_ or _haoma_; and in Scandinavian myth the gods renewed their youth
+by tasting Iduna's golden apples.
+
+In Celtic Elysium tales, the fruit of a tree is most usually the food of
+immortality. The fruit never diminishes and always satisfies, and it is
+the food of the gods. When eaten by mortals it confers immortality upon
+them; in other words, it makes them of like nature to the gods, and this
+is doubtless derived from the widespread idea that the eating of food
+given by a stranger makes a man of one kin with him. Hence to eat the
+food of gods, fairies, or of the dead, binds the mortal to them and he
+cannot leave their land. This might be illustrated from a wide range of
+myth and folk-belief. When Connla ate the apple he at once desired to go
+to Elysium, and he could not leave it once he was there; he had become
+akin to its people. In the stories of Bran and Oisin, they are not said
+to have eaten such fruit, but the primitive form of the tales may have
+contained this incident, and this would explain why they could not set
+foot on earth unscathed, and why Bran and his followers, or, in the tale
+of Fiachna, Loegaire and his men who had drunk the ale of Elysium,
+returned thither. In other tales, it is true, those who eat food in
+Elysium can return to earth--Cormac and Cúchulainn; but had we the
+primitive form of these tales we should probably find that they had
+refrained from eating. The incident of the fruit given by an immortal to
+a mortal may have borrowed something from the wide folk-custom of the
+presentation of an apple as a gage of love or as a part of the marriage
+rite.[1276] Its acceptance denotes willingness to enter upon betrothal
+or marriage. But as in the Roman rite of _confarreatio_ with its savage
+parallels, the underlying idea is probably that which has just been
+considered, namely, that the giving and acceptance of food produces the
+bond of kinship.
+
+As various nuts and fruits were prized in Ireland as food, and were
+perhaps used in some cases to produce an intoxicant,[1277] it is evident
+that the trees of Elysium were, primarily, a magnified form of earthly
+trees. But all such trees were doubtless objects of a cult before their
+produce was generally eaten; they were first sacred or totem-trees, and
+their food eaten only occasionally and sacramentally. If so, this would
+explain why they grew in Elysium and their fruit was the food of the
+gods. For whatever man eats or drinks is generally supposed to have been
+first eaten and drunk by the gods, like the _soma_. But, growing in
+Elysium, these trees, like the trees of most myths of Elysium, are far
+more marvellous than any known on earth. They have branches of silver
+and golden apples; they have magical supplies of fruit, they produce
+wonderful music which sometimes causes sleep or oblivion; and birds
+perch in their branches and warble melody "such that the sick would
+sleep to it." It should be noted also that, as Miss Hull points out, in
+some tales the branch of a divine tree becomes a talisman leading the
+mortal to Elysium; in this resembling the golden bough plucked by Ćneas
+before visiting the underworld.[1278] This, however, is not the
+fundamental characteristic of the tree, in Irish story. Possibly, as Mr.
+A.B. Cook maintains, the branch giving entrance to Elysium is derived
+from the branch borne by early Celtic kings of the wood, while the tree
+is an imaginative form of those which incarnated a vegetation
+spirit.[1279] Be this as it may, it is rather the fruit eaten by the
+mortal which binds him to the Immortal Land.
+
+The inhabitants of Elysium are not only immortal, but also invisible at
+will. They make themselves visible to one person only out of many
+present with him. Connla alone sees the goddess, invisible to his father
+and the Druid. Mananuan is visible to Bran, but there are many near the
+hero whom he does not see; and when the same god comes to Fand, he is
+invisible to Cúchulainn and those with him. So Mider says to Etain, "We
+behold, and are not beheld."[1280] Occasionally, too, the people of
+Elysium have the power of shape-shifting--Fand and Liban appear to
+Cúchulainn as birds.
+
+The hazel of knowledge connects wisdom with the gods' world, and in
+Celtic belief generally civilisation and culture were supposed to have
+come from the gods. The things of their land were coveted by men, and
+often stolen thence by them. In Welsh and Irish tales, often with
+reference to the Other-world, a magical cauldron has a prominent place.
+Dagda possessed such a cauldron and it was inexhaustible, and a vat of
+inexhaustible mead is described in the story of _Cúchulain's Sickness_.
+Whatever was put into such cauldrons satisfied all, no matter how
+numerous they might be.[1281] Cúchulainn obtained one from the daughter
+of the king of Scath, and also carried off the king's three cows.[1282]
+In an analogous story, he stole from Cúroi, by the connivance of his
+wife Bláthnat, her father Mider's cauldron, three cows, and the woman
+herself. But in another version Cúchulainn and Cúroi go to Mider's
+stronghold in the Isle of Falga (Elysium), and steal cauldron, cows, and
+Bláthnat. These were taken from Cúchulainn by Cúroi; hence his revenge
+as in the previous tale.[1283] Thus the theft was from Elysium. In the
+Welsh poem "The Spoils of Annwfn," Arthur stole a cauldron from Annwfn.
+Its rim was encrusted with pearls, voices issued from it, it was kept
+boiling by the breath of nine maidens, and it would not boil a coward's
+food.[1284]
+
+As has been seen from the story of Gwion, he was set to watch a cauldron
+which must boil until it yielded "three drops of the grace of
+inspiration." It belonged to Tegid Voel and Cerridwen, divine rulers of
+a Land under the Waters.[1285] In the _Mabinogi_ of Branwen, her brother
+Bran received a cauldron from two beings, a man and a huge woman, who
+came from a lake. This cauldron was given by him to the king of Erin,
+and it had the property of restoring to life the slain who were placed
+in it.[1286]
+
+The three properties of the cauldron--inexhaustibility, inspiration, and
+regeneration--may be summed up in one word, fertility; and it is
+significant that the god with whom such a cauldron was associated,
+Dagda, was a god of fertility. But we have just seen it associated,
+directly or indirectly, with goddesses--Cerridwen, Branwen, the woman
+from the lake--and perhaps this may point to an earlier cult of
+goddesses of fertility, later transferred to gods. In this light the
+cauldron's power of restoring to life is significant, since in early
+belief life is associated with what is feminine. Woman as the fruitful
+mother suggested that the Earth, which produced and nourished, was also
+female. Hence arose the cult of the Earth-mother who was often also a
+goddess of love as well as of fertility. Cerridwen, in all probability,
+was a goddess of fertility, and Branwen a goddess of love.[1287] The
+cult of fertility was usually associated with orgiastic and
+indiscriminate love-making, and it is not impossible that the cauldron,
+like the Hindu _yoni_, was a symbol of fertility.[1288] Again, the
+slaughter and cooking of animals was usually regarded as a sacred act in
+primitive life. The animals were cooked in enormous cauldrons, which
+were found as an invariable part of the furniture of every Celtic
+house.[1289] The quantities of meat which they contained may have
+suggested inexhaustibility to people to whom the cauldron was already a
+symbol of fertility. Thus the symbolic cauldron of a fertility cult was
+merged with the cauldron used in the religious slaughter and cooking of
+animal food. The cauldron was also used in ritual. The Cimri slaughtered
+human victims over a cauldron and filled it with their blood; victims
+sacrificed to Teutates were suffocated in a vat (_semicupium_); and in
+Ireland "a cauldron of truth" was used in the ordeal of boiling
+water.[1290] Like the food of men which was regarded as the food of the
+gods, the cauldron of this world became the marvellous cauldron of the
+Other-world, and as it then became necessary to explain the origin of
+such cauldrons on earth, myths arose, telling how they had been stolen
+from the divine land by adventurous heroes, Cúchulainn, Arthur, etc. In
+other instances, the cauldron is replaced by a magic vessel or cup
+stolen from supernatural beings by heroes of the Fionn saga or of
+_Märchen_.[1291] Here, too, it may be noted that the Graal of Arthurian
+romance has affinities with the Celtic cauldron. In the _Conte du Graal_
+of pseudo-Chrétien, a cup comes in of itself and serves all present with
+food. This is a simple conception of the Graal, but in other poems its
+magical and sacrosanct character is heightened. It supplies the food
+which the eater prefers, it gives immortal youth and immunity from
+wounds. In these respects it presents an unmistakable likeness to the
+cauldron of Celtic myth. But, again, it was the vessel in which Christ
+had instituted the Blessed Sacrament; it contained His Blood; and it had
+been given by our Lord to Joseph of Arimathea. Thus in the Graal there
+was a fusion of the magic cauldron of Celtic paganism and the Sacred
+Chalice of Christianity, with the product made mystic and glorious in a
+most wonderful manner. The story of the Graal became immensely popular,
+and, deepening in ethical, mystical, and romantic import as time went
+on, was taken up by one poet after another, who "used it as a type of
+the loftiest goal of man's effort."[1292]
+
+In other ways myth told how the gifts of civilisation came from the
+gods' world. When man came to domesticate animals, it was believed in
+course of time that the knowledge of domestication or, more usually, the
+animals themselves had come from the gods, only, in this case, the
+animals were of a magical, supernatural kind. Such a belief underlies
+the stories in which Cúchulainn steals cows from their divine owners. In
+other instances, heroes who obtain a wife from the _síd_-folk, obtain
+also cattle from the _síd_.[1293] As has been seen the swine given to
+Pryderi by Arawn, king of Annwfn, and hitherto unknown to man, are
+stolen from him by Gwydion, Pryderi being son of Pwyll, a temporary king
+of Annwfn, and in all probability both were lords of Elysium. The theft,
+in the original form of the myth, must thus have been from Elysium,
+though we have a hint in "The Spoils of Annwfn" that Gwydion (Gweir) was
+unsuccessful and was imprisoned in Annwfn, to which imprisonment the
+later blending of Annwfn with hell gave a doleful aspect.[1294] In a
+late Welsh MS., a white roebuck and a puppy (or, in the _Triads_, a
+bitch, a roebuck, and a lapwing) were stolen by Amćthon from Annwfn, and
+the story presents archaic features.[1295] In some of these tales the
+animals are transferred to earth by a divine or semi-divine being, in
+whom we may see an early Celtic culture-hero. The tales are attenuated
+forms of older myths which showed how all domestic animals were at first
+the property of the gods, and an echo of these is still heard in
+_Märchen_ describing the theft of cattle from fairyland. In the most
+primitive form of the tales the theft was doubtless from the underworld
+of gods of fertility, the place whither the dead went. But with the rise
+of myths telling of a distant Elysium, it was inevitable that some tales
+should connect the animals and the theft with that far-off land. So far
+as the Irish and Welsh tales are concerned, the thefts seem mainly to be
+from Elysium.[1296]
+
+Love-making has a large place in the Elysium tales. Goddesses seek the
+love of mortals, and the mortal desires to visit Elysium because of
+their enticements. But the love-making of Elysium is "without sin,
+without crime," and this phrase may perhaps suggest the existence of
+ritual sex-unions at stated times for magical influence upon the
+fertility of the earth, these unions not being regarded as immoral, even
+when they trespassed on customary tribal law. In some of the stories
+Elysium is composed of many islands, one of which is the "island of
+women."[1297] These women and their queen give their favours to Bran and
+his men or to Maelduin and his company. Similar "islands of women" occur
+in _Märchen_, still current among Celtic peoples, and actual islands
+were or still are called by that name--Eigg and Groagez off the Breton
+coast.[1298] Similar islands of women are known to Chinese, Japanese,
+and Ainu folk-lore, to Greek mythology (Circe's and Calypso's islands),
+and to ancient Egyptian conceptions of the future life.[1299] They were
+also known elsewhere,[1300] and we may therefore assume that in
+describing such an island as part of Elysium, the Celts were using
+something common to universal folk-belief. But it may also owe something
+to actual custom, to the memory of a time when women performed their
+rites in seclusion, a seclusion perhaps recalled in the references to
+the mysterious nature of the island, its inaccessibility, and its
+disappearance once the mortal leaves it. To these rites men may have
+been admitted by favour, but perhaps to their detriment, because of
+their temporary partner's extreme erotic madness. This is the case in
+the Chinese tales of the island of women, and this, rather than
+home-sickness, may explain the desire of Bran, Oisin, etc., to leave
+Elysium. Celtic women performed orgiastic rites on islands, as has been
+seen.[1301] All this may have originated the belief in an island of
+beautiful divine women as part of Elysium, while it also heightened its
+sensuous aspect.
+
+Borrowed from the delight which the Celt took in music is the recurring
+reference to the marvellous music which swelled in Elysium. There, as
+the goddess says to Bran, "there is nothing rough or harsh, but sweet
+music striking on the ear." It sounded from birds on every tree, from
+the branches of trees, from marvellous stones, and from the harps of
+divine musicians. And this is recalled in the ravishing music which the
+belated traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots--"what pipes
+and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!" The romantic beauty of Elysium is
+described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other sagas
+or _Märchen_, and it is insisted on by those who come to lure mortals
+there. The beauty of its landscapes--hills, white cliffs, valleys, sea
+and shore, lakes and rivers,--of its trees, its inhabitants, and its
+birds,--the charm of its summer haze, is obviously the product of the
+imagination of a people keenly alive to natural beauty. The opening
+lines sung by the goddess to Bran strike a note which sounds through all
+Celtic literature:
+
+  "There is a distant isle, around which sea-horses glisten,
+
+   ...
+
+   A beauty of a wondrous land, whose aspects are lovely,
+   Whose view is a fair country, incomparable in its haze.
+   It is a day of lasting weather, that showers silver on the land;
+   A pure white cliff on the range of the sea,
+   Which from the sun receives its heat."
+
+So Oisin describes it: "I saw a country all green and full of flowers,
+with beautiful smooth plains, blue hills, and lakes and waterfalls." All
+this and more than this is the reflection of nature as it is found in
+Celtic regions, and as it was seen by the eye of Celtic dreamers, and
+interpreted to a poetic race by them.
+
+In Irish accounts of the _síd_, Dagda has the supremacy, wrested later
+from him by Oengus, but generally each owner of a _síd_ is its lord. In
+Welsh tradition Arawn is lord of Annwfn, but his claims are contested by
+a rival, and other lords of Elysium are known. Manannan, a god of the
+sea, appears to be lord of the Irish island Elysium which is called "the
+land of Manannan," perhaps because it was easy to associate an oversea
+world "around which sea-horses glisten" with a god whose mythic steeds
+were the waves. But as it lay towards the sunset, and as some of its
+aspects may have been suggested by the glories of the setting sun, the
+sun-god Lug was also associated with it, though he hardly takes the
+place of Manannan.
+
+Most of the aspects of Elysium appear unchanged in later folk-belief,
+but it has now become fairyland--a place within hills, mounds, or _síd_,
+of marvellous beauty, with magic properties, and where time lapses as in
+a dream. A wonderful oversea land is also found in _Märchen_ and
+tradition, and Tír na n-Og is still a living reality to the Celt. There
+is the fountain of youth, healing balsams, life-giving fruits, beautiful
+women or fairy folk. It is the true land of heart's desire. In the
+eleventh century MSS. from which our knowledge of Elysium is mainly
+drawn, but which imply a remote antiquity for the materials and ideas of
+the tales, the _síd_-world is still the world of divine beings, though
+these are beginning to assume the traits of fairies. Probably among the
+people themselves the change had already begun to be made, and the land
+of the gods was simply fairyland. In Wales the same change had taken
+place, as is seen by Giraldus' account of Elidurus enticed to a
+subterranean fairyland by two small people.[1302]
+
+Some of the Elysium tales have been influenced by Christian conceptions,
+and in a certain group, the _Imrama_ or "Voyages," Elysium finally
+becomes the Christian paradise or heaven. But the Elysium conception
+also reacted on Christian ideas of paradise. In the _Voyage of
+Maelduin_, which bears some resemblance to the story of Bran, the
+Christian influence is still indefinite, but it is more marked in the
+_Voyage of Snedgus and MacRiagla_. One island has become a kind of
+intermediate state, where dwell Enoch and Elijah, and many others
+waiting for the day of judgment. Another island resembles the Christian
+heaven. But in the _Voyage of Brandan_ the pagan elements have
+practically disappeared; there is an island of hell and an island of
+paradise.[1303] The island conception is the last relic of paganism, but
+now the voyage is undertaken for the purpose of revenge or penance or
+pilgrimage. Another series of tales of visionary journeys to hell or
+heaven are purely Christian, yet the joys of heaven have a sensuous
+aspect which recalls those of the pagan Elysium. In one of these, _The
+Tidings of Doomsday_,[1304] there are two hells, and besides heaven
+there is a place for the _boni non valde_, resembling the island of
+Enoch and Elijah in the _Voyage of Snedgus_. The connection of Elysium
+with the Christian paradise is seen in the title _Tir Tairngiri_, "The
+Land of Promise," which is applied to the heavenly kingdom or the land
+flowing with milk and honey in early glosses, e.g. on Heb. iv. 4, vi.
+15, where Canaan and the _regnum c[oe]lorum_ are called _Tír Tairngiri_,
+and in a gloss to 1 Cor. x. 4, where the heavenly land is called Tír
+Tairngiri Innambéo, "The Land of Promise of the Living Ones," thus
+likening it to the "Land of the Living" in the story of Connla.
+
+Sensuous as many of the aspects of Elysium are, they have yet a
+spiritual aspect which must not be overlooked. The emphasis placed on
+its beauty, its music, its rest and peace, its oblivion, is spiritual
+rather than sensual, while the dwelling of favoured mortals there with
+divine beings is suggestive of that union with the divine which is the
+essence of all religion. Though men are lured to seek it, they do not
+leave it, or they go back to it after a brief absence, and Laeg says
+that he would prefer Elysium to the kingship of all Ireland, and his
+words are echoed by others. And the lure of the goddess often emphasises
+the freedom from turmoil, grief, and the rude alarms of earthly life.
+This "sweet and blessed country" is described with all the passion of a
+poetical race who dreamed of perfect happiness, and saw in the joy of
+nature's beauty, the love of women, and the thought of unbroken peace
+and harmony, no small part of man's truest life. Favoured mortals had
+reached Elysium, and the hope that he, too, might be so favoured buoyed
+up the Celt as he dreamed over this state, which was so much more
+blissful even than the future state of the dead. Many races have
+imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with
+magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood
+on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed
+before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and
+on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a
+glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the
+setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and
+instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and
+disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes
+and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time,
+eternal happiness and eternal love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1231] Nutt-Meyer, i. 213.
+
+[1232] Joyce, _OCR_ 431.
+
+[1233] D'Arbois, ii. 311; _IT_ i. 113 f.; O'Curry, _MC_ iii. 190.
+
+[1234] Nutt-Meyer, i. 1 f., text and translation.
+
+[1235] _LU_ 120_a_; Windisch, _Irische Gramm._ 120 f.; D'Arbois, v. 384
+f.; _Gaelic Journal_, ii. 307.
+
+[1236] _TOS_ iv. 234. See also Joyce, _OCR_ 385; Kennedy, 240.
+
+[1237] _LU_ 43 f.; _IT_ i. 205 f.; O'Curry, _Atlantis_, ii., iii.;
+D'Arbois, v. 170; Leahy, i. 60 f.
+
+[1238] "From Manannan came foes."
+
+[1239] Joyce, _OCR_ 223 f.
+
+[1240] O'Grady, ii. 290. In this story the sea is identified with
+Fiachna's wife.
+
+[1241] Joyce, _OCR_ 253 f.
+
+[1242] _IT_ iii. 211 f.; D'Arbois, ii. 185.
+
+[1243] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 388.
+
+[1244] A similar idea occurs in many Fian tales.
+
+[1245] Evans, _Welsh Dict. s.v._ "Annwfn"; Anwyl, 60; Gaidoz, _ZCP_ i.
+29 f.
+
+[1246] Loth, i. 27 f.; see p. 111, _supra_.
+
+[1247] Pp. 106, 112, _supra_.
+
+[1248] Guest, iii. 75; Loth, i. 29 f.
+
+[1249] Skene, i. 264, 276. Cf. the _Ille tournoiont_ of the Graal
+romances and the revolving houses of _Märchen_. A revolving rampart
+occurs in "Maelduin" (_RC_ x. 81).
+
+[1250] Skene, i. 285.
+
+[1251] Pp. 103, 116, _supra_.
+
+[1252] Chretien, _Eric_, 1933 f.; Geoffrey, _Vita Merlini_, 41; San
+Marte, _Geoffrey_, 425. Another Irish Liban is called Muirgen, which is
+the same as Morgen. See Girald. Cambr. _Spec. Eccl._ Rolls Series, iv.
+48.
+
+[1253] William of Malmesbury, _de Ant. Glaston. Eccl._
+
+[1254] San Marte, 425.
+
+[1255] _Op. cit._ iv. 49.
+
+[1256] Joyce, _OCR_ 434; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 170; Hardiman, _Irish Minst._
+i. 367; Sébillot, ii. 56 f.; Girald. Cambr. ii. 12. The underworld is
+sometimes reached through a well (cf. p. 282, _supra_; _TI_ iii. 209).
+
+[1257] _Le Braz_{2}, i. p. xxxix, ii. 37 f.; Albert le Grand, _Vies de
+Saints de Bretagne_, 63.
+
+[1258] A whole class of such Irish legends is called _Tomhadna_,
+"Inundations." A typical instance is that of the town below Lough Neagh,
+already referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis, _Top. Hib._ ii. 9; cf. a
+Welsh instance in _Itin. Cambr._ i. 2. See Rh[^y]s, _CFL, passim_;
+Kennedy, 282; _Rev. des Trad. Pop._ ix. 79.
+
+[1259] _Scott. Celt. Rev._ i. 70; Campbell, _WHT_ Nos. 38, 52; Loth, i.
+38.
+
+[1260] Curtin, _Tales_, 158; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 230.
+
+[1261] Nutt-Meyer, i. 159.
+
+[1262] In the Vedas, Elysium has also a strong agricultural aspect,
+probably for the same reasons.
+
+[1263] D'Arbois, ii. 119, 192, 385, vi. 197, 219; _RC_ xxvi. 173; _Les
+Druides_, 121.
+
+[1264] For the text see Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 120: "Totchurethar bii
+bithbi at gérait do dáinib Tethrach. ar-dot-chiat each dia i n-dálaib
+tathardai eter dugnathu inmaini." Dr. Stokes and Sir John Rh[^y]s have
+both privately confirmed the interpretation given above.
+
+[1265] "Dialogue of the Sages," _RC_ xxvi. 33 f.
+
+[1266] Tethra was husband of the war-goddess Badb, and in one text his
+name is glossed _badb_ (Cormac, _s.v._ "Tethra"). The name is also
+glossed _muir_, "sea," by O'Cleary, and the sea is called "the plain of
+Tethra" (_Arch. Rev._ i. 152). These obscure notices do not necessarily
+denote that he was ruler of an oversea Elysium.
+
+[1267] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ § 13; D'Arbois, ii. 86, 134, 231.
+
+[1268] _LL_ 8_b_; Keating, 126.
+
+[1269] Both art _motifs_ and early burial customs in the two countries
+are similar. See Reinach, _RC_ xxi. 88; _L'Anthropologie_, 1889, 397;
+Siret, _Les Premiere Ages du Metal dans le Sud. Est. de l'Espagne._
+
+[1270] Orosius, i. 2. 71; _LL_ 11_b_.
+
+[1271] D'Arbois, v. 384; O'Grady, ii. 385.
+
+[1272] _TOS_ iii. 119; Joyce, _OCR_ 314. For a folk-tale version see
+_Folk-lore_, vii. 321.
+
+[1273] Leahy, i. 36; Campbell, _LF_ 29; _CM_ xiii. 285; _Dean of
+Lismore's Book_, 54.
+
+[1274] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 143; Cormac, 35.
+
+[1275] See p. 187, _supra_; _IT_ iii. 213.
+
+[1276] See Gaidoz, "La Requisition de l'Amour et la Symbolisme de la
+Pomme," _Ann. de l'École Pratique des Hautes Études_, 1902; Fraser,
+_Pausanias_, iii. 67.
+
+[1277] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 359.
+
+[1278] "The Silver Bough in Irish Legend," _Folk-Lore_, xii. 431.
+
+[1279] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 158.
+
+[1280] _IT_ i. 133.
+
+[1281] O'Donovan, _Battle of Mag Rath_, 50; D'Arbois, v. 67; _IT_ i. 96.
+Dagda's cauldron came from Murias, probably an oversea world.
+
+[1282] Miss Hull, 244. Scath is here the Other-world, conceived,
+however, as a dismal abode.
+
+[1283] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 97, iii. 79; Keating, 284 f.; _RC_ xv. 449.
+
+[1284] Skene, i. 264; cf. _RC_ xxii. 14.
+
+[1285] P. 116, _supra_.
+
+[1286] Guest, iii. 321 f.
+
+[1287] See pp. 103, 117, _supra_.
+
+[1288] For the use of a vessel in ritual as a symbol of deity, see
+Crooke, _Folk-Lore_, viii. 351 f.
+
+[1289] Diod. Sic. v. 28; Athen. iv. 34; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 124; _Antient
+Laws of Ireland_, iv. 327. The cauldrons of Irish houses are said in the
+texts to be inexhaustible (cf. _RC_ xxiii. 397).
+
+[1290] Strabo, vii. 2. 1; Lucan, Usener's ed., p. 32; _IT_ iii. 210;
+_Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 195 f.
+
+[1291] Curtin, _HTI_ 249, 262.
+
+[1292] See Villemarqué, _Contes Pop. des anciens Bretons_, Paris, 1842;
+Rh[^y]s, _AL_; and especially Nutt, _Legend of the Holy Grail_, 1888.
+
+[1293] "Adventures of Nera," _RC_ x. 226; _RC_ xvi. 62, 64.
+
+[1294] P. 106, _supra_.
+
+[1295] P. 107, _supra_.
+
+[1296] For parallel myths see _Rig-Veda_, i. 53. 2; Campbell, _Travels
+in South Africa_, i. 306; Johnston, _Uganda Protectorate_, ii. 704; Ling
+Roth, _Natives of Sarawak_, i. 307; and cf. the myth of Prometheus.
+
+[1297] This is found in the stories of Bran, Maelduin, Connla, in Fian
+tales (O'Grady, ii. 228, 238), in the "Children of Tuirenn," and in
+Gaelic _Märchen_.
+
+[1298] Martin, 277; Sébillot, ii. 76.
+
+[1299] Burton, _Thousand Nights and a Night_, x. 239; Chamberlain, _Aino
+Folk-Tales_, 38; _L'Anthropologie_, v. 507; Maspero, _Hist. anc. des
+peuples de l'Orient_, i. 183. The lust of the women of these islands is
+fatal to their lovers.
+
+[1300] An island near New Guinea is called "the land of women." On it
+men are allowed to land temporarily, but only the female offspring of
+the women are allowed to survive (_L' Anthrop._ v. 507). The Indians of
+Florida had a tradition of an island in a lake inhabited by the fairest
+women (Chateaubriand, _Autob._ 1824, ii. 24), and Fijian mythology knows
+of an Elysian island of goddesses, near the land of the gods, to which a
+few favoured mortals are admitted (Williams, _Fiji_, i. 114).
+
+[1301] P. 274, _supra_. Islands may have been regarded as sacred because
+of such cults, as the folk-lore reported by Plutarch suggests (p. 343,
+_supra_). Celtic saints retained the veneration for islands, and loved
+to dwell on them, and the idea survives in folk-belief. Cf. the
+veneration of Lewismen for the Flannan islands.
+
+[1302] Gir. Camb. _Itin. Camb._ i. 8.
+
+[1303] Translations of some of these _Voyages_ by Stokes are given in
+_RC_, vols. ix. x. and xiv. See also Zimmer, "Brendan's Meerfahrt,"
+_Zeits. für Deut. Alt._ xxxiii.; cf. Nutt-Meyer, ch. 4, 8.
+
+[1304] _RC_ iv. 243.
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Abnoba, 43.
+
+Adamnan, 72.
+
+Aed Abrat, 65.
+
+Aed Slane, 351.
+
+Aeracura, 37, 44.
+
+Afanc, 190.
+
+Agricultural rites, 3, 4, 57, 80, 107, 140, 227, 237. See Festivals.
+
+Aife, 129.
+
+Aillén, 70.
+
+Aine, 70 f.
+
+Aitherne, 84.
+
+Albiorix, 28.
+
+All Saints' Day, 170.
+
+All Souls' Day, 170.
+
+Allat, 87, 100.
+
+Alpine race, 8, 12.
+
+Altars, 282 f.
+
+Amćthon, 107, 384.
+
+Amairgen, 55, 172.
+
+Ambicatus, 19, 222.
+
+Amours with mortals, divine, 128, 159, 348, 350, 355.
+
+Amulets, 30, 327 f., 323.
+
+Ancestor worship, 165, 200.
+
+Andarta, 41.
+
+Andrasta, 41, 125.
+
+Anextiomarus, 125.
+
+Animal gods, anthropomorphic, 34, 92, 106, 139 f., 158, 210, 212, 226.
+
+Animal worship, 3, 92, 140, 186, 208 f., 260.
+
+Animals, burial of, 186, 211, 221.
+
+Animals, descent from, 213, 216 f.
+
+Animals, domestic, from the gods' land, 37, 384.
+
+Animals, dressing as, 217, 260.
+
+Animals, sacramental eating of, 221 f.
+
+Animals, slaughter of, 382.
+
+Animals, tabooed, 219.
+
+Animism, 173, 185.
+
+Ankou, 345.
+
+Annwfn, 106, 111, 115, 117, 367 f., 381.
+
+Anu, 67 f., 72, 73, 223.
+
+Anwyl, Prof., 41 note, 96.
+
+Apollo, 25, 27, 125, 180, 183, 231.
+
+Arawn, 111, 368, 384, 387.
+
+Archćology, 2.
+
+Arduinna, 43.
+
+Arianrhod, 104, 105, 106, 109 f.
+
+Artemis, 42, 110, 177, 242.
+
+Artaios, 24, 121.
+
+Arthur, 88, 97, 109, 117, 119 f., 211, 242, 344, 369, 381.
+
+Arthurian cycle, 119, 383.
+
+Artor, 121.
+
+Arvalus, 125.
+
+Astrology, 248.
+
+Augustus, 23, 90.
+
+Auto-suggestion, 254.
+
+Avagddu, 116.
+
+Avallon, 120, 369.
+
+
+Bacchus, 274.
+
+Badb, 58, 71, 72, 136, 137, 232.
+
+Badbcatha, 41, 71.
+
+Balor, 31, 35 note, 54, 57, 89, 90.
+
+Banba, 50, 73, 74.
+
+_Banfeinnidi_, 72.
+
+_Bangaisgedaig_, 72.
+
+Baptism, 196 note, 308 f.
+
+Bards, 117, 299, 325.
+
+Barintus, 88.
+
+Barrex, 125.
+
+Barri, S., 88.
+
+Bear, cult of, 212.
+
+Beddoe, Dr., 12.
+
+Belatucadros, 28, 125.
+
+Belenos, 26, 102, 113, 124, 231, 264, 298.
+
+Belgć, 9 f.
+
+Beli, 60, 98, 103, 112 f., 124.
+
+_Belinuntia_, 26, 322.
+
+Belinus, 26, 102, 113, 124.
+
+Belisama, 41, 68-69, 125.
+
+Bellovesus, 19.
+
+Beltane, 92, 194, 239, 259, 264.
+
+Bericynthia, 44, 275.
+
+Bertrand, M., 305.
+
+_Bile_, 162, 201.
+
+Bile, 54, 60, 103.
+
+Bird gods, 108, 205, 247.
+
+Birth, 196, 345.
+
+Black Annis' Bower, 67.
+
+Blathnat, 84, 109, 381.
+
+Blodeuwedd, 104, 105 f., 108.
+
+Blood, 240, 244.
+
+Blood, Brotherhood, 131, 240.
+
+Boand, 81, 191.
+
+Boar, cult of, 42.
+
+Bodb, 83.
+
+Bodb Dearg, 64, 78, 86.
+
+Bormana, 43.
+
+Borvo, 43, 183.
+
+Boudicca, 72, 125, 161, 219.
+
+Boughs, 265, 270.
+
+Boundary stones, 284.
+
+Braciaca, 28.
+
+Bran, 34, 98, 100 f., 107, 111, 117, 160, 242, 363, 379 f.
+
+Branwen, 98, 103 f., 381 f., 385.
+
+Braziers, god of, 76.
+
+Brennius, 102, 112 f.
+
+Brennus, 160.
+
+Bres, 53, 54, 58-59.
+
+Brian, 73 f.
+
+Bride, S., 69.
+
+Bridge, 346.
+
+Bridge of Life, 228.
+
+Brigantia, 68, 125.
+
+Brigindo, 68, 275.
+
+Brigit, 41, 58, 68 f., 90, 92.
+
+Brigit, St., 68 f., 88 note, 257.
+
+Broca, 9.
+
+Bronze Age, 148.
+
+Brother-sister unions, 106, 113.
+
+Brown Bull, 130.
+
+Brownie, 166, 189, 245.
+
+_Brug_. See _Síd_.
+
+Brythons, 13.
+
+Brythons, gods of, 85, 95 f., 124.
+
+Buanann, 68, 73, 223.
+
+Bull, cult of, 38, 140, 189, 208, 243.
+
+Burial rites, 309, 337 f.
+
+
+Caer Sidi, 112, 117, 368.
+
+Cćsar, 22, 29, 219, 223, 233, 283, 294, 334.
+
+Cakes, 266.
+
+Calatin, 131 f.
+
+Calendar, 175 f., 252.
+
+Camulos, 28, 125, 149.
+
+Candlemas, 69.
+
+Cannibalism, 239, 271.
+
+Caoilte, 61, 142, 152, 336.
+
+Caractacus, 103.
+
+Carman, 167.
+
+Carpenters, god of, 76.
+
+Cassiterides, 39.
+
+Cassivellaunus, 113.
+
+Castor and Pollux, 136.
+
+Caswallawn, 98, 102, 112-113.
+
+Cathbad, 127.
+
+Cathubodua, 41, 71.
+
+Caturix, 28.
+
+Cauldron, 84, 92, 112, 116, 120, 368, 381.
+
+Celtć, 8, 9, 15.
+
+Celtiberians, 176, 246.
+
+Celtic and Teutonic religion, 11.
+
+Celtic empire, 18 f.
+
+Celtic origins, 8 f.
+
+Celtic people, types of, 8.
+
+Celtic religion, evolution of, 3 f.
+
+Celtic religion, higher aspects of, 6.
+
+Celtic religion, homogeneity of, 5.
+
+Celtic religion, Roman influence on, 5.
+
+Celts, gods of, 158.
+
+Celts, religiosity of, 2.
+
+Celts, temperament of, 3, 14.
+
+Cenn Cruaich, 66, 79 note.
+
+Cera, 77.
+
+Cernunnos, 29 f., 32, 101, 136, 212, 282.
+
+Cerridwen, 116 f., 351, 358 f.
+
+Cessair, 50.
+
+Cethlenn, 59, 81.
+
+Cetnad, 249.
+
+Charms, 172, 356.
+
+Church and paganism, 6, 7, 48, 80, 115, 132, 152 f., 174 f., 203 f.,
+238, 249, 258, 272, 280, 285, 288-289, 315, 321, 331, 389.
+
+Cian, 75, 89.
+
+Clairvoyance, 307.
+
+Cleena, 70.
+
+Clota, 43, 70.
+
+Clutoida, 70.
+
+Cocidius, 125.
+
+Cock, 219.
+
+Columba, S., 17, 66, 88 note, 181, 238, 315, 324, 331-332, 358.
+
+Combats, ritual, 263, 267.
+
+Comedovć, 47.
+
+Comyn, M., 143, 151.
+
+Conaire, 84, 220, 252, 255.
+
+Conall Cernach, 134, 136, 230, 240.
+
+Conan, 142.
+
+Conception, magical, 351.
+
+Conchobar, 127, 132, 160, 182, 232, 254, 349.
+
+Conn, 367.
+
+Conncrithir, 73.
+
+Connla, 59, 65, 364, 374, 377, 379, 380.
+
+Conservatism in belief, 193.
+
+Coral, 329.
+
+Coranians, 114.
+
+Cordelia, 99.
+
+Cormac, 67, 68, 88, 366.
+
+Corn-spirit, 92, 107, 117, 168, 173, 213, 260, 262, 273 f., 275.
+
+Corotacus, 125.
+
+Cosmogony, 227 f.
+
+Couvade, 130, 224.
+
+Crafts, gods of, 93.
+
+Cranes, 38.
+
+Craniology, 8 f.
+
+Creation, 230.
+
+Creiddylad, 85, 99, 113.
+
+Creidne, 76, 77.
+
+Creirwy, 116.
+
+Crom Dubh, 80.
+
+Crom Eocha, 79.
+
+Cromm Cruaich, 57, 79, 236, 286.
+
+Cross, 290.
+
+Cross-roads, 174.
+
+Cruithne, 17.
+
+Cúchulainn, 72, 109, 121, 123, 159, 174, 179, 220, 240, 252, 254, 336,
+349, 355, 357, 365, 369, 381.
+
+Cúchulainn saga, 38, 63, 71, 87, 97, 127 f., 145, 204, 207.
+
+Culann, 128.
+
+Culture goddesses, 4, 68 f.
+
+Culture gods and heroes, 4, 58, 92-93, 106, 121, 124 note, 136.
+
+Cumal, 125, 142, 145 f., 148 f.
+
+Cúroi, 109, 381.
+
+Cursing wells, 137.
+
+
+Dagda, 44, 61, 64, 65, 72, 74-75, 77 f., 327, 387.
+
+Damona, 43, 215.
+
+Dance, ritual, 246, 268, 286.
+
+Danu, 63, 67 f., 92, 103, 223.
+
+_Daoine-sidhe_, 62.
+
+D'Arbois, M., 31, 38, 56, 59, 74, 79, 90, 136, 178, 264, 293, 314, 341,
+357, 374.
+
+Day of Judgment, 347.
+
+Dead, condition and cult of, 68, 165 f., 282, 330, 333 f., 340, 344 f.,
+378.
+
+Dead Debtor, 337.
+
+Dead, land of, and Elysium, 340 f.
+
+Dead living in grave, 338-339.
+
+Debility of Ultonians, 71, 129 f., 224.
+
+Dechelette, M., 166.
+
+Dechtire, 127 f., 348, 354.
+
+_Deiseil_, 193, 237, 271.
+
+Dei Terreni, 64.
+
+Demeter, 44, 68, 117, 274.
+
+Demons, 173 f., 188.
+
+Devorgilla, 133.
+
+Diana, 42, 177.
+
+Diancecht, 77, 84, 207, 325.
+
+Diarmaid, 82, 83, 88, 100, 142, 147, 150, 210, 220, 252, 254, 351,
+365-366.
+
+_Dii Casses,_ 39.
+
+Diodorus Siculus, 334.
+
+Dionysus, 211.
+
+Dioscuri, 136.
+
+Dirona, 42, 70.
+
+Dirra, 70.
+
+Disablot, 169.
+
+Disir, 169.
+
+Dispater, 29 f., 44, 60, 100, 169, 218, 229, 341, 345, 376.
+
+Distortion, 128, 132, 134.
+
+Divination, 235, 247 f., 259, 266, 304.
+
+Divine descent, 351, 354.
+
+Divine kings, 253.
+
+Divineresses, 316.
+
+Diviners, 299.
+
+Divining rod, 248.
+
+Dolmens, 283, 330, 352.
+
+Domestication, 210, 214, 225.
+
+_Dominć_, 47.
+
+Domnu, 57 note, 59, 223.
+
+Dôn, 60, 63, 103, 223.
+
+Donnotaurus, 138, 209.
+
+Dragon, 114, 121, 188.
+
+Drink of oblivion, 324.
+
+Druidesses, 250, 316.
+
+Druidic Hedge, 324.
+
+Druidic sending, 325.
+
+Druids, 6, 22, 61, 76, 150, 161 f., 173, 180, 201, 205 f., 235 f., 238,
+246 f., 250, 265, 280-281, 287 f., 293 f., 312.
+
+Druids and Filid, 305 f.
+
+Druids and magic, 310, 319, 325 f.
+
+Druids and medicine, 309.
+
+Druids and monasticism, 305.
+
+Druids and Pythagoras, 303.
+
+Druids and Rome, 312 f.
+
+Druids, classical references to, 301 f.
+
+Druids, dress of, 310 f.
+
+Druids, origin of, 292 f.
+
+Druids, poems of, 2.
+
+Druids, power of, 312.
+
+Druids, teaching of, 307 f., 314, 333.
+
+Druids, varieties of, 298 f.
+
+Drunemeton, 161, 280, 306.
+
+Dualism, 57 f., 60 f.
+
+Dumias, 25.
+
+Dusii, 355.
+
+Dwelling of gods. See Gods, abode of.
+
+Dylan, 104, 110, 178.
+
+
+_Each uisge_, 188.
+
+Earth and Under-earth, 35, 37, 68.
+
+Earth cults, 3.
+
+Earth divinities, 31, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44 f., 57 note, 65, 67 f., 72, 78,
+92, 110, 162, 169, 227, 229 f., 345.
+
+Eclipses, 178.
+
+Ecne, 74, 223.
+
+Ecstasy, 251.
+
+Egg, serpent's, 211.
+
+Elatha, 53, 58, 60.
+
+Elcmar, 78, 87.
+
+Elements, cult of, 171 f.
+
+Elphin, 118.
+
+Elves, 66 note.
+
+Elysium, 59, 78 f., 84, 87, 102, 106, 115, 116, 120, 163, 201, 229 f.,
+350, 362 f.
+
+Elysium, and Paradise, 388 f.
+
+Elysium, characteristics of, 373 ff.
+
+Elysium, lords of, 387.
+
+Elysium, names of, 362.
+
+Elysium, origin of, 370 f.
+
+Elysium, varieties of, 363 f.
+
+Emer, 128, 129, 135.
+
+Enbarr, 88, 135.
+
+Eochaid, 83.
+
+Eochaid Ollathair, 78.
+
+Eochaid O'Flynn, 64.
+
+Eogabail, 70.
+
+Epona, 43, 125, 189, 213 f.
+
+Eri, 53.
+
+Eridanus, 27.
+
+Eriu, 73-74.
+
+Esus, 29, 38, 137, 208, 234, 289.
+
+Etain, 82 f., 223, 348, 363, 380.
+
+Etair, 82.
+
+Ethics, 304, 307.
+
+Ethne, 31 note, 89.
+
+Euhemerisation, 49 f., 84, 91, 95, 98, 127.
+
+Eurosswyd, 100.
+
+Evans, Dr., 200.
+
+Evil eye, 59.
+
+Evnissyen, 98.
+
+Exogamy, 222.
+
+_Ex votos_, 195.
+
+
+Fachan, 251.
+
+Fairies, 43, 45 f., 62, 64 f., 70, 73, 80, 98, 114, 115, 166, 173, 178
+note, 183, 185 f., 190, 201, 203, 262, 263, 378.
+
+Fairyland, 372, 385, 388.
+
+_Fáith_, 106, 300, 309.
+
+Falga, 84, 87, 381.
+
+Fand, 65, 87, 88, 135, 365, 380.
+
+Ferdia, 131.
+
+Fergus, 142, 336.
+
+Fertility cults, 3, 56, 70, 73, 78, 83, 92, 93, 112, 114-115, 276, 330,
+352, 382 f.
+
+Festivals, 4, 181, 256 f.
+
+Festivals of dead, 167.
+
+Fetich, 289.
+
+Fiachna, 88, 350, 366, 379.
+
+Fians, 143, 365.
+
+_Filid_, 248 f., 300, 305 f., 325.
+
+_Findbennach_, 130.
+
+Finnen, S., 351.
+
+Finntain, 50.
+
+Fionn, 28, 118, 120-121, 125, 142 f., 179, 220, 254, 344, 350, 365-366.
+
+Fionn saga, 83, 97, 111, 120, 142 f.
+
+_Fir Dea_, 63.
+
+_Fir Domnann_, 52 f., 157.
+
+_Fir Síde_, 64, 65.
+
+Firbolgs, 52, 57.
+
+Fires, 199 f., 259, 261 f., 265, 268, 270.
+
+Fires, sacred, 69.
+
+Fish, sacred, 186, 220.
+
+Flann Manistrech, 64.
+
+Flood, 228, 231.
+
+Fomorians, 51, 52 f., 55-56, 65, 72, 83, 89, 90, 114, 133, 189, 237,
+251.
+
+Food of immortality, 377 f.
+
+Food as bond of relationship, 379.
+
+Forest divinities, 43, 108.
+
+Fotla, 73-74.
+
+Foundation sacrifices, 238.
+
+Fountains, 171, 174, 181.
+
+Fountains of youth, 378, 388.
+
+Fraoch, 377.
+
+Friuch, 349.
+
+Frazer, Dr. J.G., 170, 176, 269.
+
+Fuamnach, 22.
+
+Funeral sacrifices, 165, 234, 337.
+
+Future life, 333 f.
+
+
+Galatć, 18.
+
+Galli, 19.
+
+Gallizenć, 317. See Priestesses.
+
+Galioin, 52, 57.
+
+Garbh mac Stairn, 139.
+
+Gargantua, 124 note, 230.
+
+Garman, 167.
+
+Gauls, 9, 20.
+
+Gavida, 89, 109.
+
+_Geasa_, 128, 132, 134, 144, 150 f., 160, 252 f. See Tabu.
+
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, 102, 112, 119.
+
+Ghosts, 66, 67, 166, 169, 262, 281, 284, 330, 336.
+
+Ghosts in trees, 202 f.
+
+Gildas, 171.
+
+Gilla Coemain, 64.
+
+Gilvćthwy, 104.
+
+Glass, 370.
+
+Glastonbury, 115, 121, 369.
+
+Goborchin, 189.
+
+God of Connaught, 92.
+
+God of Druidism, 92, 105, 122.
+
+God of Ulster, 92.
+
+Goddesses and mortals, 355.
+
+Goddesses, pre-eminence of, 93, 124, 183.
+
+Godiva, 276.
+
+Gods, abode of, 228 f., 362, 372.
+
+Gods, children of, 159.
+
+Gods, fertility and civilisation from land of, 100, 106-107, 112, 121,
+380 f., 383.
+
+Gods uniting with mortals, 159.
+
+Goibniu, 76, 103, 325.
+
+Goidels, 16, 17, 96.
+
+Goll mac Morna, 142.
+
+Gomme, Sir G.L., 181, 295.
+
+Goose, 219.
+
+Govannon, 109 f.
+
+Graal, 383.
+
+Grainne, 150, 254.
+
+Grannos, 26, 42 f., 77, 125, 183.
+
+Gregory of Tours, 194, 196, 275.
+
+Groves, 174, 198, 279 f.
+
+Growth, divinities of, 5, 44, 80, 82, 92, 182.
+
+Gruagach, 245.
+
+Guinevere, 123.
+
+Gurgiunt, 124.
+
+Gutuatri, 298 f.
+
+Gwawl, 99, 111.
+
+Gweir, 106.
+
+Gwion, 117, 351, 381.
+
+Gwydion, 104, 105 f., 117, 368, 385.
+
+Gwyn, 55, 113, 115.
+
+Gwythur, 55.
+
+
+Hades, 135.
+
+Hafgan, 111, 368.
+
+Hallowe'en, 259, 281.
+
+Hallstatt, 208, 211.
+
+Hallucinations, 323-324.
+
+Hammer as divine symbol, 30, 291.
+
+Hammer, God with, 30 f., 35, 36 f., 79.
+
+Haoma, 76.
+
+Hare, 219.
+
+Harvest, 259, 273.
+
+Head-hunting, 240.
+
+Heads, cult of, 34, 71, 102, 240 f.
+
+Healing plants, 131, 206 f.
+
+Healing ritual, 122, 193 f.
+
+Healing springs, 123, 186.
+
+Hearth as altar, 165 f.
+
+Heaven and earth, 227.
+
+Hen, 219.
+
+Hephaistos, 76.
+
+Heracles, 25, 75, 133.
+
+Heroes in hills, 344.
+
+Hills, 66.
+
+Holder, A., 23.
+
+Horned helmets, 217.
+
+Horns, gods with, 32 f.
+
+Horse, 213 f.
+
+Hu Gadarm, 124 note.
+
+Hyde, Dr., 143-144.
+
+Hyperboreans, 18, 27.
+
+Hypnotism, 307, 310, 323-324.
+
+
+Iberians, 13.
+
+Icauna, 43.
+
+Iconoclasm, 287.
+
+Igerna, 120.
+
+Images, 79, 85, 204, 277, 283 f.
+
+_Imbas Forosnai_, 248.
+
+Immortality, 158, 333, 376.
+
+Incantations, 80, 248 f., 254, 297, 325.
+
+Incest, 223 f.
+
+Indech, 54, 58.
+
+Inspiration, 116, 118.
+
+Invisibility, 322, 380.
+
+Is, 372.
+
+Iuchar, Iucharbar, 63, 73 f.
+
+
+Janus, 34, 100.
+
+Joyce, Dr., 65, 143, 236.
+
+Juno, 47.
+
+Junones, 45.
+
+Jullian, 178.
+
+Juppiter, 29.
+
+
+Kalevala, 142.
+
+Keane, 9.
+
+Keating, 51, 143.
+
+Kei, 122 f.
+
+Keres, 72.
+
+Kieva, 99.
+
+King and fertility, 4, 253.
+
+Kings, divine, 160 f., 243.
+
+Kings, election of, 306.
+
+Kore, 44, 274-275.
+
+Kronos, 59.
+
+
+La Tčne, 208.
+
+Labraid, 65, 365, 369, 380.
+
+Lakes, 181, 194.
+
+Lammas, 273.
+
+Land under waves, 371.
+
+Lear, 86.
+
+Ler, Lir, 49 note, 86, 320.
+
+Lia Fail, 329.
+
+Liban, 65, 365.
+
+Libations, 244 f., 247.
+
+Ligurians, 13.
+
+Llew, 91, 104, 106.
+
+Lludd Llawereint, 85, 99, 102, 113 f., 124.
+
+Llyr, 98 f.
+
+Lochlanners, 56, 147.
+
+Lodens, 113.
+
+Loegaire, 64, 137, 379.
+
+Lonnrot, 142.
+
+Loth, M., 108.
+
+Love, 385.
+
+Lucan, 38, 125, 279, 282, 335 f., 345.
+
+Luchtine, 76.
+
+Lucian, 75, 125.
+
+Lug, 31 note, 35 note, 59, 60, 61, 74, 75, 89 f., 103, 108 f., 128, 131,
+134, 137, 167, 272, 348, 353 f.
+
+Lugaid, 132.
+
+Lugnasad, 91, 109, 167 f., 272 f.
+
+Lugoves, 91.
+
+Lugus, 90, 272.
+
+Lycanthropy, 216.
+
+
+Mabinogion, 2, 95 f.
+
+Mabon, 123, 183.
+
+MacBain, Dr., 16, 56, 78.
+
+MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne, 74.
+
+Macha, 71, 129, 137, 241.
+
+MacIneely, 89.
+
+MacPherson, 142, 155 f.
+
+Madonna, 289.
+
+Maelduin, 385.
+
+Maelrubha, S. 243.
+
+Magic, 6, 105, 194, 292, 319.
+
+Magic, agricultural, 260, 265-266, 271, 273, 276 note.
+
+Magico-medical rites, 330 f., 332.
+
+Magonia, 180.
+
+Magtured, 53 f., 84.
+
+Man, origin of, 36, 228.
+
+Manannan, 49 note, 64-65, 70, 80, 86 f., 92, 100, 134, 147, 178, 189,
+231, 350 f., 358, 364 f., 380, 387.
+
+Manawyddan, 87, 98 f., 100 f., 111, 368.
+
+Mannhardt, 269.
+
+Maponos, 27, 123.
+
+_Märchen_ formulć, 77, 82, 83, 89, 95, 107-108, 111, 116, 124, 132, 133,
+143, 148, 152, 187, 337, 353, 384.
+
+Marriage, sacred, 163, 267, 273.
+
+Mars, 27 f., 85, 180, 214.
+
+Martin, S., 140, 243, 260.
+
+Martinmas, 259. f.
+
+Math, 104 f.
+
+Matholwych, 98.
+
+Matres, 40, 44 f., 72-73, 125, 169, 183, 214, 285, 289.
+
+Matriarchate, 17, 223.
+
+Matronć, 46, 123, 183.
+
+May-day, 114.
+
+May-queen, 163, 267.
+
+Medb, 130 f.
+
+Medicine, 309 f.
+
+Mediterranean race, 9.
+
+Medros, 84, 209.
+
+Megaliths, 202, 297, 330, 352. See Stonehenge.
+
+Men, cults of, 3.
+
+Mercury, 24 f., 34, 137, 284 f.
+
+Merlin, 120, 121 f.
+
+Mermaids, 190.
+
+Metempsychosis, 303, 348 f.
+
+Meyer, Prof., 16, 294.
+
+Miach, 27.
+
+Mider, 82 f., 209, 363, 380-381.
+
+Midsummer, 70, 92, 176, 184, 191, 194, 200, 215, 235, 239, 257, 268 f.
+
+Mile, 54.
+
+Milesians, 55, 60, 78.
+
+Minerva, 41, 68, 125.
+
+Miracles, 331, 351.
+
+Mistletoe, 162, 176, 199, 205, 243 f., 270.
+
+Mithraism, 209.
+
+Moccus, 24, 210.
+
+Modranicht, 169.
+
+Modron, 123, 183.
+
+Mogons, 27, 125, 180.
+
+Mongan, 88, 120, 350 f., 358.
+
+Moon, 175 f., 246.
+
+Morgen, 159, 178, 369.
+
+Morrigan, 71, 81, 83, 130-131, 136-137, 159, 172.
+
+Morvran, 116, 118.
+
+Mounds, 63, 66.
+
+Mountain gods, 39.
+
+Mountains, 171 f.
+
+Mowat, M., 33, 36.
+
+Muireartach, 56, 179.
+
+Muirne, 148.
+
+Mule, 214.
+
+Mullo, 214.
+
+Music, 329, 386.
+
+Mythological school, 83, 89, 108, 119, 122, 133 f.
+
+
+Name, 246.
+
+Name-giving, 308 f.
+
+Nantosvelta, 31.
+
+Nature divinities and spirits, 48, 93, 171 f.
+
+Needfire, 199.
+
+Nemaind, 58.
+
+Neman, 71.
+
+Nemedians, 51 f.
+
+_Nemeton_, 161.
+
+Nemetona, 41, 71.
+
+Nennius, 119.
+
+Neo-Druidic heresy, 2 note.
+
+Neptune, 85.
+
+Nera, 339.
+
+Nessa, 128, 349.
+
+Nét, 28, 58, 71.
+
+Neton, 28.
+
+New Year, 170, 259, 261.
+
+Night, 256.
+
+Niskas, 185.
+
+Nodons, 85, 114, 124, 160.
+
+Norse influence, 99, 127.
+
+Nuada, 53 f., 61, 77, 84, 90, 160.
+
+Nuada Necht, 85 f.
+
+Nudd, 113, 115 f., 124, 160.
+
+Nudd Hael, 86.
+
+Nudity, 275-276, 322.
+
+Nutt, Mr., 103, 373.
+
+Nymphs, 43.
+
+Nynnyaw, 113.
+
+
+Oak, 199.
+
+Oaths, 172 f., 292.
+
+O'Curry, 65, 143.
+
+O'Davoren, 91.
+
+Oengus, 78, 81, 86, 146, 387.
+
+Oghams, 75.
+
+Ogma, 54, 74-75.
+
+Ogmíos, 25, 75.
+
+Oilill Olom, 70.
+
+Oisin, 142, 150-151, 152 f., 222, 364, 379, 387.
+
+Omens, 247 f.
+
+Oracles, 179, 196.
+
+Oran, 238.
+
+_Orbis alius_, 340.
+
+Orbsen, 87.
+
+Ordeals, 196 f., 383.
+
+Orgiastic rites, 80, 261, 265, 386.
+
+Osiris, 66.
+
+
+Paradise, 388 f.
+
+Partholan, 51.
+
+Pastoral stage, 3, 225, 260.
+
+Patrick, S., 61. 64, 66, 70, 76, 79-80, 132, 151, 152 f., 171, 193, 237,
+242, 249, 251, 286, 315 f., 319.
+
+Peanfahel, 17.
+
+Peisgi, 185.
+
+Penn Cruc, 66.
+
+Pennocrucium, 66.
+
+Perambulation, 277.
+
+Persephone, 68, 85.
+
+Picts, 16 f., 217, 220, 222.
+
+Pillar of sky, 228.
+
+Place-names, 16 note, 17, 19, 120, 146, 209, 211.
+
+Plants, 176, 205 f.
+
+Pliny, 162, 175, 198, 205 f., 328.
+
+Plutarch, 343.
+
+Pluto, 34 f.
+
+Plutus, 35.
+
+Poeninus, 39.
+
+Poetry, divinities of, 68, 75.
+
+Pollux, 180.
+
+Polyandry, 74, 223 f.
+
+Polygamy, 17, 224.
+
+Prayer, 245 f.
+
+Pre-Celtic cults, 48, 81, 93, 174, 181, 200, 202, 219, 224, 277, 294 f.,
+361.
+
+Priesthood. See Druids.
+
+Priestesses, 69, 180, 192 f., 226, 246, 250, 316, 321.
+
+Priest-kings, 161, 226, 267, 296, 307.
+
+Procopius, 342.
+
+Prophecy, 250 f, 300 f.
+
+Pryderi, 98 f., 110 f., 112, 368, 385.
+
+Pwyll, 110 f., 112, 368, 385.
+
+Pythagoras, 303, 334.
+
+
+_Quadrivić_, 47.
+
+
+Ragnarok, 232.
+
+Rain-making, 266, 321 f.
+
+Rebirth, 88, 117, 128, 348 f.
+
+Reinach, M., 31 note, 38, 137, 211, 287, 297, 317, 340.
+
+Relics, 332.
+
+Retribution, 346.
+
+Rhiannon, 98 f., 110 f.
+
+Rh[^y]s, Sir J., 15, 16, 24, 55, 60, 68, 78, 82 f., 91, 93, 100, 101 f.,
+103, 106, 108, 122, 135, 183, 219, 282, 294, 356, 376.
+
+Rigantona, 111.
+
+Rigisama, 28.
+
+River divinities, 43, 46, 123, 182, 243, 354.
+
+Rivers, cult of, 172, 180 f.
+
+Rivers, names of, 182.
+
+Roman and Celtic gods, 22 f., 289 f.
+
+Romans and Druids, 312 f.
+
+Ruadan, 58.
+
+Ruad-rofhessa, 77.
+
+Rucht, 349.
+
+Rudiobus, 214.
+
+
+Saar, 150.
+
+Sacramental rites, 222, 260, 266, 271.
+
+Sacrifice of aged, 242.
+
+Sacrifice of animals, 140, 181, 189, 205, 242 f., 260, 265.
+
+Sacrifice, foundation, 121, 238 f.
+
+Sacrifice, human, 57, 79, 165, 190, 198, 233 f., 261, 265, 269, 304,
+308, 313, 337.
+
+Sacrifice to dead, 165 f., 234, 337.
+
+Sacrificial offerings, 6, 174, 181, 185, 190, 194, 198, 233 f., 299,
+308.
+
+Sacrificial survivals, 244 f.
+
+Saints, 115, 209, 217, 251, 285 f., 288, 331 f., 386 note.
+
+Saints and wells, 193.
+
+Saints' days and pagan festivals, 258.
+
+Salmon of knowledge, 149, 187, 377.
+
+Samhain, 56, 70, 80, 167-168, 170, 222, 256 f., 258 f.
+
+Satire, 326.
+
+Saturn, 47.
+
+Scandinavia and Ireland, 148.
+
+Scathach, 129, 135.
+
+_Scotti_, 17.
+
+Sea, 110, 178.
+
+Sébillot, 342.
+
+Segomo, 214.
+
+Segovesus, 19.
+
+Selvanus, 37.
+
+Semnotheoi, 298, 301.
+
+Sequana, 43.
+
+Sergi, Prof., 9, 296.
+
+Serpent, 35, 166, 188, 211.
+
+Serpent with ram's head, 34, 44, 166, 211.
+
+Serpent's egg, 328.
+
+Serpent's glass, 328.
+
+Setanta, 349.
+
+Shape-shifting, 104, 105, 117, 130, 131, 150, 221, 322 f., 350, 356 f.
+
+_Síd_, 63, 64 note, 65, 78.
+
+Silvanus, 29, 36, 218.
+
+Sinend, 187, 191.
+
+Sinnan, 43.
+
+Sirona, 42.
+
+Skene, Dr., 16, 108.
+
+Slain gods and human victims, 159, 168 f., 199, 226, 235, 239, 262, 269,
+272.
+
+Sleep, magic, 327.
+
+Smertullos, 35, 136, 289.
+
+Smiths, god of, 76.
+
+Smiths, magic of, 76.
+
+Solar hero, 133.
+
+Soma, 76.
+
+Soul as animal, 360.
+
+Soul, separable, 140, 162, 270.
+
+Spain, 375.
+
+Spells, 246, 254, 325 f.
+
+Squatting gods, 32 f.
+
+Sreng, 84.
+
+Stag, 213.
+
+Stanna, 42.
+
+Stokes, Dr., 16, 56, 71, 77, 222, 264.
+
+Stone circles, 281.
+
+Stonehenge, 27, 121, 200, 281-282.
+
+Stones, cult of, 174, 284, 329.
+
+Sualtaim, 128.
+
+Submerged towns, 231, 372.
+
+Sucellos, 30 f.
+
+Suicide, 234, 345.
+
+Sul, 41, 69, 125.
+
+Sulević, 46.
+
+Sun, 178, 268.
+
+Sun myths, 83.
+
+Swan-maidens, 82.
+
+Swastika, 290.
+
+Swine, 25, 106, 117, 209 f.
+
+Swineherds, The Two, 349.
+
+Symbols, 290.
+
+
+Tabu, 69, 102, 128, 132, 144, 186, 191 f., 210, 219, 252 f., 276, 304,
+306, 323, 372. See _Geasa_.
+
+Tadg, 221.
+
+_Taghairm_, 249.
+
+Tailtiu, 167, 273, 376.
+
+_Táin bó Cuailgne_, 127, 130 f.
+
+Taliesin, 95, 97, 116, 323, 335, 356, 358.
+
+Taran, 124.
+
+Taranis, 29, 30, 234.
+
+Taranos, 124.
+
+_Tarbh Uisge_, 189.
+
+_Tarvos Trigaranos_, 38, 137, 208, 289.
+
+Tattooing, 17, 217.
+
+Tegid Voel, 116.
+
+_Teinm Laegha_, 249.
+
+_Tempestarii_, 175, 180.
+
+Temples, 85, 279 f.
+
+Tethra, 58-59, 71, 75, 374.
+
+Teutates, 28, 125, 234.
+
+Teyrnon, 111.
+
+Three-headed gods, 32 f.
+
+Thumb of knowledge, 149.
+
+Thurnam, Dr., 12.
+
+_Tír na n-Og_, 151, 362, 364.
+
+Tombs as sacred places, 165.
+
+Tonsure, 311.
+
+Torque, 34.
+
+Totatis, 125.
+
+Totemism, 149, 187, 201 f., 216, 323, 360, 379.
+
+Toutatis, 28.
+
+Transformation. See Shape-shifting.
+
+Transformation Combat, 353.
+
+Transmigration, 334 f., 348 f., 356, 359 f.
+
+Tree cults, 162, 169, 174, 194, 198 f., 208, 265, 269, 331, 379.
+
+Tree descent from, 202.
+
+Trees of Elysium, 380.
+
+Trees of Immortality, 377 f.
+
+Triads, 34 f., 39, 95 f., 109, 113-114, 115, 118, 120, 123, 124 note.
+
+Triple goddesses, 44 f.
+
+Tristram, 103.
+
+Tuan MacCairill, 57, 357, 375.
+
+Tuatha Dé Danann, 49 f., 60, 61, 63 f., 66, 92 f., 146, 158, 168, 173.
+
+Tutelar divinities, 40, 45, 73.
+
+Tuag, 87.
+
+_Twrch Trwyth_, 108, 119, 211.
+
+Tyr, 84.
+
+
+Underworld, 60, 102, 112, 341.
+
+Urien, 101.
+
+_Urwisg_, 189.
+
+Uthyr, 101, 120, 122.
+
+
+Valkyries, 72.
+
+Vegetation cults, 3, 215.
+
+Vegetation gods and spirits, 38, 92, 139, 159, 162 f., 199, 208, 215,
+243, 265, 269.
+
+Venus of Quinipily, 289.
+
+Vera, 70.
+
+Vesta, 69.
+
+_Vierges noires_, 46.
+
+Vintius, 180.
+
+_Virgines_, 47.
+
+Viviane, 122.
+
+Vortigern, 121, 238, 315.
+
+Vosegus, 39.
+
+Votive offerings, 185.
+
+Vulcan, 47.
+
+
+War chants, 246.
+
+War goddesses, 71, 93.
+
+War gods, 4, 27 f., 48, 71, 92, 115, 118, 123, 136.
+
+Warrior, ideal, 132, 136.
+
+Warrior, power of dead, 338.
+
+Washer at the Ford, 73.
+
+Water bull, 189.
+
+Water fairies, 70, 73 note, 190.
+
+Water, guardians of, 195.
+
+Water horse, 188.
+
+Water world, 192 note, 371.
+
+Waves, fighting the, 178.
+
+Waves, nine, 179.
+
+Weapons, 291.
+
+Wells, 77, 180 f., 184, 191, 193 f., 321, 372.
+
+Wells, origin of, 230.
+
+Wheel, god with, 29.
+
+Wheel symbol, 29, 271, 327.
+
+White women, 73.
+
+Wind, 180.
+
+Windisch, Prof., 16.
+
+Wisdom, 74.
+
+Wisdom from eating animal, 149 note.
+
+Wolf god, 36, 216, 218.
+
+Witch, 201, 203, 262, 268, 318, 321.
+
+Women and magic, 319 f.
+
+Women as first civilisers, 41, 45, 192, 317.
+
+Women as warriors, 72.
+
+Women, cults of, 3, 5, 41, 69, 163 f., 225 f., 274 f., 317.
+
+Women, islands of, 385 f.
+
+World catastrophe, 228, 232.
+
+World, origin of, 230.
+
+Wren, 221.
+
+
+Yama, 101.
+
+Year, division of, 256.
+
+Yule log, 170, 259.
+
+
+Zeus, 66, 84, 199 f.
+
+Zimmer, 56, 141, 147.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religion of the Ancient Celts
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+Project Gutenberg's The Religion of the Ancient Celts, by J. A. MacCulloch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+Title: The Religion of the Ancient Celts
+
+Author: J. A. MacCulloch
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2005 [EBook #14672]
+[Date last updated: December 14, 2005]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS ***
+
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+
+<h1>THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS</h1>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>J.A. MACCULLOCH</h2>
+<center>HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE
+CATHEDRAL</center>
+<br />
+<center>AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY"<br />
+"RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE"<br />
+"THE CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND PRIMITIVE
+THOUGHT"</center>
+<br />
+<center>Edinburgh: T. &amp; T. CLARK, 38 George Street</center>
+<br />
+<center>1911</center>
+<br />
+<center>Printed by</center>
+<br />
+<center>MORRISON &amp; GIBB LIMITED,</center>
+<br />
+<center>FOR</center>
+<br />
+<center>T. &amp; T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.</center>
+<br />
+<center>LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO.
+LIMITED.</center>
+<br />
+<center>NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.</center>
+<br />
+<center>TO</center>
+<br />
+<center>ANDREW LANG</center>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+<p>The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of
+recent growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a
+study, earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights
+and connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the
+remains of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines
+veiled under polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz,
+Bertrand, and D'Arbois de Jubainville in France, as well as by the
+publication of Irish texts by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and
+Stokes, a new era may be said to have dawned, and a flood of light
+was poured upon the scanty remains of Celtic religion. In this
+country the place of honour among students of that religion belongs
+to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures <i>On the Origin and
+Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom</i> (1886)
+was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that
+time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable
+researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I
+would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In
+his Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on <i>The
+Arthurian Legend</i>, however, he took the standpoint of the
+"mythological" school, and tended to see in the old stories myths
+of the sun and dawn and the darkness, and in the divinities
+sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host of dark personages of
+supernatural character. The present writer, studying the subject
+rather from an anthropological point of view and in the light of
+modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement with Sir
+John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced that
+Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in
+spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures
+must remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More
+recently the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and
+the valuable little book on <i>Celtic Religion</i>, by Professor
+Anwyl, have broken fresh ground.<a id="footnotetag1" name=
+"footnotetag1"></a><a href="#footnote1"><sup>1</sup></a></p>
+<p>In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and
+have endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of
+view and in the light of the anthropological method. I have also
+interpreted the earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals
+over the Celtic area wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so.
+The results are summarised in the introductory chapter of the work,
+and students of religion, and especially of Celtic religion, must
+judge how far they form a true interpretation of the earlier faith
+of our Celtic forefathers, much of which resembles primitive
+religion and folk-belief everywhere.</p>
+<p>Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and
+we are left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the
+existing materials, and to the light shed on them by the
+comparative study of religions. As this book was written during a
+long residence in the Isle of Skye, where the old language of the
+people still survives, and where the <i>genius loci</i> speaks
+everywhere of things remote and strange, it may have been easier to
+attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a busier or
+more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would
+have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his
+former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred
+matters which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not
+be!</p>
+<p>I have to thank Miss Turner and Miss Annie Gilchrist for
+valuable help rendered in the work of research, and the London
+Library for obtaining for me several works not already in its
+possession. Its stores are an invaluable aid to all students
+working at a distance from libraries.</p>
+<p>J.A. MACCULLOCH.</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>THE RECTORY,</p>
+<p>BRIDGE OF ALLAN,</p>
+<p><i>October</i> 1911.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1" name=
+"footnote1"></a><b>Footnote 1:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1">(return)</a>
+<p>See also my article "Celts" in Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia
+of Religion and Ethics</i>, vol. iii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Throughout this book, some characters are
+used which are not part of the Latin-1 character set used in this
+e-book. The string "[^y]" is used to represent a lower-case "Y"
+with a circumflex mark on top of it, "[=a]" is used to represent a
+lower-case "A" with a line on top of it, and "[oe]" is used to
+represent the "oe"-ligature. Numbers in superscripts such as
+<sup>3</sup> were used in the book to give edition numbers to
+books.]</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<p><a href="#chap1">I. INTRODUCTORY</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap2">II. THE CELTIC PEOPLE</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap3">III. THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL
+CELTS</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap4">IV. THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap5">V. THE TUATHA D&Eacute; DANANN</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap6">VI. THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap7">VII. THE C&Uacute;CHULAINN CYCLE</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap8">VIII. THE FIONN SAGA</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap9">IX. GODS AND MEN</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap10">X. THE CULT OF THE DEAD</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap11">XI. PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap12">XII. RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap13">XIII. TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap14">XIV. ANIMAL WORSHIP</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap15">XV. COSMOGONY</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap16">XVI. SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap17">XVII. TABU</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap18">XVIII. FESTIVALS</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap19">XIX. ACCESSORIES OF CULT</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap20">XX. THE DRUIDS</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap21">XXI. MAGIC</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap22">XXII. THE STATE OF THE DEAD</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap23">XXIII. REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION</a></p>
+<p><a href="#chap24">XXIV. ELYSIUM</a></p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h3>LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES THROUGHOUT THIS
+WORK</h3>
+<p>(<i>This list is not a Bibliography.</i>)</p>
+<p>BRAND: Rev. J. Brand, <i>Observations on the Popular Antiquities
+of Great Britain.</i> 3 vols. 1870.</p>
+<p>BLANCHET: A. Blanchet, <i>Trait&eacute; des monnaies
+gauloises.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1905.</p>
+<p>BERTRAND: A. Bertrand, <i>Religion des gaulois.</i> Paris,
+1897.</p>
+<p>CAMPBELL, <i>WHT</i>: J.F. Campbell, <i>Popular Tales of the
+West Highlands.</i> 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1890.</p>
+<p>CAMPBELL <i>LF</i>: J.F. Campbell, <i>Leabhar na Feinne.</i>
+London, 1872.</p>
+<p>CAMPBELL, <i>Superstitions</i>: J.G. Campbell, <i>Superstitions
+of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.</i> 1900.</p>
+<p>CAMPBELL, <i>Witchcraft</i>: J.G. Campbell, <i>Witchcraft and
+Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.</i>
+1902.</p>
+<p>CORMAC: <i>Cormac's Glossary.</i> Tr. by J. O'Donovan. Ed. by W.
+Stokes. Calcutta, 1868.</p>
+<p>COURCELLE&mdash;SENEUIL.: J.L. Courcelle-Seneuil, <i>Les dieux
+gaulois d'apr&egrave;s les monuments figur&eacute;s.</i> Paris,
+1910.</p>
+<p><i>CIL</i>: <i>Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.</i> Berlin, 1863
+f.</p>
+<p><i>CM</i>: <i>Celtic Magazine.</i> Inverness, 1875 f.</p>
+<p>CURTIN, <i>HTI</i>: J. Curtin, <i>Hero Tales of Ireland.</i>
+1894.</p>
+<p>CURTIN, <i>Tales</i>: J. Curtin, <i>Tales of the Fairies and
+Ghost World.</i> 1895.</p>
+<p>DALZELL: Sir J.G. Dalzell, <i>Darker Superstitions of
+Scotland.</i> 1835.</p>
+<p>D'ARBOIS: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, <i>Cours de litterature
+celtique.</i> 12 vols. Paris, 1883-1902.</p>
+<p>D'ARBOIS <i>Les Celtes</i>: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, <i>Les
+Celtes.</i> Paris, 1904.</p>
+<p>D'ARBOIS <i>Les Druides</i>: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, <i>Les
+Druides et les dieux celtiques &agrave; formes d'animaux.</i>
+Paris, 1906.</p>
+<p>D'ARBOIS <i>PH</i>: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, <i>Les premiers
+habitants de l'Europe.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1889-1894.</p>
+<p>DOM MARTIN: Dom Martin, <i>Le religion des gaulois.</i> 2 vols.
+Paris, 1727.</p>
+<p>DOTTIN: G. Dottin, <i>Manuel pour servir a l'&eacute;tude de
+l'antiquit&eacute; celtique.</i> Paris, 1906.</p>
+<p>ELTON: C.I. Elton, <i>Origins of English History.</i> London,
+1890.</p>
+<p>FRAZER, <i>GB</i><sup>2</sup>: J.G. Frazer, <i>Golden
+Bough</i><sup>2</sup>. 3 vols. 1900,</p>
+<p>GUEST: Lady Guest, <i>The Mabinogion.</i> 3 vols. Liandovery,
+1849.</p>
+<p>HAZLITT: W.C. Hazlitt, <i>Faiths and Folk-lore: A Dictionary of
+National Beliefs, Superstitions, and Popular Customs.</i> 2 vols.
+1905.</p>
+<p>HOLDER: A. Holder, <i>Altceltischer Sprachschatz.</i> 3 vols.
+Leipzig, 1891 f.</p>
+<p>HULL: Miss E. Hull, <i>The Cuchullin Saga.</i> London, 1898.</p>
+<p><i>IT</i>: See Windisch-Stokes.</p>
+<p><i>JAI</i>: <i>Journal of the Anthropological Institute.</i>
+London, 1871 f.</p>
+<p>JOYCE, <i>OCR</i>: P.W. Joyce, <i>Old Celtic
+Romances</i><sup>2</sup>. London, 1894.</p>
+<p>JOYCE, <i>PN</i>: P.W. Joyce, <i>History of Irish Names of
+Places</i><sup>4</sup>. 2 vols. London, 1901.</p>
+<p>JOYCE, <i>SH</i>: P.W. Joyce, <i>Social History of Ancient
+Ireland.</i> 2 vols. London, 1903.</p>
+<p>JULLIAN: C. Jullian, <i>Recherches sur la religion gauloise.</i>
+Bordeaux, 1903.</p>
+<p>KEATING: Keating, <i>History of Ireland.</i> Tr. O'Mahony.
+London, 1866.</p>
+<p>KENNEDY: P. Kennedy, <i>Legendary Fictions of the Irish
+Celts.</i> 1866.</p>
+<p>LARMINIE: W. Larminie, <i>West Irish Folk-Tales and
+Romances.</i> 1893.</p>
+<p>LEAHY: Leahy, <i>Heroic Romances of Ireland.</i> 2 vols. London,
+1905.</p>
+<p>LE BRAZ: A. Le Braz, <i>La Legende de la Mort chez les Bretons
+armoricains.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1902.</p>
+<p><i>LL</i>: <i>Leabhar Laignech</i> (Book of Leinster), facsimile
+reprint. London, 1880.</p>
+<p>LOTH: Loth, <i>Le Mabinogion.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1889.</p>
+<p><i>LU</i>: <i>Leabhar na h-Uidhre</i> (Book of the Dun Cow),
+facsimile reprint. London, 1870.</p>
+<p>MACBAIN: A. MacBain, <i>Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic
+Language.</i> Inverness, 1896.</p>
+<p>MACDOUGALL: Macdougall, <i>Folk and Hero Tales.</i> London,
+1891.</p>
+<p>MACKINLAY: J.M. Mackinlay, <i>Folk-lore of Scottish Lochs and
+Springs.</i> Glasgow, 1893.</p>
+<p>MARTIN: M. Martin, <i>Description of the Western Islands of
+Scotland</i><sup>2</sup>. London, 1716.</p>
+<p>MAURY: A. Maury, <i>Croyances et legendes du Moyen Age.</i>
+Paris, 1896.</p>
+<p>MONNIER: D. Monnier, <i>Traditions populaires
+compar&eacute;es.</i> Paris, 1854.</p>
+<p>MOORE: A.W. Moore, <i>Folk-lore of the Isle of Man.</i>
+1891.</p>
+<p>NUTT-MEYER: A. Nutt and K. Meyer, <i>The Voyage of Bran.</i> 2
+vols. London, 1895-1897.</p>
+<p>O'CURRY <i>MC</i>: E. O'Curry, <i>Manners and Customs of the
+Ancient Irish.</i> 4 vols. London, 1873.</p>
+<p>O'CURRY <i>MS. Mat</i>: E. O'Curry, <i>MS. Materials of Ancient
+Irish History.</i> Dublin, 1861.</p>
+<p>O'GRADY: S.H. O'Grady, <i>Silva Gadelica.</i> 2 vols. 1892.</p>
+<p>REES: Rev. W.J. Rees, <i>Lives of Cambro-British Saints.</i>
+Llandovery, 1853.</p>
+<p>REINACH, BF: S. Reinach, <i>Bronzes Figur&eacute;s de la Gaule
+romaine.</i> Paris, 1900.</p>
+<p>REINACH, BF <i>Catal. Sommaire</i>: S. Reinach, <i>Catalogue
+Commaire du Mus&eacute;e des Antinquit&eacute;e
+Nationales</i><sup>4</sup>. Paris.</p>
+<p>REINACH, BF CMR: S. Reinach, <i>Cultes, Mythes, et
+Religions.</i> 2 vols. Paris, 1905.</p>
+<p>RC: <i>Revue Celtique.</i> Paris, 1870 f.</p>
+<p>RENEL: C. Renel, <i>Religions de la Gaule.</i> Paris 1906.</p>
+<p>RH[^Y]S, <i>AL</i>: Sir John Rh[^y]s, <i>The Arthurian
+Legend.</i> Oxford, 1891.</p>
+<p>RH[^Y]S, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup>: Sir John Rh[^y]s, <i>Celtic
+Britain</i><sup>4</sup>. London, 1908.</p>
+<p>RH[^Y]S, <i>CFL</i>: Sir John Rh[^y]s, <i>Celtic Folk-Lore.</i>
+2 vols. Oxford, 1901.</p>
+<p>RH[^Y]S, <i>HL</i>: Sir John Rh[^y]s, <i>Hibbert Lectures on
+Celtic Heathendom.</i> London, 1888.</p>
+<p>S&Eacute;BILLOT: P. Sebillot, <i>La Folk-lore de la France.</i>
+4 vols. Paris, 1904 f.</p>
+<p>SKENE: W.F. Skene, <i>Four Ancient Books of Wales.</i> 2 vols.
+Edinburgh, 1868.</p>
+<p>STOKES, <i>TIG</i>: Whitley Stokes, <i>Three Irish
+Glossaries.</i> London, 1862.</p>
+<p>STOKES, <i>Trip. Life</i>: Whitley Stokes, <i>The Tripartite
+Life of Patrick.</i> London 1887.</p>
+<p>STOKES, <i>US</i>: Whitley Stokes, <i>Urkeltischer
+Sprachschatz.</i> G&ouml;ttingen, 1894 (in Fick's <i>Vergleichende
+W&ouml;rterbuch</i><sup>4</sup>).</p>
+<p>TAYLOR: I. Taylor, <i>Origin of the Aryans.</i> London, n.d.</p>
+<p><i>TSC</i>: <i>Transactions of Society of Cymmrodor.</i></p>
+<p><i>TOS</i>: <i>Transactions of the Ossianic Society.</i> Dublin
+1854-1861.</p>
+<p><i>Trip. Life</i>: See Stokes.</p>
+<p>WILDE: Lady Wilde, <i>Ancient Legends and Superstitions of
+Ireland.</i> 2 vols. 1887.</p>
+<p>WINDISCH, <i>T&aacute;in</i>: E. Windisch, <i>Die altirische
+Heldensage T&aacute;in B&oacute; C&uacute;algne.</i> Leipzig,
+1905.</p>
+<p>WINDISCH-STOKES, <i>IT</i>: E. Windisch and W. Stokes,
+<i>Irische Texte.</i> Leipzig, 1880 f.</p>
+<p>WOOD-MARTIN: Wood-Martin, <i>Elder Faiths of Ireland.</i> 2
+vols. London, 1903.</p>
+<p><i>ZCP</i>: <i>Zeitschrift f&uuml;r Celtische Philologie.</i>
+Halle, 1897 f.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>{1}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap1" id="chap1">CHAPTER I.</a></h2>
+<h3>INTRODUCTORY.</h3>
+<p>To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make
+it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old
+faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in
+their case liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the
+accessories of cult, remain to yield their report of the outward
+form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand,
+are the records of Celtic religion! The bygone faith of a people
+who have inspired the world with noble dreams must be constructed
+painfully, and often in fear and trembling, out of fragmentary and,
+in many cases, transformed remains.</p>
+<p>We have the surface observations of classical observers,
+dedications in the Romano-Celtic area to gods mostly assimilated to
+the gods of the conquerors, figured monuments mainly of the same
+period, coins, symbols, place and personal names. For the Irish
+Celts there is a mass of written material found mainly in eleventh
+and twelfth century MSS. Much of this, in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>{2}</span> spite of
+alteration and excision, is based on divine and heroic myths, and
+it also contains occasional notices of ritual. From Wales come
+documents like the <i>Mabinogion</i>, and strange poems the
+personages of which are ancient gods transformed, but which tell
+nothing of rite or cult.<a id="footnotetag2" name=
+"footnotetag2"></a><a href="#footnote2"><sup>2</sup></a> Valuable
+hints are furnished by early ecclesiastical documents, but more
+important is existing folk-custom, which preserves so much of the
+old cult, though it has lost its meaning to those who now use it.
+Folk-tales may also be inquired of, if we discriminate between what
+in them is Celtic and what is universal. Lastly, Celtic
+burial-mounds and other remains yield their testimony to ancient
+belief and custom.</p>
+<p>From these sources we try to rebuild Celtic paganism and to
+guess at its inner spirit, though we are working in the twilight on
+a heap of fragments. No Celt has left us a record of his faith and
+practice, and the unwritten poems of the Druids died with them. Yet
+from these fragments we see the Celt as the seeker after God,
+linking himself by strong ties to the unseen, and eager to conquer
+the unknown by religious rite or magic art. For the things of the
+spirit have never appealed in vain to the Celtic soul, and long ago
+classical observers were struck with the religiosity of the Celts.
+They neither forgot nor transgressed the law of the gods, and they
+thought that no good befell men apart from their will.<a id=
+"footnotetag3" name="footnotetag3"></a><a href=
+"#footnote3"><sup>3</sup></a> The submission of the Celts to the
+Druids shows how they welcomed authority in matters of religion,
+and all Celtic regions have been characterised by religious
+devotion, easily passing over to superstition, and by loyalty to
+ideals and lost causes. The <span class="pagenum"><a name="page3"
+id="page3"></a>{3}</span> Celts were born dreamers, as their
+exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much that is spiritual and
+romantic in more than one European literature is due to them.</p>
+<p>The analogy of religious evolution in other faiths helps us in
+reconstructing that of the Celts. Though no historic Celtic group
+was racially pure, the profound influence of the Celtic temperament
+soon "Celticised" the religious contributions of the non-Celtic
+element which may already have had many Celtic parallels. Because a
+given Celtic rite or belief seems to be "un-Aryan," it need not
+necessarily be borrowed. The Celts had a savage past, and,
+conservative as they were, they kept much of it alive. Our
+business, therefore, lies with Celtic religion as a whole. These
+primitive elements were there before the Celts migrated from the
+old "Aryan" home; yet since they appear in Celtic religion to the
+end, we speak of them as Celtic. The earliest aspect of that
+religion, before the Celts became a separate people, was a cult of
+nature spirits, or of the life manifested in nature. But men and
+women probably had separate cults, and, of the two, perhaps that of
+the latter is more important. As hunters, men worshipped the
+animals they slew, apologising to them for the slaughter. This
+apologetic attitude, found with all primitive hunters, is of the
+nature of a cult. Other animals, too sacred to be slain, would be
+preserved and worshipped, the cult giving rise to domestication and
+pastoral life, with totemism as a probable factor. Earth, producing
+vegetation, was the fruitful mother; but since the origin of
+agriculture is mainly due to women, the Earth cult would be
+practised by them, as well as, later, that of vegetation and corn
+spirits, all regarded as female. As men began to interest
+themselves in agriculture, they would join in the female cults,
+probably with the result of changing the sex of the spirits
+worshipped. An Earth-god would take the place of the Earth-mother,
+or stand as her consort or son. Vegetation <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>{4}</span> and corn
+spirits would often become male, though many spirits, even when
+they were exalted into divinities, remained female.</p>
+<p>With the growth of religion the vaguer spirits tended to become
+gods and goddesses, and worshipful animals to become
+anthropomorphic divinities, with the animals as their symbols,
+attendants, or victims. And as the cult of vegetation spirits
+centred in the ritual of planting and sowing, so the cult of the
+divinities of growth centred in great seasonal and agricultural
+festivals, in which the key to the growth of Celtic religion is to
+be found. But the migrating Celts, conquering new lands, evolved
+divinities of war; and here the old female influence is still at
+work, since many of these are female. In spite of possessing so
+many local war-gods, the Celts were not merely men of war. Even the
+<i>equites</i> engaged in war only when occasion arose, and
+agriculture as well as pastoral industry was constantly practised,
+both in Gaul and Britain, before the conquest.<a id="footnotetag4"
+name="footnotetag4"></a><a href="#footnote4"><sup>4</sup></a> In
+Ireland, the belief in the dependence of fruitfulness upon the
+king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished there.<a id=
+"footnotetag5" name="footnotetag5"></a><a href=
+"#footnote5"><sup>5</sup></a> Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave
+rise to culture divinities, perhaps evolved from gods of growth,
+since later myths attributed to them both the origin of arts and
+crafts, and the introduction of domestic animals among men.
+Possibly some culture gods had been worshipful animals, now
+worshipped as gods, who had given these animals to man.
+Culture-goddesses still held their place among culture-gods, and
+were regarded as their mothers. The prominence of these divinities
+shows that the Celts were more than a race of warriors.</p>
+<p>The pantheon was thus a large one, but on the whole the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>{5}</span>
+divinities of growth were more generally important. The older
+nature spirits and divine animals were never quite forgotten,
+especially by the folk, who also preserved the old rituals of
+vegetation spirits, while the gods of growth were worshipped at the
+great festivals. Yet in essence the lower and the higher cults were
+one and the same, and, save where Roman influence destroyed Celtic
+religion, the older primitive strands are everywhere apparent. The
+temperament of the Celt kept him close to nature, and he never
+quite dropped the primitive elements of his religion. Moreover, the
+early influence of female cults of female spirits and goddesses
+remained to the end as another predominant factor.</p>
+<p>Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character, each
+tribe possessing its own group, each god having functions similar
+to those of other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more
+universal character, absorbing divinities with similar functions.
+Still this local character must be borne in mind. The numerous
+divinities of Gaul, with differing names&mdash;but, judging by
+their assimilation to the same Roman divinity, similar functions,
+are best understood as gods of local groups. This is probably true
+also of Britain and Ireland. But those gods worshipped far and wide
+over the Celtic area may be gods of the undivided Celts, or gods of
+some dominant Celtic group extending their influence on all sides,
+or, in some cases, popular gods whose cult passed beyond the tribal
+bounds. If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the
+local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be
+made to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing
+everywhere the same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic
+civilisation, save in local areas, <i>e.g.</i> the South of Gaul.
+Moreover, the comparison of the various testimonies of onlookers
+points to a general similarity, while the permanence of the
+primitive elements in Celtic religion must have tended to keep it
+everywhere <span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id=
+"page6"></a>{6}</span> the same. Though in Gaul we have only
+inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those
+testimonies, as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both
+regions, point to the similarity of religious phenomena. The
+Druids, as a more or less organised priesthood, would assist in
+preserving the general likeness.</p>
+<p>Thus the primitive nature-spirits gave place to greater or
+lesser gods, each with his separate department and functions.
+Though growing civilisation tended to separate them from the soil,
+they never quite lost touch with it. In return for man's worship
+and sacrifices, they gave life and increase, victory, strength, and
+skill. But these sacrifices, had been and still often were rites in
+which the representative of a god was slain. Some divinities were
+worshipped over a wide area, most were gods of local groups, and
+there were spirits of every place, hill, wood, and stream. Magic
+rites mingled with the cult, but both were guided by an organised
+priesthood. And as the Celts believed in unseen gods, so they
+believed in an unseen region whither they passed after death.</p>
+<p>Our knowledge of the higher side of Celtic religion is
+practically a blank, since no description of the inner spiritual
+life has come down to us. How far the Celts cultivated religion in
+our sense of the term, or had glimpses of Monotheism, or were
+troubled by a deep sense of sin, is unknown. But a people whose
+spiritual influence has later been so great, must have had glimpses
+of these things. Some of them must have known the thirst of the
+soul for God, or sought a higher ethical standard than that of
+their time. The enthusiastic reception of Christianity, the
+devotion of the early Celtic saints, and the character of the old
+Celtic church, all suggest this.</p>
+<p>The relation of the Celtic church to paganism was mainly
+intolerant, though not wholly so. It often adopted the less
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>{7}</span>
+harmful customs of the past, merging pagan festivals in its own,
+founding churches on the sites of the old cult, dedicating sacred
+wells to a saint. A saint would visit the tomb of a pagan to hear
+an old epic rehearsed, or would call up pagan heroes from hell and
+give them a place in paradise. Other saints recall dead heroes from
+the Land of the Blessed, and learn the nature of that wonderland
+and the heroic deeds</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Of the old days, which seem to be</p>
+<p>Much older than any history</p>
+<p>That is written in any book."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>Reading such narratives, we gain a lesson in the fine spirit of
+Christian tolerance and Christian sympathy.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote2" name=
+"footnote2"></a><b>Footnote 2:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag2">(return)</a>
+<p>Some writers saw in the bardic poetry a Druidic-esoteric system
+and traces of a cult practised secretly by the bards&mdash;the
+"Neo-Druidic heresy"; see Davies, <i>Myth. of the Brit. Druids</i>,
+1809; Herbert, <i>The Neo-Druidic Heresy</i>, 1838. Several French
+writers saw in "Druidism" a monotheistic faith, veiled under
+polytheism.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote3" name=
+"footnote3"></a><b>Footnote 3:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag3">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, v. 46; C&aelig;sar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian,
+<i>Cyneg</i>. xxxv. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote4" name=
+"footnote4"></a><b>Footnote 4:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag4">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained
+there and cultivated the lands."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote5" name=
+"footnote5"></a><b>Footnote 5:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag5">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Pliny, <i>HN</i> xvii. 7, xviii. 18 on the wheeled ploughs
+and agricultural methods of Gauls and Britons. Cf. also Strabo, iv.
+1. 2, iv. 5. 5; Girald. Camb. <i>Top. Hib.</i> i. 4, <i>Descr.
+Camb.</i> i. 8; Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 264.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>{8}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap2" id="chap2">CHAPTER II.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE CELTIC PEOPLE.</h3>
+<p>Scrutiny reveals the fact that Celtic-speaking peoples are of
+differing types&mdash;short and dark as well as tall and fairer
+Highlanders or Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types
+of Irishmen. Men with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the
+Gaelic." But all alike have the same character and temperament, a
+striking witness to the influence which the character as well as
+the language of the Celts, whoever they were, made on all with whom
+they mingled. Ethnologically there may not be a Celtic race, but
+something was handed down from the days of comparative Celtic
+purity which welded different social elements into a common type,
+found often where no Celtic tongue is now spoken. It emerges where
+we least expect it, and the stolid Anglo-Saxon may suddenly awaken
+to something in himself due to a forgotten Celtic strain in his
+ancestry.</p>
+<p>Two main theories of Celtic origins now hold the field:</p>
+<p>(1) The Celts are identified with the progenitors of the short,
+brachycephalic "Alpine race" of Central Europe, existing there in
+Neolithic times, after their migrations from Africa and Asia. The
+type is found among the Slavs, in parts of Germany and Scandinavia,
+and in modern France in the region of C&aelig;sar's "Celt&aelig;,"
+among the Auvergnats, the Bretons, and in Loz&egrave;re and Jura.
+Representatives of the type have been <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>{9}</span> found in
+Belgian and French Neolithic graves.<a id="footnotetag6" name=
+"footnotetag6"></a><a href="#footnote6"><sup>6</sup></a> Professor
+Sergi calls this the "Eurasiatic race," and, contrary to general
+opinion, identifies it with the Aryans, a savage people, inferior
+to the dolichocephalic Mediterranean race, whose language they
+Aryanised.<a id="footnotetag7" name="footnotetag7"></a><a href=
+"#footnote7"><sup>7</sup></a> Professor Keane thinks that they were
+themselves an Aryanised folk before reaching Europe, who in turn
+gave their acquired Celtic and Slavic speech to the preceding
+masses. Later came the Belg&aelig;, Aryans, who acquired the Celtic
+speech of the people they conquered.<a id="footnotetag8" name=
+"footnotetag8"></a><a href="#footnote8"><sup>8</sup></a></p>
+<p>Broca assumed that the dark, brachycephalic people whom he
+identified with C&aelig;sar's "Celt&aelig;," differed from the
+Belg&aelig;, were conquered by them, and acquired the language of
+their conquerors, hence wrongly called Celtic by philologists. The
+Belg&aelig; were tall and fair, and overran Gaul, except Aquitaine,
+mixing generally with the Celt&aelig;, who in C&aelig;sar's time
+had thus an infusion of Belgic blood.<a id="footnotetag9" name=
+"footnotetag9"></a><a href="#footnote9"><sup>9</sup></a> But before
+this conquest, the Celt&aelig; had already mingled with the
+aboriginal dolichocephalic folk of Gaul, Iberians, or
+Mediterraneans of Professor Sergi. The latter had apparently
+remained comparatively pure from admixture in Aquitaine, and are
+probably the Aquitani of C&aelig;sar.<a id="footnotetag10" name=
+"footnotetag10"></a><a href="#footnote10"><sup>10</sup></a></p>
+<p>But were the short, brachycephalic folk Celts? C&aelig;sar says
+the people who call themselves "Celt&aelig;" were called Gauls by
+the Romans, and Gauls, according to classical writers, were tall
+and fair.<a id="footnotetag11" name="footnotetag11"></a><a href=
+"#footnote11"><sup>11</sup></a> Hence the Celt&aelig; were not a
+short, dark race, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id=
+"page10"></a>{10}</span> and C&aelig;sar himself says that Gauls
+(including Celt&aelig;) looked with contempt on the short
+Romans.<a id="footnotetag12" name="footnotetag12"></a><a href=
+"#footnote12"><sup>12</sup></a> Strabo also says that Celt&aelig;
+and Belg&aelig; had the same Gaulish appearance, <i>i.e.</i> tall
+and fair. C&aelig;sar's statement that Aquitani, Galli, and
+Belg&aelig; differ in language, institutions, and laws is vague and
+unsupported by evidence, and may mean as to language no more than a
+difference in dialects. This is also suggested by Strabo's words,
+Celt&aelig; and Belg&aelig; "differ a little" in language.<a id=
+"footnotetag13" name="footnotetag13"></a><a href=
+"#footnote13"><sup>13</sup></a> No classical writer describes the
+Celts as short and dark, but the reverse. Short, dark people would
+have been called Iberians, without respect to skulls. Classical
+observers were not craniologists. The short, brachycephalic type is
+now prominent in France, because it has always been so, eliminating
+the tall, fair Celtic type. Conquering Celts, fewer in number than
+the broad and narrow-headed aborigines, intermarried or made less
+lasting alliances with them. In course of time the type of the more
+numerous race was bound to prevail. Even in C&aelig;sar's day the
+latter probably outnumbered the tall and fair Celts, who had,
+however, Celticised them. But classical writers, who knew the true
+Celt as tall and fair, saw that type only, just as every one, on
+first visiting France or Germany, sees his generalised type of
+Frenchman or German everywhere. Later, he modifies his opinion, but
+this the classical observers did not do. C&aelig;sar's campaigns
+must have drained Gaul of many tall and fair Celts. This, with the
+tendency of dark types to out-number fair types in South and
+Central Europe, may help to explain the growing prominence of the
+dark type, though the tall, fair type is far from uncommon.<a id=
+"footnotetag14" name="footnotetag14"></a><a href=
+"#footnote14"><sup>14</sup></a></p>
+<p>(2) The second theory, already anticipated, sees in Gauls and
+Belg&aelig; a tall, fair Celtic folk, speaking a Celtic language,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>{11}</span>
+and belonging to the race which stretched from Ireland to Asia
+Minor, from North Germany to the Po, and were masters of Teutonic
+tribes till they were driven by them from the region between Elbe
+and Rhine.<a id="footnotetag15" name="footnotetag15"></a><a href=
+"#footnote15"><sup>15</sup></a> Some Belgic tribes claimed a
+Germanic ancestry,<a id="footnotetag16" name=
+"footnotetag16"></a><a href="#footnote16"><sup>16</sup></a> but
+"German" was a word seldom used with precision, and in this case
+may not mean Teutonic. The fair hair of this people has made many
+suppose that they were akin to the Teutons. But fairness is
+relative, and the dark Romans may have called brown hair fair,
+while they occasionally distinguished between the "fair" Gauls and
+fairer Germans. Their institutions and their religions (<i>pace</i>
+Professor Rh[^y]s) differed, and though they were so long in
+contact the names of their gods and priests are unlike.<a id=
+"footnotetag17" name="footnotetag17"></a><a href=
+"#footnote17"><sup>17</sup></a> Their languages, again, though of
+"Aryan" stock, differ more from each other than does Celtic from
+Italic, pointing to a long period of Italo-Celtic unity, before
+Italiotes and Celts separated, and Celts came in contact with
+Teutons.<a id="footnotetag18" name="footnotetag18"></a><a href=
+"#footnote18"><sup>18</sup></a> The typical German differs in
+mental and moral qualities from the typical Celt. Contrast an east
+country Scot, descendant of Teutonic stock, with a West Highlander,
+and the difference leaps to the eyes. Celts and Germans of history
+differ, then, in relative fairness, character, religion, and
+language.</p>
+<p>The tall, blonde Teutonic type of the Row graves is
+dolichocephalic. Was the Celtic type (assuming that Broca's "Celts"
+were not true Celts) dolicho or brachy? Broca thinks the
+Belg&aelig; or "Kymri" were dolichocephalic, but all must agree
+with him that the skulls are too few to generalise from. Celtic
+iron-age skulls in Britain are dolichocephalic, perhaps a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>{12}</span>
+recrudescence of the aboriginal type. Broca's "Kymric" skulls are
+mesocephalic; this he attributes to crossing with the short
+round-heads. The evidence is too scanty for generalisation, while
+the Walloons, perhaps descendants of the Belg&aelig;, have a high
+index, and some Gauls of classical art are broad-headed.<a id=
+"footnotetag19" name="footnotetag19"></a><a href=
+"#footnote19"><sup>19</sup></a></p>
+<p>Skulls of the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age)
+are mainly broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic
+brachycephalic skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5
+inches shorter), Selaigneaux, and Borreby.<a id="footnotetag20"
+name="footnotetag20"></a><a href="#footnote20"><sup>20</sup></a>
+Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled Belg&aelig; on the whole
+reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow folk in
+Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belg&aelig;
+(Broca's Kymri), and thinks that Gaulish skulls were round, with
+beetling brows.<a id="footnotetag21" name=
+"footnotetag21"></a><a href="#footnote21"><sup>21</sup></a>
+Professors Ripley and Sergi, disregarding their difference in
+stature and higher cephalic index, identify them with the short
+Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.<a id=
+"footnotetag22" name="footnotetag22"></a><a href=
+"#footnote22"><sup>22</sup></a> Might not both, however, have
+originally sprung from a common stock and reached Europe at
+different times?<a id="footnotetag23" name=
+"footnotetag23"></a><a href="#footnote23"><sup>23</sup></a></p>
+<p>But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching
+conclusions regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At
+some very remote period there may have been a Celtic type, as at
+some further period there may have been an Aryan type. But the
+Celts, as we know them, must have mingled with the aborigines of
+Europe and become a mixed race, though preserving and endowing
+others with their racial and mental characteristics. Some Gauls or
+Belg&aelig; were dolichocephalic, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page13" id="page13"></a>{13}</span> to judge by their skulls,
+others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a relative
+term. Classical observers probably generalised from the higher
+classes, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But
+the higher classes may have had varying skulls, as well as stature
+and colour of hair,<a id="footnotetag24" name=
+"footnotetag24"></a><a href="#footnote24"><sup>24</sup></a> and
+Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed stock, and a short,
+dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those distant ages we
+must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed their
+characteristics, as well as the Celts themselves. What happened on
+the Eurasian steppe, the hypothetical cradle of the "Aryans,"
+whence the Celts came "stepping westwards," seems clear to some,
+but in truth is a book sealed with seven seals. The men whose Aryan
+speech was to dominate far and wide may already have possessed
+different types of skull, and that age was far from "the very
+beginning."</p>
+<p>Thus the Celts before setting out on their <i>Wanderjahre</i>
+may already have been a mixed race, even if their leaders were of
+purer stock. But they had the bond of common speech, institutions,
+and religion, and they formed a common Celtic type in Central and
+Western Europe. Intermarriage with the already mixed Neolithic folk
+of Central Europe produced further removal from the unmixed Celtic
+racial type; but though both reacted on each other as far as
+language, custom, and belief were concerned, on the whole the
+Celtic elements predominated in these respects. The Celtic
+migration into Gaul produced further racial mingling with
+descendants of the old pal&aelig;olithic stock, dolichocephalic
+Iberians and Ligurians, and brachycephalic swarthy folk (Broca's
+Celts). Thus even the first Celtic arrivals in Britain, the
+Goidels, were a people of mixed race, though probably relatively
+purer than the late coming Brythons, the latest of whom had
+probably mingled with the Teutons. Hence among Celtic-speaking folk
+or their <span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id=
+"page14"></a>{14}</span> descendants&mdash;short, dark,
+broad-beaded Bretons, tall, fair or rufous Highlanders, tall
+chestnut-haired Welshmen or Irishmen, Highlanders of Norse descent,
+short, dark, narrow-headed Highlanders, Irishmen, and
+Welshmen&mdash;there is a common Celtic <i>facies</i>, the result
+of old Celtic characteristics powerful enough so to impress
+themselves on such varied peoples in spite of what they gave to the
+Celtic incomers. These peoples became Celtic, and Celtic in speech
+and character they have remained, even where ancestral physical
+types are reasserting themselves. The folk of a Celtic type,
+whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or Norse, have all spoken a Celtic
+language and exhibit the same old Celtic
+characteristics&mdash;vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness,
+imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family
+ties, sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over
+easily to superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual
+morality. Some of these traits were already noted by classical
+observers.</p>
+<p>Celtic speech had early lost the initial <i>p</i> of old
+Indo-European speech, except in words beginning with <i>pt</i> and,
+perhaps, <i>ps</i>. Celtic <i>pare</i> (Lat. <i>pr&aelig;</i>)
+became <i>are</i>, met with in <i>Aremorici</i>, "the dwellers by
+the sea," <i>Arecluta</i>, "by the Clyde," the region watered by
+the Clyde. Irish <i>athair</i>, Manx <i>ayr</i>, and Irish
+<i>iasg</i>, represent respectively Latin <i>pater</i> and
+<i>piscis</i>. <i>P</i> occurring between vowels was also lost,
+<i>e.g.</i> Irish <i>caora</i>, "sheep," is from <i>kaperax</i>;
+<i>for</i>, "upon" (Lat. <i>super</i>), from <i>uper</i>. This
+change took place before the Goidelic Celts broke away and invaded
+Britain in the tenth century B.C., but while Celts and Teutons were
+still in contact, since Teutons borrowed words with initial
+<i>p</i>, <i>e.g.</i> Gothic <i>fairguni</i>, "mountain," from
+Celtic <i>percunion</i>, later <i>Ercunio</i>, the Hercynian
+forest. The loss must have occurred before 1000 B.C. But after the
+separation of the Goidelic group a further change took place.
+Goidels preserved the sound represented by <i>qu</i>, or more
+simply by <i>c</i> or <i>ch</i>, but this <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>{15}</span> was changed
+into <i>p</i> by the remaining continental Celts, who carried with
+them into Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Britain (the Brythons) words in
+which <i>q</i> became <i>p</i>. The British <i>Epidii</i> is from
+Gaulish <i>epos</i>, "horse," which is in Old Irish <i>ech</i>
+(Lat. <i>equus</i>). The Parisii take their name from
+<i>Qarisii</i>, the Pictones or Pictavi of Poictiers from
+<i>Pictos</i> (which in the plural <i>Pidi</i> gives us "Picts"),
+derived from <i>quicto</i>. This change took place after the
+Goidelic invasion of Britain in the tenth century B.C. On the other
+hand, some continental Celts may later have regained the power of
+pronouncing <i>q</i>. In Gaul the <i>q</i> of <i>Sequana</i>
+(Seine) was not changed to <i>p</i>, and a tribe dwelling on its
+banks was called the Sequani. This assumes that Sequana was a
+pre-Celtic word, possibly Ligurian.<a id="footnotetag25" name=
+"footnotetag25"></a><a href="#footnote25"><sup>25</sup></a>
+Professor Rh[^y]s thinks, however, that Goidelic tribes, identified
+by him with C&aelig;sar's Celt&aelig;, existed in Gaul and Spain
+before the coming of the Galli, and had preserved <i>q</i> in their
+speech. To them we owe Sequana, as well as certain names with
+<i>q</i> in Spain.<a id="footnotetag26" name=
+"footnotetag26"></a><a href="#footnote26"><sup>26</sup></a> This at
+least is certain, that Goidelic Celts of the <i>q</i> group
+occupied Gaul and Spain before reaching Britain and Ireland. Irish
+tradition and arch&aelig;ological data confirm this.<a id=
+"footnotetag27" name="footnotetag27"></a><a href=
+"#footnote27"><sup>27</sup></a> But whether their descendants were
+represented by C&aelig;sar's "Celt&aelig;" must be uncertain.
+Celt&aelig; and Galli, according to C&aelig;sar, were one and the
+same,<a id="footnotetag28" name="footnotetag28"></a><a href=
+"#footnote28"><sup>28</sup></a> and must have had the same general
+form of speech.</p>
+<p>The dialects of Goidelic speech&mdash;Irish, Manx, Gaelic, and
+that of the continental Goidels&mdash;preserved the <i>q</i> sound;
+those of Gallo-Brythonic speech&mdash;Gaulish, Breton, Welsh,
+Cornish&mdash;changed <i>q</i> into <i>p</i>. The speech of the
+Picts, perhaps connected with the Pictones of Gaul, also had this
+<i>p</i> sound. Who, then, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page16"
+id="page16"></a>{16}</span> were the Picts? According to Professor
+Rh[^y]s they were pre-Aryans,<a id="footnotetag29" name=
+"footnotetag29"></a><a href="#footnote29"><sup>29</sup></a> but
+they must have been under the influence of Brythonic Celts. Dr.
+Skene regarded them as Goidels speaking a Goidelic dialect with
+Brythonic forms.<a id="footnotetag30" name=
+"footnotetag30"></a><a href="#footnote30"><sup>30</sup></a> Mr.
+Nicholson thinks they were Goidels who had preserved the
+Indo-European <i>p</i>.<a id="footnotetag31" name=
+"footnotetag31"></a><a href="#footnote31"><sup>31</sup></a> But
+might they not be descendants of a Brythonic group, arriving early
+in Britain and driven northwards by newcomers? Professor Windisch
+and Dr. Stokes regard them as Celts, allied to the Brythons rather
+than to the Goidels, the phonetics of their speech resembling those
+of Welsh rather than Irish.<a id="footnotetag32" name=
+"footnotetag32"></a><a href="#footnote32"><sup>32</sup></a></p>
+<p>The theory of an early Goidelic occupation of Britain has been
+contested by Professor Meyer,<a id="footnotetag33" name=
+"footnotetag33"></a><a href="#footnote33"><sup>33</sup></a> who
+holds that the first Goidels reached Britain from Ireland in the
+second century, while Dr. MacBain<a id="footnotetag34" name=
+"footnotetag34"></a><a href="#footnote34"><sup>34</sup></a> was of
+the opinion that England, apart from Wales and Cornwall, knew no
+Goidels, the place-names being Brythonic. But unless all Goidels
+reached Ireland from Gaul or Spain, as some did, Britain was more
+easily reached than Ireland by migrating Goidels from the
+Continent. Prominent Goidelic place-names would become Brythonic,
+but insignificant places would retain their Goidelic form, and to
+these we must look for decisive evidence.<a id="footnotetag35"
+name="footnotetag35"></a><a href="#footnote35"><sup>35</sup></a> A
+Goidelic occupation by the ninth century B.C. is suggested by the
+name "Cassiterides" (a word of the <i>q</i> group) applied to
+Britain. If the Goidels occupied Britain first, they may have
+called their land <i>Qretanis</i> or <i>Qritanis</i>, which Pictish
+invaders would change to <i>Pretanis</i>, found in Welsh "Ynys
+Pridain," Pridain's Isle, or Isle of the Picts, "pointing to the
+original underlying the Greek [Greek: Pretanikai N&ecirc;soi]
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>{17}</span>
+or Pictish Isles,"<a id="footnotetag36" name=
+"footnotetag36"></a><a href="#footnote36"><sup>36</sup></a> though
+the change may be due to continental <i>p</i> Celts trading with
+<i>q</i> Celts in Britain. With the Pictish occupation would agree
+the fact that Irish Goidels called the Picts who came to Ireland
+<i>Cruithne=Qritani=Pre-tani</i>. In Ireland they almost certainly
+adopted Goidelic speech.</p>
+<p>Whether or not all the Pictish invaders of Britain were called
+"Pictavi," this word or Picti, perhaps from <i>quicto</i> (Irish
+<i>cicht</i>, "engraver"),<a id="footnotetag37" name=
+"footnotetag37"></a><a href="#footnote37"><sup>37</sup></a> became
+a general name for this people. <i>Q</i> had been changed into
+<i>p</i> on the Continent; hence "Pictavi" or "Pictones," "the
+tattooed men," those who "engraved" figures on their bodies, as the
+Picts certainly did. Dispossessed and driven north by incoming
+Brythons and Belg&aelig;, they later became the virulent enemies of
+Rome. In 306 Eumenius describes all the northern tribes as
+"Caledonii and other Picts," while some of the tribes mentioned by
+Ptolemy have Brythonic names or names with Gaulish cognates.
+Place-names in the Pictish area, personal names in the Pictish
+chronicle, and Pictish names like "Peanfahel,"<a id="footnotetag38"
+name="footnotetag38"></a><a href="#footnote38"><sup>38</sup></a>
+have Brythonic affinities. If the Picts spoke a Brythonic dialect,
+S. Columba's need of an interpreter when preaching to them would be
+explained.<a id="footnotetag39" name="footnotetag39"></a><a href=
+"#footnote39"><sup>39</sup></a> Later the Picts were conquered by
+Irish Goidels, the Scotti. The Picts, however, must already have
+mingled with aboriginal peoples and with Goidels, if these were
+already in Britain, and they may have adopted their supposed
+non-Aryan customs from the aborigines. On the other hand, the
+matriarchate seems at one time to have been Celtic, and it may have
+been no more than a conservative survival in the Pictish royal
+house, as it was elsewhere.<a id="footnotetag40" name=
+"footnotetag40"></a><a href="#footnote40"><sup>40</sup></a>
+Britons, as well as Caledonii, had wives in common.<a id=
+"footnotetag41" name="footnotetag41"></a><a href=
+"#footnote41"><sup>41</sup></a> As to tattooing, it was practised
+by the Scotti ("the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id=
+"page18"></a>{18}</span> scarred and painted men"?), and the
+Britons dyed themselves with woad, while what seem to be tattoo
+marks appear on faces on Gaulish coins.<a id="footnotetag42" name=
+"footnotetag42"></a><a href="#footnote42"><sup>42</sup></a>
+Tattooing, painting, and scarifying the body are varieties of one
+general custom, and little stress can be laid on Pictish tattooing
+as indicating a racial difference. Its purpose may have been
+ornamental, or possibly to impart an aspect of fierceness, or the
+figures may have been totem marks, as they are elsewhere. Finally,
+the description of the Caledonii, a Pictish people, possessing
+flaming hair and mighty limbs, shows that they differed from the
+short, dark pre-Celtic folk.<a id="footnotetag43" name=
+"footnotetag43"></a><a href="#footnote43"><sup>43</sup></a></p>
+<p>The Pictish problem must remain obscure, a welcome puzzle to
+antiquaries, philologists, and ethnologists. Our knowledge of
+Pictish religion is too scanty for the interpretation of Celtic
+religion to be affected by it. But we know that the Picts offered
+sacrifice before war&mdash;a Celtic custom, and had Druids, as also
+had the Celts.</p>
+<p>The earliest Celtic "kingdom" was in the region between the
+upper waters of the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube, where probably
+in Neolithic times the formation of their Celtic speech as a
+distinctive language began. Here they first became known to the
+Greeks, probably as a semi-mythical people, the
+Hyperboreans&mdash;the folk dwelling beyond the Ripoean mountains
+whence Boreas blew&mdash;with whom Hecat&aelig;us in the fourth
+century identifies them. But they were now known as Celts, and
+their territory as Celtica, while "Galatas" was used as a synonym
+of "Celt&aelig;," in the third century B.C.<a id="footnotetag44"
+name="footnotetag44"></a><a href="#footnote44"><sup>44</sup></a>
+The name generally applied by the Romans to the Celts was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>{19}</span>
+"Galli" a term finally confined by them to the people of
+Gaul.<a id="footnotetag45" name="footnotetag45"></a><a href=
+"#footnote45"><sup>45</sup></a> Successive bands of Celts went
+forth from this comparatively restricted territory, until the
+Celtic "empire" for some centuries before 300 B.C. included the
+British Isles, parts of the Iberian peninsula, Gaul, North Italy,
+Belgium, Holland, great part of Germany, and Austria. When the
+German tribes revolted, Celtic bands appeared in Asia Minor, and
+remained there as the Galatian Celts. Arch&aelig;ological
+discoveries with a Celtic <i>facies</i> have been made in most of
+these lands but even more striking is the witness of place-names.
+Celtic <i>dunon</i>, a fort or castle (the Gaelic <i>dun</i>), is
+found in compound names from Ireland to Southern Russia.
+<i>Magos</i>, "a field," is met with in Britain, France,
+Switzerland, Prussia, Italy, and Austria. River and mountain names
+familiar in Britain occur on the Continent. The Pennine range of
+Cumberland has the same name as the Appenines. Rivers named for
+their inherent divinity, <i>devos</i>, are found in Britain and on
+the Continent&mdash;Dee, Deva, etc.</p>
+<p>Besides this linguistic, had the Celts also a political unity
+over their great "empire," under one head? Such a unity certainly
+did not prevail from Ireland to the Balkan peninsula, but it
+prevailed over a large part of the Celtic area. Livy, following
+Timagenes, who perhaps cited a lost Celtic epos, speaks of king
+Ambicatus ruling over the Celts from Spain to Germany, and sending
+his sister's sons, Bellovesus and Segovesus, with many followers,
+to found new colonies in Italy and the Hercynian forest.<a id=
+"footnotetag46" name="footnotetag46"></a><a href=
+"#footnote46"><sup>46</sup></a> Mythical as this may be, it
+suggests the hegemony of one tribe or one chief over other tribes
+and chiefs, for Livy says that the sovereign power rested with the
+Bituriges who appointed the king of Celticum, <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>{20}</span> viz.
+Ambicatus. Some such unity is necessary to explain Celtic power in
+the ancient world, and it was made possible by unity of race or at
+least of the congeries of Celticised peoples, by religious
+solidarity, and probably by regular gatherings of all the kings or
+chiefs. If the Druids were a Celtic priesthood at this time, or
+already formed a corporation as they did later in Gaul, they must
+have endeavoured to form and preserve such a unity. And if it was
+never so compact as Livy's words suggest, it must have been
+regarded as an ideal by the Celts or by their poets, Ambicatus
+serving as a central figure round which the ideas of empire
+crystallised. The hegemony existed in Gaul, where the Arverni and
+their king claimed power over the other tribes, and where the
+Romans tried to weaken the Celtic unity by opposing to them the
+Aedni.<a id="footnotetag47" name="footnotetag47"></a><a href=
+"#footnote47"><sup>47</sup></a> In Belgium the hegemony was in the
+hands of the Suessiones, to whose king Belgic tribes in Britain
+submitted.<a id="footnotetag48" name="footnotetag48"></a><a href=
+"#footnote48"><sup>48</sup></a> In Ireland the "high king" was
+supreme over other smaller kings, and in Galatia the unity of the
+tribes was preserved by a council with regular assemblies.<a id=
+"footnotetag49" name="footnotetag49"></a><a href=
+"#footnote49"><sup>49</sup></a></p>
+<p>The diffusion of the Ambicatus legend would help to preserve
+unity by recalling the mythic greatness of the past. The Boii and
+Insubri appealed to transalpine Gauls for aid by reminding them of
+the deeds of their ancestors.<a id="footnotetag50" name=
+"footnotetag50"></a><a href="#footnote50"><sup>50</sup></a> Nor
+would the Druids omit to infuse into their pupils' minds the
+sentiment of national greatness. For this and for other reasons,
+the Romans, to whom "the sovereignty of all Gaul" was an obnoxious
+watch-word, endeavoured to suppress them.<a id="footnotetag51"
+name="footnotetag51"></a><a href="#footnote51"><sup>51</sup></a>
+But the Celts were too widely scattered ever to form a compact
+empire.<a id="footnotetag52" name="footnotetag52"></a><a href=
+"#footnote52"><sup>52</sup></a> The Roman empire extended itself
+gradually in the consciousness of <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page21" id="page21"></a>{21}</span> its power; the cohesion of the
+Celts in an empire or under one king was made impossible by their
+migrations and diffusion. Their unity, such as it was, was broken
+by the revolt of the Teutonic tribes, and their subjugation was
+completed by Rome. The dreams of wide empire remained dreams. For
+the Celts, in spite of their vigour, have been a race of dreamers,
+their conquests in later times, those of the spirit rather than of
+the mailed fist. Their superiority has consisted in imparting to
+others their characteristics; organised unity and a vast empire
+could never be theirs.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote6" name=
+"footnote6"></a><b>Footnote 6:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag6">(return)</a>
+<p>Ripley, <i>Races of Europe</i>; Wilser, <i>L'Anthropologie</i>,
+xiv. 494; Collignon, <i>ibid.</i> 1-20; Broca, <i>Rev.
+d'Anthrop.</i> ii. 589 ff.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote7" name=
+"footnote7"></a><b>Footnote 7:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag7">(return)</a>
+<p>Sergi, <i>The Mediterranean Race</i>, 241 ff., 263 ff.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote8" name=
+"footnote8"></a><b>Footnote 8:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag8">(return)</a>
+<p>Keane, <i>Man, Past and Present</i>, 511 ff., 521, 528.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote9" name=
+"footnote9"></a><b>Footnote 9:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag9">(return)</a>
+<p>Broca, <i>Mem. d'Anthrop.</i> i. 370 ff. Hovelacque thinks, with
+Keane, that the Gauls learned Celtic from the dark round-heads. But
+Galatian and British Celts, who had never been in contact with the
+latter, spoke Celtic. See Holmes, <i>C&aelig;sar's Conquest of
+Gaul</i>, 311-312.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote10" name=
+"footnote10"></a><b>Footnote 10:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag10">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, i. 1; Collignon, <i>Mem. Soc. d'Anthrop. de
+Paris</i>, 3<sup>me</sup> ser. i. 67.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote11" name=
+"footnote11"></a><b>Footnote 11:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag11">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, i. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote12" name=
+"footnote12"></a><b>Footnote 12:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag12">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, ii. 30.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote13" name=
+"footnote13"></a><b>Footnote 13:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag13">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, i. 1; Strabo, iv. 1. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote14" name=
+"footnote14"></a><b>Footnote 14:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag14">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Holmes, 295; Beddoe, <i>Scottish Review</i>, xix. 416.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote15" name=
+"footnote15"></a><b>Footnote 15:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag15">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 175.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote16" name=
+"footnote16"></a><b>Footnote 16:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag16">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, ii. 4; Strabo, vii. 1. 2. Germans are taller and
+fairer than Gauls; Tacitus, <i>Agric.</i> ii. Cf. Beddoe,
+<i>JAI</i> xx. 354-355.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote17" name=
+"footnote17"></a><b>Footnote 17:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag17">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>PH</i> ii. 374. Welsh Gwydion and Teutonic Wuotan
+may have the same root, see p. <a href="#page105">105</a>. Celtic
+Taranis has been compared to Donar, but there is no connection, and
+Taranis was not certainly a thunder-god. Much of the folk-religion
+was alike, but this applies to folk-religion everywhere.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote18" name=
+"footnote18"></a><b>Footnote 18:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag18">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 251.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote19" name=
+"footnote19"></a><b>Footnote 19:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag19">(return)</a>
+<p>Beddoe, <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, v. 516. Tall, fair, and highly
+brachycephalic types are still found in France, <i>ibid.</i> i.
+213; Bortrand-Reinach, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 39.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote20" name=
+"footnote20"></a><b>Footnote 20:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag20">(return)</a>
+<p>Beddoe, 516; <i>L'Anthrop.</i>, v. 63; Taylor, 81; Greenwell,
+<i>British Barrows</i>, 680.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote21" name=
+"footnote21"></a><b>Footnote 21:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag21">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Fort. Rev.</i> xvi. 328; <i>Mem. of London Anthr. Soc.</i>,
+1865.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote22" name=
+"footnote22"></a><b>Footnote 22:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag22">(return)</a>
+<p>Ripley, 309; Sergi, 243; Keane, 529; Taylor, 112.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote23" name=
+"footnote23"></a><b>Footnote 23:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag23">(return)</a>
+<p>Taylor, 122, 295.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote24" name=
+"footnote24"></a><b>Footnote 24:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag24">(return)</a>
+<p>The Walloons are both dark and fair.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote25" name=
+"footnote25"></a><b>Footnote 25:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag25">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>PH</i> ii. 132.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote26" name=
+"footnote26"></a><b>Footnote 26:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag26">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>Proc. Phil. Soc.</i> 1891; "Celt&aelig; and Galli,"
+<i>Proc. Brit. Acad.</i> ii. D'Arbois points out that we do not
+know that these words are Celtic (<i>RC</i> xii, 478).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote27" name=
+"footnote27"></a><b>Footnote 27:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag27">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page51">51</a>, <a href=
+"#page376">376</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote28" name=
+"footnote28"></a><b>Footnote 28:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag28">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, i. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote29" name=
+"footnote29"></a><b>Footnote 29:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag29">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 160.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote30" name=
+"footnote30"></a><b>Footnote 30:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag30">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. ch. 8; see p. <a href="#page135">135</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote31" name=
+"footnote31"></a><b>Footnote 31:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag31">(return)</a>
+<p><i>ZCP</i> iii. 308; <i>Keltic Researches</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote32" name=
+"footnote32"></a><b>Footnote 32:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag32">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, "Kelt. Sprachen," Ersch-Gruber's
+<i>Encylop&auml;die</i>; Stokes, <i>Linguistic Value of the Irish
+Annals</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote33" name=
+"footnote33"></a><b>Footnote 33:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag33">(return)</a>
+<p><i>THSC</i> 1895-1896, 55 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote34" name=
+"footnote34"></a><b>Footnote 34:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag34">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CM</i> xii. 434.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote35" name=
+"footnote35"></a><b>Footnote 35:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag35">(return)</a>
+<p>In the Isle of Skye, where, looking at names of prominent places
+alone, Norse derivatives are to Gaelic as 3 to 2, they are as 1 to
+5 when names of insignificant places, untouched by Norse influence,
+are included.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote36" name=
+"footnote36"></a><b>Footnote 36:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag36">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 241.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote37" name=
+"footnote37"></a><b>Footnote 37:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag37">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote38" name=
+"footnote38"></a><b>Footnote 38:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag38">(return)</a>
+<p>Bede, <i>Eccl. Hist.</i> i. 12.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote39" name=
+"footnote39"></a><b>Footnote 39:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag39">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamnan, <i>Vita S. Col.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote40" name=
+"footnote40"></a><b>Footnote 40:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag40">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page222">222</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote41" name=
+"footnote41"></a><b>Footnote 41:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag41">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; C&aelig;sar, v. 14. See p. <a href=
+"#page223">223</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote42" name=
+"footnote42"></a><b>Footnote 42:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag42">(return)</a>
+<p>Isidore, <i>Etymol.</i> ix. 2, 103; Rh[^y]s, <i>CB</i> 242-243;
+C&aelig;sar, v. 14; Nicholson, <i>ZCP</i> in. 332.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote43" name=
+"footnote43"></a><b>Footnote 43:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag43">(return)</a>
+<p>Tacitus, <i>Agric.</i> ii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote44" name=
+"footnote44"></a><b>Footnote 44:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag44">(return)</a>
+<p>If <i>Celt&aelig;</i> is from <i>qelo</i>, "to raise," it may
+mean "the lofty," just as many savages call themselves "the men,"
+<i>par excellence</i>. Rh[^y]s derives it from <i>qel</i>, "to
+slay," and gives it the sense of "warriors." See Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i>; Stokes, <i>US</i> 83. <i>Galat&aelig;</i> is from
+<i>gala</i> (Irish <i>gal</i>), "bravery." Hence perhaps
+"warriors."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote45" name=
+"footnote45"></a><b>Footnote 45:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag45">(return)</a>
+<p>"Galli" may be connected with "Galat&aelig;," but D'Arbois
+denies this. For all these titles see his <i>PH</i> ii. 396 ff.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote46" name=
+"footnote46"></a><b>Footnote 46:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag46">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, v. 31 f.; D'Arbois, <i>PH</i> ii. 304, 391.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote47" name=
+"footnote47"></a><b>Footnote 47:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag47">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 10. 3; C&aelig;sar, i. 31, vii. 4; <i>Frag. Hist.
+Gr&aelig;c.</i> i. 437.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote48" name=
+"footnote48"></a><b>Footnote 48:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag48">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, ii. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote49" name=
+"footnote49"></a><b>Footnote 49:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag49">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, xii. 5. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote50" name=
+"footnote50"></a><b>Footnote 50:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag50">(return)</a>
+<p>Polybius, ii. 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote51" name=
+"footnote51"></a><b>Footnote 51:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag51">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, i. 2, 1-3.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote52" name=
+"footnote52"></a><b>Footnote 52:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag52">(return)</a>
+<p>On the subject of Celtic unity see Jullian, "Du patriotisme
+gaulois," <i>RC</i> xxiii. 373.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>{22}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap3" id="chap3">CHAPTER III.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS.</h3>
+<p>The passage in which C&aelig;sar sums up the Gaulish pantheon
+runs: "They worship chiefly the god Mercury; of him there are many
+symbols, and they regard him as the inventor of all the arts, as
+the guide of travellers, and as possessing great influence over
+bargains and commerce. After him they worship Apollo and Mars,
+Juppiter and Minerva. About these they hold much the same beliefs
+as other nations. Apollo heals diseases, Minerva teaches the
+elements of industry and the arts, Juppiter rules over the heavens,
+Mars directs war.... All the Gauls assert that they are descended
+from Dispater, their progenitor."<a id="footnotetag53" name=
+"footnotetag53"></a><a href="#footnote53"><sup>53</sup></a></p>
+<p>As will be seen in this chapter, the Gauls had many other gods
+than these, while the Roman gods, by whose names C&aelig;sar calls
+the Celtic divinities, probably only approximately corresponded to
+them in functions. As the Greeks called by the names of their own
+gods those of Egypt, Persia, and Babylonia, so the Romans
+identified Greek, Teutonic, and Celtic gods with theirs. The
+identification was seldom complete, and often extended only to one
+particular function or attribute. But, as in Gaul, it was often
+part of a state policy, and there the fusion of cults was intended
+to break the power of the Druids. The Gauls seem to have adopted
+Roman civilisation easily, and to have acquiesced in the process of
+assimilation of their <span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id=
+"page23"></a>{23}</span> divinities to those of their conquerors.
+Hence we have thousands of inscriptions in which a god is called by
+the name of the Roman deity to whom he was assimilated and by his
+own Celtic name&mdash;Jupiter Taranis, Apollo Grannus, etc. Or
+sometimes to the name of the Roman god is added a descriptive
+Celtic epithet or a word derived from a Celtic place-name. Again,
+since Augustus reinstated the cult of the Lares, with himself as
+chief Lar, the epithet Augustus was given to all gods to whom the
+character of the Lares could be ascribed, <i>e.g.</i> Belenos
+Augustus. Cults of local gods became cults of the genius of the
+place, coupled with the genius of the emperor. In some cases,
+however, the native name stands alone. The process was aided by
+art. Celtic gods are represented after Greco-Roman or
+Greco-Egyptian models. Sometimes these carry a native divine
+symbol, or, in a few cases, the type is purely native, <i>e.g.</i>
+that of Cernunnos. Thus the native paganism was largely transformed
+before Christianity appeared in Gaul. Many Roman gods were
+worshipped as such, not only by the Romans in Gaul, but by the
+Gauls, and we find there also traces of the Oriental cults affected
+by the Romans.<a id="footnotetag54" name=
+"footnotetag54"></a><a href="#footnote54"><sup>54</sup></a></p>
+<p>There were probably in Gaul many local gods, tribal or
+otherwise, of roads and commerce, of the arts, of healing, etc.,
+who, bearing different names, might easily be identified with each
+other or with Roman gods. C&aelig;sar's Mercury, Mars, Minerva,
+etc., probably include many local Minervas, Mars, and Mercuries.
+There may, however, have been a few great gods common to all Gaul,
+universally worshipped, besides the numerous local gods, some of
+whom may have been adopted from the aborigines. An examination of
+the divine names in Holder's <i>Altceltischer Sprachschatz</i> will
+show how numerous the local gods of the continental Celts must have
+been. Professor <span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id=
+"page24"></a>{24}</span> Anwyl reckons that 270 gods are mentioned
+once on inscriptions, 24 twice, 11 thrice, 10 four times, 3 five
+times, 2 seven times, 4 fifteen times, 1 nineteen times (Grannos),
+and 1 thirty-nine times (Belenos).<a id="footnotetag55" name=
+"footnotetag55"></a><a href="#footnote55"><sup>55</sup></a></p>
+<p>The god or gods identified with Mercury were very popular in
+Gaul, as C&aelig;sar's words and the witness of place-names derived
+from the Roman name of the god show. These had probably supplanted
+earlier names derived from those of the corresponding native gods.
+Many temples of the god existed, especially in the region of the
+Allobrogi, and bronze statuettes of him have been found in
+abundance. Pliny also describes a colossal statue designed for the
+Arverni who had a great temple of the god on the Puy de
+D&ocirc;me.<a id="footnotetag56" name="footnotetag56"></a><a href=
+"#footnote56"><sup>56</sup></a> Mercury was not necessarily the
+chief god, and at times, <i>e.g.</i> in war, the native war-gods
+would be prominent. The native names of the gods assimilated to
+Mercury are many in number; in some cases they are epithets,
+derived from the names of places where a local "Mercury" was
+worshipped, in others they are derived from some function of the
+gods.<a id="footnotetag57" name="footnotetag57"></a><a href=
+"#footnote57"><sup>57</sup></a> One of these titles is Artaios,
+perhaps cognate with Irish <i>art</i>, "god," or connected with
+<i>artos</i>, "bear." Professor Rh[^y]s, however, finds its cognate
+in Welsh <i>&acirc;r</i>, "ploughed land," as if one of the god's
+functions connected him with agriculture.<a id="footnotetag58"
+name="footnotetag58"></a><a href="#footnote58"><sup>58</sup></a>
+This is supported by another inscription to Mercurius Cultor at
+Wurtemberg. Local gods of agriculture must thus have been
+assimilated to Mercury. A god Moccus, "swine," was also identified
+with Mercury, and the swine was a frequent representative of the
+corn-spirit or of vegetation divinities in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>{25}</span> Europe. The
+flesh of the animal was often mixed with the seed corn or buried in
+the fields to promote fertility. The swine had been a sacred animal
+among the Celts, but had apparently become an anthropomorphic god
+of fertility, Moccus, assimilated to Mercury, perhaps because the
+Greek Hermes caused fertility in flocks and herds. Such a god was
+one of a class whose importance was great among the Celts as an
+agricultural people.</p>
+<p>Commerce, much developed among the settled Gauls, gave rise to a
+god or gods who guarded roads over which merchants travelled, and
+boundaries where their transactions took place. Hence we have an
+inscription from Yorkshire, "To the god who invented roads and
+paths," while another local god of roads, equated with Mercury, was
+Cimiacinus.<a id="footnotetag59" name="footnotetag59"></a><a href=
+"#footnote59"><sup>59</sup></a></p>
+<p>Another god, Ogm&iacute;os, a native god of speech, who draws
+men by chains fastened to the tip of his tongue, is identified in
+Lucian with Heracles, and is identical with the Goidelic
+Ogma.<a id="footnotetag60" name="footnotetag60"></a><a href=
+"#footnote60"><sup>60</sup></a> Eloquence and speech are important
+matters among primitive peoples, and this god has more likeness to
+Mercury as a culture-god than to Heracles, Greek writers speaking
+of eloquence as binding men with the chains of Hermes.</p>
+<p>Several local gods, of agriculture, commerce, and culture, were
+thus identified with Mercury, and the Celtic Mercury was sometimes
+worshipped on hilltops, one of the epithets of the god, Dumias,
+being connected with the Celtic word for hill or mound. Irish gods
+were also associated with mounds.</p>
+<p>Many local gods were identified with Apollo both in his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>{26}</span>
+capacity of god of healing and also that of god of light.<a id=
+"footnotetag61" name="footnotetag61"></a><a href=
+"#footnote61"><sup>61</sup></a> The two functions are not
+incompatible, and this is suggested by the name Grannos, god of
+thermal springs both in Britain and on the Continent. The name is
+connected with a root which gives words meaning "burning,"
+"shining," etc., and from which comes also Irish <i>grian</i>,
+"sun." The god is still remembered in a chant sung round bonfires
+in Auvergne. A sheaf of corn is set on fire, and called "Granno
+mio," while the people sing, "Granno, my friend; Granno, my father;
+Granno, my mother."<a id="footnotetag62" name=
+"footnotetag62"></a><a href="#footnote62"><sup>62</sup></a> Another
+god of thermal springs was Borvo, Bormo, or Bormanus, whose name is
+derived from <i>borvo</i>, whence Welsh <i>berw</i>, "boiling," and
+is evidently connected with the bubbling of the springs.<a id=
+"footnotetag63" name="footnotetag63"></a><a href=
+"#footnote63"><sup>63</sup></a> Votive tablets inscribed Grannos or
+Borvo show that the offerers desired healing for themselves or
+others.</p>
+<p>The name Belenos found over a wide area, but mainly in Aquileia,
+comes from <i>belo-s</i>, bright, and probably means "the shining
+one." It is thus the name of a Celtic sun-god, equated with Apollo
+in that character. If he is the Belinus referred to by Geoffrey of
+Monmouth,<a id="footnotetag64" name="footnotetag64"></a><a href=
+"#footnote64"><sup>64</sup></a> his cult must have extended into
+Britain from the Continent, and he is often mentioned by classical
+writers, while much later Ausonius speaks of his priest in
+Gaul.<a id="footnotetag65" name="footnotetag65"></a><a href=
+"#footnote65"><sup>65</sup></a> Many place and personal names point
+to the popularity of his cult, and inscriptions show that he, too,
+was a god of health and of healing-springs. The plant
+<i>Belinuntia</i> <span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id=
+"page27"></a>{27}</span> was called after him and venerated for its
+healing powers.<a id="footnotetag66" name=
+"footnotetag66"></a><a href="#footnote66"><sup>66</sup></a> The
+sun-god's functions of light and fertility easily passed over into
+those of health-giving, as our study of Celtic festivals will
+show.</p>
+<p>A god with the name Maponos, connected with words denoting
+"youthfulness," is found in England and Gaul, equated with Apollo,
+who himself is called <i>Bonus Puer</i> in a Dacian inscription.
+Another god Mogons or Mogounos, whose name is derived from
+<i>Mago</i>, "to increase," and suggests the idea of youthful
+strength, may be a form of the sun-god, though some evidence points
+to his having been a sky-god.<a id="footnotetag67" name=
+"footnotetag67"></a><a href="#footnote67"><sup>67</sup></a></p>
+<p>The Celtic Apollo is referred to by classical writers. Diodorus
+speaks of his circular temple in an island of the Hyperboreans,
+adorned with votive offerings. The kings of the city where the
+temple stood, and its overseers, were called "Boreads," and every
+nineteenth year the god appeared dancing in the sky at the spring
+equinox.<a id="footnotetag68" name="footnotetag68"></a><a href=
+"#footnote68"><sup>68</sup></a> The identifications of the temple
+with Stonehenge and of the Boreads with the Bards are quite
+hypothetical. Apollonius says that the Celts regarded the waters of
+Eridanus as due to the tears of Apollo&mdash;probably a native myth
+attributing the creation of springs and rivers to the tears of a
+god, equated by the Greeks with Apollo.<a id="footnotetag69" name=
+"footnotetag69"></a><a href="#footnote69"><sup>69</sup></a> The
+Celtic sun-god, as has been seen, was a god of healing springs.</p>
+<p>Some sixty names or titles of Celtic war-gods are known,
+generally equated with Mars.<a id="footnotetag70" name=
+"footnotetag70"></a><a href="#footnote70"><sup>70</sup></a> These
+were probably local tribal <span class="pagenum"><a name="page28"
+id="page28"></a>{28}</span> divinities regarded as leading their
+worshippers to battle. Some of the names show that these gods were
+thought of as mighty warriors, <i>e.g.</i> Caturix, "battle-king,"
+Belatu-Cadros&mdash;a common name in Britain&mdash;perhaps meaning
+"comely in slaughter,"<a id="footnotetag71" name=
+"footnotetag71"></a><a href="#footnote71"><sup>71</sup></a> and
+Albiorix, "world-king."<a id="footnotetag72" name=
+"footnotetag72"></a><a href="#footnote72"><sup>72</sup></a> Another
+name, Rigisamus, from <i>rix</i> and <i>samus</i>, "like to," gives
+the idea of "king-like."<a id="footnotetag73" name=
+"footnotetag73"></a><a href="#footnote73"><sup>73</sup></a></p>
+<p>Toutatis, Totatis, and Tutatis are found in inscriptions from
+Seckau, York, and Old Carlisle, and may be identified with Lucan's
+Teutates, who with Taranis and Esus mentioned by him, is regarded
+as one of three pan-Celtic gods.<a id="footnotetag74" name=
+"footnotetag74"></a><a href="#footnote74"><sup>74</sup></a> Had
+this been the case we should have expected to find many more
+inscriptions to them. The scholiast on Lucan identifies Teutates
+now with Mars, now with Mercury. His name is connected with
+<i>teuta</i>, "tribe," and he is thus a tribal war-god, regarded as
+the embodiment of the tribe in its warlike capacity.</p>
+<p>Neton, a war-god of the Accetani, has a name connected with
+Irish <i>nia</i>, "warrior," and may be equated with the Irish
+war-god N&eacute;t. Another god, Camulos, known from British and
+continental inscriptions, and figured on British coins with warlike
+emblems, has perhaps some connection with Cumal, father of Fionn,
+though it is uncertain whether Cumal was an Irish divinity.<a id=
+"footnotetag75" name="footnotetag75"></a><a href=
+"#footnote75"><sup>75</sup></a></p>
+<p>Another god equated with Mars is the Gaulish Braciaca, god of
+malt. According to classical writers, the Celts were <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>{29}</span> drunken
+race, and besides importing quantities of wine, they made their own
+native drinks, <i>e.g.</i> [Greek: chourmi], the Irish
+<i>cuirm</i>, and <i>braccat</i>, both made from malt
+(<i>braich</i>).<a id="footnotetag76" name=
+"footnotetag76"></a><a href="#footnote76"><sup>76</sup></a> These
+words, with the Gaulish <i>brace</i>, "spelt,"<a id="footnotetag77"
+name="footnotetag77"></a><a href="#footnote77"><sup>77</sup></a>
+are connected with the name of this god, who was a divine
+personification of the substance from which the drink was made
+which produced, according to primitive ideas, the divine frenzy of
+intoxication. It is not clear why Mars should have been equated
+with this god.</p>
+<p>C&aelig;sar says that the Celtic Juppiter governed heaven. A god
+who carries a wheel, probably a sun-god, and another, a god of
+thunder, called Taranis, seem to have been equated with Juppiter.
+The sun-god with the wheel was not equated with Apollo, who seems
+to have represented Celtic sun-gods only in so far as they were
+also gods of healing. In some cases the god with the wheel carries
+also a thunderbolt, and on some altars, dedicated to Juppiter, both
+a wheel and a thunderbolt are figured. Many races have symbolised
+the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman god, Summanus,
+probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as his
+emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the
+wheel symbol as an amulet,<a id="footnotetag78" name=
+"footnotetag78"></a><a href="#footnote78"><sup>78</sup></a> while
+at the midsummer festivals blazing wheels, symbolising the sun,
+were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god carries a thunderbolt
+because the Celts, like other races, believed that lightning was a
+spark from the sun.</p>
+<p>Three divinities have claims to be the god whom C&aelig;sar
+calls Dispater&mdash;a god with a hammer, a crouching god called
+Cernunnos, and a god called Esus or Silvanus. Possibly the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>{30}</span>
+native Dispater was differently envisaged in different districts,
+so that these would be local forms of one god.</p>
+<p>1. The god Taranis mentioned by Lucan is probably the Taranoos
+and Taranucnos of inscriptions, sometimes equated with
+Juppiter.<a id="footnotetag79" name="footnotetag79"></a><a href=
+"#footnote79"><sup>79</sup></a> These names are connected with
+Celtic words for "thunder"; hence Taranis is a thunder-god. The
+scholiasts on Lucan identify him now with Juppiter, now with
+Dispater. This latter identification is supported by many who
+regard the god with the hammer as at once Taranis and Dispater,
+though it cannot be proved that the god with the hammer is Taranis.
+On one inscription the hammer-god is called Sucellos; hence we may
+regard Taranis as a distinct deity, a thunder-god, equated with
+Juppiter, and possibly represented by the Taran of the Welsh tale
+of <i>Kulhwych</i>.<a id="footnotetag80" name=
+"footnotetag80"></a><a href="#footnote80"><sup>80</sup></a></p>
+<p>Primitive men, whose only weapon and tool was a stone axe or
+hammer, must have regarded it as a symbol of force, then of
+supernatural force, hence of divinity. It is represented on remains
+of the Stone Age, and the axe was a divine symbol to the
+Mycen&aelig;ans, a hieroglyph of Neter to the Egyptians, and a
+worshipful object to Polynesians and Chaldeans. The cult of axe or
+hammer may have been widespread, and to the Celts, as to many other
+peoples, it was a divine symbol. Thus it does not necessarily
+denote a thunderbolt, but rather power and might, and possibly, as
+the tool which shaped things, creative might. The Celts made <i>ex
+voto</i> hammers of lead, or used axe-heads as amulets, or figured
+them on altars and coins, and they also placed the hammer in the
+hand of a god.<a id="footnotetag81" name=
+"footnotetag81"></a><a href="#footnote81"><sup>81</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>{31}</span>
+<p>The god with the hammer is a gracious bearded figure, clad in
+Gaulish dress, and he carries also a cup. His plastic type is
+derived from that of the Alexandrian Serapis, ruler of the
+underworld, and that of Hades-Pluto.<a id="footnotetag82" name=
+"footnotetag82"></a><a href="#footnote82"><sup>82</sup></a> His
+emblems, especially that of the hammer, are also those of the Pluto
+of the Etruscans, with whom the Celts had been in contact.<a id=
+"footnotetag83" name="footnotetag83"></a><a href=
+"#footnote83"><sup>83</sup></a> He is thus a Celtic Dispater, an
+underworld god, possibly at one time an Earth-god and certainly a
+god of fertility, and ancestor of the Celtic folk. In some cases,
+like Serapis, he carries a <i>modius</i> on his head, and this,
+like the cup, is an emblem of chthonian gods, and a symbol of the
+fertility of the soil. The god being benevolent, his hammer, like
+the tool with which man forms so many things, could only be a
+symbol of creative force.<a id="footnotetag84" name=
+"footnotetag84"></a><a href="#footnote84"><sup>84</sup></a> As an
+ancestor of the Celts, the god is naturally represented in Celtic
+dress. In one bas-relief he is called Sucellos, and has a consort,
+Nantosvelta.<a id="footnotetag85" name="footnotetag85"></a><a href=
+"#footnote85"><sup>85</sup></a> Various meanings have been assigned
+to "Sucellos," but it probably denotes the god's power of striking
+with the hammer. M. D'Arbois hence regards him as a god of blight
+and death, like Balor.<a id="footnotetag86" name=
+"footnotetag86"></a><a href="#footnote86"><sup>86</sup></a> But
+though this Celtic Dispater was a god of the dead who lived on in
+the underworld, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id=
+"page32"></a>{32}</span> he was not necessarily a destructive god.
+The underworld god was the god from whom or from whose kingdom men
+came forth, and he was also a god of fertility. To this we shall
+return.</p>
+<p>2. A bearded god, probably squatting, with horns from each of
+which hangs a torque, is represented on an altar found at
+Paris.<a id="footnotetag87" name="footnotetag87"></a><a href=
+"#footnote87"><sup>87</sup></a> He is called Cernunnos, perhaps
+"the horned," from <i>cerna</i>, "horn," and a whole group of
+nameless gods, with similar or additional attributes, have
+affinities with him.</p>
+<p>(<i>a</i>) A bronze statuette from Autun represents a similar
+figure, probably horned, who presents a torque to two ram's-headed
+serpents. Fixed above his ears are two small heads.<a id=
+"footnotetag88" name="footnotetag88"></a><a href=
+"#footnote88"><sup>88</sup></a> On a monument from Vandoeuvres is a
+squatting horned god, pressing a sack. Two genii stand beside him
+on a serpent, while one of them holds a torque.<a id=
+"footnotetag89" name="footnotetag89"></a><a href=
+"#footnote89"><sup>89</sup></a></p>
+<p>(<i>b</i>) Another squatting horned figure with a torque occurs
+on an altar from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes,
+and on it an ox and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the
+pediment above, and on either side stand Apollo and Mercury.<a id=
+"footnotetag90" name="footnotetag90"></a><a href=
+"#footnote90"><sup>90</sup></a> On the altar of Saintes is a
+squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a
+goddess with a cornucopia, and a smaller divinity with a cornucopia
+and an apple. A similar squatting figure, supported by male and
+female deities, is represented on the other side of the
+altar.<a id="footnotetag91" name="footnotetag91"></a><a href=
+"#footnote91"><sup>91</sup></a> On the altar of Beaune are three
+figures, one horned with a cornucopia, another three-headed,
+holding a basket.<a id="footnotetag92" name=
+"footnotetag92"></a><a href="#footnote92"><sup>92</sup></a> Three
+figures, one female and two male, are found on the Dennevy altar.
+One god is three-faced, the other has a cornucopia, which he offers
+to a serpent.<a id="footnotetag93" name=
+"footnotetag93"></a><a href="#footnote93"><sup>93</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>{33}</span>
+<p>(<i>c</i>) Another image represents a three-faced god, holding a
+serpent with a ram's head.<a id="footnotetag94" name=
+"footnotetag94"></a><a href="#footnote94"><sup>94</sup></a></p>
+<p>(<i>d</i>) Above a seated god and goddess on an altar from
+Malmaison is a block carved to represent three faces. To be
+compared with these are seven steles from Reims, each with a triple
+face but only one pair of eyes. Above some of these is a ram's
+head. On an eighth stele the heads are separated.<a id=
+"footnotetag95" name="footnotetag95"></a><a href=
+"#footnote95"><sup>95</sup></a></p>
+<p>Cernunnos may thus have been regarded as a three-headed, horned,
+squatting god, with a torque and ram's-headed serpent. But a horned
+god is sometimes a member of a triad, perhaps representing myths in
+which Cernunnos was associated with other gods. The three-headed
+god may be the same as the horned god, though on the Beaune altar
+they are distinct. The various representations are linked together,
+but it is not certain that all are varying types of one god. Horns,
+torque, horned snake, or even the triple head may have been symbols
+pertaining to more than one god, though generally associated with
+Cernunnos.</p>
+<p>The squatting attitude of the god has been differently
+explained, and its affinities regarded now as Buddhist, now as
+Greco-Egyptian.<a id="footnotetag96" name=
+"footnotetag96"></a><a href="#footnote96"><sup>96</sup></a> But if
+the god is a Dispater, and the ancestral god of the Celts, it is
+natural, as M. Mowat points out, to represent him in the typical
+attitude of the Gauls when sitting, since they did not use
+seats.<a id="footnotetag97" name="footnotetag97"></a><a href=
+"#footnote97"><sup>97</sup></a> While the horns were probably
+symbols of power and worn also by chiefs on their helmets,<a id=
+"footnotetag98" name="footnotetag98"></a><a href=
+"#footnote98"><sup>98</sup></a> they may also show that the god was
+an anthropomorphic form of an earlier animal god, like the
+wolf-skin of other gods. Hence also horned animals would be
+regarded as symbols of the god, and this may account for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>{34}</span>
+their presence on the Reims monument. Animals are sometimes
+represented beside the divinities who were their anthropomorphic
+forms.<a id="footnotetag99" name="footnotetag99"></a><a href=
+"#footnote99"><sup>99</sup></a> Similarly the ram's-headed serpent
+points to animal worship. But its presence with three-headed and
+horned gods is enigmatic, though, as will be seen later, it may
+have been connected with a cult of the dead, while the serpent was
+a chthonian animal.<a id="footnotetag100" name=
+"footnotetag100"></a><a href="#footnote100"><sup>100</sup></a>
+These gods were gods of fertility and of the underworld of the
+dead. While the bag or purse (interchangeable with the cornucopia)
+was a symbol of Mercury, it was also a symbol of Pluto, and this
+may point to the fact that the gods who bear it had the same
+character as Pluto. The significance of the torque is also
+doubtful, but the Gauls offered torques to the gods, and they may
+have been regarded as vehicles of the warrior's strength which
+passed from him to the god to whom the victor presented it.</p>
+<p>Though many attempts have been made to prove the non-Celtic
+origin of the three-headed divinities or of their images,<a id=
+"footnotetag101" name="footnotetag101"></a><a href=
+"#footnote101"><sup>101</sup></a> there is no reason why the
+conception should not be Celtic, based on some myth now lost to us.
+The Celts had a cult of human heads, and fixed them up on their
+houses in order to obtain the protection of the ghost. Bodies or
+heads of dead warriors had a protective influence on their land or
+tribe, and myth told how the head of the god Bran saved his country
+from invasion. In other myths human heads speak after being cut
+off.<a id="footnotetag102" name="footnotetag102"></a><a href=
+"#footnote102"><sup>102</sup></a> It might thus easily have been
+believed that the representation of a god's head had a still more
+powerful protective influence, especially when it was triplicated,
+thus looking in all directions, like Janus.</p>
+<p>The significance of the triad on these monuments is <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>{35}</span> uncertain
+but since the supporting divinities are now male, now female, now
+male and female, it probably represents myths of which the horned
+or three-headed god was the central figure. Perhaps we shall not be
+far wrong in regarding such gods, on the whole, as Cernunnos, a god
+of abundance to judge by his emblems, and by the cornucopia held by
+his companions, probably divinities of fertility. In certain cases
+figures of squatting and horned goddesses with cornucopia
+occur.<a id="footnotetag103" name="footnotetag103"></a><a href=
+"#footnote103"><sup>103</sup></a> These may be consorts of
+Cernunnos, and perhaps preceded him in origin. We may also go
+further and see in this god of abundance and fertility at once an
+Earth and an Under-earth god, since earth and under-earth are much
+the same to primitive thought, and fertility springs from below the
+earth's surface. Thus Cernunnos would be another form of the Celtic
+Dispater. Generally speaking, the images of Cernunnos are not found
+where those of the god with the hammer (Dispater) are most
+numerous. These two types may thus be different local forms of
+Dispater. The squatting attitude of Cernunnos is natural in the
+image of the ancestor of a people who squatted. As to the symbols
+of plenty, we know that Pluto was confounded with Plutus, the god
+of riches, because corn and minerals came out of the earth, and
+were thus the gifts of an Earth or Under-earth god. Celtic myth may
+have had the same confusion.</p>
+<p>On a Paris altar and on certain steles a god attacks a serpent
+with a club. The serpent is a chthonian animal, and the god, called
+Smertullos, may be a Dispater.<a id="footnotetag104" name=
+"footnotetag104"></a><a href="#footnote104"><sup>104</sup></a> Gods
+who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier animal divinities,
+sometimes have the animals as symbols or attendants, or are
+regarded as hostile to them. In some cases Dispater <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>{36}</span> may have
+outgrown the serpent symbolism, the serpent being regarded locally
+as his foe; this assumes that the god with the club is the same as
+the god with the hammer. But in the case of Cernunnos the animal
+remained as his symbol.</p>
+<p>Dispater was a god of growth and fertility, and besides being
+lord of the underworld of the dead, not necessarily a dark region
+or the abode of "dark" gods as is so often assumed by writers on
+Celtic religion, he was ancestor of the living. This may merely
+have meant that, as in other mythologies, men came to the surface
+of the earth from an underground region, like all things whose
+roots struck deep down into the earth. The lord of the underworld
+would then easily be regarded as their ancestor.<a id=
+"footnotetag105" name="footnotetag105"></a><a href=
+"#footnote105"><sup>105</sup></a></p>
+<p>3. The hammer and the cup are also the symbols of a god called
+Silvanus, identified by M. Mowat with Esus,<a id="footnotetag106"
+name="footnotetag106"></a><a href="#footnote106"><sup>106</sup></a>
+a god represented cutting down a tree with an axe. Axe and hammer,
+however, are not necessarily identical, and the symbols are those
+of Dispater, as has been seen. A purely superficial connection
+between the Roman Silvanus and the Celtic Dispater may have been
+found by Gallo-Roman artists in the fact that both wear a
+wolf-skin, while there may once have been a Celtic wolf totem-god
+of the dead.<a id="footnotetag107" name=
+"footnotetag107"></a><a href="#footnote107"><sup>107</sup></a> The
+Roman god was also associated with the wolf. This might be regarded
+as one out of many examples of a mere superficial assimilation of
+Roman and Celtic divinities, but in this case they still kept
+certain symbols of the native Dispater&mdash;the cup and hammer.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>{37}</span>
+Of course, since the latter was also a god of fertility, there was
+here another link with Silvanus, a god of woods and vegetation. The
+cult of the god was widespread&mdash;in Spain, S. Gaul, the Rhine
+provinces, Cisalpine Gaul, Central Europe and Britain. But one
+inscription gives the name Selvanos, and it is not impossible that
+there was a native god Selvanus. If so, his name may have been
+derived from <i>selva</i>, "possession," Irish <i>sealbh</i>,
+"possession," "cattle," and he may have been a chthonian god of
+riches, which in primitive communities consisted of cattle.<a id=
+"footnotetag108" name="footnotetag108"></a><a href=
+"#footnote108"><sup>108</sup></a> Domestic animals, in Celtic
+mythology, were believed to have come from the god's land. Selvanus
+would thus be easily identified with Silvanus, a god of flocks.</p>
+<p>Thus the Celtic Dispater had various names and forms in
+different regions, and could be assimilated to different foreign
+gods. Since Earth and Under-earth are so nearly connected, this
+divinity may once have been an Earth-god, and as such perhaps took
+the place of an earlier Earth-mother, who now became his consort or
+his mother. On a monument from Salzbach, Dispater is accompanied by
+a goddess called Aeracura, holding a basket of fruit, and on
+another monument from Ober-Seebach, the companion of Dispater holds
+a cornucopia. In the latter instance Dispater holds a hammer and
+cup, and the goddess may be Aeracura. Aeracura is also associated
+with Dispater in several inscriptions.<a id="footnotetag109" name=
+"footnotetag109"></a><a href="#footnote109"><sup>109</sup></a> It
+is not yet certain that she is a Celtic goddess, but her presence
+with this evidently Celtic god is almost sufficient proof of the
+fact. She may thus represent the old Earth-goddess, whose place the
+native Dispater gradually usurped.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>{38}</span>
+<p>Lucan mentions a god Esus, who is represented on a Paris altar
+as a woodman cutting down a tree, the branches of which are carried
+round to the next side of the altar, on which is represented a bull
+with three cranes&mdash;Tarvos Trigaranos. The same figure,
+unnamed, occurs on another altar at Tr&egrave;ves, but in this case
+the bull's head appears in the branches, and on them sit the birds.
+M. Reinach applies one formula to the subjects of these
+altars&mdash;"The divine Woodman hews the Tree of the Bull with
+Three Cranes."<a id="footnotetag110" name=
+"footnotetag110"></a><a href="#footnote110"><sup>110</sup></a> The
+whole represents some myth unknown to us, but M. D'Arbois finds in
+it some allusion to events in the C&uacute;chulainn saga. To this
+we shall return.<a id="footnotetag111" name=
+"footnotetag111"></a><a href="#footnote111"><sup>111</sup></a> Bull
+and tree are perhaps both divine, and if the animal, like the
+images of the divine bull, is three-horned, then the three cranes
+(<i>garanus</i>, "crane") may be a rebus for three-horned
+(<i>trikeras</i>), or more probably three-headed
+(<i>trikarenos</i>).<a id="footnotetag112" name=
+"footnotetag112"></a><a href="#footnote112"><sup>112</sup></a> In
+this case woodman, tree, and bull might all be representatives of a
+god of vegetation. In early ritual, human, animal, or arboreal
+representatives of the god were periodically destroyed to ensure
+fertility, but when the god became separated from these
+representatives, the destruction or slaying was regarded as a
+sacrifice to the god, and myths arose telling how he had once slain
+the animal. In this case, tree and bull, really identical, would be
+mythically regarded as destroyed by the god whom they had once
+represented. If Esus was a god of vegetation, once represented by a
+tree, this would explain why, as the scholiast on Lucan relates,
+human sacrifices to Esus were suspended from a tree. Esus was
+worshipped at Paris and at Tr&egrave;ves; a coin with the name
+&AElig;sus was found in England; and personal names like Esugenos,
+"son of Esus," <span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id=
+"page39"></a>{39}</span> and Esunertus, "he who has the strength of
+Esus," occur in England, France, and Switzerland.<a id=
+"footnotetag113" name="footnotetag113"></a><a href=
+"#footnote113"><sup>113</sup></a> Thus the cult of this god may
+have been comparatively widespread. But there is no evidence that
+he was a Celtic Jehovah or a member, with Teutates and Taranis, of
+a pan-Celtic triad, or that this triad, introduced by Gauls, was
+not accepted by the Druids.<a id="footnotetag114" name=
+"footnotetag114"></a><a href="#footnote114"><sup>114</sup></a> Had
+such a great triad existed, some instance of the occurrence of the
+three names on one inscription would certainly have been found.
+Lucan does not refer to the gods as a triad, nor as gods of all the
+Celts, or even of one tribe. He lays stress merely on the fact that
+they were worshipped with human sacrifice, and they were apparently
+more or less well-known local gods.<a id="footnotetag115" name=
+"footnotetag115"></a><a href="#footnote115"><sup>115</sup></a></p>
+<p>The insular Celts believed that some of their gods lived on or
+in hills. We do not know whether such a belief was entertained by
+the Gauls, though some of their deities were worshipped on hills,
+like the Puy de D&ocirc;me. There is also evidence of mountain
+worship among them. One inscription runs, "To the Mountains"; a god
+of the Pennine Alps, Poeninus, was equated with Juppiter; and the
+god of the Vosges mountains was called Vosegus, perhaps still
+surviving in the giant supposed to haunt them.<a id=
+"footnotetag116" name="footnotetag116"></a><a href=
+"#footnote116"><sup>116</sup></a></p>
+<p>Certain grouped gods, <i>Dii Casses</i>, were worshipped by
+Celts on the right bank of the Rhine, but nothing is known
+regarding their functions, unless they were road gods. The name
+means "beautiful" or "pleasant," and <i>Cassi</i> appears in
+personal and tribal names, and also in <i>Cassiterides</i>, an
+early name of Britain, perhaps signifying that the new lands were
+"more beautiful" than those the Celts had left. When tin was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>{40}</span>
+discovered in Britain, the Mediterranean traders called it [Greek:
+chassiteros], after the name of the place where it was found, as
+<i>cupreus</i>, "copper," was so called from Cyprus.<a id=
+"footnotetag117" name="footnotetag117"></a><a href=
+"#footnote117"><sup>117</sup></a></p>
+<p>Many local tutelar divinities were also worshipped. When a new
+settlement was founded, it was placed under the protection of a
+tribal god, or the name of some divinised river on whose banks the
+village was placed, passed to the village itself, and the divinity
+became its protector. Thus Dea Bibracte, Nemausus, and Vasio were
+tutelar divinities of Bibracte, Nimes, and Vaison. Other places
+were called after Belenos, or a group of divinities, usually the
+<i>Matres</i> with a local epithet, watched over a certain
+district.<a id="footnotetag118" name="footnotetag118"></a><a href=
+"#footnote118"><sup>118</sup></a> The founding of a town was
+celebrated in an annual festival, with sacrifices and libations to
+the protecting deity, a practice combated by S. Eloi in the eighth
+century. But the custom of associating a divinity with a town or
+region was a great help to patriotism. Those who fought for their
+homes felt that they were fighting for their gods, who also fought
+on their side. Several inscriptions, "To the genius of the place,"
+occur in Britain, and there are a few traces of tutelar gods in
+Irish texts, but generally local saints had taken their place.</p>
+<p>The Celtic cult of goddesses took two forms, that of individual
+and that of grouped goddesses, the latter much more numerous than
+the grouped gods. Individual goddesses were worshipped as consorts
+of gods, or as separate personalities, and in the latter case the
+cult was sometimes far extended. Still more popular was the cult of
+grouped goddesses. Of these the <i>Matres</i>, like some individual
+goddesses, were probably early Earth-mothers, and since the
+primitive fertility-cults included all that might then be summed up
+as "civilisation," <span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id=
+"page41"></a>{41}</span> such goddesses had already many functions,
+and might the more readily become divinities of special crafts or
+even of war. Many individual goddesses are known only by their
+names, and were of a purely local character.<a id="footnotetag119"
+name="footnotetag119"></a><a href="#footnote119"><sup>119</sup></a>
+Some local goddesses with different names but similar functions are
+equated with the same Roman goddess; others were never so
+equated.</p>
+<p>The Celtic Minerva, or the goddesses equated with her, "taught
+the elements of industry and the arts,"<a id="footnotetag120" name=
+"footnotetag120"></a><a href="#footnote120"><sup>120</sup></a> and
+is thus the equivalent of the Irish Brigit. Her functions are in
+keeping with the position of woman as the first
+civiliser&mdash;discovering agriculture, spinning, the art of
+pottery, etc. During this period goddesses were chiefly worshipped,
+and though the Celts had long outgrown this primitive stage, such
+culture-goddesses still retained their importance. A goddess
+equated with Minerva in Southern France and Britain is Belisama,
+perhaps from <i>qval</i>, "to burn" or "shine."<a id=
+"footnotetag121" name="footnotetag121"></a><a href=
+"#footnote121"><sup>121</sup></a> Hence she may have been
+associated with a cult of fire, like Brigit and like another
+goddess Sul, equated with Minerva at Bath and in Hesse, and in
+whose temple perpetual fires burned.<a id="footnotetag122" name=
+"footnotetag122"></a><a href="#footnote122"><sup>122</sup></a> She
+was also a goddess of hot springs. Belisama gave her name to the
+Mersey,<a id="footnotetag123" name="footnotetag123"></a><a href=
+"#footnote123"><sup>123</sup></a> and many goddesses in Celtic myth
+are associated with rivers.</p>
+<p>Some war-goddesses are associated with Mars&mdash;Nemetona (in
+Britain and Germany), perhaps the same as the Irish Nemon, and
+Cathubodua, identical with the Irish war-goddess Badb-catha,
+"battle-crow," who tore the bodies of the slain.<a id=
+"footnotetag124" name="footnotetag124"></a><a href=
+"#footnote124"><sup>124</sup></a> Another goddess Andrasta,
+"invincible," perhaps the same as the Andarta of the Voconces, was
+worshipped by <span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id=
+"page42"></a>{42}</span> the people of Boudicca with human
+sacrifices, like the native Bellona of the Scordisci.<a id=
+"footnotetag125" name="footnotetag125"></a><a href=
+"#footnote125"><sup>125</sup></a></p>
+<p>A goddess of the chase was identified with Artemis in Galatia,
+where she had a priestess Camma, and also in the west. At the feast
+of the Galatian goddess dogs were crowned with flowers, her
+worshippers feasted and a sacrifice was made to her, feast and
+sacrifice being provided out of money laid aside for every animal
+taken in the chase.<a id="footnotetag126" name=
+"footnotetag126"></a><a href="#footnote126"><sup>126</sup></a>
+Other goddesses were equated with Diana, and one of her statues was
+destroyed in Christian times at Tr&egrave;ves.<a id=
+"footnotetag127" name="footnotetag127"></a><a href=
+"#footnote127"><sup>127</sup></a> These goddesses may have been
+thought of as rushing through the forest with an attendant train,
+since in later times Diana, with whom they were completely
+assimilated, became, like Holda, the leader of the "furious host"
+and also of witches' revels.<a id="footnotetag128" name=
+"footnotetag128"></a><a href="#footnote128"><sup>128</sup></a> The
+Life of C&aelig;sarius of Arles speaks of a "demon" called Diana by
+the rustics. A bronze statuette represents the goddess riding a
+wild boar,<a id="footnotetag129" name="footnotetag129"></a><a href=
+"#footnote129"><sup>129</sup></a> her symbol and, like herself, a
+creature of the forest, but at an earlier time itself a divinity of
+whom the goddess became the anthropomorphic form.</p>
+<p>Goddesses, the earlier spirits of the waters, protected rivers
+and springs, or were associated with gods of healing wells. Dirona
+or Sirona is associated with Grannos mainly in Eastern Gaul and the
+Rhine provinces, and is sometimes represented carrying grapes and
+grain.<a id="footnotetag130" name="footnotetag130"></a><a href=
+"#footnote130"><sup>130</sup></a> Thus this goddess may once have
+been connected with fertility, perhaps an Earth-mother, and if her
+name means "the long-lived,"<a id="footnotetag131" name=
+"footnotetag131"></a><a href="#footnote131"><sup>131</sup></a> this
+would be an appropriate title for an Earth-goddess. Another
+goddess, Stanna, mentioned in an inscription at Perigueux, is
+perhaps <span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id=
+"page43"></a>{43}</span> "the standing or abiding one," and thus
+may also have been Earth-goddess.<a id="footnotetag132" name=
+"footnotetag132"></a><a href="#footnote132"><sup>132</sup></a>
+Grannos was also associated with the local goddesses Vesunna and
+Aventia, who gave their names to Vesona and Avanche. His statue
+also stood in the temple of the goddess of the Seine,
+Sequana.<a id="footnotetag133" name="footnotetag133"></a><a href=
+"#footnote133"><sup>133</sup></a> With Bormo were associated
+Bormana in Southern Gaul, and Damona in Eastern Gaul&mdash;perhaps
+an animal goddess, since the root of her name occurs in Irish
+<i>dam</i>, "ox," and Welsh <i>dafad</i>, "sheep." Dea Brixia was
+the consort of Luxovius, god of the waters of Luxeuil. Names of
+other goddesses of the waters are found on <i>ex votos</i> and
+plaques which were placed in or near them. The Roman Nymph&aelig;,
+sometimes associated with Bormo, were the equivalents of the Celtic
+water-goddesses, who survived in the water-fairies of later
+folk-belief. Some river-goddesses gave their names to many rivers
+in the Celtic area&mdash;the numerous Avons being named from
+Abnoba, goddess of the sources of the Danube, and the many Dees and
+Dives from Divona. Clota was goddess of the Clyde, Sabrina had her
+throne "beneath the translucent wave" of the Severn, Icauna was
+goddess of the Yonne, Sequana of the Seine, and Sinnan of the
+Shannon.</p>
+<p>In some cases forests were ruled by goddesses&mdash;that of the
+Ardennes by Dea Arduinna, and the Black Forest, perhaps because of
+the many waters in it, by Dea Abnoba.<a id="footnotetag134" name=
+"footnotetag134"></a><a href="#footnote134"><sup>134</sup></a>
+While some goddesses are known only by being associated with a god,
+<i>e.g.</i> Kosmerta with Mercury in Eastern Gaul, others have
+remained separate, like Epona, perhaps a river-goddess merged with
+an animal divinity, and known from inscriptions as a
+horse-goddess.<a id="footnotetag135" name=
+"footnotetag135"></a><a href="#footnote135"><sup>135</sup></a> But
+the most striking instance is found in the grouped goddesses.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>{44}</span>
+<p>Of these the <i>Deoe Matres</i>, whose name has taken a Latin
+form and whose cult extended to the Teutons, are mentioned in many
+inscriptions all over the Celtic area, save in East and North-West
+Gaul.<a id="footnotetag136" name="footnotetag136"></a><a href=
+"#footnote136"><sup>136</sup></a> In art they are usually
+represented as three in number, holding fruit, flowers, a
+cornucopia, or an infant. They were thus goddesses of fertility,
+and probably derived from a cult of a great Mother-goddess, the
+Earth personified. She may have survived as a goddess Berecynthia;
+worshipped at Autun, where her image was borne through the fields
+to promote fertility, or as the goddesses equated with Demeter and
+Kore, worshipped by women on an island near Britain.<a id=
+"footnotetag137" name="footnotetag137"></a><a href=
+"#footnote137"><sup>137</sup></a> Such cults of a Mother-goddess
+lie behind many religions, but gradually her place was taken by an
+Earth-god, the Celtic Dispater or Dagda, whose consort the goddess
+became. She may therefore be the goddess with the cornucopia on
+monuments of the horned god, or Aeracura, consort of Dispater, or a
+goddess on a monument at Epinal holding a basket of fruit and a
+cornucopia, and accompanied by a ram's-headed serpent.<a id=
+"footnotetag138" name="footnotetag138"></a><a href=
+"#footnote138"><sup>138</sup></a> These symbols show that this
+goddess was akin to the <i>Matres</i>. But she sometimes preserved
+her individuality, as in the case of Berecynthia and the
+<i>Matres</i>, though it is not quite clear why she should have
+been thus triply multiplied. A similar phenomenon is found in the
+close connection of Demeter and Persephone, while the Celts
+regarded three as a sacred number. The primitive division of the
+year into three seasons&mdash;spring, summer, and winter&mdash;may
+have had its effect in triplicating a goddess of fertility with
+which the course of the seasons was connected.<a id=
+"footnotetag139" name="footnotetag139"></a><a href=
+"#footnote139"><sup>139</sup></a> In other mythologies groups of
+three goddesses are found, the <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page45" id="page45"></a>{45}</span> Hathors in Egypt, the Moirai,
+Gorgons, and Grai&aelig; of Greece, the Roman Fates, and the Norse
+Norn&aelig;, and it is noticeable that the <i>Matres</i> were
+sometimes equated with the Parc&aelig; and Fates.<a id=
+"footnotetag140" name="footnotetag140"></a><a href=
+"#footnote140"><sup>140</sup></a></p>
+<p>In the <i>Matres</i>, primarily goddesses of fertility and
+plenty, we have one of the most popular and also primitive aspects
+of Celtic religion. They originated in an age when women cultivated
+the ground, and the Earth was a goddess whose cult was performed by
+priestesses. But in course of time new functions were bestowed on
+the <i>Matres</i>. Possibly river-goddesses and others are merely
+mothers whose functions have become specialised. The <i>Matres</i>
+are found as guardians of individuals, families, houses, of towns,
+a province, or a whole nation, as their epithets in inscriptions
+show. The <i>Matres Domestic&aelig;</i> are household goddesses;
+the <i>Matres Trever&aelig;</i>, or <i>Gallaic&aelig;</i>, or
+<i>Vediant&aelig;</i>, are the mothers of Tr&egrave;ves, of the
+Gallaec&aelig;, of the Vediantii; the <i>Matres Nemetiales</i> are
+guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields as <i>Matres
+Campestr&aelig;</i> they brought prosperity to towns and
+people.<a id="footnotetag141" name="footnotetag141"></a><a href=
+"#footnote141"><sup>141</sup></a> They guarded women, especially in
+childbirth, as <i>ex votos</i> prove, and in this aspect they are
+akin to the <i>Junones</i> worshipped also in Gaul and Britain. The
+name thus became generic for most goddesses, but all alike were the
+lineal descendants of the primitive Earth-mother.<a id=
+"footnotetag142" name="footnotetag142"></a><a href=
+"#footnote142"><sup>142</sup></a></p>
+<p>Popular superstition has preserved the memory of these goddesses
+in the three <i>bonnes dames</i>, <i>dames blanches</i>, and White
+Women, met by wayfarers in forests, or in the three fairies or wise
+women of folk-tales, who appear at the birth of <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>{46}</span> children.
+But sometimes they have become hateful hags. The <i>Matres</i> and
+other goddesses probably survived in the beneficent fairies of
+rocks and streams, in the fairy Abonde who brought riches to
+houses, or Esterelle of Provence who made women fruitful, or Aril
+who watched over meadows, or in beings like Melusine, Viviane, and
+others.<a id="footnotetag143" name="footnotetag143"></a><a href=
+"#footnote143"><sup>143</sup></a> In Gallo-Roman Britain the cult
+of the <i>Matres</i> is found, but how far it was indigenous there
+is uncertain. A Welsh name for fairies, <i>Y Mamau</i>, "the
+Mothers," and the phrase, "the blessing of the Mothers" used of a
+fairy benediction, may be a reminiscence of such goddesses.<a id=
+"footnotetag144" name="footnotetag144"></a><a href=
+"#footnote144"><sup>144</sup></a> The presence of similar goddesses
+in Ireland will be considered later.<a id="footnotetag145" name=
+"footnotetag145"></a><a href="#footnote145"><sup>145</sup></a>
+Images of the <i>Matres</i> bearing a child have sometimes been
+taken for those of the Virgin, when found accidentally, and as they
+are of wood blackened with age, they are known as <i>Vierges
+Noires</i>, and occupy an honoured place in Christian sanctuaries.
+Many churches of N&ocirc;tre Dame have been built on sites where an
+image of the Virgin is said to have been miraculously
+found&mdash;the image probably being that of a pagan Mother.
+Similarly, an altar to the <i>Matres</i> at Vaison is now dedicated
+to the Virgin as the "good Mother."<a id="footnotetag146" name=
+"footnotetag146"></a><a href="#footnote146"><sup>146</sup></a></p>
+<p>In inscriptions from Eastern and Cisalpine Gaul, and from the
+Rhine and Danube region, the <i>Matron&aelig;</i> are mentioned,
+and this name is probably indicative of goddesses like the
+<i>Matres</i>.<a id="footnotetag147" name=
+"footnotetag147"></a><a href="#footnote147"><sup>147</sup></a> It
+is akin to that of many rivers, <i>e.g.</i> the Marne or Meyrone,
+and shows that the Mothers were associated with rivers. The Mother
+river fertilised a large district, and <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>{47}</span> exhibited
+the characteristic of the whole group of goddesses.</p>
+<p>Akin also to the <i>Matres</i> are the <i>Sulevi&aelig;</i>,
+guardian goddesses called <i>Matres</i> in a few inscriptions; the
+<i>Comedov&aelig;</i>, whose name perhaps denotes guardianship or
+power; the <i>Domin&aelig;</i>, who watched over the home, perhaps
+the <i>Dames</i> of medi&aelig;val folk-lore; and the
+<i>Virgines</i>, perhaps an appellative of the <i>Matres</i>, and
+significant when we find that virgin priestesses existed in Gaul
+and Ireland.<a id="footnotetag148" name=
+"footnotetag148"></a><a href="#footnote148"><sup>148</sup></a> The
+<i>Proxum&aelig;</i> were worshipped in Southern Gaul, and the
+<i>Quadrivi&aelig;</i>, goddesses of cross-roads, at
+Cherbourg.<a id="footnotetag149" name="footnotetag149"></a><a href=
+"#footnote149"><sup>149</sup></a></p>
+<p>Some Roman gods are found on inscriptions without being equated
+with native deities. They may have been accepted by the Gauls as
+new gods, or they had perhaps completely ousted similar native
+gods. Others, not mentioned by C&aelig;sar, are equated with native
+deities, Juno with Clivana, Saturn with Arvalus, and to a native
+Vulcan the Celts vowed spoils of war.<a id="footnotetag150" name=
+"footnotetag150"></a><a href="#footnote150"><sup>150</sup></a>
+Again, many native gods are not equated with Roman deities on
+inscriptions. Apart from the divinities of Pyren&aelig;an
+inscriptions, who may not be Celtic, the names of over 400 native
+deities, whether equated with Roman gods or not, are known. Some of
+these names are mere epithets, and most of the gods are of a local
+character, known here by one name, there by another. Only in a very
+few cases can it be asserted that a god was worshipped over the
+whole Celtic area by one name, though some gods in Gaul, Britain,
+and Ireland with different names have certainly similar
+functions.<a id="footnotetag151" name="footnotetag151"></a><a href=
+"#footnote151"><sup>151</sup></a></p>
+<p>The pantheon of the continental Celts was a varied one. Traces
+of the primitive agricultural rites, and of the priority of
+goddesses to gods, are found, and the vaguer aspects of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>{48}</span>
+primitive nature worship are seen behind the cult of divinities of
+sky, sun, thunder, forests, rivers, or in deities of animal origin.
+We come next to evidence of a higher stage, in divinities of
+culture, healing, the chase, war, and the underworld. We see
+divinities of Celtic groups&mdash;gods of individuals, the family,
+the tribe. Sometimes war-gods assumed great prominence, in time of
+war, or among the aristocracy, but with the development of
+commerce, gods associated with trade and the arts of peace came to
+the front.<a id="footnotetag152" name="footnotetag152"></a><a href=
+"#footnote152"><sup>152</sup></a> At the same time the popular
+cults of agricultural districts must have remained as of old. With
+the adoption of Roman civilisation, enlightened Celts separated
+themselves from the lower aspects of their religion, but this would
+have occurred with growing civilisation had no Roman ever entered
+Gaul. In rural districts the more savage aspects of the cult would
+still have remained, but that these were entirely due to an
+aboriginal population is erroneous. The Celts must have brought
+such cults with them or adopted cults similar to their own wherever
+they came. The persistence of these cults is seen in the fact that
+though Christianity modified them, it could not root them out, and
+in out-of-the-way corners, survivals of the old ritual may still be
+found, for everywhere the old religion of the soil dies hard.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote53" name=
+"footnote53"></a><b>Footnote 53:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag53">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, <i>de Bell. Gall.</i> vi. 17, 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote54" name=
+"footnote54"></a><b>Footnote 54:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag54">(return)</a>
+<p>Bloch (Lavisse), <i>Hist, de France</i>, i. 2, 419; Reinaoh,
+<i>BF</i> 13, 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote55" name=
+"footnote55"></a><b>Footnote 55:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag55">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Trans. Gaelic Soc. of Inverness</i>, xxvi. p. 411 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote56" name=
+"footnote56"></a><b>Footnote 56:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag56">(return)</a>
+<p>Vallentin, <i>Les Dieux de la cit&eacute; des Allobroges</i>,
+15; Pliny, <i>HN</i> xxxiv. 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote57" name=
+"footnote57"></a><b>Footnote 57:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag57">(return)</a>
+<p>These names are Alaunius, Arcecius, Artaius, Arvernorix,
+Arvernus, Adsmerius, Canetonensis, Clavariatis, Cissonius,
+Cimbrianus, Dumiatis, Magniacus, Moecus, Toeirenus, Vassocaletus,
+Vellaunus, Visuoius, Biausius, Cimiacinus, Naissatis. See Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote58" name=
+"footnote58"></a><b>Footnote 58:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag58">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote59" name=
+"footnote59"></a><b>Footnote 59:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag59">(return)</a>
+<p>H&uuml;bner, vii. 271; <i>CIL</i> iii. 5773.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote60" name=
+"footnote60"></a><b>Footnote 60:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag60">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucian, <i>Heracles</i>, 1 f. Some Gaulish coins figure a head
+to which are bound smaller heads. In one case the cords issue from
+the mouth (Blanchet, i. 308, 316-317). These may represent Lucian's
+Ogm&iacute;os, but other interpretations have been put upon them.
+See Robert, <i>RC</i> vii. 388; Jullian, 84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote61" name=
+"footnote61"></a><b>Footnote 61:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag61">(return)</a>
+<p>The epithets and names are Anextiomarus, Belenos, Bormo, Borvo,
+or Bormanus, Cobledulitavus, Cosmis (?), Grannos, Livicus, Maponos,
+Mogo or Mogounos, Sianus, Toutiorix, Viudonnus, Virotutis. See
+Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote62" name=
+"footnote62"></a><b>Footnote 62:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag62">(return)</a>
+<p>Pommerol, <i>Ball. de Soc. d'ant. de Paris</i>, ii. fasc. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote63" name=
+"footnote63"></a><b>Footnote 63:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag63">(return)</a>
+<p>See Holder, <i>s.v.</i> Many place-names are derived from
+<i>Borvo, e.g.</i> Bourbon l'Archambaut, which gave its name to the
+Bourbon dynasty, thus connected with an old Celtic god.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote64" name=
+"footnote64"></a><b>Footnote 64:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag64">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page102">102</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote65" name=
+"footnote65"></a><b>Footnote 65:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag65">(return)</a>
+<p>Jul. Cap. <i>Maxim.</i> 22; Herodian, viii. 3; Tert.
+<i>Apol.</i> xxiv. 70; Auson. <i>Prof.</i> xi. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote66" name=
+"footnote66"></a><b>Footnote 66:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag66">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes derives <i>belinuntia</i> from <i>beljo</i>-, a tree or
+leaf, Irish <i>bile</i>, <i>US</i> 174.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote67" name=
+"footnote67"></a><b>Footnote 67:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag67">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; Stokes, <i>US</i> 197; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>
+23; see p. <a href="#page180">180</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote68" name=
+"footnote68"></a><b>Footnote 68:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag68">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. ii. 47.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote69" name=
+"footnote69"></a><b>Footnote 69:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag69">(return)</a>
+<p>Apoll. Rhod. iv. 609.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote70" name=
+"footnote70"></a><b>Footnote 70:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag70">(return)</a>
+<p>Albiorix, Alator, Arixo, Beladonnis, Barrex, Belatucadros,
+Bolvinnus, Braciaca, Britovis, Buxenus, Cabetius, Camulus,
+Cariocecius, Caturix, Cemenelus, Cicollius, Carrus, Cocosus,
+Cociduis, Condatis, Cnabetius, Corotiacus, Dinomogetimarus,
+Divanno, Dunatis, Glarinus, Halamardus, Harmogius, Ieusdriuus,
+Lacavus, Latabius, Leucetius, Leucimalacus, Lenus, Mullo, Medocius,
+Mogetius, Nabelcus, Neton, Ocelos, Ollondios, Rudianus, Rigisamus,
+Randosatis, Riga, Segomo, Sinatis, Smertatius, Toutates, Tritullus,
+Vesucius, Vincius, Vitucadros, Vorocius. See Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote71" name=
+"footnote71"></a><b>Footnote 71:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag71">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 215; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 37.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote72" name=
+"footnote72"></a><b>Footnote 72:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag72">(return)</a>
+<p>So Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 42.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote73" name=
+"footnote73"></a><b>Footnote 73:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag73">(return)</a>
+<p>H&uuml;bner, 61.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote74" name=
+"footnote74"></a><b>Footnote 74:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag74">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; Lucan, i. 444 f. The opinions of writers
+who take this view are collected by Reinach, <i>RC</i> xviii.
+137.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote75" name=
+"footnote75"></a><b>Footnote 75:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag75">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i> The Gaulish name Camulogenus, "born of
+Cumel," represents the same idea as in Fionn's surname,
+MacCumall.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote76" name=
+"footnote76"></a><b>Footnote 76:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag76">(return)</a>
+<p>Athen. iv. 36; Dioscorides, ii. 110; Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 116,
+120; <i>IT</i> i. 437, 697.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote77" name=
+"footnote77"></a><b>Footnote 77:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag77">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xviii. 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote78" name=
+"footnote78"></a><b>Footnote 78:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag78">(return)</a>
+<p>Gaidoz, <i>Le Dieu Gaulois de Soleil</i>; Reinach, <i>CS</i> 98,
+<i>BF</i> 35; Blanchet, i. 27.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote79" name=
+"footnote79"></a><b>Footnote 79:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag79">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, <i>Phar.</i> i. 444. Another form, Tanaros, may be simply
+the German Donar.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote80" name=
+"footnote80"></a><b>Footnote 80:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag80">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote81" name=
+"footnote81"></a><b>Footnote 81:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag81">(return)</a>
+<p>Gaidoz, <i>RC</i> vi. 457; Reinach, <i>OS</i> 65, 138; Blanchet,
+i. 160. The hammer is also associated with another Celtic Dispater,
+equated with Sylvanus, who was certainly not a thunder-god.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote82" name=
+"footnote82"></a><b>Footnote 82:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag82">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 137 f.; Courcelle-Seneuil, 115 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote83" name=
+"footnote83"></a><b>Footnote 83:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag83">(return)</a>
+<p>Barthelemy, <i>RC</i> i. l f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote84" name=
+"footnote84"></a><b>Footnote 84:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag84">(return)</a>
+<p>See Flouest, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> v. 17.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote85" name=
+"footnote85"></a><b>Footnote 85:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag85">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>RC</i> xvii. 45.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote86" name=
+"footnote86"></a><b>Footnote 86:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag86">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 126. He explains Nantosvelta as meaning "She who
+is brilliant in war." The goddess, however, has none of the
+attributes of a war-goddess. M. D'Arbois also saw in a bas-relief
+of the hammer-god, a female figure, and a child, the Gaulish
+equivalents of Balor, Ethne, and Lug (<i>RC</i> xv. 236). M.
+Reinach regards Sucellos, Nantosvelta, and a bird which is figured
+with them, as the same trio, because pseudo-Plutarch (<i>de
+Fluv.</i> vi. 4) says that <i>lougos</i> means "crow" in Celtic.
+This is more than doubtful. In any case Ethne has no warlike traits
+in Irish story, and as Lug and Balor were deadly enemies, it
+remains to be explained why they appear tranquilly side by side.
+See <i>RC</i> xxvi. 129. Perhaps Nantosvelta, like other Celtic
+goddesses, was a river nymph. <i>Nanto</i> Gaulish is "valley," and
+<i>nant</i> in old Breton is "gorge" or "brook." Her name might
+mean "shining river." See Stokes, <i>US</i> 193, 324.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote87" name=
+"footnote87"></a><b>Footnote 87:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag87">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xviii. 254. Cernunnos may be the Juppiter Cernenos of
+an inscription from Pesth, Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote88" name=
+"footnote88"></a><b>Footnote 88:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag88">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 186, fig. 177.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote89" name=
+"footnote89"></a><b>Footnote 89:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag89">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. Arch.</i> xix. 322, pl. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote90" name=
+"footnote90"></a><b>Footnote 90:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag90">(return)</a>
+<p>Bertrand, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xv. 339, xvi. pl. 12.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote91" name=
+"footnote91"></a><b>Footnote 91:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag91">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> xv. pl. 9, 10.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote92" name=
+"footnote92"></a><b>Footnote 92:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag92">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> xvi. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote93" name=
+"footnote93"></a><b>Footnote 93:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag93">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> pl. 12 <i>bis</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote94" name=
+"footnote94"></a><b>Footnote 94:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag94">(return)</a>
+<p>Bertrand, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xvi. 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote95" name=
+"footnote95"></a><b>Footnote 95:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag95">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> xvi. 10 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote96" name=
+"footnote96"></a><b>Footnote 96:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag96">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> xv., xvi.; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 17, 191.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote97" name=
+"footnote97"></a><b>Footnote 97:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag97">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Bull. Epig.</i> i. 116; Strabo, iv. 3; Diod. Sic. v. 28.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote98" name=
+"footnote98"></a><b>Footnote 98:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag98">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 30; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 193.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote99" name=
+"footnote99"></a><b>Footnote 99:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag99">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page212">212</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote100" name=
+"footnote100"></a><b>Footnote 100:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag100">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page166">166</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote101" name=
+"footnote101"></a><b>Footnote 101:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag101">(return)</a>
+<p>See, <i>e.g.</i>, Mowat, <i>Bull. Epig.</i> i. 29; de Witte,
+<i>Rev. Arch.</i> ii. 387, xvi. 7; Bertrand, <i>ibid.</i> xvi.
+3.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote102" name=
+"footnote102"></a><b>Footnote 102:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag102">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page242">242</a>,
+<i>infra</i>; Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 554; Curtin, 182; <i>RC</i>
+xxii. 123, xxiv. 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote103" name=
+"footnote103"></a><b>Footnote 103:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag103">(return)</a>
+<p>Dom Martin, ii. 185; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 192, 199.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote104" name=
+"footnote104"></a><b>Footnote 104:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag104">(return)</a>
+<p>See, however, p. <a href="#page136">136</a>, <i>infra</i>; and
+for another interpretation of this god as equivalent of the Irish
+Lug slaying Balor, see D'Arbois, ii. 287.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote105" name=
+"footnote105"></a><b>Footnote 105:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag105">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page229">229</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote106" name=
+"footnote106"></a><b>Footnote 106:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag106">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 162, 184; Mowat, <i>Bull. Epig.</i> i. 62,
+<i>Rev. Epig.</i> 1887, 319, 1891, 84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote107" name=
+"footnote107"></a><b>Footnote 107:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag107">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 141, 153, 175, 176, 181; see p. <a href=
+"#page218">218</a>, <i>infra</i>. Flouest, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> 1885,
+i. 21, thinks that the identification was with an earlier chthonian
+Silvanus. Cf. Jullian, 17, note 3, who observes that the
+Gallo-Roman assimilations were made "sur le doinaine archaisant des
+faits populaires et rustiques de l'Italie." For the inscriptions,
+see Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote108" name=
+"footnote108"></a><b>Footnote 108:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag108">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>US</i> 302; MacBain, 274; <i>RC</i> xxvi. 282.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote109" name=
+"footnote109"></a><b>Footnote 109:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag109">(return)</a>
+<p>Gaidoz, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> ii. 1898; Mowat, <i>Bull. Epig.</i> i.
+119; Courcelle-Seneuil, 80 f.; Pauly-Wissowa, <i>Real. Lex.</i> i.
+667; Daremberg-Saglio, <i>Dict.</i> ii., <i>s.v.</i>
+"Dispater."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote110" name=
+"footnote110"></a><b>Footnote 110:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag110">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, i. 444; <i>RC</i> xviii. 254, 258.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote111" name=
+"footnote111"></a><b>Footnote 111:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag111">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page127">127</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote112" name=
+"footnote112"></a><b>Footnote 112:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag112">(return)</a>
+<p>For a supposed connection between this bas-relief and the myth
+of Geryon, see Reinach, <i>BF</i> 120; <i>RC</i> xviii. 258 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote113" name=
+"footnote113"></a><b>Footnote 113:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag113">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Coins of the Ancient Britons</i>, 386; Holder, i. 1475,
+1478.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote114" name=
+"footnote114"></a><b>Footnote 114:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag114">(return)</a>
+<p>For these theories see Dom Martin, ii. 2; Bertrand, 335 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote115" name=
+"footnote115"></a><b>Footnote 115:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag115">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Reinach, <i>RC</i> xviii. 149.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote116" name=
+"footnote116"></a><b>Footnote 116:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag116">(return)</a>
+<p>Orelli, 2107, 2072; Monnier, 532; Tacitus, xxi. 38.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote117" name=
+"footnote117"></a><b>Footnote 117:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag117">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, i. 824; Reinach, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xx. 262; D'Arbois,
+<i>Les Celtes</i>, 20. Other grouped gods are the Bacucei,
+Castoeci, Icotii, Ifles, Lugoves, Nervini, and Silvani. See Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote118" name=
+"footnote118"></a><b>Footnote 118:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag118">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these see Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote119" name=
+"footnote119"></a><b>Footnote 119:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag119">(return)</a>
+<p>Professor Anwyl gives the following statistics: There are 35
+goddesses mentioned once, 2 twice, 3 thrice, 1 four times, 2 six
+times, 2 eleven times, 1 fourteen times (Sirona), 1 twenty-one
+times (Rosmerta), 1 twenty-six times (Epona) (<i>Trans. Gael. Soc.
+Inverness</i>, xxvi. 413).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote120" name=
+"footnote120"></a><b>Footnote 120:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag120">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 17.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote121" name=
+"footnote121"></a><b>Footnote 121:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag121">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 54; <i>Rev. Arch.</i> i. 201. See
+Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote122" name=
+"footnote122"></a><b>Footnote 122:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag122">(return)</a>
+<p>Solinus, xxii. 10; Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote123" name=
+"footnote123"></a><b>Footnote 123:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag123">(return)</a>
+<p>Ptolemy, ii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote124" name=
+"footnote124"></a><b>Footnote 124:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag124">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page71">71</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote125" name=
+"footnote125"></a><b>Footnote 125:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag125">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Amm. Mare, xxvii. 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote126" name=
+"footnote126"></a><b>Footnote 126:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag126">(return)</a>
+<p>Plutarch, <i>de Vir. Mul.</i> 20; Arrian, <i>Cyneg.</i> xxxiv.
+1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote127" name=
+"footnote127"></a><b>Footnote 127:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag127">(return)</a>
+<p>S. Greg. <i>Hist.</i> viii. 15.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote128" name=
+"footnote128"></a><b>Footnote 128:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag128">(return)</a>
+<p>Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> 283, 933; Reinach, <i>RC</i> xvi.
+261.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote129" name=
+"footnote129"></a><b>Footnote 129:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag129">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 50.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote130" name=
+"footnote130"></a><b>Footnote 130:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag130">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, i. 1286; Robert, <i>RC</i> iv. 133.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote131" name=
+"footnote131"></a><b>Footnote 131:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag131">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 27.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote132" name=
+"footnote132"></a><b>Footnote 132:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag132">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>Celt. Rev.</i> 1906, 43.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote133" name=
+"footnote133"></a><b>Footnote 133:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag133">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; Bulliot, <i>RC</i> ii. 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote134" name=
+"footnote134"></a><b>Footnote 134:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag134">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, i. 10, 89.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote135" name=
+"footnote135"></a><b>Footnote 135:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag135">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; see p. <a href="#page213">213</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote136" name=
+"footnote136"></a><b>Footnote 136:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag136">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, ii. 463. They are very numerous in South-East Gaul,
+where also three-headed gods are found.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote137" name=
+"footnote137"></a><b>Footnote 137:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag137">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page274">274-5</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote138" name=
+"footnote138"></a><b>Footnote 138:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag138">(return)</a>
+<p>Courcelle-Seneuil, 80-81.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote139" name=
+"footnote139"></a><b>Footnote 139:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag139">(return)</a>
+<p>See my article "Calendar" in Hastings' <i>Encyclop. of Religion
+and Ethics</i>, iii. 80.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote140" name=
+"footnote140"></a><b>Footnote 140:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag140">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> v. 4208, 5771, vii. 927; Holder, ii. 89.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote141" name=
+"footnote141"></a><b>Footnote 141:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag141">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these titles see Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote142" name=
+"footnote142"></a><b>Footnote 142:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag142">(return)</a>
+<p>There is a large literature devoted to the <i>Matres</i>. See De
+Wal, <i>Die M&aelig;der Gottinem</i>; Vallentin, <i>Le Culte des
+Matr&aelig;</i>; Daremberg-Saglio, <i>Dict. s.v. Matres</i>; Ihm,
+<i>Jahrbuch. des Vereins von Alterth. in Rheinlande</i>, No. 83;
+Roscher, <i>Lexicon</i>, ii. 2464 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote143" name=
+"footnote143"></a><b>Footnote 143:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag143">(return)</a>
+<p>See Maury, <i>F&eacute;es du Moyen Age</i>; S&eacute;billot, i.
+262; Monnier, 439 f.; Wright, <i>Celt, Roman, and Saxon</i>, 286
+f.; Vallentin, <i>RC</i> iv. 29. The <i>Matres</i> may already have
+had a sinister aspect in Roman times, as they appear to be intended
+by an inscription <i>Lamiis Tribus</i> on an altar at Newcastle.
+H&uuml;bner, 507.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote144" name=
+"footnote144"></a><b>Footnote 144:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag144">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>Celt. Rev.</i> 1906, 28. Cf. <i>Y Foel Famau</i>, "the
+hill of the Mothers," in the Clwydian range.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote145" name=
+"footnote145"></a><b>Footnote 145:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag145">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page73">73</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote146" name=
+"footnote146"></a><b>Footnote 146:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag146">(return)</a>
+<p>Vallentin, <i>op. cit.</i> iv. 29; Maury, <i>Croyances du Moyen
+Age</i>, 382.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote147" name=
+"footnote147"></a><b>Footnote 147:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag147">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote148" name=
+"footnote148"></a><b>Footnote 148:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag148">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page317">317</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote149" name=
+"footnote149"></a><b>Footnote 149:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag149">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these see Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 103;
+<i>RC</i> iv. 34.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote150" name=
+"footnote150"></a><b>Footnote 150:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag150">(return)</a>
+<p>Florus, ii. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote151" name=
+"footnote151"></a><b>Footnote 151:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag151">(return)</a>
+<p>See the table of identifications, p. <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote152" name=
+"footnote152"></a><b>Footnote 152:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag152">(return)</a>
+<p>We need not assume with Jullian, 18, that there was one supreme
+god, now a war-god, now a god of peace. Any prominent god may have
+become a war-god on occasion.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>{49}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap4" id="chap4">CHAPTER IV.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE.</h3>
+<p>Three divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland,
+one telling of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, the others of
+C&uacute;chulainn and of the Fians. They are distinct in character
+and contents, but the gods of the first cycle often help the heroes
+of the other groups, as the gods of Greece and India assisted the
+heroes of the epics. We shall see that some of the personages of
+these cycles may have been known in Gaul; they are remembered in
+Wales, but, in the Highlands, where stories of C&uacute;chulainn
+and Fionn are still told, the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are less
+known now than in 1567, when Bishop Carsewell lamented the love of
+the Highlanders for "idle, turbulent, lying, worldly stories
+concerning the Tuatha D&eacute;danans."<a id="footnotetag153" name=
+"footnotetag153"></a><a href="#footnote153"><sup>153</sup></a></p>
+<p>As the new Ach&aelig;an religion in Greece and the Vedic sacred
+books of India regarded the aboriginal gods and heroes as demons
+and goblins, so did Christianity in Ireland sometimes speak of the
+older gods there. On the other hand, it was mainly Christian
+scribes who changed the old mythology into history, and made the
+gods and heroes kings. Doubtless myths already existed, telling of
+the descent of rulers and people from divinities, just as the Gauls
+spoke of their <span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id=
+"page50"></a>{50}</span> descent from Dispater, or as the Incas of
+Peru, the Mikados of Japan, and the kings of Uganda considered
+themselves offspring of the gods. This is a universal practice, and
+made it the more easy for Christian chroniclers to transmute myth
+into history. In Ireland, as elsewhere, myth doubtless told of
+monstrous races inhabiting the land in earlier days, of the strife
+of the aborigines and incomers, and of their gods, though the
+aboriginal gods may in some cases have been identified with Celtic
+gods, or worshipped in their own persons. Many mythical elements
+may therefore be looked for in the euhemerised chronicles of
+ancient Ireland. But the chroniclers themselves were but the
+continuers of a process which must have been at work as soon as the
+influence of Christianity began to be felt.<a id="footnotetag154"
+name="footnotetag154"></a><a href="#footnote154"><sup>154</sup></a>
+Their passion, however, was to show the descent of the Irish and
+the older peoples from the old Biblical personages, a process dear
+to the modern Anglo-Israelite, some of whose arguments are based on
+the wild romancing of the chroniclers.</p>
+<p>Various stories were told of the first peopling of Ireland.
+Banba, with two other daughters of Cain, arrived with fifty women
+and three men, only to die of the plague. Three fishermen next
+discovered Ireland, and "of the island of Banba of Fair Women with
+hardihood they took possession." Having gone to fetch their wives,
+they perished in the deluge at Tuath Inba.<a id="footnotetag155"
+name="footnotetag155"></a><a href="#footnote155"><sup>155</sup></a>
+A more popular account was that of the coming of Cessair, Noah's
+granddaughter, with her father, husband, a third man, Ladru, "the
+first dead man of Erin," and fifty damsels. Her coming was the
+result of the advice of a <i>laimh-dhia</i>, or "hand-god," but
+their ship was wrecked, and all save her husband, Finntain, who
+survived for centuries, perished <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page51" id="page51"></a>{51}</span> in the flood.<a id=
+"footnotetag156" name="footnotetag156"></a><a href=
+"#footnote156"><sup>156</sup></a> Cessair's ship was less
+serviceable than her grandparent's! Followed the race of Partholan,
+"no wiser one than the other," who increased on the land until
+plague swept them away, with the exception of Tuan mac Caraill, who
+after many transformations, told the story of Ireland to S. Finnen
+centuries after.<a id="footnotetag157" name=
+"footnotetag157"></a><a href="#footnote157"><sup>157</sup></a> The
+survival of Finntain and Tuan, doubles of each other, was an
+invention of the chroniclers, to explain the survival of the
+history of colonists who had all perished. Keating, on the other
+hand, rejecting the sole survivor theory as contradictory to
+Scripture, suggests that "aerial demons," followers of the
+invaders, revealed all to the chroniclers, unless indeed they found
+it engraved with "an iron pen and lead in the rocks."<a id=
+"footnotetag158" name="footnotetag158"></a><a href=
+"#footnote158"><sup>158</sup></a></p>
+<p>Two hundred years before Partholan's coming, the Fomorians had
+arrived,<a id="footnotetag159" name="footnotetag159"></a><a href=
+"#footnote159"><sup>159</sup></a> and they and their chief Cichol
+Gricenchos fought Partholan at Mag Itha, where they were defeated.
+Cichol was footless, and some of his host had but one arm and one
+leg.<a id="footnotetag160" name="footnotetag160"></a><a href=
+"#footnote160"><sup>160</sup></a> They were demons, according to
+the chroniclers, and descendants of the luckless Ham. Nennius makes
+Partholan and his men the first Scots who came from Spain to
+Ireland. The next arrivals were the people of Nemed who returned to
+Spain, whence they came (Nennius), or died to a man (Tuan). They
+also were descendants of the inevitable Noah, and their sojourn in
+Ireland was much disturbed by the Fomorians who had recovered from
+their defeat, and finally overpowered the Nemedians after the death
+of Nemed.<a id="footnotetag161" name="footnotetag161"></a><a href=
+"#footnote161"><sup>161</sup></a> From Tory Island the Fomorians
+ruled Ireland, and forced the <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page52" id="page52"></a>{52}</span> Nemedians to pay them annually
+on the eve of Samhain (Nov. 1st) two-thirds of their corn and milk
+and of the children born during the year. If the Fomorians are gods
+of darkness, or, preferably, aboriginal deities, the tribute must
+be explained as a dim memory of sacrifice offered at the beginning
+of winter when the powers of darkness and blight are in the
+ascendant. The Fomorians had a tower of glass in Tory Island. This
+was one day seen by the Milesians, to whom appeared on its
+battlements what seemed to be men. A year after they attacked the
+tower and were overwhelmed in the sea.<a id="footnotetag162" name=
+"footnotetag162"></a><a href="#footnote162"><sup>162</sup></a> From
+the survivors of a previously wrecked vessel of their fleet are
+descended the Irish. Another version makes the Nemedians the
+assailants. Thirty of them survived their defeat, some of them
+going to Scotland or Man (the Britons), some to Greece (to return
+as the Firbolgs), some to the north, where they learned magic and
+returned as the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann.<a id="footnotetag163"
+name="footnotetag163"></a><a href="#footnote163"><sup>163</sup></a>
+The Firbolgs, "men of bags," resenting their ignominious treatment
+by the Greeks, escaped to Ireland. They included the Firbolgs
+proper, the Fir-Domnann, and the Galioin.<a id="footnotetag164"
+name="footnotetag164"></a><a href="#footnote164"><sup>164</sup></a>
+The Fomorians are called their gods, and this, with the
+contemptuous epithets bestowed on them, may point to the fact that
+the Firbolgs were the pre-Celtic folk of Ireland and the Fomorians
+their divinities, hostile to the gods of the Celts or regarded as
+dark deities. The Firbolgs are vassals of Ailill and Medb, and with
+the Fir Domnann and Galioin are hostile to C&uacute;chulainn and
+his men,<a id="footnotetag165" name="footnotetag165"></a><a href=
+"#footnote165"><sup>165</sup></a> just as Fomorians were to the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann. The strifes of races and of their gods are
+inextricably confused.</p>
+<p>The Tuatha D&eacute; Danann arrived from heaven&mdash;an idea in
+keeping with their character as beneficent gods, but later legend
+told how they came from the north. They reached <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>{53}</span> Ireland on
+Beltane, shrouded in a magic mist, and finally, after one or, in
+other accounts, two battles, defeated the Firbolgs and Fomorians at
+Magtured. The older story of one battle may be regarded as a
+euhemerised account of the seeming conflict of nature powers.<a id=
+"footnotetag166" name="footnotetag166"></a><a href=
+"#footnote166"><sup>166</sup></a> The first battle is described in
+a fifteenth to sixteenth century MS.,<a id="footnotetag167" name=
+"footnotetag167"></a><a href="#footnote167"><sup>167</sup></a> and
+is referred to in a fifteenth century account of the second battle,
+full of archaic reminiscences, and composed from various earlier
+documents.<a id="footnotetag168" name="footnotetag168"></a><a href=
+"#footnote168"><sup>168</sup></a> The Firbolgs, defeated in the
+first battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile
+Nuada, leader of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, lost his hand, and as
+no king with a blemish could sit on the throne, the crown was given
+to Bres, son of the Fomorian Elatha and his sister Eri, a woman of
+the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann. One day Eri espied a silver boat
+speeding to her across the sea. From it stepped forth a magnificent
+hero, and without delay the pair, like the lovers in Theocritus,
+"rejoiced in their wedlock." The hero, Elatha, foretold the birth
+of Eri's son, so beautiful that he would be a standard by which to
+try all beautiful things. He gave her his ring, but she was to part
+with it only to one whose finger it should fit. This was her child
+Bres, and by this token he was later, as an exile, recognised by
+his father, and obtained his help against the Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann. Like other wonderful children, Bres grew twice as quickly
+as any other child until he was seven.<a id="footnotetag169" name=
+"footnotetag169"></a><a href="#footnote169"><sup>169</sup></a>
+Though Elatha and Eri are brother and sister, she is among the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann.<a id="footnotetag170" name=
+"footnotetag170"></a><a href="#footnote170"><sup>170</sup></a>
+There is the usual inconsistency of myth here and in other accounts
+of Fomorian and Tuatha D&eacute; Danann unions. The latter had just
+landed, but already had united in marriage with the Fomorians. This
+inconsistency <span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id=
+"page54"></a>{54}</span> escaped the chroniclers, but it points to
+the fact that both were divine not human, and that, though in
+conflict, they united in marriage as members of hostile tribes
+often do.</p>
+<p>The second battle took place twenty-seven years after the first,
+on Samhain. It was fought like the first on the plain of Mag-tured,
+though later accounts made one battle take place at Mag-tured in
+Mayo, the other at Mag-tured in Sligo.<a id="footnotetag171" name=
+"footnotetag171"></a><a href="#footnote171"><sup>171</sup></a>
+Inconsistently, the conquering Tuatha D&eacute; Danann in the
+interval, while Bres is their king, must pay tribute imposed by the
+Fomorians. Obviously in older accounts this tribute must have been
+imposed before the first battle and have been its cause. But why
+should gods, like the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, ever have been in
+subjection? This remains to be seen, but the answer probably lies
+in parallel myths of the subjection or death of divinities like
+Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, and Osiris. Bres having exacted a
+tribute of the milk of all hornless dun cows, the cows of Ireland
+were passed through fire and smeared with ashes&mdash;a myth based
+perhaps on the Beltane fire ritual.<a id="footnotetag172" name=
+"footnotetag172"></a><a href="#footnote172"><sup>172</sup></a> The
+avaricious Bres was satirised, and "nought but decay was on him
+from that hour,"<a id="footnotetag173" name=
+"footnotetag173"></a><a href="#footnote173"><sup>173</sup></a> and
+when Nuada, having recovered, claimed the throne, he went to
+collect an army of the Fomorians, who assembled against the Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann. In the battle Indech wounded Ogma, and Balor slew
+Nuada, but was mortally wounded by Lug. Thereupon the Fomorians
+fled to their own region.</p>
+<p>The Tuatha D&eacute; Danann remained masters of Ireland until
+the coming of the Milesians, so named from an eponymous Mile, son
+of Bile. Ith, having been sent to reconnoitre, was slain, and the
+Milesians now invaded Ireland in force. In spite of a mist raised
+by the Druids, they landed, and, having met the three princes who
+slew Ith, demanded instant battle or surrender of the land. The
+princes agreed to abide by <span class="pagenum"><a name="page55"
+id="page55"></a>{55}</span> the decision of the Milesian poet
+Amairgen, who bade his friends re-embark and retire for the
+distance of nine waves. If they could then effect a landing,
+Ireland was theirs. A magic storm was raised, which wrecked many of
+their ships, but Amairgen recited verses, fragments, perhaps, of
+some old ritual, and overcame the dangers. After their defeat the
+survivors of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann retired into the hills to
+become a fairy folk, and the Milesians (the Goidels or Scots)
+became ancestors of the Irish.</p>
+<p>Throughout the long story of the conquests of Ireland there are
+many reduplications, the same incidents being often ascribed to
+different personages.<a id="footnotetag174" name=
+"footnotetag174"></a><a href="#footnote174"><sup>174</sup></a>
+Different versions of similar occurrences, based on older myths and
+traditions, may already have been in existence, and ritual
+practices, dimly remembered, required explanation. In the hands of
+the chroniclers, writing history with a purpose and combining their
+information with little regard to consistency, all this was reduced
+to a more or less connected narrative. At the hands of the prosaic
+chroniclers divinity passed from the gods, though traces of it
+still linger.</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Ye are gods, and, behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon
+you at last.</p>
+<p>In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the
+changes of things,</p>
+<p>Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget
+you for kings."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>From the annalistic point of view the Fomorians are sea demons
+or pirates, their name being derived from <i>muir</i>, "sea," while
+they are descended along with other monstrous beings from them.
+Professor Rh[^y]s, while connecting the name with Welsh
+<i>foawr</i>, "giant" (Gaelic <i>famhair</i>), derives the name
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>{56}</span>
+from <i>fo</i>, "under," and <i>muir</i>, and regards them as
+submarine beings.<a id="footnotetag175" name=
+"footnotetag175"></a><a href="#footnote175"><sup>175</sup></a> Dr.
+MacBain connected them with the fierce powers of the western sea
+personified, like the <i>Muireartach</i>, a kind of sea hag, of a
+Fionn ballad.<a id="footnotetag176" name=
+"footnotetag176"></a><a href="#footnote176"><sup>176</sup></a> But
+this association of the Fomorians with the ocean may be the result
+of a late folk-etymology, which wrongly derived their name from
+<i>muir</i>. The Celtic experience of the Lochlanners or Norsemen,
+with whom the Fomorians are associated,<a id="footnotetag177" name=
+"footnotetag177"></a><a href="#footnote177"><sup>177</sup></a>
+would aid the conception of them as sea-pirates of a more or less
+demoniacal character. Dr. Stokes connects the second syllable
+<i>mor</i> with <i>mare</i> in "nightmare," from <i>moro</i>, and
+regards them as subterranean as well as submarine.<a id=
+"footnotetag178" name="footnotetag178"></a><a href=
+"#footnote178"><sup>178</sup></a> But the more probable derivation
+is that of Zimmer and D'Arbois, from <i>fo</i> and <i>morio</i>
+(<i>mor</i>, "great "),<a id="footnotetag179" name=
+"footnotetag179"></a><a href="#footnote179"><sup>179</sup></a>
+which would thus agree with the tradition which regarded them as
+giants. They were probably beneficent gods of the aborigines, whom
+the Celtic conquerors regarded as generally evil, perhaps equating
+them with the dark powers already known to them. They were still
+remembered as gods, and are called "champions of the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>," like the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann.<a id=
+"footnotetag180" name="footnotetag180"></a><a href=
+"#footnote180"><sup>180</sup></a> Thus King Bres sought to save his
+life by promising that the kine of Ireland would always be in milk,
+then that the men of Ireland would reap every quarter, and finally
+by revealing the lucky days for ploughing, sowing, and
+reaping.<a id="footnotetag181" name="footnotetag181"></a><a href=
+"#footnote181"><sup>181</sup></a> Only an autochthonous god could
+know this, and the story is suggestive of the true nature of the
+Fomorians. The hostile character attributed to them is seen from
+the fact that they destroyed corn, milk, and fruit. But in Ireland,
+as elsewhere, this destructive power was deprecated by begging them
+not to destroy "corn nor milk in Erin beyond their fair
+tribute."<a id="footnotetag182" name="footnotetag182"></a><a href=
+"#footnote182"><sup>182</sup></a> Tribute was also paid to them on
+Samhain, the time when <span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id=
+"page57"></a>{57}</span> the powers of blight feared by men are in
+the ascendant. Again, the kingdom of Balor, their chief, is still
+described as the kingdom of cold.<a id="footnotetag183" name=
+"footnotetag183"></a><a href="#footnote183"><sup>183</sup></a> But
+when we remember that a similar "tribute" was paid to Cromm
+Cruaich, a god of fertility, and that after the conquest of the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann they also were regarded as hostile to
+agriculture,<a id="footnotetag184" name=
+"footnotetag184"></a><a href="#footnote184"><sup>184</sup></a> we
+realise that the Fomorians must have been aboriginal gods of
+fertility whom the conquering Celts regarded as hostile to them and
+their gods. Similarly, in folk-belief the beneficent corn-spirit
+has sometimes a sinister and destructive aspect.<a id=
+"footnotetag185" name="footnotetag185"></a><a href=
+"#footnote185"><sup>185</sup></a> Thus the stories of "tribute"
+would be distorted reminiscences of the ritual of gods of the soil,
+differing little in character from that of the similar Celtic
+divinities. What makes it certain that the Fomorians were
+aboriginal gods is that they are found in Ireland before the coming
+of the early colonist Partholan. They were the gods of the
+pre-Celtic folk&mdash;Firbolgs, Fir Domnann, and Galioin<a id=
+"footnotetag186" name="footnotetag186"></a><a href=
+"#footnote186"><sup>186</sup></a>&mdash;all of them in Ireland
+before the Tuatha D&eacute; Danaan arrived, and all of them
+regarded as slaves, spoken of with the utmost contempt. Another
+possibility, however, ought to be considered. As the Celtic gods
+were local in character, and as groups of tribes would frequently
+be hostile to other groups, the Fomorians may have been local gods
+of a group at enmity with another group, worshipping the Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danaan.</p>
+<p>The strife of Fomorians and Tuatha D&eacute; Danann suggests the
+dualism of all nature religions. Demons or giants or monsters
+strive with gods in Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>{58}</span> mythology,
+and in Persia the primitive dualism of beneficent and hurtful
+powers of nature became an ethical dualism&mdash;the eternal
+opposition of good and evil. The sun is vanquished by cloud and
+storm, but shines forth again in vigour. Vegetation dies, but
+undergoes a yearly renewal. So in myth the immortal gods are
+wounded and slain in strife. But we must not push too far the
+analogy of the apparent strife of the elements and the wars of the
+gods. The one suggested the other, especially where the gods were
+elemental powers. But myth-making man easily developed the
+suggestion; gods were like men and "could never get eneuch o'
+fechtin'." The Celts knew of divine combats before their arrival in
+Ireland, and their own hostile powers were easily assimilated to
+the hostile gods of the aborigines.</p>
+<p>The principal Fomorians are described as kings. Elatha was son
+of N&eacute;t, described by Cormac as "a battle god of the heathen
+Gael," i.e. he is one of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, and has as
+wives two war-goddesses, Badb and Nemaind.<a id="footnotetag187"
+name="footnotetag187"></a><a href="#footnote187"><sup>187</sup></a>
+Thus he resembles the Fomorian Tethra whose wife is a <i>badb</i>
+or "battle-crow," preying on the slain.<a id="footnotetag188" name=
+"footnotetag188"></a><a href="#footnote188"><sup>188</sup></a>
+Elatha's name, connected with words meaning "knowledge," suggests
+that he was an aboriginal culture-god.<a id="footnotetag189" name=
+"footnotetag189"></a><a href="#footnote189"><sup>189</sup></a> In
+the genealogies, Fomorians and Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are
+inextricably mingled. Bres's temporary position as king of the
+Tuatha D&eacute;a may reflect some myth of the occasional supremacy
+of the powers of blight. Want and niggardliness characterise his
+reign, and after his defeat a better state of things prevails.
+Bres's consort was Brigit, and their son Ruadan, sent to spy on the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, was slain. His mother's wailing for him
+was the first mourning wail ever heard in Erin.<a id=
+"footnotetag190" name="footnotetag190"></a><a href=
+"#footnote190"><sup>190</sup></a> Another god, Indech, <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>{59}</span> was son of
+D&eacute;a Domnu, a Fomorian goddess of the deep, i.e. of the
+underworld and probably also of fertility, who may hold a position
+among the Fomorians similar to that of Danu among the Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann. Indech was slain by Ogma, who himself died of
+wounds received from his adversary.</p>
+<p>Balor had a consort Cethlenn, whose venom killed Dagda. His one
+eye had become evil by contact with the poisonous fumes of a
+concoction which his father's Druids were preparing. The eyelid
+required four men to raise it, when his evil eye destroyed all on
+whom its glance fell. In this way Balor would have slain Lug at
+Mag-tured, but the god at once struck the eye with a sling-stone
+and slew him.<a id="footnotetag191" name=
+"footnotetag191"></a><a href="#footnote191"><sup>191</sup></a>
+Balor, like the Greek Medusa, is perhaps a personification of the
+evil eye, so much feared by the Celts. Healthful influences and
+magical charms avert it; hence Lug, a beneficent god, destroys
+Balor's maleficence.</p>
+<p>Tethra, with Balor and Elatha, ruled over Erin at the coming of
+the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann. From a phrase used in the story of
+Connla's visit to Elysium, "Thou art a hero of the men of Tethra,"
+M. D'Arbois assumes that Tethra was ruler of Elysium, which he
+makes one with the land of the dead. The passage, however, bears a
+different interpretation, and though a Fomorian, Tethra, a god of
+war, might be regarded as lord of all warriors.<a id=
+"footnotetag192" name="footnotetag192"></a><a href=
+"#footnote192"><sup>192</sup></a> Elysium was not the land of the
+dead, and when M. D'Arbois equates Tethra with Kronos, who after
+his defeat became ruler of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like
+other analogies with Greek mythology, is misleading. He also
+equates Bres, as temporary king of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann,
+with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold. Kronos, again,
+slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson Lug.
+Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god
+equivalent to Kronos.<a id="footnotetag193" name=
+"footnotetag193"></a><a href="#footnote193"><sup>193</sup></a> Yet
+their <span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id=
+"page60"></a>{60}</span> personalities are quite distinct. Each
+race works out its mythology for itself, and, while parallels are
+inevitable, we should not allow these to override the actual myths
+as they have come down to us.</p>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s makes Bile, ancestor of the Milesians who came
+from Spain, a Goidelic counterpart of the Gaulish Dispater, lord of
+the dead, from whom the Gauls claimed descent. But Bile, neither a
+Fomorian nor of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, is an imaginary and
+shadowy creation. Bile is next equated with a Brythonic Beli,
+assumed to be consort of D&ocirc;n, whose family are equivalent to
+the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann.<a id="footnotetag194" name=
+"footnotetag194"></a><a href="#footnote194"><sup>194</sup></a> Beli
+was a mythic king whose reign was a kind of golden age, and if he
+was father of D&ocirc;n's children, which is doubtful, Bile would
+then be father of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann. But he is ancestor
+of the Milesians, their opponents according to the annalists. Beli
+is also equated with Elatha, and since D&ocirc;n, reputed consort
+of Beli, was grandmother of Llew, equated with Irish Lug, grandson
+of Balor, Balor is equivalent to Beli, whose name is regarded by
+Professor Rh[^y]s as related etymologically to Balor's.<a id=
+"footnotetag195" name="footnotetag195"></a><a href=
+"#footnote195"><sup>195</sup></a> Bile, Balor, and Elatha are thus
+Goidelic equivalents of the shadowy Beli. But they also are quite
+distinct personalities, nor are they ever hinted at as ancestral
+gods of the Celts, or gods of a gloomy underworld. In Celtic belief
+the underworld was probably a fertile region and a place of light,
+nor were its gods harmful and evil, as Balor was.</p>
+<p>On the whole, the Fomorians came to be regarded as the powers of
+nature in its hostile aspect. They personified blight, winter,
+darkness, and death, before which men trembled, yet were not wholly
+cast down, since the immortal gods of growth and light, rulers of
+the bright other-world, were on their side and fought against their
+enemies. Year by year the gods suffered deadly harm, but returned
+as conquerors to renew <span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id=
+"page61"></a>{61}</span> the struggle once more. Myth spoke of this
+as having happened once for all, but it went on continuously.<a id=
+"footnotetag196" name="footnotetag196"></a><a href=
+"#footnote196"><sup>196</sup></a> Gods were immortal and only
+seemed to die. The strife was represented in ritual, since men
+believe that they can aid the gods by magic, rite, or prayer. Why,
+then, do hostile Fomorians and Tuatha D&eacute; Danann intermarry?
+This happens in all mythologies, and it probably reflects, in the
+divine sphere, what takes place among men. Hostile peoples carry
+off each the other's women, or they have periods of friendliness
+and consequent intermarriage. Man makes his gods in his own image,
+and the problem is best explained by facts like these, exaggerated
+no doubt by the Irish annalists.</p>
+<p>The Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, in spite of their euhemerisation,
+are more than human. In the north where they learned magic, they
+dwelt in four cities, from each of which they brought a magical
+treasure&mdash;the stone of Fal, which "roared under every king,"
+Lug's unconquerable spear, Nuada's irresistible sword, the Dagda's
+inexhaustible cauldron. But they are more than wizards or Druids.
+They are re-born as mortals; they have a divine world of their own,
+they interfere in and influence human affairs. The euhemerists did
+not go far enough, and more than once their divinity is practically
+acknowledged. When the Fian Caoilte and a woman of the Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann appear before S. Patrick, he asks, "Why is she
+youthful and beautiful, while you are old and wrinkled?" And
+Caoilte replies, "She is of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, who are
+unfading and whose duration is perennial. I am of the sons of
+Milesius, that are perishable and fade away."<a id="footnotetag197"
+name="footnotetag197"></a><a href=
+"#footnote197"><sup>197</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>{62}</span>
+<p>After their conversion, the Celts, sons of Milesius, thought
+that the gods still existed in the hollow hills, their former
+dwellings and sanctuaries, or in far-off islands, still caring for
+their former worshippers. This tradition had its place with that
+which made them a race of men conquered by the Milesians&mdash;the
+victory of Christianity over paganism and its gods having been
+transmuted into a strife of races by the euhemerists. The new
+faith, not the people, conquered the old gods. The Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann became the <i>Daoine-sidhe</i>, a fairy folk, still
+occasionally called by their old name, just as individual fairy
+kings or queens bear the names of the ancient gods. The euhemerists
+gave the Fomorians a monstrous and demoniac character, which they
+did not always give to the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann; in this
+continuing the old tradition that Fomorians were hostile and the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann beneficent and mild.</p>
+<p>The mythological cycle is not a complete "body of divinity"; its
+apparent completeness results from the chronological order of the
+annalists. Fragments of other myths are found in the
+<i>Dindsenchas</i>; others exist as romantic tales, and we have no
+reason to believe that all the old myths have been preserved. But
+enough remains to show the true nature of the Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann&mdash;their supernatural character, their powers, their
+divine and unfailing food and drink, their mysterious and beautiful
+abode. In their contents, their personages, in the actions that are
+described in them, the materials of the "mythological cycle," show
+how widely it differs from the C&uacute;chulainn and Fionn
+cycles.<a id="footnotetag198" name="footnotetag198"></a><a href=
+"#footnote198"><sup>198</sup></a> "The white radiance of eternity"
+suffuses it; the heroic cycles, magical and romantic as they are,
+belong far more to earth and time.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote153" name=
+"footnote153"></a><b>Footnote 153:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag153">(return)</a>
+<p>For some Highland references to the gods in saga and
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i>, see <i>Book of the Dean of Lismore</i>, 10;
+Campbell, <i>WHT</i> ii. 77. The sea-god Lir is probably the Liur
+of Ossianic ballads (Campbell, <i>LF</i> 100, 125), and his son
+Manannan is perhaps "the Son of the Sea" in a Gaelic song
+(Carmichael, <i>CG</i> ii. 122). Manannan and his daughters are
+also known (Campbell, <i>witchcraft</i>, 83).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote154" name=
+"footnote154"></a><b>Footnote 154:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag154">(return)</a>
+<p>The euhemerising process is first seen in tenth century poems by
+Eochaid hua Flainn, but was largely the work of Flainn Manistrech,
+<i>ob.</i> 1056. It is found fully fledged in the <i>Book of
+Invasions</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote155" name=
+"footnote155"></a><b>Footnote 155:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag155">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 105-106.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote156" name=
+"footnote156"></a><b>Footnote 156:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag156">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 107; <i>LL</i> 4<i>b</i>. Cf. <i>RC</i> xvi. 155.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote157" name=
+"footnote157"></a><b>Footnote 157:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag157">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote158" name=
+"footnote158"></a><b>Footnote 158:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag158">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 111. Giraldus Cambrensis, <i>Hist. Irel.</i> c. 2,
+makes Roanus survive and tell the tale of Partholan to S. Patrick.
+He is the Caoilte mac Ronan of other tales, a survivor of the
+Fians, who held many racy dialogues with the Saint. Keating abuses
+Giraldus for equating Roanus with Finntain in his "lying history,"
+and for calling him Roanus instead of Ronanus, a mistake in which
+he, "the guide bull of the herd," is followed by others.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote159" name=
+"footnote159"></a><b>Footnote 159:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag159">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 164.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote160" name=
+"footnote160"></a><b>Footnote 160:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag160">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 5<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote161" name=
+"footnote161"></a><b>Footnote 161:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag161">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 121; <i>LL</i> 6<i>a</i>; <i>RC</i> xvi. 161.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote162" name=
+"footnote162"></a><b>Footnote 162:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag162">(return)</a>
+<p>Nennius, <i>Hist. Brit.</i> 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote163" name=
+"footnote163"></a><b>Footnote 163:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag163">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 6, 8<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote164" name=
+"footnote164"></a><b>Footnote 164:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag164">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 6<i>b</i>, 127<i>a</i>; <i>IT</i> iii. 381; <i>RC</i>
+xvi. 81.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote165" name=
+"footnote165"></a><b>Footnote 165:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag165">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 9<i>b</i>, 11<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote166" name=
+"footnote166"></a><b>Footnote 166:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag166">(return)</a>
+<p>See Cormac, <i>s.v.</i> "Nescoit," <i>LU</i> 51.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote167" name=
+"footnote167"></a><b>Footnote 167:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag167">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Harl. MSS.</i> 2, 17, pp. 90-99. Cf. fragment from <i>Book of
+Invasions</i> in <i>LL</i> 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote168" name=
+"footnote168"></a><b>Footnote 168:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag168">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Harl. MS.</i> 5280, translated in <i>RC</i> xii. 59 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote169" name=
+"footnote169"></a><b>Footnote 169:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag169">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 60; D'Arbois, v. 405 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote170" name=
+"footnote170"></a><b>Footnote 170:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag170">(return)</a>
+<p>For Celtic brother-sister unions see p. <a href=
+"#page224">224</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote171" name=
+"footnote171"></a><b>Footnote 171:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag171">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, <i>Annals</i>, i. 16.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote172" name=
+"footnote172"></a><b>Footnote 172:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag172">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 439.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote173" name=
+"footnote173"></a><b>Footnote 173:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag173">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 71.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote174" name=
+"footnote174"></a><b>Footnote 174:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag174">(return)</a>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s thinks the Partholan story is the aboriginal,
+the median the Celtic version of the same event. Partholan, with
+initial <i>p</i> cannot be Goidelic (<i>Scottish Review</i>, 1890,
+"Myth. Treatment of Celtic Ethnology").</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote175" name=
+"footnote175"></a><b>Footnote 175:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag175">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 591.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote176" name=
+"footnote176"></a><b>Footnote 176:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag176">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CM</i> ix. 130; Campbell <i>LF</i> 68.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote177" name=
+"footnote177"></a><b>Footnote 177:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag177">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 75.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote178" name=
+"footnote178"></a><b>Footnote 178:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag178">(return)</a>
+<p><i>US</i> 211.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote179" name=
+"footnote179"></a><b>Footnote 179:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag179">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 52; <i>RC</i> xii. 476.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote180" name=
+"footnote180"></a><b>Footnote 180:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag180">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 73.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote181" name=
+"footnote181"></a><b>Footnote 181:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag181">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 105.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote182" name=
+"footnote182"></a><b>Footnote 182:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag182">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxii. 195.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote183" name=
+"footnote183"></a><b>Footnote 183:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag183">(return)</a>
+<p>Larmime, "Kian, son of Kontje."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote184" name=
+"footnote184"></a><b>Footnote 184:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag184">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page78">78</a>; <i>LL</i> 245<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote185" name=
+"footnote185"></a><b>Footnote 185:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag185">(return)</a>
+<p>Mannhardt, <i>Mythol. Forsch.</i> 310 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote186" name=
+"footnote186"></a><b>Footnote 186:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag186">(return)</a>
+<p>"Fir Domnann," "men of Domna," a goddess (Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>
+597), or a god (D'Arbois, ii. 130). "Domna" is connected with
+Irish-words meaning "deep" (Windisch, <i>IT</i> i. 498; Stokes,
+<i>US</i> 153). Domna, or Domnu, may therefore have been a goddess
+of the deep, not the sea so much as the underworld, and so perhaps
+an Earth-mother from whom the Fir Domnann traced their descent.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote187" name=
+"footnote187"></a><b>Footnote 187:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag187">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, <i>s.v.</i> "Neith"; D'Arbois, v. 400; <i>RC</i> xii.
+61.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote188" name=
+"footnote188"></a><b>Footnote 188:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag188">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 50. Tethra is glossed <i>badb</i> (<i>IT</i> i.
+820).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote189" name=
+"footnote189"></a><b>Footnote 189:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag189">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 521; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 274 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote190" name=
+"footnote190"></a><b>Footnote 190:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag190">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 95.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote191" name=
+"footnote191"></a><b>Footnote 191:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag191">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 101.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote192" name=
+"footnote192"></a><b>Footnote 192:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag192">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote193" name=
+"footnote193"></a><b>Footnote 193:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag193">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 198, 375.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote194" name=
+"footnote194"></a><b>Footnote 194:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag194">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 90-91.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote195" name=
+"footnote195"></a><b>Footnote 195:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag195">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 274, 319, 643. For Beli, see p. <a href=
+"#page112">112</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote196" name=
+"footnote196"></a><b>Footnote 196:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag196">(return)</a>
+<p>Whatever the signification of the battle of Mag-tured may be,
+the place which it was localised is crowded with Neolithic
+megaliths, dolmens, etc. To later fancy these were the graves of
+warriors slain in a great battle fought there, and that battle
+became the fight between Fomorians and Tuatha D&eacute; Dananns.
+Mag-tured may have been the scene of a battle between their
+respective worshippers.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote197" name=
+"footnote197"></a><b>Footnote 197:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag197">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 203.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote198" name=
+"footnote198"></a><b>Footnote 198:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag198">(return)</a>
+<p>It should be observed that, as in the Vedas, the Odyssey, the
+Japanese <i>Ko-ji-ki</i>, as well as in barbaric and savage
+mythologies, <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig; abound in the Irish
+mythological cycle.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>{63}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap5" id="chap5">CHAPTER V.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE TUATHA D&Eacute; DANANN</h3>
+<p>The meaning formerly given to <i>Tuatha D&eacute; Danann</i> was
+"the men of science who were gods," <i>danann</i> being here
+connected with <i>d&aacute;n</i>, "knowledge." But the true meaning
+is "the tribes <i>or</i> folk of the goddess Danu,"<a id=
+"footnotetag199" name="footnotetag199"></a><a href=
+"#footnote199"><sup>199</sup></a> which agrees with the cognates
+<i>Tuatha</i> or <i>Fir Dea</i>, "tribes <i>or</i> men of the
+goddess." The name was given to the group, though Danu had only
+three sons, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharbar. Hence the group is also
+called <i>fir tri ndea</i>, "men of the three gods."<a id=
+"footnotetag200" name="footnotetag200"></a><a href=
+"#footnote200"><sup>200</sup></a> The equivalents in Welsh story of
+Danu and her folk are D&ocirc;n and her children. We have seen that
+though they are described as kings and warriors by the annalists,
+traces of their divinity appear. In the C&uacute;chulainn cycle
+they are supernatural beings and sometimes demons, helping or
+harming men, and in the Fionn cycle all these characteristics are
+ascribed to them. But the theory which prevailed most is that which
+connected them with the hills or mounds, the last resting-places of
+the mighty dead. Some of these bore their names, while other beings
+were also associated with the mounds
+(<i>s&iacute;d</i>)&mdash;Fomorians and Milesian chiefs, heroes of
+the sagas, or those who had actually been buried in them.<a id=
+"footnotetag201" name="footnotetag201"></a><a href=
+"#footnote201"><sup>201</sup></a> Legend told how, after the defeat
+of the gods, the mounds were divided among them, the method
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>{64}</span>
+of division varying in different versions. In an early version the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are immortal and the Dagda divides the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>.<a id="footnotetag202" name=
+"footnotetag202"></a><a href="#footnote202"><sup>202</sup></a> But
+in a poem of Flann Manistrech (<i>ob.</i> 1056) they are mortals
+and die.<a id="footnotetag203" name="footnotetag203"></a><a href=
+"#footnote203"><sup>203</sup></a> Now follows a regular chronology
+giving the dates of their reigns and their deaths, as in the poem
+of Gilla Coemain (eleventh century).<a id="footnotetag204" name=
+"footnotetag204"></a><a href="#footnote204"><sup>204</sup></a>
+Hence another legend told how, Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divided
+the <i>s&iacute;d</i>, yet even here Manannan is said to have
+conferred immortality upon the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann.<a id=
+"footnotetag205" name="footnotetag205"></a><a href=
+"#footnote205"><sup>205</sup></a> The old pagan myths had shown
+that gods might die, while in ritual their representatives were
+slain, and this may have been the starting-point of the
+euhemerising process. But the divinity of the Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann is still recalled. Eochaid O'Flynn (tenth century), doubtful
+whether they are men or demons, concludes, "though I have treated
+of these deities in order, yet have I not adored them."<a id=
+"footnotetag206" name="footnotetag206"></a><a href=
+"#footnote206"><sup>206</sup></a> Even in later times they were
+still thought of as gods in exile, a view which appears in the
+romantic tales and sagas existing side by side with the notices of
+the annalists. They were also regarded as fairy kings and queens,
+and yet fairies of a different order from those of ordinary
+tradition. They are "fairies or sprites with corporeal forms,
+endowed with immortality," and yet also <i>dei terreni</i> or
+<i>s&iacute;de</i> worshipped by the folk before the coming of S.
+Patrick. Even the saint and several bishops were called by the fair
+pagan daughters of King Loegaire, <i>fir s&iacute;de</i>, "men of
+the <i>s&iacute;d</i>," that is, gods.<a id="footnotetag207" name=
+"footnotetag207"></a><a href="#footnote207"><sup>207</sup></a> The
+<i>s&iacute;d</i> were named after the names of the Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann <span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id=
+"page65"></a>{65}</span> who reigned in them, but the tradition
+being localised in different places, several mounds were sometimes
+connected with one god. The <i>s&iacute;d</i> were marvellous
+underground palaces, full of strange things, and thither favoured
+mortals might go for a time or for ever. In this they correspond
+exactly to the oversea Elysium, the divine land.</p>
+<p>But why were the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann associated with the
+mounds? If fairies or an analogous race of beings were already in
+pagan times connected with hills or mounds, gods now regarded as
+fairies would be connected with them. Dr. Joyce and O'Curry think
+that an older race of aboriginal gods or <i>s&iacute;d-folk</i>
+preceded the Tuatha D&eacute;a in the mounds.<a id="footnotetag208"
+name="footnotetag208"></a><a href="#footnote208"><sup>208</sup></a>
+These may have been the Fomorians, the "champions of the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>," while in <i>Mesca Ulad</i> the Tuatha
+D&eacute;a go to the underground dwellings and speak with the
+<i>s&iacute;de</i> already there. We do not know that the fairy
+creed as such existed in pagan times, but if the <i>s&iacute;de</i>
+and the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann were once distinct, they were
+gradually assimilated. Thus the Dagda is called "king of the
+<i>s&iacute;de</i>"; Aed Abrat and his daughters, Fand and Liban,
+and Labraid, Liban's husband, are called <i>s&iacute;de</i>, and
+Manannan is Fand's consort.<a id="footnotetag209" name=
+"footnotetag209"></a><a href="#footnote209"><sup>209</sup></a>
+Labraid's island, like the <i>s&iacute;d</i> of Mider and the land
+to which women of the <i>s&iacute;de</i> invite Connla, differs but
+little from the usual divine Elysium, while Mider, one of the
+<i>s&iacute;de</i>, is associated with the Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann.<a id="footnotetag210" name="footnotetag210"></a><a href=
+"#footnote210"><sup>210</sup></a> The <i>s&iacute;de</i> are once
+said to be female, and are frequently supernatural women who run
+away or marry mortals.<a id="footnotetag211" name=
+"footnotetag211"></a><a href="#footnote211"><sup>211</sup></a> Thus
+they may be a reminiscence of old Earth goddesses. But they are not
+exclusively female, since there are kings of the
+<i>s&iacute;de</i>, and as the name <i>Fir s&iacute;de</i>, "men of
+the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id=
+"page66"></a>{66}</span> <i>s&iacute;de</i>," shows, while S.
+Patrick and his friends were taken for <i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk.</p>
+<p>The formation of the legend was also aided by the old cult of
+the gods on heights, some of them sepulchral mounds, and now
+occasionally sites of Christian churches.<a id="footnotetag212"
+name="footnotetag212"></a><a href="#footnote212"><sup>212</sup></a>
+The Irish god Cenn Cruaich and his Welsh equivalent Penn Cruc,
+whose name survives in <i>Pennocrucium</i>, have names meaning
+"chief <i>or</i> head of the mound."<a id="footnotetag213" name=
+"footnotetag213"></a><a href="#footnote213"><sup>213</sup></a>
+Other mounds or hills had also a sacred character. Hence gods
+worshipped at mounds, dwelling or revealing themselves there, still
+lingered in the haunted spots; they became fairies, or were
+associated with the dead buried in the mounds, as fairies also have
+been, or were themselves thought to have died and been buried
+there. The haunting of the mounds by the old gods is seen in a
+prayer of S. Columba's, who begs God to dispel "this host
+(<i>i.e.</i> the old gods) around the cairns that reigneth."<a id=
+"footnotetag214" name="footnotetag214"></a><a href=
+"#footnote214"><sup>214</sup></a> An early MS also tells how the
+Milesians allotted the underground part of Erin to the Tuatha
+D&eacute;a who now retired within the hills; in other words, they
+were gods of the hills worshipped by the Milesians on hills.<a id=
+"footnotetag215" name="footnotetag215"></a><a href=
+"#footnote215"><sup>215</sup></a> But, as we shall see, the gods
+dwelt elsewhere than in hills.<a id="footnotetag216" name=
+"footnotetag216"></a><a href="#footnote216"><sup>216</sup></a></p>
+<p>Tumuli may already in pagan times have been pointed out as tombs
+of gods who died in myth or ritual, like the tombs of Zeus in Crete
+and of Osiris in Egypt. Again, fairies, in some aspects, are ghosts
+of the dead, and haunt tumuli; hence, when gods became fairies they
+would do the same. And once they were thought of as dead kings, any
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>{67}</span>
+notable tumuli would be pointed out as theirs, since it is a law in
+folk-belief to associate tumuli or other structures not with the
+dead or with their builders, but with supernatural or mythical or
+even historical personages. If <i>s&iacute;de</i> ever meant
+"ghosts," it would be easy to call the dead gods by this name, and
+to connect them with the places of the dead.<a id="footnotetag217"
+name="footnotetag217"></a><a href=
+"#footnote217"><sup>217</sup></a></p>
+<p>Many strands went to the weaving of the later conception of the
+gods, but there still hung around them an air of mystery, and the
+belief that they were a race of men was never consistent with
+itself.</p>
+<p>Danu gave her name to the whole group of gods, and is called
+their mother, like the Egyptian Neith or the Semitic Ishtar.<a id=
+"footnotetag218" name="footnotetag218"></a><a href=
+"#footnote218"><sup>218</sup></a> In the annalists she is daughter
+of Dagda, and has three sons. She may be akin to the goddess Anu,
+whom Cormac describes as "<i>mater deorum hibernensium</i>. It was
+well she nursed the gods." From her name he derives <i>ana</i>,
+"plenty," and two hills in Kerry are called "the Paps of
+Anu."<a id="footnotetag219" name="footnotetag219"></a><a href=
+"#footnote219"><sup>219</sup></a> Thus as a goddess of plenty Danu
+or Anu may have been an early Earth-mother, and what may be a dim
+memory of Anu in Leicestershire confirms this view. A cave on the
+Dane Hills is called "Black Annis' Bower," and she is said to have
+been a savage woman who devoured human victims.<a id=
+"footnotetag220" name="footnotetag220"></a><a href=
+"#footnote220"><sup>220</sup></a> Earth-goddesses <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>{68}</span> usually have
+human victims, and Anu would be no exception. In the cult of Earth
+divinities Earth and under-Earth are practically identical, while
+Earth-goddesses like Demeter and Persephone were associated with
+the underworld, the dead being Demeter's folk. The fruits of the
+earth with their roots below the surface are then gifts of the
+earth- or under-earth goddess. This may have been the case with
+Danu, for in Celtic belief the gifts of civilisation came from the
+underworld or from the gods. Professor Rh[^y]s finds the name Anu
+in the dat. <i>Anoniredi</i>, "chariot of Anu," in an inscription
+from Vaucluse, and the identification is perhaps established by the
+fact that goddesses of fertility were drawn through the fields in a
+vehicle.<a id="footnotetag221" name="footnotetag221"></a><a href=
+"#footnote221"><sup>221</sup></a> Cormac also mentions Buanann as
+mother and nurse of heroes, perhaps a goddess worshipped by
+heroes.<a id="footnotetag222" name="footnotetag222"></a><a href=
+"#footnote222"><sup>222</sup></a></p>
+<p>Danu is also identified with Brigit, goddess of knowledge
+(<i>d&aacute;n</i>), perhaps through a folk-etymology. She was
+worshipped by poets, and had two sisters of the same name connected
+with leechcraft and smithwork.<a id="footnotetag223" name=
+"footnotetag223"></a><a href="#footnote223"><sup>223</sup></a> They
+are duplicates or local forms of Brigit, a goddess of culture and
+of poetry, so much loved by the Celts. She is thus the equivalent
+of the Gaulish goddess equated with Minerva by C&aelig;sar, and
+found on inscriptions as Minerva Belisama and Brigindo. She is the
+Dea Brigantia of British inscriptions.<a id="footnotetag224" name=
+"footnotetag224"></a><a href="#footnote224"><sup>224</sup></a> One
+of the seats of her worship was the land of the Brigantes, of whom
+she was the eponymous goddess, and her name (cf. Ir. <i>brig</i>,
+"power" or "craft"; Welsh <i>bri</i>, "honour," "renown") suggests
+her high functions. But her popularity is seen in the continuation
+of her personality and cult in those of S. Brigit, at <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>{69}</span> whose shrine
+in Kildare a sacred fire, which must not be breathed on, or
+approached by a male, was watched daily by nineteen nuns in turn,
+and on the twentieth day by the saint herself.<a id=
+"footnotetag225" name="footnotetag225"></a><a href=
+"#footnote225"><sup>225</sup></a> Similar sacred fires were kept up
+in other monasteries,<a id="footnotetag226" name=
+"footnotetag226"></a><a href="#footnote226"><sup>226</sup></a> and
+they point to the old cult of a goddess of fire, the nuns being
+successors of a virgin priesthood like the vestals, priestesses of
+Vesta. As has been seen, the goddesses Belisama and Sul, probably
+goddesses of fire, resembled Brigit in this.<a id="footnotetag227"
+name="footnotetag227"></a><a href="#footnote227"><sup>227</sup></a>
+But Brigit, like Vesta, was at once a goddess of fire and of
+fertility, as her connection with Candlemas and certain ritual
+survivals also suggest. In the Hebrides on S. Bride's day
+(Candlemas-eve) women dressed a sheaf of oats in female clothes and
+set it with a club in a basket called "Briid's bed." Then they
+called, "Briid is come, Briid is welcome." Or a bed was made of
+corn and hay with candles burning beside it, and Bride was invited
+to come as her bed was ready. If the mark of the club was seen in
+the ashes, this was an omen of a good harvest and a prosperous
+year.<a id="footnotetag228" name="footnotetag228"></a><a href=
+"#footnote228"><sup>228</sup></a> It is also noteworthy that if
+cattle cropped the grass near S. Brigit's shrine, next day it was
+as luxuriant as ever.</p>
+<p>Brigit, or goddesses with similar functions, was regarded by the
+Celts as an early teacher of civilisation, inspirer of the
+artistic, poetic, and mechanical faculties, as well as a goddess of
+fire and fertility. As such she far excelled her sons, gods of
+knowledge. She must have originated in the period when the Celts
+worshipped goddesses rather than gods, and when
+knowledge&mdash;leechcraft, agriculture, inspiration&mdash;were
+women's rather than men's. She had a female priesthood, and men
+were perhaps excluded from her cult, as the tabued shrine at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>{70}</span>
+Kildare suggests. Perhaps her fire was fed from sacred oak wood,
+for many shrines of S. Brigit were built under oaks, doubtless
+displacing pagan shrines of the goddess.<a id="footnotetag229"
+name="footnotetag229"></a><a href="#footnote229"><sup>229</sup></a>
+As a goddess, Brigit is more prominent than Danu, also a goddess of
+fertility, even though Danu is mother of the gods.</p>
+<p>Other goddesses remembered in tradition are Cleena and Vera,
+celebrated in fairy and witch lore, the former perhaps akin to a
+river-goddess Clota, the Clutoida (a fountain-nymph) of the
+continental Celts; the latter, under her alternative name Dirra,
+perhaps a form of a goddess of Gaul, Dirona.<a id="footnotetag230"
+name="footnotetag230"></a><a href="#footnote230"><sup>230</sup></a>
+Aine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has her seat at
+Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former cult
+are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If they were
+neglected she and her troops performed them, according to local
+legend.<a id="footnotetag231" name="footnotetag231"></a><a href=
+"#footnote231"><sup>231</sup></a> She is thus an old goddess of
+fertility, whose cult, even at a festival in which gods were
+latterly more prominent, is still remembered. She is also
+associated with the waters as a water-nymph captured for a time as
+a fairy-bride by the Earl of Desmond.<a id="footnotetag232" name=
+"footnotetag232"></a><a href="#footnote232"><sup>232</sup></a> But
+older legends connect her with the <i>s&iacute;d</i>. She was
+daughter of Eogabal, king of the <i>s&iacute;d</i> of Knockainy,
+the grass on which was annually destroyed at Samhain by his people,
+because it had been taken from them, its rightful owners. Oilill
+Olomm and Ferchus resolved to watch the <i>s&iacute;d</i> on
+Samhain-eve. They saw Eogabal and Aine emerge from it. Ferchus
+killed Eogabal, and Oilill tried to outrage Aine, who bit the flesh
+from his ear. Hence his name of "Bare Ear."<a id="footnotetag233"
+name="footnotetag233"></a><a href="#footnote233"><sup>233</sup></a>
+In this legend we see how earlier gods of fertility come to be
+regarded as hostile to growth. Another story tells of the love of
+Aill&eacute;n, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id=
+"page71"></a>{71}</span> Eogabal's son, for Manannan's wife and
+that of Aine for Manannan. Aine offered her favours to the god if
+he would give his wife to her brother, and "the complicated bit of
+romance," as S. Patrick calls it, was thus arranged.<a id=
+"footnotetag234" name="footnotetag234"></a><a href=
+"#footnote234"><sup>234</sup></a></p>
+<p>Although the Irish gods are warriors, and there are special
+war-gods, yet war-goddesses are more prominent, usually as a group
+of three&mdash;Morrigan, Neman, and Macha. A fourth, Badb,
+sometimes takes the place of one of these, or is identical with
+Morrigan, or her name, like that of Morrigan, may be generic.<a id=
+"footnotetag235" name="footnotetag235"></a><a href=
+"#footnote235"><sup>235</sup></a> <i>Badb</i> means "a scald-crow,"
+under which form the war-goddesses appeared, probably because these
+birds were seen near the slain. She is also called Badbcatha,
+"battle-Badb," and is thus the equivalent of <i>-athubodua,</i> or,
+more probably, <i>Cathubodua</i>, mentioned in an inscription from
+Haute-Savoie, while this, as well as personal names like
+<i>Boduogenos</i>, shows that a goddess Bodua was known to the
+Gauls.<a id="footnotetag236" name="footnotetag236"></a><a href=
+"#footnote236"><sup>236</sup></a> The <i>badb</i> or battle-crow is
+associated with the Fomorian Tethra, but Badb herself is consort of
+a war-god N&eacute;t, one of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, who may
+be the equivalent of Neton, mentioned in Spanish inscriptions and
+equated with Mars. Elsewhere Neman is N&eacute;t's consort, and she
+may be the Nemetona of inscriptions, <i>e.g.</i> at Bath, the
+consort of Mars. Cormac calls N&eacute;t and Neman "a venomous
+couple," which we may well believe them to have been.<a id=
+"footnotetag237" name="footnotetag237"></a><a href=
+"#footnote237"><sup>237</sup></a> To Macha were devoted the heads
+of slain enemies, "Macha's mast," but she, according to the
+annalists, was slain at Mag-tured, though she reappears in the
+C&uacute;chulainn saga as the Macha whose ill-treatment led to the
+"debility" of the Ulstermen.<a id="footnotetag238" name=
+"footnotetag238"></a><a href="#footnote238"><sup>238</sup></a> The
+name Morrigan may mean "great queen," though Dr. Stokes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>{72}</span>
+connecting <i>mor</i> with the same syllable in "Fomorian,"
+explains it as "nightmare-queen."<a id="footnotetag239" name=
+"footnotetag239"></a><a href="#footnote239"><sup>239</sup></a> She
+works great harm to the Fomorians at Mag-tured, and afterwards
+proclaims the victory to the hills, rivers, and fairy-hosts,
+uttering also a prophecy of the evils to come at the end of
+time.<a id="footnotetag240" name="footnotetag240"></a><a href=
+"#footnote240"><sup>240</sup></a> She reappears prominently in the
+C&uacute;chulainn saga, hostile to the hero because he rejects her
+love, yet aiding the hosts of Ulster and the Brown Bull, and in the
+end trying to prevent the hero's death.<a id="footnotetag241" name=
+"footnotetag241"></a><a href="#footnote241"><sup>241</sup></a></p>
+<p>The prominent position of these goddesses must be connected with
+the fact that women went out to war&mdash;a custom said to have
+been stopped by Adamnan at his mother's request, and that many
+prominent heroines of the heroic cycles are warriors, like the
+British Boudicca, whose name may be connected with <i>boudi</i>,
+"victory." Specific titles were given to such classes of female
+warriors&mdash;<i>bangaisgedaig</i>, <i>banfeinnidi</i>, etc.<a id=
+"footnotetag242" name="footnotetag242"></a><a href=
+"#footnote242"><sup>242</sup></a> But it is possible that these
+goddesses were at first connected with fertility, their functions
+changing with the growing warlike tendencies of the Celts. Their
+number recalls that of the threefold <i>Matres</i>, and possibly
+the change in their character is hinted in the Romano-British
+inscription at Benwell to the <i>Lamiis Tribus</i>, since
+Morrigan's name is glossed <i>lamia</i>.<a id="footnotetag243"
+name="footnotetag243"></a><a href="#footnote243"><sup>243</sup></a>
+She is also identified with Anu, and is mistress of Dagda, an
+Earth-god, and with Badb and others expels the Fomorians when they
+destroyed the agricultural produce of Ireland.<a id=
+"footnotetag244" name="footnotetag244"></a><a href=
+"#footnote244"><sup>244</sup></a> Probably the scald-crow was at
+once the symbol and the incarnation of the war-goddesses, who
+resemble the Norse Valkyries, appearing sometimes as crows, and the
+Greek Keres, bird-like beings which drank the blood of the slain.
+It <span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id=
+"page73"></a>{73}</span> is also interesting to note that Badb, who
+has the character of a prophetess of evil, is often identified with
+the "Washer at the Ford," whose presence indicates death to him
+whose armour or garments she seems to cleanse.<a id=
+"footnotetag245" name="footnotetag245"></a><a href=
+"#footnote245"><sup>245</sup></a></p>
+<p>The <i>Matres</i>, goddesses of fertility, do not appear by name
+in Ireland, but the triplication of such goddesses as Morrigan and
+Brigit, the threefold name of Dagda's wife, or the fact that Arm,
+Danu, and Buanan are called "mothers," while Buanan's name is
+sometimes rendered "good mother," may suggest that such grouped
+goddesses were not unknown. Later legend knows of white women who
+assist in spinning, or three hags with power over nature, or, as in
+the <i>Battle of Ventry</i>, of three supernatural women who fall
+in love with Conncrithir, aid him in fight, and heal his wounds. In
+this document and elsewhere is mentioned the "<i>s&iacute;d</i> of
+the White Women."<a id="footnotetag246" name=
+"footnotetag246"></a><a href="#footnote246"><sup>246</sup></a>
+Goddesses of fertility are usually goddesses of love, and the
+prominence given to females among the <i>s&iacute;de</i>, the fact
+that they are often called <i>Be find</i>, "White Women," like
+fairies who represent the <i>Matres</i> elsewhere, and that they
+freely offer their love to mortals, may connect them with this
+group of goddesses. Again, when the Milesians arrived in Ireland,
+three kings of the Tuatha D&eacute;a had wives called Eriu, Banba,
+and Fotla, who begged that Ireland should be called after them.
+This was granted, but only Eriu (Erin) remained in general
+use.<a id="footnotetag247" name="footnotetag247"></a><a href=
+"#footnote247"><sup>247</sup></a> The story is an &aelig;tiological
+myth explaining the names of Ireland, but the three wives may be a
+group like the <i>Matres</i>, guardians of the land which took its
+name from them.</p>
+<p>Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba, who give a title to the whole
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>{74}</span>
+group, are called <i>tri dee Donand</i>, "the three gods (sons of)
+Danu," or, again, "gods of <i>d&aacute;n</i>" (knowledge), perhaps
+as the result of a folk-etymology, associating <i>d&acirc;n</i>
+with their mother's name Danu.<a id="footnotetag248" name=
+"footnotetag248"></a><a href="#footnote248"><sup>248</sup></a>
+Various attributes are personified as their descendants, Wisdom
+being son of all three.<a id="footnotetag249" name=
+"footnotetag249"></a><a href="#footnote249"><sup>249</sup></a>
+Though some of these attributes may have been actual gods,
+especially Ecne or Wisdom, yet it is more probable that the
+personification is the result of the subtleties of bardic science,
+of which similar examples occur.<a id="footnotetag250" name=
+"footnotetag250"></a><a href="#footnote250"><sup>250</sup></a> On
+the other hand, the fact that Ecne is the son of three brothers,
+may recall some early practice of polyandry of which instances are
+met with in the sagas.<a id="footnotetag251" name=
+"footnotetag251"></a><a href="#footnote251"><sup>251</sup></a> M.
+D'Arbois has suggested that Iuchar and Iucharba are mere duplicates
+of Brian, who usually takes the leading place, and he identifies
+them with three kings of the Tuatha D&eacute;a reigning at the time
+of the Milesian invasion&mdash;MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne,
+so called, according to Keating, because the hazel (<i>coll</i>),
+the plough (<i>cecht</i>), and the sun (<i>grian</i>) were "gods of
+worship" to them. Both groups are grandsons of Dagda, and M.
+D'Arbois regards this second group as also triplicates of one god,
+because their wives Fotla, Banba, and Eriu all bear names of
+Ireland itself, are personifications of the land, and thus may be
+"reduced to unity."<a id="footnotetag252" name=
+"footnotetag252"></a><a href="#footnote252"><sup>252</sup></a>
+While this reasoning is ingenious, it should be remembered that we
+must not lay too much stress upon Irish divine genealogies, while
+each group of three may have been similar local gods associated at
+a later time as brothers. Their separate personality is suggested
+by the fact that the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are called after them
+"the Men of the Three Gods," and their supremacy appears in the
+incident of Dagda, Lug, and Ogma consulting them before the fight
+at Mag-tured&mdash;a natural proceeding if they <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>{75}</span> were gods of
+knowledge or destiny.<a id="footnotetag253" name=
+"footnotetag253"></a><a href="#footnote253"><sup>253</sup></a> The
+brothers are said to have slain the god Cian, and to have been
+themselves slain by Lug, and on this seems to have been based the
+story of <i>The Children of Tuirenn</i>, in which they perish
+through their exertions in obtaining the <i>eric</i> demanded by
+Lug.<a id="footnotetag254" name="footnotetag254"></a><a href=
+"#footnote254"><sup>254</sup></a> Here they are sons of Tuirenn,
+but more usually their mother Danu or Brigit is mentioned.</p>
+<p>Another son of Brigit's was Ogma, master of poetry and inventor
+of <i>ogham</i> writing, the word being derived from his
+name.<a id="footnotetag255" name="footnotetag255"></a><a href=
+"#footnote255"><sup>255</sup></a> It is more probable that Ogma's
+name is a derivative from some word signifying "speech" or
+"writing," and that the connection with "ogham" may be a mere
+folk-etymology. Ogma appears as the champion of the gods,<a id=
+"footnotetag256" name="footnotetag256"></a><a href=
+"#footnote256"><sup>256</sup></a> a position given him perhaps from
+the primitive custom of rousing the warriors' emotions by eloquent
+speeches before a battle. Similarly the Babylonian Marduk, "seer of
+the gods," was also their champion in fight. Ogma fought and died
+at Mag-tured; but in other accounts he survives, captures Tethra's
+sword, goes on the quest for Dagda's harp, and is given a
+<i>s&iacute;d</i> after the Milesian victory. Ogma's counterpart in
+Gaul is Ogm&iacute;os, a Herakles and a god of eloquence, thus
+bearing the dual character of Ogma, while Ogma's epithet
+<i>grianainech</i>, "of the smiling countenance," recalls Lucian's
+account of the "smiling face" of Ogm&iacute;os.<a id=
+"footnotetag257" name="footnotetag257"></a><a href=
+"#footnote257"><sup>257</sup></a> Ogma's high position is the
+result of the admiration of bardic eloquence among the Celts, whose
+loquacity was proverbial, and to him its origin was doubtless
+ascribed, as well as that of poetry. The genealogists explain his
+relationship to the other divinities in different ways, but these
+confusions may result from the fact that gods had more than one
+name, of which the annalists made separate personalities.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>{76}</span>
+Most usually Ogma is called Brigit's son. Her functions were like
+his own, but in spite of the increasing supremacy of gods over
+goddesses, he never really eclipsed her.</p>
+<p>Among other culture gods were those associated with the arts and
+crafts&mdash;the development of Celtic art in metal-work
+necessitating the existence of gods of this art. Such a god is
+Goibniu, eponymous god of smiths (Old Ir. <i>goba</i>, "smith"),
+and the divine craftsman at the battle of Mag-tured, making spears
+which never failed to kill.<a id="footnotetag258" name=
+"footnotetag258"></a><a href="#footnote258"><sup>258</sup></a>
+Smiths have everywhere been regarded as uncanny&mdash;a tradition
+surviving from the first introduction of metal among those hitherto
+accustomed to stone weapons and tools. S. Patrick prayed against
+the "spells of women, smiths, and Druids," and it is thus not
+surprising to find that Goibniu had a reputation for magic, even
+among Christians. A spell for making butter, in an eighth century
+MS. preserved at S. Gall, appeals to his "science."<a id=
+"footnotetag259" name="footnotetag259"></a><a href=
+"#footnote259"><sup>259</sup></a> Curiously enough, Goibniu is also
+connected with the culinary art in myth, and, like Hephaistos,
+prepares the feast of the gods, while his ale preserves their
+immortality.<a id="footnotetag260" name=
+"footnotetag260"></a><a href="#footnote260"><sup>260</sup></a> The
+elation produced by heady liquors caused them to be regarded as
+draughts of immortality, like Soma, Haoma, or nectar. Goibniu
+survives in tradition as the <i>Gobhan Saer</i>, to whom the
+building of round towers is ascribed.</p>
+<p>Another god of crafts was Creidne the brazier (Ir. <i>cerd</i>,
+"artificer"; cf. Scots <i>caird</i>, "tinker"), who assisted in
+making a silver hand for Nuada, and supplied with magical rapidity
+parts of the weapons used at Mag-tured.<a id="footnotetag261" name=
+"footnotetag261"></a><a href="#footnote261"><sup>261</sup></a>
+According to the annalists, he was drowned while bringing golden
+ore from Spain.<a id="footnotetag262" name=
+"footnotetag262"></a><a href="#footnote262"><sup>262</sup></a>
+Luchtine, god of carpenters, provided spear-handles <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>{77}</span> for the
+battle, and with marvellous skill flung them into the sockets of
+the spear-heads.<a id="footnotetag263" name=
+"footnotetag263"></a><a href="#footnote263"><sup>263</sup></a></p>
+<p>Diancecht, whose name may mean "swift in power," was god of
+medicine, and, with Creidne's help, fashioned a silver hand for
+Nuada.<a id="footnotetag264" name="footnotetag264"></a><a href=
+"#footnote264"><sup>264</sup></a> His son Miach replaced this by a
+magic restoration of the real hand, and in jealousy his father slew
+him&mdash;a version of the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula of the
+jealous master. Three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew from his
+grave, and were arranged according to their properties by his
+sister Airmed, but Diancecht again confused them, "so that no one
+knows their proper cures."<a id="footnotetag265" name=
+"footnotetag265"></a><a href="#footnote265"><sup>265</sup></a> At
+the second battle of Mag-tured, Diancecht presided over a
+healing-well containing magic herbs. These and the power of spells
+caused the mortally wounded who were placed in it to recover. Hence
+it was called "the spring of health."<a id="footnotetag266" name=
+"footnotetag266"></a><a href="#footnote266"><sup>266</sup></a>
+Diancecht, associated with a healing-well, may be cognate with
+Grannos. He is also referred to in the S. Gall MS., where his
+healing powers are extolled.</p>
+<p>An early chief of the gods is Dagda, who, in the story of the
+battle of Mag-tured, is said to be so called because he promised to
+do more than all the other gods together. Hence they said, "It is
+thou art the <i>good hand</i>" (<i>dag-dae</i>). The <i>C&oacute;ir
+Anmann</i> explains <i>Dagda</i> as "fire of god" (<i>daig</i> and
+<i>d&eacute;a</i>). The true derivation is from <i>dagos</i>,
+"good," and <i>deivos</i>, "god," though Dr. Stokes considers
+<i>Dagda</i> as connected with <i>dagh</i>, whence <i>daghda</i>,
+"cunning."<a id="footnotetag267" name="footnotetag267"></a><a href=
+"#footnote267"><sup>267</sup></a> Dagda is also called Cera, a word
+perhaps derived from <i>kar</i> and connected with Lat.
+<i>cerus</i>, "creator" and other names of his are
+<i>Ruad-rofhessa</i>, "lord of great knowledge," <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>{78}</span> and
+<i>Eochaid Ollathair</i>, "great father," "for a great father to
+the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann was he."<a id="footnotetag268" name=
+"footnotetag268"></a><a href="#footnote268"><sup>268</sup></a> He
+is also called "a beautiful god," and "the principal god of the
+pagans."<a id="footnotetag269" name="footnotetag269"></a><a href=
+"#footnote269"><sup>269</sup></a> After the battle he divides the
+<i>brugs</i> or <i>s&iacute;d</i> among the gods, but his son
+Oengus, having been omitted, by a stratagem succeeded in ousting
+his father from his <i>s&iacute;d</i>, over which he now himself
+reigned<a id="footnotetag270" name="footnotetag270"></a><a href=
+"#footnote270"><sup>270</sup></a>&mdash;possibly the survival of an
+old myth telling of a superseding of Dagda's cult by that of
+Oengus, a common enough occurrence in all religions. In another
+version, Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divides the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>, and Manannan makes the Tuatha D&eacute;a
+invisible and immortal. He also helps Oengus to drive out his
+foster-father Elemar from his <i>brug</i>, where Oengus now lives
+as a god.<a id="footnotetag271" name="footnotetag271"></a><a href=
+"#footnote271"><sup>271</sup></a> The underground <i>brugs</i> are
+the gods' land, in all respects resembling the oversea Elysium, and
+at once burial-places of the euhemerised gods and local forms of
+the divine land. Professor Rh[^y]s regards Dagda as an atmospheric
+god; Dr. MacBain sees in him a sky-god. More probably he is an
+early Earth-god and a god of agriculture. He has power over corn
+and milk, and agrees to prevent the other gods from destroying
+these after their defeat by the Milesians&mdash;former beneficent
+gods being regarded as hurtful, a not uncommon result of the
+triumph of a new faith.<a id="footnotetag272" name=
+"footnotetag272"></a><a href="#footnote272"><sup>272</sup></a>
+Dagda is called "the god of the earth" "because of the greatness of
+his power."<a id="footnotetag273" name=
+"footnotetag273"></a><a href="#footnote273"><sup>273</sup></a>
+Mythical objects associated with him suggest plenty and
+fertility&mdash;his cauldron which satisfied all comers, his
+unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
+vessel <span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id=
+"page79"></a>{79}</span> of ale, and three trees always laden with
+fruit. These were in his <i>s&iacute;d</i>, where none ever tasted
+death;<a id="footnotetag274" name="footnotetag274"></a><a href=
+"#footnote274"><sup>274</sup></a> hence his <i>s&iacute;d</i> was a
+local Elysium, not a gloomy land of death, but the underworld in
+its primitive aspect as the place of gods of fertility. In some
+myths he appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D'Arbois suggests
+that he may thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god with the
+mallet.<a id="footnotetag275" name="footnotetag275"></a><a href=
+"#footnote275"><sup>275</sup></a> This is probable, since the
+Gaulish god may have been a form of Dispater, an Earth or
+under-Earth god of fertility.</p>
+<p>If Dagda was a god of fertility, he may have been an equivalent
+of a god whose image was called <i>Cenn</i> or <i>Cromm
+Cruaich</i>, "Head <i>or</i> Crooked One of the Mound," or "Bloody
+Head <i>or</i> Crescent."<a id="footnotetag276" name=
+"footnotetag276"></a><a href="#footnote276"><sup>276</sup></a>
+Vallancey, citing a text now lost, says that <i>Crom-eocha</i> was
+a name of Dagda, and that a motto at the sacrificial place at Tara
+read, "Let the altar ever blaze to Dagda."<a id="footnotetag277"
+name="footnotetag277"></a><a href="#footnote277"><sup>277</sup></a>
+These statements may support this identification. The cult of Cromm
+is preserved in some verses:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"He was their god,</p>
+<p>The withered Cromm with many mists...</p>
+<p>To him without glory</p>
+<p>They would kill their piteous wretched offspring,</p>
+<p>With much wailing and peril,</p>
+<p>To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.</p>
+<p>Milk and corn</p>
+<p>They would ask from him speedily</p>
+<p>In return for a third of their healthy issue,</p>
+<p>Great was the horror and fear of him.</p>
+<p>To him noble Gaels would prostrate themselves."<a id=
+"footnotetag278" name="footnotetag278"></a><a href=
+"#footnote278"><sup>278</sup></a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>{80}</span>
+<p>Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts
+of corn and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on
+one occasion the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused
+three-fourths of them to die. Again, "they beat their palms, they
+pounded their bodies ... they shed falling showers of tears."<a id=
+"footnotetag279" name="footnotetag279"></a><a href=
+"#footnote279"><sup>279</sup></a> These are reminiscences of
+orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one. The god
+must have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was
+poured on the image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and
+folk-survivals, may have been buried in the fields to promote
+fertility. If so, the victims' flesh was instinct with the power of
+the divinity, and, though their number is obviously exaggerated,
+several victims may have taken the place of an earlier slain
+representative of the god. A mythic <i>Crom Dubh</i>, "Black Crom,"
+whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in August, may be another
+form of Cromm Cruaich. In one story the name is transferred to S.
+Patrick's servant, who is asked by the fairies when they will go to
+Paradise. "Not till the day of judgment," is the answer, and for
+this they cease to help men in the processes of agriculture. But in
+a variant Manannan bids Crom ask this question, and the same result
+follows.<a id="footnotetag280" name="footnotetag280"></a><a href=
+"#footnote280"><sup>280</sup></a> These tales thus enshrine the
+idea that Crom and the fairies were ancient gods of growth who
+ceased to help men when they deserted them for the Christian faith.
+If the sacrifice was offered at the August festival, or, as the
+texts suggest, at Samhain, after harvest, it must have been on
+account of the next year's crop, and the flesh may have been
+mingled with the seed corn.</p>
+<p>Dagda may thus have been a god of growth and fertility.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>{81}</span>
+His wife or mistress was the river-goddess, Boand (the
+Boyne),<a id="footnotetag281" name="footnotetag281"></a><a href=
+"#footnote281"><sup>281</sup></a> and the children ascribed to him
+were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma. The
+euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn's venom, long after the battle
+of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.<a id="footnotetag282"
+name="footnotetag282"></a><a href="#footnote282"><sup>282</sup></a>
+Irish mythology is remarkably free from obscene and grotesque
+myths, but some of these cluster round Dagda. We hear of the
+Gargantuan meal provided for him in sport by the Fomorians, and of
+which he ate so much that "not easy was it for him to move and
+unseemly was his apparel," as well as his conduct with a Fomorian
+beauty. Another amour of his was with Morrigan, the place where it
+occurred being still known as "The Couple's Bed."<a id=
+"footnotetag283" name="footnotetag283"></a><a href=
+"#footnote283"><sup>283</sup></a> In another tale Dagda acts as
+cook to Conaire the great.<a id="footnotetag284" name=
+"footnotetag284"></a><a href="#footnote284"><sup>284</sup></a></p>
+<p>The beautiful and fascinating Oengus is sometimes called <i>Mac
+Ind Oc</i>, "Son of the Young Ones," <i>i.e.</i> Dagda and Boand,
+or <i>In Mac Oc</i>, "The Young Son." This name, like the myth of
+his disinheriting his father, may point to his cult superseding
+that of Dagda. If so, he may then have been affiliated to the older
+god, as was frequently done in parallel cases, <i>e.g.</i> in
+Babylon. Oengus may thus have been the high god of some tribe who
+assumed supremacy, ousting the high god of another tribe, unless we
+suppose that Dagda was a pre-Celtic god with functions similar to
+those of Oengus, and that the Celts adopted his cult but gave that
+of Oengus a higher place. In one myth the supremacy of Oengus is
+seen. After the first battle of Mag-tured, Dagda is forced to
+become the slave of Bres, and is much annoyed by a lampooner who
+extorts the best pieces of his rations. Following the advice of
+Oengus, he not only causes the lampooner's death, but triumphs over
+the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id=
+"page82"></a>{82}</span> Fomorians.<a id="footnotetag285" name=
+"footnotetag285"></a><a href="#footnote285"><sup>285</sup></a> On
+insufficient grounds, mainly because he was patron of Diarmaid,
+beloved of women, and because his kisses became birds which
+whispered love thoughts to youths and maidens, Oengus has been
+called the Eros of the Gaels. More probably he was primarily a
+supreme god of growth, who occasionally suffered eclipse during the
+time of death in nature, like Tammuz and Adonis, and this may
+explain his absence from Mag-tured. The beautiful story of his
+vision of a maiden with whom he fell violently in love contains too
+many <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig; to be of any mythological or
+religious value. His mother Boand caused search to be made for her,
+but without avail. At last she was discovered to be the daughter of
+a semi-divine lord of a <i>s&iacute;d</i>, but only through the
+help of mortals was the secret of how she could be taken wrung from
+him. She was a swan-maiden, and on a certain day only would Oengus
+obtain her. Ultimately she became his wife. The story is
+interesting because it shows how the gods occasionally required
+mortal aid.<a id="footnotetag286" name=
+"footnotetag286"></a><a href="#footnote286"><sup>286</sup></a></p>
+<p>Equally influenced by <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig; is the
+story of Oengus and Etain. Etain and Fuamnach were wives of Mider,
+but Fuamnach was jealous of Etain, and transformed her into an
+insect. In this shape Oengus found her, and placed her in a glass
+<i>grianan</i> or bower filled with flowers, the perfume of which
+sustained her. He carried the <i>grianan</i> with him wherever he
+went, but Fuamnach raised a magic wind which blew Etain away to the
+roof of Etair, a noble of Ulster. She fell through a smoke-hole
+into a golden cup of wine, and was swallowed by Etair's wife, of
+whom she was reborn.<a id="footnotetag287" name=
+"footnotetag287"></a><a href="#footnote287"><sup>287</sup></a>
+Professor Rh[^y]s resolves all <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page83" id="page83"></a>{83}</span> this into a sun and dawn myth.
+Oengus is the sun, Etain the dawn, the <i>grianan</i> the expanse
+of the sky.<a id="footnotetag288" name=
+"footnotetag288"></a><a href="#footnote288"><sup>288</sup></a> But
+the dawn does not grow stronger with the sun's influence, as Etain
+did under that of Oengus. At the sun's appearance the dawn
+begins</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i2">"to faint in the light of the sun she loves,</p>
+<p>To faint in his light and to die."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>The whole story is built up on the well-known
+<i>M&atilde;rchen</i> formul&aelig; of the "True Bride" and the
+"Two Brothers," but accommodated to well-known mythic personages,
+and the <i>grianan</i> is the Celtic equivalent of various objects
+in stories of the "Cinderella" type, in which the heroine conceals
+herself, the object being bought by the hero and kept in his
+room.<a id="footnotetag289" name="footnotetag289"></a><a href=
+"#footnote289"><sup>289</sup></a> Thus the tale reveals nothing of
+Etain's divine functions, but it illustrates the method of the
+"mythological" school in discovering sun-heroes and dawn-maidens in
+any incident, mythical or not.</p>
+<p>Oengus appears in the Fionn cycle as the fosterer and protector
+of Diarmaid.<a id="footnotetag290" name=
+"footnotetag290"></a><a href="#footnote290"><sup>290</sup></a> With
+Mider, Bodb, and Morrigan, he expels the Fomorians when they
+destroy the corn, fruit, and milk of the Tuatha D&eacute;
+Danann.<a id="footnotetag291" name="footnotetag291"></a><a href=
+"#footnote291"><sup>291</sup></a> This may point to his functions
+as a god of fertility.</p>
+<p>Although Mider appears mainly as a king of the
+<i>s&iacute;de</i> and ruler of the <i>brug</i> of Bri
+L&eacute;ith, he is also connected with the Tuatha
+D&eacute;a.<a id="footnotetag292" name=
+"footnotetag292"></a><a href="#footnote292"><sup>292</sup></a>
+Learning that Etain had been reborn and was now married to King
+Eochaid, he recovered her from him, but lost her again when Eochaid
+attacked his <i>brug</i>. He was <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page84" id="page84"></a>{84}</span> ultimately avenged in the
+series of tragic events which led to the death of Eochaid's
+descendant Conaire. Though his <i>s&iacute;d</i> is located in
+Ireland, it has so much resemblance to Elysium that Mider must be
+regarded as one of its lords. Hence he appears as ruler of the Isle
+of Falga, <i>i.e.</i> the Isle of Man regarded as Elysium. Thence
+his daughter Bl&aacute;thnat, his magical cows and cauldron, were
+stolen by C&uacute;chulainn and Curoi, and his three cranes from
+Bri L&eacute;ith by Aitherne<a id="footnotetag293" name=
+"footnotetag293"></a><a href=
+"#footnote293"><sup>293</sup></a>&mdash;perhaps distorted versions
+of the myths which told how various animals and gifts came from the
+god's land. Mider may be the Irish equivalent of a local Gaulish
+god, Medros, depicted on bas-reliefs with a cow or bull.<a id=
+"footnotetag294" name="footnotetag294"></a><a href=
+"#footnote294"><sup>294</sup></a></p>
+<p>The victory of the Tuatha D&eacute;a at the first battle of
+Mag-tured, in June, their victory followed, however, by the deaths
+of many of them at the second battle in November, may point to old
+myths dramatising the phenomena of nature, and connected with the
+ritual of summer and winter festivals. The powers of light and
+growth are in the ascendant in summer; they seem to die in winter.
+Christian euhemerists made use of these myths, but regarded the
+gods as warriors who were slain, not as those who die and revive
+again. At the second battle, Nuada loses his life; at the first,
+though his forces are victorious, his hand was cut off by the
+Fomorian Sreng, for even when victorious the gods must suffer. A
+silver hand was made for him by Diancecht, and hence he was called
+Nuada <i>Argetl&aacute;m</i>, "of the silver hand." Professor
+Rh[^y]s regards him as a Celtic Zeus, partly because he is king of
+the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, partly because he, like Zeus or Tyr,
+who lost tendons or a hand through the wiles of evil gods, is also
+maimed.<a id="footnotetag295" name="footnotetag295"></a><a href=
+"#footnote295"><sup>295</sup></a> Similarly in the <i>Rig-Veda</i>
+the A&ccedil;vins substitute a <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page85" id="page85"></a>{85}</span> leg of iron for the leg of
+Vispala, cut off in battle, and the sun is called "golden-handed"
+because Savitri cut off his hand and the priests replaced it by one
+of gold. The myth of Nuada's hand may have arisen from primitive
+attempts at replacing lopped-off limbs, as well as from the fact
+that no Irish king must have any bodily defect, or possibly because
+an image of Nuada may have lacked a hand or possessed one of
+silver. Images were often maimed or given artificial limbs, and
+myths then arose to explain the custom.<a id="footnotetag296" name=
+"footnotetag296"></a><a href="#footnote296"><sup>296</sup></a>
+Nuada appears to be a god of life and growth, but he is not a
+sun-god. His Welsh equivalent is Ll&ucirc;d Llawereint, or
+"silver-handed," who delivers his people from various scourges. His
+daughter Creidylad is to be wedded to Gwythur, but is kidnapped by
+Gwyn. Arthur decides that they must fight for her yearly on 1st May
+until the day of judgment, when the victor would gain her
+hand.<a id="footnotetag297" name="footnotetag297"></a><a href=
+"#footnote297"><sup>297</sup></a> Professor Rh[^y]s regards
+Creidylad as a Persephone, wedded alternately to light and dark
+divinities.<a id="footnotetag298" name=
+"footnotetag298"></a><a href="#footnote298"><sup>298</sup></a> But
+the story may rather be explanatory of such ritual acts as are
+found in folk-survivals in the form of fights between summer and
+winter, in which a Queen of May figures, and intended to assist the
+conflict of the gods of growth with those of blight.<a id=
+"footnotetag299" name="footnotetag299"></a><a href=
+"#footnote299"><sup>299</sup></a> Creidylad is daughter of a
+probable god of growth, nor is it impossible that the story of the
+battle of Mag-tured is based on mythic explanations of such ritual
+combats.</p>
+<p>The Brythons worshipped Nuada as Nodons in Romano-British times.
+The remains of his temple exist near the mouth of the Severn, and
+the god may have been equated with Mars, though certain symbols
+seem to connect him with the waters as a kind of Neptune.<a id=
+"footnotetag300" name="footnotetag300"></a><a href=
+"#footnote300"><sup>300</sup></a> An Irish mythic poet Nuada
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>{86}</span>
+Necht may be the Nechtan who owned a magic well whence issued the
+Boyne, and was perhaps a water-god. If such a water-god was
+associated with Nuada, he and Nodons might be a Celtic
+Neptune.<a id="footnotetag301" name="footnotetag301"></a><a href=
+"#footnote301"><sup>301</sup></a> But the relationship and
+functions of these various personages are obscure, nor is it
+certain that Nodons was equated with Neptune or that Nuada was a
+water-god. His name may be cognate with words meaning "growth,"
+"possession," "harvest," and this supports the view taken here of
+his functions.<a id="footnotetag302" name=
+"footnotetag302"></a><a href="#footnote302"><sup>302</sup></a> The
+Welsh Nudd Hael, or "the Generous," who possessed a herd of 21,000
+milch kine, may be a memory of this god, and it is possible that,
+as a god of growth, Nuada had human incarnations called by his
+name.<a id="footnotetag303" name="footnotetag303"></a><a href=
+"#footnote303"><sup>303</sup></a></p>
+<p>Ler, whose name means "sea," and who was a god of the sea, is
+father of Manannan as well as of the personages of the beautiful
+story called <i>The Children of Lir</i>, from which we learn
+practically all that is known of him. He resented not being made
+ruler of the Tuatha D&eacute;a, but was later reconciled when the
+daughter of Bodb Dearg was given to him as his wife. On her death,
+he married her sister, who transformed her step-children into
+swans.<a id="footnotetag304" name="footnotetag304"></a><a href=
+"#footnote304"><sup>304</sup></a> Ler is the equivalent of the
+Brythonic Llyr, later immortalised by Shakespeare as King Lear.</p>
+<p>The greatness of Manannan mac Lir, "son of the sea," is proved
+by the fact that he appears in many of the heroic tales, and is
+still remembered in tradition and folk-tale. He is a sea-god who
+has become more prominent than the older god of the sea, and though
+not a supreme god, he must have had a far-spreading cult. With Bodb
+Dearg he was elected king of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann. He made
+the gods invisible and immortal, gave them magical food, and
+assisted Oengus in <span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id=
+"page87"></a>{87}</span> driving out Elemar from his
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>. Later tradition spoke of four Manannans,
+probably local forms of the god, as is suggested by the fact that
+the true name of one of them is said to be Orbsen, son of Allot.
+Another, the son of Ler, is described as a renowned trader who
+dwelt in the Isle of Man, the best of pilots, weather-wise, and
+able to transform himself as he pleased. The <i>C&oacute;ir
+Anmann</i> adds that the Britons and the men of Erin deemed him god
+of the sea.<a id="footnotetag305" name=
+"footnotetag305"></a><a href="#footnote305"><sup>305</sup></a> That
+position is plainly seen in many tales, <i>e.g.</i> in the
+magnificent passage of <i>The Voyage of Bran</i>, where he suddenly
+sweeps into sight, riding in a chariot across the waves from the
+Land of Promise; or in the tale of <i>C&uacute;chulainn's
+Sickness</i>, where his wife Fand sees him, "the horseman of the
+crested sea," coming across the waves. In the <i>Agallamh na
+Senorach</i> he appears as a cavalier breasting the waves. "For the
+space of nine waves he would be submerged in the sea, but would
+rise on the crest of the tenth without wetting chest or
+breast."<a id="footnotetag306" name="footnotetag306"></a><a href=
+"#footnote306"><sup>306</sup></a> In one archaic tale he is
+identified with a great sea wave which swept away Tuag, while the
+waves are sometimes called "the son of Lir's horses"&mdash;a name
+still current in Ireland, or, again, "the locks of Manannan's
+wife."<a id="footnotetag307" name="footnotetag307"></a><a href=
+"#footnote307"><sup>307</sup></a> His position as god of the sea
+may have given rise to the belief that he was ruler of the oversea
+Elysium, and, later, of the other-world as a magical domain
+coterminous with this earth. He is still remembered in the Isle of
+Man, which may owe its name to him, and which, like many another
+island, was regarded by the Goidels as the island Elysium under its
+name of Isle of Falga. He is also the Manawyddan of Welsh
+story.</p>
+<p>Manannan appears in the C&uacute;chulainn and Fionn cycles,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>{88}</span>
+usually as a ruler of the Other-world. His wife Fand was
+C&uacute;chulainn's mistress, Diarmaid was his pupil in fairyland,
+and Cormac was his guest there. Even in Christian times surviving
+pagan beliefs caused legend to be busy with his name. King Fiachna
+was fighting the Scots and in great danger, when a stranger
+appeared to his wife and announced that he would save her husband's
+life if she would consent to abandon herself to him. She
+reluctantly agreed, and the child of the <i>amour</i> was the
+seventh-century King Mongan, of whom the annalist says, "every one
+knows that his real father was Manannan."<a id="footnotetag308"
+name="footnotetag308"></a><a href="#footnote308"><sup>308</sup></a>
+Mongan was also believed to be a rebirth of Fionn. Manannan is
+still remembered in folk-tradition, and in the Isle of Man, where
+his grave is to be seen, some of his ritual survived until lately,
+bundles of rushes being placed for him on midsummer eve on two
+hills.<a id="footnotetag309" name="footnotetag309"></a><a href=
+"#footnote309"><sup>309</sup></a> Barintus, who steers Arthur to
+the fortunate isles, and S. Barri, who crossed the sea on
+horseback, may have been legendary forms of a local sea-god akin to
+Manannan, or of Manannan himself.<a id="footnotetag310" name=
+"footnotetag310"></a><a href="#footnote310"><sup>310</sup></a> His
+steed was Enbarr, "water foam <i>or</i> hair," and Manannan was
+"the horseman of the man&eacute;d sea." "Barintus," perhaps
+connected with <i>barr find</i>, "white-topped," would thus be a
+surname of the god who rode on Enbarr, the foaming wave, or who was
+himself the wave, while his mythic sea-riding was transferred to
+the legend of S. Barri, if such a person ever existed.</p>
+<p>Various magical possessions were ascribed to Manannan&mdash;his
+armour and sword, the one making the wearer invulnerable,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>{89}</span>
+the other terrifying all who beheld it; his horse and canoe; his
+swine, which came to life again when killed; his magic cloak; his
+cup which broke when a lie was spoken; his tablecloth, which, when
+waved, produced food. Many of these are found everywhere in
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i>, and there is nothing peculiarly Celtic in
+them. We need not, therefore, with the mythologists, see in his
+armour the vapoury clouds or in his sword lightning or the sun's
+rays. But their magical nature as well as the fact that so much
+wizardry is attributed to Manannan, points to a copious mythology
+clustering round the god, now for ever lost.</p>
+<p>The parentage of Lug is differently stated, but that account
+which makes him son of Cian and of Ethne, daughter of Balor, is
+best attested.<a id="footnotetag311" name=
+"footnotetag311"></a><a href="#footnote311"><sup>311</sup></a>
+Folk-tradition still recalls the relation of Lug and Balor. Balor,
+a robber living in Tory Island, had a daughter whose son was to
+kill her father. He therefore shut her up in an inaccessible place,
+but in revenge for Balor's stealing MacIneely's cow, the latter
+gained access to her, with the result that Ethne bore three sons,
+whom Balor cast into the sea. One of them, Lug, was recovered by
+MacIneely and fostered by his brother Gavida. Balor now slew
+MacIneely, but was himself slain by Lug, who pierced his single eye
+with a red-hot iron.<a id="footnotetag312" name=
+"footnotetag312"></a><a href="#footnote312"><sup>312</sup></a> In
+another version, Kian takes MacIneely's place and is aided by
+Manannan, in accordance with older legends.<a id="footnotetag313"
+name="footnotetag313"></a><a href="#footnote313"><sup>313</sup></a>
+But Lug's birth-story has been influenced in these tales by the
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula of the girl hidden away because it has
+been foretold that she will have a son who will slay her
+father.</p>
+<p>Lug is associated with Manannan, from whose land he comes to
+assist the Tuatha D&eacute;a against the Fomorians. His appearance
+was that of the sun, and by this brilliant warrior's <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>{90}</span> prowess the
+hosts were utterly defeated.<a id="footnotetag314" name=
+"footnotetag314"></a><a href="#footnote314"><sup>314</sup></a> This
+version, found in <i>The Children of Tuirenn</i>, differs from the
+account in the story of Mag-tured. Here Lug arrives at the gates of
+Tara and offers his services as a craftsman. Each offer is refused,
+until he proclaims himself "the man of each and every art," or
+<i>samild&aacute;nach</i>, "possessing many arts." Nuada resigns
+his throne to him for thirteen days, and Lug passes in review the
+various craftsmen (<i>i.e.</i> the gods), and though they try to
+prevent such a marvellous person risking himself in fight, he
+escapes, heads the warriors, and sings his war-song. Balor, the
+evil-eyed, he slays with a sling-stone, and his death decided the
+day against the Fomorians. In this account Lug
+<i>samild&aacute;nach</i> is a patron of the divine patrons of
+crafts; in other words, he is superior to a whole group of gods. He
+was also inventor of draughts, ball-play, and horsemanship. But, as
+M. D'Arbois shows, <i>samild&aacute;nach</i> is the equivalent of
+"inventor of all arts," applied by C&aelig;sar to the Gallo-Roman
+Mercury, who is thus an equivalent of Lug.<a id="footnotetag315"
+name="footnotetag315"></a><a href="#footnote315"><sup>315</sup></a>
+This is attested on other grounds. As Lug's name appears in Irish
+Louth (<i>Lug-magh</i>) and in British Lugu-vallum, near Hadrian's
+Wall, so in Gaul the names Lugudunum (Lyons), Lugudiacus, and
+Lugselva ("devoted to Lugus") show that a god Lugus was worshipped
+there. A Gaulish feast of Lugus in August&mdash;the month of Lug's
+festival in Ireland&mdash;was perhaps superseded by one in honour
+of Augustus. No dedication to Lugus has yet been found, but images
+of and inscriptions to Mercury abound at Lugudunum
+Convenarum.<a id="footnotetag316" name=
+"footnotetag316"></a><a href="#footnote316"><sup>316</sup></a> As
+there were three Brigits, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page91"
+id="page91"></a>{91}</span> so there may have been several forms of
+Lugus, and two dedications to the <i>Lugoves</i> have been found in
+Spain and Switzerland, one of them inscribed by the shoemakers of
+Uxama.<a id="footnotetag317" name="footnotetag317"></a><a href=
+"#footnote317"><sup>317</sup></a> Thus the Lugoves may have been
+multiplied forms of Lugus or <i>Lugovos</i>, "a hero," the meaning
+given to "Lug" by O'Davoren.<a id="footnotetag318" name=
+"footnotetag318"></a><a href="#footnote318"><sup>318</sup></a>
+Shoe-making was not one of the arts professed by Lug, but Professor
+Rh[^y]s recalls the fact that the Welsh Lleu, whom he equates with
+Lug, disguised himself as a shoemaker.<a id="footnotetag319" name=
+"footnotetag319"></a><a href="#footnote319"><sup>319</sup></a>
+Lugus, besides being a mighty hero, was a great Celtic culture-god,
+superior to all other culture divinities.</p>
+<p>The euhemerists assigned a definite date to Lug's death, but
+side by side with this the memory of his divinity prevailed, and he
+appears as the father and helper of C&uacute;chulainn, who was
+possibly a rebirth of the god.<a id="footnotetag320" name=
+"footnotetag320"></a><a href="#footnote320"><sup>320</sup></a> His
+high position appears in the fact that the Gaulish assembly at
+Lugudunum was held in his honour, like the festival of Lugnasad in
+Ireland. Craftsmen brought their wares to sell at this festival of
+the god of crafts, while it may also have been a harvest
+festival.<a id="footnotetag321" name="footnotetag321"></a><a href=
+"#footnote321"><sup>321</sup></a> Whether it was a strictly solar
+feast is doubtful, though Professor Rh[^y]s and others insist that
+Lug is a sun-god. The name of the Welsh Lleu, "light," is equated
+with Lug, and the same meaning assigned to the latter.<a id=
+"footnotetag322" name="footnotetag322"></a><a href=
+"#footnote322"><sup>322</sup></a> This equation has been contested
+and is doubtful, Lugus probably meaning "hero."<a id=
+"footnotetag323" name="footnotetag323"></a><a href=
+"#footnote323"><sup>323</sup></a> Still the sun-like traits
+ascribed to Lug before Mag-tured suggest that he was a sun-god, and
+solar gods elsewhere, <i>e.g.</i> the Polynesian Maui, are
+culture-gods as well. But it should be remembered that Lug is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>{92}</span>
+not associated with the true solar festivals of Beltane and
+Midsummer.</p>
+<p>While our knowledge of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann is based upon
+a series of mythic tales and other records, that of the gods of the
+continental Celts, apart from a few notices in classical authors
+and elsewhere, comes from inscriptions. But as far as can be
+judged, though the names of the two groups seldom coincide, their
+functions must have been much alike, and their origins certainly
+the same. The Tuatha D&eacute; Danann were nature divinities of
+growth, light, agriculture&mdash;their symbols and possessions
+suggesting fertility, <i>e.g.</i> the cauldron. They were
+divinities of culture and crafts, and of war. There must have been
+many other gods in Ireland than those described here, while some of
+those may not have been worshipped all over Ireland. Generally
+speaking, there were many local gods in Gaul with similar functions
+but different names, and this may have been true of Ireland.
+Perhaps the different names given to Dagda, Manannan, and others
+were simply names of similar local gods, one of whom became
+prominent, and attracted to himself the names of the others. So,
+too, the identity of Danu and Brigit might be explained, or the
+fact that there were three Brigits. We read also in the texts of
+the god of Connaught, or of Ulster, and these were apparently
+regional divinities, or of "the god of Druidism"&mdash;perhaps a
+god worshipped specially by Druids.<a id="footnotetag324" name=
+"footnotetag324"></a><a href="#footnote324"><sup>324</sup></a> The
+remote origin of some of these divinities may be sought in the
+primitive cult of the Earth personified as a fertile being, and in
+that of vegetation and corn-spirits, and the vague spirits of
+nature in all its aspects. Some of these still continued to be
+worshipped when the greater gods had been evolved. Though animal
+worship was not lacking in Ireland, divinities who are
+anthropomorphic forms of earlier animal-gods are less in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>{93}</span>
+evidence than on the Continent. The divinities of culture, crafts,
+and war, and of departments of nature, must have slowly assumed the
+definite personality assigned them in Irish religion. But,
+doubtless, they already possessed that before the Goidels reached
+Ireland. Strictly speaking, the underground domain assigned later
+to the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann belongs only to such of them as were
+associated with fertility. But in course of time most of the group,
+as underground dwellers, were connected with growth and increase.
+These could be blighted by their enemies, or they themselves could
+withhold them when their worshippers offended them.<a id=
+"footnotetag325" name="footnotetag325"></a><a href=
+"#footnote325"><sup>325</sup></a></p>
+<p>Irish mythology points to the early pre-eminence of goddesses.
+As agriculture and many of the arts were first in the hands of
+women, goddesses of fertility and culture preceded gods, and still
+held their place when gods were evolved. Even war-goddesses are
+prominent in Ireland. Celtic gods and heroes are often called after
+their mothers, not their fathers, and women loom largely in the
+tales of Irish colonisation, while in many legends they play a most
+important part. Goddesses give their name to divine groups, and,
+even where gods are prominent, their actions are free, their
+personalities still clearly defined. The supremacy of the divine
+women of Irish tradition is once more seen in the fact that they
+themselves woo and win heroes; while their capacity for love, their
+passion, their eternal youthfulness and beauty are suggestive of
+their early character as goddesses of ever-springing
+fertility.<a id="footnotetag326" name="footnotetag326"></a><a href=
+"#footnote326"><sup>326</sup></a></p>
+<p>This supremacy of goddesses is explained by Professor Rh[^y]s as
+non-Celtic, as borrowed by the Celts from the aborigines.<a id=
+"footnotetag327" name="footnotetag327"></a><a href=
+"#footnote327"><sup>327</sup></a> But it is too deeply impressed on
+the fabric of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id=
+"page94"></a>{94}</span> Celtic tradition to be other than native,
+and we have no reason to suppose that the Celts had not passed
+through a stage in which such a state of things was normal. Their
+innate conservatism caused them to preserve it more than other
+races who had long outgrown such a state of things.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote199" name=
+"footnote199"></a><b>Footnote 199:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag199">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 89; Stokes, <i>RC</i> xii. 129. D'Arbois, ii. 125,
+explains it as "Folk of the god whose mother is called Danu."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote200" name=
+"footnote200"></a><b>Footnote 200:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag200">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 77. The usual Irish word for "god" is <i>dia</i>;
+other names are <i>Fiadu</i>, <i>Art</i>, <i>Dess</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote201" name=
+"footnote201"></a><b>Footnote 201:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag201">(return)</a>
+<p>See Joyce, <i>SII</i>. i. 252, 262; <i>PN</i> i. 183.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote202" name=
+"footnote202"></a><b>Footnote 202:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag202">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 245<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote203" name=
+"footnote203"></a><b>Footnote 203:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag203">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote204" name=
+"footnote204"></a><b>Footnote 204:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag204">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 127. The mounds were the sepulchres of the euhemerised
+gods.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote205" name=
+"footnote205"></a><b>Footnote 205:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag205">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Book of Fermoy</i>, fifteenth century.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote206" name=
+"footnote206"></a><b>Footnote 206:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag206">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 11<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote207" name=
+"footnote207"></a><b>Footnote 207:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag207">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 14, 774; Stokes, <i>TL</i> i. 99, 314, 319.
+<i>S&iacute;d</i> is a fairy hill, the hill itself or the dwelling
+within it. Hence those who dwell in it are <i>Aes</i> or <i>Fir
+s&iacute;de</i>, "men of the mound," or <i>s&iacute;de</i>, fairy
+folk. The primitive form is probably <i>s&ecirc;dos</i>, from
+<i>s&ecirc;d</i>, "abode" or "seat"; cf. Greek [Greek: edos] "a
+temple." Thurneysen suggests a connection with a word equivalent to
+Lat. <i>sidus</i>, "constellation," or "dwelling of the gods."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote208" name=
+"footnote208"></a><b>Footnote 208:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag208">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 252; O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 505.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote209" name=
+"footnote209"></a><b>Footnote 209:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag209">(return)</a>
+<p>"Vision of Oengus," <i>RC</i> iii. 344; <i>IT</i> i. 197 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote210" name=
+"footnote210"></a><b>Footnote 210:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag210">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>Ir. Gram.</i> 118; O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 71; see
+p. <a href="#page363">363</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote211" name=
+"footnote211"></a><b>Footnote 211:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag211">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>Ir. Gram.</i> 118, &sect; 6; <i>IT</i> iii. 407;
+<i>RC</i> xvi. 139.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote212" name=
+"footnote212"></a><b>Footnote 212:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag212">(return)</a>
+<p>Shore, <i>JAI</i> xx. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote213" name=
+"footnote213"></a><b>Footnote 213:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag213">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 203 f. <i>Pennocrucium</i> occurs in the
+<i>Itinerary</i> of Antoninus.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote214" name=
+"footnote214"></a><b>Footnote 214:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag214">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 434.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote215" name=
+"footnote215"></a><b>Footnote 215:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag215">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 252.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote216" name=
+"footnote216"></a><b>Footnote 216:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag216">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page228">228</a>. In Scandinavia the dead were
+called elves, and lived feasting in their barrows or in hills.
+These became the seat of ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means
+any divine spirit, later a fairy. "Elf" and <i>s&iacute;de</i> may
+thus, like the "elf-howe" and the <i>s&iacute;d</i> or mound, have
+a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, <i>Corpus Poet.
+Boreale</i>, i. 413 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote217" name=
+"footnote217"></a><b>Footnote 217:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag217">(return)</a>
+<p>Tuan MacCairill (<i>LU</i> 166) calls the Tuatha D&eacute;a,
+"d&eacute;e ocus and&eacute;e," and gives the meaning as "poets and
+husbandmen." This phrase, with the same meaning, is used in
+"C&oacute;ir Anmann" (<i>IT</i> iii. 355), but there we find that
+it occurred in a pagan formula of blessing&mdash;"The blessing of
+gods and not-gods be on thee." But the writer goes on to
+say&mdash;"These were their gods, the magicians, and their
+non-gods, the husbandmen." This may refer to the position of
+priest-kings and magicians as gods. Rh[^y]s compares Sanskrit
+<i>deva</i> and <i>adeva</i> (<i>HL</i> 581). Cf. the phrase in a
+Welsh poem (Skene, i. 313), "Teulu Oeth et Anoeth," translated by
+Rh[^y]s as "Household of Power and Not-Power" (<i>CFL</i> ii. 620),
+but the meaning is obscure. See Loth, i. 197.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote218" name=
+"footnote218"></a><b>Footnote 218:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag218">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 10<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote219" name=
+"footnote219"></a><b>Footnote 219:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag219">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, 4. Stokes (<i>US</i> 12) derives Anu from <i>(p)an</i>,
+"to nourish"; cf. Lat. <i>panis</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote220" name=
+"footnote220"></a><b>Footnote 220:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag220">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Leicester County Folk-lore</i>, 4. The <i>C&oacute;ir
+Anmann</i> says that Anu was worshipped as a goddess of plenty
+(<i>IT</i> iii. 289).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote221" name=
+"footnote221"></a><b>Footnote 221:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag221">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>Trans. 3rd Inter. Cong. Hist. of Rel.</i> ii. 213.
+See Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> 251 ff., and p. <a href=
+"#page275">275</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote222" name=
+"footnote222"></a><b>Footnote 222:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag222">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>ibid.</i> ii. 213. He finds her name in the
+place-name <i>Bononia</i> and its derivatives.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote223" name=
+"footnote223"></a><b>Footnote 223:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag223">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote224" name=
+"footnote224"></a><b>Footnote 224:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag224">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 17; Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; Stokes, <i>TIG</i>
+33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote225" name=
+"footnote225"></a><b>Footnote 225:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag225">(return)</a>
+<p>Girald. Cambr. <i>Top. Hib.</i> ii. 34 f. Vengeance followed
+upon rash intrusion. For the breath tabu see Frazer, <i>Early Hist.
+of the Kingship</i>, 224.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote226" name=
+"footnote226"></a><b>Footnote 226:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag226">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 335.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote227" name=
+"footnote227"></a><b>Footnote 227:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag227">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page41">41</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote228" name=
+"footnote228"></a><b>Footnote 228:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag228">(return)</a>
+<p>Martin, 119; Campbell, <i>Witchcraft</i>, 248.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote229" name=
+"footnote229"></a><b>Footnote 229:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag229">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i> 225.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote230" name=
+"footnote230"></a><b>Footnote 230:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag230">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>PN</i> i. 195; O'Grady, ii. 198; Wood-Martin, i. 366;
+see p. <a href="#page42">42</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote231" name=
+"footnote231"></a><b>Footnote 231:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag231">(return)</a>
+<p>Fitzgerald, <i>RC</i> iv. 190. Aine has no connection with Anu,
+nor is she a moon-goddess, as is sometimes supposed.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote232" name=
+"footnote232"></a><b>Footnote 232:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag232">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> iv. 189.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote233" name=
+"footnote233"></a><b>Footnote 233:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag233">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 318; <i>IT</i> iii. 305; <i>RC</i> xiii. 435.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote234" name=
+"footnote234"></a><b>Footnote 234:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag234">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 197.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote235" name=
+"footnote235"></a><b>Footnote 235:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag235">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 109, xxii. 295; Cormac, 87; Stokes, <i>TIG</i>
+xxxiii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote236" name=
+"footnote236"></a><b>Footnote 236:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag236">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, i. 341; <i>CIL</i> vii. 1292; C&aelig;sar, ii. 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote237" name=
+"footnote237"></a><b>Footnote 237:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag237">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 11<i>b</i>; Cormac, s.v. <i>Neit</i>; <i>RC</i> iv.
+36; <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 231; Holder, ii. 714, 738.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote238" name=
+"footnote238"></a><b>Footnote 238:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag238">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>TIG, LL</i> 11<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote239" name=
+"footnote239"></a><b>Footnote 239:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag239">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 43; Stokes, <i>RC</i> xii. 128.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote240" name=
+"footnote240"></a><b>Footnote 240:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag240">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 91, 110.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote241" name=
+"footnote241"></a><b>Footnote 241:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag241">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page131">131</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote242" name=
+"footnote242"></a><b>Footnote 242:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag242">(return)</a>
+<p>Petrie, <i>Tara</i>, 147; Stokes, <i>US</i> 175; Meyer, <i>Cath
+Finntr&aacute;ga</i>, Oxford, 1885, 76 f.; <i>RC</i> xvi. 56, 163,
+xxi. 396.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote243" name=
+"footnote243"></a><b>Footnote 243:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag243">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> vii. 507; Stokes, <i>US</i> 211.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote244" name=
+"footnote244"></a><b>Footnote 244:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag244">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> i. 41, xii. 84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote245" name=
+"footnote245"></a><b>Footnote 245:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag245">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxi. 157, 315; Miss Hull, 247. A <i>baobh</i> (a
+common Gaelic name for "witch") appears to Oscar and prophesies his
+death in a Fionn ballad (Campbell, <i>The Fians</i>, 33). In
+Brittany the "night-washers," once water-fairies, are now regarded
+as <i>revenants</i> (Le Braz, i. 52).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote246" name=
+"footnote246"></a><b>Footnote 246:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag246">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 261; Miss Hull, 186; Meyer, <i>Cath
+Finntraga</i>, 6, 13; <i>IT</i> i. 131, 871.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote247" name=
+"footnote247"></a><b>Footnote 247:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag247">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 10<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote248" name=
+"footnote248"></a><b>Footnote 248:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag248">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 10<i>a</i>, 30<i>b</i>, 187<i>c</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote249" name=
+"footnote249"></a><b>Footnote 249:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag249">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxvi. 13; <i>LL</i> 187<i>c</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote250" name=
+"footnote250"></a><b>Footnote 250:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag250">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. the personification of the three strains of Dagda's harp
+(Leahy, ii. 205).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote251" name=
+"footnote251"></a><b>Footnote 251:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag251">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page223">223</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote252" name=
+"footnote252"></a><b>Footnote 252:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag252">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 372.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote253" name=
+"footnote253"></a><b>Footnote 253:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag253">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 77, 83.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote254" name=
+"footnote254"></a><b>Footnote 254:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag254">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 11; <i>Atlantis</i>, London, 1858-70, iv. 159.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote255" name=
+"footnote255"></a><b>Footnote 255:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag255">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, <i>Grammar</i>, Dublin, 1845, xlvii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote256" name=
+"footnote256"></a><b>Footnote 256:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag256">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 77.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote257" name=
+"footnote257"></a><b>Footnote 257:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag257">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucian, <i>Herakles</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote258" name=
+"footnote258"></a><b>Footnote 258:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag258">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 89. The name is found in Gaulish Gobannicnos, and
+in Welsh Abergavenny.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote259" name=
+"footnote259"></a><b>Footnote 259:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag259">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 56; Zimmer, <i>Gloss&aelig; Hibernic&aelig;</i>,
+1881, 270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote260" name=
+"footnote260"></a><b>Footnote 260:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag260">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Atlantis</i>, 1860, iii. 389.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote261" name=
+"footnote261"></a><b>Footnote 261:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag261">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 89.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote262" name=
+"footnote262"></a><b>Footnote 262:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag262">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> ll<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote263" name=
+"footnote263"></a><b>Footnote 263:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag263">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 93.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote264" name=
+"footnote264"></a><b>Footnote 264:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag264">(return)</a>
+<p>Connac, 56, and <i>C&oacute;ir Anmann</i> (<i>IT</i> iii. 357)
+divide the name as <i>d&iacute;a-na-cecht</i> and explain it as
+"god of the powers."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote265" name=
+"footnote265"></a><b>Footnote 265:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag265">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 67. For similar stories of plants springing from
+graves, see my <i>Childhood of Fiction</i>, 115.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote266" name=
+"footnote266"></a><b>Footnote 266:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag266">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii, 89, 95.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote267" name=
+"footnote267"></a><b>Footnote 267:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag267">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> vi. 369; Cormac, 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote268" name=
+"footnote268"></a><b>Footnote 268:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag268">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, 47, 144; <i>IT</i> iii. 355, 357.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote269" name=
+"footnote269"></a><b>Footnote 269:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag269">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 355; D'Arbois, i. 202.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote270" name=
+"footnote270"></a><b>Footnote 270:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag270">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 246<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote271" name=
+"footnote271"></a><b>Footnote 271:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag271">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Irish MSS. Series</i>, i. 46; D'Arbois, ii. 276. In a MS.
+edited by Dr. Stirn, Oengus was Dagda's son by Elemar's wife, the
+amour taking place in her husband's absence. This incident is a
+parallel to the birth-stories of Mongan and Arthur, and has also
+the Fatherless Child theme, since Oengus goes in tears to Mider
+because he has been taunted with having no father or mother. In the
+same MS. it is the Dagda who instructs Oengus how to obtain
+Elemar's <i>s&iacute;d</i>. See <i>RC</i> xxvii. 332, xxviii.
+330.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote272" name=
+"footnote272"></a><b>Footnote 272:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag272">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 245<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote273" name=
+"footnote273"></a><b>Footnote 273:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag273">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 355.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote274" name=
+"footnote274"></a><b>Footnote 274:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag274">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, <i>Battle of Mag-Rath</i>, Dublin, 1842, 50;
+<i>LL</i> 246<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote275" name=
+"footnote275"></a><b>Footnote 275:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag275">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 427, 448.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote276" name=
+"footnote276"></a><b>Footnote 276:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag276">(return)</a>
+<p>The former is Rh[^y]s's interpretation (<i>HL</i> 201)
+connecting <i>Cruaich</i> with <i>cr&uacute;ach</i>, "a heap"; the
+latter is that of D'Arbois (ii. 106), deriving <i>Cruaich</i> from
+<i>cru</i>, "blood." The idea of the image being bent or crooked
+may have been due to the fact that it long stood ready to topple
+over, as a result of S. Patrick's miracle. See p. <a href=
+"#page286">286</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote277" name=
+"footnote277"></a><b>Footnote 277:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag277">(return)</a>
+<p>Vallancey, in <i>Coll. de Rebus Hib.</i> 1786, iv. 495.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote278" name=
+"footnote278"></a><b>Footnote 278:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag278">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 213<i>b</i>. D'Arbois thinks Cromm was a Fomorian, the
+equivalent of Taranis (ii. 62). But he is worshipped by Gaels.
+<i>Crin</i>, "withered," probably refers to the idol's position
+after S. Patrick's miracle, no longer upright but bent like an old
+man. Dr. Hyde, <i>Lit. Hist. of Ireland</i>, 87, with exaggerated
+patriotism, thinks the sacrificial details are copied by a
+Christian scribe from the Old Testament, and are no part of the old
+ritual.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote279" name=
+"footnote279"></a><b>Footnote 279:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag279">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 35, 163.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote280" name=
+"footnote280"></a><b>Footnote 280:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag280">(return)</a>
+<p>Fitzgerald, <i>RL</i> iv. 175.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote281" name=
+"footnote281"></a><b>Footnote 281:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag281">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxvi. 19.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote282" name=
+"footnote282"></a><b>Footnote 282:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag282">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Annals of the Four Masters</i>, A.M. 3450.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote283" name=
+"footnote283"></a><b>Footnote 283:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag283">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 83, 85; Hyde, <i>op. cit.</i> 288.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote284" name=
+"footnote284"></a><b>Footnote 284:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag284">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 94.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote285" name=
+"footnote285"></a><b>Footnote 285:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag285">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 65. Elsewhere three supreme "ignorances" are
+ascribed to Oengus (<i>RL</i> xxvi. 31).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote286" name=
+"footnote286"></a><b>Footnote 286:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag286">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> iii. 342.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote287" name=
+"footnote287"></a><b>Footnote 287:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag287">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 11<i>c</i>; <i>LU</i> 129; <i>IT</i> i. 130. Cf. the
+glass house, placed between sky and moon, to which Tristan conducts
+the queen. Bedier, <i>Tristan et Iseut</i>, 252. In a fragmentary
+version of the story Oengus is Etain's wooer, but Mider is
+preferred by her father, and marries her. In the latter half of the
+story, Oengus does not appear (see p. <a href="#page363">363</a>,
+<i>infra</i>). Mr. Nutt (<i>RC</i> xxvii. 339) suggests that
+Oengus, not Mider, was the real hero of the story, but that its
+Christian redactors gave Mider his place in the second part. The
+fragments are edited by Stirn (<i>ZCP</i> vol. v.).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote288" name=
+"footnote288"></a><b>Footnote 288:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag288">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 146.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote289" name=
+"footnote289"></a><b>Footnote 289:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag289">(return)</a>
+<p>See my <i>Childhood of Fiction</i>, 114, 153. The tale has some
+unique features, as it alone among Western <i>M&auml;rchen</i> and
+saga variants of the "True Bride" describes the malicious woman as
+the wife of Mider. In other words, the story implies polygamy,
+rarely found in European folk-tales.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote290" name=
+"footnote290"></a><b>Footnote 290:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag290">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, <i>TOS</i> iii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote291" name=
+"footnote291"></a><b>Footnote 291:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag291">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> i. 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote292" name=
+"footnote292"></a><b>Footnote 292:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag292">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> i. 71.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote293" name=
+"footnote293"></a><b>Footnote 293:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag293">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 117<i>a</i>. See p. <a href="#page381">381</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote294" name=
+"footnote294"></a><b>Footnote 294:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag294">(return)</a>
+<p>Cumont, <i>RC</i> xxvi. 47; D'Arbois, <i>RC</i> xxvii. 127,
+notes the difficulty of explaining the change of <i>e</i> to
+<i>i</i> in the names.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote295" name=
+"footnote295"></a><b>Footnote 295:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag295">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 121.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote296" name=
+"footnote296"></a><b>Footnote 296:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag296">(return)</a>
+<p>See Crooke, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, viii. 341. Cf. Herod, ii. 131.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote297" name=
+"footnote297"></a><b>Footnote 297:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag297">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 269.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote298" name=
+"footnote298"></a><b>Footnote 298:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag298">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 563.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote299" name=
+"footnote299"></a><b>Footnote 299:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag299">(return)</a>
+<p>Train, <i>Isle of Man</i>, Douglas, 1845, ii. 118; Grimm,
+<i>Teut. Myth.</i> ii. ch. 24; Frazer, <i>GB</i><sup>2</sup> ii. 99
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote300" name=
+"footnote300"></a><b>Footnote 300:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag300">(return)</a>
+<p>Bathurst, <i>Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park</i>, 1879; Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i> "Nodons."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote301" name=
+"footnote301"></a><b>Footnote 301:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag301">(return)</a>
+<p>See Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 122; Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii.
+30.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote302" name=
+"footnote302"></a><b>Footnote 302:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag302">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>US</i> 194-195; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>, 128, <i>IT</i> i.
+712.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote303" name=
+"footnote303"></a><b>Footnote 303:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag303">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 235, 296. See p. <a href="#page160">160</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote304" name=
+"footnote304"></a><b>Footnote 304:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag304">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote305" name=
+"footnote305"></a><b>Footnote 305:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag305">(return)</a>
+<p>For these four Manannans see Cormac 114, <i>RC</i> xxiv. 270,
+<i>IT</i> iii. 357.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote306" name=
+"footnote306"></a><b>Footnote 306:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag306">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote307" name=
+"footnote307"></a><b>Footnote 307:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag307">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Bodley Dindsenchas</i>, No. 10, <i>RC</i> xii. 105; Joyce,
+<i>SH</i> i. 259; <i>Otia Merseiana</i>, ii. "Song of the Sea."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote308" name=
+"footnote308"></a><b>Footnote 308:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag308">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 133.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote309" name=
+"footnote309"></a><b>Footnote 309:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag309">(return)</a>
+<p>Moore, 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote310" name=
+"footnote310"></a><b>Footnote 310:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag310">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, <i>Vita Merlini</i>, 37; Rees, 435. Other saintly
+legends are derived from myths, <i>e.g.</i> that of S. Barri in his
+boat meeting S. Scuithne walking on the sea. Scuithne maintains he
+is walking on a field, and plucks a flower to prove it, while Barri
+confutes him by pulling a salmon out of the sea. This resembles an
+episode in the meeting of Bran and Manannan (Stokes,
+<i>F&eacute;lire</i>, xxxix.; Nutt-Meyer, i. 39). Saints are often
+said to assist men just as the gods did. Columcille and Brigit
+appeared over the hosts of Erin assisting and encouraging them
+<i>(RC</i> xxiv. 40).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote311" name=
+"footnote311"></a><b>Footnote 311:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag311">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 59.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote312" name=
+"footnote312"></a><b>Footnote 312:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag312">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-Lore Journal</i>, v. 66; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 314.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote313" name=
+"footnote313"></a><b>Footnote 313:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag313">(return)</a>
+<p>Larminie, "Kian, son of Kontje."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote314" name=
+"footnote314"></a><b>Footnote 314:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag314">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 37.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote315" name=
+"footnote315"></a><b>Footnote 315:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag315">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, vi. 116, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 39, <i>RC</i> xii. 75,
+101, 127, xvi. 77. Is the defaced inscription at Geitershof, <i>Deo
+M ... Sam ...</i> (Holder, ii. 1335), a dedication to Mercury
+Samild&aacute;nach? An echo of Lug's story is found in the Life of
+S. Herve, who found a devil in his monastery in the form of a man
+who said he was a good carpenter, mason, locksmith, etc., but who
+could not make the sign of the cross. Albert le Grand, <i>Saints de
+la Bretagne</i>, 49, <i>RC</i> vii. 231.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote316" name=
+"footnote316"></a><b>Footnote 316:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag316">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 44, <i>RC</i>
+vii. 400.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote317" name=
+"footnote317"></a><b>Footnote 317:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag317">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i> "Lugus."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote318" name=
+"footnote318"></a><b>Footnote 318:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag318">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>TIG</i> 103. Gaidoz contests the identification of
+the Lugoves and of Lug with Mercury, and to him the Lugoves are
+grouped divinities like the <i>Matres</i> (<i>RC</i> vi. 489).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote319" name=
+"footnote319"></a><b>Footnote 319:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag319">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 425.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote320" name=
+"footnote320"></a><b>Footnote 320:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag320">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page349">349</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote321" name=
+"footnote321"></a><b>Footnote 321:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag321">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page272">272</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote322" name=
+"footnote322"></a><b>Footnote 322:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag322">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 409.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote323" name=
+"footnote323"></a><b>Footnote 323:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag323">(return)</a>
+<p>See Loth, <i>RC</i> x. 490.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote324" name=
+"footnote324"></a><b>Footnote 324:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag324">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, i. 138, ii. 50, 52, <i>LU</i> 124<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote325" name=
+"footnote325"></a><b>Footnote 325:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag325">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 215<i>a</i>; see p. <a href="#page78">78</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote326" name=
+"footnote326"></a><b>Footnote 326:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag326">(return)</a>
+<p>See, further, p. <a href="#page385">385</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote327" name=
+"footnote327"></a><b>Footnote 327:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag327">(return)</a>
+<p><i>The Welsh People</i>, 61. Professor Rh[^y]s admits that the
+theory of borrowing "cannot easily be proved."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>{95}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap6" id="chap6">CHAPTER VI.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS</h3>
+<p>Our knowledge of the gods of the Brythons, <i>i.e.</i> as far as
+Wales is concerned, is derived, apart from inscriptions, from the
+<i>Mabinogion</i>, which, though found in a fourteenth century MS.,
+was composed much earlier, and contains elements from a remote
+past. Besides this, the <i>Triads</i>, probably of twelfth-century
+origin, the <i>Taliesin</i>, and other poems, though obscure and
+artificial, the work of many a "confused bard drivelling" (to cite
+the words of one of them), preserve echoes of the old
+mythology.<a id="footnotetag328" name="footnotetag328"></a><a href=
+"#footnote328"><sup>328</sup></a> Some of the gods may lurk behind
+the personages of Geoffrey of Monmouth's <i>Historia Britonum</i>
+and of the Arthurian cycle, though here great caution is required.
+The divinities have become heroes and heroines, kings and
+princesses, and if some of the episodes are based on ancient myths,
+they are treated in a romantic spirit. Other episodes are mere
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig;. Like the wreckage of some rich
+galleon, the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of the old mythology has been
+used to construct a new fabric, and the old divinities have even
+less of the god-like traits of the personages of the Irish
+texts.</p>
+<p>Some of the personages bear similar names to the Irish
+divinities, and in some cases there is a certain similarity of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>{96}</span>
+incidents to those of the Irish tales.<a id="footnotetag329" name=
+"footnotetag329"></a><a href="#footnote329"><sup>329</sup></a> Are,
+then, the gods dimly revealed in Welsh literature as much Goidelic
+as Brythonic? Analysing the incidents of the <i>Mabinogion</i>,
+Professor Anwyl has shown that they have an entirely local
+character, and are mainly associated with the districts of Dyfed
+and Gwent, of Anglesey, and of Gwynedd, of which Pryderi, Branwen,
+and Gwydion are respectively the heroic characters.<a id=
+"footnotetag330" name="footnotetag330"></a><a href=
+"#footnote330"><sup>330</sup></a> These are the districts where a
+strong Goidelic element prevailed, whether these Goidels were the
+original inhabitants of Britain, driven there by Brythons,<a id=
+"footnotetag331" name="footnotetag331"></a><a href=
+"#footnote331"><sup>331</sup></a> or tribes who had settled there
+from Ireland,<a id="footnotetag332" name=
+"footnotetag332"></a><a href="#footnote332"><sup>332</sup></a> or
+perhaps a mixture of both. In any case they had been conquered by
+Brythons and had become Brythonic in speech from the fifth century
+onwards. On account of this Goidelic element, it has been claimed
+that the personages of the <i>Mabinogion</i> are purely Goidelic.
+But examination proves that only a few are directly parallel in
+name with Irish divinities, and while here there are fundamental
+likenesses, the <i>incidents</i> with Irish parallels may be due to
+mere superficial borrowings, to that interchange of
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> and mythical <i>donn&eacute;es</i> which has
+everywhere occurred. Many incidents have no Irish parallels, and
+most of the characters are entirely different in name from Irish
+divinities. Hence any theory which would account for the
+likenesses, must also account for the differences, and must explain
+why, if the <i>Mabinogion</i> is due to Irish Goidels, there should
+have been few or no borrowings in Welsh literature <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>{97}</span> from the
+popular C&uacute;chulainn and Ossianic sagas,<a id="footnotetag333"
+name="footnotetag333"></a><a href="#footnote333"><sup>333</sup></a>
+and why, at a time when Brythonic elements were uppermost, such
+care should have been taken to preserve Goidelic myths. If the
+tales emanated from native Welsh Goidels, the explanation might be
+that they, the kindred of the Irish Goidels, must have had a
+certain community with them in divine names and myths, while others
+of their gods, more local in character, would differ in name. Or if
+they are Brythonic, the likenesses might be accounted for by an
+early community in myth and cult among the common ancestors of
+Brythons and Goidels.<a id="footnotetag334" name=
+"footnotetag334"></a><a href="#footnote334"><sup>334</sup></a> But
+as the date of the composition of the <i>Mabinogion</i> is
+comparatively late, at a time when Brythons had overrun these
+Goidelic districts, more probably the tales contain a mingling of
+Goidelic (Irish or Welsh) and Brythonic divinities, though some of
+these may be survivals of the common Celtic heritage.<a id=
+"footnotetag335" name="footnotetag335"></a><a href=
+"#footnote335"><sup>335</sup></a> Celtic divinities were mainly of
+a local, tribal character. Hence some would be local Goidelic
+divinities, others, classed with these, local Brythonic divinities.
+This would explain the absence of divinities and heroes of other
+local Brythonic groups, <i>e.g.</i> Arthur, from the
+<i>Mabinogion</i>. But with the growing importance of these, they
+attracted to their legend the folk of the <i>Mabinogion</i> and
+other tales. These are associated with Arthur in <i>Kulhwych</i>,
+and the D&ocirc;n group mingles with that of Taliesin in the
+<i>Taliesin</i> poems.<a id="footnotetag336" name=
+"footnotetag336"></a><a href="#footnote336"><sup>336</sup></a>
+Hence Welsh literature, as far as concerns the old religion, may be
+regarded as including both local Goidelic and Brythonic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>{98}</span>
+divinities, of whom the more purely Brythonic are Arthur, Gwynn,
+Taliesin, etc.<a id="footnotetag337" name=
+"footnotetag337"></a><a href="#footnote337"><sup>337</sup></a> They
+are regarded as kings and queens, or as fairies, or they have
+magical powers. They are mortal and die, and the place of their
+burial is pointed out, or existing tumuli are associated with them,
+All this is parallel to the history of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann,
+and shows how the same process of degradation had been at work in
+Wales as in Ireland.</p>
+<p>The story of the Llyr group is told in the <i>Mabinogion</i> of
+Branwen and of Manawyddan. They are associated with the Pwyll
+group, and apparently opposed to that of D&ocirc;n. Branwen is
+married to Matholwych, king of Ireland, but is ill-treated by him
+on account of the insults of the mischievous Evnissyen, in spite of
+the fact that Bran had atoned for the insult by many gifts,
+including that of a cauldron of regeneration. Now he crosses with
+an army to Ireland, where Evnissyen throws Branwen's child, to whom
+the kingdom is given, on the fire. A fight ensues; the dead Irish
+warriors are resuscitated in the cauldron, but Evnissyen, at the
+cost of his life, destroys it. Bran is slain, and by his directions
+his head is cut off and carried first to Harlech, then to Gwales,
+where it will entertain its bearers for eighty years. At the end of
+that time it is to be taken to London and buried. Branwen,
+departing with the bearers, dies of a broken heart at Anglesey, and
+meanwhile Caswallyn, son of Beli, seizes the kingdom.<a id=
+"footnotetag338" name="footnotetag338"></a><a href=
+"#footnote338"><sup>338</sup></a> Two of the bearers of the head
+are Manawyddan and Pryderi, whose fortunes we follow in the
+<i>Mabinogi</i> of the former. Pryderi gives his mother Rhiannon to
+Manawyddan as his wife, along with some land which by magic art is
+made barren. After following different crafts, they are led by a
+boar to a strange castle, where Rhiannon and Pryderi disappear
+along with the building. <span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id=
+"page99"></a>{99}</span> Manawyddan, with Pryderi's wife Kieva, set
+out as shoemakers, but are forced to abandon this craft on account
+of the envy of the craftsmen. Finally, we learn how Manawyddan
+overcame the enchanter Llwyt, who, because of an insult offered by
+Pryderi's father to his friend Gwawl, had made Rhiannon and Pryderi
+disappear. They are now restored, and Llwyt seeks no further
+revenge.</p>
+<p>The story of Branwen is similar to a tale of which there are
+variants in Teutonic and Scandinavian sagas, but the resemblance is
+closer to the latter.<a id="footnotetag339" name=
+"footnotetag339"></a><a href="#footnote339"><sup>339</sup></a>
+Possibly a similar story with their respective divinities or heroes
+for its characters existed among Celts, Teutons, and Norsemen, but
+more likely it was borrowed from Norsemen who occupied both sides
+of the Irish Sea in the ninth and tenth century, and then
+naturalised by furnishing it with Celtic characters. But into this
+framework many native elements were set, and we may therefore
+scrutinise the story for Celtic mythical elements utilised by its
+redactor, who probably did not strip its Celtic personages of their
+earlier divine attributes. In the two <i>Mabinogi</i> these
+personages are Llyr, his sons Bran and Manawyddan, his daughter
+Branwen, their half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, sons of Llyr's
+wife Penardim, daughter of Beli, by a previous marriage with
+Eurosswyd.</p>
+<p>Llyr is the equivalent of the Irish Ler, the sea-god, but two
+other Llyrs, probably duplicates of himself, are known to Welsh
+story&mdash;Llyr Marini, and the Llyr, father of Cordelia, of the
+chroniclers.<a id="footnotetag340" name=
+"footnotetag340"></a><a href="#footnote340"><sup>340</sup></a> He
+is constantly confused with Lludd Llawereint, <i>e.g.</i> both are
+described as one of three notable prisoners of Britain, and both
+are called fathers of Cordelia or Creiddylad.<a id="footnotetag341"
+name="footnotetag341"></a><a href="#footnote341"><sup>341</sup></a>
+Perhaps the two were once identical, for <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>{100}</span> Manannan
+is sometimes called son of Alloid (= Lludd), in Irish texts, as
+well as son of Ler.<a id="footnotetag342" name=
+"footnotetag342"></a><a href="#footnote342"><sup>342</sup></a> But
+the confusion may be accidental, nor is it certain that Nodons or
+Lludd was a sea-god. Llyr's prison was that of Eurosswyd,<a id=
+"footnotetag343" name="footnotetag343"></a><a href=
+"#footnote343"><sup>343</sup></a> whose wife he may have abducted
+and hence suffered imprisonment. In the <i>Black Book of
+Caermarthen</i> Bran is called son of Y Werydd or "Ocean,"
+according to M. Loth's interpretation of the name, which would thus
+point to Llyr's position as a sea-god. But this is contested by
+Professor Rh[^y]s who makes Ywerit wife of Llyr, the name being in
+his view a form of the Welsh word for Ireland. In Geoffrey and the
+chroniclers Llyr becomes a king of Britain whose history and that
+of his daughters was immortalised by Shakespeare. Geoffrey also
+refers to Llyr's burial in a vault built in honour of Janus.<a id=
+"footnotetag344" name="footnotetag344"></a><a href=
+"#footnote344"><sup>344</sup></a> On this Professor Rh[^y]s builds
+a theory that Llyr was a form of the Celtic Dis with two faces and
+ruler of a world of darkness.<a id="footnotetag345" name=
+"footnotetag345"></a><a href="#footnote345"><sup>345</sup></a> But
+there is no evidence that the Celtic Dispater was lord of a gloomy
+underworld, and it is best to regard Llyr as a sea-divinity.</p>
+<p>Manawyddan is not god-like in these tales in the sense in which
+the majestic Manannan of Irish story is, though elsewhere we learn
+that "deep was his counsel."<a id="footnotetag346" name=
+"footnotetag346"></a><a href="#footnote346"><sup>346</sup></a>
+Though not a magician, he baffles one of the great wizards of Welsh
+story, and he is also a master craftsman, who instructs Pryderi in
+the arts of shoe-making, shield-making, and saddlery. In this he is
+akin to Manannan, the teacher of Diarmaid. Incidents of his career
+are reflected in the <i>Triads</i>, and his union with Rhiannon may
+point to an old myth in which they were from the first a divine
+pair, parents of Pryderi. This would give point to his deliverance
+of Pryderi and Rhiannon from the <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page101" id="page101"></a>{101}</span> hostile magician.<a id=
+"footnotetag347" name="footnotetag347"></a><a href=
+"#footnote347"><sup>347</sup></a> Rhiannon resembles the Irish
+Elysium goddesses, and Manawyddan, like Manannan, is lord of
+Elysium in a <i>Taliesin</i> poem.<a id="footnotetag348" name=
+"footnotetag348"></a><a href="#footnote348"><sup>348</sup></a> He
+is a craftsman and follows agriculture, perhaps a reminiscence of
+the old belief that fertility and culture come from the god's land.
+Manawyddan, like other divinities, was drawn into the Arthurian
+cycle, and is one of those who capture the famous boar, the
+<i>Twrch Trwyth</i>.<a id="footnotetag349" name=
+"footnotetag349"></a><a href="#footnote349"><sup>349</sup></a></p>
+<p>Bran, or Bendigeit Vran ("Bran the Blessed"), probably an old
+pagan title which appropriately enough denotes one who figured
+later in Christian hagiology, is so huge that no house or ship can
+hold him. Hence he wades over to Ireland, and as he draws near is
+thought to be a mountain. This may be an archaic method of
+expressing his divinity&mdash;a gigantic non-natural man like some
+of the Tuatha D&eacute;a and Ossianic heroes. But Bran also appears
+as the <i>Urdawl Ben</i>, or "Noble Head," which makes time pass to
+its bearers like a dream, and when buried protects the land from
+invasion. Both as a giant squatting on a rock and as a head, Bran
+is equated by Professor Rh[^y]s with Cernunnos, the squatting god,
+represented also as a head, and also with the Welsh Urien whose
+attribute was a raven, the supposed meaning of Bran's name.<a id=
+"footnotetag350" name="footnotetag350"></a><a href=
+"#footnote350"><sup>350</sup></a> He further equates him with Uthr
+Ben, "Wonderful Head," the superior bard, harper and piper of a
+<i>Taliesin</i> poem.<a id="footnotetag351" name=
+"footnotetag351"></a><a href="#footnote351"><sup>351</sup></a>
+Urien, Bran, and Uthr are three forms of a god worshipped by bards,
+and a "dark" divinity, whose wading over to Ireland signifies
+crossing to Hades, of which he, like Yama, who first crossed the
+rapid waters to the land of death, is the ruler.<a id=
+"footnotetag352" name="footnotetag352"></a><a href=
+"#footnote352"><sup>352</sup></a> But Bran is not a "dark" god in
+the sense implied here. Cernunnos is god of a happy underworld, and
+there is nothing <span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id=
+"page102"></a>{102}</span> dark or evil in him or in Bran and his
+congeners. Professor Rh[^y]s's "dark" divinities are sometimes, in
+his view, "light" gods, but they cannot be both. The Celtic lords
+of the dead had no "dark" character, and as gods of fertility they
+were, so to speak, in league with the sun-god, the slayer of Bran,
+according to Professor Rh[^y]s's ingenious theory. And although to
+distracted Irish secretaries Ireland may be Hades, its introduction
+into this <i>Mabinogi</i> merely points to the interpretation of a
+mythico-historic connection between Wales and Ireland. Thus if Bran
+is Cernunnos, this is because he is a lord of the underworld of
+fertility, the counterpart of which is the distant Elysium, to
+which Bran seems rather to belong. Thus, in presence of his head,
+time passes as a dream in feasting and joy. This is a true Elysian
+note, and the tabued door of the story is also suggestive of the
+tabus of Elysium, which when broken rob men of happiness.<a id=
+"footnotetag353" name="footnotetag353"></a><a href=
+"#footnote353"><sup>353</sup></a> As to the power of the head in
+protecting the land, this points to actual custom and belief
+regarding the relics of the dead and the power of divine images or
+sculptured heads.<a id="footnotetag354" name=
+"footnotetag354"></a><a href="#footnote354"><sup>354</sup></a> The
+god Bran has become a king and law-giver in the <i>Mabinogion</i>
+and the <i>Triads</i>,<a id="footnotetag355" name=
+"footnotetag355"></a><a href="#footnote355"><sup>355</sup></a>
+while Geoffrey of Monmouth describes how Belinus and Brennus, in
+the Welsh version Beli and Bran, dispute the crown of Britain, are
+reconciled, and finally conquer Gaul and Rome.<a id=
+"footnotetag356" name="footnotetag356"></a><a href=
+"#footnote356"><sup>356</sup></a> The mythic Bran is confused with
+Brennus, leader of the Gauls against Rome in 390 B.C., and Belinus
+may be the god Belenos, as well as Beli, father of Lludd and
+Caswallawn. But Bran also figures as a Christian missionary. He is
+described as hostage at Rome for his son Caradawc, returning thence
+as preacher of Christianity to the Cymry&mdash;a legend arising out
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id=
+"page103"></a>{103}</span> of a misunderstanding of his epithet
+"Blessed" and a confusing of his son with the historic
+Caractacus.<a id="footnotetag357" name=
+"footnotetag357"></a><a href="#footnote357"><sup>357</sup></a>
+Hence Bran's family is spoken of as one of the three saintly
+families of Prydein, and he is ancestor of many saints.<a id=
+"footnotetag358" name="footnotetag358"></a><a href=
+"#footnote358"><sup>358</sup></a></p>
+<p>Branwen, "White Bosom," daughter of a sea-god, may be a
+sea-goddess, "Venus of the northern sea,"<a id="footnotetag359"
+name="footnotetag359"></a><a href="#footnote359"><sup>359</sup></a>
+unless with Mr. Nutt we connect her with the cauldron described in
+her legend,<a id="footnotetag360" name=
+"footnotetag360"></a><a href="#footnote360"><sup>360</sup></a>
+symbol of an orgiastic cult, and regard her as a goddess of
+fertility. But the connection is not clear in the story, though in
+some earlier myth the cauldron may have been her property. As
+Brangwaine, she reappears in romance, giving a love-potion to
+Tristram&mdash;perhaps a reminiscence of her former functions as a
+goddess of love, or earlier of fertility. In the <i>Mabinogion</i>
+she is buried in Anglesey at Ynys Bronwen, where a cairn with bones
+discovered in 1813 was held to be the grave and remains of
+Branwen.<a id="footnotetag361" name="footnotetag361"></a><a href=
+"#footnote361"><sup>361</sup></a></p>
+<p>The children of D&ocirc;n, the equivalent of Danu, and probably
+like her, a goddess of fertility, are Gwydion, Gilv&aelig;thwy,
+Am&aelig;thon, Govannon, and Arianrhod, with her sons, Dylan and
+Llew.<a id="footnotetag362" name="footnotetag362"></a><a href=
+"#footnote362"><sup>362</sup></a> These correspond, therefore, in
+part to the Tuatha D&eacute;a, though the only members of the group
+who bear names similar to the Irish gods are Govannon (= Goibniu)
+and possibly Llew (= Lug). Gwydion as a culture-god corresponds to
+Ogma. In the <i>Triads</i> Beli is called father of
+Arianrhod,<a id="footnotetag363" name="footnotetag363"></a><a href=
+"#footnote363"><sup>363</sup></a> and assuming that this Arianrhod
+is identical with the daughter of D&ocirc;n, Professor Rh[^y]s
+regards Beli as husband of D&ocirc;n. But the identification is far
+from certain, and the theory built upon it that Beli is one with
+the Irish Bile, and that both <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page104" id="page104"></a>{104}</span> are lords of a dark
+underworld, has already been found precarious.<a id=
+"footnotetag364" name="footnotetag364"></a><a href=
+"#footnote364"><sup>364</sup></a> In later belief D&ocirc;n was
+associated with the stars, the constellation Cassiopeia being
+called her court. She is described as "wise" in a <i>Taliesin</i>
+poem.<a id="footnotetag365" name="footnotetag365"></a><a href=
+"#footnote365"><sup>365</sup></a></p>
+<p>This group of divinities is met with mainly in the
+<i>Mabinogi</i> of Math, which turns upon Gilv&aelig;thwy's illicit
+love of Math's "foot-holder" Goewin. To assist him in his
+<i>amour</i>, Gwydion, by a magical trick, procures for Math from
+the court of Pryderi certain swine sent him by Arawn, king of
+Annwfn. In the battle which follows when the trick is discovered,
+Gwydion slays Pryderi by enchantment. Math now discovers that
+Gilv&aelig;thwy has seduced Goewin, and transforms him and Gwydion
+successively into deer, swine, and wolves. Restored to human form,
+Gwydion proposes that Arianrhod should be Math's foot-holder, but
+Math by a magic test discovers that she is not a virgin. She bears
+two sons, Dylan, fostered by Math, and another whom Gwydion
+nurtures and for whom he afterwards by a trick obtains a name from
+Arianrhod, who had sworn never to name him. The name is Llew Llaw
+Gyffes, "Lion of the Sure Hand." By magic, Math and Gwydion form a
+wife for Llew out of flowers. She is called Blodeuwedd, and later,
+at the instigation of a lover, Gronw, she discovers how Llew can be
+killed. Gronw attacks and wounds him, and he flies off as an eagle.
+Gwydion seeks for Llew, discovers him, and retransforms him to
+human shape. Then he changes Blodeuwedd into an owl, and slays
+Gronw.<a id="footnotetag366" name="footnotetag366"></a><a href=
+"#footnote366"><sup>366</sup></a> Several independent tales have
+gone to the formation of this <i>Mabinogi</i>, but we are concerned
+here merely with the light it may throw on the divine characters
+who figure in it.</p>
+<p>Math or Math Hen, "the Ancient,"<a id="footnotetag367" name=
+"footnotetag367"></a><a href="#footnote367"><sup>367</sup></a> is
+probably an old <span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id=
+"page105"></a>{105}</span> divinity of Gwyned, of which he is
+called lord. He is a king and a magician, pre-eminent in wizardry,
+which he teaches to Gwydion, and in a <i>Triad</i> he is called one
+of the great men of magic and metamorphosis of Britain.<a id=
+"footnotetag368" name="footnotetag368"></a><a href=
+"#footnote368"><sup>368</sup></a> More important are his traits of
+goodness to the suffering, and justice with no trace of vengeance
+to the wrong-doer. Whether these are derived from his character as
+a god or from the Celtic kingly ideal, it is impossible to say,
+though the former is by no means unlikely. Possibly his supreme
+magical powers make him the equivalent of the Irish "god of
+Druidism," but this is uncertain, since all gods were more or less
+dowered with these.</p>
+<p>Gwydion's magical powers are abundantly illustrated in the tale.
+At Pryderi's court he changes fungus into horses and dogs, and
+afterwards slays Pryderi by power of enchantments; he produces a
+fleet by magic before Arianrhod's castle; with Math's help he forms
+Blodeuwedd out of flowers; he gives Llew his natural shape when he
+finds him as a wasted eagle on a tree, his flesh and the worms
+breeding in it dropping from him; he transforms the faithless
+Blodeuwedd into an owl. Some of these and other deeds are referred
+to in the <i>Taliesin</i> poems, while Taliesin describes himself
+as enchanted by Gwydion.<a id="footnotetag369" name=
+"footnotetag369"></a><a href="#footnote369"><sup>369</sup></a> In
+the <i>Triads</i> he is one of the three great astrologers of
+Prydein, and this emphasis laid on his powers of divination is
+significant when it is considered that his name may be derived from
+a root <i>vet</i>, giving words meaning "saying" or "poetry," while
+cognate words are Irish <i>f&aacute;ith</i>, "a prophet" or "poet,"
+German <i>wuth</i>, "rage," and the name of Odinn.<a id=
+"footnotetag370" name="footnotetag370"></a><a href=
+"#footnote370"><sup>370</sup></a> The name is suggestive of the
+ecstasy of inspiration producing prophetic and poetic utterance. In
+the <i>Mabinogion</i> he is a mighty bard, and in a poem, he, under
+the name of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id=
+"page106"></a>{106}</span> Gweir, is imprisoned in the Other-world,
+and there becomes a bard, thus receiving inspiration from the gods'
+land.<a id="footnotetag371" name="footnotetag371"></a><a href=
+"#footnote371"><sup>371</sup></a> He is the ideal
+<i>f&aacute;ith</i>&mdash;diviner, prophet, and poet, and thus the
+god of those professing these arts. Strabo describes how the Celtic
+<i>vates</i> (<i>f&aacute;ith</i>) was also a philosopher, and this
+character is given in a poem to Seon (probably = Gwydion), whose
+artists are poets and magicians.<a id="footnotetag372" name=
+"footnotetag372"></a><a href="#footnote372"><sup>372</sup></a> But
+he is also a culture-god, bringing swine to men from the gods'
+land. For though Pryderi is described as a mortal who has himself
+received the swine from Annwfn (Elysium), there is no doubt that he
+himself was a lord of Annwfn, and it was probably on account of
+Gwydion's theft from Annwfn that he, as Gweir, was imprisoned there
+"through the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi."<a id="footnotetag373"
+name="footnotetag373"></a><a href="#footnote373"><sup>373</sup></a>
+A raid is here made directly on the god's land for the benefit of
+men, and it is unsuccessful, but in the <i>Mabinogi</i> a different
+version of the raid is told. Perhaps Gwydion also brought kine from
+Annwfn, since he is called one of the three herds of Britain,<a id=
+"footnotetag374" name="footnotetag374"></a><a href=
+"#footnote374"><sup>374</sup></a> while he himself may once have
+been an animal god, then an anthropomorphic deity associated with
+animals. Thus in the <i>Mabinogi</i>, when Gwydion flees with the
+swine, he rests each night at a place one of the syllables of which
+is <i>Moch</i>, "swine"&mdash;an &aelig;tiological myth explaining
+why places which were once sites of the cult of a swine-god,
+afterwards worshipped as Gwydion, were so called.</p>
+<p>Gwydion has also a tricky, fraudulent character in the
+<i>Mabinogi</i>, and although "in his life there was counsel," yet
+he had a "vicious muse."<a id="footnotetag375" name=
+"footnotetag375"></a><a href="#footnote375"><sup>375</sup></a> It
+is also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod and father
+of Dylan and Llew&mdash;the mythic reflections of a time when such
+unions, perhaps only in royal houses, were permissible. Instances
+occur in Irish tales, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id=
+"page107"></a>{107}</span> and Arthur was also his sister's
+lover.<a id="footnotetag376" name="footnotetag376"></a><a href=
+"#footnote376"><sup>376</sup></a> In later belief Gwydion was
+associated with the stars; and the Milky Way was called Caer
+Gwydion. Across it he had chased the faithless Blodeuwedd.<a id=
+"footnotetag377" name="footnotetag377"></a><a href=
+"#footnote377"><sup>377</sup></a> Professor Rh[^y]s equates him
+with Odinn, and regards both as representing an older
+Celto-Teutonic hero, though many of the alleged similarities in
+their respective mythologies are not too obvious.<a id=
+"footnotetag378" name="footnotetag378"></a><a href=
+"#footnote378"><sup>378</sup></a></p>
+<p>Am&aelig;thon the good is described in <i>Kulhwych</i> as the
+only husbandman who could till or dress a certain piece of land,
+though Kulhwych will not be able to force him or to make him follow
+him.<a id="footnotetag379" name="footnotetag379"></a><a href=
+"#footnote379"><sup>379</sup></a> This, together with the name
+Am&aelig;thon, from Cymric <i>am&aelig;th</i>, "labourer" or
+"ploughman," throws some light on his functions.<a id=
+"footnotetag380" name="footnotetag380"></a><a href=
+"#footnote380"><sup>380</sup></a> He was a god associated with
+agriculture, either as one who made waste places fruitful, or
+possibly as an anthropomorphic corn divinity. But elsewhere his
+taking a roebuck and a whelp, and in a <i>Triad</i>, a lapwing from
+Arawn, king of Annwfn, led to the battle of Godeu, in which he
+fought Arawn, aided by Gwydion, who vanquished one of Arawn's
+warriors, Bran, by discovering his name.<a id="footnotetag381"
+name="footnotetag381"></a><a href="#footnote381"><sup>381</sup></a>
+Am&aelig;thon, who brings useful animals from the gods' land, plays
+the same part as Gwydion, bringer of the swine. The dog and deer
+are frequent representatives of the corn-spirit, of which
+Am&aelig;thon may have been an anthropomorphic form, or they, with
+the lapwing, may have been earlier worshipful animals, associated
+with Am&aelig;thon as his symbols, while later myth told how he had
+procured them from Annwfn.</p>
+<p>The divine functions of Llew Llaw Gyffes are hardly apparent in
+the <i>Mabinogi</i>. The incident of Blodeuwedd's unfaithfulness is
+simply that of the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula of the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>{108}</span>
+treacherous wife who discovers the secret of her husband's life,
+and thus puts him at her lover's mercy.<a id="footnotetag382" name=
+"footnotetag382"></a><a href="#footnote382"><sup>382</sup></a> But
+since Llew is not slain, but changes to eagle form, this unusual
+ending may mean that he was once a bird divinity, the eagle later
+becoming his symbol. Some myth must have told of his death, or he
+was afterwards regarded as a mortal who died, for a poem mentions
+his tomb, and adds, "he was a man who never gave justice to any
+one." Dr. Skene suggests that truth, not justice, is here meant,
+and finds in this a reference to Llew's disguises.<a id=
+"footnotetag383" name="footnotetag383"></a><a href=
+"#footnote383"><sup>383</sup></a> Professor Rh[^y]s, for reasons
+not held convincing by M. Loth, holds that <i>Llew</i>, "lion," was
+a misapprehension for his true name <i>Lleu</i>, interpreted by him
+"light."<a id="footnotetag384" name="footnotetag384"></a><a href=
+"#footnote384"><sup>384</sup></a> This meaning he also gives to
+<i>Lug</i>, equating Lug and Llew, and regarding both as sun-gods.
+He also equates <i>Llaw Gyffes</i>, "steady <i>or</i> strong hand,"
+with Lug's epithet <i>L&aacute;m fada</i>, "long hand," suggesting
+that <i>gyffes</i> may have meant "long," although it was Llew's
+steadiness of hand in shooting which earned him the title.<a id=
+"footnotetag385" name="footnotetag385"></a><a href=
+"#footnote385"><sup>385</sup></a> Again, Llew's rapid growth need
+not make him the sun, for this was a privilege of many heroes who
+had no connection with the sun. Llew's unfortunate matrimonial
+affairs are also regarded as a sun myth. Blodeuwedd is a dawn
+goddess dividing her love between the sun-god and the prince of
+darkness. Llew as the sun is overcome by the latter, but is
+restored by the culture-hero Gwydion, who slays the dark rival. The
+transformation of Blodeuwedd into an owl means that the Dawn has
+become the Dusk.<a id="footnotetag386" name=
+"footnotetag386"></a><a href="#footnote386"><sup>386</sup></a> As
+we have seen, all this is a <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula with no
+mythical significance. Evidence of the precariousness of such an
+interpretation is furnished from <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page109" id="page109"></a>{109}</span> the similar interpretation
+of the story of Curoi's wife, Blathnat, whose lover
+C&uacute;chulainn slew Curoi.<a id="footnotetag387" name=
+"footnotetag387"></a><a href="#footnote387"><sup>387</sup></a> Here
+a supposed sun-god is the treacherous villain who kills a dark
+divinity, husband of a dawn goddess.</p>
+<p>If Llew is a sun-god, the equivalent of Lug, it is curious that
+he is never connected with the August festival in Wales which
+corresponds to Lugnasad in Ireland. There may be some support to
+the theory which makes him a sun-god in a <i>Triad</i> where he is
+one of the three <i>ruddroawc</i> who cause a year's sterility
+wherever they set their feet, though in this Arthur excels them,
+for he causes seven years' sterility!<a id="footnotetag388" name=
+"footnotetag388"></a><a href="#footnote388"><sup>388</sup></a> Does
+this point to the scorching of vegetation by the summer sun? The
+mythologists have not made use of this incident. On the whole the
+evidence for Llew as a sun-god is not convincing. The strongest
+reason for identifying him with Lug rests on the fact that both
+have uncles who are smiths and have similar names&mdash;Govannon
+and Gavida (Goibniu). Like Am&aelig;thon, Govannon, the artificer
+or smith (<i>g&ocirc;f</i>, "smith"), is mentioned in
+<i>Kulhwych</i> as one whose help must be gained to wait at the end
+of the furrows to cleanse the iron of the plough.<a id=
+"footnotetag389" name="footnotetag389"></a><a href=
+"#footnote389"><sup>389</sup></a> Here he is brought into
+connection with the plough, but the myth to which the words refer
+is lost. A <i>Taliesin</i> poem associates him with Math&mdash;"I
+have been with artificers, with the old Math and with Govannon,"
+and refers to his <i>Caer</i> or castle.<a id="footnotetag390"
+name="footnotetag390"></a><a href=
+"#footnote390"><sup>390</sup></a></p>
+<p>Arianrhod, "silver wheel," has a twofold character. She pretends
+to be a virgin, and disclaims all knowledge of her son Llew, yet
+she is mistress of Gwydion. In the <i>Triads</i> she appears as one
+of the three blessed (or white) ladies of Britain.<a id=
+"footnotetag391" name="footnotetag391"></a><a href=
+"#footnote391"><sup>391</sup></a> Perhaps these two aspects of her
+character may point to a divergence between religion and mythology,
+the cult of a virgin <span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id=
+"page110"></a>{110}</span> goddess of whom myth told discreditable
+things. More likely she was an old Earth-goddess, at once a virgin
+and a fruitful mother, like Artemis, the virgin goddess, yet
+neither chaste nor fair, or like a Babylonian goddess addressed as
+at once "mother, wife, and maid." Arianrhod, "beauty famed beyond
+summer's dawn," is mentioned in a <i>Taliesin</i> poem, and she was
+later associated with the constellation Corona Borealis.<a id=
+"footnotetag392" name="footnotetag392"></a><a href=
+"#footnote392"><sup>392</sup></a> Possibly her real name was
+forgotten, and that of Arianrhod derived from a place-name, "Caer
+Arianrhod," associated with her. The interpretation which makes her
+a dawn goddess, mother of light, Lleu, and darkness, Dylan, is far
+from obvious.<a id="footnotetag393" name=
+"footnotetag393"></a><a href="#footnote393"><sup>393</sup></a>
+Dylan, after his baptism, rushed into the sea, the nature of which
+became his. No wave ever broke under him; he swam like a fish; and
+hence was called Dylan Eil Ton or "son of the wave." Govannon, his
+uncle, slew him, an incident interpreted as the defeat of darkness,
+which "hies away to lurk in the sea." Dylan, however, has no dark
+traits and is described as a blonde. The waves lament his death,
+and, as they dash against the shore, seek to avenge it. His grave
+is "where the wave makes a sullen sound," but popular belief
+identifies him with the waves, and their noise as they press into
+the Conway is his dying groan. Not only is he <i>Eil Ton</i>, "son
+of the wave," but also <i>Eil Mor</i>, "son of the sea."<a id=
+"footnotetag394" name="footnotetag394"></a><a href=
+"#footnote394"><sup>394</sup></a> He is thus a local sea-god, and
+like Manannan identified with the waves, and yet separate from
+them, since they mourn his death. The <i>Mabinogi</i> gives us the
+<i>d&eacute;bris</i> of myths explaining how an anthropomorphic
+sea-god was connected with the goddess Arianrhod and slain by a god
+Govannon.</p>
+<p>Another <i>Mabinogion</i> group is that of Pwyll, prince of
+Dyved, his wife Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi.<a id=
+"footnotetag395" name="footnotetag395"></a><a href=
+"#footnote395"><sup>395</sup></a> Pwyll <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>{111}</span> agrees
+with Arawn, king of Annwfn (Elysium), to reign over his kingdom for
+a year. At the end of that time he slays Arawn's rival Havgan.
+Arawn sends him gifts, and Pwyll is now known as Pen or Head of
+Annwfn, a title showing that he was once a god, belonging to the
+gods' land, later identified with the Christian Hades. Pwyll now
+agrees with Rhiannon,<a id="footnotetag396" name=
+"footnotetag396"></a><a href="#footnote396"><sup>396</sup></a> who
+appears mysteriously on a magic hillock, and whom he captures, to
+rid her of an unwelcome suitor Gwawl. He imprisons him in a magical
+bag, and Rhiannon weds Pwyll. The story thus resolves itself into
+the formula of the Fairy Bride, but it paves the way for the
+vengeance taken on Pryderi and Rhiannon by Gwawl's friend Llwyt.
+Rhiannon has a son who is stolen as soon as born. She is accused of
+slaying him and is degraded, but Teyrnon recovers the child from
+its super-human robber and calls him Gwri. As he grows up, Teyrnon
+notices his resemblance to Pwyll, and takes him to his court.
+Rhiannon is reinstated, and because she cries that her anguish
+(<i>pryderi</i>) is gone, the boy is now called Pryderi. Here,
+again, we have <i>M&auml;rchen</i> incidents, which also appear in
+the Fionn saga.<a id="footnotetag397" name=
+"footnotetag397"></a><a href="#footnote397"><sup>397</sup></a></p>
+<p>Though there is little that is mythological here, it is evident
+that Pwyll is a god and Rhiannon a goddess, whose early importance,
+like that of other Celtic goddesses, appears from her name, a
+corruption of Rigantona, "great queen." Elsewhere we hear of her
+magic birds whose song charmed Bran's companions for seven years,
+and of her marriage to Manawyddan&mdash;an old myth in which
+Manawyddan may have been Pryderi's father, while possibly in some
+other myth Pryderi may have been child of Rigantona and Teyrnon
+(=Tigernonos, "king").<a id="footnotetag398" name=
+"footnotetag398"></a><a href="#footnote398"><sup>398</sup></a> We
+may postulate an old Rhiannon saga, fragments of which <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>{112}</span> are to be
+found in the <i>Mabinogi</i>, and there may have been more than one
+goddess called Rigantona, later fused into one. But in the tales
+she is merely a queen of old romance.</p>
+<p>Pryderi, as has been seen, was despoiled of his swine by
+Gwydion. They were the gift of Arawn, but in the <i>Triads</i> they
+seem to have been brought from Annwfn by Pwyll, while Pryderi acted
+as swineherd.<a id="footnotetag399" name=
+"footnotetag399"></a><a href="#footnote399"><sup>399</sup></a> Both
+Pwyll and Pryderi are thus connected with those myths which told of
+the bringing of domestic animals from the gods' land. But since
+they are certainly gods, associated with the gods' land, this is
+perhaps the result of misunderstanding. A poem speaks of the magic
+cauldron of Pen Annwfn, <i>i.e.</i> Pwyll, and this points to a
+myth explaining his connection with Annwfn in a different way from
+the account in the <i>Mabinogi</i>. The poem also tells how Gweir
+was imprisoned in Caer Sidi (=Annwfn) "through the messenger of
+Pwyll and Pryderi."<a id="footnotetag400" name=
+"footnotetag400"></a><a href="#footnote400"><sup>400</sup></a> They
+are thus lords of Annwfn, whose swine Gweir (Gwydion) tries to
+steal. Elsewhere Caer Sidi is associated with Manawyddan and
+Pryderi, perhaps a reference to their connection as father and
+son.<a id="footnotetag401" name="footnotetag401"></a><a href=
+"#footnote401"><sup>401</sup></a> Thus Pryderi and Pwyll belong to
+the bright Elysium, and may once have been gods of fertility
+associated with the under-earth region, which was by no means a
+world of darkness. Whatever be the meaning of the death of Pryderi
+at the hands of Gwydion, it is connected with later references to
+his grave.<a id="footnotetag402" name="footnotetag402"></a><a href=
+"#footnote402"><sup>402</sup></a></p>
+<p>A fourth group is that of Beli and his sons, referred to in the
+<i>Mabinogi</i> of Branwen, where one of them, Caswallawn, usurps
+the throne, and thus makes Manawyddan, like MacGregor, landless. In
+the <i>Dream of Maxen</i>, the sons of Beli are Lludd, Caswallawn,
+Nynnyaw, and Llevelys.<a id="footnotetag403" name=
+"footnotetag403"></a><a href="#footnote403"><sup>403</sup></a>
+Geoffrey calls Beli Heli, and speaks of an earlier king Belinus, at
+enmity with his brother Brennius.<a id="footnotetag404" name=
+"footnotetag404"></a><a href="#footnote404"><sup>404</sup></a> But
+probably Beli or Heli and <span class="pagenum"><a name="page113"
+id="page113"></a>{113}</span> Belinus are one and the same, and
+both represent the earlier god Belenos. Caswellawn becomes
+Cassivellaunus, opponent of C&aelig;sar, but in the <i>Mabinogi</i>
+he is hostile to the race of Llyr, and this may be connected with
+whatever underlies Geoffrey's account of the hostility of Belinus
+and Brennius (=Bran, son of Llyr), perhaps, like the enmity of the
+race of D[^o]n to Pryderi, a reminiscence of the strife of rival
+tribes or of Goidel and Brython.<a id="footnotetag405" name=
+"footnotetag405"></a><a href="#footnote405"><sup>405</sup></a> As
+has been seen, the evidence for regarding Beli as D[^o]n's consort
+or the equivalent of Bile is slender. Nor, if he is Belenos, the
+equivalent of Apollo, is he in any sense a "dark" god. He is
+regarded as a victorious champion, preserver of his "honey isle"
+and of the stability of his kingdom, in a <i>Taliesin</i> poem and
+in the <i>Triads</i>.<a id="footnotetag406" name=
+"footnotetag406"></a><a href="#footnote406"><sup>406</sup></a></p>
+<p>The personality of Casswallawn is lost in that of the historic
+Cassivellaunus, but in a reference to him in the <i>Triads</i>
+where, with Caradawc and Gweirydd, he bears the title "war king,"
+we may see a glimpse of his divine character, that of a god of war,
+invisibly leading on armies to battle, and as such embodied in
+great chiefs who bore his name.<a id="footnotetag407" name=
+"footnotetag407"></a><a href="#footnote407"><sup>407</sup></a>
+Nynnyaw appears in Geoffrey's pages as Nennius, who dies of wounds
+inflicted by C&aelig;sar, to the great grief of
+Cassivellaunus.<a id="footnotetag408" name=
+"footnotetag408"></a><a href="#footnote408"><sup>408</sup></a></p>
+<p>The theory that Lludd Llaw Ereint or <i>Lodens Lamargentios</i>
+represents <i>Nodens</i> (Nuada) <i>L[=a]margentios</i>, the change
+being the result of alliteration, has been contested,<a id=
+"footnotetag409" name="footnotetag409"></a><a href=
+"#footnote409"><sup>409</sup></a> while if the Welsh Lludd and Nudd
+were identical it is strange that they should have become distinct
+personalities, Gwyn, son of Nudd, being the lover of Creiddylad,
+daughter of Lludd,<a id="footnotetag410" name=
+"footnotetag410"></a><a href="#footnote410"><sup>410</sup></a>
+unless in some earlier myth their love was that of brother and
+sister. Lludd is <span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id=
+"page114"></a>{114}</span> also confused or is identical with Llyr,
+just as the Irish Ler is with Alloid. He is probably the son of
+Beli who, in the tale of <i>Lludd and Llevelys</i>, by the advice
+of Llevelys rids his country of three plagues.<a id=
+"footnotetag411" name="footnotetag411"></a><a href=
+"#footnote411"><sup>411</sup></a> These are, first, the Coranians
+who hear every whisper, and whom he destroys by throwing over them
+water in which certain insects given him by Levelys have been
+bruised. The second is a shriek on May-eve which makes land and
+water barren, and is caused by a dragon which attacks the dragon of
+the land. These Lludd captures and imprisons at Dinas Emreis, where
+they afterwards cause trouble to Vortigern at the building of his
+castle. The third is that of the disappearance of a year's supply
+of food by a magician, who lulls every one to sleep and who is
+captured by Lludd. Though the Coranians appear in the <i>Triads</i>
+as a hostile tribe,<a id="footnotetag412" name=
+"footnotetag412"></a><a href="#footnote412"><sup>412</sup></a> they
+may have been a supernatural folk, since their name is perhaps
+derived from <i>c&ograve;r</i>, "dwarf," and they are now regarded
+as mischievous fairies.<a id="footnotetag413" name=
+"footnotetag413"></a><a href="#footnote413"><sup>413</sup></a> They
+may thus be analogous to the Fomorians, and their story, like that
+of the dragon and the magician who produce blight and loss of food,
+may be based on older myth or ritual embodying the belief in powers
+hostile to fertility, though it is not clear why those powers
+should be most active on May-day. But this may be a
+misunderstanding, and the dragons are overcome on May-eve. The
+references in the tale to Lludd's generosity and liberality in
+giving food may reflect his function as a god of growth, but, like
+other euhemerised gods, he is also called a mighty warrior, and is
+said to have rebuilt the walls of Caer Ludd (London), his name
+still surviving in "Ludgate Hill," where he was buried.<a id=
+"footnotetag414" name="footnotetag414"></a><a href=
+"#footnote414"><sup>414</sup></a> This legend doubtless points to
+some ancient cult of Lludd at this spot.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id=
+"page115"></a>{115}</span>
+<p>Nudd already discussed under his title Nodons, is less prominent
+than his son Gwyn, whose fight with Gwthur we have explained as a
+mythic explanation of ritual combats for the increase of fertility.
+He also appears as a hunter and as a great warrior,<a id=
+"footnotetag415" name="footnotetag415"></a><a href=
+"#footnote415"><sup>415</sup></a> "the hope of armies," and thus he
+may be a god of fertility who became a god of war and the chase.
+But legend associated him with Annwfn, and regarded him, like the
+Tuatha D&eacute;a, as a king of fairyland.<a id="footnotetag416"
+name="footnotetag416"></a><a href="#footnote416"><sup>416</sup></a>
+In the legend of S. Collen, the saint tells two men, whom he
+overhears speaking of Gwyn and the fairies, that these are demons.
+"Thou shalt receive a reproof from Gwyn," said one of them, and
+soon after Collen was summoned to meet the king of Annwfn on
+Glastonbury Tor. He climbed the hill with a flask of holy water,
+and saw on its top a splendid castle, with crowds of beautiful and
+youthful folk, while the air resounded with music. He was brought
+to Gwyn, who politely offered him food, but "I will not eat of the
+leaves of the tree," cried the saint; and when he was asked to
+admire the dresses of the crowd, all he would say was that the red
+signified burning, the blue coldness. Then he threw the holy water
+over them, and nothing was left but the bare hillside.<a id=
+"footnotetag417" name="footnotetag417"></a><a href=
+"#footnote417"><sup>417</sup></a> Though Gwyn's court on
+Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium, which was actually located
+there, the story marks the hostility of the Church to the cult of
+Gwyn, perhaps practised on hilltops, and this is further seen in
+the belief that he hunts souls of the wicked and is connected with
+Annwfn in its later sense of hell. But a mediant view is found in
+<i>Kulhwych</i>, where it is said of him that he restrains the
+demons of hell lest they should destroy the people of this world.
+In the <i>Triads</i> he is, like other gods, a great magician and
+astrologer.<a id="footnotetag418" name=
+"footnotetag418"></a><a href="#footnote418"><sup>418</sup></a></p>
+<p>Another group, unknown to the <i>Mabinogion</i>, save that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id=
+"page116"></a>{116}</span> Taliesin is one of the bearers of Bran's
+head, is found in the <i>Book of Taliesin</i> and in the late story
+of Taliesin. These, like the <i>Arthur</i> cycle, often refer to
+personages of the <i>Mabinogion</i>; hence we gather that local
+groups of gods, originally distinct, were later mingled in story,
+the references in the poems reflecting this mingling. Late as is
+the <i>Hanes Taliesin</i> or story of Taliesin, and expressed as
+much of it is in a <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula, it is based on old
+myths about Cerridwen and Taliesin of which its compiler made use,
+following an old tradition already stereotyped in one of the poems
+in the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula of the Transformation
+Combat.<a id="footnotetag419" name="footnotetag419"></a><a href=
+"#footnote419"><sup>419</sup></a> But the mythical fragments are
+also mingled with traditions regarding the sixth century poet
+Taliesin. The older saga was perhaps developed in a district south
+of the Dyfi estuary.<a id="footnotetag420" name=
+"footnotetag420"></a><a href="#footnote420"><sup>420</sup></a> In
+Lake Tegid dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their
+children&mdash;the fair maiden Creirwy, Morvran, and the ugly
+Avagddu. To give Avagddu knowledge, his mother prepares a cauldron
+of inspiration from which three drops of inspiration will be
+produced. These fall on the finger of Gwion, whom she set to stir
+it. He put the finger in his mouth, and thus acquired the
+inspiration. He fled, and Cerridwen pursued, the rest of the story
+being accommodated to the Transformation Combat formula. Finally,
+Cerridwen as a hen swallows Gwion as a grain of wheat, and bears
+him as a child, whom she throws into the sea. Elphin, who rescues
+him, calls him Taliesin, and brings him up as a bard.<a id=
+"footnotetag421" name="footnotetag421"></a><a href=
+"#footnote421"><sup>421</sup></a></p>
+<p>The water-world of Tegid is a submarine Elysium with the
+customary cauldron of inspiration, regeneration, and fertility,
+like the cauldron associated with a water-world in the
+<i>Mabinogion</i>. "Shall not my chair be defended from the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id=
+"page117"></a>{117}</span> cauldron of Cerridwen," runs a line in a
+Taliesin poem, while another speaks of her chair, which was
+probably in Elysium like that of Taliesin himself in Caer
+Sidi.<a id="footnotetag422" name="footnotetag422"></a><a href=
+"#footnote422"><sup>422</sup></a> Further references to her
+connection with poetry show that she may have been worshipped by
+bards, her cauldron being the source of their inspiration.<a id=
+"footnotetag423" name="footnotetag423"></a><a href=
+"#footnote423"><sup>423</sup></a> Her anger at Gwion may point to
+some form of the Celtic myth of the theft of the elements of
+culture from the gods' land. But the cauldron was first of all
+associated with a fertility cult,<a id="footnotetag424" name=
+"footnotetag424"></a><a href="#footnote424"><sup>424</sup></a> and
+Cerridwen must therefore once have been a goddess of fertility,
+who, like Brigit, was later worshipped by bards. She may also have
+been a corn-goddess, since she is called a goddess of grain, and
+tradition associates the pig&mdash;a common embodiment of the
+corn-spirit&mdash;with her.<a id="footnotetag425" name=
+"footnotetag425"></a><a href="#footnote425"><sup>425</sup></a> If
+the tradition is correct, this would be an instance, like that of
+Demeter and the pig, of an animal embodiment of the corn-spirit
+being connected with a later anthropomorphic corn-goddess.</p>
+<p>Taliesin was probably an old god of poetic inspiration confused
+with the sixth century poet of the same name, perhaps because this
+boastful poet identified himself or was identified by other bards
+with the gods. He speaks of his "splendid chair, inspiration of
+fluent and urgent song" in Caer Sidi or Elysium, and, speaking in
+the god's name or identifying himself with him, describes his
+presence with Llew, Bran, Gwydion, and others, as well as his
+creation and his enchantment before he became immortal.<a id=
+"footnotetag426" name="footnotetag426"></a><a href=
+"#footnote426"><sup>426</sup></a> He was present with Arthur when a
+cauldron was stolen from Aunwfn, and basing his verses on the
+mythic transformations and rebirths of the gods, recounts in highly
+inflated <span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id=
+"page118"></a>{118}</span> language his own numerous forms and
+rebirths.<a id="footnotetag427" name="footnotetag427"></a><a href=
+"#footnote427"><sup>427</sup></a> His claims resemble those of the
+<i>Shaman</i> who has the entree of the spirit-world and can
+transform himself at will. Taliesin's rebirth is connected with his
+acquiring of inspiration. These incidents appear separately in the
+story of Fionn, who acquired his inspiration by an accident, and
+was also said to have been reborn as Mongan. They are myths common
+to various branches of the Celtic people, and applied in different
+combinations to outstanding gods or heroes.<a id="footnotetag428"
+name="footnotetag428"></a><a href="#footnote428"><sup>428</sup></a>
+The <i>Taliesin</i> poems show that there may have been two gods or
+two mythic aspects of one god, later combined together. He is the
+son of the goddess and dwells in the divine land, but he is also a
+culture-hero stealing from the divine land. Perhaps the myths
+reflect the encroachment of the cult of a god on that of a goddess,
+his worshippers regarding him as her son, her worshippers
+reflecting their hostility to the new god in a myth of her enmity
+to him. Finally, the legend of the rescue of Taliesin the poet from
+the waves became a myth of the divine outcast child rescued by
+Elphin, and proving himself a bard when normal infants are merely
+babbling.</p>
+<p>The occasional and obscure references to the other members of
+this group throw little light on their functions, save that
+Morvran, "sea-crow," is described in <i>Kulhwych</i> as so ugly and
+terrible that no one would strike him at the battle of Camlan. He
+may have been a war-god, like the scald-crow goddesses of Ireland,
+and he is also spoken of in the <i>Triads</i> as an "obstructor of
+slaughter" or "support of battle."<a id="footnotetag429" name=
+"footnotetag429"></a><a href="#footnote429"><sup>429</sup></a></p>
+<p>Ingenuity and speculation have busied themselves with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id=
+"page119"></a>{119}</span> trying to prove that the personages of
+the Arthurian cycle are the old gods of the Brythons, and the
+incidents of the romances fragments of the old mythology. While
+some of these personages&mdash;those already present in genuinely
+old Welsh tales and poems or in Geoffrey's <i>History</i>&mdash;are
+reminiscent of the old gods, the romantic presentment of them in
+the cycle itself is so largely imaginative, that nothing certain
+can be gained from it for the understanding of the old mythology,
+much less the old religion. Incidents which are the common stock of
+real life as well as of romance are interpreted mythologically, and
+it is never quite obvious why the slaying of one hero by another
+should signify the conquest of a dark divinity by a solar hero, or
+why the capture of a heroine by one knight when she is beloved of
+another, should make her a dawn-goddess sharing her favours, now
+with the sun-god, now with a "dark" divinity. Or, even granting the
+truth of this method, what light does it throw on Celtic
+religion?</p>
+<p>We may postulate a local Arthur saga fusing an old Brythonic god
+with the historic sixth century Arthur. From this or from
+Geoffrey's handling of it sprang the great romantic cycle. In the
+ninth century Nennius Arthur is the historic war-chief, possibly
+Count of Britain, but in the reference to his hunting the <i>Porcus
+Troit</i> (the <i>Twrch Trwyth</i>) the mythic Arthur momentarily
+appears.<a id="footnotetag430" name="footnotetag430"></a><a href=
+"#footnote430"><sup>430</sup></a> Geoffrey's Arthur differs from
+the later Arthur of romance, and he may have partially rationalised
+the saga, which was either of recent formation or else local and
+obscure, since there is no reference to Arthur in the
+<i>Mabinogion</i>&mdash;a fact which shows that "in the legends of
+Gwynedd and Dyfedd he had no place whatever,"<a id="footnotetag431"
+name="footnotetag431"></a><a href="#footnote431"><sup>431</sup></a>
+and also that Arthur the god or mythic hero was also purely local.
+In Geoffrey Arthur is the fruit <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page120" id="page120"></a>{120}</span> of Igerna's <i>amour</i>
+with Uther, to whom Merlin has given her husband's shape. Arthur
+conquers many hosts as well as giants, and his court is the resort
+of all valorous persons. But he is at last wounded by his wife's
+seducer, and carried to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his
+wounds, and nothing more is ever heard of him.<a id=
+"footnotetag432" name="footnotetag432"></a><a href=
+"#footnote432"><sup>432</sup></a> Some of these incidents occur
+also in the stories of Fionn and Mongan, and those of the
+mysterious begetting of a wonder child and his final disappearance
+into fairyland are local forms of a tale common to all branches of
+the Celts.<a id="footnotetag433" name="footnotetag433"></a><a href=
+"#footnote433"><sup>433</sup></a> This was fitted to the history of
+the local god or hero Arthur, giving rise to the local saga, to
+which was afterwards added events from the life of the historic
+Arthur. This complex saga must then have acquired a wider fame long
+before the romantic cycle took its place, as is suggested by the
+purely Welsh tales of <i>Kulhwych</i> and the <i>Dream of
+Rhonabwy</i>, in the former of which the personages (gods) of the
+<i>Mabinogion</i> figure in Arthur's train, though he is far from
+being the Arthur of the romances. Sporadic references to Arthur
+occur also in Welsh literature, and to the earlier saga belongs the
+Arthur who spoils Elysium of its cauldron in a <i>Taliesin</i>
+poem.<a id="footnotetag434" name="footnotetag434"></a><a href=
+"#footnote434"><sup>434</sup></a> In the <i>Triads</i> there is a
+mingling of the historic, the saga, and the later romance Arthur,
+but probably as a result of the growing popularity of the saga
+Arthur he is added to many Triads as a more remarkable person than
+the three whom they describe.<a id="footnotetag435" name=
+"footnotetag435"></a><a href="#footnote435"><sup>435</sup></a>
+Arthurian place-names over the Brythonic area are more probably the
+result of the popularity of the saga than that of the later
+romantic cycle, a parallel instance being found in the extent of
+Ossianic place-names over the Goidelic area as a result of the
+spread of the Fionn saga.</p>
+<p>The character of the romance Arthur&mdash;the flower of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id=
+"page121"></a>{121}</span> knighthood and a great warrior&mdash;and
+the blending of the historic war-leader Arthur with the mythic
+Arthur, suggest that the latter was the ideal hero of certain
+Brythonic groups, as Fionn and C&uacute;chulainn of certain
+Goidelic groups. He may have been the object of a cult as these
+heroes perhaps were, or he may have been a god more and more
+idealised as a hero. If the earlier form of his name was Artor, "a
+ploughman," but perhaps with a wider significance, and having an
+equivalent in Artaius, a Gaulish god equated with Mercury,<a id=
+"footnotetag436" name="footnotetag436"></a><a href=
+"#footnote436"><sup>436</sup></a> he may have been a god of
+agriculture who became a war-god. But he was also regarded as a
+culture-hero, stealing a cauldron and also swine from the gods'
+land, the last incident euhemerised into the tale of an
+unsuccessful theft from March, son of Meirchion,<a id=
+"footnotetag437" name="footnotetag437"></a><a href=
+"#footnote437"><sup>437</sup></a> while, like other culture-heroes,
+he is a bard. To his story was easily fitted that of the
+wonder-child, who, having finally disappeared into Elysium (later
+located at Glastonbury), would reappear one day, like Fionn, as the
+Saviour of his people. The local Arthur finally attained a fame far
+exceeding that of any Brythonic god or hero.</p>
+<p>Merlin, or Myrddin, appears in the romances as a great magician
+who is finally overcome by the Lady of the Lake, and is in Geoffrey
+son of a mysterious invisible personage who visits a woman, and,
+finally taking human shape, begets Merlin. As a son who never had a
+father he is chosen as the foundation sacrifice for Vortigern's
+tower by his magicians, but he confutes them and shows why the
+tower can never be built, namely, because of the dragons in the
+pool beneath it. Then follow his prophecies regarding the dragons
+and the future of the country, and the story of his removal of the
+Giant's Dance, or Stonehenge, from Ireland to its present
+site&mdash;an &aelig;tiological myth explaining the origin of the
+great <span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id=
+"page122"></a>{122}</span> stone circle. His description of how the
+giants used the water with which they washed the stones for the
+cure of sickness or wounds, probably points to some ritual for
+healing in connection with these megaliths. Finally, we hear of his
+transformation of the lovelorn Uther and of his confidant Ulfin, as
+well as of himself.<a id="footnotetag438" name=
+"footnotetag438"></a><a href="#footnote438"><sup>438</sup></a> Here
+he appears as little more than an ideal magician, possibly an old
+god, like the Irish "god of Druidism," to whose legend had been
+attached a story of supernatural conception. Professor Rh[^y]s
+regards him as a Celtic Zeus or as the sun, because late legends
+tell of his disappearance in a glass house into the sea. The glass
+house is the expanse of light travelling with the sun (Merlin),
+while the Lady of the Lake who comes daily to solace Merlin in his
+enchanted prison is a dawn-goddess. Stonehenge was probably a
+temple of this Celtic Zeus "whose late legendary self we have in
+Merlin."<a id="footnotetag439" name="footnotetag439"></a><a href=
+"#footnote439"><sup>439</sup></a> Such late romantic episodes and
+an &aelig;tiological myth can hardly be regarded as affording safe
+basis for these views, and their mythological interpretation is
+more than doubtful. The sun is never prisoner of the dawn as Merlin
+is of Viviane. Merlin and his glass house disappear for ever, but
+the sun reappears every morning. Even the most poetic mythology
+must conform in some degree to actual phenomena, but this cannot be
+said of the systems of mythological interpretation. If Merlin
+belongs to the pagan period at all, he was probably an ideal
+magician or god of magicians, prominent, perhaps, in the Arthur
+saga as in the later romances, and credited with a mysterious
+origin and an equally mysterious ending, the latter described in
+many different ways.</p>
+<p>The boastful Kei of the romances appears already in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>{123}</span>
+<i>Kulhwych</i>, while in Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.<a id=
+"footnotetag440" name="footnotetag440"></a><a href=
+"#footnote440"><sup>440</sup></a> Nobler traits are his in later
+Welsh poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a
+hundred, though his powers as a toper are also great. Here, too,
+his death is lamented.<a id="footnotetag441" name=
+"footnotetag441"></a><a href="#footnote441"><sup>441</sup></a> He
+may thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury may be
+poetically described in a curious passage referring to him in
+<i>Kulhwych</i>: "His breath lasted nine days and nine nights under
+water. He could remain without sleep for the same period. No
+physician could heal a wound inflicted by his sword. When he
+pleased he could make himself as tall as the tallest tree in the
+wood. And when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry
+above and below his hand to the distance of a handbreadth, so great
+was his natural heat. When it was coldest he was as glowing fuel to
+his companions."<a id="footnotetag442" name=
+"footnotetag442"></a><a href="#footnote442"><sup>442</sup></a> This
+almost exactly resembles C&uacute;chulainn's aspect in his
+battle-fury. In a curious poem Gwenhyvar (Guinevere) extols his
+prowess as a warrior above that of Arthur, and in <i>Kulhwych</i>
+and elsewhere there is enmity between the two.<a id=
+"footnotetag443" name="footnotetag443"></a><a href=
+"#footnote443"><sup>443</sup></a> This may point to Kei's having
+been a god of tribes hostile to those of whom Arthur was hero.</p>
+<p>Mabon, one of Arthur's heroes in <i>Kulhwych</i> and the
+<i>Dream of Rhonabwy</i>, whose name, from <i>mab</i> (<i>map</i>),
+means "a youth," may be one with the god Maponos equated with
+Apollo in Britain and Gaul, perhaps as a god of healing
+springs.<a id="footnotetag444" name="footnotetag444"></a><a href=
+"#footnote444"><sup>444</sup></a> His mother's name, Modron, is a
+local form of <i>Matrona</i>, a river-goddess and probably one of
+the mother-goddesses as her name implies. In the <i>Triads</i>
+Mabon is one of the three eminent prisoners of Prydein. To obtain
+his help in hunting the magic boar his prison must be found, and
+this is done by <span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id=
+"page124"></a>{124}</span> animals, in accordance with a
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula, while the words spoken by them show
+the immense duration of his imprisonment&mdash;perhaps a hint of
+his immortality.<a id="footnotetag445" name=
+"footnotetag445"></a><a href="#footnote445"><sup>445</sup></a> But
+he was also said to have died and been buried at Nantlle,<a id=
+"footnotetag446" name="footnotetag446"></a><a href=
+"#footnote446"><sup>446</sup></a> which, like Gloucester, the place
+of his prison, may have been a site of his widely extended
+cult.<a id="footnotetag447" name="footnotetag447"></a><a href=
+"#footnote447"><sup>447</sup></a></p>
+<hr />
+<p>Taken as a whole the various gods and heroes of the Brythons, so
+far as they are known to us, just as they resemble the Irish
+divinities in having been later regarded as mortals, magicians, and
+fairies, so they resemble them in their functions, dimly as these
+are perceived. They are associated with Elysium, they are lords of
+fertility and growth, of the sea, of the arts of culture and of
+war. The prominent position of certain goddesses may point to what
+has already been discovered of them in Gaul and Ireland&mdash;their
+pre-eminence and independence. But, like the divinities of Gaul and
+Ireland, those of Wales were mainly local in character, and only in
+a few cases attained a wider popularity and cult.</p>
+<p>Certain British gods mentioned on inscriptions may be identified
+with some of those just considered&mdash;Nodons with Nudd or Lludd,
+Belenos with Belinus or Beli, Maponos with Mabon, Taranos (in
+continental inscriptions only), with a Taran mentioned in
+<i>Kulhwych</i>.<a id="footnotetag448" name=
+"footnotetag448"></a><a href="#footnote448"><sup>448</sup></a>
+Others are referred to in classical <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page125" id="page125"></a>{125}</span> writings&mdash;Andrasta, a
+goddess of victory, to whom Boudicca prayed;<a id="footnotetag449"
+name="footnotetag449"></a><a href="#footnote449"><sup>449</sup></a>
+Sul, a goddess of hot springs, equated with Minerva at Bath.<a id=
+"footnotetag450" name="footnotetag450"></a><a href=
+"#footnote450"><sup>450</sup></a> Inscriptions also mention Epona,
+the horse-goddess; Brigantia, perhaps a form of Brigit; Belisama
+(the Mersey in Ptolemy),<a id="footnotetag451" name=
+"footnotetag451"></a><a href="#footnote451"><sup>451</sup></a> a
+goddess in Gaulish inscriptions. Others refer to the group
+goddesses, the <i>Matres</i>. Some gods are equated with
+Mars&mdash;Camulos, known also on the Continent and perhaps the
+same as Cumal, father of Fionn; Belatucadros, "comely in
+slaughter"; Cocidius, Corotiacus, Barrex, and Totatis (perhaps
+Lucan's Teutates). Others are equated with Apollo in his character
+as a god of healing&mdash;Anextiomarus, Grannos (at Musselburgh and
+in many continental inscriptions), Arvalus, Mogons, etc. Most of
+these and many others found on isolated inscriptions were probably
+local in character, though some, occurring also on the Continent,
+had attained a wider popularity.<a id="footnotetag452" name=
+"footnotetag452"></a><a href="#footnote452"><sup>452</sup></a> But
+some of the inscriptions referring to the latter may be due to
+Gaulish soldiers quartered in Britain.</p>
+<h3>COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DIVINITIES WITH SIMILAR NAMES IN IRELAND,
+BRITAIN, AND GAUL.</h3>
+<p><i>Italics denote names found in Inscriptions.</i></p>
+<table summary="Divinity Names" align="center">
+<tr>
+<td align="left">IRELAND.</td>
+<td align="left">BRITAIN.</td>
+<td align="left">GAUL.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Anextiomarus</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Anextiomarus</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Anu</td>
+<td align="left">Anna (?)</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Anoniredi</i>, "chariot of Anu"</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Badb</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Bodua</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Beli, Belinus</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Belenos</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Belisama</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Belisama</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Brigit</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Brigantia</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Brigindu</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Bron</td>
+<td align="left">Bran</td>
+<td align="left">Brennus (?)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Buanann</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Buanu</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Cumal</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Camulos</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Camulos</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Danu</td>
+<td align="left">D&ocirc;n</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Epona</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Epona</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Goibniu</td>
+<td align="left">Govannon</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Grannos</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Grannos</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Ler</td>
+<td align="left">Llyr</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Lug</td>
+<td align="left">Llew or Lleu (?)</td>
+<td align="left">Lugus, <i>Lugores</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Mabon, <i>Maponos</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Maponos</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Manannan</td>
+<td align="left">Manawyddan</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Matres</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Matres</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Mider</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Medros</i> (?)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Modron</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Matrona</i> (?)</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Nemon</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Nemetona</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">N&eacute;t</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Neton</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Nuada</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Nodons</i>, Nudd</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Hael, Ll&ucirc;dd (?)</td>
+<td></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td align="left">Ogma</td>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Ogm&iacute;os</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Silvanus</i></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Silvanus</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left">Taran</td>
+<td align="left"><i>Taranis</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td></td>
+<td align="left"><i>Totatis, Tutatis</i></td>
+<td align="left">Teutates</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote328" name=
+"footnote328"></a><b>Footnote 328:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag328">(return)</a>
+<p>The text of the <i>Mabinogion</i> has been edited by Rh[^y]s and
+Evans, 1887, and it has been translated into English by Lady Guest,
+and more critically, into French, by Loth. Many of the
+<i>Triads</i> will be found in Loth's second volume. For the poetry
+see Skene, <i>Four Ancient Books of Wales</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote329" name=
+"footnote329"></a><b>Footnote 329:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag329">(return)</a>
+<p>These incidents are found mainly in the story of Branwen,
+<i>e.g.</i> those of the cauldron, a frequent accessory in Irish
+tales; the regeneration of the warriors, also found in the story of
+Mag-tured, though no cauldron is used; the red-hot house, occurring
+also in <i>Mesca Ulad</i>; the description of Bran paralleled by
+that of MacCecht.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote330" name=
+"footnote330"></a><b>Footnote 330:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag330">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> i. 277, ii. 124, iii. 122.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote331" name=
+"footnote331"></a><b>Footnote 331:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag331">(return)</a>
+<p>Bp. of S. Davids, <i>Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynned</i>, 1851;
+Rh[^y]s, <i>TSC</i> 1894-1895, 21.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote332" name=
+"footnote332"></a><b>Footnote 332:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag332">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 45; Meyer, <i>TSC</i> 1895-1896, 55.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote333" name=
+"footnote333"></a><b>Footnote 333:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag333">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. John, <i>The Mabinogion</i>, 1901, 19. Curoi appears as
+Kubert, and Conchobar as Knychur in <i>Kulhwych</i> (Loth, i. 202).
+A poem of <i>Taliesin</i> has for subject the death of Corroi, son
+of Dayry (Curoi mac Daire), Skene, i. 254.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote334" name=
+"footnote334"></a><b>Footnote 334:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag334">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, <i>RC</i> x. 356; John, <i>op. cit.</i> 19; Nutt, <i>Arch.
+Rev.</i> i. 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote335" name=
+"footnote335"></a><b>Footnote 335:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag335">(return)</a>
+<p>The giant Ysppadden in <i>Kulhwych</i> resembles Balor, but has
+no evil eye.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote336" name=
+"footnote336"></a><b>Footnote 336:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag336">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> ii. 127-128, "The merging of the two legends
+[of D&ocirc;n and Taliesin] may have arisen through the fusion of
+Penllyn with Ardudwy and Arvon."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote337" name=
+"footnote337"></a><b>Footnote 337:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag337">(return)</a>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s thinks that the Llyr family may be pre-Celtic,
+<i>TSC</i> 1894-1895, 29 f.; <i>CFL</i> 552.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote338" name=
+"footnote338"></a><b>Footnote 338:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag338">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 97 f.; Lady Guest, iii. 143 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote339" name=
+"footnote339"></a><b>Footnote 339:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag339">(return)</a>
+<p>See Nutt, <i>Folk-lore Record</i>, v. 1 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote340" name=
+"footnote340"></a><b>Footnote 340:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag340">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 298, ii. 243-244; Geoffrey, <i>Hist. Brit.</i> ii.
+11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote341" name=
+"footnote341"></a><b>Footnote 341:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag341">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 224, 265, ii. 215, 244; Geoff. ii. 11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote342" name=
+"footnote342"></a><b>Footnote 342:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag342">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 81; Rh[^y]s, <i>Academy</i>, Jan. 7, 1882.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote343" name=
+"footnote343"></a><b>Footnote 343:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag343">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Triads</i>, Loth, ii. 293; Nutt, <i>Folk-lore Record</i>, v.
+9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote344" name=
+"footnote344"></a><b>Footnote 344:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag344">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Hist. Brit.</i> ii. 11-14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote345" name=
+"footnote345"></a><b>Footnote 345:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag345">(return)</a>
+<p><i>AL</i> 131.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote346" name=
+"footnote346"></a><b>Footnote 346:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag346">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 262.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote347" name=
+"footnote347"></a><b>Footnote 347:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag347">(return)</a>
+<p>See Nutt-Meyer, ii. 17.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote348" name=
+"footnote348"></a><b>Footnote 348:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag348">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 276.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote349" name=
+"footnote349"></a><b>Footnote 349:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag349">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 208, 280; see also i. 197, ii. 245, 294.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote350" name=
+"footnote350"></a><b>Footnote 350:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag350">(return)</a>
+<p>See Skene i. 355. The raven is rather the bird of prey come to
+devour Urien than his "attribute."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote351" name=
+"footnote351"></a><b>Footnote 351:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag351">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 298.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote352" name=
+"footnote352"></a><b>Footnote 352:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag352">(return)</a>
+<p>For these theories see Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 90<i>f</i>.; <i>AL</i>
+ch. 11; <i>CFL</i> 552.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote353" name=
+"footnote353"></a><b>Footnote 353:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag353">(return)</a>
+<p>See Ch. <a href="#chap24">XXIV</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote354" name=
+"footnote354"></a><b>Footnote 354:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag354">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page242">242</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote355" name=
+"footnote355"></a><b>Footnote 355:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag355">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 65, ii. 285.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote356" name=
+"footnote356"></a><b>Footnote 356:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag356">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Hist. Brit.</i> iii. 1<i>f</i>. Geoffrey says that
+Billingsgate was called after Belinus, and that his ashes were
+preserved in the gate, a tradition recalling some connection of the
+god with the gate.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote357" name=
+"footnote357"></a><b>Footnote 357:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag357">(return)</a>
+<p>An early Caradawc saga may have become mingled with the story of
+Caractacus.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote358" name=
+"footnote358"></a><b>Footnote 358:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag358">(return)</a>
+<p>Rees, 77.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote359" name=
+"footnote359"></a><b>Footnote 359:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag359">(return)</a>
+<p>So Elton, 291.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote360" name=
+"footnote360"></a><b>Footnote 360:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag360">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-lore Record</i>, v. 29.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote361" name=
+"footnote361"></a><b>Footnote 361:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag361">(return)</a>
+<p>Lady Guest, iii. 134.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote362" name=
+"footnote362"></a><b>Footnote 362:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag362">(return)</a>
+<p>D&ocirc;n is sometimes held to be male, but she is distinctly
+called sister of Math (Loth, i. 134), and as the equivalent of Danu
+she must be female.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote363" name=
+"footnote363"></a><b>Footnote 363:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag363">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 209.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote364" name=
+"footnote364"></a><b>Footnote 364:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag364">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page60">60</a>, <i>supra</i>, and Rh[^y]s,
+<i>HL</i> 90<i>f</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote365" name=
+"footnote365"></a><b>Footnote 365:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag365">(return)</a>
+<p>Lady Guest, iii. 255; Skene, i. 297, 350.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote366" name=
+"footnote366"></a><b>Footnote 366:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag366">(return)</a>
+<p>For this <i>Mabinogi</i> see Loth, i. 117f.; Guest, iii.
+189f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote367" name=
+"footnote367"></a><b>Footnote 367:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag367">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 286.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote368" name=
+"footnote368"></a><b>Footnote 368:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag368">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 229, 257; and for other references to Math, Skene, i.
+281, 269, 299.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote369" name=
+"footnote369"></a><b>Footnote 369:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag369">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 296, 281.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote370" name=
+"footnote370"></a><b>Footnote 370:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag370">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 297; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 276.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote371" name=
+"footnote371"></a><b>Footnote 371:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag371">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote372" name=
+"footnote372"></a><b>Footnote 372:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag372">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 270. Skene, i. 430, 537, gives a different
+meaning to <i>seon</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote373" name=
+"footnote373"></a><b>Footnote 373:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag373">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote374" name=
+"footnote374"></a><b>Footnote 374:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag374">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 296.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote375" name=
+"footnote375"></a><b>Footnote 375:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag375">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 299, 531.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote376" name=
+"footnote376"></a><b>Footnote 376:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag376">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page224">224</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote377" name=
+"footnote377"></a><b>Footnote 377:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag377">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 255; Morris, <i>Celtic Remains</i>, 231.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote378" name=
+"footnote378"></a><b>Footnote 378:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag378">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 283 <i>f</i>. See also Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> i.
+131.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote379" name=
+"footnote379"></a><b>Footnote 379:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag379">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 240.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote380" name=
+"footnote380"></a><b>Footnote 380:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag380">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>US</i> 34.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote381" name=
+"footnote381"></a><b>Footnote 381:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag381">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Myvyrian Arch&aelig;ol.</i> i. 168; Skene, i. 275, 278 f.;
+Loth, ii. 259.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote382" name=
+"footnote382"></a><b>Footnote 382:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag382">(return)</a>
+<p>See my <i>Childhood of Fiction</i>, 127. Llew's vulnerability
+does not depend on the discovery of his separable soul, as is
+usual. The earliest form of this <i>M&auml;rchen</i> is the
+Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, and that of Samson and Delilah
+is another old form of it.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote383" name=
+"footnote383"></a><b>Footnote 383:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag383">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 314, ii. 342.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote384" name=
+"footnote384"></a><b>Footnote 384:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag384">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 408; <i>RC</i> x. 490.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote385" name=
+"footnote385"></a><b>Footnote 385:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag385">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 237, 319, 398, 408.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote386" name=
+"footnote386"></a><b>Footnote 386:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag386">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 384.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote387" name=
+"footnote387"></a><b>Footnote 387:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag387">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 474, 424.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote388" name=
+"footnote388"></a><b>Footnote 388:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag388">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 231.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote389" name=
+"footnote389"></a><b>Footnote 389:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag389">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 240.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote390" name=
+"footnote390"></a><b>Footnote 390:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag390">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i, 286-287.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote391" name=
+"footnote391"></a><b>Footnote 391:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag391">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 263.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote392" name=
+"footnote392"></a><b>Footnote 392:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag392">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, ii. 159; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 157; Guest, iii. 255.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote393" name=
+"footnote393"></a><b>Footnote 393:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag393">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 161, 566.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote394" name=
+"footnote394"></a><b>Footnote 394:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag394">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 282, 288, 310, 543, ii. 145; Loth, i. 135; Rh[^y]s,
+<i>HL</i> 387.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote395" name=
+"footnote395"></a><b>Footnote 395:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag395">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 27 f.; Guest, iii. 7 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote396" name=
+"footnote396"></a><b>Footnote 396:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag396">(return)</a>
+<p>Rhiannon is daughter of Heveidd Hen or "the Ancient," probably
+an old divinity.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote397" name=
+"footnote397"></a><b>Footnote 397:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag397">(return)</a>
+<p>In the <i>Mabinogi</i> and in Fionn tales a mysterious hand
+snatches away newly-born children. Cf. <i>ZCP</i> i. 153.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote398" name=
+"footnote398"></a><b>Footnote 398:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag398">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> i. 288.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote399" name=
+"footnote399"></a><b>Footnote 399:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag399">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 247.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote400" name=
+"footnote400"></a><b>Footnote 400:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag400">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote401" name=
+"footnote401"></a><b>Footnote 401:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag401">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> i. 276.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote402" name=
+"footnote402"></a><b>Footnote 402:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag402">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> i. 310.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote403" name=
+"footnote403"></a><b>Footnote 403:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag403">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 166.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote404" name=
+"footnote404"></a><b>Footnote 404:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag404">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Hist. Brit.</i> ii. 11, iii. 1, 20, iv. 3.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote405" name=
+"footnote405"></a><b>Footnote 405:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag405">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> i. 287.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote406" name=
+"footnote406"></a><b>Footnote 406:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag406">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 431; Loth, ii. 278. Some phrases seem to connect Beli
+with the sea&mdash;the waves are his cattle, the brine his
+liquor.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote407" name=
+"footnote407"></a><b>Footnote 407:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag407">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 209, 249, 260, 283.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote408" name=
+"footnote408"></a><b>Footnote 408:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag408">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, <i>Brit. Hist.</i> iv. 3. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote409" name=
+"footnote409"></a><b>Footnote 409:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag409">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 125 f.; Loth, i. 265; MacBain, <i>CM</i> ix.
+66.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote410" name=
+"footnote410"></a><b>Footnote 410:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag410">(return)</a>
+<p>See Loth, i. 269; and Skene, i. 293.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote411" name=
+"footnote411"></a><b>Footnote 411:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag411">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 173 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote412" name=
+"footnote412"></a><b>Footnote 412:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag412">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 256, 274.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote413" name=
+"footnote413"></a><b>Footnote 413:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag413">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 606. Cf. the Breton fairies, the <i>Korr</i>
+and <i>Korrigan</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote414" name=
+"footnote414"></a><b>Footnote 414:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag414">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, iii. 20.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote415" name=
+"footnote415"></a><b>Footnote 415:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag415">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 253-254; Skene, i. 293.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote416" name=
+"footnote416"></a><b>Footnote 416:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag416">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 323.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote417" name=
+"footnote417"></a><b>Footnote 417:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag417">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 325.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote418" name=
+"footnote418"></a><b>Footnote 418:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag418">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 253, ii. 297.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote419" name=
+"footnote419"></a><b>Footnote 419:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag419">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page353">353</a>, <i>infra</i>.; Skene, i.
+532.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote420" name=
+"footnote420"></a><b>Footnote 420:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag420">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> i. 293.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote421" name=
+"footnote421"></a><b>Footnote 421:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag421">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 356 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote422" name=
+"footnote422"></a><b>Footnote 422:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag422">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 275, 296.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote423" name=
+"footnote423"></a><b>Footnote 423:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag423">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> i. 498, 500.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote424" name=
+"footnote424"></a><b>Footnote 424:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag424">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page382">382</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote425" name=
+"footnote425"></a><b>Footnote 425:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag425">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Mon. Hist. Brit.</i> i. 698, ii.; Thomas, <i>Revue de l'hist.
+des Religions</i>, xxxviii. 339.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote426" name=
+"footnote426"></a><b>Footnote 426:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag426">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 263, 274-276, 278, 281-282, 286-287. His "chair"
+bestows immortal youth and freedom from sickness.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote427" name=
+"footnote427"></a><b>Footnote 427:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag427">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264, 376 f., 309, 532. See p. <a href=
+"#page356">356</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote428" name=
+"footnote428"></a><b>Footnote 428:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag428">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page350">350-1</a>, <i>infra</i>. Fionn and
+Taliesin are examples of the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula of a hero
+expelled and brought back to honour, Nutt-Meyer, ii. 88.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote429" name=
+"footnote429"></a><b>Footnote 429:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag429">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 209, ii. 238; Skene, ii. 459.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote430" name=
+"footnote430"></a><b>Footnote 430:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag430">(return)</a>
+<p>Nennius, ch. 50, 79.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote431" name=
+"footnote431"></a><b>Footnote 431:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag431">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>ZCP</i> i. 293.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote432" name=
+"footnote432"></a><b>Footnote 432:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag432">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, viii. 9-xi. 3.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote433" name=
+"footnote433"></a><b>Footnote 433:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag433">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, ii. 22 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote434" name=
+"footnote434"></a><b>Footnote 434:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag434">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page381">381</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote435" name=
+"footnote435"></a><b>Footnote 435:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag435">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, ii. 232, 245.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote436" name=
+"footnote436"></a><b>Footnote 436:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag436">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>AL</i>, 39 f. Others derive the name from
+<i>arto-s</i>, "bear." MacBain, 357.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote437" name=
+"footnote437"></a><b>Footnote 437:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag437">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth. ii. 247; Skene, ii. 459.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote438" name=
+"footnote438"></a><b>Footnote 438:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag438">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, vi. 17-19, vii. viii. 1, 10-12, 19. In a poem (Skene,
+i. 478), Myrddin is called "the man who speaks from the
+grave"&mdash;a conception familiar to the Celts, who thought of the
+dead as living on in the grave. See p. <a href="#page340">340</a>,
+<i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote439" name=
+"footnote439"></a><b>Footnote 439:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag439">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>, 154 f., 158-159, 194.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote440" name=
+"footnote440"></a><b>Footnote 440:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag440">(return)</a>
+<p>Geoffrey, ix. 12, etc.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote441" name=
+"footnote441"></a><b>Footnote 441:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag441">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, ii. 51.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote442" name=
+"footnote442"></a><b>Footnote 442:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag442">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth. i. 225; cf. p. <a href="#page131">131</a>, <i>infra</i>.
+From this description Elton supposes Kei to have been a god of
+fire.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote443" name=
+"footnote443"></a><b>Footnote 443:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag443">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Myv. Arch.</i> i. 175; Loth, i. 269. Rh[^y]s, <i>AL</i> 59,
+thinks Merlin may have been Guinevere's ravisher.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote444" name=
+"footnote444"></a><b>Footnote 444:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag444">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, i. 414.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote445" name=
+"footnote445"></a><b>Footnote 445:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag445">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth i. 250, 260 f., 280, ii. 215, 244.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote446" name=
+"footnote446"></a><b>Footnote 446:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag446">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 363, ii. 406; <i>Myv. Arch.</i> i. 78.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote447" name=
+"footnote447"></a><b>Footnote 447:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag447">(return)</a>
+<p>Hu Gadarn is mentioned in the <i>Triads</i> as a leader of the
+Cymry from the east and their teacher in ploughing. He divided them
+into clans, and invented music and song. The monster <i>avanc</i>
+was drawn by him from the lake which had burst and caused the flood
+(see p. <a href="#page231">231</a>, <i>infra</i>). Perhaps Hu is an
+old culture-god of some tribes, but the <i>Triads</i> referring to
+him are of late date (Loth, ii. 271, 289, 290-291, 298-299). For
+the ridiculous Neo-Druidic speculations based on Hu, see Davies,
+<i>Celtic Researches</i> and <i>Mythology and Rites of the
+Druids</i>.</p>
+<p>Gurgiunt, son of Belinus, in Geoffrey, iii. 11, may be the
+French legendary Gargantua, perhaps an old god. See the works of
+S&eacute;billot and Gaidoz on <i>Gargantua</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote448" name=
+"footnote448"></a><b>Footnote 448:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag448">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote449" name=
+"footnote449"></a><b>Footnote 449:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag449">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cassius, lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote450" name=
+"footnote450"></a><b>Footnote 450:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag450">(return)</a>
+<p>Solinus, xxii. 10. See p. <a href="#page2">2</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote451" name=
+"footnote451"></a><b>Footnote 451:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag451">(return)</a>
+<p>Ptol. ii. 3. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote452" name=
+"footnote452"></a><b>Footnote 452:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag452">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these see Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id=
+"page127"></a>{127}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap7" id="chap7">CHAPTER VII.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE C&Uacute;CHULAINN CYCLE.</h3>
+<p>The events of the C&uacute;chulainn cycle are supposed to date
+from the beginning of the Christian era&mdash;King Conchobar's
+death synchronising with the crucifixion. But though some
+personages who are mentioned in the Annals figure in the tales, on
+the whole they deal with persons who never existed. They belong to
+a world of romance and myth, and embody the ideals of Celtic
+paganism, modified by Christian influences and those of classical
+tales and romantic sagas of other regions, mainly Scandinavian. The
+present form of the tales as they exist in the <i>Book of the Dun
+Cow</i> and the <i>Book of Leinster</i> must have been given them
+in the seventh or eighth century, but they embody materials of a
+far older date. At an early time the saga may have had a more or
+less definite form, but new tales were being constantly added to
+it, and some of the longer tales are composed of incidents which
+once had no connection with each other.</p>
+<p>C&uacute;chulainn is the central figure of the cycle, and its
+central episode is that of the <i>T&aacute;in b&oacute;
+Cuailgne</i>, or "Cattle Spoil of Cooley." Other personages are
+Conchobar and Dechtire, Ailill and Medb, Fergus, Conall Cernach,
+C&uacute;roi, Deirdre, and the sons of Usnach. Some of these are of
+divine descent, some are perhaps euhemerised divinities; Conchobar
+is called <i>d&iacute;a talmaide</i>, "a terrestrial god," and
+Dechtire a goddess. The cycle opens with the birth of <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>{128}</span>
+Conchobar, son of Cathbad and of Nessa, daughter of one of the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, though in an older rescension of the tale
+he is Nessa's son by the god Lug. During Conchobar's reign over
+Ulster C&uacute;chulainn was born. He was son of Dechtire, either
+by Sualtaim, or by her brother Conchobar, or by the god Lug, of
+whom he may also be a reincarnation.<a id="footnotetag453" name=
+"footnotetag453"></a><a href="#footnote453"><sup>453</sup></a> Like
+other heroes of saga, he possesses great strength and skill at a
+tender age, and, setting out for Conchobar's court, overpowers the
+king's "boy corps," and then becomes their chief. His next
+adventure is the slaying of the watch-dog of Culann the smith, and
+his appeasing the anger of its owner by offering to act as his
+watch-dog. Cathbad now announced that his name would henceforth be
+C&uacute; Chulainn, "Culann's hound."<a id="footnotetag454" name=
+"footnotetag454"></a><a href="#footnote454"><sup>454</sup></a> At
+the mature age of seven he obtained Conchobar's spears, sword,
+shield, and chariot, and with these he overcame three mighty
+champions, returning in the distortion of his "battle-fury" to
+Emania. To prevent mischief from his rage, the women went forth
+naked to meet him. He modestly covered his eyes, for it was one of
+his <i>geasa</i> not to look on a woman's breast. Thus taken
+unawares, he was plunged into three successive vats of cold water
+until his natural appearance was restored to him, although the
+water boiled and hissed from his heat.<a id="footnotetag455" name=
+"footnotetag455"></a><a href="#footnote455"><sup>455</sup></a></p>
+<p>As C&uacute;chulainn grew up, his strength, skill, wisdom, and
+beauty were unsurpassed. All women fell in love with him, and to
+forestall a series of <i>bonnes fortunes</i>, the men of Ulster
+sought a wife for him. But the hero's heart was set on Emer,
+daughter of Forgall, whom he wooed in a strange language which none
+but she could understand. At last she consented to be his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id=
+"page129"></a>{129}</span> wife if he would slay a number of
+warriors. Forgall was opposed to the match, and with a view to
+C&uacute;chulainn's destruction suggested that he should go to
+Donall in Alba to increase his skill, and to Scathach if he would
+excel all other warriors. He agreed, provided that Forgall would
+give him whatever he asked for on his return. Arrived in Alba, he
+refused the love of Donall's daughter, Dornolla, who swore to be
+avenged. Thence he went to Scathach, overcoming all the dangers of
+the way, leaping in safety the gulf surrounding her island, after
+essaying in vain to cross a narrow, swinging bridge. From Scathach
+he learned supreme skill in arms, and overcame her Amazonian rival
+Aife. He begat a son by Aife, and instructed her to call him Conla,
+to give him his father's ring, to send him to seek
+C&uacute;chulainn, and to forbid him to reveal his name. In the
+sequel, C&uacute;chulainn, unaware that Conla was his son, slew him
+in single combat, too late discovering his identity from the ring
+which he wore. This is the well-known saga formula of Sohrab and
+Rustum, of Theseus and Hippolytus. On his return from Scathach's
+isle C&uacute;chulainn destroyed Forgall's <i>rath</i> with many of
+its inmates, including Forgall, and carried off Emer. To the ten
+years which followed, during which he was the great champion of
+Ulster, belong many tales in which he figures prominently. One of
+these is <i>The Debility of the Ultonians</i>. This was caused by
+Macha, who, during her pregnancy, was forced to run a race with
+Conchobar's horses. She outran them, but gave birth immediately to
+twins, and, in her pangs, cursed the men of Ulster, with a curse
+that, in time of oppression, they would be overcome with the
+weakness of childbirth. From this C&uacute;chulainn was exempt, for
+he was not of Ulster, but a son of Lug.<a id="footnotetag456" name=
+"footnotetag456"></a><a href="#footnote456"><sup>456</sup></a>
+Various attempts have been <span class="pagenum"><a name="page130"
+id="page130"></a>{130}</span> made to explain this "debility." It
+may be a myth explaining a Celtic use of the "couvade," though no
+example of a simultaneous tribal couvade is known, unless we have
+here an instance of Westermarck's "human pairing season in
+primitive times," with its consequent simultaneous birth-period for
+women and couvade for men.<a id="footnotetag457" name=
+"footnotetag457"></a><a href="#footnote457"><sup>457</sup></a>
+Others, with less likelihood, explain it as a period of tabu, with
+cessation from work and warfare, at a funeral or festival.<a id=
+"footnotetag458" name="footnotetag458"></a><a href=
+"#footnote458"><sup>458</sup></a> In any case Macha's curse is a
+myth explanatory of the origin of some existing custom, the
+duration of which is much exaggerated by the narrator. To this
+period belong also the tale of C&uacute;chulainn's visit to
+Elysium, and others to be referred to later. Another story
+describes his attack upon Morrigan because she would neither yield
+up the cows which she was driving away nor tell her true
+name&mdash;an instance of the well-known name tabu. Morrigan took
+the form of a bird, and was then recognised by C&uacute;chulainn,
+who poured scorn upon her, while she promised to oppose him during
+the fight of the <i>T&aacute;in</i> in the forms of an eel, a wolf,
+and a cow, all of which he vowed to destroy.<a id="footnotetag459"
+name="footnotetag459"></a><a href="#footnote459"><sup>459</sup></a>
+Like many others in the saga, this story is introductory to the
+main episode of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>. To this we now turn.</p>
+<p>Medb had been wife of Conchobar, but, leaving him, had married
+in succession two chiefs called Ailill, the second of whom had a
+bull, Findbennach, the White-horned, which she resolved to match by
+one in every way its equal. Having been refused the Brown Bull of
+Cuailgne, she summoned all her forces to invade Ulster. The moment
+was inauspicious for Ulster, for all its men were suffering from
+their "debility." C&uacute;chulainn, therefore, went out to
+encounter the host, and forced Medb to agree that a succession of
+her warriors should <span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id=
+"page131"></a>{131}</span> engage him in single combat. Among these
+was his old friend Ferdia, and nothing is so touching as his
+reluctance to fight him or so pathetic as his grief when Ferdia
+falls. The reluctance is primarily due to the tie of
+blood-brotherhood existing between them. Finally, the Ulstermen
+rose in force and defeated Medb, but not before she had already
+captured the bull and sent it into her own land. There it was
+fought by the Findbennach and slew it, rushing back to Ulster with
+the mangled body on its horns. But in its frenzy a rock seemed to
+be another bull, which it charged; its brains were dashed out, and
+it fell dead.</p>
+<p>The Morrigan had warned the bull of the approach of Medb's army,
+and she had also appeared in the form of a beautiful woman to
+C&uacute;chulainn offering him her love, only to be repulsed. Hence
+she turned against him, and described how she would oppose him as
+an eel, a wolf, and a red heifer&mdash;an incident which is
+probably a variant of that already described.<a id="footnotetag460"
+name="footnotetag460"></a><a href="#footnote460"><sup>460</sup></a>
+In each of these shapes she was conquered and wounded by the hero,
+and knowing that none whom he hurt could be healed save by himself,
+she appeared to him as an old crone milking a cow. At each draught
+of the milk which he received from her he blessed her with "the
+blessing of gods and not-gods," and so her wounds were
+healed.<a id="footnotetag461" name="footnotetag461"></a><a href=
+"#footnote461"><sup>461</sup></a> For this, at a later time, she
+tried to ward off his death, but unsuccessfully. During the
+progress of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, one of C&uacute;chulainn's
+"fairy kinsmen," namely, Lug, who announced himself as his father,
+appeared to aid him, while others of the Tuatha D&eacute;a threw
+"herbs of healing" into the streams in which his wounds were
+washed.<a id="footnotetag462" name="footnotetag462"></a><a href=
+"#footnote462"><sup>462</sup></a></p>
+<p>During the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, C&uacute;chulainn slaughtered the
+wizard Calatin and his daughters. But Calatin's wife bore three
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id=
+"page132"></a>{132}</span> posthumous sons and three daughters, and
+through their means the hero was at last slain. Everything was done
+to keep him back from the host which now advanced against Ulster,
+but finally one of Calatin's daughters took the form of Niamh and
+bade him go forth. As he passed to the fight, Calatin's daughters
+persuaded him to eat the flesh of a dog&mdash;a fatal deed, for it
+was one of his <i>geasa</i> never to eat dog's flesh. So it was
+that in the fight he was slain by Lugaid,<a id="footnotetag463"
+name="footnotetag463"></a><a href="#footnote463"><sup>463</sup></a>
+and his soul appeared to the thrice fifty queens who had loved him,
+chanting a mystic song of the coming of Christ and the day of
+doom&mdash;an interesting example of a phantasm coincidental with
+death.<a id="footnotetag464" name="footnotetag464"></a><a href=
+"#footnote464"><sup>464</sup></a> This and other Christian touches
+show that the Christian redactors of the saga felt tenderly towards
+the old pagan hero. This is even more marked in the story in which
+he appears to King Loegaire and S. Patrick, begging the former to
+believe in God and the saint, and praying Patrick to "bring me with
+thy faithful ones unto the land of the living."<a id=
+"footnotetag465" name="footnotetag465"></a><a href=
+"#footnote465"><sup>465</sup></a> A similar Christianising appears
+in the story of Conchobar's death, the result of his mad frenzy on
+hearing from his Druid that an earthquake is the result of the
+shameful crucifixion of Christ.<a id="footnotetag466" name=
+"footnotetag466"></a><a href="#footnote466"><sup>466</sup></a></p>
+<p>In the saga, C&uacute;chulainn appears as the ideal Celtic
+warrior, but, like other ideal warriors, he is a "magnified,
+non-natural man," many of his deeds being merely exaggerations of
+those common among barbaric folk. Even his "distortion" or battle
+frenzy is but a magnifying of the wild frenzy of all wild fighters.
+To the person of this ideal warrior, some of whose traits may have
+been derived from traditional stories of actual heroes,
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> and saga episodes attached themselves. Of every
+ideal hero, Celtic, Greek, Babylonian, or <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>{133}</span>
+Polynesian, certain things are told&mdash;his phenomenal strength
+as a child; his victory over enormous forces; his visits to the
+Other-world; his amours with a goddess; his divine descent. These
+belong to the common stock of folk-tale episodes, and accumulate
+round every great name. Hence, save in the colouring given to them
+or the use made of them by any race, they do not afford a key to
+the mythic character of the hero. Such deeds are ascribed to
+C&uacute;chulainn, as they doubtless were to the ideal heroes of
+the "undivided Aryans," but though parallels may be found between
+him and the Greek Heracles, they might just as easily be found in
+non-Aryan regions, <i>e.g.</i> in Polynesia. Thus the parallels
+between C&uacute;chulainn and Heracles throw little light on the
+personality of the former, though here and there in such parallels
+we observe a peculiarly Celtic touch. Thus, while the Greek hero
+rescues Hesione from a dragon, it is from three Fomorians that
+C&uacute;chulainn rescues Devorgilla, namely, from beings to whom
+actual human sacrifice was paid. Thus a <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula
+of world-wide existence has been moulded by Celtic religious belief
+and ritual practice.<a id="footnotetag467" name=
+"footnotetag467"></a><a href="#footnote467"><sup>467</sup></a></p>
+<p>It was inevitable that the "mythological school" should regard
+C&uacute;chulainn as a solar hero. Thus "he reaches his full
+development at an unusually early age," as the sun does,<a id=
+"footnotetag468" name="footnotetag468"></a><a href=
+"#footnote468"><sup>468</sup></a> but also as do many other heroes
+of saga and <i>M&auml;rchen</i> who are not solar. The three
+colours of C&uacute;chulainn's hair, dark near the skin, red in the
+middle, golden near the top, are claimed to be a description of the
+sun's rays, or of the three parts into which the Celts divided the
+day.<a id="footnotetag469" name="footnotetag469"></a><a href=
+"#footnote469"><sup>469</sup></a> Elsewhere his tresses are yellow,
+like Prince Charlie's in fact and in song, yet he was not a solar
+hero. Again, the seven pupils of his eyes perhaps <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>{134}</span> "referred
+to the days of the week."<a id="footnotetag470" name=
+"footnotetag470"></a><a href="#footnote470"><sup>470</sup></a>
+Blindness befell all women who loved him, a reference to the
+difficulty of gazing at the sun.<a id="footnotetag471" name=
+"footnotetag471"></a><a href="#footnote471"><sup>471</sup></a> This
+is prosaic! The blindness was a compliment paid to
+C&uacute;chulainn the blind, by women who made themselves blind
+while talking to him, just as Conall Cernach's mistresses squinted
+as he did.<a id="footnotetag472" name="footnotetag472"></a><a href=
+"#footnote472"><sup>472</sup></a> C&uacute;chulainn's blindness
+arose from his habit of sinking one eye into his head and
+protruding the other&mdash;a well-known solar trait! His
+"distortion," during which, besides this "blindness," blood shot
+upwards from his head and formed a magic mist, and his anger caused
+showers of sparks to mount above him, points to dawn or
+sunset,<a id="footnotetag473" name="footnotetag473"></a><a href=
+"#footnote473"><sup>473</sup></a> though the setting sun would
+rather suggest a hero sinking calmly to rest than a mad giant
+setting out to slaughter friend and foe. The "distortion," as
+already pointed out, is the exaggerated description of the mad
+warrior rage, just as the fear which produced death to those who
+saw him brandish his weapons, was also produced by Maori warrior
+methods.<a id="footnotetag474" name="footnotetag474"></a><a href=
+"#footnote474"><sup>474</sup></a> Lug, who may be a sun-god, has no
+such "distortion." The cooling of the hero in three vats, the
+waters of which boil over, and his emergence from them pinky red in
+colour, symbolise the sun sinking into the waters and reappearing
+at dawn.<a id="footnotetag475" name="footnotetag475"></a><a href=
+"#footnote475"><sup>475</sup></a> Might it not describe in an
+exaggerated way the refreshing bath taken by frenzied warriors, the
+water being supposed to grow warm from the heat of their
+bodies?<a id="footnotetag476" name="footnotetag476"></a><a href=
+"#footnote476"><sup>476</sup></a> One of the hero's <i>geasa</i>
+was not to see Manannan's horses, the waves; which, being
+interpreted, means that the sun is near its death as it approaches
+the sea. Yet Lug, a sun-god, rides <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page135" id="page135"></a>{135}</span> the steed Enbarr, a
+personification of the waves, while C&uacute;chulainn himself often
+crossed the sea, and also lived with the sea-god's wife, Fand,
+without coming to grief. Again, the magic horses which he drives,
+black and grey in colour, are "symbols of day and night,"<a id=
+"footnotetag477" name="footnotetag477"></a><a href=
+"#footnote477"><sup>477</sup></a> though it is not obvious why a
+grey horse should symbolise day, which is not always grey even in
+the isles of the west. Unlike a solar hero, too, C&uacute;chulainn
+is most active in winter, and rests for a brief space from
+slaughtering at midday&mdash;the time of the sun's greatest
+activity both in summer and winter.</p>
+<p>Another theory is that every visit of the hero to a strange land
+signifies a descent to Hades, suggested by the sun sinking in the
+west. Scathach's island may be Hades, but it is more probably
+Elysium with some traits borrowed from the Christian idea of hell.
+But Emer's land, also visited by C&uacute;chulainn, suggests
+neither Hades nor Elysium. Emer calls herself <i>ingen rig richis
+garta</i>, translated by Professor Rh[^y]s as "daughter of the
+coal-faced king," <i>i.e.</i> she is daughter of darkness. Hence
+she is a dawn-maiden and becomes the sun-hero's wife.<a id=
+"footnotetag478" name="footnotetag478"></a><a href=
+"#footnote478"><sup>478</sup></a> There is nothing in the story to
+corroborate this theory, apart from the fact that it is not clear,
+even to the hypothetical primitive mind, why dawn and sun should be
+a divine pair. Emer's words probably mean that she is "daughter of
+a king" and "a flame of hospitality" (<i>richis garta</i>.)<a id=
+"footnotetag479" name="footnotetag479"></a><a href=
+"#footnote479"><sup>479</sup></a> C&uacute;chulainn, in visiting
+her, went from west to east, contrary to the apparent course of the
+sun. The extravagance of the solar theory is further seen in the
+hypothesis that because C&uacute;chulainn has other wives, the
+sun-god made love to as many dawn-maidens as there are days in the
+year,<a id="footnotetag480" name="footnotetag480"></a><a href=
+"#footnote480"><sup>480</sup></a> like <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>{136}</span> the king
+in Louys' romance with his 366 wives, one for each day of the year,
+leap-year included.</p>
+<p>Further examples of the solar theory need not be cited. It is
+enough to see in C&uacute;chulainn the ideal warrior, whose traits
+are bombastic and obscure exaggerations of actual custom and
+warfare, or are borrowed from folk-tale <i>motifs</i> not
+exclusively Celtic. Possibly he may have been a war-god, since he
+is associated with Badb<a id="footnotetag481" name=
+"footnotetag481"></a><a href="#footnote481"><sup>481</sup></a> and
+also with Morrigan. But he has also some traits of a culture hero.
+He claims superiority in wisdom, in law, in politics, in the art of
+the <i>Filid</i>, and in Druidism, while he brings various things
+from the world of the gods<a id="footnotetag482" name=
+"footnotetag482"></a><a href="#footnote482"><sup>482</sup></a>. In
+any case the Celts paid divine honours to heroes, living or
+dead,<a id="footnotetag483" name="footnotetag483"></a><a href=
+"#footnote483"><sup>483</sup></a> and C&uacute;chulainn, god or
+ideal hero, may have been the subject of a cult. This lends point
+to the theory of M. D'Arbois that C&uacute;chulainn and Conall
+Cernach are the equivalents of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri,
+said by Diodorus to be worshipped among the Celts near the
+Ocean.<a id="footnotetag484" name="footnotetag484"></a><a href=
+"#footnote484"><sup>484</sup></a> C&uacute;chulainn, like Pollux,
+was son of a god, and was nursed, according to some accounts, by
+Findcho&eacute;m, mother of Conall,<a id="footnotetag485" name=
+"footnotetag485"></a><a href="#footnote485"><sup>485</sup></a> just
+as Leda was mother of Castor as well as of Pollux. But, on the
+other hand, C&uacute;chulainn, unlike Pollux, was mortal. M.
+D'Arbois then identifies the two pairs of heroes with certain
+figures on an altar at Cluny. These are Castor and Pollux;
+Cernunnos and Smertullos. He equates Castor with Cernunnos, and
+Pollux with Smertullos. Smertullos is C&uacute;chulainn, and the
+name is explained from an incident in the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, in
+which the hero, reproached for his youth, puts on a false beard
+before attacking Morrigan in her form as an eel. This is expressed
+by <i>sm&eacute;rthain</i>, "to attach", and is thus connected with
+and gave rise to the name Smertullos. On the altar Smertullos is
+attacking an eel or serpent. Hence Pollux is <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>{137}</span>
+Smertullos-C&uacute;chulainn.<a id="footnotetag486" name=
+"footnotetag486"></a><a href="#footnote486"><sup>486</sup></a>
+Again, the name Cernunnos signifies "the horned one," from
+<i>cernu</i>, "horn," a word found in Conall's epithet Cernach. But
+this was not given him because he was horned, but because of the
+angular shape of his head, the angle (<i>cern</i>) being the result
+of a blow.<a id="footnotetag487" name="footnotetag487"></a><a href=
+"#footnote487"><sup>487</sup></a> The epithet may mean
+"victorious."<a id="footnotetag488" name=
+"footnotetag488"></a><a href="#footnote488"><sup>488</sup></a> On
+the whole, the theory is more ingenious than convincing, and we
+have no proof that the figures of Castor and Pollux on the altar
+were duplicates of the Celtic pair. Cernunnos was an underworld
+god, and Conall has no trace of such a character.</p>
+<p>M. D'Arbois also traces the saga in Gaul in the fact that on the
+menhir of Kervadel Mercury is figured with a child, Mercury, in his
+opinion, being Lug, and the child C&uacute;chulainn.<a id=
+"footnotetag489" name="footnotetag489"></a><a href=
+"#footnote489"><sup>489</sup></a> On another altar are depicted (1)
+a woodman, Esus, cutting down a tree, and (2) a bull on which are
+perched three birds&mdash;Tarvos Trigaranos. The two subjects, as
+M. Reinach points out, are combined on another altar at
+Tr&egrave;ves, on which a woodman is cutting down a tree in which
+are perched three birds, while a bull's head appears in the
+branches.<a id="footnotetag490" name="footnotetag490"></a><a href=
+"#footnote490"><sup>490</sup></a> These represent, according to M.
+D'Arbois, incidents of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>&mdash;the cutting
+down of trees by C&uacute;chulainn and placing them in the way of
+his enemies, and the warning of the bull by Morrigan in the bird
+form which she shared with her sisters Badb and Macha.<a id=
+"footnotetag491" name="footnotetag491"></a><a href=
+"#footnote491"><sup>491</sup></a> Why, then, is C&uacute;chulainn
+called Esus? "Esus" comes from a root which gives words meaning
+"rapid motion," "anger," "strength"&mdash;all shown by the
+hero.<a id="footnotetag492" name="footnotetag492"></a><a href=
+"#footnote492"><sup>492</sup></a> The altars were found in the land
+of the Belgic Treveri, and some Belgic tribes may have passed into
+Britain and Ireland carrying the Esus-C&uacute;chulainn legend
+there in the second century <span class="pagenum"><a name="page138"
+id="page138"></a>{138}</span> B.C., <i>e.g.</i> the Setantii,
+dwelling by the Mersey, and bearing a name similar to that of the
+hero in his childhood&mdash;Setanta (<i>Setantios</i>) as well as
+the Menapii and Brigantes, located in Ireland by Ptolemy.<a id=
+"footnotetag493" name="footnotetag493"></a><a href=
+"#footnote493"><sup>493</sup></a> In other words, the divine Esus,
+with his surname Smertullos, was called in Ireland Setanta, after
+the Setantii, and at a later date, C&uacute;chulainn. The princely
+name Donnotaurus resembles <i>Dond tarb</i>, the "Brown Bull" of
+the saga, and also suggests its presence in Gaul, while the name
+[Greek: d&ecirc;iotaros], perhaps the equivalent of
+<i>De[^u]io-taruos</i>, "Divine Bull," is found in Galatia.<a id=
+"footnotetag494" name="footnotetag494"></a><a href=
+"#footnote494"><sup>494</sup></a> Thus the main elements of the
+saga may have been known to the continental Celts before it was
+localised in Ireland,<a id="footnotetag495" name=
+"footnotetag495"></a><a href="#footnote495"><sup>495</sup></a> and,
+it may be added, if it was brought there by Gallo-British tribes,
+this might account for the greater popularity of the native,
+possibly pre-Celtic, Fionn saga among the folk, as well as for the
+finer literary quality of the C&uacute;chulainn saga. But the
+identification of Esus with C&uacute;chulainn rests on slight
+grounds; the names Esus and Smertullos are not found in Ireland,
+and the Gaulish Esus, worshipped with human sacrifice, has little
+affinity with the hero, unless his deeds of slaughter are
+reminiscent of such rites. It is possible, however, that the
+episode of the <i>T&aacute;in</i> came from a myth explaining
+ritual acts. This myth may have been the subject of the
+bas-reliefs, carried to Ireland, and there worked into the
+saga.</p>
+<p>The folk-versions of the saga, though resembling the literary
+versions, are less elaborate and generally wilder, and perhaps
+represent its primitive form.<a id="footnotetag496" name=
+"footnotetag496"></a><a href="#footnote496"><sup>496</sup></a> The
+greatest differences are found in versions of the
+<i>T&aacute;in</i> and of C&uacute;chulainn's death, <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>{139}</span> which,
+separate in the saga, are parts of one folk-tale, the death
+occurring during the fighting over the bull. The bull is his
+property, and Medb sends Garbh mac Stairn to take it from him. He
+pretends to be a child, goes to bed, and tricks Garbh, who goes off
+to get the bull. C&uacute;chulainn arrives before him and
+personates the herdsman. Each seizes a horn, and the bull is torn
+in two.<a id="footnotetag497" name="footnotetag497"></a><a href=
+"#footnote497"><sup>497</sup></a> Does this represent the primitive
+form of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, and, further, were the bull and
+C&uacute;chulainn once one and the same&mdash;a bull, the
+incarnation of a god or vegetation spirit, being later made
+anthropomorphic&mdash;a hero-god whose property or symbol was a
+bull? Instances of this process are not unknown among the
+Celts.<a id="footnotetag498" name="footnotetag498"></a><a href=
+"#footnote498"><sup>498</sup></a> In India, Indra was a bull and a
+divine youth, in Greece there was the bull-Dionysos, and among the
+Celts the name of the divine bull was borne by kings.<a id=
+"footnotetag499" name="footnotetag499"></a><a href=
+"#footnote499"><sup>499</sup></a> In the saga Morrigan is friendly
+to the bull, but fights for Medb; but she is now friendly, now
+hostile to C&uacute;chulainn, finally, however, trying to avert his
+doom. If he had once been the bull, her friendliness would not be
+quite forgotten, once he became human and separate from the bull.
+When she first met C&uacute;chulainn she had a cow on whom the
+Brown Bull was to beget a calf, and she told the hero that "So long
+as the calf which is in this cow's body is a yearling, it is up to
+that time that thou art in life; and it is this that will lead to
+the <i>T&aacute;in</i>."<a id="footnotetag500" name=
+"footnotetag500"></a><a href="#footnote500"><sup>500</sup></a> This
+suggests that the hero was to die in the battle, but it shows that
+the Brown Bull's calf is bound up his life. The Bull was a
+reincarnation of a divine swineherd, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page140" id="page140"></a>{140}</span> and if, as in the case of
+C&uacute;chulainn, "his rebirth could only be of himself,"<a id=
+"footnotetag501" name="footnotetag501"></a><a href=
+"#footnote501"><sup>501</sup></a> the calf was simply a duplicate
+of the bull, and, as it was bound up with the hero's life, bull and
+hero may well have been one. The life or soul was in the calf, and,
+as in all such cases, the owner of the soul and that in which it is
+hidden are practically identical. C&uacute;chulainn's "distortion"
+might then be explained as representing the bull's fury in fight,
+and the folk-tales would be popular forms of an old myth explaining
+ritual in which a bull, the incarnation of a tree or vegetation
+spirit, was slain, and the sacred tree cut down and consumed, as in
+Celtic agricultural ritual. This would be the myth represented on
+the bas-reliefs, and in the ritual the bull would be slain, rent,
+and eaten by his worshippers. Why, then, should C&uacute;chulainn
+rend the bull? In the later stages of such rites the animal was
+slain, not so much as a divine incarnation as a sacrifice to the
+god once incarnated in him. And when a god was thus separated from
+his animal form, myths often arose telling how he himself had slain
+the animal.<a id="footnotetag502" name=
+"footnotetag502"></a><a href="#footnote502"><sup>502</sup></a> In
+the case of C&uacute;chulainn and the bull, the god represented by
+the bull became separate from it, became anthropomorphic, and in
+that form was associated with or actually was the hero
+C&uacute;chulainn. Bull sacrifices were common among the Celts with
+whom the bull had been a divine animal.<a id="footnotetag503" name=
+"footnotetag503"></a><a href="#footnote503"><sup>503</sup></a>
+Possibly a further echo of this myth and ritual is to be found in
+the folk-belief that S. Martin was cut up and eaten in the form of
+an ox&mdash;the god incarnate in the animal being associated with a
+saint.<a id="footnotetag504" name="footnotetag504"></a><a href=
+"#footnote504"><sup>504</sup></a> Thus the literary versions of the
+<i>T&aacute;in</i>, departing from the hypothetical primitive
+versions, kept the bull as the central figure, but introduced a
+rival bull, and described its death differently, while both bulls
+are said to be reincarnations of divine swine-herds.<a id=
+"footnotetag505" name="footnotetag505"></a><a href=
+"#footnote505"><sup>505</sup></a> The idea of a fight <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>{141}</span> for a
+bull is borrowed from actual custom, and thus the old form of the
+story was further distorted.</p>
+<p>The C&uacute;chulainn saga is more coherent than the Fionn saga,
+because it possesses one central incident. The "canon" of the saga
+was closed at an early date, while that of Fionn has practically
+never been closed, mainly because it has been more a saga of the
+folk than that of C&uacute;chulainn. In some respects the two may
+have been rivals, for if the C&uacute;chulainn saga was introduced
+by conquerors from Britain or Gaul, it would not be looked on with
+favour by the folk. Or if it is the saga of Ulster as opposed to
+that of Leinster, rivalry would again ensue. The Fionn saga lives
+more in the hearts of the people, though it sometimes borrows from
+the other. This borrowing, however, is less than some critics,
+<i>e.g.</i> Zimmer, maintain. Many of the likenesses are the result
+of the fact that wherever a hero exists a common stock of incidents
+becomes his. Hence there is much similarity in all sagas wherever
+found.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote453" name=
+"footnote453"></a><b>Footnote 453:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag453">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 134; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 38 f.; Windisch,
+<i>T&aacute;in</i>, 342; L. Duvau, "La Legende de la Conception de
+C&uacute;chulainn," <i>RC</i> ix. 1 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote454" name=
+"footnote454"></a><b>Footnote 454:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag454">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, 118 f. For a similar reason
+Finnchad was called C&uacute; Cerca, "the hound of Cerc" (<i>IT</i>
+iii. 377).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote455" name=
+"footnote455"></a><b>Footnote 455:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag455">(return)</a>
+<p>For the boyish exploits, see Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, 106
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote456" name=
+"footnote456"></a><b>Footnote 456:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag456">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> vii. 225; Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, 20. Macha is a
+granddaughter of Ler, but elsewhere she is called Mider's daughter
+(<i>RC</i> xvi. 46).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote457" name=
+"footnote457"></a><b>Footnote 457:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag457">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> ii. 654; Westermarck, <i>Hist. of Human
+Marriage</i>, ch. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote458" name=
+"footnote458"></a><b>Footnote 458:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag458">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xii. 60, citing instances from
+Jevons, <i>Hist. of Religion</i>, 65.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote459" name=
+"footnote459"></a><b>Footnote 459:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag459">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>IT</i> ii. 239.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote460" name=
+"footnote460"></a><b>Footnote 460:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag460">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, 184, 312, 330; cf. <i>IT</i> iii. 355; Miss Hull, 164
+f.; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 468.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote461" name=
+"footnote461"></a><b>Footnote 461:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag461">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 119<i>a</i>; <i>RC</i> iii. 175.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote462" name=
+"footnote462"></a><b>Footnote 462:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag462">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, 342.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote463" name=
+"footnote463"></a><b>Footnote 463:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag463">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> iii. 175 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote464" name=
+"footnote464"></a><b>Footnote 464:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag464">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 185.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote465" name=
+"footnote465"></a><b>Footnote 465:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag465">(return)</a>
+<p>Crowe, <i>Jour. Kilkenny Arch. Soc.</i> 1870-1871, 371 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote466" name=
+"footnote466"></a><b>Footnote 466:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag466">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 79<i>a</i>; O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat</i>, 640.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote467" name=
+"footnote467"></a><b>Footnote 467:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag467">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 125<i>a</i>. See my <i>Childhood of fiction</i>, ch.
+14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote468" name=
+"footnote468"></a><b>Footnote 468:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag468">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, lxxvi.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote469" name=
+"footnote469"></a><b>Footnote 469:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag469">(return)</a>
+<p>"Da Derga's Hostel," <i>RC</i> xxii. 283; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>
+438.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote470" name=
+"footnote470"></a><b>Footnote 470:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag470">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 68<i>a</i>; Rh[^y]s, 437; Ingcel the one-eyed has also
+many pupils (<i>RC</i> xxii. 58).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote471" name=
+"footnote471"></a><b>Footnote 471:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag471">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, lxiii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote472" name=
+"footnote472"></a><b>Footnote 472:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag472">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> viii. 49.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote473" name=
+"footnote473"></a><b>Footnote 473:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag473">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 77<i>b</i>; Miss Hull, lxii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote474" name=
+"footnote474"></a><b>Footnote 474:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag474">(return)</a>
+<p>Other Celtic heroes undergo this distortion, which resembles the
+Scandinavian warrior rage followed by languor, as in the case of
+C&uacute;chulainn.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote475" name=
+"footnote475"></a><b>Footnote 475:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag475">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, p. lxvi.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote476" name=
+"footnote476"></a><b>Footnote 476:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag476">(return)</a>
+<p>Irish saints, standing neck deep in freezing water, made it
+hot.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote477" name=
+"footnote477"></a><b>Footnote 477:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag477">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 268; D'Arbois, v. 103; Miss Hull, lxvi.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote478" name=
+"footnote478"></a><b>Footnote 478:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag478">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 448.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote479" name=
+"footnote479"></a><b>Footnote 479:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag479">(return)</a>
+<p>See Meyer, <i>RC xi</i>. 435; Windisch, <i>IT</i> i. 589, 740.
+Though <i>richis</i> means "charcoal," it is also glossed "flame,"
+hence it could only be glowing charcoal, without any idea of
+darkness.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote480" name=
+"footnote480"></a><b>Footnote 480:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag480">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HL</i> 458.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote481" name=
+"footnote481"></a><b>Footnote 481:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag481">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 107.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote482" name=
+"footnote482"></a><b>Footnote 482:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag482">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 1 f.; <i>IT</i> i. 213; see p. <a href=
+"#page381">381</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote483" name=
+"footnote483"></a><b>Footnote 483:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag483">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page164">164</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote484" name=
+"footnote484"></a><b>Footnote 484:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag484">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Siculus, iv. 56.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote485" name=
+"footnote485"></a><b>Footnote 485:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag485">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 393.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote486" name=
+"footnote486"></a><b>Footnote 486:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag486">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Les Celtes</i>, 58 f. Formerly M. D'Arbois identified
+Smertullos with Lug, ii. 217; Holder, i. 46, 262. For the incident
+of the beard, see Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, 308.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote487" name=
+"footnote487"></a><b>Footnote 487:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag487">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 395.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote488" name=
+"footnote488"></a><b>Footnote 488:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag488">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 420.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote489" name=
+"footnote489"></a><b>Footnote 489:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag489">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxvii. 319 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote490" name=
+"footnote490"></a><b>Footnote 490:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag490">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xviii. 256.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote491" name=
+"footnote491"></a><b>Footnote 491:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag491">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Les Celtes</i>, 63; <i>RC</i> xix. 246.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote492" name=
+"footnote492"></a><b>Footnote 492:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag492">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>RC</i> xx. 89.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote493" name=
+"footnote493"></a><b>Footnote 493:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag493">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>RC</i> xxvii. 321; <i>Les Celtes</i>, 65.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote494" name=
+"footnote494"></a><b>Footnote 494:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag494">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Les Celtes</i>, 49; C&aelig;sar, vi. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote495" name=
+"footnote495"></a><b>Footnote 495:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag495">(return)</a>
+<p>In contradiction to this, M. D'Arbois elsewhere thinks that
+Druids from Britain may have taught the C&uacute;chulainn legend in
+Gaul (<i>RC</i> xxvii. 319).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote496" name=
+"footnote496"></a><b>Footnote 496:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag496">(return)</a>
+<p>See versions in <i>Book of the Dean of Lismore</i>; <i>CM</i>
+xiii.; Campbell, <i>The Fians</i>, 6 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote497" name=
+"footnote497"></a><b>Footnote 497:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag497">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CM</i> xiii. 327, 514. The same story is told of Fionn,
+<i>ibid.</i> 512. See also ballad versions in Campbell, <i>LF</i> 3
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote498" name=
+"footnote498"></a><b>Footnote 498:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag498">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page212">212</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote499" name=
+"footnote499"></a><b>Footnote 499:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag499">(return)</a>
+<p>A Galatian king was called Brogitaros, probably a form of
+<i>Brogitaruos</i>, "bull of the province," a title borne by
+Conchobar, <i>tarb in ch&oacute;icid</i> (<i>IT</i> i. 72). This
+with the epithets applied to heroes in the <i>Triads</i>,
+"bull-phantom," "prince bull of combat" (Loth, ii. 232, 243), may
+be an appellative denoting great strength.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote500" name=
+"footnote500"></a><b>Footnote 500:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag500">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> ii. 241 f.; D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 168.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote501" name=
+"footnote501"></a><b>Footnote 501:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag501">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 58.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote502" name=
+"footnote502"></a><b>Footnote 502:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag502">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page212">212</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote503" name=
+"footnote503"></a><b>Footnote 503:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag503">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page208">208</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote504" name=
+"footnote504"></a><b>Footnote 504:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag504">(return)</a>
+<p>Fitzgerald, <i>RC</i> vi. 254.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote505" name=
+"footnote505"></a><b>Footnote 505:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag505">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page243">243</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id=
+"page142"></a>{142}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap8" id="chap8">CHAPTER VIII.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE FIONN SAGA.</h3>
+<p>The most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death
+of Fionn's father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson
+Oscar, his nephew Diarmaid with his <i>ball-seire</i>, or
+"beauty-spot," which no woman could resist; Fergus famed for wisdom
+and eloquence; Caoilte mac Ronan, the swift; Conan, the comic
+character of the saga; Goll mac Morna, the slayer of Cumal, but
+later the devoted friend of Fionn, besides a host of less important
+personages. Their doings, like those of the heroes of saga and epos
+everywhere, are mainly hunting, fighting, and love-making. They
+embody much of the Celtic character&mdash;vivacity, valour,
+kindness, tenderness, as well as boastfulness and fiery temper.
+Though dating from pagan times, the saga throws little light upon
+pagan beliefs, but reveals much concerning the manners of the
+period. Here, as always in early Celtdom, woman is more than a mere
+chattel, and occupies a comparatively high place. The various parts
+of the saga, like those of the Finnish <i>Kalevala</i>, always
+existed separately, never as one complete epos, though always
+bearing a certain relation to each other. Lonnrot, in Finland, was
+able, by adding a few connecting links of his own, to give unity to
+the <i>Kalevala</i>, and had MacPherson been content to do this for
+the Fionn saga, instead of inventing, transforming, and serving up
+the whole in the manner of the sentimental eighteenth century, what
+a boon would he have conferred on Celtic literature. The various
+parts of the saga belong to <span class="pagenum"><a name="page143"
+id="page143"></a>{143}</span> different centuries and come from
+different authors, all, however, imbued with the spirit of the
+Fionn tradition.</p>
+<p>A date cannot be given to the beginnings of the saga, and
+additions have been made to it even down to the eighteenth century,
+Michael Comyn's poem of Oisin in Tir na n-Og being as genuine a
+part of it as any of the earlier pieces. Its contents are in part
+written, but much more oral. Much of it is in prose, and there is a
+large poetic literature of the ballad kind, as well as
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i> of the universal stock made purely Celtic, with
+Fionn and the rest of the heroic band as protagonists. The saga
+embodies Celtic ideals and hopes; it was the literature of the
+Celtic folk on which was spent all the riches of the Celtic
+imagination; a world of dream and fancy into which they could enter
+at all times and disport themselves. Yet, in spite of its immense
+variety, the saga preserves a certain unity, and it is provided
+with a definite framework, recounting the origin of the heroes, the
+great events in which they were concerned, their deaths or final
+appearances, and the breaking up of the Fionn band.</p>
+<p>The historic view of the Fians is taken by the annalists, by
+Keating, O'Curry, Dr. Joyce, and Dr. Douglas Hyde.<a id=
+"footnotetag506" name="footnotetag506"></a><a href=
+"#footnote506"><sup>506</sup></a> According to this view, they were
+a species of militia maintained by the Irish kings for the support
+of the throne and the defence of the country. From Samhain to
+Beltane they were quartered on the people, and from Beltane to
+Samhain they lived by hunting. How far the people welcomed this
+billeting, we are not told. Their method of cooking the game which
+they hunted was one well known to all primitive peoples. Holes were
+dug in the ground; in them red-hot stones were placed, and on the
+stones was laid venison wrapped in sedge. All was then covered
+over, and in due time the meat was done to a turn. Meanwhile the
+heroes engaged in an elaborate <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page144" id="page144"></a>{144}</span> toilette before sitting
+down to eat. Their beds were composed of alternate layers of
+brushwood, moss, and rushes. The Fians were divided into
+<i>Catha</i> of three thousand men, each with its commander, and
+officers to each hundred, each fifty, and each nine, a system not
+unlike that of the ancient Peruvians. Each candidate for admission
+to the band had to undergo the most trying ordeals, rivalling in
+severity those of the American Indians, and not improbably genuine
+though exaggerated reminiscences of actual tests of endurance and
+agility. Once admitted he had to observe certain <i>geasa</i> or
+"tabus," <i>e.g.</i> not to choose his wife for her dowry like
+other Celts, but solely for her good manners, not to offer violence
+to a woman, not to flee when attacked before less than nine
+warriors, and the like.</p>
+<p>All this may represent some genuine tradition with respect to a
+warrior band, with many exaggerations in details and numbers. Some
+of its outstanding heroes may have had names derived from or
+corresponding to those of the heroes of an existing saga. But as
+time went on they became as unhistorical as their ideal prototypes;
+round their names crystallised floating myths and tales; things
+which had been told of the saga heroes were told of them; their
+names were given to the personages of existing folk-tales. This
+might explain the great divergence between the "historical" and the
+romantic aspects of the saga as it now exists. Yet we cannot fail
+to see that what is claimed as historical is full of exaggeration,
+and, in spite of the pleading of Dr. Hyde and other patriots,
+little historic fact can be found in it. Even if this exists, it is
+the least important part of the saga. What is important is that
+part&mdash;nine-tenths of the whole&mdash;which "is not true
+because it cannot be true." It belongs to the region of the
+supernatural and the unreal. But personages, nine-tenths of whose
+actions belong to this region, must bear the same character
+themselves, and for that reason are all the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>{145}</span> more
+interesting, especially when we remember that the Celts firmly
+believed in them and in their exploits. A Fionn myth arose as all
+myths do, increasing as time went on, and the historical nucleus,
+if it ever existed, was swamped and lost. Throughout the saga the
+Fians are more than mere mortals, even in those very parts which
+are claimed as historical. They are giants; their story "bristles
+with the supernatural"; they are the ideal figures of Celtic legend
+throwing their gigantic shadows upon the dim and misty background
+of the past. We must therefore be content to assume that whether
+personages called Fionn, Oisin, Diarmaid, or Conan, ever existed,
+what we know of them now is purely mythical.</p>
+<p>Bearing in mind that they are the cherished heroes of popular
+fancy in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, we have now to inquire
+whether they were Celtic in origin. We have seen that the Celts
+were a conquering people in Ireland, bringing with them their own
+religion and mythology, their own sagas and tales reflected now in
+the mythological and C&uacute;chulainn cycles, which found a local
+habitation in Ireland. C&uacute;chulainn was the hero of a saga
+which flourished more among the aristocratic and lettered classes
+than among the folk, and there are few popular tales about him. But
+it is among the folk that the Fionn saga has always been popular,
+and for every peasant who could tell a story of C&uacute;chulainn a
+thousand could tell one of Fionn. Conquerors often adopt beliefs,
+traditions, and customs of the aboriginal folk, after hostilities
+have ceased, and if the pre-Celtic people had a popular hero and a
+saga concerning him, it is possible that in time it was accepted by
+the Celts or by the lower classes among them. But in the process it
+must have been completely Celticised, like the aborigines
+themselves; to its heroes were given Celtic names, or they may have
+been associated with existing Celtic personages like Cumal, and the
+whole saga <span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id=
+"page146"></a>{146}</span> was in time adapted to the conceptions
+and legendary history of the Celts. Thus we might account for the
+fact that it has so largely remained without admixture with the
+mythological and C&uacute;chulainn cycles, though its heroes are
+brought into relation with the older gods. Thus also we might
+account for its popularity as compared with the C&uacute;chulainn
+saga among the peasantry in whose veins must flow so much of the
+aboriginal blood both in Ireland and the Highlands. In other words,
+it was the saga of a non-Celtic people occupying both Ireland and
+Scotland. If Celts from Western Europe occupied the west of
+Scotland at an early date, they may have been so few in number that
+their own saga or sagas died out. Or if the Celtic occupation of
+the West Highlands originated first from Ireland, the Irish may
+have been unable to impose their C&uacute;chulainn saga there, or
+if they themselves had already adopted the Fionn saga and found it
+again in the Highlands, they would but be the more attached to what
+was already localised there. This would cut the ground from the
+theory that the Fionn saga was brought to Scotland from Ireland,
+and it would account for its popularity in the Highlands, as well
+as for the fact that many Fionn stories are attached to Highland as
+well as to Irish localities, while many place-names in both
+countries have a Fian origin. Finally, the theory would explain the
+existence of so many <i>M&auml;rchen</i> about Fionn and his men,
+so few about C&uacute;chulainn.</p>
+<p>Returning to the theory of the historic aspect of the Fians, it
+should be noted that, while, when seen through the eyes of the
+annalists, the saga belongs to a definite historical period, when
+viewed by itself it belongs to a mythic age, and though the Fians
+are regarded as champions of Ireland, their foes are usually of a
+supernatural kind, and they themselves move in a magic atmosphere.
+They are also brought into connection with the unhistoric Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann; they fight with them <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>{147}</span> or for
+them; they have amours with or wed their women; and some of the
+gods even become members of the Fian band. Diarmaid was the darling
+of the gods Oengus and Manannan, and in his direst straits was
+assisted by the former. In all this we are in the wonderland of
+myth, not the <i>terra firma</i> of history. There is a certain
+resemblance between the C&uacute;chulainn and Fionn sagas, but no
+more than that which obtains between all sagas everywhere. Both
+contain similar incidents, but these are the stock episodes of
+universal saga belief, fitted to the personages of individual
+sagas. Hence we need not suppose with Professor Windisch that the
+mythic incidents of the Fionn saga are derived from the
+C&uacute;chulainn cycle.</p>
+<p>The personages against whom Fionn and his men fight show the
+mythic nature of the saga. As champions of Leinster they fight the
+men of Ulster and Connaught, but they also war against oversea
+invaders&mdash;the Lochlanners. While Lochlann may mean any land
+beyond the sea, like the Welsh <i>Llychlyn</i> it probably meant
+"the fabulous land beneath the lakes or the waves of the sea," or
+simply the abode of hostile, supernatural beings. Lochlanners would
+thus be counterparts of the Fomorians, and the conflicts of the
+Fians with them would reflect old myths. But with the Norse
+invasions, the Norsemen became the true Lochlanners, against whom
+Fionn and his men fight as Charlemagne fought Muhammadans&mdash;a
+sheer impossibility. Professor Zimmer, however, supposes that the
+Fionn saga took shape during the Norse occupation from the ninth
+century onwards. Fionn is half Norse, half Irish, and equivalent to
+Caittil Find, who commanded the apostate Irish in the ninth
+century, while Oisin and Oscar are the Norse Asvin and Asgeirr. But
+it is difficult to understand why one who was half a Norseman
+should become the chosen hero of the Celts in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>{148}</span> the very
+age in which Norsemen were their bitter enemies, and why Fionn, if
+of Norse origin, fights against Lochlanners, <i>i.e.</i> Norsemen.
+It may also be inquired why the borrowing should have affected the
+saga only, not the myths of the gods. No other Celtic scholar has
+given the slightest support to this brilliant but audacious theory.
+On the other hand, if the saga has Norse affinities, and if it is,
+in origin, pre-Celtic, these may be sought in an earlier connection
+of Ireland with Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age. Ireland had a
+flourishing civilisation then, and exported beautiful gold
+ornaments to Scandinavia, where they are still found in Bronze Age
+deposits.<a id="footnotetag507" name="footnotetag507"></a><a href=
+"#footnote507"><sup>507</sup></a> This flourishing civilisation was
+overwhelmed by the invasion of the Celtic barbarians. But if the
+Scandinavians borrowed gold and artistic decorations from Ireland,
+and if the Fionn saga or part of it was already in existence, why
+should they not have borrowed some of its incidents, or why, on the
+other hand, should not some episodes have found their way from the
+north to Ireland? We should also consider, however, that similar
+incidents may have been evolved in both countries on similar lines
+and quite independently.</p>
+<p>The various contents of the saga can only be alluded to in the
+briefest manner. Fionn's birth-story belongs to the well-known
+"Expulsion and Return" formula, applied to so many heroes of saga
+and folk-tale, but highly elaborated in his case at the hands of
+the annalists. Thus his father Cumal, uncle of Conn the Hundred
+Fighter, 122-157 A.D., wished to wed Muirne, daughter of Conn's
+chief druid, Tadg. Tadg refused, knowing that through this marriage
+he would lose his ancestral seat. Cumal seized Muirne and married
+her, and the king, on Tadg's appeal, sent an army against him.
+Cumal was slain; Muirne fled to his sister, and gave <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>{149}</span> birth to
+Demni, afterwards known as Fionn. Perhaps in accordance with old
+matriarchal usage, Fionn's descent through his mother is
+emphasised, while he is related to the ancient gods, Tadg being son
+of Nuada. This at once points to the mythical aspect of the saga.
+Cumal may be identical with the god Camulos. In a short time,
+Fionn, now a marauder and an outlaw, appeared at Conn's Court, and
+that same night slew one of the Tuatha D&eacute;a, who came yearly
+and destroyed the palace. For this he received his rightful
+heritage&mdash;the leadership of the Fians, formerly commanded by
+Cumal.<a id="footnotetag508" name="footnotetag508"></a><a href=
+"#footnote508"><sup>508</sup></a> Another incident of Fionn's youth
+tells how he obtained his "thumb of knowledge." The eating of
+certain "salmon of knowledge" was believed to give inspiration, an
+idea perhaps derived from earlier totemistic beliefs. The bard
+Finn&eacute;ces, having caught one of the coveted salmon, set his
+pupil Fionn to cook it, forbidding him to taste it. But as he was
+turning the fish Fionn burnt his thumb and thrust it into his
+mouth, thus receiving the gift of inspiration. Hereafter he had
+only to suck his thumb in order to obtain secret information.<a id=
+"footnotetag509" name="footnotetag509"></a><a href=
+"#footnote509"><sup>509</sup></a> In another story the inspiration
+is already in his thumb, as Samson's strength was in his hair,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id=
+"page150"></a>{150}</span> but the power is also partly in his
+tooth, under which, after ritual preparation, he has to place his
+thumb and chew it.<a id="footnotetag510" name=
+"footnotetag510"></a><a href="#footnote510"><sup>510</sup></a></p>
+<p>Fionn had many wives and sweethearts, one of them, Saar, being
+mother of Oisin. Saar was turned into a fawn by a Druid, and fled
+from Fionn's house. Long after he found a beast-child in the forest
+and recognised him as his son. He nourished him until his beast
+nature disappeared, and called him Oisin, "little fawn." Round this
+birth legend many stories sprang up&mdash;a sure sign of its
+popularity.<a id="footnotetag511" name=
+"footnotetag511"></a><a href="#footnote511"><sup>511</sup></a>
+Oisin's fame as a poet far excelled that of Fionn, and he became
+the ideal bard of the Gaels.</p>
+<p>By far the most passionate and tragic story of the saga is that
+of Diarmaid and Grainne, to whom Fionn was betrothed. Grainne put
+<i>geasa</i> upon Diarmaid to elope with her, and these he could
+not break. They fled, and for many days were pursued by Fionn, who
+at last overtook them, but was forced by the Fians to pardon the
+beloved hero. Meanwhile Fionn waited for his revenge. Knowing that
+it was one of Diarmaid's <i>geasa</i> never to hunt a wild boar, he
+invited him to the chase of the boar of Gulban. Diarmaid slew it,
+and Fionn then bade him measure its length with his foot. A bristle
+pierced his heel, and he fell down in agony, beseeching Fionn to
+bring him water in his hand, for if he did this he would heal him.
+In spite of repeated appeals, Fionn, after bringing the water, let
+it drip from his hands. Diarmaid's brave soul passed away, and on
+Fionn's character this dire blot was fixed for ever.<a id=
+"footnotetag512" name="footnotetag512"></a><a href=
+"#footnote512"><sup>512</sup></a></p>
+<p>Other tales relate how several of the Fians were spirited away
+to the Land beyond the Seas, how they were rescued, <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>{151}</span> how
+Diarmaid went to Land under Waves, and how Fionn and his men were
+entrapped in a Fairy Palace. Of greater importance are those which
+tell the end of the Fian band. This, according to the annalists,
+was the result of their exactions and demands. Fionn was told by
+his wife, a wise woman, never to drink out of a horn, but coming
+one day thirsty to a well, he forgot this tabu, and so brought the
+end near. He encountered the sons of Uirgrenn, whom he had slain,
+and in the fight with them he fell.<a id="footnotetag513" name=
+"footnotetag513"></a><a href="#footnote513"><sup>513</sup></a> Soon
+after were fought several battles, culminating in that of Gabhra in
+which all but a few Fians perished. Among the survivors were Oisin
+and Caoilte, who lingered on until the coming of S. Patrick.
+Caoilte remained on earth, but Oisin, whose mother was of the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i> folk, went to fairyland for a time, ultimately
+returning and joining S. Patrick's company.<a id="footnotetag514"
+name="footnotetag514"></a><a href="#footnote514"><sup>514</sup></a>
+But a different version is given in the eighteenth century poem of
+Michael Comyn, undoubtedly based on popular tales. Oisin met the
+Queen of Tir na n-Og and went with her to fairyland, where time
+passed as a dream until one day he stood on a stone against which
+she had warned him. He saw his native land and was filled with
+home-sickness. The queen tried to dissuade him, but in vain. Then
+she gave him a horse, warning him not to set foot on Irish soil. He
+came to Ireland; and found it all changed. Some puny people were
+trying in vain to raise a great stone, and begged the huge stranger
+to help them. He sprang from his horse and flung the stone from its
+resting-place. But when he turned, his horse was gone, and he had
+become a decrepit old man. Soon after he met S. Patrick and related
+the tale to him.</p>
+<p>Of most of the tales preserved in twelfth to fifteenth century
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id=
+"page152"></a>{152}</span> MSS. it may be said that in essence they
+come down to us from a remote antiquity, like stars pulsing their
+clear light out of the hidden depths of space. Many of them exist
+as folk-tales, often wild and weird in form, while some folk-tales
+have no literary parallels. Some are <i>M&auml;rchen</i> with
+members of the Fian band as heroes, and of these there are many
+European parallels. But it is not unlikely that, as in the case of
+the C&uacute;chulainn cycle, the folk versions may be truer to the
+original forms of the saga than the rounded and polished literary
+versions. Whatever the Fians were in origin&mdash;gods, mythic
+heroes, or actual personages&mdash;it is probable that a short
+<i>Heldensage</i> was formed in early times. This slowly expanded,
+new tales were added, and existing <i>M&auml;rchen</i>
+formul&aelig; were freely made use of by making their heroes the
+heroes of the saga. Then came the time when many of the tales were
+written down, while later they were adapted to a scheme of Irish
+history, the heroes becoming warriors of a definite historic
+period, or perhaps connected with such warriors. But these heroes
+belonged to a timeless world, whose margins are "the shore of old
+romance," and it was as if they, who were not for an age but for
+all time, scorned to become the puppets of the page of history.</p>
+<p>The earliest evidence of the attitude of the ecclesiastical
+world to these heroes is found in the <i>Agallamh na Senorach</i>,
+or "Colloquy of the Ancients."<a id="footnotetag515" name=
+"footnotetag515"></a><a href="#footnote515"><sup>515</sup></a> This
+may have been composed in the thirteenth century, and its author
+knew scores of Fionn legends. Making use of the tradition that
+Caoilte and Oisin had met S. Patrick, he makes Caoilte relate many
+of the tales, usually in connection with some place-name of Fian
+origin. The saint and his followers are amazed at the huge stature
+of the Fians, but Patrick asperges them with holy water, and hosts
+of demons flee from them. At each tale which Caoilte tells, the
+saint says, "Success and benediction, Caoilte. All this is to us a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id=
+"page153"></a>{153}</span> recreation of spirit and of mind, were
+it only not a destruction of devotion and a dereliction of prayer."
+But presently his guardian angel appears, and bids him not only
+listen to the tales but cause them to be written down. He and his
+attendant clerics now lend a willing ear to the recital and
+encourage the narrator with their applause. Finally, baptism is
+administered to Caoilte and his men, and by Patrick's intercessions
+Caoilte's relations and Fionn himself are brought out of hell. In
+this work the representatives of paganism are shown to be on terms
+of friendliness with the representatives of Christianity.</p>
+<p>But in Highland ballads collected in the sixteenth century by
+the Dean of Lismore, as well as in Irish ballads found in MSS.
+dating from the seventeenth century onwards, the saint is a sour
+and intolerant cleric, and the Fians are equally intolerant and
+blasphemous pagans. There is no attempt at compromise; the saint
+rejoices that the Fian band are in hell, and Oisin throws contempt
+on the God of the shaven priests. But sometimes this contempt is
+mingled with humour and pathos. Were the heroes of Oisin's band now
+alive, scant work would be made of the monks' bells, books, and
+psalm-singing. It is true that the saint gives the weary old man
+hospitality, but Oisin's eyes are blinded with tears as he thinks
+of the departed glories of the Fians, and his ears are tormented
+"by jangling bells, droning psalms, and howling clerics." These
+ballads probably represent one main aspect of the attitude of the
+Church to Celtic paganism. How, then, did the more generous
+<i>Colloquy</i> come into being? We must note first that some of
+the ballads have a milder tone. Oisin is urged to accept the faith,
+and he prays for salvation. Probably these represent the beginning
+of a reaction in favour of the old heroes, dating from a time when
+the faith was well established. There was no danger of a pagan
+revival, and, provided the Fians were Christianised, it might be
+legitimate <span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id=
+"page154"></a>{154}</span> to represent them as heroic and noble.
+The <i>Colloquy</i> would represent the high-water mark of this
+reaction among the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge
+by popular tales, the Fians had never been regarded in other than a
+favourable light. The <i>Colloquy</i> re-established the dignity of
+the Fian band in the eyes of official Christianity. They are
+baptized or released from hell, and in their own nature they are
+virtuous and follow lofty ideals. "Who or what was it that
+maintained you in life?" asks Patrick. And Caoilte gives the noble
+reply, "Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms, and
+fulfilment in our tongues." Patrick says of Fionn: "He was a king,
+a seer, a poet, a lord with a manifold and great train; our
+magician, our knowledgeable one, our soothsayer; all whatsoever he
+said was sweet with him. Excessive, perchance, as ye deem my
+testimony of Fionn, although ye hold that which I say to be
+overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King that is above me, he
+was three times better still." Not only so, but Caoilte maintains
+that Fionn and his men were aware of the existence of the true God.
+They possessed the <i>anima naturaliter Christiana</i>. The growing
+appreciation of a wider outlook on life, and possibly acquaintance
+with the romances of chivalry, made the composition of the
+<i>Colloquy</i> possible, but, again, it may represent a more
+generous conception of paganism existing from the time of the first
+encounter of Christianity with it in Ireland.</p>
+<p>The strife of creeds in Ireland, the old order changing, giving
+place to new, had evidently impressed itself on the minds of Celtic
+poets and romancers. It suggested itself to them as providing an
+excellent "situation"; hence we constantly hear of the meeting of
+gods, demigods, or heroes with the saints of the new era.
+Frequently they bow before the Cross, they are baptized and receive
+the Christian verity, as in the <i>Colloquy</i> and in some
+documents of the C&uacute;chulainn cycle. Probably <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>{155}</span> no other
+European folk-literature so takes advantage of just this situation,
+this meeting of creeds, one old and ready to vanish away, the other
+with all the buoyant freshness of youth.</p>
+<p>Was MacPherson's a genuine Celtic epic unearthed by him and by
+no one else? No mortal eye save his has ever seen the original, but
+no one who knows anything of the contents of the saga can deny that
+much of his work is based on materials collected by him. He knew
+some of the tales and ballads current among the folk, possibly also
+some of the Irish MS. versions. He saw that there was a certain
+unity among them, and he saw that it was possible to make it more
+evident still. He fitted the floating incidents into an epic
+framework, adding, inventing, altering, and moulding the whole into
+an English style of his own. Later he seems to have translated the
+whole into Gaelic. He gave his version to the world, and found
+himself famous, but he gave it as the genuine translation of a
+genuine Celtic epic. Here was his craft; here he was the "charlatan
+of genius." His genius lay in producing an epic which people were
+willing to read, and in making them believe it to be not his work
+but that of the Celtic heroic age. Any one can write an epic, but
+few can write one which thousands will read, which men like
+Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon, Byron, and Coleridge will admire
+and love, and which will, as it were, crystallise the aspirations
+of an age weary with classical formalism. MacPherson introduced his
+readers to a new world of heroic deeds, romantic adventure,
+deathless love, exquisite sentiments sentimentally expressed. He
+changed the rough warriors and beautiful but somewhat unabashed
+heroines of the saga into sentimental personages, who suited the
+taste of an age poised between the bewigged and powdered formalism
+of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of new ideals which was
+to follow. His <i>Ossian</i> is a cross between Pope's <i>Homer</i>
+and Byron's <i>Childe Harold</i>. His <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>{156}</span> heroes
+and heroines are not on their native heath, and are uncertain
+whether to mince and strut with Pope or to follow nature with
+Rousseau's noble savages and Saint Pierre's Paul and Virginia. The
+time has gone when it was heresy to cast doubt upon the genuineness
+of MacPherson's epic, but if any one is still doubtful, let him
+read it and then turn to the existing versions, ballads, and tales.
+He will find himself in a totally different atmosphere, and will
+recognise in the latter the true epic note&mdash;the warrior's rage
+and the warrior's generosity, dire cruelty yet infinite tenderness,
+wild lust yet also true love, a world of magic supernaturalism, but
+an exact copy of things as they were in that far-off age. The
+barbarism of the time is in these old tales&mdash;deeds which make
+one shiver, customs regarding the relations of the sexes now found
+only among savages, social and domestic arrangements which are
+somewhat lurid and disgusting. And yet, withal, the note of
+bravery, of passion, of authentic life is there; we are held in the
+grip of genuine manhood and womanhood. MacPherson gives a picture
+of the Ossianic age as he conceived it, an age of Celtic history
+that "never was on sea or land." Even his ghosts are un-Celtic,
+misty and unsubstantial phantasms, unlike the embodied
+<i>revenants</i> of the saga which are in agreement with the Celtic
+belief that the soul assumed a body in the other world. MacPherson
+makes Fionn invariably successful, but in the saga tales he is
+often defeated. He mingles the C&uacute;chulainn and Ossianic
+cycles, but these, save in a few casual instances, are quite
+distinct in the old literature. Yet had not his poem been so great
+as it is, though so un-Celtic, it could not have influenced all
+European literature. But those who care for genuine Celtic
+literature, the product of a people who loved nature, romance,
+doughty deeds, the beauty of the world, the music of the sea and
+the birds, the mountains, valour in men, beauty in women, will find
+all these <span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id=
+"page157"></a>{157}</span> in the saga, whether in its literary or
+its popular forms. And through it all sounds the undertone of
+Celtic pathos and melancholy, the distant echo</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Of old unhappy, far-off things</p>
+<p>And battles long ago."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote506" name=
+"footnote506"></a><b>Footnote 506:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag506">(return)</a>
+<p>See Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 447.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote507" name=
+"footnote507"></a><b>Footnote 507:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag507">(return)</a>
+<p>Montelius, <i>Les Temps Pr&eacute;historiques</i>, 57, 151;
+Reinach, <i>RC</i> xxi. 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote508" name=
+"footnote508"></a><b>Footnote 508:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag508">(return)</a>
+<p>The popular versions of this early part of the saga differ much
+in detail, but follow the main outlines in much the same way. See
+Curtin, <i>HTI</i> 204; Campbell, <i>LF</i> 33 f.; <i>WHT</i> iii.
+348.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote509" name=
+"footnote509"></a><b>Footnote 509:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag509">(return)</a>
+<p>In a widespread group of tales supernatural knowledge is
+obtained by eating part of some animal, usually a certain snake. In
+many of these tales the food is eaten by another person than he who
+obtained it, as in the case of Fionn. Cf. the Welsh story of Gwion,
+p. 116, and the Scandinavian of Sigurd, and other parallels in Miss
+Cox, <i>Cinderella</i>, 496; Frazer, <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 172 f.
+The story is thus a folk-tale formula applied to Fionn, doubtless
+because it harmonised with Celtic or pre-Celtic totemistic ideas.
+But it is based on ancient ideas regarding the supernatural
+knowledge possessed by reptiles or fish, and among American
+Indians, Maoris, Solomon Islanders, and others there are figured
+representations of a man holding such an animal, its tongue being
+attached to his tongue. He is a <i>shaman</i>, and American Indians
+believe that his inspiration comes from the tongue of a mysterious
+river otter, caught by him. See Dall, <i>Bureau of Ethnol.</i> 3rd
+report; and Miss Buckland, <i>Jour. Anth. Inst.</i> xxii. 29.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote510" name=
+"footnote510"></a><b>Footnote 510:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag510">(return)</a>
+<p><i>TOS</i> iv.; O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 396; Joyce, <i>OCR</i>
+194, 339.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote511" name=
+"footnote511"></a><b>Footnote 511:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag511">(return)</a>
+<p>For ballad versions see Campbell, <i>LF</i> 198.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote512" name=
+"footnote512"></a><b>Footnote 512:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag512">(return)</a>
+<p>Numerous ballad versions are given in Campbell <i>LF</i> 152 f.
+The tale is localised in various parts of Ireland and the
+Highlands, many dolmens in Ireland being known as Diarmaid and
+Grainne's beds.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote513" name=
+"footnote513"></a><b>Footnote 513:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag513">(return)</a>
+<p>For an account differing from this annalistic version, see
+<i>ZCP</i> i. 465.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote514" name=
+"footnote514"></a><b>Footnote 514:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag514">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 102. This, on the whole, agrees with the Highland
+ballad version, <i>LF</i> 198.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote515" name=
+"footnote515"></a><b>Footnote 515:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag515">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iv.; O'Grady, <i>Silva Gad.</i> text and
+translation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id=
+"page158"></a>{158}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap9" id="chap9">CHAPTER IX.</a></h2>
+<h3>GODS AND MEN.</h3>
+<p>Though man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are
+unlike as well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are
+ideal heroes whose parentage is partly divine, and who may
+themselves have been gods. One mark of the Celtic gods is their
+great stature. No house could contain Bran, and certain divine
+people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a
+three-ox goad."<a id="footnotetag516" name=
+"footnotetag516"></a><a href="#footnote516"><sup>516</sup></a> Even
+the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain
+several men. The gods have also the attribute of invisibility, and
+are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or
+they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When
+they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes in
+the form of a particular person, but they can also transform
+themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The animal
+names of certain divinities show that they had once been animals
+pure and simple, but when they became anthropomorphic, myths would
+arise telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes.
+This, in part, accounts for these transformation myths. The gods
+are also immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are "unfading," their "duration is
+perennial."<a id="footnotetag517" name=
+"footnotetag517"></a><a href="#footnote517"><sup>517</sup></a> This
+immortality is sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is the
+result of eating immortal food&mdash;Manannan's <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>{159}</span> swine,
+Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal ale, or the apples of
+Elysium. The stories telling of the deaths of the gods in the
+annalists may be based on old myths in which they were said to die,
+these myths being connected with ritual acts in which the human
+representatives of gods were slain. Such rites were an inherent
+part of Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of gods like Osiris
+or Adonis, based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was
+connected with elaborate myths telling of their death and revival.
+Something akin to this may have occurred among the Celts.</p>
+<p>The divinities often united with mortals. Goddesses sought the
+love of heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the gods, and
+gods had amours with the daughters of men.<a id="footnotetag518"
+name="footnotetag518"></a><a href="#footnote518"><sup>518</sup></a>
+Frequently the heroes of the sagas are children of a god or goddess
+and a mortal,<a id="footnotetag519" name=
+"footnotetag519"></a><a href="#footnote519"><sup>519</sup></a> and
+this divine parentage was firmly believed in by the Celts, since
+personal names formed of a divine name and <i>-genos</i> or
+<i>-gnatos</i>, "born of," "son of," are found in inscriptions over
+the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic documents&mdash;Boduogenos,
+Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these names were believed to
+be of divine descent on one side. Spirits of nature or the elements
+of nature personified might also be parents of mortals, as a name
+like Morgen, from <i>Morigenos</i>, "Son of the Sea," and many
+others suggest. For this and for other reasons the gods frequently
+interfere in human affairs, assisting their children or their
+favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the
+heroes of the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as
+when Morrigan besought healing from C&uacute;chulainn.</p>
+<p>As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who
+bore divine names were probably believed to be <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>{160}</span>
+representatives or incarnations of gods. Perhaps this explains why
+a chief of the Boii called himself a god and was revered after his
+death, and why the Gauls so readily accepted the divinity of
+Augustus. Irish kings bear divine names, and of these Nuada occurs
+frequently, one king, Ir&eacute;l F&aacute;ith, being identified
+with Nuada Airgetlam, while in one text <i>nuadat</i> is glossed
+<i>in r&iacute;g</i>, "of the king," as if <i>Nuada</i> had come to
+be a title meaning "king." Welsh kings bear the name Nudd (Nodons),
+and both the actual and the mythic leader Brennus took their name
+from the god Bran. King Conchobar is called <i>d&iacute;a
+talmaide</i>, "a terrestrial god." If kings were thought to be
+god-men like the Pharaohs, this might account for the frequency of
+tales about divine fatherhood or reincarnation, while it would also
+explain the numerous <i>geasa</i> which Irish kings must observe,
+unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with their
+observance, though this prosperity was later thought to depend on
+the king's goodness. The nature of the prosperity&mdash;mild
+seasons, abundant crops, fruit, fish, and cattle&mdash;shows that
+the king was associated with fertility, like the gods of
+growth.<a id="footnotetag520" name="footnotetag520"></a><a href=
+"#footnote520"><sup>520</sup></a> Hence they had probably been once
+regarded as incarnations of such gods. Wherever divine kings are
+found, fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance
+of their tabus. To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain
+before they grow old and weak, and their vigour passes on to their
+successors. Their death benefits their people.<a id=
+"footnotetag521" name="footnotetag521"></a><a href=
+"#footnote521"><sup>521</sup></a> But frequently the king might
+reign as long as he could hold his own against all comers, or,
+again, a slave or <span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id=
+"page161"></a>{161}</span> criminal was for a time treated as a
+mock king, and slain as the divine king's substitute. Scattered
+hints in Irish literature and in folk survivals show that some such
+course as this had been pursued by the Celts with regard to their
+divine kings, as it was also elsewhere.<a id="footnotetag522" name=
+"footnotetag522"></a><a href="#footnote522"><sup>522</sup></a> It
+is not impossible that some at least of the Druids stood in a
+similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably at
+first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met
+annually with three hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great
+national council.<a id="footnotetag523" name=
+"footnotetag523"></a><a href="#footnote523"><sup>523</sup></a> This
+council at a consecrated place (<i>nemeton</i>), its likeness to
+the annual Druidic gathering in Gaul, and the possibility that
+<i>Dru</i>- has some connection with the name "Druid," point to a
+religious as well as political aspect of this council. The
+"tetrarchs" may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the
+kingly prerogative of acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul.
+The wife of one of them was a priestess,<a id="footnotetag524"
+name="footnotetag524"></a><a href="#footnote524"><sup>524</sup></a>
+the office being hereditary in her family, and it may have been
+necessary that her husband should also be a priest. One tetrarch,
+Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the
+priest-kingship of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the
+second century B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic
+institution.<a id="footnotetag525" name=
+"footnotetag525"></a><a href="#footnote525"><sup>525</sup></a>
+Mythic Celtic kings consulted the gods without any priestly
+intervention, and Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.<a id=
+"footnotetag526" name="footnotetag526"></a><a href=
+"#footnote526"><sup>526</sup></a> Without giving these hints undue
+emphasis, we may suppose that the differentiation of the two
+offices would not be simultaneous over the Celtic area.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id=
+"page162"></a>{162}</span> But when it did take effect priests
+would probably lay claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as
+incarnate god. Kings were not likely to give these up, and where
+they retained them priests would be content with seeing that the
+tabus and ritual and the slaying of the mock king were duly
+observed. Irish kings were perhaps still regarded as gods, though
+certain Druids may have been divine priests, since they called
+themselves creators of the universe, and both continental and Irish
+Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the name [Greek:
+semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic
+priests, though its meaning is obscure, points to divine
+pretensions on their part.<a id="footnotetag527" name=
+"footnotetag527"></a><a href="#footnote527"><sup>527</sup></a></p>
+<p>The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit
+of earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A
+symbolic branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by
+Druids, who used oak branches in their rites.<a id="footnotetag528"
+name="footnotetag528"></a><a href="#footnote528"><sup>528</sup></a>
+King and tree would be connected, the king's life being bound up
+with that of the tree, and perhaps at one time both perished
+together. But as kings were represented by a substitute, so the
+sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down, may also have
+had its <i>succedaneum</i>. The Irish <i>bile</i> or sacred tree,
+connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand,
+and it was sacrilege to cut it down.<a id="footnotetag529" name=
+"footnotetag529"></a><a href="#footnote529"><sup>529</sup></a>
+Probably before cutting down the tree a branch or something growing
+upon it, <i>e.g.</i> mistletoe, had to be cut, or the king's
+symbolic branch secured before he could be slain. This may explain
+Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or branch was
+the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the divine
+representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
+down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's
+account is incomplete, or he is relating <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>{163}</span> something
+of which all the details were not known to him. The rite must have
+had some other purpose than that of the magico-medical use of the
+mistletoe which he describes, and though he says nothing of cutting
+down the tree or slaying a human victim, it is not unlikely that,
+as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his time, the oxen which
+were slain during the rite took the place of the latter. Later
+romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some personage, the
+mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a branch
+carried by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked from
+the tree which he defended.<a id="footnotetag530" name=
+"footnotetag530"></a><a href="#footnote530"><sup>530</sup></a>
+These may point to an old belief in tree and king as divine
+representatives, and to a ritual like that associated with the
+Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic tree of Elysium,
+with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits. Armed with
+such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might
+penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be
+regarded as romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch
+of the divine tree.</p>
+<p>If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her
+representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring
+festivals by the female worshippers. This would explain the slaying
+of one of their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when
+male spirits or gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king
+would take the place of the female representative. On the other
+hand, just as the goddess became the consort of the god, a female
+representative would continue as the divine bride in the ritual of
+the sacred marriage, the May Queen <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page164" id="page164"></a>{164}</span> of later folk-custom.
+Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female cults with
+female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the May
+Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals
+from which men were excluded.<a id="footnotetag531" name=
+"footnotetag531"></a><a href="#footnote531"><sup>531</sup></a></p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote516" name=
+"footnote516"></a><b>Footnote 516:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag516">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 228.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote517" name=
+"footnote517"></a><b>Footnote 517:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag517">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> ii. 203. Cf. C&aelig;sar, vi. 14, "the immortal
+gods" of Gaul.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote518" name=
+"footnote518"></a><b>Footnote 518:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag518">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote519" name=
+"footnote519"></a><b>Footnote 519:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag519">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, ii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote520" name=
+"footnote520"></a><b>Footnote 520:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag520">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 203; <i>Trip. Life</i>, 507; <i>Annals of the
+Four Masters</i>, A.D. 14; <i>RC</i> xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well
+as kings probably influenced fertility. A curious survival of this
+is found in the belief that herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when
+MacLeod arrived at his castle there, and in the desire of the
+people in Skye during the potato famine that his fairy banner
+should be waved.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote521" name=
+"footnote521"></a><b>Footnote 521:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag521">(return)</a>
+<p>An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King
+Ailill, "If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many"
+(O'Grady, ii. 416).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote522" name=
+"footnote522"></a><b>Footnote 522:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag522">(return)</a>
+<p>See Frazer, <i>Kingship</i>; Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, 1906, "The
+European Sky-God." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence
+of Celtic incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though
+some of his inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in
+his view, a sky-god; he was more likely to have been the
+representative of a god or spirit of growth or vegetation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote523" name=
+"footnote523"></a><b>Footnote 523:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag523">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, xii. 5. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote524" name=
+"footnote524"></a><b>Footnote 524:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag524">(return)</a>
+<p>Plutarch, <i>de Virt. Mul.</i> 20.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote525" name=
+"footnote525"></a><b>Footnote 525:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag525">(return)</a>
+<p>Cicero, <i>de Div.</i> i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3;
+Stachelin, <i>Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote526" name=
+"footnote526"></a><b>Footnote 526:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag526">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote527" name=
+"footnote527"></a><b>Footnote 527:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag527">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ancient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1;
+see p. <a href="#page301">301</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote528" name=
+"footnote528"></a><b>Footnote 528:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag528">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xvi. 95.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote529" name=
+"footnote529"></a><b>Footnote 529:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag529">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page201">201</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote530" name=
+"footnote530"></a><b>Footnote 530:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag530">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly
+bough, and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree
+guarded by Gramoplanz (Weston, <i>Legend of Sir Gawain</i>, 22,
+86). Cf. also the tale of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a
+tree to obtain its fruit, and the subsequent slaughter of each man
+who attacks the hero hidden in its branches (<i>TOS</i> vol. iii.).
+Cf. Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii. 441.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote531" name=
+"footnote531"></a><b>Footnote 531:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag531">(return)</a>
+<p>See Chap. <a href="#chap18">XVIII</a>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id=
+"page165"></a>{165}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap10" id="chap10">CHAPTER X.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE CULT OF THE DEAD.</h3>
+<p>The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife
+or slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the
+dead, yet when such practices survive over a long period they
+assume the form of a cult. These customs flourished among the
+Celts, and, taken in connection with the reverence for the
+sepulchres of the dead, they point to a worship of ancestral
+spirits as well as of great departed heroes. Heads of the slain
+were offered to the "strong shades"&mdash;the ghosts of tribal
+heroes whose praises were sung by bards.<a id="footnotetag532"
+name="footnotetag532"></a><a href="#footnote532"><sup>532</sup></a>
+When such heads were placed on houses, they may have been devoted
+to the family ghosts. The honour in which mythic or real heroes
+were held may point to an actual cult, the hero being worshipped
+when dead, while he still continued his guardianship of the tribe.
+We know also that the tomb of King Cottius in the Alps was a sacred
+place, that Irish kings were often inaugurated on ancestral burial
+cairns, and that Irish gods were associated with barrows of the
+dead.<a id="footnotetag533" name="footnotetag533"></a><a href=
+"#footnote533"><sup>533</sup></a></p>
+<p>The cult of the dead culminated at the family hearth, around
+which the dead were even buried, as among the Aeduii; this latter
+custom may have been general.<a id="footnotetag534" name=
+"footnotetag534"></a><a href="#footnote534"><sup>534</sup></a> In
+any case the belief in the presence of ancestral ghosts around the
+hearth was widespread, as existing superstitions show. In
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id=
+"page166"></a>{166}</span> Brittany the dead seek warmth at the
+hearth by night, and a feast is spread for them on All Souls' eve,
+or crumbs are left for them after a family gathering.<a id=
+"footnotetag535" name="footnotetag535"></a><a href=
+"#footnote535"><sup>535</sup></a> But generally the family ghost
+has become a brownie, lutin, or pooka, haunting the hearth and
+doing the household work.<a id="footnotetag536" name=
+"footnotetag536"></a><a href="#footnote536"><sup>536</sup></a>
+Fairy corresponds in all respects to old ancestral ghost, and the
+one has succeeded to the place of the other, while the fairy is
+even said to be the ghost of a dead person.<a id="footnotetag537"
+name="footnotetag537"></a><a href="#footnote537"><sup>537</sup></a>
+Certain arch&aelig;ological remains have also a connection with
+this ancient cult. Among Celtic remains in Gaul are found andirons
+of clay, ornamented with a ram's head. M. Dechelette sees in this
+"the symbol of sacrifice offered to the souls of ancestors on the
+altar of the hearth."<a id="footnotetag538" name=
+"footnotetag538"></a><a href="#footnote538"><sup>538</sup></a> The
+ram was already associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of
+fire on the hearth, and by an easy transition it was connected with
+the cult of the dead there. It is found as an emblem on ancient
+tombs, and the domestic Lar was purified by the immolation of a
+ram.<a id="footnotetag539" name="footnotetag539"></a><a href=
+"#footnote539"><sup>539</sup></a> Figurines of a ram have been
+found in Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the
+underworld.<a id="footnotetag540" name=
+"footnotetag540"></a><a href="#footnote540"><sup>540</sup></a> The
+ram of the andirons was thus a permanent representative of the
+victim offered in the cult of the dead. A mutilated inscription on
+one of them may stand for <i>Laribus augustis</i>, and certain
+markings on others may represent the garlands twined round the
+victim.<a id="footnotetag541" name="footnotetag541"></a><a href=
+"#footnote541"><sup>541</sup></a> Serpents with rams' heads occur
+on the monuments of the underworld god. The serpent was a chthonian
+god or the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id=
+"page167"></a>{167}</span> emblem of such a god, and it may have
+been thought appropriate to give it the head of an animal
+associated with the cult of the dead.</p>
+<p>The dead were also fed at the grave or in the house. Thus cups
+were placed in the recess of a well in the churchyard of
+Kilranelagh by those interring a child under five, and the ghost of
+the child was supposed to supply the other spirits with water from
+these cups.<a id="footnotetag542" name=
+"footnotetag542"></a><a href="#footnote542"><sup>542</sup></a> In
+Ireland, after a death, food is placed out for the spirits, or, at
+a burial, nuts are placed in the coffin.<a id="footnotetag543"
+name="footnotetag543"></a><a href="#footnote543"><sup>543</sup></a>
+In some parts of France, milk is poured out on the grave, and both
+in Brittany and in Scotland the dead are supposed to partake of the
+funeral feast.<a id="footnotetag544" name=
+"footnotetag544"></a><a href="#footnote544"><sup>544</sup></a>
+These are survivals from pagan times and correspond to the rites in
+use among those who still worship ancestors. In Celtic districts a
+cairn or a cross is placed over the spot where a violent or
+accidental death has occurred, the purpose being to appease the
+ghost, and a stone is often added to the cairn by all
+passers-by.<a id="footnotetag545" name=
+"footnotetag545"></a><a href="#footnote545"><sup>545</sup></a></p>
+<p>Festivals were held in Ireland on the anniversaries of the death
+of kings or chiefs, and these were also utilised for purposes of
+trade, pleasure, or politics. They sometimes occurred on the great
+festivals, <i>e.g.</i> Lugnasad and Samhain, and were occasionally
+held at the great burial-places.<a id="footnotetag546" name=
+"footnotetag546"></a><a href="#footnote546"><sup>546</sup></a> Thus
+the gathering at Taillti on Lugnasad was said to have been founded
+by Lug in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, and the Leinstermen
+met at Carman on the same day to commemorate King Garman, or in a
+variant account, a woman called Carman. She and her sons had tried
+to blight the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id=
+"page168"></a>{168}</span> corn of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, but
+the sons were driven off and she died of grief, begging that a fair
+should always be held in her name, and promising abundance of milk,
+fruit, and fish for its observance.<a id="footnotetag547" name=
+"footnotetag547"></a><a href="#footnote547"><sup>547</sup></a>
+These may be &aelig;tiological myths explaining the origin of these
+festivals on the analogy of funeral festivals, but more likely,
+since Lugnasad was a harvest festival, they are connected with the
+custom of slaying a representative of the corn-spirit. The festival
+would become a commemoration of all such victims, but when the
+custom itself had ceased it would be associated with one particular
+personage, the corn-goddess regarded as a mortal.</p>
+<p>This would be the case where the victim was a woman, but where a
+male was slain, the analogy of the slaying of the divine king or
+his <i>succedaneum</i> would lead to the festivals being regarded
+as commemorative of a king, <i>e.g.</i> Garman. This agrees with
+the statement that observance of the festival produced plenty;
+non-observance, dearth. The victims were slain to obtain plenty,
+and the festival would also commemorate those who had died for this
+good cause, while it would also appease their ghosts should these
+be angry at their violent deaths. Certain of the dead were thus
+commemorated at Lugnasad, a festival of fertility. Both the
+corn-spirit or divinity slain in the reaping of the corn, and the
+human victims, were appeased by its observance.<a id=
+"footnotetag548" name="footnotetag548"></a><a href=
+"#footnote548"><sup>548</sup></a> The legend of Carman makes her
+hostile to the corn&mdash;a curious way of regarding a
+corn-goddess. But we have already seen that gods of fertility were
+sometimes thought of as causing blight, and in folk-belief the
+corn-spirit is occasionally believed to be dangerous. Such
+inversions occur wherever revolutions in religion take place.</p>
+<p>The great commemoration of the dead was held on <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>{169}</span> Samhain
+eve, a festival intended to aid the dying powers of vegetation,
+whose life, however, was still manifested in evergreen shrubs, in
+the mistletoe, in the sheaf of corn from last harvest&mdash;the
+abode of the corn-spirit.<a id="footnotetag549" name=
+"footnotetag549"></a><a href="#footnote549"><sup>549</sup></a>
+Probably, also, human representatives of the vegetation or
+corn-spirit were slain, and this may have suggested the belief in
+the presence of their ghosts at this festival. Or the festival
+being held at the time of the death of vegetation, the dead would
+naturally be commemorated then. Or, as in Scandinavia, they may
+have been held to have an influence on fertility, as an extension
+of the belief that certain slain persons represented spirits of
+fertility, or because trees and plants growing on the barrows of
+the dead were thought to be tenanted by their spirits.<a id=
+"footnotetag550" name="footnotetag550"></a><a href=
+"#footnote550"><sup>550</sup></a> In Scandinavia, the dead were
+associated with female spirits or <i>fylgjur</i>, identified with
+the <i>disir</i>, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in hollow
+hills.<a id="footnotetag551" name="footnotetag551"></a><a href=
+"#footnote551"><sup>551</sup></a> The nearest Celtic analogy to
+these is the <i>Matres</i>, goddesses of fertility. Bede says that
+Christmas eve was called <i>Modranicht</i>, "Mothers' Night,"<a id=
+"footnotetag552" name="footnotetag552"></a><a href=
+"#footnote552"><sup>552</sup></a> and as many of the rites of
+Samhain were transferred to Yule, the former date of
+<i>Modranicht</i> may have been Samhain, just as the Scandinavian
+<i>Disablot</i>, held in November, was a festival of the
+<i>disir</i> and of the dead.<a id="footnotetag553" name=
+"footnotetag553"></a><a href="#footnote553"><sup>553</sup></a> It
+has been seen that the Celtic Earth-god was lord of the dead, and
+that he probably took the place of an Earth-goddess or goddesses,
+to whom the <i>Matres</i> certainly correspond. Hence the
+connection of the dead with female Earth-spirits would be
+explained. Mother Earth had received the dead before her place was
+taken by the Celtic Dispater. Hence the time of Earth's
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id=
+"page170"></a>{170}</span> decay was the season when the dead, her
+children, would be commemorated. Whatever be the reason, Celts,
+Teutons, and others have commemorated the dead at the beginning of
+winter, which was the beginning of a new year, while a similar
+festival of the dead at New Year is held in many other lands.</p>
+<p>Both in Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid
+out for the dead who come to visit the houses and to warm
+themselves at the fire in the stillness of the night, and in
+Brittany a huge log burns on the hearth. We have here returned to
+the cult of the dead at the hearth.<a id="footnotetag554" name=
+"footnotetag554"></a><a href="#footnote554"><sup>554</sup></a>
+Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the hearth&mdash;the
+place of the family ghosts&mdash;at Samhain, when new fire was
+kindled in each house. On it libations were poured, which would
+then have been meant for the dead. The Yule log and the log of the
+Breton peasants would thus be the domestic aspect of the fire
+ritual, which had its public aspect in the Samhain bonfires.</p>
+<p>All this has been in part affected by the Christian feast of All
+Souls. Dr. Frazer thinks that the feast of All Saints (November
+1st) was intended to take the place of the pagan cult of the dead.
+As it failed to do this, All Souls, a festival of all the dead, was
+added on November 2nd.<a id="footnotetag555" name=
+"footnotetag555"></a><a href="#footnote555"><sup>555</sup></a> To
+some extent, but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan rites,
+for the old ideas connected with Samhain still survive here and
+there. It is also to be noted that in some cases the friendly
+aspect of the dead has been lost sight of, and, like the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk, they are popularly connected with evil
+powers which are in the ascendant on Samhain eve.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote532" name=
+"footnote532"></a><b>Footnote 532:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag532">(return)</a>
+<p>Silius Italicus, v. 652; Lucan, i. 447. Cf. p. <a href=
+"#page241">241</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote533" name=
+"footnote533"></a><b>Footnote 533:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag533">(return)</a>
+<p>Ammian. Marcell. xv. 10. 7; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 45.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote534" name=
+"footnote534"></a><b>Footnote 534:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag534">(return)</a>
+<p>Bulliot, <i>Fouilles du Mont Beuvray</i>, Autun, 1899, i. 76,
+396.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote535" name=
+"footnote535"></a><b>Footnote 535:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag535">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz, ii. 67; Sauv&eacute;, <i>Folk-lore des Hautes
+Vosges</i>, 295; B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, <i>Superstitions et
+Survivances</i>, i. 11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote536" name=
+"footnote536"></a><b>Footnote 536:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag536">(return)</a>
+<p>Hearn, <i>Aryan Household</i>, 43 f.;
+B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, i. 33; <i>Rev. des Trad.</i> i. 142;
+Carmichael, ii. 329; Cosquin, <i>Trad. Pop. de la Lorraine</i>, i.
+82.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote537" name=
+"footnote537"></a><b>Footnote 537:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag537">(return)</a>
+<p>Kennedy, 126. The mischievous brownie who overturns furniture
+and smashes crockery is an exact reproduction of the
+Poltergeist.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote538" name=
+"footnote538"></a><b>Footnote 538:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag538">(return)</a>
+<p>Dechelette, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xxxiii, (1898), 63, 245, 252.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote539" name=
+"footnote539"></a><b>Footnote 539:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag539">(return)</a>
+<p>Cicero, <i>De Leg.</i> ii. 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote540" name=
+"footnote540"></a><b>Footnote 540:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag540">(return)</a>
+<p>Dechelette, 256; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 189.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote541" name=
+"footnote541"></a><b>Footnote 541:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag541">(return)</a>
+<p>Dechelette, 257-258. In another instance the ram is marked with
+crosses like those engraved on images of the underworld god with
+the hammer.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote542" name=
+"footnote542"></a><b>Footnote 542:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag542">(return)</a>
+<p>Kennedy, 187.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote543" name=
+"footnote543"></a><b>Footnote 543:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag543">(return)</a>
+<p>Lady Wilde, 118; Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 54.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote544" name=
+"footnote544"></a><b>Footnote 544:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag544">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, <i>Voyage dans le
+Finist&egrave;re</i>, i. 229.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote545" name=
+"footnote545"></a><b>Footnote 545:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag545">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz, ii. 47; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, iv. 357; MacCulloch, <i>Misty
+Isle of Skye</i>, 254; S&eacute;billot, i. 235-236.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote546" name=
+"footnote546"></a><b>Footnote 546:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag546">(return)</a>
+<p>Names of places associated with the great festivals are also
+those of the chief pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc.
+(O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 523).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote547" name=
+"footnote547"></a><b>Footnote 547:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag547">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rennes Dindsenchas</i>, <i>RC</i> xv. 313-314.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote548" name=
+"footnote548"></a><b>Footnote 548:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag548">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Frazer, <i>Adonis</i>, 134.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote549" name=
+"footnote549"></a><b>Footnote 549:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag549">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Chambers, <i>Medi&aelig;val Stage</i>, i. 250, 253.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote550" name=
+"footnote550"></a><b>Footnote 550:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag550">(return)</a>
+<p>See Vigfusson-Powell, <i>Corpus Poet. Boreale</i>, i. 405, 419.
+Perhaps for a similar reason a cult of the dead may have occurred
+at the Midsummer festival.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote551" name=
+"footnote551"></a><b>Footnote 551:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag551">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Faraday, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii. 398 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote552" name=
+"footnote552"></a><b>Footnote 552:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag552">(return)</a>
+<p>Bede, <i>de Temp. Rat.</i> c. xv.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote553" name=
+"footnote553"></a><b>Footnote 553:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag553">(return)</a>
+<p>Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote554" name=
+"footnote554"></a><b>Footnote 554:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag554">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 157; Haddon, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, iv. 359; Le
+Braz, ii. 115 <i>et passim.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote555" name=
+"footnote555"></a><b>Footnote 555:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag555">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>Adonis</i>, 253 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id=
+"page171"></a>{171}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap11" id="chap11">CHAPTER XI.</a></h2>
+<h3>PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.</h3>
+<p>In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning
+then possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were
+worshipped&mdash;earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later
+to more complete personification, and the sun or earth divinity or
+spirit was more or less separated from the sun or earth themselves.
+Some Celtic divinities were thus evolved, but there still continued
+a veneration of the objects of nature in themselves, as well as a
+cult of nature spirits or secondary divinities who peopled every
+part of nature. "Nor will I call out upon the mountains, fountains,
+or hills, or upon the rivers, which are now subservient to the use
+of man, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and
+to which the blind people paid divine honours," cries Gildas.<a id=
+"footnotetag556" name="footnotetag556"></a><a href=
+"#footnote556"><sup>556</sup></a> This was the true cult of the
+folk, the "blind people," even when the greater gods were
+organised, and it has survived with modifications in out-of-the-way
+places, in spite of the coming of Christianity.</p>
+<p>S. Kentigern rebuked the Cambrians for worshipping the elements,
+which God made for man's use.<a id="footnotetag557" name=
+"footnotetag557"></a><a href="#footnote557"><sup>557</sup></a> The
+question of the daughters of Loegaire also throws much light on
+Celtic nature worship. "Has your god sons or daughters?... Have
+many fostered his sons? Are his daughters dear and beautiful to
+men? Is he in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in the rivers, in the
+mountains, in the valleys?"<a id="footnotetag558" name=
+"footnotetag558"></a><a href="#footnote558"><sup>558</sup></a> The
+words suggest <span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id=
+"page172"></a>{172}</span> a belief in divine beings filling
+heaven, earth, sea, air, hills, glens, lochs, and rivers, and
+following human customs. A na&iuml;ve faith, full of beauty and
+poetry, even if it had its dark and grim aspects! These powers or
+personalities had been invoked from time immemorial, but the
+invocations were soon stereotyped into definite formulas. Such a
+formula is put into the mouth of Amairgen, the poet of the
+Milesians, when they were about to invade Erin, and it may have
+been a magical invocation of the powers of nature at the beginning
+of an undertaking or in times of danger:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"I invoke the land of Ireland!</p>
+<p>Shining, shining sea!</p>
+<p>Fertile, fertile mountain!</p>
+<p>Wooded vale!</p>
+<p>Abundant river, abundant in waters!</p>
+<p>Fish abounding lake!</p>
+<p>Fish abounding sea!</p>
+<p>Fertile earth!</p>
+<p>Irruption of fish! Fish there!</p>
+<p>Bird under wave! Great fish!</p>
+<p>Crab hole! Irruption of fish!</p>
+<p>Fish abounding sea!"<a id="footnotetag559" name=
+"footnotetag559"></a><a href="#footnote559"><sup>559</sup></a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>A similar formula was spoken after the destruction of Da Derga's
+Hostel by MacCecht on his finding water. He bathed in it and
+sang&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Cold fountain! Surface of strand ...</p>
+<p>Sea of lake, water of Gara, stream of river;</p>
+<p>High spring well; cold fountain!"<a id="footnotetag560" name=
+"footnotetag560"></a><a href="#footnote560"><sup>560</sup></a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>The goddess Morrigan, after the defeat of the Fomorians, invokes
+the powers of nature and proclaims the victory to "the royal
+mountains of Ireland, to its chief waters, and its river
+mouths."<a id="footnotetag561" name="footnotetag561"></a><a href=
+"#footnote561"><sup>561</sup></a> It was also customary to take
+oaths by the elements&mdash;heaven, earth, sun, fire, moon, sea,
+land, day, night, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id=
+"page173"></a>{173}</span> etc., and these punished the breaker of
+the oath.<a id="footnotetag562" name="footnotetag562"></a><a href=
+"#footnote562"><sup>562</sup></a> Even the gods exacted such an
+oath of each other. Bres swore by sun, moon, sea, and land, to
+fulfil the engagement imposed on him by Lug.<a id="footnotetag563"
+name="footnotetag563"></a><a href="#footnote563"><sup>563</sup></a>
+The formul&aelig; survived into Christian times, and the faithful
+were forbidden to call the sun and moon gods or to swear by them,
+while in Breton folk-custom at the present day oaths by sun, moon,
+or earth, followed by punishment of the oath-breaker by the moon,
+are still in use.<a id="footnotetag564" name=
+"footnotetag564"></a><a href="#footnote564"><sup>564</sup></a>
+These oaths had originated in a time when the elements themselves
+were thought to be divine, and similar adjurations were used by
+Greeks and Scandinavians.</p>
+<p>While the greater objects of nature were worshipped for
+themselves alone, the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits,
+benevolent or malevolent, of rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes,
+and streams,<a id="footnotetag565" name=
+"footnotetag565"></a><a href="#footnote565"><sup>565</sup></a> and
+while greater divinities of growth had been evolved, they still
+believed in lesser spirits of vegetation, of the corn, and of
+fertility, connected, however, with these gods. Some of these still
+survive as fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or streams, or as
+demoniac beings haunting lonely places. And even now, in French
+folk-belief, sun, moon, winds, etc., are regarded as actual
+personages. Sun and moon are husband and wife; the winds have
+wives; they are addressed by personal names and reverenced.<a id=
+"footnotetag566" name="footnotetag566"></a><a href=
+"#footnote566"><sup>566</sup></a> Some spirits may already have had
+a demoniac aspect in pagan times. The Tuatha D&eacute;a conjured up
+<i>meisi</i>, "spectral bodies that rise from the ground," against
+the Milesians, and at their service were malignant
+sprites&mdash;<i>urtrochta</i>, and "forms, spectres, and great
+queens" called <i>guidemain</i> (false demons). The Druids also
+sent forth mischievous spirits called <i>siabra</i>. In the
+<i>T&aacute;in</i> there are <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page174" id="page174"></a>{174}</span> references to
+<i>boc&acirc;nachs</i>, <i>ban&acirc;naichs</i>, and
+<i>geniti-glinni</i>, "goblins, eldritch beings, and
+glen-folk."<a id="footnotetag567" name=
+"footnotetag567"></a><a href="#footnote567"><sup>567</sup></a>
+These are twice called Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, and this suggests
+that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater gods.<a id=
+"footnotetag568" name="footnotetag568"></a><a href=
+"#footnote568"><sup>568</sup></a> The <i>geniti-glinni</i> would be
+spirits haunting glen and valley. They are friendly to
+C&uacute;chulainn in the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, but in the <i>Feast of
+Bricriu</i> he and other heroes fight and destroy them.<a id=
+"footnotetag569" name="footnotetag569"></a><a href=
+"#footnote569"><sup>569</sup></a> In modern Irish belief they are
+demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.<a id="footnotetag570"
+name="footnotetag570"></a><a href=
+"#footnote570"><sup>570</sup></a></p>
+<p>Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it
+held its ground because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They
+upheld the aboriginal cults resembling those which, in the lands
+whence they came, had been native and local with themselves. Such
+cults are as old as the world, and when Christianity expelled the
+worship of the greater gods, younger in growth, the ancient nature
+worship, dowered with immortal youth,</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p class="i4">"bowed low before the blast</p>
+<p>In patient deep disdain,"</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed
+against it. The old rites continued to be practised, or survived
+under a Christian dress and colouring. They are found in Breton
+villages, in Highland glens, in Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish
+townships, and only the spread of school-board education, with its
+materialism and uninviting common sense, is forcing them at last to
+yield.</p>
+<p>The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them.
+Offerings at trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the
+lighting of fires or candles there, and vows or incantations
+addressed to them, are forbidden, as is also the worship of trees,
+groves, stones, rivers, and wells. The sun and moon <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>{175}</span> are not
+to be called lords. Wizardry, and divination, and the leapings and
+dancings, songs and choruses of the pagans, <i>i.e.</i> their
+orgiastic cults, are not to be practised. Tempest-raisers are not
+to ply their diabolical craft.<a id="footnotetag571" name=
+"footnotetag571"></a><a href="#footnote571"><sup>571</sup></a>
+These denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and
+legend told how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the
+power of the Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in
+wooded hollows, secluded valleys, and shores of lake and
+river.<a id="footnotetag572" name="footnotetag572"></a><a href=
+"#footnote572"><sup>572</sup></a> Their power, though limited, was
+not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults often
+continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were
+identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism
+with dark and grisly demons.<a id="footnotetag573" name=
+"footnotetag573"></a><a href="#footnote573"><sup>573</sup></a> This
+culminated in the medi&aelig;val witch persecutions, for witchcraft
+was in part the old paganism in a new guise. Yet even that did not
+annihilate superstition, which still lives and flourishes among the
+folk, though the actual worship of nature-spirits has now
+disappeared.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>Perhaps the most important object in nature to the early Celts
+as to most primitive folk was the moon. The phases of the moon were
+apparent before men observed the solstices and equinoxes, and they
+formed an easy method of measuring time. The Celtic year was at
+first lunar&mdash;Pliny speaks of the Celtic method of counting the
+beginning of months and years by the moon&mdash;and night was
+supposed to precede day.<a id="footnotetag574" name=
+"footnotetag574"></a><a href="#footnote574"><sup>574</sup></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id=
+"page176"></a>{176}</span> The festivals of growth began, not at
+sunrise, but on the previous evening with the rising of the moon,
+and the name <i>La Lunade</i> is still given to the Midsummer
+festival in parts of France.<a id="footnotetag575" name=
+"footnotetag575"></a><a href="#footnote575"><sup>575</sup></a> At
+Vallon de la Suille a wood on the slope where the festival is held
+is called <i>Bois de la Lune</i>; and in Ireland, where the
+festival begins on the previous evening, in the district where an
+ascent of Cnoc Aine is made, the position of the moon must be
+observed. A similar combination of sun and moon cults is found in
+an inscription at Lausanne&mdash;<i>To the genius of the sun and
+moon.</i><a id="footnotetag576" name="footnotetag576"></a><a href=
+"#footnote576"><sup>576</sup></a></p>
+<p>Possibly sun festivals took the place of those of the moon.
+Traces of the connection of the moon with agriculture occur in
+different regions, the connection being established through the
+primitive law of sympathetic magic. The moon waxes and wanes,
+therefore it must affect all processes of growth or decay. Dr.
+Frazer has cited many instances of this belief, and has shown that
+the moon had a priority to the sun in worship, <i>e.g.</i> in Egypt
+and Babylon.<a id="footnotetag577" name=
+"footnotetag577"></a><a href="#footnote577"><sup>577</sup></a>
+Sowing is done with a waxing moon, so that, through sympathy, there
+may be a large increase. But harvesting, cutting timber, etc.,
+should be done with a waning moon, because moisture being caused by
+a waxing moon, it was necessary to avoid cutting such things as
+would spoil by moisture at that time. Similar beliefs are found
+among the Celts. Mistletoe and other magical plants were culled
+with a waxing moon, probably because their <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>{177}</span> power
+would thus be greater. Dr. Johnson noted the fact that the
+Highlanders sowed their seed with a waxing moon, in the expectation
+of a better harvest. For similar occult reasons, it is thought in
+Brittany that conception during a waxing moon produces a male
+child, during a waning moon a female, while <i>accouchements</i> at
+the latter time are dangerous. Sheep and cows should be killed at
+the new moon, else their flesh will shrink, but peats should be cut
+in the last quarter, otherwise they will remain moist and give out
+"a power of smoke."<a id="footnotetag578" name=
+"footnotetag578"></a><a href="#footnote578"><sup>578</sup></a></p>
+<p>These ideas take us back to a time when it was held that the
+moon was not merely the measurer of time, but had powerful effects
+on the processes of growth and decay. Artemis and Diana,
+moon-goddesses, had power over all growing things, and as some
+Celtic goddesses were equated with Diana, they may have been
+connected with the moon, more especially as Gallo-Roman images of
+Diana have the head adorned with a crescent moon. In some cases
+festivals of the moon remained intact, as among the Celtiberians
+and other peoples to the north of them, who at the time of full
+moon celebrated the festival of a nameless god, dancing all night
+before the doors of their houses.<a id="footnotetag579" name=
+"footnotetag579"></a><a href="#footnote579"><sup>579</sup></a> The
+nameless god may have been the moon, worshipped at the time of her
+intensest light. Moonlight dances round a great stone, with
+singing, on the first day of the year, occurred in the Highlands in
+the eighteenth century.<a id="footnotetag580" name=
+"footnotetag580"></a><a href="#footnote580"><sup>580</sup></a>
+Other survivals of cult are seen in the practices of bowing or
+baring the head at new moon, or addressing it with words of
+adoration or supplication. In Ireland, Camden found the custom at
+new moon of saying the Lord's Prayer with the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>{178}</span> addition
+of the words, "Leave us whole and sound as Thou hast found us."
+Similar customs exist in Brittany, where girls pray to the moon to
+grant them dreams of their future husbands.<a id="footnotetag581"
+name="footnotetag581"></a><a href="#footnote581"><sup>581</sup></a>
+Like other races, the Celts thought that eclipses were caused by a
+monster attacking the moon, while it could be driven off with cries
+and shouts. In 218 B.C. the Celtic allies of Attalus were
+frightened by an eclipse, and much later Christian legislation
+forbade the people to assemble at an eclipse and shout, <i>Vince,
+Luna!</i><a id="footnotetag582" name="footnotetag582"></a><a href=
+"#footnote582"><sup>582</sup></a> Such a practice was observed in
+Ireland in the seventeenth century. At an earlier time, Irish poets
+addressed sun and moon as divinities, and they were represented on
+altars even in Christian times.<a id="footnotetag583" name=
+"footnotetag583"></a><a href="#footnote583"><sup>583</sup></a></p>
+<p>While the Celts believed in sea-gods&mdash;Manannan, Morgen,
+Dylan&mdash;the sea itself was still personified and regarded as
+divine. It was thought to be a hostile being, and high tides were
+met by Celtic warriors, who advanced against them with sword and
+spear, often perishing in the rushing waters rather than retreat.
+The ancients regarded this as bravado. M. Jullian sees in it a
+sacrifice by voluntary suicide; M. D'Arbois, a tranquil waiting for
+death and the introduction to another life.<a id="footnotetag584"
+name="footnotetag584"></a><a href="#footnote584"><sup>584</sup></a>
+But the passages give the sense of an actual attack on the
+waves&mdash;living things which men might terrify, and perhaps with
+this was combined the belief that no one could die during a rising
+tide. Similarly French fishermen threaten to cut a fog in two with
+a knife, while the legend of S. Lunaire tells how he threw a knife
+at a fog, thus causing its disappearance.<a id="footnotetag585"
+name="footnotetag585"></a><a href="#footnote585"><sup>585</sup></a>
+Fighting the waves is also referred to in Irish texts. <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>{179}</span> Thus
+Tuirbe Tr&aacute;gmar would "hurl a cast of his axe in the face of
+the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not
+come over the axe." C&uacute;chulainn, in one of his fits of anger,
+fought the waves for seven days, and Fionn fought and conquered the
+Muireartach, a personification of the wild western sea.<a id=
+"footnotetag586" name="footnotetag586"></a><a href=
+"#footnote586"><sup>586</sup></a> On the French coast fishermen
+throw harpoons at certain harmful waves called the Three Witch
+Waves, thus drawing their blood and causing them to subside.<a id=
+"footnotetag587" name="footnotetag587"></a><a href=
+"#footnote587"><sup>587</sup></a> In some cases human victims may
+have been offered to the rising waters, since certain tales speak
+of a child set floating on the waves, and this, repeated every
+seven years, kept them in their place.<a id="footnotetag588" name=
+"footnotetag588"></a><a href="#footnote588"><sup>588</sup></a></p>
+<p>The sea had also its beneficent aspects. The shore was "a place
+of revelation of science," and the sea sympathised with human
+griefs. At the Battle of Ventry "the sea chattered, telling the
+losses, and the waves raised a heavy, woeful great moan in wailing
+them."<a id="footnotetag589" name="footnotetag589"></a><a href=
+"#footnote589"><sup>589</sup></a> In other cases in Ireland, by a
+spell put on the waves, or by the intuitive knowledge of the
+listener, it was revealed that they were wailing for a death or
+describing some distant event.<a id="footnotetag590" name=
+"footnotetag590"></a><a href="#footnote590"><sup>590</sup></a> In
+the beautiful song sung by the wife of Cael, "the wave wails
+against the shore for his death," and in Welsh myth the waves
+bewailed the death of Dylan, "son of the wave," and were eager to
+avenge it. The noise of the waves rushing into the vale of Conwy
+were his dying groans.<a id="footnotetag591" name=
+"footnotetag591"></a><a href="#footnote591"><sup>591</sup></a> In
+Ireland the roaring of the sea was thought to be prophetic of a
+king's death or the coming of important news; and there, too,
+certain great waves were celebrated in story&mdash;Clidna's,
+Tuaithe's, and Rudhraidhe's.<a id="footnotetag592" name=
+"footnotetag592"></a><a href="#footnote592"><sup>592</sup></a> Nine
+waves, or the ninth wave, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page180"
+id="page180"></a>{180}</span> partly because of the sacred nature
+of the number nine, partly because of the beneficent character of
+the waves, had a great importance. They formed a barrier against
+invasion, danger, or pestilence, or they had a healing
+effect.<a id="footnotetag593" name="footnotetag593"></a><a href=
+"#footnote593"><sup>593</sup></a></p>
+<p>The wind was also regarded as a living being whose power was to
+be dreaded. It punished King Loegaire for breaking his oath. But it
+was also personified as a god Vintius, equated with Pollux and
+worshipped by Celtic sailors, or with Mars, the war-god who, in his
+destructive aspect, was perhaps regarded as the nearest analogue to
+a god of stormy winds.<a id="footnotetag594" name=
+"footnotetag594"></a><a href="#footnote594"><sup>594</sup></a>
+Druids and Celtic priestesses claimed the power of controlling the
+winds, as did wizards and witches in later days. This they did,
+according to Christian writers, by the aid of demons, perhaps the
+old divinities of the air. Bishop Agobard describes how the
+<i>tempestarii</i> raised tempests which destroyed the fruits of
+the earth, and drew "aerial ships" from Magonia, whither the ships
+carried these fruits.<a id="footnotetag595" name=
+"footnotetag595"></a><a href="#footnote595"><sup>595</sup></a>
+Magonia may be the upper air ruled over by a sky god Magounos or
+Mogounos, equated with Apollo.<a id="footnotetag596" name=
+"footnotetag596"></a><a href="#footnote596"><sup>596</sup></a> The
+winds may have been his servants, ruled also by earthly magicians.
+Like Yahweh, as conceived by Hebrew poets, he "bringeth the winds
+out of his treasures," and "maketh lightnings with rain."</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote556" name=
+"footnote556"></a><b>Footnote 556:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag556">(return)</a>
+<p>Gildas ii. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote557" name=
+"footnote557"></a><b>Footnote 557:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag557">(return)</a>
+<p>Jocelyn, <i>Vila Kentig.</i> c. xxxii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote558" name=
+"footnote558"></a><b>Footnote 558:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag558">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Trip. Life</i>, 315.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote559" name=
+"footnote559"></a><b>Footnote 559:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag559">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 12<i>b</i>. The translation is from D'Arbois, ii. 250
+f; cf. O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 190.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote560" name=
+"footnote560"></a><b>Footnote 560:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag560">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxii. 400.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote561" name=
+"footnote561"></a><b>Footnote 561:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag561">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 109.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote562" name=
+"footnote562"></a><b>Footnote 562:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag562">(return)</a>
+<p>Petrie, <i>Tara</i>, 34; <i>RC</i> vi. 168; <i>LU</i> 118.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote563" name=
+"footnote563"></a><b>Footnote 563:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag563">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 50.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote564" name=
+"footnote564"></a><b>Footnote 564:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag564">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Achery, <i>Spicelegium</i>, v. 216; S&eacute;billot, i. 16 f.,
+56, 211.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote565" name=
+"footnote565"></a><b>Footnote 565:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag565">(return)</a>
+<p>Gregory of Tours, <i>Hist.</i> ii. 10, speaks of the current
+belief in the divinity of waters, birds, and beasts.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote566" name=
+"footnote566"></a><b>Footnote 566:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag566">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, i. 9, 35, 75, 247, etc.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote567" name=
+"footnote567"></a><b>Footnote 567:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag567">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 273; Cormac, 87; Stokes, <i>TIG</i>
+xxxiii., <i>RC</i> xv. 307.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote568" name=
+"footnote568"></a><b>Footnote 568:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag568">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 170, 187, 193; <i>IT</i> i. 214; Leahy, i. 126.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote569" name=
+"footnote569"></a><b>Footnote 569:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag569">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 287.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote570" name=
+"footnote570"></a><b>Footnote 570:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag570">(return)</a>
+<p>Henderson, <i>Irish Texts</i>, ii. 210.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote571" name=
+"footnote571"></a><b>Footnote 571:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag571">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Capit. Karoli Magni</i>, i. 62; <i>Leges Luitprand.</i> ii.
+38; Canon 23, 2nd Coun. of Arles, Hefele, <i>Councils</i>, iii.
+471; D'Achery, v. 215. Some of these attacks were made against
+Teutonic superstitions, but similar superstitions existed among the
+Celts.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote572" name=
+"footnote572"></a><b>Footnote 572:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag572">(return)</a>
+<p>See Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> ii. 498.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote573" name=
+"footnote573"></a><b>Footnote 573:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag573">(return)</a>
+<p>A more tolerant note is heard, <i>e.g.</i>, in an Irish text
+which says that the spirits which appeared of old were divine
+ministrants not demoniacal, while angels helped the ancients
+because they followed natural truth. "Cormac's Sword," <i>IT</i>
+iii. 220-221. Cf. p. <a href="#page152">152</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote574" name=
+"footnote574"></a><b>Footnote 574:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag574">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 18; Pliny xxii. 14. Pliny speaks of culling
+mistletoe on the sixth day of the moon, which is to them the
+beginning of months and years (<i>sexta luna, quae principia</i>,
+etc.). This seems to make the sixth, not the first, day of the moon
+that from which the calculation was made. But the meaning is that
+mistletoe was culled on the sixth day of the moon, and that the
+moon was that by which months and years were measured. <i>Luna</i>,
+not <i>sexta luna</i>, is in apposition with <i>quae</i>. Traces of
+the method of counting by nights or by the moon survive locally in
+France, and the usage is frequent in Irish and Welsh literature.
+See my article "Calendar" (Celtic) in Hastings' <i>Encyclop. of
+Religion and Ethics</i>, iii. 78 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote575" name=
+"footnote575"></a><b>Footnote 575:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag575">(return)</a>
+<p>Delocke, "La Procession dite La Lunade," <i>RC</i> ix. 425.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote576" name=
+"footnote576"></a><b>Footnote 576:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag576">(return)</a>
+<p>Monnier, 174, 222; Fitzgerald, <i>RC</i> iv. 189.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote577" name=
+"footnote577"></a><b>Footnote 577:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag577">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, ii. 154 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote578" name=
+"footnote578"></a><b>Footnote 578:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag578">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xvi. 45; Johnson, <i>Journey</i>, 183; Ramsay,
+<i>Scotland in the Eighteenth Century</i>, ii. 449;
+S&eacute;billot, i. 41 f.; MacCulloch, <i>Misty Isle of Skye</i>,
+236. In Brittany it is thought that girls may conceive by the
+moon's power (<i>RC</i> iii. 452).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote579" name=
+"footnote579"></a><b>Footnote 579:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag579">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iii. 4. 16.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote580" name=
+"footnote580"></a><b>Footnote 580:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag580">(return)</a>
+<p>Brand, <i>s.v.</i> "New Year's Day."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote581" name=
+"footnote581"></a><b>Footnote 581:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag581">(return)</a>
+<p>Chambers, <i>Popular Rhymes</i>, 35; S&eacute;billot, i. 46, 57
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote582" name=
+"footnote582"></a><b>Footnote 582:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag582">(return)</a>
+<p>Polybius, v. 78; <i>Vita S. Eligii</i>, ii. 15.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote583" name=
+"footnote583"></a><b>Footnote 583:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag583">(return)</a>
+<p>Osborne, <i>Advice to his Son</i> (1656), 79; <i>RC</i> xx. 419,
+428.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote584" name=
+"footnote584"></a><b>Footnote 584:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag584">(return)</a>
+<p>Aristotle, <i>Nic. Eth.</i> iii. 77; <i>Eud. Eth.</i> iii. 1.
+25; Stob&aelig;us, vii. 40; &AElig;lian, xii. 22; Jullian, 54;
+D'Arbois, vi. 218.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote585" name=
+"footnote585"></a><b>Footnote 585:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag585">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, i. 119. The custom of throwing something at a
+"fairy eddy," <i>i.e.</i> a dust storm, is well known on Celtic
+ground and elsewhere.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote586" name=
+"footnote586"></a><b>Footnote 586:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag586">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-Lore,</i> iv. 488; Curtin, <i>HTI</i> 324; Campbell,
+<i>The Fians</i>, 158. Fian warriors attacked the sea when told it
+was laughing at them.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote587" name=
+"footnote587"></a><b>Footnote 587:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag587">(return)</a>
+<p><i>M&eacute;lusine</i>, ii. 200.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote588" name=
+"footnote588"></a><b>Footnote 588:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag588">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 170.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote589" name=
+"footnote589"></a><b>Footnote 589:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag589">(return)</a>
+<p>Meyer, <i>Cath. Finntraga</i>, 40.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote590" name=
+"footnote590"></a><b>Footnote 590:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag590">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 9; <i>LB</i> 32<i>b</i>, 55.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote591" name=
+"footnote591"></a><b>Footnote 591:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag591">(return)</a>
+<p>Meyer, <i>op. cit.</i> 55; Skene, i. 282, 288, 543; Rh[^y]s,
+<i>HL</i> 387.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote592" name=
+"footnote592"></a><b>Footnote 592:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag592">(return)</a>
+<p>Meyer, 51; Joyce, <i>PN</i> i. 195, ii. 257; <i>RC</i> xv.
+438.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote593" name=
+"footnote593"></a><b>Footnote 593:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag593">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page55">55</a>, <i>supra</i>; <i>IT</i> i. 838,
+iii. 207; <i>RC</i> ii. 201, ix. 118.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote594" name=
+"footnote594"></a><b>Footnote 594:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag594">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i> "Vintius."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote595" name=
+"footnote595"></a><b>Footnote 595:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag595">(return)</a>
+<p>Agobard, i. 146.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote596" name=
+"footnote596"></a><b>Footnote 596:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag596">(return)</a>
+<p>See Stokes, <i>RC</i> vi. 267.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id=
+"page181"></a>{181}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap12" id="chap12">CHAPTER XII.</a></h2>
+<h3>RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP.</h3>
+<p>Among the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses,
+inscriptions, votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance
+of the cult of waters and of water divinities. Mr. Gomme argues
+that Celtic water-worship was derived from the pre-Celtic
+aborigines,<a id="footnotetag597" name=
+"footnotetag597"></a><a href="#footnote597"><sup>597</sup></a> but
+if so, the Celts must have had a peculiar aptitude for it, since
+they were so enthusiastic in its observance. What probably happened
+was that the Celts, already worshippers of the waters, freely
+adopted local cults of water wherever they came. Some rivers or
+river-goddesses in Celtic regions seem to posses pre-Celtic
+names.<a id="footnotetag598" name="footnotetag598"></a><a href=
+"#footnote598"><sup>598</sup></a></p>
+<p>Treasures were flung into a sacred lake near Toulouse to cause a
+pestilence to cease. Caepion, who afterwards fished up this
+treasure, fell soon after in battle&mdash;a punishment for
+cupidity, and <i>aurum Tolosanum</i> now became an expression for
+goods dishonestly acquired.<a id="footnotetag599" name=
+"footnotetag599"></a><a href="#footnote599"><sup>599</sup></a> A
+yearly festival, lasting three days, took place at Lake
+G&eacute;vaudan. Garments, food, and wax were thrown into the
+waters, and animals were sacrificed. On the fourth day, it is said,
+there never failed to spring up a tempest of rain, thunder, and
+lightning&mdash;a strange reward for this worship of the
+lake.<a id="footnotetag600" name="footnotetag600"></a><a href=
+"#footnote600"><sup>600</sup></a> S. Columba routed the spirits of
+a Scottish fountain which was worshipped as a god, and <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>{182}</span> the well
+now became sacred, perhaps to the saint himself, who washed in it
+and blessed it so that it cured diseases.<a id="footnotetag601"
+name="footnotetag601"></a><a href=
+"#footnote601"><sup>601</sup></a></p>
+<p>On inscriptions a river name is prefixed by some divine
+epithet&mdash;<i>dea</i>, <i>augusta</i>, and the worshipper
+records his gratitude for benefits received from the divinity or
+the river itself. Bormanus, Bormo or Borvo, Danuvius (the Danube),
+and Luxovius are found on inscriptions as names of river or
+fountain gods, but goddesses are more numerous&mdash;Acionna,
+Aventia, Bormana, Brixia, Carpundia, Clutoida, Divona, Sirona,
+Ura&mdash;well-nymphs; and Icauna (the Yonne), Matrona, and Sequana
+(the Seine)&mdash;river-goddesses.<a id="footnotetag602" name=
+"footnotetag602"></a><a href="#footnote602"><sup>602</sup></a> No
+inscription to the goddess of a lake has yet been found. Some
+personal names like Dubrogenos (son of the Dubron), Enigenus (son
+of the Aenus), and the belief of Virdumarus that one of his
+ancestors was the Rhine,<a id="footnotetag603" name=
+"footnotetag603"></a><a href="#footnote603"><sup>603</sup></a>
+point to the idea that river-divinities might have amours with
+mortals and beget progeny called by their names. In Ireland,
+Conchobar was so named from the river whence his mother Nessa drew
+water, perhaps because he was a child of the river-god.<a id=
+"footnotetag604" name="footnotetag604"></a><a href=
+"#footnote604"><sup>604</sup></a></p>
+<p>The name of the water-divinity was sometimes given to the place
+of his or her cult, or to the towns which sprang up on the banks of
+rivers&mdash;the divinity thus becoming a tutelary god. Many towns
+(<i>e.g.</i> Divonne or Dyonne, etc.) have names derived from a
+common Celtic river name Deuona, "divine." This name in various
+forms is found all over the Celtic area,<a id="footnotetag605"
+name="footnotetag605"></a><a href="#footnote605"><sup>605</sup></a>
+and there is little doubt that the Celts, in their onward progress,
+named river after river by the name of the same <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>{183}</span> divinity,
+believing that each new river was a part of his or her kingdom. The
+name was probably first an appellative, then a personal name, the
+divine river becoming a divinity. Deus Nemausus occurs on votive
+tablets at Nimes, the name Nemausus being that of the clear and
+abundant spring there whence flowed the river of the same name. A
+similar name occurs in other regions&mdash;Nemesa, a tributary of
+the Moselle; Nemh, the source of the Tara and the former name of
+the Blackwater; and Nimis, a Spanish river mentioned by Appian.
+Another group includes the Matrona (Marne), the Moder, the Madder,
+the Maronne and Maronna, and others, probably derived from a word
+signifying "mother."<a id="footnotetag606" name=
+"footnotetag606"></a><a href="#footnote606"><sup>606</sup></a> The
+mother-river was that which watered a whole region, just as in the
+Hindu sacred books the waters are mothers, sources of fertility.
+The Celtic mother-rivers were probably goddesses, akin to the
+<i>Matres</i>, givers of plenty and fertility. In Gaul, Sirona, a
+river-goddess, is represented like the <i>Matres</i>. She was
+associated with Grannos, perhaps as his mother, and Professor
+Rh[^y]s equates the pair with the Welsh Modron and Mabon; Modron is
+probably connected with Matrona.<a id="footnotetag607" name=
+"footnotetag607"></a><a href="#footnote607"><sup>607</sup></a> In
+any case the Celts regarded rivers as bestowers of life, health,
+and plenty, and offered them rich gifts and sacrifices.<a id=
+"footnotetag608" name="footnotetag608"></a><a href=
+"#footnote608"><sup>608</sup></a></p>
+<p>Gods like Grannos, Borvo, and others, equated with Apollo,
+presided over healing springs, and they are usually associated with
+goddesses, as their husbands or sons. But as the goddesses are more
+numerous, and as most Celtic river names are feminine, female
+divinities of rivers and springs doubtless had the earlier and
+foremost place, especially as <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page184" id="page184"></a>{184}</span> their cult was connected
+with fertility. The gods, fewer in number, were all equated with
+Apollo, but the goddesses were not merged by the Romans into the
+personality of one goddess, since they themselves had their groups
+of river-goddesses, Nymphs and Naiads. Before the Roman conquest
+the cult of water-divinities, friends of mankind, must have formed
+a large part of the popular religion of Gaul, and their names may
+be counted by hundreds. Thermal springs had also their genii, and
+they were appropriated by the Romans, so that the local gods now
+shared their healing powers with Apollo, &AElig;sculapius, and the
+Nymphs. Thus every spring, every woodland brook, every river in
+glen or valley, the roaring cataract, and the lake were haunted by
+divine beings, mainly thought of as beautiful females with whom the
+<i>Matres</i> were undoubtedly associated. There they revealed
+themselves to their worshippers, and when paganism had passed away,
+they remained as <i>f&eacute;es</i> or fairies haunting spring, or
+well, or river.<a id="footnotetag609" name=
+"footnotetag609"></a><a href="#footnote609"><sup>609</sup></a>
+Scores of fairy wells still exist, and by them medi&aelig;val
+knights had many a fabled amour with those beautiful beings still
+seen by the "ignorant" but romantic peasant.</p>
+<p>Sanctuaries were erected at these springs by grateful
+worshippers, and at some of them festivals were held, or they were
+the resort of pilgrims. As sources of fertility they had a place in
+the ritual of the great festivals, and sacred wells were visited on
+Midsummer day, when also the river-gods claimed their human
+victims. Some of the goddesses were represented by statues or busts
+in Gallo-Roman times, if not earlier, and other images of them
+which have been found were of the nature of <i>ex votos</i>,
+presented by worshippers in gratitude <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>{185}</span> for the
+goddess's healing gifts. Money, ingots of gold or silver, and
+models of limbs or other parts of the body which had been or were
+desired to be healed, were also presented. Gregory of Tours says of
+the Gauls that they "represent in wood or bronze the members in
+which they suffer, and whose healing they desire, and place them in
+a temple."<a id="footnotetag610" name="footnotetag610"></a><a href=
+"#footnote610"><sup>610</sup></a> Contact of the model with the
+divinity brought healing to the actual limbs on the principle of
+sympathetic magic. Many such models have been discovered. Thus in
+the shrine of Dea Sequana was found a vase with over a hundred;
+another contained over eight hundred. Inscriptions were engraved on
+plaques which were fastened to the walls of temples, or placed in
+springs.<a id="footnotetag611" name="footnotetag611"></a><a href=
+"#footnote611"><sup>611</sup></a> Leaden tablets with inscriptions
+were placed in springs by those who desired healing or when the
+waters were low, and on some the actual waters are hardly
+discriminated from the divinities. The latter are asked to heal or
+flow or swell&mdash;words which apply more to the waters than to
+them, while the tablets, with their frank animism, also show that,
+in some cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well, only
+some of whom were rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called
+collectively <i>Niskas</i>&mdash;the Nixies of later tradition, but
+some have personal names&mdash;Lerano, Dibona, Dea&mdash;showing
+that they were tending to become separate divine personalities. The
+Peisgi are also appealed to, perhaps the later Piskies, unless the
+word is a corrupt form of a Celtic <i>peiskos</i>, or the Latin
+<i>piscus</i>, "fish."<a id="footnotetag612" name=
+"footnotetag612"></a><a href="#footnote612"><sup>612</sup></a> This
+is unlikely, as fish could not exist in a warm sulphurous spring,
+though the Celts believed in the sacred fish of wells or streams.
+The fairies now associated with wells or with a <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>{186}</span>
+water-world beneath them, are usually nameless, and only in a few
+cases have a definite name. They, like the older spirits of the
+wells, have generally a beneficent character.<a id="footnotetag613"
+name="footnotetag613"></a><a href="#footnote613"><sup>613</sup></a>
+Thus in the fountains of Logres dwelt damsels who fed the wayfarer
+with meat and bread, until grievous wrong was done them, when they
+disappeared and the land became waste.<a id="footnotetag614" name=
+"footnotetag614"></a><a href="#footnote614"><sup>614</sup></a>
+Occasionally, however, they have a more malevolent character.<a id=
+"footnotetag615" name="footnotetag615"></a><a href=
+"#footnote615"><sup>615</sup></a></p>
+<p>The spirit of the waters was often embodied in an animal,
+usually a fish. Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring
+has the form of an eel, while in the seventeenth century Highland
+wells contained fish so sacred that no one dared to catch
+them.<a id="footnotetag616" name="footnotetag616"></a><a href=
+"#footnote616"><sup>616</sup></a> In Wales S. Cybi's well contained
+a huge eel in whose virtues the villagers believed, and terror
+prevailed when any one dared to take it from the water. Two sacred
+fish still exist in a holy well at Nant Peris, and are replaced by
+others when they die, the dead fish being buried.<a id=
+"footnotetag617" name="footnotetag617"></a><a href=
+"#footnote617"><sup>617</sup></a> This latter act, solemnly
+performed, is a true sign of the divine or sacred character of the
+animal. Many wells with sacred fish exist in Ireland, and the fish
+have usually some supernatural quality&mdash;they never alter in
+size, they become invisible, or they take the form of beautiful
+women.<a id="footnotetag618" name="footnotetag618"></a><a href=
+"#footnote618"><sup>618</sup></a> Any one destroying such fish was
+regarded as a sacrilegious person, and sometimes a hostile tribe
+killed and ate the sacred fish of a district invaded by them, just
+as Egyptians of one nome insulted those of another by killing their
+sacred animals.<a id="footnotetag619" name=
+"footnotetag619"></a><a href="#footnote619"><sup>619</sup></a> In
+old Irish beliefs the salmon was the fish of knowledge. Thus
+whoever ate the salmon of Connla's <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page187" id="page187"></a>{187}</span> well was dowered with the
+wisdom which had come to them through eating nuts from the hazels
+of knowledge around the well. In this case the sacred fish was
+eaten, but probably by certain persons only&mdash;those who had the
+right to do so. Sinend, who went to seek inspiration from the well,
+probably by eating one of its salmon, was overwhelmed by its
+waters. The legend of the salmon is perhaps based on old ritual
+practices of the occasional eating of a divine animal. In other
+cases, legends of a miraculous supply of fish from sacred wells are
+perhaps later Christian traditions of former pagan beliefs or
+customs concerning magical methods of increasing a sacred or totem
+animal species, like those used in Central Australia and New
+Guinea.<a id="footnotetag620" name="footnotetag620"></a><a href=
+"#footnote620"><sup>620</sup></a> The frog is sometimes the sacred
+animal, and this recalls the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> of the Frog
+Bridegroom living in a well, who insisted on marrying the girl who
+drew its waters. Though this tale is not peculiar to the Celts, it
+is not improbable that the divine animal guardian of a well may
+have become the hero of a folk-tale, especially as such wells were
+sometimes tabu to women.<a id="footnotetag621" name=
+"footnotetag621"></a><a href="#footnote621"><sup>621</sup></a> A
+fly was the guardian spirit of S. Michael's well in Banffshire.
+Auguries regarding health were drawn from its movements, and it was
+believed that the fly, when it grew old, transmigrated into
+another.<a id="footnotetag622" name="footnotetag622"></a><a href=
+"#footnote622"><sup>622</sup></a></p>
+<p>Such beliefs were not peculiarly Celtic. They are found in all
+European folk-lore, and they are still alive among
+savages&mdash;the animal being itself divine or the personification
+of a divinity. A huge sacred eel was worshipped by the Fijians; in
+North America and elsewhere there were serpent guardians of the
+waters; and the Semites worshipped the fish of sacred wells as
+incarnations or symbols of a god.</p>
+<p>Later Celtic folk-belief associated monstrous and malevolent
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id=
+"page188"></a>{188}</span> beings with rivers and lakes. These may
+be the older divinities to whom a demoniac form has been given, but
+even in pagan times such monstrous beings may have been believed
+in, or they may be survivals of the more primitive monstrous
+guardians of the waters. The last were dragons or serpents,
+conventional forms of the reptiles which once dwelt in watery
+places, attacking all who came near. This old idea certainly
+survived in Irish and Highland belief, for the Fians conquered huge
+dragons or serpents in lochs, or saints chained them to the bottom
+of the waters. Hence the common place-name of Loch na piast, "Loch
+of the Monster." In other tales they emerge and devour the impious
+or feast on the dead.<a id="footnotetag623" name=
+"footnotetag623"></a><a href="#footnote623"><sup>623</sup></a> The
+<i>Dracs</i> of French superstition&mdash;river monsters who assume
+human form and drag down victims to the depths, where they devour
+them&mdash;resemble these.</p>
+<p>The <i>Each Uisge</i>, or "Water-horse," a horse with staring
+eyes, webbed feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes
+different forms and lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes
+love in human shape to women, some of whom discover his true nature
+by seeing a piece of water-weed in his hair, and only escape with
+difficulty. Such a water-horse was forced to drag the chariot of S.
+Fechin of Fore, and under his influence became "gentler than any
+other horse."<a id="footnotetag624" name=
+"footnotetag624"></a><a href="#footnote624"><sup>624</sup></a> Many
+Highland lochs are still haunted by this dreaded being, and he is
+also known in Ireland and France, where, however, he has more of a
+tricky and less of a demoniac nature.<a id="footnotetag625" name=
+"footnotetag625"></a><a href="#footnote625"><sup>625</sup></a> His
+horse form is perhaps <span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id=
+"page189"></a>{189}</span> connected with the similar form ascribed
+to Celtic water-divinities. Manannan's horses were the waves, and
+he was invariably associated with a horse. Epona, the
+horse-goddess, was perhaps originally goddess of a spring, and,
+like the <i>Matres</i>, she is sometimes connected with the
+waters.<a id="footnotetag626" name="footnotetag626"></a><a href=
+"#footnote626"><sup>626</sup></a> Horses were also sacrificed to
+river-divinities.<a id="footnotetag627" name=
+"footnotetag627"></a><a href="#footnote627"><sup>627</sup></a> But
+the beneficent water-divinities in their horse form have undergone
+a curious distortion, perhaps as the result of later Christian
+influences. The name of one branch of the Fomorians, the
+Goborchinn, means the "Horse-headed," and one of their kings was
+Eochaid Echchenn, or "Horse-head."<a id="footnotetag628" name=
+"footnotetag628"></a><a href="#footnote628"><sup>628</sup></a>
+Whether these have any connection with the water-horse is
+uncertain.</p>
+<p>The foaming waters may have suggested another animal
+personification, since the name of the Boyne in Ptolemy, [Greek:
+bououinda], is derived from a primitive <i>b&oacute;u-s</i>, "ox,"
+and <i>vindo-s</i>, "white," in Irish <i>b&oacute; find</i>, "white
+cow."<a id="footnotetag629" name="footnotetag629"></a><a href=
+"#footnote629"><sup>629</sup></a> But it is not certain that this
+or the Celtic cult of the bull was connected with the belief in the
+<i>Tarbh Uisge</i>, or "Water-bull," which had no ears and could
+assume other shapes. It dwells in lochs and is generally friendly
+to man, occasionally emerging to mate with ordinary cows. In the
+Isle of Man the <i>Tarroo Ushtey</i>, however, begets
+monsters.<a id="footnotetag630" name="footnotetag630"></a><a href=
+"#footnote630"><sup>630</sup></a> These Celtic water-monsters have
+a curious resemblance to the Australian <i>Bunyip</i>.</p>
+<p>The <i>Uruisg</i>, often confused with the brownie, haunts
+lonely places and waterfalls, and, according to his mood, helps or
+harms the wayfarer. His appearance is that of a man with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id=
+"page190"></a>{190}</span> shaggy hair and beard.<a id=
+"footnotetag631" name="footnotetag631"></a><a href=
+"#footnote631"><sup>631</sup></a> In Wales the <i>afanc</i> is a
+water-monster, though the word first meant "dwarf," then
+"water-dwarf," of whom many kinds existed. They correspond to the
+Irish water-dwarfs, the <i>Luchorp&aacute;in</i>, descended with
+the Fomorians and Goborchinn from Ham.<a id="footnotetag632" name=
+"footnotetag632"></a><a href="#footnote632"><sup>632</sup></a></p>
+<p>In other cases the old water beings have a more pleasing form,
+like the syrens and other fairy beings who haunt French rivers, or
+the mermaids of Irish estuaries.<a id="footnotetag633" name=
+"footnotetag633"></a><a href="#footnote633"><sup>633</sup></a> In
+Celtic France and Britain lake fairies are connected with a
+water-world like that of Elysium tales, the region of earlier
+divinities.<a id="footnotetag634" name=
+"footnotetag634"></a><a href="#footnote634"><sup>634</sup></a> They
+unite with mortals, who, as in the Swan-maiden tales, lose their
+fairy brides through breaking a tabu. In many Welsh tales the bride
+is obtained by throwing bread and cheese on the waters, when she
+appears with an old man who has all the strength of youth. He
+presents his daughter and a number of fairy animals to the mortal.
+When she disappears into the waters after the breaking of the tabu,
+the lake is sometimes drained in order to recover her; the father
+then appears and threatens to submerge the whole district. Father
+and daughters are earlier lake divinities, and in the bread and
+cheese we may see a relic of the offerings to these.<a id=
+"footnotetag635" name="footnotetag635"></a><a href=
+"#footnote635"><sup>635</sup></a></p>
+<p>Human sacrifice to water-divinities is suggested by the belief
+that water-monsters devour human beings, and by the tradition that
+a river claims its toll of victims every year. In popular rhymes
+the annual character of the sacrifice is <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>{191}</span> hinted
+at, and Welsh legend tells of a voice heard once a year from rivers
+or lakes, crying, "The hour is come, but the man is not."<a id=
+"footnotetag636" name="footnotetag636"></a><a href=
+"#footnote636"><sup>636</sup></a> Here there is the trace of an
+abandoned custom of sacrifice and of the traditional idea of the
+anger of the divinity at being neglected. Such spirits or gods,
+like the water-monsters, would be ever on the watch to capture
+those who trespassed on their domain. In some cases the victim is
+supposed to be claimed on Midsummer eve, the time of the sacrifice
+in the pagan period.<a id="footnotetag637" name=
+"footnotetag637"></a><a href="#footnote637"><sup>637</sup></a> The
+spirits of wells had also a harmful aspect to those, at least, who
+showed irreverence in approaching them. This is seen in legends
+about the danger of looking rashly into a well or neglecting to
+cover it, or in the belief that one must not look back after
+visiting the well. Spirits of wells were also besought to do harm
+to enemies.</p>
+<p>Legends telling of the danger of removing or altering a well, or
+of the well moving elsewhere because a woman washed her hands in
+it, point to old tabus concerning wells. Boand, wife of Nechtain,
+went to the fairy well which he and his cup-bearers alone might
+visit, and when she showed her contempt for it, the waters rose and
+destroyed her. They now flow as the river Boyne. Sinend met with a
+similar fate for intruding on Connla's well, in this case the
+pursuing waters became the Shannon.<a id="footnotetag638" name=
+"footnotetag638"></a><a href="#footnote638"><sup>638</sup></a>
+These are variants of a story <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page192" id="page192"></a>{192}</span> which might be used to
+explain the origin of any river, but the legends suggest that
+certain wells were tabu to women because certain branches of
+knowledge, taught by the well, must be reserved for men.<a id=
+"footnotetag639" name="footnotetag639"></a><a href=
+"#footnote639"><sup>639</sup></a> The legends said in effect, "See
+what came of women obtruding beyond their proper sphere." Savage
+"mysteries" are usually tabu to women, who also exclude men from
+their sacred rites. On the other hand, as all tribal lore was once
+in the hands of the wise woman, such tabus and legends may have
+arisen when men began to claim such lore. In other legends women
+are connected with wells, as the guardians who must keep them
+locked up save when water was drawn. When the woman neglected to
+replace the cover, the waters burst forth, overwhelming her, and
+formed a loch.<a id="footnotetag640" name=
+"footnotetag640"></a><a href="#footnote640"><sup>640</sup></a> The
+woman is the priestess of the well who, neglecting part of its
+ritual, is punished. Even in recent times we find sacred wells in
+charge of a woman who instructs the visitors in the due ritual to
+be performed.<a id="footnotetag641" name=
+"footnotetag641"></a><a href="#footnote641"><sup>641</sup></a> If
+such legends and survivals thus point to former Celtic priestesses
+of wells, these are paralleled by the Norse Horgabrudar, guardians
+of wells, now elves living in the waters.<a id="footnotetag642"
+name="footnotetag642"></a><a href="#footnote642"><sup>642</sup></a>
+That such legends are based on the ritual of well-worship is
+suggested by Boand's walking three times <i>widdershins</i> round
+the well, instead of the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page193"
+id="page193"></a>{193}</span> customary <i>deiseil</i>. The due
+ritual must be observed, and the stories are a warning against its
+neglect.</p>
+<p>In spite of twenty centuries of Christianity and the anathemas
+of saints and councils, the old pagan practices at healing wells
+have survived&mdash;a striking instance of human conservatism. S.
+Patrick found the pagans of his day worshipping a well called
+<i>Sl&aacute;n</i>, "health-giving," and offering sacrifices to
+it,<a id="footnotetag643" name="footnotetag643"></a><a href=
+"#footnote643"><sup>643</sup></a> and the Irish peasant to-day has
+no doubt that there is something divine about his holy wells. The
+Celts brought the belief in the divinity of springs and wells with
+them, but would naturally adopt local cults wherever they found
+them. Afterwards the Church placed the old pagan wells under the
+protection of saints, but part of the ritual often remained
+unchanged. Hence many wells have been venerated for ages by
+different races and through changes in religion and polity. Thus at
+the thermal springs of Vicarello offerings have been found which
+show that their cult has continued from the Stone Age, through the
+Bronze Age, to the days of Roman civilisation, and so into modern
+times; nor is this a solitary instance.<a id="footnotetag644" name=
+"footnotetag644"></a><a href="#footnote644"><sup>644</sup></a> But
+it serves to show that all races, high and low, preserve the great
+outlines of primitive nature religion unchanged. In all probability
+the ritual of the healing wells has also remained in great part
+unaltered, and wherever it is found it follows the same general
+type. The patient perambulated the well three times <i>deiseil</i>
+or sun-wise, taking care not to utter a word. Then he knelt at the
+well and prayed to the divinity for his healing. In modern times
+the saint, but occasionally the well itself, is prayed to.<a id=
+"footnotetag645" name="footnotetag645"></a><a href=
+"#footnote645"><sup>645</sup></a> Then he drank of the waters,
+bathed in them, or laved his limbs or sores, probably attended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id=
+"page194"></a>{194}</span> by the priestess of the well. Having
+paid her dues, he made an offering to the divinity of the well, and
+affixed the bandage or part of his clothing to the well or a tree
+near by, that through it he might be in continuous <i>rapport</i>
+with the healing influences. Ritual formul&aelig; probably
+accompanied these acts, but otherwise no word was spoken, and the
+patient must not look back on leaving the well. Special times,
+Beltane, Midsummer, or August 1st, were favourable for such
+visits,<a id="footnotetag646" name="footnotetag646"></a><a href=
+"#footnote646"><sup>646</sup></a> and where a patient was too ill
+to present himself at the well, another might perform the ritual
+for him.<a id="footnotetag647" name="footnotetag647"></a><a href=
+"#footnote647"><sup>647</sup></a></p>
+<p>The rag or clothing hung on the tree seems to connect the spirit
+of the tree with that of the well, and tree and well are often
+found together. But sometimes it is thrown into the well, just as
+the Gaulish villagers of S. Gregory's day threw offerings of cloth
+and wool into a sacred lake.<a id="footnotetag648" name=
+"footnotetag648"></a><a href="#footnote648"><sup>648</sup></a> The
+rag is even now regarded in the light of an offering, and such
+offerings, varying from valuable articles of clothing to mere rags,
+are still hung on sacred trees by the folk. It thus probably has
+always had a sacrificial aspect in the ritual of the well, but as
+magic and religion constantly blend, it had also its magical
+aspect. The rag, once in contact with the patient, transferred his
+disease to the tree, or, being still subtly connected with him,
+through it the healing properties passed over to him.</p>
+<p>The offering thrown into the well&mdash;a pin, coin, etc., may
+also have this double aspect. The sore is often pricked or rubbed
+with the pin as if to transfer the disease to the well, and if
+picked up by another person, the disease may pass to <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>{195}</span> him. This
+is also true of the coin.<a id="footnotetag649" name=
+"footnotetag649"></a><a href="#footnote649"><sup>649</sup></a> But
+other examples show the sacrificial nature of the pin or other
+trifle, which is probably symbolic or a survival of a more costly
+offering. In some cases it is thought that those who do not leave
+it at the well from which they have drunk will die of thirst, and
+where a coin is offered it is often supposed to disappear, being
+taken by the spirit of the well.<a id="footnotetag650" name=
+"footnotetag650"></a><a href="#footnote650"><sup>650</sup></a> The
+coin has clearly the nature of an offering, and sometimes it must
+be of gold or silver, while the antiquity of the custom on Celtic
+ground is seen by the classical descriptions of the coins
+glittering in the pool of Clitumnus and of the "gold of Toulouse"
+hid in sacred tanks.<a id="footnotetag651" name=
+"footnotetag651"></a><a href="#footnote651"><sup>651</sup></a> It
+is also an old and widespread belief that all water belongs to some
+divine or monstrous guardian, who will not part with any of it
+without a <i>quid pro quo</i>. In many cases the two rites of rag
+and pin are not both used, and this may show that originally they
+had the same purpose&mdash;magical or sacrificial, or perhaps both.
+Other sacrifices were also made&mdash;an animal, food, or an <i>ex
+voto</i>, the last occurring even in late survivals as at S.
+Thenew's Well, Glasgow, where even in the eighteenth century tin
+cut to represent the diseased member was placed on the tree, or at
+S. Winifred's Well in Wales, where crutches were left.</p>
+<p>Certain waters had the power of ejecting the demon of madness.
+Besides drinking, the patient was thrown into the waters, the shock
+being intended to drive the demon away, as elsewhere demons are
+exorcised by flagellation or beating. The divinity of the waters
+aided the process, and an offering was usually made to him. In
+other cases the sacred waters were supposed to ward off disease
+from the district or from those <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page196" id="page196"></a>{196}</span> who drank of them. Or,
+again, they had the power of conferring fertility. Women made
+pilgrimages to wells, drank or bathed in the waters, implored the
+spirit or saint to grant them offspring, and made a due
+offering.<a id="footnotetag652" name="footnotetag652"></a><a href=
+"#footnote652"><sup>652</sup></a> Spirit or saint, by a transfer of
+his power, produced fruitfulness, but the idea was in harmony with
+the recognised power of water to purify, strengthen, and heal.
+Women, for a similar reason, drank or washed in the waters or wore
+some articles dipped in them, in order to have an easy delivery or
+abundance of milk.<a id="footnotetag653" name=
+"footnotetag653"></a><a href="#footnote653"><sup>653</sup></a></p>
+<p>The waters also gave oracles, their method of flowing, the
+amount of water in the well, the appearance or non-appearance of
+bubbles at the surface when an offering was thrown in, the sinking
+or floating of various articles, all indicating whether a cure was
+likely to occur, whether fortune or misfortune awaited the
+inquirer, or, in the case of girls, whether their lovers would be
+faithful. The movements of the animal guardian of the well were
+also ominous to the visitor.<a id="footnotetag654" name=
+"footnotetag654"></a><a href="#footnote654"><sup>654</sup></a>
+Rivers or river divinities were also appealed to. In cases of
+suspected fidelity the Celts dwelling by the Rhine placed the
+newly-born child in a shield on the waters. If it floated the
+mother was innocent; if it sank it was allowed to drown, and she
+was put to death.<a id="footnotetag655" name=
+"footnotetag655"></a><a href="#footnote655"><sup>655</sup></a>
+Girls whose purity was suspected were similarly tested, and S.
+Gregory of Tours tells how a woman accused of adultery was proved
+by being thrown into the Sa&ocirc;ne.<a id="footnotetag656" name=
+"footnotetag656"></a><a href="#footnote656"><sup>656</sup></a> The
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id=
+"page197"></a>{197}</span> medi&aelig;val witch ordeal by water is
+connected with this custom, which is, however, widespread.<a id=
+"footnotetag657" name="footnotetag657"></a><a href=
+"#footnote657"><sup>657</sup></a></p>
+<p>The malevolent aspect of the spirit of the well is seen in the
+"cursing wells" of which it was thought that when some article
+inscribed with an enemy's name was thrown into them with the
+accompaniment of a curse, the spirit of the well would cause his
+death. In some cases the curse was inscribed on a leaden tablet
+thrown into the waters, just as, in other cases, a prayer for the
+offerer's benefit was engraved on it. Or, again, objects over which
+a charm had been said were placed in a well that the victim who
+drew water might be injured. An excellent instance of a
+cursing-well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once
+have had a guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had
+charge of it presided at the ceremony. She wrote the name of the
+victim in a book, receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was
+dropped into the well in the name of the victim, and through it and
+through knowledge of his name, the spirit of the well acted upon
+him to his hurt.<a id="footnotetag658" name=
+"footnotetag658"></a><a href="#footnote658"><sup>658</sup></a>
+Obviously rites like these, in which magic and religion mingle, are
+not purely Celtic, but it is of interest to note their existence in
+Celtic lands and among Celtic folk.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote597" name=
+"footnote597"></a><b>Footnote 597:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag597">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ethnol. in Folklore</i>, 104 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote598" name=
+"footnote598"></a><b>Footnote 598:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag598">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>PH</i> ii. 132, 169; Dottin, 240.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote599" name=
+"footnote599"></a><b>Footnote 599:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag599">(return)</a>
+<p>Justin, xxxii. 3; Strabo, iv. 1. 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote600" name=
+"footnote600"></a><b>Footnote 600:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag600">(return)</a>
+<p>S. Gregory, <i>In Glor. Conf.</i> ch. 2. Perhaps the feast and
+offerings were intended to cause rain in time of drought. See p.
+<a href="#page321">321</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote601" name=
+"footnote601"></a><b>Footnote 601:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag601">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamman, <i>Vita Colum.</i> ii. 10.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote602" name=
+"footnote602"></a><b>Footnote 602:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag602">(return)</a>
+<p>See Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote603" name=
+"footnote603"></a><b>Footnote 603:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag603">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>RC</i> x. 168, xiv. 377; <i>CIL</i> xii. 33;
+Propertius, iv. 10. 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote604" name=
+"footnote604"></a><b>Footnote 604:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag604">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page349">349</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote605" name=
+"footnote605"></a><b>Footnote 605:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag605">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. Ptolemy's [Greek: D&ecirc;ouana] and [Greek: D&ecirc;ouna]
+(ii. 3. 19, 11. 29); the Scots and English Dee; the Divy in Wales;
+D&ecirc;ve, Dive, and Divette in France; Devon in England; Deva in
+Spain (Ptolemy's [Greek: D&ecirc;oua], ii. 6. 8). The Shannon is
+surnamed even in the seventh century "the goddess" (<i>Trip.
+Life</i>, 313).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote606" name=
+"footnote606"></a><b>Footnote 606:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag606">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i>; D'Arbois, <i>PH</i> ii. 119, thinks
+<i>Matrona</i> is Ligurian. But it seems to have strong Celtic
+affinities.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote607" name=
+"footnote607"></a><b>Footnote 607:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag607">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 27-29, <i>RC</i> iv. 137.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote608" name=
+"footnote608"></a><b>Footnote 608:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag608">(return)</a>
+<p>On the whole subject see Pictet, "Quelques noms celtiques de
+rivi&egrave;res," <i>RC</i> ii. 1 f. Orosius, v. 15. 6, describes
+the sacrifices of gold, silver, and horses, made to the
+Rh&ocirc;ne.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote609" name=
+"footnote609"></a><b>Footnote 609:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag609">(return)</a>
+<p>Maury, 18. By extension of this belief any divinity might appear
+by the haunted spring. S. Patrick and his synod of bishops at an
+Irish well were supposed to be <i>s&iacute;d</i> or gods (p.
+<a href="#page64">64</a>, <i>supra</i>.) By a fairy well Jeanne
+d'Arc had her first vision.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote610" name=
+"footnote610"></a><b>Footnote 610:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag610">(return)</a>
+<p>Greg. Tours, <i>Vita Patr.</i> c. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote611" name=
+"footnote611"></a><b>Footnote 611:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag611">(return)</a>
+<p>See Reinach, <i>Catal. Sommaire</i>, 23, 115; Baudot, <i>Rapport
+sur les fouilles faits aux sources de la Seine</i>, ii. 120;
+<i>RC</i> ii. 26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote612" name=
+"footnote612"></a><b>Footnote 612:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag612">(return)</a>
+<p>For these tablets see Nicolson, <i>Keltic Studies</i>, 131 f.;
+Jullian, <i>RC</i> 1898.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote613" name=
+"footnote613"></a><b>Footnote 613:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag613">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 195.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote614" name=
+"footnote614"></a><b>Footnote 614:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag614">(return)</a>
+<p>Prologue to Chrestien's <i>Conte du Graal</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote615" name=
+"footnote615"></a><b>Footnote 615:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag615">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 202 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote616" name=
+"footnote616"></a><b>Footnote 616:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag616">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 196-197; Martin, 140-141; Dalyell, 411.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote617" name=
+"footnote617"></a><b>Footnote 617:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag617">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 366; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, viii. 281. If the
+fish appeared when an invalid drank of the well, this was a good
+omen. For the custom of burying sacred animals, see Herod, ii. 74;
+&AElig;lian, xiii. 26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote618" name=
+"footnote618"></a><b>Footnote 618:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag618">(return)</a>
+<p>Gomme, <i>Ethnol. in Folklore</i>, 92.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote619" name=
+"footnote619"></a><b>Footnote 619:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag619">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Trip. Life</i>, 113; Tigernach, <i>Annals</i>, A.D. 1061.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote620" name=
+"footnote620"></a><b>Footnote 620:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag620">(return)</a>
+<p>Mackinley, 184.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote621" name=
+"footnote621"></a><b>Footnote 621:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag621">(return)</a>
+<p>Burne, <i>Shropshire Folk-Lore</i>, 416; Campbell, <i>WHT</i>
+ii. 145.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote622" name=
+"footnote622"></a><b>Footnote 622:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag622">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Old Stat. Account</i>, xii. 465.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote623" name=
+"footnote623"></a><b>Footnote 623:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag623">(return)</a>
+<p>S. Patrick, when he cleared Ireland of serpents, dealt in this
+way with the worst specimens. S. Columba quelled a monster which
+terrified the dwellers by the Ness. Joyce, <i>PN</i> i. 197;
+Adamnan, <i>Vita Columb.</i> ii. 28; Kennedy, 12, 82, 246;
+<i>RC</i> iv. 172, 186.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote624" name=
+"footnote624"></a><b>Footnote 624:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag624">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 347.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote625" name=
+"footnote625"></a><b>Footnote 625:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag625">(return)</a>
+<p>For the water-horse, see Campbell, <i>WHT</i> iv. 307;
+Macdongall, 294; Campbell, <i>Superstitions</i>, 203; and for the
+Manx <i>Glashtyn</i>, a kind of water-horse, see Rh[^y]s,
+<i>CFL</i> i. 285. For French cognates, see
+B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, <i>Superstitions et Survivances</i>,
+i. 349 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote626" name=
+"footnote626"></a><b>Footnote 626:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag626">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>CMR</i> i. 63.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote627" name=
+"footnote627"></a><b>Footnote 627:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag627">(return)</a>
+<p>Orosius, v. 15. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote628" name=
+"footnote628"></a><b>Footnote 628:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag628">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 2<i>a</i>. Of Eochaid is told a variant of the Midas
+story&mdash;the discovery of his horse's ears. This is also told of
+Labraid Lore (<i>RC</i> ii. 98; Kennedy, 256) and of King Marc'h in
+Brittany and in Wales (Le Braz, ii. 96; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> 233).
+Other variants are found in non-Celtic regions, so the story has no
+mythological significance on Celtic ground.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote629" name=
+"footnote629"></a><b>Footnote 629:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag629">(return)</a>
+<p>Ptol. ii. 2. 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote630" name=
+"footnote630"></a><b>Footnote 630:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag630">(return)</a>
+<p>Campbell, <i>WHT</i> iv. 300 f.; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 284;
+Waldron, <i>Isle of Man</i>, 147.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote631" name=
+"footnote631"></a><b>Footnote 631:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag631">(return)</a>
+<p>Macdougall, 296; Campbell, <i>Superstitions</i>, 195. For the
+Uruisg as Brownie, see <i>WHT</i> ii. 9; Graham, <i>Scenery of
+Perthshire</i>, 19.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote632" name=
+"footnote632"></a><b>Footnote 632:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag632">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> ii. 431, 469, <i>HL</i>, 592; <i>Book of
+Taliesin</i>, vii. 135.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote633" name=
+"footnote633"></a><b>Footnote 633:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag633">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 340; <i>LL</i> 165; <i>IT</i> i. 699.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote634" name=
+"footnote634"></a><b>Footnote 634:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag634">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 409.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote635" name=
+"footnote635"></a><b>Footnote 635:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag635">(return)</a>
+<p>See Pughe, <i>The Physicians of Myddfai</i>, 1861 (these were
+descendants of a water-fairy); Rh[^y]s, <i>Y Cymmrodor</i>, iv.
+164; Hartland, <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 202. Such water-gods with
+lovely daughters are known in most mythologies&mdash;the Greek
+Nereus and the Nereids, the Slavonic Water-king, and the Japanese
+god Ocean-Possessor (Ralston, <i>Songs of the Russian People</i>,
+148; Chamberlain, <i>Ko-ji-ki</i>, 120). Manannan had nine
+daughters (Wood-Martin, i. 135).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote636" name=
+"footnote636"></a><b>Footnote 636:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag636">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 338, 344; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 243;
+Henderson, <i>Folk-Lore of the N. Counties</i>, 262. Cf. the
+rhymes, "L'Arguenon veut chaque ann&eacute;e son poisson," the
+"fish" being a human victim, and</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Blood-thirsty Dee</p>
+<p>Each year needs three,</p>
+<p>But bonny Don,</p>
+<p>She needs none."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote637" name=
+"footnote637"></a><b>Footnote 637:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag637">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 339.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote638" name=
+"footnote638"></a><b>Footnote 638:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag638">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rendes Dindsenchas</i>, <i>RC</i> xv. 315, 457. Other
+instances of punishment following misuse of a well are given in
+S&eacute;billot, ii. 192; Rees, 520, 523. An Irish lake no longer
+healed after a hunter swam his mangy hounds through it (Joyce,
+<i>PN</i> ii. 90). A similar legend occurs with the Votiaks, one of
+whose sacred lakes was removed to its present position because a
+woman washed dirty clothes in it (<i>L'Anthropologie</i>, xv.
+107).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote639" name=
+"footnote639"></a><b>Footnote 639:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag639">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 392.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote640" name=
+"footnote640"></a><b>Footnote 640:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag640">(return)</a>
+<p>Girald. Cambr. <i>Itin. Hib.</i> ii. 9; Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 97;
+Kennedy, 281; O'Grady, i. 233; Skene, ii. 59; Campbell, <i>WHT</i>
+ii. 147. The waters often submerge a town, now seen below the
+waves&mdash;the town of Is in Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or
+the towers under Lough Neagh. In some Welsh instances a man is the
+culprit (Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 379). In the case of Lough Neagh
+the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on in the waters as a
+mermaid. Later she was caught and received the baptismal name of
+Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a water-goddess, said to
+have been baptized, is attached to the legend of the careless
+guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified (O'Grady, ii.
+184, 265).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote641" name=
+"footnote641"></a><b>Footnote 641:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag641">(return)</a>
+<p>Roberts, <i>Cambrian Pop. Antiq.</i> 246; Hunt, <i>Popular
+Romances</i>, 291; <i>New Stat. Account</i>, x. 313.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote642" name=
+"footnote642"></a><b>Footnote 642:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag642">(return)</a>
+<p>Thorpe, <i>Northern Myth.</i> ii. 78.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote643" name=
+"footnote643"></a><b>Footnote 643:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag643">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>PN</i> ii. 84. <i>Sl&aacute;n</i> occurs in many names
+of wells. Well-worship is denounced in the canons of the Fourth
+Council of Arles.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote644" name=
+"footnote644"></a><b>Footnote 644:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag644">(return)</a>
+<p>Cartailhac, <i>L'Age de Pierre</i>, 74; Bulliot et Thiollier,
+<i>Mission de S. Martin</i>, 60.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote645" name=
+"footnote645"></a><b>Footnote 645:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag645">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 284.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote646" name=
+"footnote646"></a><b>Footnote 646:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag646">(return)</a>
+<p>Dalyell, 79-80; S&eacute;billot, ii. 282, 374; see p. <a href=
+"#page266">266</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote647" name=
+"footnote647"></a><b>Footnote 647:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag647">(return)</a>
+<p>I have compiled this account of the ritual from notices of the
+modern usages in various works. See, <i>e.g.</i>, Moore,
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, v. 212; Mackinley, <i>passim</i>; Hope, <i>Holy
+Wells</i>; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i>; S&eacute;billot, 175 f.; Dixon,
+<i>Gairloch</i>, 150 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote648" name=
+"footnote648"></a><b>Footnote 648:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag648">(return)</a>
+<p>Brand, ii. 68; Greg. <i>In Glor. Conf.</i> c. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote649" name=
+"footnote649"></a><b>Footnote 649:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag649">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 293, 296; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, iv. 55.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote650" name=
+"footnote650"></a><b>Footnote 650:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag650">(return)</a>
+<p>Mackinley, 194; S&eacute;billot, ii. 296.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote651" name=
+"footnote651"></a><b>Footnote 651:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag651">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-Lore</i>, iii. 67; <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 1893, 415;
+Pliny, <i>Ep.</i> viii. 8; Strabo, iv. 287; Diod. Sic. v. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote652" name=
+"footnote652"></a><b>Footnote 652:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag652">(return)</a>
+<p>Walker, <i>Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot.</i> vol. v.; S&eacute;billot,
+ii. 232. In some early Irish instances a worm swallowed with the
+waters by a woman causes pregnancy. See p. <a href=
+"#page352">352</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote653" name=
+"footnote653"></a><b>Footnote 653:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag653">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 235-236.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote654" name=
+"footnote654"></a><b>Footnote 654:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag654">(return)</a>
+<p>See Le Braz, i. 61; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, v. 214; Rh[^y]s,
+<i>CFL</i> i. 364; Dalyell, 506-507; Scott, <i>Minstrelsy</i>,
+Introd. xliii; Martin, 7; S&eacute;billot, ii. 242 f.; <i>RC</i>
+ii. 486.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote655" name=
+"footnote655"></a><b>Footnote 655:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag655">(return)</a>
+<p>Jullian, <i>Ep. to Maximin</i>, 16. The practice may have been
+connected with that noted by Aristotle, of plunging the newly-born
+into a river, to strengthen it, as he says (<i>Pol.</i> vii. 15.
+2), but more probably as a baptismal or purificatory rite. See p.
+<a href="#page309">309</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote656" name=
+"footnote656"></a><b>Footnote 656:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag656">(return)</a>
+<p>Lefevre, <i>Les Gaulois</i>, 109; Michelet, <i>Origines du droit
+fran&ccedil;ais</i>, 268.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote657" name=
+"footnote657"></a><b>Footnote 657:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag657">(return)</a>
+<p>See examples of its use in Post, <i>Grundriss der Ethnol.
+Jurisprudenz</i>, ii. 459 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote658" name=
+"footnote658"></a><b>Footnote 658:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag658">(return)</a>
+<p>Roberts, <i>Cambrian Popular Antiquities</i>, 246.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id=
+"page198"></a>{198}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap13" id="chap13">CHAPTER XIII.</a></h2>
+<h3>TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP.</h3>
+<p>The Celts had their own cult of trees, but they adopted local
+cults&mdash;Ligurian, Iberian, and others. The <i>Fagus Deus</i>
+(the divine beech), the <i>Sex arbor</i> or <i>Sex arbores</i> of
+Pyrenean inscriptions, and an anonymous god represented by a
+conifer on an altar at Toulouse, probably point to local Ligurian
+tree cults continued by the Celts into Roman times.<a id=
+"footnotetag659" name="footnotetag659"></a><a href=
+"#footnote659"><sup>659</sup></a> Forests were also personified or
+ruled by a single goddess, like <i>Dea Arduinna</i> of the Ardennes
+and <i>Dea Abnoba</i> of the Black Forest.<a id="footnotetag660"
+name="footnotetag660"></a><a href="#footnote660"><sup>660</sup></a>
+But more primitive ideas prevailed, like that which assigned a
+whole class of tree-divinities to a forest, <i>e.g.</i> the
+<i>Fat&aelig; Dervones</i>, spirits of the oak-woods of Northern
+Italy.<a id="footnotetag661" name="footnotetag661"></a><a href=
+"#footnote661"><sup>661</sup></a> Groups of trees like <i>Sex
+arbores</i> were venerated, perhaps for their height, isolation, or
+some other peculiarity.</p>
+<p>The Celts made their sacred places in dark groves, the trees
+being hung with offerings or with the heads of victims. Human
+sacrifices were hung or impaled on trees, <i>e.g.</i> by the
+warriors of Boudicca.<a id="footnotetag662" name=
+"footnotetag662"></a><a href="#footnote662"><sup>662</sup></a>
+These, like the offerings still placed by the folk on sacred trees,
+were attached to them because the trees were the abode of spirits
+or divinities who in many cases had power over vegetation.</p>
+<p>Pliny said of the Celts: "They esteem nothing more sacred
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id=
+"page199"></a>{199}</span> than the mistletoe and the tree on which
+it grows. But apart from this they choose oak-woods for their
+sacred groves, and perform no sacred rite without using oak
+branches."<a id="footnotetag663" name="footnotetag663"></a><a href=
+"#footnote663"><sup>663</sup></a> Maximus of Tyre also speaks of
+the Celtic (? German) image of Zeus as a lofty oak, and an old
+Irish glossary gives <i>daur</i>, "oak," as an early Irish name for
+"god," and glosses it by <i>dia</i>, "god."<a id="footnotetag664"
+name="footnotetag664"></a><a href="#footnote664"><sup>664</sup></a>
+The sacred need-fire may have been obtained by friction from
+oak-wood, and it is because of the old sacredness of the oak that a
+piece of its wood is still used as a talisman in Brittany.<a id=
+"footnotetag665" name="footnotetag665"></a><a href=
+"#footnote665"><sup>665</sup></a> Other Aryan folk besides the
+Celts regarded the oak as the symbol of a high god, of the sun or
+the sky,<a id="footnotetag666" name="footnotetag666"></a><a href=
+"#footnote666"><sup>666</sup></a> but probably this was not its
+earliest significance. Oak forests were once more extensive over
+Europe than they are now, and the old tradition that men once lived
+on acorns has been shown to be well-founded by the witness of
+arch&aelig;ological finds, <i>e.g.</i> in Northern Italy.<a id=
+"footnotetag667" name="footnotetag667"></a><a href=
+"#footnote667"><sup>667</sup></a> A people living in an oak region
+and subsisting in part on acorns might easily take the oak as a
+representative of the spirit of vegetation or growth. It was
+long-lived, its foliage was a protection, it supplied food, its
+wood was used as fuel, and it was thus clearly the friend of man.
+For these reasons, and because it was the most abiding and living
+thing men knew, it became the embodiment of the spirits of life and
+growth. Folk-lore survivals show that the spirit of vegetation in
+the shape of his representative was annually slain while yet in
+full vigour, that his life might benefit all things and be passed
+on undiminished to his successor.<a id="footnotetag668" name=
+"footnotetag668"></a><a href="#footnote668"><sup>668</sup></a>
+Hence the oak or a <span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id=
+"page200"></a>{200}</span> human being representing the spirit of
+vegetation, or both together, were burned in the Midsummer fires.
+How, then, did the oak come to symbolise a god equated with Zeus.
+Though the equation may be worthless, it is possible that the
+connection lay in the fact that Zeus and Juppiter had agricultural
+functions, or that, when the equation was made, the earlier spirit
+of vegetation had become a divinity with functions resembling those
+of Zeus. The fires were kindled to recruit the sun's life; they
+were fed with oak-wood, and in them an oak or a human victim
+representing the spirit embodied in the oak was burned. Hence it
+may have been thought that the sun was strengthened by the fire
+residing in the sacred oak; it was thus "the original storehouse or
+reservoir of the fire which was from time to time drawn out to feed
+the sun."<a id="footnotetag669" name="footnotetag669"></a><a href=
+"#footnote669"><sup>669</sup></a> The oak thus became the symbol of
+a bright god also connected with growth. But, to judge by folk
+survivals, the older conception still remained potent, and tree or
+human victim affected for good all vegetable growth as well as
+man's life, while at the same time the fire strengthened the
+sun.</p>
+<p>Dr. Evans argues that "the original holy object within the
+central triliths of Stonehenge was a sacred tree," an oak, image of
+the Celtic Zeus. The tree and the stones, once associated with
+ancestor worship, had become symbols of "a more celestial Spirit or
+Spirits than those of departed human beings."<a id="footnotetag670"
+name="footnotetag670"></a><a href="#footnote670"><sup>670</sup></a>
+But Stonehenge has now been proved to have been in existence before
+the arrival of the Celts, hence such a cult must have been
+pre-Celtic, though it may quite well have been adopted by the
+Celts. Whether this hypothetical cult was practised by a tribe, a
+group of tribes, or by the whole people, must remain obscure, and,
+indeed, it may well be questioned whether Stonehenge was ever more
+than the scene of some ancestral rites.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id=
+"page201"></a>{201}</span>
+<p>Other trees&mdash;the yew, the cypress, the alder, and the ash,
+were venerated, to judge by what Lucan relates of the sacred grove
+at Marseilles. The Irish Druids attributed special virtues to the
+hazel, rowan, and yew, the wood of which was used in magical
+ceremonies described in Irish texts.<a id="footnotetag671" name=
+"footnotetag671"></a><a href="#footnote671"><sup>671</sup></a>
+Fires of rowan were lit by the Druids of rival armies, and
+incantations said over them in order to discomfit the opposing
+host,<a id="footnotetag672" name="footnotetag672"></a><a href=
+"#footnote672"><sup>672</sup></a> and the wood of all these trees
+is still believed to be efficacious against fairies and
+witches.</p>
+<p>The Irish <i>bile</i> was a sacred tree, of great age, growing
+over a holy well or fort. Five of them are described in the
+<i>Dindsenchas</i>, and one was an oak, which not only yielded
+acorns, but nuts and apples.<a id="footnotetag673" name=
+"footnotetag673"></a><a href="#footnote673"><sup>673</sup></a> The
+mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the
+reason in both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated
+apple took the place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words
+signifying "nut" or "acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth
+of trees on which all these fruits grew might then easily arise.
+Another Irish <i>bile</i> was a yew described in a poem as "a firm
+strong god," while such phrases in this poem as "word-pure man,"
+"judgment of origin," "spell of knowledge," may have some reference
+to the custom of writing divinations in ogham on rods of yew. The
+other <i>bile</i> were ash-trees, and from one of them the <i>Fir
+Bile</i>, "men of the tree," were named&mdash;perhaps a
+totem-clan.<a id="footnotetag674" name=
+"footnotetag674"></a><a href="#footnote674"><sup>674</sup></a> The
+lives of kings and chiefs appear to have been connected with these
+trees, probably as representatives of the spirit of vegetation
+embodied in the tree, and under their shadow they were inaugurated.
+But as a substitute for the king was slain, so doubtless these
+pre-eminent sacred trees were too sacred, too much charged with
+supernatural force, to <span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id=
+"page202"></a>{202}</span> be cut down and burned, and the yearly
+ritual would be performed with another tree. But in time of feud
+one tribe gloried in destroying the <i>bile</i> of another; and
+even in the tenth century, when the <i>bile maighe Adair</i> was
+destroyed by Maelocohlen the act was regarded with horror. "But, O
+reader, this deed did not pass unpunished."<a id="footnotetag675"
+name="footnotetag675"></a><a href="#footnote675"><sup>675</sup></a>
+Of another <i>bile</i>, that of Borrisokane, it was said that any
+house in which a fragment of it was burned would itself be
+destroyed by fire.<a id="footnotetag676" name=
+"footnotetag676"></a><a href="#footnote676"><sup>676</sup></a></p>
+<p>Tribal and personal names point to belief in descent from tree
+gods or spirits and perhaps to totemism. The Eburones were the
+yew-tree tribe (<i>eburos</i>); the Bituriges perhaps had the
+mistletoe for their symbol, and their surname Vivisci implies that
+they were called "Mistletoe men."<a id="footnotetag677" name=
+"footnotetag677"></a><a href="#footnote677"><sup>677</sup></a> If
+<i>bile</i> (tree) is connected with the name Bile, that of the
+ancestor of the Milesians, this may point to some myth of descent
+from a sacred tree, as in the case of the <i>Fir Bile</i>, or "men
+of the tree."<a id="footnotetag678" name=
+"footnotetag678"></a><a href="#footnote678"><sup>678</sup></a>
+Other names like Guidgen (<i>Viduo-genos</i>, "son of the tree"),
+Dergen (<i>Dervo-genos</i>, "son of the oak"), Guerngen
+(<i>Verno-genos</i>, "son of the alder"), imply filiation to a
+tree. Though these names became conventional, they express what had
+once been a living belief. Names borrowed directly from trees are
+also found&mdash;-Eburos or Ebur, "yew," Derua or Deruacus, "oak,"
+etc.</p>
+<p>The veneration of trees growing beside burial mounds or
+megalithic monuments was probably a pre-Celtic cult continued by
+the Celts. The tree embodied the ghost of the person buried under
+it, but such a ghost could then hardly be differentiated from a
+tree spirit or divinity. Even now in Celtic districts extreme
+veneration exists for trees growing in cemeteries and in other
+places. It is dangerous to cut them <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page203" id="page203"></a>{203}</span> down or to pluck a leaf or
+branch from them, while in Breton churchyards the yew is thought to
+spread a root to the mouth of each corpse.<a id="footnotetag679"
+name="footnotetag679"></a><a href="#footnote679"><sup>679</sup></a>
+The story of the grave of Cyperissa, daughter of a Celtic king in
+the Danube region, from which first sprang the "mournful
+cypress,"<a id="footnotetag680" name="footnotetag680"></a><a href=
+"#footnote680"><sup>680</sup></a> is connected with universal
+legends of trees growing from the graves of lovers until their
+branches intertwine. These embody the belief that the spirit of the
+dead is in the tree, which was thus in all likelihood the object of
+a cult. Instances of these legends occur in Celtic story.
+Yew-stakes driven through the bodies of Naisi and Deirdre to keep
+them apart, became yew-trees the tops of which embraced over Armagh
+Cathedral. A yew sprang from the grave of Bail&eacute; Mac Buain,
+and an apple-tree from that of his lover Aillinn, and the top of
+each had the form of their heads.<a id="footnotetag681" name=
+"footnotetag681"></a><a href="#footnote681"><sup>681</sup></a> The
+identification of tree and ghost is here complete.</p>
+<p>The elder, rowan, and thorn are still planted round houses to
+keep off witches, or sprigs of rowan are placed over
+doorways&mdash;a survival from the time when they were believed to
+be tenanted by a beneficent spirit hostile to evil influences. In
+Ireland and the Isle of Man the thorn is thought to be the resort
+of fairies, and they, like the woodland fairies or "wood men" are
+probably representatives of the older tree spirits and gods of
+groves and forests.<a id="footnotetag682" name=
+"footnotetag682"></a><a href="#footnote682"><sup>682</sup></a></p>
+<p>Tree-worship was rooted in the oldest nature worship, and the
+Church had the utmost difficulty in suppressing it. Councils
+fulminated against the cult of trees, against offerings to them or
+the placing of lights before them and before wells <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>{204}</span> or
+stones, and against the belief that certain trees were too sacred
+to be cut down or burned. Heavy fines were levied against those who
+practised these rites, yet still they continued.<a id=
+"footnotetag683" name="footnotetag683"></a><a href=
+"#footnote683"><sup>683</sup></a> Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, tried
+to stop the worship of a large pear-tree standing in the centre of
+the town and on which the semi-Christian inhabitants hung animals'
+heads with much ribaldry. At last S. Germanus destroyed it, but at
+the risk of his life. S. Martin of Tours was allowed to destroy a
+temple, but the people would not permit him to attack a much
+venerated pine-tree which stood beside it&mdash;an excellent
+example of the way in which the more official paganism fell before
+Christianity, while the older religion of the soil, from which it
+sprang, could not be entirely eradicated.<a id="footnotetag684"
+name="footnotetag684"></a><a href="#footnote684"><sup>684</sup></a>
+The Church often effected a compromise. Images of the gods affixed
+to trees were replaced by those of the Virgin, but with curious
+results. Legends arose telling how the faithful had been led to
+such trees and there discovered the image of the Madonna
+miraculously placed among the branches.<a id="footnotetag685" name=
+"footnotetag685"></a><a href="#footnote685"><sup>685</sup></a>
+These are analogous to the legends of the discovery of images of
+the Virgin in the earth, such images being really those of the
+<i>Matres</i>.</p>
+<p>Representations of sacred trees are occasionally met with on
+coins, altars, and <i>ex votos</i>.<a id="footnotetag686" name=
+"footnotetag686"></a><a href="#footnote686"><sup>686</sup></a> If
+the interpretation be correct which sees a representation of part
+of the C&uacute;chulainn legend on the Paris and Tr&egrave;ves
+altars, the trees figured there would not necessarily be sacred.
+But otherwise they may depict sacred trees.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id=
+"page205"></a>{205}</span>
+<p>We now turn to Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The Druids
+held nothing more sacred than this plant and the tree on which it
+grew, probably an oak. Of it groves were formed, while branches of
+the oak were used in all religious rites. Everything growing on the
+oak had been sent from heaven, and the presence of the mistletoe
+showed that God had selected the tree for especial favour. Rare as
+it was, when found the mistletoe was the object of a careful
+ritual. On the sixth day of the moon it was culled. Preparations
+for a sacrifice and feast were made beneath the tree, and two white
+bulls whose horns had never been bound were brought there. A Druid,
+clad in white, ascended the tree and cut the mistletoe with a
+golden sickle. As it fell it was caught in a white cloth; the bulls
+were then sacrificed, and prayer was made that God would make His
+gift prosperous to those on whom He had bestowed it. The mistletoe
+was called "the universal healer," and a potion made from it caused
+barren animals to be fruitful. It was also a remedy against all
+poisons.<a id="footnotetag687" name="footnotetag687"></a><a href=
+"#footnote687"><sup>687</sup></a> We can hardly believe that such
+an elaborate ritual merely led up to the medico-magical use of the
+mistletoe. Possibly, of course, the rite was an attenuated survival
+of something which had once been more important, but it is more
+likely that Pliny gives only a few picturesque details and passes
+by the <i>rationale</i> of the ritual. He does not tell us who the
+"God" of whom he speaks was, perhaps the sun-god or the god of
+vegetation. As to the "gift," it was probably in his mind the
+mistletoe, but it may quite well have meant the gift of growth in
+field and fold. The tree was perhaps cut down and burned; the oxen
+may have been incarnations of a god of vegetation, as the tree also
+may have been. We need not here repeat the meaning which has been
+given to the ritual,<a id="footnotetag688" name=
+"footnotetag688"></a><a href="#footnote688"><sup>688</sup></a> but
+it may be added that if this meaning is <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>{206}</span> correct,
+the rite probably took place at the time of the Midsummer festival,
+a festival of growth and fertility. Mistletoe is still gathered on
+Midsummer eve and used as an antidote to poisons or for the cure of
+wounds. Its Druidic name is still preserved in Celtic speech in
+words signifying "all-healer," while it is also called
+<i>s&ugrave;gh an daraich</i>, "sap of the oak," and <i>Druidh
+lus</i>, "Druid's weed."<a id="footnotetag689" name=
+"footnotetag689"></a><a href="#footnote689"><sup>689</sup></a></p>
+<p>Pliny describes other Celtic herbs of grace. <i>Selago</i> was
+culled without use of iron after a sacrifice of bread and
+wine&mdash;probably to the spirit of the plant. The person
+gathering it wore a white robe, and went with unshod feet after
+washing them. According to the Druids, <i>Selago</i> preserved one
+from accident, and its smoke when burned healed maladies of the
+eye.<a id="footnotetag690" name="footnotetag690"></a><a href=
+"#footnote690"><sup>690</sup></a> <i>Samolus</i> was placed in
+drinking troughs as a remedy against disease in cattle. It was
+culled by a person fasting, with the left hand; it must be wholly
+uprooted, and the gatherer must not look behind him.<a id=
+"footnotetag691" name="footnotetag691"></a><a href=
+"#footnote691"><sup>691</sup></a> <i>Vervain</i> was gathered at
+sunrise after a sacrifice to the earth as an
+expiation&mdash;perhaps because its surface was about to be
+disturbed. When it was rubbed on the body all wishes were
+gratified; it dispelled fevers and other maladies; it was an
+antidote against serpents; and it conciliated hearts. A branch of
+the dried herb used to asperge a banquet-hall made the guests more
+convivial<a id="footnotetag692" name="footnotetag692"></a><a href=
+"#footnote692"><sup>692</sup></a></p>
+<p>The ritual used in gathering these plants&mdash;silence, various
+tabus, ritual purity, sacrifice&mdash;is found wherever plants are
+culled whose virtue lies in this that they are possessed by a
+spirit. Other plants are still used as charms by modern Celtic
+peasants, and, in some cases, the ritual of gathering <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>{207}</span> them
+resembles that described by Pliny.<a id="footnotetag693" name=
+"footnotetag693"></a><a href="#footnote693"><sup>693</sup></a> In
+Irish sagas plants have magical powers. "Fairy herbs" placed in a
+bath restored beauty to women bathing therein.<a id=
+"footnotetag694" name="footnotetag694"></a><a href=
+"#footnote694"><sup>694</sup></a> During the <i>T&aacute;in</i>
+C&uacute;chulainn's wounds were healed with "balsams and healing
+herbs of fairy potency," and Diancecht used similar herbs to
+restore the dead at the battle of Mag-tured.<a id="footnotetag695"
+name="footnotetag695"></a><a href=
+"#footnote695"><sup>695</sup></a></p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote659" name=
+"footnote659"></a><b>Footnote 659:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag659">(return)</a>
+<p>Sacaze, <i>Inscr. des Pyren.</i> 255; Hirschfeld,
+<i>Sitzungsberichte</i> (Berlin, 1896), 448.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote660" name=
+"footnote660"></a><b>Footnote 660:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag660">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> vi. 46; <i>CIR</i> 1654, 1683.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote661" name=
+"footnote661"></a><b>Footnote 661:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag661">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 52.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote662" name=
+"footnote662"></a><b>Footnote 662:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag662">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, <i>Phar.</i> Usener's ed., 32; Orosius, v. 16. 6; Dio
+Cass. lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote663" name=
+"footnote663"></a><b>Footnote 663:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag663">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xvi. 44. The Scholiast on Lucan says that the Druids
+divined with acorns (Usener, 33).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote664" name=
+"footnote664"></a><b>Footnote 664:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag664">(return)</a>
+<p>Max. Tyr. <i>Diss.</i> viii. 8; Stokes, <i>RC</i> i. 259.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote665" name=
+"footnote665"></a><b>Footnote 665:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag665">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz, ii. 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote666" name=
+"footnote666"></a><b>Footnote 666:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag666">(return)</a>
+<p>Mr. Chadwick (<i>Jour. Anth. Inst.</i> xxx. 26) connects this
+high god with thunder, and regards the Celtic Zeus (Taranis, in his
+opinion) as a thunder-god. The oak was associated with this god
+because his worshippers dwelt under oaks.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote667" name=
+"footnote667"></a><b>Footnote 667:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag667">(return)</a>
+<p>Helbig, <i>Die Italiker in der Poebene</i>, 16 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote668" name=
+"footnote668"></a><b>Footnote 668:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag668">(return)</a>
+<p>Mannhardt, <i>Baumkultus</i>; Frazer, <i>Golden
+Bough</i><sup>2</sup> iii. 198.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote669" name=
+"footnote669"></a><b>Footnote 669:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag669">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote670" name=
+"footnote670"></a><b>Footnote 670:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag670">(return)</a>
+<p>Evans, <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 327 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote671" name=
+"footnote671"></a><b>Footnote 671:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag671">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 236.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote672" name=
+"footnote672"></a><b>Footnote 672:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag672">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> i. 213.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote673" name=
+"footnote673"></a><b>Footnote 673:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag673">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 199<i>b</i>; <i>Rennes Dindsenchas</i>, <i>RC</i> xv.
+420.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote674" name=
+"footnote674"></a><b>Footnote 674:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag674">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 455, xvi. 279; Hennessey, <i>Chron. Scot.</i>
+76.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote675" name=
+"footnote675"></a><b>Footnote 675:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag675">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 556; Joyce, <i>PN</i> i. 499.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote676" name=
+"footnote676"></a><b>Footnote 676:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag676">(return)</a>
+<p>Wood-Martin, ii. 159.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote677" name=
+"footnote677"></a><b>Footnote 677:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag677">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 51; Jullian, 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote678" name=
+"footnote678"></a><b>Footnote 678:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag678">(return)</a>
+<p>Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii. 60.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote679" name=
+"footnote679"></a><b>Footnote 679:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag679">(return)</a>
+<p>See S&eacute;billot, i. 293; Le Braz, i. 259; <i>Folk-Lore
+Journal</i>, v. 218; <i>Folk-Lore Record</i>, 1882.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote680" name=
+"footnote680"></a><b>Footnote 680:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag680">(return)</a>
+<p>Val. Probus, <i>Comm. in Georgica</i>, ii. 84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote681" name=
+"footnote681"></a><b>Footnote 681:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag681">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 53; O'Ourry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 465. Writing tablets,
+made from each of the trees when they were cut down, sprang
+together and could not be separated.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote682" name=
+"footnote682"></a><b>Footnote 682:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag682">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Stat. Account</i>, iii. 27; Moore, 151; S&eacute;billot, i.
+262, 270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote683" name=
+"footnote683"></a><b>Footnote 683:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag683">(return)</a>
+<p>Dom Martin, i. 124; <i>Vita S. Eligii</i>, ii. 16.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote684" name=
+"footnote684"></a><b>Footnote 684:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag684">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Acta Sanct.</i> (Bolland.), July 31; Sulp. Sever. <i>Vita S.
+Mart.</i> 457.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote685" name=
+"footnote685"></a><b>Footnote 685:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag685">(return)</a>
+<p>Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> 76; Maury, 13, 299. The story of
+beautiful women found in trees may be connected with the custom of
+placing images in trees, or with the belief that a goddess might be
+seen emerging from the tree in which she dwelt.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote686" name=
+"footnote686"></a><b>Footnote 686:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag686">(return)</a>
+<p>De la Tour, <i>Atlas des Monnaies Gaul</i>, 260, 286; Reinach,
+<i>Catal. Sommaire</i>, 29.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote687" name=
+"footnote687"></a><b>Footnote 687:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag687">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xvi. 44.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote688" name=
+"footnote688"></a><b>Footnote 688:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag688">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page162">162</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote689" name=
+"footnote689"></a><b>Footnote 689:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag689">(return)</a>
+<p>See Cameron, <i>Gaelic Names of Plants</i>, 45. In Gregoire de
+Rostren, <i>Dict. fran&ccedil;ois-celt.</i> 1732, mistletoe is
+translated by <i>dour-dero</i>, "oak-water," and is said to be good
+for several evils.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote690" name=
+"footnote690"></a><b>Footnote 690:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag690">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xxiv. 11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote691" name=
+"footnote691"></a><b>Footnote 691:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag691">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote692" name=
+"footnote692"></a><b>Footnote 692:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag692">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> xxv. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote693" name=
+"footnote693"></a><b>Footnote 693:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag693">(return)</a>
+<p>See Carmichael, <i>Carmina Gadelica</i>; De Nore, <i>Coutumes
+... des Provinces de France</i>, 150 f.; Sauv&eacute;, <i>RC</i>
+vi. 67, <i>CM</i> ix. 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote694" name=
+"footnote694"></a><b>Footnote 694:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag694">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 126.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote695" name=
+"footnote695"></a><b>Footnote 695:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag695">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 172; see p. <a href="#page77">77</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id=
+"page208"></a>{208}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap14" id="chap14">CHAPTER XIV.</a></h2>
+<h3>ANIMAL WORSHIP.</h3>
+<p>Animal worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of
+historic times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or
+attributes of divinities. The older cult had been connected with
+the pastoral stage in which the animals were divine, or with the
+agricultural stage in which they represented the corn-spirit, and
+perhaps with totemism. We shall study here (1) traces of the older
+animal cults; (2) the transformation of animal gods into symbols;
+and (3) traces of totemism.</p>
+<h4>1.</h4>
+<p>The presence of a bull with three cranes (<i>Tarvos
+Trigaranos</i>) on the Paris altar, along with the gods Esus,
+Juppiter, and Vulcan, suggests that it was a divine animal, or the
+subject of a divine myth. As has been seen, this bull may be the
+bull of the <i>T&aacute;in b&oacute; Cuailgne</i>. Both it and its
+opponent were reincarnations of the swine-herds of two gods. In the
+Irish sagas reincarnation is only attributed to gods or heroes, and
+this may point to the divinity of the bulls. We have seen that this
+and another altar may depict some myth in which the bull was the
+incarnation of a tree or vegetation spirit. The divine nature of
+the bull is attested by its presence on Gaulish coins as a
+religious symbol, and by images of the animal with <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>{209}</span> three
+horns&mdash;an obvious symbol of divinity.<a id="footnotetag696"
+name="footnotetag696"></a><a href="#footnote696"><sup>696</sup></a>
+On such an image in bronze the Cimbri, Celticised Germans, swore.
+The images are pre-Roman, since they are found at Hallstadt and La
+T&egrave;ne. Personal names like Donnotaurus (the equivalent of the
+<i>Donn Taruos</i> of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>) or Deiotaros ("divine
+bull"), show that men were called after the divine animal.<a id=
+"footnotetag697" name="footnotetag697"></a><a href=
+"#footnote697"><sup>697</sup></a> Similarly many place-names in
+which the word <i>taruos</i> occurs, in Northern Italy, the
+Pyrenees, Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere, suggest that the places
+bearing these names were sites of a bull cult or that some myth,
+like that elaborated in the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, had been there
+localised.<a id="footnotetag698" name="footnotetag698"></a><a href=
+"#footnote698"><sup>698</sup></a> But, as possibly in the case of
+C&uacute;chulainn and the bull, the animal tended to become the
+symbol of a god, a tendency perhaps aided by the spread of
+Mithraism with its symbolic bull. A god Medros leaning on a bull is
+represented at Haguenau, possibly a form of Mider or of Meduris, a
+surname of Toutatis, unless Medros is simply Mithras.<a id=
+"footnotetag699" name="footnotetag699"></a><a href=
+"#footnote699"><sup>699</sup></a> Echoes of the cult of the bull or
+cow are heard in Irish tales of these animals brought from the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>, or of magic bulls or of cows which produced
+enormous supplies of milk, or in saintly legends of oxen leading a
+saint to the site of his future church.<a id="footnotetag700" name=
+"footnotetag700"></a><a href="#footnote700"><sup>700</sup></a>
+These legends are also told of the swine,<a id="footnotetag701"
+name="footnotetag701"></a><a href="#footnote701"><sup>701</sup></a>
+and they perhaps arose when a Christian church took the place of
+the site of a local animal cult, legend fusing the old and the new
+cult by making the once divine animal point out the site of the
+church. A late relic of a bull cult may be found in the carnival
+procession of the <i>Boeuf Gras</i> at Paris.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id=
+"page210"></a>{210}</span>
+<p>A cult of a swine-god Moccus has been referred to. The boar was
+a divine symbol on standards, coins, and altars, and many bronze
+images of the animal have been found. These were temple treasures,
+and in one case the boar is three-horned.<a id="footnotetag702"
+name="footnotetag702"></a><a href="#footnote702"><sup>702</sup></a>
+But it was becoming the symbol of a goddess, as is seen by the
+altars on which it accompanies a goddess, perhaps of fertility, and
+by a bronze image of a goddess seated on a boar. The altars occur
+in Britain, of which the animal may be the emblem&mdash;the
+"Caledonian monster" of Claudian's poem.<a id="footnotetag703"
+name="footnotetag703"></a><a href="#footnote703"><sup>703</sup></a>
+The Galatian Celts abstained from eating the swine, and there has
+always been a prejudice against its flesh in the Highlands. This
+has a totemic appearance.<a id="footnotetag704" name=
+"footnotetag704"></a><a href="#footnote704"><sup>704</sup></a> But
+the swine is esteemed in Ireland, and in the texts monstrous swine
+are the staple article of famous feasts.<a id="footnotetag705"
+name="footnotetag705"></a><a href="#footnote705"><sup>705</sup></a>
+These may have been legendary forms of old swine-gods, the feasts
+recalling sacrificial feasts on their flesh. Magic swine were also
+the immortal food of the gods. But the boar was tabu to certain
+persons, <i>e.g.</i> Diarmaid, though whether this is the
+attenuated memory of a clan totem restriction is uncertain. In
+Welsh story the swine comes from Elysium&mdash;a myth explaining
+the origin of its domestication, while domestication certainly
+implies an earlier cult of the animal. When animals come to be
+domesticated, the old cult restrictions, <i>e.g.</i> against eating
+them, usually pass away. For this reason, perhaps, the Gauls, who
+worshipped an anthropomorphic swine-god, trafficked in the animal
+and may have eaten it.<a id="footnotetag706" name=
+"footnotetag706"></a><a href="#footnote706"><sup>706</sup></a>
+Welsh story also tells of the magic boar, the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>{211}</span> <i>Twrch
+Trwyth</i>, hunted by Arthur, possibly a folk-tale reminiscence of
+a boar divinity.<a id="footnotetag707" name=
+"footnotetag707"></a><a href="#footnote707"><sup>707</sup></a>
+Place-names also point to a cult of the swine, and a recollection
+of its divinity may underlie the numerous Irish tales of magical
+swine.<a id="footnotetag708" name="footnotetag708"></a><a href=
+"#footnote708"><sup>708</sup></a> The magic swine which issued from
+the cave of Cruachan and destroyed the young crops are suggestive
+of the theriomorphic corn-spirit in its occasional destructive
+aspect.<a id="footnotetag709" name="footnotetag709"></a><a href=
+"#footnote709"><sup>709</sup></a> Bones of the swine, sometimes
+cremated, have been found in Celtic graves in Britain and at
+Hallstadt, and in one case the animal was buried alone in a tumulus
+at Hallstadt, just as sacred animals were buried in Egypt, Greece,
+and elsewhere.<a id="footnotetag710" name=
+"footnotetag710"></a><a href="#footnote710"><sup>710</sup></a> When
+the animal was buried with the dead, it may have been as a
+sacrifice to the ghost or to the god of the underworld.</p>
+<p>The divinity of the serpent is proved by the occurrence of a
+horned serpent with twelve Roman gods on a Gallo-Roman altar.<a id=
+"footnotetag711" name="footnotetag711"></a><a href=
+"#footnote711"><sup>711</sup></a> In other cases a horned or
+ram's-headed serpent appears as the attribute of a god, and we have
+seen that the ram's-headed serpent may be a fusion of the serpent
+as a chthonian animal with the ram, sacrificed to the dead. In
+Greece Dionysus had the form both of a bull and a horned serpent,
+the horn being perhaps derived from the bull symbol. M. Reinach
+claims that the primitive elements of the Orphic myth of the
+Thracian Dionysos-Zagreus&mdash;divine serpents producing an egg
+whence came the horned snake Zagreus, occur in dislocated form in
+Gaul. There enlacing serpents were believed to produce a magic egg,
+and there a horned <span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id=
+"page212"></a>{212}</span> serpent was worshipped, but was not
+connected with the egg. But they may once have been connected, and
+if so, there may be a common foundation both for the Greek and the
+Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in Thrace.<a id=
+"footnotetag712" name="footnotetag712"></a><a href=
+"#footnote712"><sup>712</sup></a> The resemblances, however, may be
+mere coincidences, and horned serpents are known in other
+mythologies&mdash;the horn being perhaps a symbol of divinity. The
+horned serpent sometimes accompanies a god who has horns, possibly
+Cernunnos, the underworld god, in accordance with the chthonian
+character of the serpent.<a id="footnotetag713" name=
+"footnotetag713"></a><a href="#footnote713"><sup>713</sup></a> In
+the C&ugrave;chulainn cycle Loeg on his visit to the Other-world
+saw two-headed serpents&mdash;perhaps a further hint of this aspect
+of the animal.<a id="footnotetag714" name=
+"footnotetag714"></a><a href="#footnote714"><sup>714</sup></a></p>
+<p>In all these instances of animal cults examples of the tendency
+to make the divine animal anthropomorphic have been seen. We have
+now to consider some instances of the complete anthropomorphic
+process.</p>
+<h4>2.</h4>
+<p>An old bear cult gave place to the cult of a bear goddess and
+probably of a god. At Berne&mdash;an old Celtic place-name meaning
+"bear"&mdash;was found a bronze group of a goddess holding a patera
+with fruit, and a bear approaching her as if to be fed. The
+inscription runs, <i>Deae Artioni Licinia Sabinilla</i>.<a id=
+"footnotetag715" name="footnotetag715"></a><a href=
+"#footnote715"><sup>715</sup></a> A local bear-cult had once
+existed at Berne, and is still recalled in the presence of the
+famous bears there, but the divine bear had given place to a
+goddess whose name and symbol were ursine. From an old Celtic
+<i>Artos</i>, fem. <i>Arta</i>, "bear," were derived various divine
+names. Of these <span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id=
+"page213"></a>{213}</span> <i>Dea Artio(n)</i> means "bear
+goddess," and <i>Artaios</i>, equated with Mercury, is perhaps a
+bear god.<a id="footnotetag716" name="footnotetag716"></a><a href=
+"#footnote716"><sup>716</sup></a> Another bear goddess, Andarta,
+was honoured at Die (Dr&ocirc;me), the word perhaps meaning "strong
+bear"&mdash;<i>And</i>- being an augmentive.<a id="footnotetag717"
+name="footnotetag717"></a><a href="#footnote717"><sup>717</sup></a>
+Numerous place-names derived from <i>Artos</i> perhaps witness to a
+widespread cult of the bear, and the word also occurs in Welsh, and
+Irish personal names&mdash;Arthmael, Arthbiu, and possibly Arthur,
+and the numerous Arts of Irish texts. Descent from the divine bear
+is also signified in names like Welsh <i>Arthgen</i>, Irish
+<i>Artigan</i>, from <i>Artigenos</i>, "son of the bear." Another
+Celtic name for "bear" was the Gaulish <i>matu</i>, Irish
+<i>math</i>, found in <i>Matugenos</i>, "son of the bear," and in
+MacMahon, which is a corrupt form of <i>Mac-math-ghamhain</i>, "son
+of the bear's son," or "of the bear."<a id="footnotetag718" name=
+"footnotetag718"></a><a href="#footnote718"><sup>718</sup></a></p>
+<p>Similarly a cult of the stag seems to have given place to that
+of a god with stag's horns, represented on many bas-reliefs, and
+probably connected with the underworld.<a id="footnotetag719" name=
+"footnotetag719"></a><a href="#footnote719"><sup>719</sup></a> The
+stag, as a grain-eater, may have been regarded as the embodiment of
+the corn-spirit, and then associated with the under-earth region
+whence the corn sprang, by one of those inversions of thought so
+common in the stage of transition from animal gods to gods with
+animal symbols. The elk may have been worshipped in Ireland, and a
+three antlered stag is the subject of a story in the Fionn
+saga.<a id="footnotetag720" name="footnotetag720"></a><a href=
+"#footnote720"><sup>720</sup></a> Its third antler, like the third
+horn of bull or boar, may be a sign of divinity.</p>
+<p>The horse had also been worshipped, but a goddess Epona (Gaul.
+<i>epo-s</i>, "horse"), protectress of horses and asses, took its
+place, and had a far-spread cult. She rides a horse or mare
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id=
+"page214"></a>{214}</span> with its foal, or is seated among
+horses, or feeds horses. A representation of a mare suckling a
+foal&mdash;a design analogous to those in which Epona feeds
+foals&mdash;shows that her primitive equine nature had not been
+forgotten.<a id="footnotetag721" name="footnotetag721"></a><a href=
+"#footnote721"><sup>721</sup></a> The Gauls were horse-rearers, and
+Epona was the goddess of the craft; but, as in other cases, a cult
+of the horse must have preceded its domestication, and its flesh
+may not have been eaten, or, if so, only sacramentally.<a id=
+"footnotetag722" name="footnotetag722"></a><a href=
+"#footnote722"><sup>722</sup></a> Finally, the divine horse became
+the anthropomorphic horse-goddess. Her images were placed in
+stables, and several inscriptions and statuettes have been found in
+such buildings or in cavalry barracks.<a id="footnotetag723" name=
+"footnotetag723"></a><a href="#footnote723"><sup>723</sup></a> The
+remains of the cult have been found in the Danube and Rhine
+valleys, in Eastern Gaul, and in Northern Italy, all Celtic
+regions, but it was carried everywhere by Roman cavalry recruited
+from the Celtic tribes.<a id="footnotetag724" name=
+"footnotetag724"></a><a href="#footnote724"><sup>724</sup></a>
+Epona is associated with, and often has, the symbols of the
+<i>Matres</i>, and one inscription reads <i>Eponabus</i>, as if
+there were a group of goddesses called Epona.<a id="footnotetag725"
+name="footnotetag725"></a><a href="#footnote725"><sup>725</sup></a>
+A goddess who promoted the fertility of mares would easily be
+associated with goddesses of fertility. Epona may also have been
+confused with a river-goddess conceived of as a spirited steed.
+Water-spirits took that shape, and the <i>Matres</i> were also
+river-goddesses.</p>
+<p>A statuette of a horse, with a dedication to a god Rudiobus,
+otherwise unknown, may have been carried processionally, while a
+mule has a dedication to Segomo, equated elsewhere with Mars. A
+mule god Mullo, also equated with Mars, is mentioned on several
+inscriptions.<a id="footnotetag726" name=
+"footnotetag726"></a><a href="#footnote726"><sup>726</sup></a> The
+connection with Mars <span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id=
+"page215"></a>{215}</span> may have been found in the fact that the
+October horse was sacrificed to him for fertility, while the horse
+was probably associated with fertility among the Celts. The horse
+was sacrificed both by Celts and Teutons at the Midsummer festival,
+undoubtedly as a divine animal. Traces of the Celtic custom survive
+in local legends, and may be interpreted in the fuller light of the
+Teutonic accounts. In Ireland a man wearing a horse's head rushed
+through the fire, and was supposed to represent all cattle; in
+other words, he was a surrogate for them. The legend of Each Labra,
+a horse which lived in a mound and issued from it every Midsummer
+eve to give oracles for the coming year, is probably connected with
+the Midsummer sacrifice of the horse.<a id="footnotetag727" name=
+"footnotetag727"></a><a href="#footnote727"><sup>727</sup></a>
+Among the Teutons the horse was a divine sacrificial animal, and
+was also sacred to Freyr, the god of fertility, while in Teutonic
+survivals a horse's head was placed in the Midsummer fire.<a id=
+"footnotetag728" name="footnotetag728"></a><a href=
+"#footnote728"><sup>728</sup></a> The horse was sporadically the
+representative of the corn-spirit, and at Rome the October horse
+was sacrificed in that capacity and for fertility.<a id=
+"footnotetag729" name="footnotetag729"></a><a href=
+"#footnote729"><sup>729</sup></a> Among the Celts, the horse
+sacrificed at Midsummer may have represented the vegetation-spirit
+and benefited all domestic animals&mdash;the old rite surviving in
+an attenuated form, as described above.</p>
+<p>Perhaps the goddess Damona was an animal divinity, if her name
+is derived from <i>damatos</i>, "sheep," cognate to Welsh
+<i>dafad</i>, "sheep," and Gaelic <i>damh</i>, "ox." Other divine
+animals, as has been seen, were associated with the waters, and the
+use of beasts and birds in divination doubtless points to their
+divine character. A cult of bird-gods may lurk behind the divine
+name Bran, "raven," and the reference to the magic birds of
+Rhiannon in the <i>Triads</i>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id=
+"page216"></a>{216}</span>
+<h4>3.</h4>
+<p>Animal worship is connected with totemism, and certain things
+point to its existence among the Celts, or to the existence of
+conditions out of which totemism was elsewhere developed. These are
+descent from animals, animal tabus, the sacramental eating of an
+animal, and exogamy.</p>
+<p>(1) <i>Descent from animals.</i>&mdash;Celtic names implying
+descent from animals or plants are of two classes, clan and
+personal names. If the latter are totemistic, they must be derived
+from the former, since totemism is an affair of the clan, while the
+so-called "personal totem," exemplified by the American Indian
+<i>manitou</i>, is the guardian but never the ancestor of a man.
+Some clan names have already been referred to. Others are the
+Bibroci of south-east Britain, probably a beaver clan
+(<i>bebros</i>), and the Eburones, a yew-tree clan
+(<i>eburos</i>).<a id="footnotetag730" name=
+"footnotetag730"></a><a href="#footnote730"><sup>730</sup></a>
+Irish clans bore animal names: some groups were called "calves,"
+others "griffins," others "red deer," and a plant name is seen in
+<i>Fir Bile</i>, "men of the tree."<a id="footnotetag731" name=
+"footnotetag731"></a><a href="#footnote731"><sup>731</sup></a> Such
+clan totemism perhaps underlies the stories of the "descendants of
+the wolf" at Ossory, who became wolves for a time as the result of
+a saintly curse. Other instances of lycanthropy were associated
+with certain families.<a id="footnotetag732" name=
+"footnotetag732"></a><a href="#footnote732"><sup>732</sup></a> The
+belief in lycanthropy might easily attach itself to existing
+wolf-clans, the transformation being then explained as the result
+of a curse. The stories of Cormac mac Art, suckled by a she-wolf,
+of Lughaid mac Con, "son of a wolf-dog," suckled by that animal,
+and of Oisin, whose mother was a fawn, and who would not eat
+venison, are perhaps totemistic, <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page217" id="page217"></a>{217}</span> while to totemism or to a
+cult of animals may be ascribed what early travellers in Ireland
+say of the people taking wolves as god-fathers and praying to them
+to do them no ill.<a id="footnotetag733" name=
+"footnotetag733"></a><a href="#footnote733"><sup>733</sup></a> In
+Wales bands of warriors at the battle of Cattraeth are described in
+Oneurin's <i>Gododin</i> as dogs, wolves, bears, and ravens, while
+Owein's band of ravens which fought against Arthur, may have been a
+raven clan, later misunderstood as actual ravens.<a id=
+"footnotetag734" name="footnotetag734"></a><a href=
+"#footnote734"><sup>734</sup></a> Certain groups of Dalriad Scots
+bore animal names&mdash;Cinel Gabran, "Little goat clan," and Cinel
+Loarn, "Fox clan." Possibly the custom of denoting Highland clans
+by animal or plant badges may be connected with a belief in descent
+from plants or animals. On many coins an animal is represented on
+horseback, perhaps leading a clan, as birds led the Celts to the
+Danube area, and these may depict myths telling how the clan totem
+animal led the clan to its present territory.<a id="footnotetag735"
+name="footnotetag735"></a><a href="#footnote735"><sup>735</sup></a>
+Such myths may survive in legends relating how an animal led a
+saint to the site of his church.<a id="footnotetag736" name=
+"footnotetag736"></a><a href="#footnote736"><sup>736</sup></a>
+Celtic warriors wore helmets with horns, and Irish story speaks of
+men with cat, dog, or goat heads.<a id="footnotetag737" name=
+"footnotetag737"></a><a href="#footnote737"><sup>737</sup></a>
+These may have been men wearing a head-gear formed of the skin or
+head of the clan totem, hence remembered at a later time as
+monstrous beings, while the horned helmets would be related to the
+same custom. Solinus describes the Britons as wearing animal skins
+before going into battle.<a id="footnotetag738" name=
+"footnotetag738"></a><a href="#footnote738"><sup>738</sup></a> Were
+these skins of totem animals under whose protection they thus
+placed themselves? The "forms of beasts, birds, and fishes" which
+the Cruithne or Picts tattooed on their bodies may have been totem
+marks, while the painting of their bodies with woad among the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id=
+"page218"></a>{218}</span> southern Britons may have been of the
+same character, though C&aelig;sar's words hardly denote this.
+Certain marks on faces figured on Gaulish coins seem to be tattoo
+marks.<a id="footnotetag739" name="footnotetag739"></a><a href=
+"#footnote739"><sup>739</sup></a></p>
+<p>It is not impossible that an early wolf-totem may have been
+associated, because of the animal's nocturnal wanderings in
+forests, with the underworld whence, according to Celtic belief,
+men sprang and whither they returned, and whence all vegetation
+came forth. The Gallo-Roman Silvanus, probably an underworld god,
+wears a wolf-skin, and may thus be a wolf-god. There were various
+types of underworld gods, and this wolf-type&mdash;perhaps a local
+wolf-totem ancestor assimilated to a local "Dispater"&mdash;may
+have been the god of a clan who imposed its mythic wolf origin on
+other clans. Some Celtic bronzes show a wolf swallowing a man who
+offers no resistance, probably because he is dead. The wolf is much
+bigger than the man, and hence may be a god.<a id="footnotetag740"
+name="footnotetag740"></a><a href="#footnote740"><sup>740</sup></a>
+These bronzes would thus represent a belief setting forth the
+return of men to their totem ancestor after death, or to the
+underworld god connected with the totem ancestor, by saying that he
+devoured the dead, like certain Polynesian divinities and the Greek
+Eurynomos.</p>
+<p>In many individual names the first part is the name of an animal
+or plant, the second is usually <i>genos</i>, "born from," or "son
+of," <i>e.g.</i> Artigenos, Matugenos, "son of the bear"
+(<i>artos</i>, <i>matu</i>-); Urogenos, occurring as Urogenertos,
+"he who has the strength of the son of the urus"; Brannogenos, "son
+of the raven"; Cunogenos, "son of the dog."<a id="footnotetag741"
+name="footnotetag741"></a><a href="#footnote741"><sup>741</sup></a>
+These names may be derived from clan totem names, but they date
+back to a time when animals, trees, and men were on a common
+footing, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id=
+"page219"></a>{219}</span> and the possibility of human descent
+from a tree or an animal was believed in. Professor Rh[^y]s has
+argued from the frequency of personal names in Ireland, like
+C&uacute;r&oacute;i, "Hound of R&oacute;i," C&uacute; Corb, "Corb's
+Hound," Mac Con, "Hound's Son," and Maelchon, "Hound's Slave," that
+there existed a dog totem or god, not of the Celts, but of a
+pre-Celtic race.<a id="footnotetag742" name=
+"footnotetag742"></a><a href="#footnote742"><sup>742</sup></a> This
+assumes that totemism was non-Celtic, an assumption based on
+preconceived notions of what Celtic institutions ought to have
+been. The names, it should be observed, are personal, not clan
+names.</p>
+<p>(2) <i>Animal tabus.</i>&mdash;Besides the dislike of swine's
+flesh already noted among certain Celtic groups, the killing and
+eating of the hare, hen, and goose were forbidden among the
+Britons. C&aelig;sar says they bred these animals for amusement,
+but this reason assigned by him is drawn from his knowledge of the
+breeding of rare animals by rich Romans as a pastime, since he had
+no knowledge of the breeding of sacred animals which were not
+eaten&mdash;a common totemic or animal cult custom.<a id=
+"footnotetag743" name="footnotetag743"></a><a href=
+"#footnote743"><sup>743</sup></a> The hare was used for divination
+by Boudicca,<a id="footnotetag744" name=
+"footnotetag744"></a><a href="#footnote744"><sup>744</sup></a>
+doubtless as a sacred animal, and it has been found that a sacred
+character still attaches to these animals in Wales. A cock or hen
+was ceremonially killed and eaten on Shrove Tuesday, either as a
+former totemic animal, or, less likely, as a representative of the
+corn-spirit. The hare is not killed in certain districts, but
+occasionally it is ceremonially hunted and slain annually, while at
+yearly fairs the goose is sold exclusively and eaten.<a id=
+"footnotetag745" name="footnotetag745"></a><a href=
+"#footnote745"><sup>745</sup></a> Elsewhere, <i>e.g.</i> in Devon,
+a ram or lamb is ceremonially slain and eaten, the eating being
+believed to confer <span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id=
+"page220"></a>{220}</span> luck.<a id="footnotetag746" name=
+"footnotetag746"></a><a href="#footnote746"><sup>746</sup></a> The
+ill-luck supposed to follow the killing of certain animals may also
+be reminiscent of totemic tabus. Fish were not eaten by the Pictish
+Meat&aelig; and Caledonii, and a dislike of eating certain
+fresh-water fish was observed among certain eighteenth century
+Highlanders.<a id="footnotetag747" name=
+"footnotetag747"></a><a href="#footnote747"><sup>747</sup></a> It
+has been already seen that certain fish living in sacred wells were
+tabu, and were believed to give oracles. Heron's flesh was disliked
+in Ireland, and it was considered unlucky to kill a swan in the
+Hebrides.<a id="footnotetag748" name="footnotetag748"></a><a href=
+"#footnote748"><sup>748</sup></a> Fatal results following upon the
+killing or eating of an animal with which the eater was connected
+by name or descent are found in the Irish sagas. Conaire was son of
+a woman and a bird which could take human shape, and it was
+forbidden to him to hunt birds. On one occasion he did so, and for
+this as well as the breaking of other tabus, he lost his
+life.<a id="footnotetag749" name="footnotetag749"></a><a href=
+"#footnote749"><sup>749</sup></a> It was tabu to C&uacute;chulainn,
+"the hound of Culann," to eat dog's flesh, and, having been
+persuaded to do this, his strength went from him, and he perished.
+Diarmaid, having been forbidden to hunt a boar with which his life
+was connected, was induced by Fionn to break this tabu, and in
+consequence he lost his life by one of the boar's bristles entering
+his foot, or (in a variant) by the boar's killing him. Another
+instance is found in a tale of certain men transformed to badgers.
+They were slain by Cormac, and brought to his father Tadg to eat.
+Tadg unaccountably loathed them, because they were transformed men
+and his cousins.<a id="footnotetag750" name=
+"footnotetag750"></a><a href="#footnote750"><sup>750</sup></a> In
+this tale, which may contain the <i>d&eacute;bris</i> of totemic
+usage, the loathing arises from the fact that the badgers are
+men&mdash;a common form of myths explanatory of misunderstood
+totemic customs, but the old idea of the relation between a man and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id=
+"page221"></a>{221}</span> his totem is not lost sight of. The
+other tales may also be reminiscent of a clan totem tabu, later
+centred in a mythic hero. Perhaps the belief in lucky or unlucky
+animals, or in omens drawn from their appearance, may be based on
+old totem beliefs or in beliefs in the divinity of the animals.</p>
+<p>(3) <i>Sacramental eating of an animal.</i>&mdash;The custom of
+"hunting the wren," found over the whole Celtic area, is connected
+with animal worship and may be totemistic in origin. In spite of
+its small size, the wren was known as the king of birds, and in the
+Isle of Man it was hunted and killed on Christmas or S. Stephen's
+day. The bird was carried in procession from door to door, to the
+accompaniment of a chant, and was then solemnly buried, dirges
+being sung. In some cases a feather was left at each house and
+carefully treasured, and there are traces of a custom of boiling
+and eating the bird.<a id="footnotetag751" name=
+"footnotetag751"></a><a href="#footnote751"><sup>751</sup></a> In
+Ireland, the hunt and procession were followed by a feast, the
+materials of which were collected from house to house, and a
+similar usage obtained in France, where the youth who killed the
+bird was called "king."<a id="footnotetag752" name=
+"footnotetag752"></a><a href="#footnote752"><sup>752</sup></a> In
+most of these districts it was considered unlucky or dangerous to
+kill the bird at any other time, yet it might be ceremonially
+killed once a year, the dead animal conferred luck, and was
+solemnly eaten or buried with signs of mourning. Similar customs
+with animals which are actually worshipped are found
+elsewhere,<a id="footnotetag753" name="footnotetag753"></a><a href=
+"#footnote753"><sup>753</sup></a> and they lend support to the idea
+that the Celts regarded the wren as a divine animal, or perhaps a
+totem animal, that it was necessary to slay it ritually, and to
+carry it round the houses of the community to obtain its divine
+influence, to eat it sacramentally or to bury it. <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>{222}</span> Probably
+like customs were followed in the case of other animals,<a id=
+"footnotetag754" name="footnotetag754"></a><a href=
+"#footnote754"><sup>754</sup></a> and these may have given rise to
+such stories as that of the eating of MacDatho's wonderful boar, as
+well as to myths which regarded certain animals, <i>e.g.</i> the
+swine, as the immortal food of the gods. Other examples of ritual
+survivals of such sacramental eating have already been noted, and
+it is not improbable that the eating of a sacred pastoral animal
+occurred at Samhain.</p>
+<p>(4) <i>Exogamy.</i>&mdash;Exogamy and the counting of descent
+through the mother are closely connected with totemism, and some
+traces of both are found among the Celts. Among the Picts, who
+were, perhaps, a Celtic group of the Brythonic stock, these customs
+survived in the royal house. The kingship passed to a brother of
+the king by the same mother, or to a sister's son, while the king's
+father was never king and was frequently a "foreigner." Similar
+rules of succession prevailed in early Aryan royal
+houses&mdash;Greek and Roman,&mdash;and may, as Dr. Stokes thought,
+have existed at Tara in Ireland, while in a Fian tale of Oisin he
+marries the daughter of the king of T&iacute;r na n-Og, and
+succeeds him as king partly for that reason, and partly because he
+had beaten him in the annual race for the kingship.<a id=
+"footnotetag755" name="footnotetag755"></a><a href=
+"#footnote755"><sup>755</sup></a> Such an athletic contest for the
+kingship was known in early Greece, and this tale may support the
+theory of the Celtic priest-kingship, the holder of the office
+retaining it as long as he was not defeated or slain. Traces of
+succession through a sister's son are found in the
+<i>Mabinogion</i>, and Livy describes how the mythic Celtic king
+Ambicatus sent not his own but his sister's sons to found new
+kingdoms.<a id="footnotetag756" name="footnotetag756"></a><a href=
+"#footnote756"><sup>756</sup></a> Irish and Welsh divine and heroic
+groups <span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id=
+"page223"></a>{223}</span> are named after the mother, not the
+father&mdash;the children of Danu and of D&ocirc;n, and the men of
+Domnu. Anu is mother of the gods, Buanann of heroes. The eponymous
+ancestor of the Scots is a woman, Scota, and the earliest
+colonisers of Ireland are women, not men. In the sagas gods and
+heroes have frequently a matronymic, and the father's name is
+omitted&mdash;Lug mac Ethnend, Conchobar mac Nessa, Indech, son of
+De Domnann, Corpre, son of Etain, and others. Perhaps parallel to
+this is the custom of calling men after their
+wives&mdash;<i>e.g.</i> the son of Fergus is Fer Tlachtga,
+Tlachtga's husband.<a id="footnotetag757" name=
+"footnotetag757"></a><a href="#footnote757"><sup>757</sup></a> In
+the sagas, females (goddesses and heroines) have a high place
+accorded to them, and frequently choose their own lovers or
+husbands&mdash;customs suggestive of the matriarchate. Thus what
+was once a general practice was later confined to the royal house
+or told of divine or heroic personages. Possibly certain cases of
+incest may really be exaggerated accounts of misunderstood unions
+once permissible by totemic law. C&aelig;sar speaks of British
+polyandry, brothers, sons, and fathers sharing a wife in
+common.<a id="footnotetag758" name="footnotetag758"></a><a href=
+"#footnote758"><sup>758</sup></a> Strabo speaks of Irish unions
+with mothers and sisters, perhaps referring not to actual practice
+but to reports of saga tales of incest.<a id="footnotetag759" name=
+"footnotetag759"></a><a href="#footnote759"><sup>759</sup></a> Dio
+Cassius speaks of community of wives among the Caledonians and
+Meat&aelig;, and Jerome says much the same of the Scoti and
+Atecotti.<a id="footnotetag760" name="footnotetag760"></a><a href=
+"#footnote760"><sup>760</sup></a> These notices, with the exception
+of C&aelig;sar's, are vague, yet they refer to marriage customs
+different from those known to their reporters. In Irish sagas
+incest legends circle round the descendants of Etain&mdash;fathers
+unite with daughters, a son with his mother, a woman has a son by
+her three brothers (just as Ecne was son of Brian, Iuchar, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id=
+"page224"></a>{224}</span> Iucharba), and is also mother of
+Crimthan by that son.<a id="footnotetag761" name=
+"footnotetag761"></a><a href="#footnote761"><sup>761</sup></a>
+Brother and sister unions occur both in Irish and Welsh
+story.<a id="footnotetag762" name="footnotetag762"></a><a href=
+"#footnote762"><sup>762</sup></a></p>
+<p>In these cases incest with a mother cannot be explained by
+totemic usage, but the cases may be distorted reminiscences of what
+might occur under totemism, namely, a son taking the wives of his
+father other than his own mother, when those were of a different
+totem from his own. Under totemism, brothers and sisters by
+different mothers having different totems, might possibly unite,
+and such unions are found in many mythologies. Later, when totemism
+passed away, the unions, regarded with horror, would be supposed to
+take place between children by the same mother. According to totem
+law, a father might unite with his daughter, since she was of her
+mother's totem, but in practice this was frowned upon. Polygamy
+also may co-exist with totemism, and of course involves the
+counting of descent through the mother as a rule. If, as is
+suggested by the "debility" of the Ultonians, and by other
+evidence, the couvade was a Celtic institution, this would also
+point to the existence of the matriarchate with the Celts. To
+explain all this as pre-Aryan, or to say that the classical notices
+refer to non-Aryan tribes and that the evidence in the Irish sagas
+only shows that the Celts had been influenced by the customs of
+aboriginal tribes among whom they lived,<a id="footnotetag763"
+name="footnotetag763"></a><a href="#footnote763"><sup>763</sup></a>
+is to neglect the fact that the customs are closely bound up with
+Celtic life, while it leaves unexplained the influence of such
+customs upon a people whose own customs, according to this theory,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id=
+"page225"></a>{225}</span> were so totally different. The evidence,
+taken as a whole, points to the existence of totemism among the
+early Celts, or, at all events, of the elements which elsewhere
+compose it.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>Celtic animal worship dates back to the primitive hunting and
+pastoral period, when men worshipped the animals which they hunted
+or reared. They may have apologised to the animal hunted and
+slain&mdash;a form of worship, or, where animals were not hunted or
+were reared and worshipped, one of them may have been slain
+annually and eaten to obtain its divine power. Care was taken to
+preserve certain sacred animals which were not hunted, and this led
+to domestication, the abstinence of earlier generations leading to
+an increased food supply at a later time, when domesticated animals
+were freely slain. But the earlier sacramental slaying of such
+animals survived in the religious aspect of their slaughter at the
+beginning of winter.<a id="footnotetag764" name=
+"footnotetag764"></a><a href="#footnote764"><sup>764</sup></a> The
+cult of animals was also connected with totemic usage, though at a
+later stage this cult was replaced by that of anthropomorphic
+divinities, with the older divine animals as their symbols,
+sacrificial victims, and the like. This evolution now led to the
+removal of restrictions upon slaying and eating the animals. On the
+other hand, the more primitive animal cults may have remained here
+and there. Animal cults were, perhaps, largely confined to men.
+With the rise of agriculture mainly as an art in the hands of
+women, and the consequent cult of the Earth-mother, of fertility
+and corn-spirits probably regarded as female, the sacramental
+eating of the divine animal may have led to the slaying and eating
+of a human or animal victim supposed to embody such a spirit. Later
+the two cults were bound to coalesce, and the divine animal and the
+animal embodiment of the vegetation <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page226" id="page226"></a>{226}</span> spirit would not be
+differentiated. On the other hand, when men began to take part in
+women's fertility cults, the fact that such spirits were female or
+were perhaps coming to be regarded as goddesses, may have led men
+to envisage certain of the anthropomorphic animal divinities as
+goddesses, since some of these, <i>e.g.</i> Epona and Damona, are
+female. But with the increasing participation of men in
+agriculture, the spirits or goddesses of fertility would tend to
+become male, or the consorts or mothers of gods of fertility,
+though the earlier aspect was never lost sight of, witness the
+Corn-Mother. The evolution of divine priest-kings would cause them
+to take the place of the earlier priestesses of these cults, one of
+whom may have been the divine victim. Yet in local survivals
+certain cults were still confined to women, and still had their
+priestesses.<a id="footnotetag765" name=
+"footnotetag765"></a><a href="#footnote765"><sup>765</sup></a></p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote696" name=
+"footnote696"></a><b>Footnote 696:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag696">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 66, 244. The bull and three cranes may be a
+rebus on the name of the bull, <i>Tarvos Trikarenos</i>, "the
+three-headed," or perhaps <i>Trikeras</i>, "three-horned."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote697" name=
+"footnote697"></a><b>Footnote 697:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag697">(return)</a>
+<p>Plutarch, <i>Marius</i>, 23; C&aelig;sar, vii. 65; D'Arbois,
+<i>Les Celtes</i>, 49.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote698" name=
+"footnote698"></a><b>Footnote 698:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag698">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, <i>s.v.</i> <i>Tarba</i>, <i>Tarouanna</i>,
+<i>Tarvisium</i>, etc.; D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 155; S. Greg.
+<i>In Glor. Conf.</i> 48.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote699" name=
+"footnote699"></a><b>Footnote 699:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag699">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> xiii. 6017; <i>RC</i> xxv. 47; Holder, ii. 528.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote700" name=
+"footnote700"></a><b>Footnote 700:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag700">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, ii. 105 f.; Curtin, <i>MFI</i> 264, 318; Joyce, <i>PN</i>
+i. 174; Rees, 453. Cf. Ailred, <i>Life of S. Ninian</i>, c. 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote701" name=
+"footnote701"></a><b>Footnote 701:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag701">(return)</a>
+<p>Jocelyn, <i>Vita S. Kentig.</i> c. 24; Rees, 293, 323.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote702" name=
+"footnote702"></a><b>Footnote 702:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag702">(return)</a>
+<p>Tacitus, <i>Germ.</i> xlv.; Blanchet, i. 162, 165; Reinach,
+<i>BF</i> 255 f., <i>CMR</i> i. 168; Bertrand, <i>Arch. Celt.</i>
+419.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote703" name=
+"footnote703"></a><b>Footnote 703:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag703">(return)</a>
+<p>Pennant, <i>Tour in Scotland</i>, 268; Reinach, <i>RC</i> xxii.
+158, <i>CMR</i> i. 67.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote704" name=
+"footnote704"></a><b>Footnote 704:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag704">(return)</a>
+<p>Pausan, vii. 17, 18; Johnson, <i>Journey</i>, 136.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote705" name=
+"footnote705"></a><b>Footnote 705:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag705">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 127; <i>IT</i> i. 99, 256 (Bricriu's feast
+and the tale of Macdatho's swine).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote706" name=
+"footnote706"></a><b>Footnote 706:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag706">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 4. 3, says these swine attacked strangers. Varro,
+<i>de Re Rustica</i>, ii. 4, admires their vast size. Cf. Polyb.
+ii. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote707" name=
+"footnote707"></a><b>Footnote 707:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag707">(return)</a>
+<p>The hunt is first mentioned in Nennius, c. 79, and then appears
+as a full-blown folk-tale in <i>Kulhwych</i>, Loth, i. 185 f. Here
+the boar is a transformed prince.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote708" name=
+"footnote708"></a><b>Footnote 708:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag708">(return)</a>
+<p>I have already suggested, p. <a href="#page106">106</a>,
+<i>supra</i>, that the places where Gwydion halted with the swine
+of Elysium were sites of a swine-cult.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote709" name=
+"footnote709"></a><b>Footnote 709:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag709">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xiii. 451. Cf. also <i>TOS</i> vi. "The Enchanted Pigs
+of Oengus," and Campbell, <i>LF</i> 53.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote710" name=
+"footnote710"></a><b>Footnote 710:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag710">(return)</a>
+<p><i>L'Anthropologie</i>, vi. 584; Greenwell, <i>British
+Barrows</i>, 274, 283, 454; <i>Arch. Rev.</i> ii. 120.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote711" name=
+"footnote711"></a><b>Footnote 711:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag711">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. Arch.</i> 1897, 313.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote712" name=
+"footnote712"></a><b>Footnote 712:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag712">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, "Zagreus le serpent cornu," <i>Rev. Arch</i>. xxxv.
+210.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote713" name=
+"footnote713"></a><b>Footnote 713:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag713">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 185; Bertrand, 316.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote714" name=
+"footnote714"></a><b>Footnote 714:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag714">(return)</a>
+<p>"C&uacute;chulainn's Sick-bed," D'Arbois, v. 202.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote715" name=
+"footnote715"></a><b>Footnote 715:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag715">(return)</a>
+<p>See Reinach, <i>CMR</i> i. 57.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote716" name=
+"footnote716"></a><b>Footnote 716:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag716">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> xiii. 5160, xii. 2199. Rh[^y]s, however, derives
+Artaios from <i>ar</i>, "ploughed land," and equates the god with
+Mercurius Cultor.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote717" name=
+"footnote717"></a><b>Footnote 717:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag717">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> xii. 1556-1558; D'Arbois, <i>RC</i> x. 165.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote718" name=
+"footnote718"></a><b>Footnote 718:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag718">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these place and personal names, see Holder and D'Arbois,
+<i>op. cit. Les Celtes</i>, 47 f., <i>Les Druides</i>, 157 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote719" name=
+"footnote719"></a><b>Footnote 719:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag719">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page32">32</a>, <i>supra</i>; Reinach,
+<i>CMR</i> i. 72, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> ii. 123.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote720" name=
+"footnote720"></a><b>Footnote 720:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag720">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 123.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote721" name=
+"footnote721"></a><b>Footnote 721:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag721">(return)</a>
+<p>Epona is fully discussed by Reinach in his <i>Epona</i>, 1895,
+and in articles (illustrated) in <i>Rev. Arch.</i> vols. 26, 33,
+35, 40, etc. See also ii. [1898], 190.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote722" name=
+"footnote722"></a><b>Footnote 722:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag722">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach suggests that this may explain why Vercingetorix, in
+view of siege by the Romans, sent away his horses. They were too
+sacred to be eaten. C&aelig;sar, vii. 71; Reinach, <i>RC</i> xxvii.
+1 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote723" name=
+"footnote723"></a><b>Footnote 723:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag723">(return)</a>
+<p>Juvenal, viii. 154; Apul. <i>Metam.</i> iii. 27; Min. Felix,
+<i>Octav.</i> xxvii. 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote724" name=
+"footnote724"></a><b>Footnote 724:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag724">(return)</a>
+<p>For the inscriptions, see Holder, <i>s.v.</i> "Epona."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote725" name=
+"footnote725"></a><b>Footnote 725:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag725">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> iii. 7904.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote726" name=
+"footnote726"></a><b>Footnote 726:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag726">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CIL</i> xiii. 3071; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 253, <i>CMR</i> i. 64,
+<i>R&eacute;pert. de la Stat.</i> ii. 745; Holder, ii. 651-652.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote727" name=
+"footnote727"></a><b>Footnote 727:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag727">(return)</a>
+<p>Granger, <i>Worship of the Romans</i>, 113; Kennedy, 135.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote728" name=
+"footnote728"></a><b>Footnote 728:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag728">(return)</a>
+<p>Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> 49, 619, 657, 661-664.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote729" name=
+"footnote729"></a><b>Footnote 729:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag729">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, ii. 281, 315.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote730" name=
+"footnote730"></a><b>Footnote 730:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag730">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, v. 21, 27. Possibly the Dea Bibracte of the Aeduans
+was a beaver goddess.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote731" name=
+"footnote731"></a><b>Footnote 731:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag731">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 207; Elton, 298.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote732" name=
+"footnote732"></a><b>Footnote 732:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag732">(return)</a>
+<p>Girald. Cambr. <i>Top. Hib.</i> ii. 19, <i>RC</i> ii. 202;
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, v. 310; <i>IT</i> iii. 376.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote733" name=
+"footnote733"></a><b>Footnote 733:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag733">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 286, 538; Campbell, <i>The Fians</i>, 78; Thiers,
+<i>Trait&eacute; des Superstitions</i>, ii. 86.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote734" name=
+"footnote734"></a><b>Footnote 734:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag734">(return)</a>
+<p>Lady Guest, ii. 409 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote735" name=
+"footnote735"></a><b>Footnote 735:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag735">(return)</a>
+<p>Blanchet, i. 166, 295, 326, 390.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote736" name=
+"footnote736"></a><b>Footnote 736:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag736">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page209">209</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote737" name=
+"footnote737"></a><b>Footnote 737:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag737">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 30; <i>IT</i> iii. 385; <i>RC</i> xxvi. 139;
+Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 593.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote738" name=
+"footnote738"></a><b>Footnote 738:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag738">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Man. Hist. Brit.</i> p. x.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote739" name=
+"footnote739"></a><b>Footnote 739:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag739">(return)</a>
+<p>Herodian, iii. 14, 8; Duald MacFirbis in Irish <i>Nennius</i>,
+p. vii; C&aelig;sar, v. 10; <i>ZCP</i> iii. 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote740" name=
+"footnote740"></a><b>Footnote 740:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag740">(return)</a>
+<p>See Reinach, "Les Carnassiers androphages dans l'art
+gallo-romain," <i>CMR</i> i. 279.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote741" name=
+"footnote741"></a><b>Footnote 741:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag741">(return)</a>
+<p>See Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote742" name=
+"footnote742"></a><b>Footnote 742:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag742">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 267.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote743" name=
+"footnote743"></a><b>Footnote 743:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag743">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, v. 12.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote744" name=
+"footnote744"></a><b>Footnote 744:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag744">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cassius, lxii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote745" name=
+"footnote745"></a><b>Footnote 745:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag745">(return)</a>
+<p>See a valuable paper by N.W. Thomas, "Survivance du Culte des
+Animaux dans le Pays de Galles," in <i>Rev. de l'Hist. des
+Religions</i>, xxxviii. 295 f., and a similar paper by Gomme,
+<i>Arch. Rev.</i> 1889, 217 f. Both writers seem to regard these
+cults as pre-Celtic.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote746" name=
+"footnote746"></a><b>Footnote 746:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag746">(return)</a>
+<p>Gomme, <i>Ethnol. in Folklore</i>, 30, <i>Village Community</i>,
+113.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote747" name=
+"footnote747"></a><b>Footnote 747:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag747">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxxii. 21; Logan, <i>Scottish Gael</i>, ii. 12.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote748" name=
+"footnote748"></a><b>Footnote 748:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag748">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 529; Martin, 71.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote749" name=
+"footnote749"></a><b>Footnote 749:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag749">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxii. 20, 24, 390-1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote750" name=
+"footnote750"></a><b>Footnote 750:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag750">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 385.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote751" name=
+"footnote751"></a><b>Footnote 751:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag751">(return)</a>
+<p>Waldron, <i>Isle of Man</i>, 49; Train, <i>Account of the Isle
+of Man</i>, ii. 124.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote752" name=
+"footnote752"></a><b>Footnote 752:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag752">(return)</a>
+<p>Vallancey, <i>Coll. de Reb. Hib.</i> iv. No. 13; Cl&eacute;ment,
+<i>F&eacute;tes</i>, 466. For English customs, see Henderson,
+<i>Folklore of the Northern Counties</i>, 125.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote753" name=
+"footnote753"></a><b>Footnote 753:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag753">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, ii. 380, 441, 446.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote754" name=
+"footnote754"></a><b>Footnote 754:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag754">(return)</a>
+<p>For other Welsh instances of the danger of killing certain
+birds, see Thomas, <i>op. cit.</i> xxxviii. 306.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote755" name=
+"footnote755"></a><b>Footnote 755:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag755">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>Kingship</i>, 261; Stokes, <i>RC</i> xvi. 418;
+Larminie, <i>Myths and Folk-tales</i>, 327.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote756" name=
+"footnote756"></a><b>Footnote 756:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag756">(return)</a>
+<p>See Rh[^y]s, <i>Welsh People</i>, 44; Livy, v. 34.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote757" name=
+"footnote757"></a><b>Footnote 757:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag757">(return)</a>
+<p>Cf. <i>IT</i> iii. 407, 409.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote758" name=
+"footnote758"></a><b>Footnote 758:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag758">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, v. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote759" name=
+"footnote759"></a><b>Footnote 759:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag759">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 5. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote760" name=
+"footnote760"></a><b>Footnote 760:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag760">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Jerome, <i>Adv. Jovin.</i> ii. 7. Giraldus
+has much to say of incest in Wales, probably actual breaches of
+moral law among a barbarous people (<i>Descr. Wales</i>, ii.
+6).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote761" name=
+"footnote761"></a><b>Footnote 761:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag761">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 235, 238, xv. 291, xvi. 149; <i>LL</i>
+23<i>a</i>, 124<i>b</i>. In various Irish texts a child is said to
+have three fathers&mdash;probably a reminiscence of polyandry. See
+p. <a href="#page74">74</a>, <i>supra</i>, and <i>RC</i> xxiii.
+333.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote762" name=
+"footnote762"></a><b>Footnote 762:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag762">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 136; Loth, i. 134 f.; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 308.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote763" name=
+"footnote763"></a><b>Footnote 763:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag763">(return)</a>
+<p>Zimmer, "Matriarchy among the Picts," in Henderson, <i>Leadbhar
+nan Gleann</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote764" name=
+"footnote764"></a><b>Footnote 764:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag764">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page259">259</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote765" name=
+"footnote765"></a><b>Footnote 765:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag765">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page274">274</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id=
+"page227"></a>{227}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap15" id="chap15">CHAPTER XV.</a></h2>
+<h3>COSMOGONY.</h3>
+<p>Whether the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and
+wife is uncertain. Such a conception is world-wide, and myth
+frequently explains in different ways the reason of the separation
+of the two. Among the Polynesians the children of heaven and
+earth&mdash;the winds, forests, and seas personified&mdash;angry at
+being crushed between their parents in darkness, rose up and
+separated them. This is in effect the Greek myth of Uranus, or
+Heaven, and G&aelig;a, or Earth, divorced by their son Kronos, just
+as in Hindu myth Dyaus, or Sky, and Prithivi, or Earth, were
+separated by Indra. Uranus in Greece gave place to Zeus, and, in
+India, Dyaus became subordinate to Indra. Thus the primitive Heaven
+personified recedes, and his place is taken by a more
+individualised god. But generally Mother Earth remains a constant
+quantity. Earth was nearer man and was more unchanging than the
+inconstant sky, while as the producer of the fruits of the earth,
+she was regarded as the source of all things, and frequently
+remained as an important divinity when a crowd of other divinities
+became prominent. This is especially true of agricultural peoples,
+who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her with orgiastic
+rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing
+civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of
+man, and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id=
+"page228"></a>{228}</span> rejoicing like man himself. Or where a
+higher religion ousts the older one, the ritual is still retained
+among the folk, though its meaning may be forgotten.</p>
+<p>The Celts may thus have possessed the Heaven and Earth myth, but
+all trace of it has perished. There are, however, remnants of myths
+showing how the sky is supported by trees, a mountain, or by
+pillars. A high mountain near the sources of the Rhone was called
+"the column of the sun," and was so lofty as to hide the sun from
+the people of the south.<a id="footnotetag766" name=
+"footnotetag766"></a><a href="#footnote766"><sup>766</sup></a> It
+may have been regarded as supporting the sky, while the sun moved
+round it. In an old Irish hymn and its gloss, Brigit and Patrick
+are compared to the two pillars of the world, probably alluding to
+some old myth of sky or earth resting on pillars.<a id=
+"footnotetag767" name="footnotetag767"></a><a href=
+"#footnote767"><sup>767</sup></a> Traces of this also exist in
+folk-belief, as in the accounts of islands resting on four pillars,
+or as in the legend of the church of Kernitou which rests on four
+pillars on a congealed sea and which will be submerged when the sea
+liquefies&mdash;a combination of the cosmogonic myth with that of a
+great inundation.<a id="footnotetag768" name=
+"footnotetag768"></a><a href="#footnote768"><sup>768</sup></a> In
+some mythologies a bridge or ladder connects heaven and earth.
+There may be a survival of some such myth in an Irish poem which
+speaks of the <i>drochet bethad</i>, or "bridge of life," or in the
+<i>drochaid na flaitheanas</i>, or "bridge of heaven," of Hebridean
+folk-lore.<a id="footnotetag769" name="footnotetag769"></a><a href=
+"#footnote769"><sup>769</sup></a></p>
+<p>Those gods who were connected with the sky may have been held to
+dwell there or on the mountain supporting it. Others, like the
+Celtic Dispater, dwelt underground. Some were connected with mounds
+and hills, or were supposed to have taken up their abode in them.
+Others, again, dwelt in a distant region, the Celtic Elysium,
+which, once the Celts reached the sea, became a far-off island.
+Those divinities <span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id=
+"page229"></a>{229}</span> worshipped in groves were believed to
+dwell there and to manifest themselves at midday or midnight, while
+such objects of nature as rivers, wells, and trees were held to be
+the abode of gods or spirits. Thus it is doubtful whether the Celts
+ever thought of their gods as dwelling in one Olympus. The Tuatha
+D&eacute; Danann are said to have come from heaven, but this may be
+the mere assertion of some scribe who knew not what to make of this
+group of beings.</p>
+<p>In Celtic belief men were not so much created by gods as
+descended from them. "All the Gauls assert that they are descended
+from Dispater, and this, they say, has been handed down to them by
+the Druids."<a id="footnotetag770" name=
+"footnotetag770"></a><a href="#footnote770"><sup>770</sup></a>
+Dispater was a Celtic underworld god of fertility, and the
+statement probably presupposes a myth, like that found among many
+primitive peoples, telling how men once lived underground and
+thence came to the surface of the earth. But it also points to
+their descent from the god of the underworld. Thither the dead
+returned to him who was ancestor of the living as well as lord of
+the dead.<a id="footnotetag771" name="footnotetag771"></a><a href=
+"#footnote771"><sup>771</sup></a> On the other hand, if the earth
+had originally been thought of as a female, she as Earth-mother
+would be ancestress of men. But her place in the myth would easily
+be taken by the Earth or Under-earth god, perhaps regarded as her
+son or her consort. In other cases, clans, families, or individuals
+often traced their descent to gods or divine animals or plants.
+Classical writers occasionally speak of the origin of branches of
+the Celtic race from eponymous founders, perhaps from their
+knowledge of existing Celtic myths.<a id="footnotetag772" name=
+"footnotetag772"></a><a href="#footnote772"><sup>772</sup></a>
+Ammianus Marcellinus also reports a Druidic tradition to the effect
+that some Gauls were indigenous, some had come from distant
+islands, and others from beyond the Rhine.<a id="footnotetag773"
+name="footnotetag773"></a><a href="#footnote773"><sup>773</sup></a>
+But this is not so much a myth of origins, as an explanation of the
+presence of different peoples in Gaul&mdash;the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>{230}</span>
+aborigines, the Celt&aelig;, and the Belgic Gauls. M. D'Arbois
+assumes that "distant islands" means the Celtic Elysium, which he
+regards as the land of the dead,<a id="footnotetag774" name=
+"footnotetag774"></a><a href="#footnote774"><sup>774</sup></a> but
+the phrase is probably no more than a distorted reminiscence of the
+far-off lands whence early groups of Celts had reached Gaul.</p>
+<p>Of the creation of the world no complete myth has survived,
+though from a gloss to the <i>Senchus M&oacute;r</i> we learn that
+the Druids, like the Br[=a]hmans, boasted that they had made sun,
+moon, earth, and sea&mdash;a boast in keeping with their supposed
+powers over the elements.<a id="footnotetag775" name=
+"footnotetag775"></a><a href="#footnote775"><sup>775</sup></a>
+Certain folk-beliefs, regarding the origin of different parts of
+nature, bear a close resemblance to primitive cosmogonic myths, and
+they may be taken as <i>disjecta membra</i> of similar myths held
+by the Celts and perhaps taught by the Druids. Thus sea, rivers, or
+springs arose from the micturition of a giant, fairy, or saint, or
+from their sweat or blood. Islands are rocks cast by giants, and
+mountains are the material thrown up by them as they were working
+on the earth. Wells sprang up from the blood of a martyr or from
+the touch of a saint's or a fairy's staff.<a id="footnotetag776"
+name="footnotetag776"></a><a href="#footnote776"><sup>776</sup></a>
+The sea originated from a magic cask given by God to a woman. The
+spigot, when opened, could not be closed again, and the cask never
+ceased running until the waters covered the earth&mdash;a tale with
+savage parallels.<a id="footnotetag777" name=
+"footnotetag777"></a><a href="#footnote777"><sup>777</sup></a> In
+all these cases, giant, saint, or fairy has doubtless taken the
+place of a god, since the stories have a very primitive
+<i>facies</i>. The giant is frequently Gargantua, probably himself
+once a divinity. Other references in Irish texts point to the
+common cosmogonic myth of the earth having gradually <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>{231}</span> assumed
+its present form. Thus many new lakes and plains are said to have
+been formed in Ireland during the time of Partholan and Nemed, the
+plains being apparently built up out of existing materials.<a id=
+"footnotetag778" name="footnotetag778"></a><a href=
+"#footnote778"><sup>778</sup></a> In some cases the formation of a
+lake was the result of digging the grave of some personage after
+whom the lake was then named.<a id="footnotetag779" name=
+"footnotetag779"></a><a href="#footnote779"><sup>779</sup></a> Here
+we come upon the familiar idea of the danger of encroaching on the
+domain of a deity, <i>e.g.</i> that of the Earth-god, by digging
+the earth, with the consequent punishment by a flood. The same
+conception is found in Celtic stories of a lake or river formed
+from the overflowing of a sacred well through human carelessness or
+curiosity, which led to the anger of the divinity of the
+well.<a id="footnotetag780" name="footnotetag780"></a><a href=
+"#footnote780"><sup>780</sup></a> Or, again, a town or castle is
+submerged on account of the wickedness of its inhabitants, the
+waters being produced by the curse of God or a saint (replacing a
+pagan god) and forming a lake.<a id="footnotetag781" name=
+"footnotetag781"></a><a href="#footnote781"><sup>781</sup></a>
+These may be regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in
+one case, that of the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved
+Dwyvan and Dwyfach and a pair of all kinds of animals when Lake
+Llion overflowed, has apparently borrowed from the Biblical
+story.<a id="footnotetag782" name="footnotetag782"></a><a href=
+"#footnote782"><sup>782</sup></a> In other cases lakes are formed
+from the tears of a god, <i>e.g.</i> Manannan, whose tears at the
+death of his son formed three lochs in Erin.<a id="footnotetag783"
+name="footnotetag783"></a><a href="#footnote783"><sup>783</sup></a>
+Apollonius reports that the waters of Eridanus originated from the
+tears of Apollo when driven from heaven by his father.<a id=
+"footnotetag784" name="footnotetag784"></a><a href=
+"#footnote784"><sup>784</sup></a> This story, which he says is
+Celtic, has been clothed by him in a Greek form, and the god in
+question may have been Belenos, equated with Apollo. Sometimes the
+formation of streams was ascribed to great hail-storms&mdash;an
+evident mythic rendering of the damage done by actual spates, while
+the Irish myths of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id=
+"page232"></a>{232}</span> "illimitable sea-bursts," of which three
+particular instances are often mentioned, were doubtless the result
+of the experience of tidal waves.</p>
+<p>Although no complete account of the end of all things, like that
+of the Scandinavian Ragnarok, has survived, scattered hints tell of
+its former existence. Strabo says that the Druids taught that "fire
+and water must one day prevail"&mdash;an evident belief in some
+final cataclysm.<a id="footnotetag785" name=
+"footnotetag785"></a><a href="#footnote785"><sup>785</sup></a> This
+is also hinted at in the words of certain Gauls to Alexander,
+telling him that what they feared most of all was the fall of the
+heavens upon their heads.<a id="footnotetag786" name=
+"footnotetag786"></a><a href="#footnote786"><sup>786</sup></a> In
+other words, they feared what would be the signal of the end of all
+things. On Irish ground the words of Conchobar may refer to this.
+He announced that he would rescue the captives and spoil taken by
+Medb, unless the heavens fell, and the earth burst open, and the
+sea engulphed all things.<a id="footnotetag787" name=
+"footnotetag787"></a><a href="#footnote787"><sup>787</sup></a> Such
+a myth mingled with Christian beliefs may underlie the prophecy of
+Badb after Mag-tured regarding the evils to come and the end of the
+world, and that of Fercertne in the <i>Colloquy of the Two
+Sages</i>.<a id="footnotetag788" name="footnotetag788"></a><a href=
+"#footnote788"><sup>788</sup></a> Both have a curious resemblance
+to the Sybil's prophecy of doom in the Voluspa. If the gods
+themselves were involved in such a catastrophe, it would not be
+surprising, since in some aspects their immortality depended on
+their eating and drinking immortal food and drink.<a id=
+"footnotetag789" name="footnotetag789"></a><a href=
+"#footnote789"><sup>789</sup></a></p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote766" name=
+"footnote766"></a><b>Footnote 766:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag766">(return)</a>
+<p>Avienus, <i>Ora Maritima</i>, 644 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote767" name=
+"footnote767"></a><b>Footnote 767:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag767">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 25; Gaidoz, <i>ZCP</i> i. 27.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote768" name=
+"footnote768"></a><b>Footnote 768:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag768">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Annales de Bretagne</i>, x. 414.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote769" name=
+"footnote769"></a><b>Footnote 769:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag769">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 50, cf. 184; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vi. 170.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote770" name=
+"footnote770"></a><b>Footnote 770:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag770">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote771" name=
+"footnote771"></a><b>Footnote 771:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag771">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page341">341</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote772" name=
+"footnote772"></a><b>Footnote 772:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag772">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 24; Appian, <i>Illyrica</i>, 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote773" name=
+"footnote773"></a><b>Footnote 773:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag773">(return)</a>
+<p>Amm. Marcel, xv. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote774" name=
+"footnote774"></a><b>Footnote 774:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag774">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote775" name=
+"footnote775"></a><b>Footnote 775:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag775">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is said
+to have been created thus&mdash;his body of earth, his blood of the
+sea, his face of the sun, his breath of the wind, etc. This is also
+found in a Frisian tale (Vigfusson-Powell, <i>Corpus Poet. Bor.</i>
+i. 479), and both stories present an inversion of well-known myths
+about the creation of the universe from the members of a giant.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote776" name=
+"footnote776"></a><b>Footnote 776:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag776">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf.
+<i>RC</i> xv. 482, xvi. 152.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote777" name=
+"footnote777"></a><b>Footnote 777:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag777">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote778" name=
+"footnote778"></a><b>Footnote 778:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag778">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 56; Keating, 117, 123.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote779" name=
+"footnote779"></a><b>Footnote 779:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag779">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 429, xvi. 277.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote780" name=
+"footnote780"></a><b>Footnote 780:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag780">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page191">191</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote781" name=
+"footnote781"></a><b>Footnote 781:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag781">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. <a href=
+"#page372">372</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote782" name=
+"footnote782"></a><b>Footnote 782:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag782">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Triads</i> in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 583,
+663.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote783" name=
+"footnote783"></a><b>Footnote 783:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag783">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 50, 146.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote784" name=
+"footnote784"></a><b>Footnote 784:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag784">(return)</a>
+<p>Apoll. iv. 609 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote785" name=
+"footnote785"></a><b>Footnote 785:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag785">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote786" name=
+"footnote786"></a><b>Footnote 786:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag786">(return)</a>
+<p>Arrian, <i>Anab.</i> i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian,
+85.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote787" name=
+"footnote787"></a><b>Footnote 787:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag787">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 94; Miss Hull, 205.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote788" name=
+"footnote788"></a><b>Footnote 788:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag788">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 111, xxvi. 33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote789" name=
+"footnote789"></a><b>Footnote 789:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag789">(return)</a>
+<p>A possible survival of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da
+Derga's Hostel" (<i>RC</i> xxii. 54), where we hear of Leviathan
+that surrounds the globe and strikes with his tail to overwhelm the
+world. But this may be a reflection of Norse myths of the Midgard
+serpent, sometimes equated with Leviathan.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id=
+"page233"></a>{233}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap16" id="chap16">CHAPTER XVI.</a></h2>
+<h3>SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION.</h3>
+<p>The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the
+matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical
+evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They
+offered human victims on the principle of a life for a life, or to
+propitiate the gods, or in order to divine the future from the
+entrails of the victim. We shall examine the Celtic custom of human
+sacrifice from these points of view first.</p>
+<p>C&aelig;sar says that those afflicted with disease or engaged in
+battle or danger offer human victims or vow to do so, because
+unless man's life be given for man's life, the divinity of the gods
+cannot be appeased.<a id="footnotetag790" name=
+"footnotetag790"></a><a href="#footnote790"><sup>790</sup></a> The
+theory appears to have been that the gods sent disease or ills when
+they desired a human life, but that any life would do; hence one in
+danger might escape by offering another in his stead. In some cases
+the victims may have been offered to disease demons or diseases
+personified, such as Celtic imagination still believes in,<a id=
+"footnotetag791" name="footnotetag791"></a><a href=
+"#footnote791"><sup>791</sup></a> rather than to gods, or, again,
+they may have been offered to native gods of healing. Coming danger
+could also be averted on the same principle, and though the victims
+were usually slaves, in times of great peril wives and children
+were sacrificed.<a id="footnotetag792" name=
+"footnotetag792"></a><a href="#footnote792"><sup>792</sup></a>
+After a defeat, which showed that the gods were still implacable,
+the wounded and feeble were slain, or a great leader would
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id=
+"page234"></a>{234}</span> offer himself.<a id="footnotetag793"
+name="footnotetag793"></a><a href="#footnote793"><sup>793</sup></a>
+Or in such a case the Celts would turn their weapons against
+themselves, making of suicide a kind of sacrifice, hoping to bring
+victory to the survivors.<a id="footnotetag794" name=
+"footnotetag794"></a><a href="#footnote794"><sup>794</sup></a></p>
+<p>The idea of the victim being offered on the principle of a life
+for a life is illustrated by a custom at Marseilles in time of
+pestilence. One of the poorer classes offered himself to be kept at
+the public expense for some time. He was then led in procession,
+clad in sacred boughs, and solemnly cursed, and prayer was made
+that on him might fall the evils of the community. Then he was cast
+headlong down. Here the victim stood for the lives of the city and
+was a kind of scape-victim, like those at the Thargelia.<a id=
+"footnotetag795" name="footnotetag795"></a><a href=
+"#footnote795"><sup>795</sup></a></p>
+<p>Human victims were also offered by way of thanksgiving after
+victory, and vows were often made before a battle, promising these
+as well as part of the spoil. For this reason the Celts would never
+ransom their captives, but offered them in sacrifice, animals
+captured being immolated along with them.<a id="footnotetag796"
+name="footnotetag796"></a><a href="#footnote796"><sup>796</sup></a>
+The method of sacrifice was slaughter by sword or spear, hanging,
+impaling, dismembering, and drowning. Some gods were propitiated by
+one particular mode of sacrifice&mdash;Taranis by burning, Teutates
+by suffocation, Esus (perhaps a tree-god) by hanging on a tree.
+Drowning meant devoting the victim to water-divinities.<a id=
+"footnotetag797" name="footnotetag797"></a><a href=
+"#footnote797"><sup>797</sup></a></p>
+<p>Other propitiatory sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a
+general or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves
+or even members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude
+outline of a human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as
+well as some animal victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says
+that the victims were malefactors who <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>{235}</span> had been
+kept in prison for five years, and that some of them were
+impaled.<a id="footnotetag798" name="footnotetag798"></a><a href=
+"#footnote798"><sup>798</sup></a> This need not mean that the
+holocausts were quinquennial, for they may have been offered
+yearly, at Midsummer, to judge by the ritual of modern
+survivals.<a id="footnotetag799" name="footnotetag799"></a><a href=
+"#footnote799"><sup>799</sup></a> The victims perished in that
+element by which the sun-god chiefly manifested himself, and by the
+sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility
+were promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an
+earlier slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation,
+though their value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence.
+This is suggested by Strabo's words that the greater the number of
+murders the greater would be the fertility of the land, probably
+meaning that there would then be more criminals as sacrificial
+victims.<a id="footnotetag800" name="footnotetag800"></a><a href=
+"#footnote800"><sup>800</sup></a> Varro also speaks of human
+sacrifice to a god equated with Saturn, offered because of all
+seeds the human race is the best, <i>i.e.</i> human victims are
+most productive of fertility.<a id="footnotetag801" name=
+"footnotetag801"></a><a href="#footnote801"><sup>801</sup></a>
+Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a propitiatory
+sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious ritual
+springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both
+points of view the intention was the same&mdash;the promotion of
+fertility in field and fold.</p>
+<p>Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by
+Tacitus, who says that "the Druids consult the gods in the
+palpitating entrails of men," and by Strabo, who describes the
+striking down of the victim by the sword and the predicting of the
+future from his convulsive movements.<a id="footnotetag802" name=
+"footnotetag802"></a><a href="#footnote802"><sup>802</sup></a> To
+this we shall return.</p>
+<p>Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were
+amazed at its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>{236}</span> religion
+in a phrase&mdash;<i>druidarum religionem dir&aelig;
+immanitatis</i>.<a id="footnotetag803" name=
+"footnotetag803"></a><a href="#footnote803"><sup>803</sup></a> By
+the year 40 A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered
+symbolically, the Druids pretending to strike them and drawing a
+little blood from them.<a id="footnotetag804" name=
+"footnotetag804"></a><a href="#footnote804"><sup>804</sup></a> Only
+the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called
+philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the
+Celts of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D.<a id=
+"footnotetag805" name="footnotetag805"></a><a href=
+"#footnote805"><sup>805</sup></a> Dio Cassius describes the
+refinements of cruelty practised on female victims (prisoners of
+war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta&mdash;their breasts cut off
+and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their
+bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.<a id=
+"footnotetag806" name="footnotetag806"></a><a href=
+"#footnote806"><sup>806</sup></a> Tacitus speaks of the altars in
+Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish Celts,
+patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such
+practices,<a id="footnotetag807" name="footnotetag807"></a><a href=
+"#footnote807"><sup>807</sup></a> but there is no <i>a priori</i>
+reason which need set them apart from other races on the same level
+of civilisation in this custom. The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate
+the number of the victims, but they certainly attest the existence
+of the practice. From the <i>Dindsenchas</i>, which describes many
+archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of every issue and
+the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm
+Cruaich&mdash;a sacrifice of the first-born,&mdash;and that at one
+festival the prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that
+three-fourths of them perished, not improbably an exaggerated
+memory of orgiastic rites.<a id="footnotetag808" name=
+"footnotetag808"></a><a href="#footnote808"><sup>808</sup></a> Dr.
+Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the mythic
+tales in the <i>Dindsenchas</i>. Yet the tales were doubtless quite
+credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly
+founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation
+sacrifices in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human
+victims may not have been offered on other occasions also.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id=
+"page237"></a>{237}</span>
+<p>The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in
+the poetical version of the cult of Cromm&mdash;</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"Milk and corn</p>
+<p>They would ask from him speedily,</p>
+<p>In return for one-third of their healthy issue."<a id=
+"footnotetag809" name="footnotetag809"></a><a href=
+"#footnote809"><sup>809</sup></a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been
+two-thirds of their children and of the year's supply of corn and
+milk<a id="footnotetag810" name="footnotetag810"></a><a href=
+"#footnote810"><sup>810</sup></a>&mdash;an obvious
+misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain corn
+and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,<a id="footnotetag811" name=
+"footnotetag811"></a><a href="#footnote811"><sup>811</sup></a> but
+there can be no doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice&mdash;the
+offering of an agricultural folk to the divinities who helped or
+retarded growth. Possibly part of the flesh of the victims, at one
+time identified with the god, was buried in the fields or mixed
+with the seed-corn, in order to promote fertility. The blood was
+sprinkled on the image of the god. Such practices were as obnoxious
+to Christian missionaries as they had been to the Roman Government,
+and we learn that S. Patrick preached against "the slaying of yoke
+oxen and milch cows and the burning of the first-born progeny" at
+the Fair of Taillte.<a id="footnotetag812" name=
+"footnotetag812"></a><a href="#footnote812"><sup>812</sup></a> As
+has been seen, the Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda
+story, in which the victim is offered not to a dragon, but to the
+Fomorians, may have received this form from actual ritual in which
+human victims were sacrificed to the Fomorians.<a id=
+"footnotetag813" name="footnotetag813"></a><a href=
+"#footnote813"><sup>813</sup></a> In a Japanese version of the same
+story the maiden is offered to the sea-gods. Another tale suggests
+the offering of human victims to remove blight. In this case the
+land suffers from blight because the adulteress Becuma, married to
+the king of Erin, has pretended to be a virgin. <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>{238}</span> The
+Druids announced that the remedy was to slay the son of an
+undefiled couple and sprinkle the doorposts and the land with his
+blood. Such a youth was found, but at his mother's request a
+two-bellied cow, in which two birds were found, was offered in his
+stead.<a id="footnotetag814" name="footnotetag814"></a><a href=
+"#footnote814"><sup>814</sup></a> In another instance in the
+<i>Dindsenchas</i>, hostages, including the son of a captive
+prince, are offered to remove plagues&mdash;an equivalent to the
+custom of the Gauls.<a id="footnotetag815" name=
+"footnotetag815"></a><a href="#footnote815"><sup>815</sup></a></p>
+<p>Human sacrifices were also offered when the foundation of a new
+building was laid. Such sacrifices are universal, and are offered
+to propitiate the Earth spirits or to provide a ghostly guardian
+for the building. A Celtic legend attaches such a sacrifice to the
+founding of the monastery at Iona. S. Oran agrees to adopt S.
+Columba's advice "to go under the clay of this island to hallow
+it," and as a reward he goes straight to heaven.<a id=
+"footnotetag816" name="footnotetag816"></a><a href=
+"#footnote816"><sup>816</sup></a> The legend is a semi-Christian
+form of the memory of an old pagan custom, and it is attached to
+Oran probably because he was the first to be buried in the island.
+In another version, nothing is said of the sacrifice. The two
+saints are disputing about the other world, and Oran agrees to go
+for three days into the grave to settle the point at issue. At the
+end of that time the grave is opened, and the triumphant Oran
+announces that heaven and hell are not such as they are alleged to
+be. Shocked at his latitudinarian sentiments, Columba ordered earth
+to be piled over him, lest he cause a scandal to the faith, and
+Oran was accordingly buried alive.<a id="footnotetag817" name=
+"footnotetag817"></a><a href="#footnote817"><sup>817</sup></a> In a
+Welsh instance, Vortigern's castle cannot be built, for the stones
+disappear as soon as they are laid. Wise men, probably Druids,
+order the sacrifice of a child born without a father, and the
+sprinkling of the site with his blood.<a id="footnotetag818" name=
+"footnotetag818"></a><a href="#footnote818"><sup>818</sup></a>
+"Groaning hostages" were placed under a fort in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>{239}</span> Ireland,
+and the foundation of the palace of Emain Macha was also laid with
+a human victim.<a id="footnotetag819" name=
+"footnotetag819"></a><a href="#footnote819"><sup>819</sup></a> Many
+similar legends are connected with buildings all over the Celtic
+area, and prove the popularity of the pagan custom. The sacrifice
+of human victims on the funeral pile will be discussed in a later
+chapter.</p>
+<p>Of all these varieties of human sacrifice, those offered for
+fertility, probably at Beltane or Midsummer, were the most
+important. Their propitiatory nature is of later origin, and their
+real intention was to strengthen the divinity by whom the processes
+of growth were directed. Still earlier, one victim represented the
+divinity, slain that his life might be revived in vigour. The earth
+was sprinkled with his blood and fed with his flesh in order to
+fertilise it, and possibly the worshippers partook sacramentally of
+the flesh. Propitiatory holocausts of human victims had taken the
+place of the slain representative of a god, but their value in
+promoting fertility was not forgotten. The sacramental aspect of
+the rite is perhaps to be found in Pliny's words regarding "the
+slaying of a human being as a most religious act and eating the
+flesh as a wholesome remedy" among the Britons.<a id=
+"footnotetag820" name="footnotetag820"></a><a href=
+"#footnote820"><sup>820</sup></a> This may merely refer to
+"medicinal cannibalism," such as still survives in Italy, but the
+passage rather suggests sacramental cannibalism, the eating of part
+of a divine victim, such as existed in Mexico and elsewhere. Other
+acts of cannibalism are referred to by classical writers. Diodorus
+says the Irish ate their enemies, and Pausanias describes the
+eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children among the
+Galatian Celts. Drinking <span class="pagenum"><a name="page240"
+id="page240"></a>{240}</span> out of a skull the blood of slain
+(sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and Livy, and
+Solinus describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood
+of the slain and drinking it.<a id="footnotetag821" name=
+"footnotetag821"></a><a href="#footnote821"><sup>821</sup></a> In
+some of these cases the intention may simply have been to obtain
+the dead enemy's strength, but where a sacrificial victim was
+concerned, the intention probably went further than this. The blood
+of dead relatives was also drunk in order to obtain their virtues,
+or to be brought into closer <i>rapport</i> with them.<a id=
+"footnotetag822" name="footnotetag822"></a><a href=
+"#footnote822"><sup>822</sup></a> This is analogous to the custom
+of blood brotherhood, which also existed among the Celts and
+continued as a survival in the Western Isles until a late
+date.<a id="footnotetag823" name="footnotetag823"></a><a href=
+"#footnote823"><sup>823</sup></a></p>
+<p>One group of Celtic human sacrifices was thus connected with
+primitive agricultural ritual, but the warlike energies of the
+Celts extended the practice. Victims were easily obtained, and
+offered to the gods of war. Yet even these sacrifices preserved
+some trace of the older rite, in which the victim represented a
+divinity or spirit.</p>
+<p>Head-hunting, described in classical writings and in Irish
+texts, had also a sacrificial aspect. The heads of enemies were
+hung at the saddle-bow or fixed on spears, as the conquerors
+returned home with songs of victory.<a id="footnotetag824" name=
+"footnotetag824"></a><a href="#footnote824"><sup>824</sup></a> This
+gruesome picture often recurs in the texts. Thus, after the death
+of C&uacute;chulainn, Conall Cernach returned to Emer with the
+heads of his slayers strung on a withy. He placed each on a stake
+and told Emer the name of the owner. A Celtic <i>oppidum</i> or a
+king's palace must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon
+Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the
+walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id=
+"page241"></a>{241}</span> how he sickened at such a sight, but
+gradually became more accustomed to it.<a id="footnotetag825" name=
+"footnotetag825"></a><a href="#footnote825"><sup>825</sup></a> A
+room in the palace was sometimes a store for such heads, or they
+were preserved in cedar-wood oil or in coffers. They were proudly
+shown to strangers as a record of conquest, but they could not be
+sold for their weight in gold.<a id="footnotetag826" name=
+"footnotetag826"></a><a href="#footnote826"><sup>826</sup></a>
+After a battle a pile of heads was made and the number of the slain
+was counted, and at annual festivals warriors produced the tongues
+of enemies as a record of their prowess.<a id="footnotetag827"
+name="footnotetag827"></a><a href=
+"#footnote827"><sup>827</sup></a></p>
+<p>These customs had a religious aspect. In cutting off a head the
+Celt saluted the gods, and the head was offered to them or to
+ancestral spirits, and sometimes kept in grove or temple.<a id=
+"footnotetag828" name="footnotetag828"></a><a href=
+"#footnote828"><sup>828</sup></a> The name given to the heads of
+the slain in Ireland, the "mast of Macha," shows that they were
+dedicated to her, just as skulls found under an altar had been
+devoted to the Celtic Mars.<a id="footnotetag829" name=
+"footnotetag829"></a><a href="#footnote829"><sup>829</sup></a>
+Probably, as among Dayaks, American Indians, and others, possession
+of a head was a guarantee that the ghost of its owner would be
+subservient to its Celtic possessor, either in this world or in the
+next, since they are sometimes found buried in graves along with
+the dead.<a id="footnotetag830" name="footnotetag830"></a><a href=
+"#footnote830"><sup>830</sup></a> Or, suspended in temples, they
+became an actual and symbolical offering of the life of their
+owners, if, as is probable, the life or soul was thought to be in
+the head. Hence, too, the custom of drinking from the skull of the
+slain had the intention of transferring his powers directly to the
+drinker.<a id="footnotetag831" name="footnotetag831"></a><a href=
+"#footnote831"><sup>831</sup></a> Milk drunk from the skull of
+Conall Cernach restored to enfeebled warriors <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>{242}</span> their
+pristine strength,<a id="footnotetag832" name=
+"footnotetag832"></a><a href="#footnote832"><sup>832</sup></a> and
+a folk-survival in the Highlands&mdash;that of drinking from the
+skull of a suicide (here taking the place of the slain enemy) in
+order to restore health&mdash;shows the same idea at work. All
+these practices had thus one end, that of the transference of
+spirit force&mdash;to the gods, to the victor who suspended the
+head from his house, and to all who drank from the skull.
+Represented in bas-relief on houses or carved on dagger-handles,
+the head may still have been thought to possess talismanic
+properties, giving power to house or weapon. Possibly this cult of
+human heads may have given rise to the idea of a divine head like
+those figured on Gaulish images, or described, <i>e.g.</i>, in the
+story of Bran. His head preserved the land from invasion, until
+Arthur disinterred it,<a id="footnotetag833" name=
+"footnotetag833"></a><a href="#footnote833"><sup>833</sup></a> the
+story being based on the belief that heads or bodies of great
+warriors still had a powerful influence.<a id="footnotetag834"
+name="footnotetag834"></a><a href="#footnote834"><sup>834</sup></a>
+The representation of the head of a god, like his whole image,
+would be thought to possess the same preservative power.</p>
+<p>A possible survival of the sacrifice of the aged may be found in
+a Breton custom of applying a heavy club to the head of old persons
+to lighten their death agonies, the clubs having been formerly used
+to kill them. They are kept in chapels, and are regarded with
+awe.<a id="footnotetag835" name="footnotetag835"></a><a href=
+"#footnote835"><sup>835</sup></a></p>
+<p>Animal victims were also frequently offered. The Galatian Celts
+made a yearly sacrifice to their Artemis of a sheep, goat, or calf,
+purchased with money laid by for each animal caught <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>{243}</span> in the
+chase. Their dogs were feasted and crowned with flowers.<a id=
+"footnotetag836" name="footnotetag836"></a><a href=
+"#footnote836"><sup>836</sup></a> Further details of this ritual
+are unfortunately lacking. Animals captured in war were sacrificed
+to the war-gods by the Gauls, or to a river-god, as when the horses
+of the defeated host were thrown into the Rhine by the Gaulish
+conquerors of Mallius.<a id="footnotetag837" name=
+"footnotetag837"></a><a href="#footnote837"><sup>837</sup></a> We
+have seen that the white oxen sacrificed at the mistletoe ritual
+may once have been representatives of the vegetation-spirit, which
+also animated the oak and the mistletoe. Among the insular Celts
+animal sacrifices are scarcely mentioned in the texts, probably
+through suppression by later scribes, but the lives of Irish saints
+contain a few notices of the custom, <i>e.g.</i> that of S.
+Patrick, which describes the gathering of princes, chiefs, and
+Druids at Tara to sacrifice victims to idols.<a id="footnotetag838"
+name="footnotetag838"></a><a href="#footnote838"><sup>838</sup></a>
+In Ireland the peasantry still kill a sheep or heifer for S. Martin
+on his festival, and ill-luck is thought to follow the
+non-observance of the rite.<a id="footnotetag839" name=
+"footnotetag839"></a><a href="#footnote839"><sup>839</sup></a>
+Similar sacrifices on saints' days in Scotland and Wales occurred
+in Christian times.<a id="footnotetag840" name=
+"footnotetag840"></a><a href="#footnote840"><sup>840</sup></a> An
+excellent instance is that of the sacrifice of bulls at Gairloch
+for the cure of lunatics on S. Maelrubha's day (August 25th).
+Libations of milk were also poured out on the hills, ruined chapels
+were perambulated, wells and stones worshipped, and divination
+practised. These rites, occurring in the seventeenth century, were
+condemned by the Presbytery of Dingwall, but with little effect,
+and some of them still survive.<a id="footnotetag841" name=
+"footnotetag841"></a><a href="#footnote841"><sup>841</sup></a> In
+all these cases the saint has succeeded to the ritual of an earlier
+god. Mr. Cook surmises that S. Maelrubha was the successor of a
+divine king connected with an oak and sacred well, the god or
+spirit of which was incarnate in him. These divine kings may at one
+time have been <span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id=
+"page244"></a>{244}</span> slain, or a bull, similarly incarnating
+the god or spirit, may have been killed as a surrogate. This
+slaying was at a later time regarded as a sacrifice and connected
+with the cure of madness.<a id="footnotetag842" name=
+"footnotetag842"></a><a href="#footnote842"><sup>842</sup></a> The
+rite would thus be on a parallel with the slaying of the oxen at
+the mistletoe gathering, as already interpreted. Eilean Maree
+(Maelrubha), where the tree and well still exist, was once known as
+Eilean mo righ ("the island of my king"), or Eilean a Mhor Righ
+("of the great king"), the king having been worshipped as a god.
+This piece of corroborative evidence was given by the oldest
+inhabitant to Sir Arthur Mitchell.<a id="footnotetag843" name=
+"footnotetag843"></a><a href="#footnote843"><sup>843</sup></a> The
+people also spoke of the god Mourie.</p>
+<p>Other survivals of animal sacrifice are found in cases of
+cattle-plague, as in Morayshire sixty years ago, in Wales, Devon,
+and the Isle of Man. The victim was burned and its ashes sprinkled
+on the herd, or it was thrown into the sea or over a
+precipice.<a id="footnotetag844" name="footnotetag844"></a><a href=
+"#footnote844"><sup>844</sup></a> Perhaps it was both a
+propitiatory sacrifice and a scape-animal, carrying away the
+disease, though the rite may be connected with the former slaying
+of a divine animal whose death benefited all the cattle of the
+district. In the Hebrides the spirits of earth and air were
+propitiated every quarter by throwing outside the door a cock, hen,
+duck, or cat, which was supposed to be seized by them. If the rite
+was neglected, misfortune was sure to follow. The animal carried
+away evils from the house, and was also a propitiatory
+sacrifice.</p>
+<p>The blood of victims was sprinkled on altars, images, and trees,
+or, as among the Boii, it was placed in a skull adorned with
+gold.<a id="footnotetag845" name="footnotetag845"></a><a href=
+"#footnote845"><sup>845</sup></a> Other libations are known mainly
+from folk-survivals. <span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id=
+"page245"></a>{245}</span> Thus Breton fishermen salute reefs and
+jutting promontories, say prayers, and pour a glass of wine or
+throw a biscuit or an old garment into the sea.<a id=
+"footnotetag846" name="footnotetag846"></a><a href=
+"#footnote846"><sup>846</sup></a> In the Hebrides a curious rite
+was performed on Maundy Thursday. After midnight a man walked into
+the sea, and poured ale or gruel on the waters, at the same time
+singing:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"O God of the sea,</p>
+<p>Put weed in the drawing wave,</p>
+<p>To enrich the ground,</p>
+<p>To shower on us food."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>Those on shore took up the strain in chorus.<a id=
+"footnotetag847" name="footnotetag847"></a><a href=
+"#footnote847"><sup>847</sup></a> Thus the rite was described by
+one who took part in it a century ago, but Martin, writing in the
+seventeenth century, gives other details. The cup of ale was
+offered with the words, "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping
+that you will be so kind as to send plenty of seaweed for enriching
+our ground for the ensuing year." All then went in silence to the
+church and remained there for a time, after which they indulged in
+an orgy out-of-doors. This orgiastic rite may once have included
+the intercourse of the sexes&mdash;a powerful charm for fertility.
+"Shony" was some old sea-god, and another divinity of the sea,
+Brianniul, was sometimes invoked for the same purpose.<a id=
+"footnotetag848" name="footnotetag848"></a><a href=
+"#footnote848"><sup>848</sup></a> Until recently milk was poured on
+"Gruagach stones" in the Hebrides, as an offering to the Gruagach,
+a brownie who watched over herds, and who had taken the place of a
+god.<a id="footnotetag849" name="footnotetag849"></a><a href=
+"#footnote849"><sup>849</sup></a></p>
+<h3>PRAYER.</h3>
+<p>Prayer accompanied most rites, and probably consisted of
+traditional formul&aelig;, on the exact recital of which depended
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id=
+"page246"></a>{246}</span> their value. The Druids invoked a god
+during the mistletoe rite, and at a Galatian sacrifice, offered to
+bring birds to destroy grasshoppers, prayer was made to the birds
+themselves.<a id="footnotetag850" name=
+"footnotetag850"></a><a href="#footnote850"><sup>850</sup></a> In
+Mona, at the Roman invasion, the Druids raised their arms and
+uttered prayers for deliverance, at the same time cursing the
+invaders, and Boudicca invoked the protection of the goddess
+Andrasta in a similar manner.<a id="footnotetag851" name=
+"footnotetag851"></a><a href="#footnote851"><sup>851</sup></a>
+Chants were sung by the "priestesses" of Sena to raise storms, and
+they were also sung by warriors both before and after a battle, to
+the accompaniment of a measured dance and the clashing of
+arms.<a id="footnotetag852" name="footnotetag852"></a><a href=
+"#footnote852"><sup>852</sup></a> These warrior chants were
+composed by bards, and probably included invocations of the
+war-gods and the recital of famous deeds. They may also have been
+of the nature of spells ensuring the help of the gods, like the
+war-cries uttered by a whole army to the sound of trumpets.<a id=
+"footnotetag853" name="footnotetag853"></a><a href=
+"#footnote853"><sup>853</sup></a> These consisted of the name of a
+god, of a tribe or clan, or of some well-known phrase. As the
+recital of a divine name is often supposed to force the god to
+help, these cries had thus a magical aspect, while they also struck
+terror into the foe.<a id="footnotetag854" name=
+"footnotetag854"></a><a href="#footnote854"><sup>854</sup></a>
+Warriors also advanced dancing to the fray, and they are depicted
+on coins dancing on horseback or before a sword, which was
+worshipped by the Celts.<a id="footnotetag855" name=
+"footnotetag855"></a><a href="#footnote855"><sup>855</sup></a> The
+Celtiberian festival at the full moon consisted entirely of
+dancing. The dance is a primitive method of expressing religious
+emotion, and where it imitates certain actions, it is intended by
+magical influence to crown the actions themselves with success. It
+is thus a kind of acted prayer with magical results.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247" id=
+"page247"></a>{247}</span>
+<h3>DIVINATION.</h3>
+<p>A special class of diviners existed among the Celts, but the
+Druids practised divination, as did also the unofficial layman.
+Classical writers speak of the Celts as of all nations the most
+devoted to, and the most experienced in, the science of divination.
+Divination with a human victim is described by Diodorus. Libations
+were poured over him, and he was then slain, auguries being drawn
+from the method of his fall, the movements of his limbs, and the
+flowing of his blood. Divination with the entrails was used in
+Galatia, Gaul, and Britain.<a id="footnotetag856" name=
+"footnotetag856"></a><a href="#footnote856"><sup>856</sup></a>
+Beasts and birds also provided omens. The course taken by a hare
+let loose gave an omen of success to the Britons, and in Ireland
+divination was used with a sacrificial animal.<a id=
+"footnotetag857" name="footnotetag857"></a><a href=
+"#footnote857"><sup>857</sup></a> Among birds the crow was
+pre-eminent, and two crows are represented speaking into the ears
+of a man on a bas-relief at Compi&egrave;gne. The Celts believed
+that the crow had shown where towns should be founded, or had
+furnished a remedy against poison, and it was also an arbiter of
+disputes.<a id="footnotetag858" name="footnotetag858"></a><a href=
+"#footnote858"><sup>858</sup></a> Artemidorus describes how, at a
+certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set
+out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds
+swooped down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He
+whose heap had been scattered won the case.<a id="footnotetag859"
+name="footnotetag859"></a><a href="#footnote859"><sup>859</sup></a>
+Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, and their
+flight furnished auguries, because, as Deiotaurus gravely said,
+birds never lie. Divination by the voices of birds was used by the
+Irish Druids.<a id="footnotetag860" name=
+"footnotetag860"></a><a href="#footnote860"><sup>860</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id=
+"page248"></a>{248}</span>
+<p>Omens were drawn from the direction of the smoke and flames of
+sacred fires and from the condition of the clouds.<a id=
+"footnotetag861" name="footnotetag861"></a><a href=
+"#footnote861"><sup>861</sup></a> Wands of yew were carried by
+Druids&mdash;"the wand of Druidism" of many folk-tales&mdash;and
+were used perhaps as divining-rods. Ogams were also engraved on
+rods of yews, and from these Druids divined hidden things. By this
+means the Druid Dalan discovered where Etain had been hidden by the
+god Mider. The method used may have been that of drawing one of the
+rods by lot and then divining from the marks upon it. A similar
+method was used to discover the route to be taken by invaders, the
+result being supposed to depend on divine interposition.<a id=
+"footnotetag862" name="footnotetag862"></a><a href=
+"#footnote862"><sup>862</sup></a> The knowledge of astronomy
+ascribed by C&aelig;sar to the Druids was probably of a simple
+kind, and much mixed with astrology, and though it furnished the
+data for computing a simple calendar, its use was largely
+magical.<a id="footnotetag863" name="footnotetag863"></a><a href=
+"#footnote863"><sup>863</sup></a> Irish diviners forecast the time
+to build a house by the stars, and the date at which S. Columba's
+education should begin, was similarly discovered.<a id=
+"footnotetag864" name="footnotetag864"></a><a href=
+"#footnote864"><sup>864</sup></a></p>
+<p>The <i>Imbas Forosnai</i>, "illumination between the hands," was
+used by the <i>Fil&eacute;</i> to discover hidden things. He chewed
+a piece of raw flesh and placed it as an offering to the images of
+the gods whom he desired to help him. If enlightenment did not come
+by the next day, he pronounced incantations on his palms, which he
+then placed on his cheeks before falling asleep. The revelation
+followed in a dream, or sometimes after awaking.<a id=
+"footnotetag865" name="footnotetag865"></a><a href=
+"#footnote865"><sup>865</sup></a> Perhaps the animal <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>{249}</span> whose
+flesh was eaten was a sacred one. Another method was that of the
+<i>Teinm Laegha</i>. The <i>Fil&eacute;</i> made a verse and
+repeated it over some person or thing regarding which he sought
+information, or he placed his staff on the person's body and so
+obtained what he sought. The rite was also preceded by sacrifice;
+hence S. Patrick prohibited both it and the <i>Imbas
+Forosnai</i>.<a id="footnotetag866" name=
+"footnotetag866"></a><a href="#footnote866"><sup>866</sup></a>
+Another incantation, the <i>C&eacute;tnad</i>, was sung through the
+fist to discover the track of stolen cattle or of the thief. If
+this did not bring enlightenment, the <i>Fil&eacute;</i> went to
+sleep and obtained the knowledge through a dream.<a id=
+"footnotetag867" name="footnotetag867"></a><a href=
+"#footnote867"><sup>867</sup></a> Another <i>C&eacute;tnad</i> for
+obtaining information regarding length of life was addressed to the
+seven daughters of the sea. Perhaps the incantation was repeated
+mechanically until the seer fell into a kind of trance. Divination
+by dreams was also used by the continental Celts.<a id=
+"footnotetag868" name="footnotetag868"></a><a href=
+"#footnote868"><sup>868</sup></a></p>
+<p>Other methods resemble "trance-utterance." "A great obnubilation
+was conjured up for the bard so that he slept a heavy sleep, and
+things magic-begotten were shewn to him to enunciate," apparently
+in his sleep. This was called "illumination by rhymes," and a
+similar method was used in Wales. When consulted, the seer roared
+violently until he was beside himself, and out of his ravings the
+desired information was gathered. When aroused from this ecstatic
+condition, he had no remembrance of what he had uttered. Giraldus
+reports this, and thinks, with the modern spiritualist, that the
+utterance was caused by spirits.<a id="footnotetag869" name=
+"footnotetag869"></a><a href="#footnote869"><sup>869</sup></a> The
+resemblance to modern trance-utterance and to similar methods used
+by savages is remarkable, and psychological science sees in it the
+promptings of the subliminal self in sleep.</p>
+<p>The <i>taghairm</i> of the Highlanders was a survival from pagan
+times. The seer was usually bound in a cow's hide&mdash;the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id=
+"page250"></a>{250}</span> animal, it may be conjectured, having
+been sacrificed in earlier times. He was left in a desolate place,
+and while he slept spirits were supposed to inspire his
+dreams.<a id="footnotetag870" name="footnotetag870"></a><a href=
+"#footnote870"><sup>870</sup></a> Clothing in the skin of a
+sacrificial animal, by which the person thus clothed is brought
+into contact with it and hence with the divinity to which it is
+offered, or with the divine animal itself where the victim is so
+regarded, is a widespread custom. Hence, in this Celtic usage,
+contact with divinity through the hide would be expected to produce
+enlightenment. For a like reason the Irish sacrificed a sheep for
+the recovery of the sick, and clothed the patient in its
+skin.<a id="footnotetag871" name="footnotetag871"></a><a href=
+"#footnote871"><sup>871</sup></a> Binding the limbs of the seer is
+also a widespread custom, perhaps to restrain his convulsions or to
+concentrate the psychic force.</p>
+<p>Both among the continental and Irish Celts those who sought
+hidden knowledge slept on graves, hoping to be inspired by the
+spirits of the dead.<a id="footnotetag872" name=
+"footnotetag872"></a><a href="#footnote872"><sup>872</sup></a>
+Legend told how, the full version of the <i>T&aacute;in</i> having
+been lost, Murgan the <i>Fil&eacute;</i> sang an incantation over
+the grave of Fergus mac Roig. A cloud hid him for three days, and
+during that time the dead man appeared and recited the saga to
+him.</p>
+<p>In Ireland and the Highlands, divination by looking into the
+shoulder-blade of a sheep was used to discover future events or
+things happening at a distance, a survival from pagan times.<a id=
+"footnotetag873" name="footnotetag873"></a><a href=
+"#footnote873"><sup>873</sup></a> The scholiast on Lucan describes
+the Druidic method of chewing acorns and then prophesying, just as,
+in Ireland, eating nuts from the sacred hazels round Connla's well
+gave inspiration.<a id="footnotetag874" name=
+"footnotetag874"></a><a href="#footnote874"><sup>874</sup></a> The
+"priestesses" of Sena and the "Druidesses" of the third century had
+the gift of prophecy, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id=
+"page251"></a>{251}</span> and it was also ascribed freely to the
+<i>Filid</i>, the Druids, and to Christian saints. Druids are said
+to have prophesied the coming of S. Patrick, and similar prophecies
+are put in the mouths of Fionn and others, just as Montezuma's
+priests foretold the coming of the Spaniards.<a id="footnotetag875"
+name="footnotetag875"></a><a href="#footnote875"><sup>875</sup></a>
+The word used for such prophecies&mdash;<i>baile</i>, means
+"ecstasy," and it suggests that the prophet worked himself into a
+frenzy and then fell into a trance, in which he uttered his
+forecast. Prophecies were also made at the birth of a child,
+describing its future career.<a id="footnotetag876" name=
+"footnotetag876"></a><a href="#footnote876"><sup>876</sup></a>
+Careful attention was given to the utterances of Druidic prophets,
+<i>e.g.</i> Medb's warriors postponed their expedition for fifteen
+days, because the Druids told them they would not succeed if they
+set out sooner.<a id="footnotetag877" name=
+"footnotetag877"></a><a href="#footnote877"><sup>877</sup></a></p>
+<p>Mythical personages or divinities are said in the Irish texts to
+have stood on one leg, with one arm extended, and one eye closed,
+when uttering prophecies or incantations, and this was doubtless an
+attitude used by the seer.<a id="footnotetag878" name=
+"footnotetag878"></a><a href="#footnote878"><sup>878</sup></a> A
+similar method is known elsewhere, and it may have been intended to
+produce greater force. From this attitude may have originated myths
+of beings with one arm, one leg, and one eye, like some Fomorians
+or the <i>Fachan</i> whose weird picture Campbell of Islay drew
+from verbal descriptions.<a id="footnotetag879" name=
+"footnotetag879"></a><a href="#footnote879"><sup>879</sup></a></p>
+<p>Early Celtic saints occasionally describe lapses into heathenism
+in Ireland, not characterised by "idolatry," but by wizardry,
+dealing in charms, and <i>fidlanna</i>, perhaps a kind of
+divination with pieces of wood.<a id="footnotetag880" name=
+"footnotetag880"></a><a href="#footnote880"><sup>880</sup></a> But
+it is much more likely that these had never really been abandoned.
+They belong to the primitive element of religion and magic which
+people cling to long after they have given up "idolatry."</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote790" name=
+"footnote790"></a><b>Footnote 790:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag790">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 16.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote791" name=
+"footnote791"></a><b>Footnote 791:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag791">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 68.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote792" name=
+"footnote792"></a><b>Footnote 792:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag792">(return)</a>
+<p>Justin, xxvi. 2; Pomp. Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote793" name=
+"footnote793"></a><b>Footnote 793:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag793">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. xxii. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote794" name=
+"footnote794"></a><b>Footnote 794:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag794">(return)</a>
+<p>See Jullian, 53.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote795" name=
+"footnote795"></a><b>Footnote 795:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag795">(return)</a>
+<p>Servius on <i>&AElig;neid</i>, iii. 57.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote796" name=
+"footnote796"></a><b>Footnote 796:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag796">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 16; Livy, xxxviii. 47; Diod. Sic. v. 32, xxxi.
+13; Athen&aelig;us, iv. 51; Dio Cass., lxii. 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote797" name=
+"footnote797"></a><b>Footnote 797:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag797">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic, xxxiv. 13; Strabo, iv. 4; Orosius, v. 16; Schol. on
+Lucan, Usener's ed. 32.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote798" name=
+"footnote798"></a><b>Footnote 798:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag798">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 16; Strabo, iv. 4; Diod. Sic. v. 32; Livy,
+xxxviii. 47.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote799" name=
+"footnote799"></a><b>Footnote 799:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag799">(return)</a>
+<p>Mannhardt, <i>Baumkultus</i>, 529 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote800" name=
+"footnote800"></a><b>Footnote 800:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag800">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, <i>ibid.</i> 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote801" name=
+"footnote801"></a><b>Footnote 801:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag801">(return)</a>
+<p>S. Aug. <i>de Civ. Dei</i>, vii. 19.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote802" name=
+"footnote802"></a><b>Footnote 802:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag802">(return)</a>
+<p>Tac. <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote803" name=
+"footnote803"></a><b>Footnote 803:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag803">(return)</a>
+<p>Suet. <i>Claud.</i> 25.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote804" name=
+"footnote804"></a><b>Footnote 804:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag804">(return)</a>
+<p>Pomp. Mela, iii. 2. 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote805" name=
+"footnote805"></a><b>Footnote 805:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag805">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xxx. 4. 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote806" name=
+"footnote806"></a><b>Footnote 806:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag806">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio. Cass. lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote807" name=
+"footnote807"></a><b>Footnote 807:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag807">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 222; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. ch. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote808" name=
+"footnote808"></a><b>Footnote 808:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag808">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 35.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote809" name=
+"footnote809"></a><b>Footnote 809:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag809">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 213<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote810" name=
+"footnote810"></a><b>Footnote 810:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag810">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page52">52</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote811" name=
+"footnote811"></a><b>Footnote 811:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag811">(return)</a>
+<p>See, however, accounts of reckless child sacrifices in Ellis,
+<i>Polynesian Researches</i>, i. 252, and Westermarck, <i>Moral
+Ideas</i>, i. 397.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote812" name=
+"footnote812"></a><b>Footnote 812:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag812">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> Intro, dcxli.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote813" name=
+"footnote813"></a><b>Footnote 813:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag813">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 126<i>a</i>. A folk-version is given by Larminie,
+<i>West Irish Folk-Tales</i>, 139.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote814" name=
+"footnote814"></a><b>Footnote 814:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag814">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Book of Fermoy</i>, 89<i>a</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote815" name=
+"footnote815"></a><b>Footnote 815:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag815">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> Intro. dcxl, ii. 222.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote816" name=
+"footnote816"></a><b>Footnote 816:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag816">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamnan, <i>Vita S. Col.</i> Reeve's ed. 288.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote817" name=
+"footnote817"></a><b>Footnote 817:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag817">(return)</a>
+<p>Carmichael, <i>Carmina Gadelica</i>, ii. 317.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote818" name=
+"footnote818"></a><b>Footnote 818:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag818">(return)</a>
+<p>Nennius, <i>Hist. Brit.</i> 40.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote819" name=
+"footnote819"></a><b>Footnote 819:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag819">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>TIG</i> xli.; O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote820" name=
+"footnote820"></a><b>Footnote 820:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag820">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xxx. 1. The feeding of Ethni, daughter of
+Crimthann, on human flesh that she might sooner attain maturity may
+be an instance of "medicinal cannibalism" (<i>IT</i> iii. 363). The
+eating of parents among the Irish, described by Strabo (iv. 5), was
+an example of "honorific cannibalism." See my article "Cannibalism"
+in Hastings' <i>Encycl. of Rel. and Ethics</i>, iii, 194.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote821" name=
+"footnote821"></a><b>Footnote 821:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag821">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. vi. 12; Paus. x. 22. 3; Amm. Marc. xxvii. 4; Livy,
+xxiii. 24; Solin. xxii. 3.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote822" name=
+"footnote822"></a><b>Footnote 822:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag822">(return)</a>
+<p>This custom continued in Ireland until Spenser's time.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote823" name=
+"footnote823"></a><b>Footnote 823:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag823">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, i. 158; Giraldus, <i>Top. Hib.</i> iii. 22; Martin,
+109.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote824" name=
+"footnote824"></a><b>Footnote 824:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag824">(return)</a>
+<p>Sil. Ital. iv. 213; Diod. Sic. xiv. 115; Livy, x. 26; Strabo,
+iv. 4. 5; Miss Hull, 92.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote825" name=
+"footnote825"></a><b>Footnote 825:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag825">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote826" name=
+"footnote826"></a><b>Footnote 826:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag826">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 11; Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, <i>loc. cit.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote827" name=
+"footnote827"></a><b>Footnote 827:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag827">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Annals of the Four Masters</i>, 864; <i>IT</i> i. 205.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote828" name=
+"footnote828"></a><b>Footnote 828:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag828">(return)</a>
+<p>Sil. Ital. iv. 215, v. 652; Lucan, <i>Phar.</i> i. 447; Livy,
+xxiii. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote829" name=
+"footnote829"></a><b>Footnote 829:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag829">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page71">71</a>, <i>supra</i>; <i>CIL</i> xii.
+1077. A dim memory of head-taking survived in the seventeenth
+century in Eigg, where headless skeletons were found, of which the
+islanders said that an enemy had cut off their heads (Martin,
+277).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote830" name=
+"footnote830"></a><b>Footnote 830:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag830">(return)</a>
+<p>Belloguet, <i>Ethnol. Gaul.</i> iii. 100.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote831" name=
+"footnote831"></a><b>Footnote 831:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag831">(return)</a>
+<p>Sil. Ital. xiii. 482; Livy, xxiii. 24; Florus, i. 39.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote832" name=
+"footnote832"></a><b>Footnote 832:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag832">(return)</a>
+<p><i>ZCP</i> i. 106.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote833" name=
+"footnote833"></a><b>Footnote 833:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag833">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 90 f., ii. 218-219. Sometimes the weapons of a great
+warrior had the same effect. The bows of Gwerthevyr were hidden in
+different parts of Prydein and preserved the land from Saxon
+invasion, until Gwrtheyrn, for love of a woman, dug them up (Loth,
+ii. 218-219).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote834" name=
+"footnote834"></a><b>Footnote 834:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag834">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page338">338</a>, <i>infra</i>. In Ireland, the
+brain of an enemy was taken from the head, mixed with lime, and
+made into a ball. This was allowed to harden, and was then placed
+in the tribal armoury as a trophy.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote835" name=
+"footnote835"></a><b>Footnote 835:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag835">(return)</a>
+<p><i>L'Anthropologie</i>, xii. 206, 711. Cf. the English tradition
+of the "Holy Mawle," said to have been used for the same purpose.
+Thorns, <i>Anecdotes and Traditions</i>, 84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote836" name=
+"footnote836"></a><b>Footnote 836:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag836">(return)</a>
+<p>Arrian, <i>Cyneg.</i> xxxiii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote837" name=
+"footnote837"></a><b>Footnote 837:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag837">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 17; Orosius, v. 16. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote838" name=
+"footnote838"></a><b>Footnote 838:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag838">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, i. 155.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote839" name=
+"footnote839"></a><b>Footnote 839:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag839">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>Tales of the Fairies</i>, 72; <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vii.
+178-179.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote840" name=
+"footnote840"></a><b>Footnote 840:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag840">(return)</a>
+<p>Mitchell, <i>Past in the Present</i>, 275.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote841" name=
+"footnote841"></a><b>Footnote 841:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag841">(return)</a>
+<p>Mitchell, <i>op. cit.</i> 271 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote842" name=
+"footnote842"></a><b>Footnote 842:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag842">(return)</a>
+<p>Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii. 332.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote843" name=
+"footnote843"></a><b>Footnote 843:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag843">(return)</a>
+<p>Mitchell, <i>loc. cit.</i> 147. The corruption of "Maelrubha" to
+"Maree" may have been aided by confusing the name with <i>mo</i> or
+<i>mhor righ</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote844" name=
+"footnote844"></a><b>Footnote 844:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag844">(return)</a>
+<p>Mitchell, <i>loc. cit.</i>; Moore, 92, 145; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i>
+i. 305; Worth, <i>Hist. of Devonshire</i>, 339; Dalyell,
+<i>passim</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote845" name=
+"footnote845"></a><b>Footnote 845:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag845">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, xxiii. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote846" name=
+"footnote846"></a><b>Footnote 846:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag846">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 166-167; <i>L'Anthrop.</i> xv. 729.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote847" name=
+"footnote847"></a><b>Footnote 847:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag847">(return)</a>
+<p>Carmichael, <i>Carm. Gad.</i> i. 163.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote848" name=
+"footnote848"></a><b>Footnote 848:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag848">(return)</a>
+<p>Martin, 28. A scribe called "Sonid," which might be the
+equivalent of "Shony," is mentioned in the Stowe missal
+(<i>Folk-Lore</i>, 1895).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote849" name=
+"footnote849"></a><b>Footnote 849:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag849">(return)</a>
+<p>Campbell, <i>Superstitions</i>, 184 f; <i>Waifs and Strays of
+Celtic Trad.</i> ii. 455.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote850" name=
+"footnote850"></a><b>Footnote 850:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag850">(return)</a>
+<p>Aelian, xvii. 19.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote851" name=
+"footnote851"></a><b>Footnote 851:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag851">(return)</a>
+<p>Tacitus, <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote852" name=
+"footnote852"></a><b>Footnote 852:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag852">(return)</a>
+<p>Appian, <i>Celtica</i>, 8; Livy, xxi. 28, xxxviii. 17, x.
+26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote853" name=
+"footnote853"></a><b>Footnote 853:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag853">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, v. 38, vii. 23; Polybius, ii. 29. Cf. Watteville, <i>Le
+cri de guerre chez les differents peuples</i>, Paris, 1889.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote854" name=
+"footnote854"></a><b>Footnote 854:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag854">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, v. 38.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote855" name=
+"footnote855"></a><b>Footnote 855:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag855">(return)</a>
+<p>Appian, vi. 53; Muret et Chabouillet, <i>Catalogue des monnaies
+gauloises</i>, 6033 f., 6941 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote856" name=
+"footnote856"></a><b>Footnote 856:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag856">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. v. 31; Justin, xxvi. 2, 4; Cicero, <i>de Div.</i> ii. 36,
+76; Tac. <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30; Strabo, iii. 3. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote857" name=
+"footnote857"></a><b>Footnote 857:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag857">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxii. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote858" name=
+"footnote858"></a><b>Footnote 858:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag858">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>Catal. Sommaire</i>, 31; Pseudo-Plutarch, <i>de
+Fluviis</i>, vi. 4; <i>Mirab. Auscult.</i> 86.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote859" name=
+"footnote859"></a><b>Footnote 859:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag859">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 4. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote860" name=
+"footnote860"></a><b>Footnote 860:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag860">(return)</a>
+<p>Justin, xxiv, 4; Cicero, <i>de Div.</i> i. 15. 26. (Cf. the two
+magic crows which announced the coming of C&uacute;chulainn to the
+other world (D'Arbois, v. 203); Irish <i>Nennius</i>, 145; O'Curry,
+<i>MC</i> ii. 224; cf. for a Welsh instance, Skene, i. 433.)</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote861" name=
+"footnote861"></a><b>Footnote 861:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag861">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 229; O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 224, <i>MS
+Mat.</i> 284.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote862" name=
+"footnote862"></a><b>Footnote 862:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag862">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 129; Livy, v. 34; Loth, <i>RC</i> xvi. 314. The
+Irish for consulting a lot is <i>crann-chur</i>, "the act of
+casting wood."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote863" name=
+"footnote863"></a><b>Footnote 863:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag863">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote864" name=
+"footnote864"></a><b>Footnote 864:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag864">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 46, 224; Stokes, <i>Three Irish
+Homilies</i>, 103.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote865" name=
+"footnote865"></a><b>Footnote 865:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag865">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, 94. Fionn's divination by chewing his thumb is called
+<i>Imbas Forosnai</i> (<i>RC</i> xxv. 347).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote866" name=
+"footnote866"></a><b>Footnote 866:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag866">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 45.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote867" name=
+"footnote867"></a><b>Footnote 867:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag867">(return)</a>
+<p>Hyde, <i>Lit. Hist. of Ireland</i>, 241.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote868" name=
+"footnote868"></a><b>Footnote 868:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag868">(return)</a>
+<p>Justin, xliii. 5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote869" name=
+"footnote869"></a><b>Footnote 869:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag869">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 362; Giraldus, <i>Descr. Camb.</i> i. 11.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote870" name=
+"footnote870"></a><b>Footnote 870:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag870">(return)</a>
+<p>Pennant, <i>Tour in Scotland</i>, i. 311; Martin, 111.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote871" name=
+"footnote871"></a><b>Footnote 871:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag871">(return)</a>
+<p>Richardson, <i>Folly of Pilgrimages</i>, 70.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote872" name=
+"footnote872"></a><b>Footnote 872:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag872">(return)</a>
+<p>Tertullian, <i>de Anima</i>, 57; <i>Coll. de Reb. Hib.</i> iii.
+334.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote873" name=
+"footnote873"></a><b>Footnote 873:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag873">(return)</a>
+<p>Campbell, <i>Superstitions</i>, 263; Curtin, <i>Tales</i>,
+84.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote874" name=
+"footnote874"></a><b>Footnote 874:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag874">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, ed. Usener, 33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote875" name=
+"footnote875"></a><b>Footnote 875:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag875">(return)</a>
+<p>See examples in O'Curry, <i>MS Mat.</i> 383 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote876" name=
+"footnote876"></a><b>Footnote 876:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag876">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 19, 20, 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote877" name=
+"footnote877"></a><b>Footnote 877:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag877">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 55.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote878" name=
+"footnote878"></a><b>Footnote 878:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag878">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 98, xxi. 156, xxii. 61.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote879" name=
+"footnote879"></a><b>Footnote 879:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag879">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 432; <i>Annals of the Four Masters</i>, A.M. 2530;
+Campbell, <i>WHT</i> iv. 298.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote880" name=
+"footnote880"></a><b>Footnote 880:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag880">(return)</a>
+<p>See "Adamnan's Second Vision." <i>RC</i> xii. 441.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id=
+"page252"></a>{252}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap17" id="chap17">CHAPTER XVII.</a></h2>
+<h3>TABU.</h3>
+<p>The Irish <i>geis</i>, pl. <i>geasa</i>, which may be rendered
+by Tabu, had two senses. It meant something which must not be done
+for fear of disastrous consequences, and also an obligation to do
+something commanded by another.</p>
+<p>As a tabu the <i>geis</i> had a large place in Irish life, and
+was probably known to other branches of the Celts.<a id=
+"footnotetag881" name="footnotetag881"></a><a href=
+"#footnote881"><sup>881</sup></a> It followed the general course of
+tabu wherever found. Sometimes it was imposed before birth, or it
+was hereditary, or connected with totemism. Legends, however, often
+arose giving a different explanation to <i>geasa</i>, long after
+the customs in which they originated had been forgotten. It was one
+of Diarmaid's <i>geasa</i> not to hunt the boar of Ben Gulban, and
+this was probably totemic in origin. But legend told how his father
+killed a child, the corpse being changed into a boar by the child's
+father, who said its span of life would be the same as Diarmaid's,
+and that he would be slain by it. Oengus put <i>geasa</i> on
+Diarmaid not to hunt it, but at Fionn's desire he broke these, and
+was killed.<a id="footnotetag882" name=
+"footnotetag882"></a><a href="#footnote882"><sup>882</sup></a>
+Other <i>geasa</i>&mdash;those of C&uacute;chulainn not to eat
+dog's flesh, and of Conaire never to chase birds&mdash;also point
+to totemism.</p>
+<p>In some cases <i>geasa</i> were based on ideas of right and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id=
+"page253"></a>{253}</span> wrong, honour or dishonour, or were
+intended to cause avoidance of unlucky days. Others are
+unintelligible to us. The largest number of <i>geasa</i> concerned
+kings and chiefs, and are described, along with their corresponding
+privileges, in the <i>Book of Rights</i>. Some of the <i>geasa</i>
+of the king of Connaught were not to go to an assembly of women at
+Leaghair, not to sit in autumn on the sepulchral mound of the wife
+of Maine, not to go in a grey-speckled garment on a grey-speckled
+horse to the heath of Cruachan, and the like.<a id="footnotetag883"
+name="footnotetag883"></a><a href="#footnote883"><sup>883</sup></a>
+The meaning of these is obscure, but other examples are more
+obvious and show that all alike corresponded to the tabus applying
+to kings in primitive societies, who are often magicians, priests,
+or even divine representatives. On them the welfare of the tribe
+and the making of rain or sunshine, and the processes of growth
+depend. They must therefore be careful of their actions, and hence
+they are hedged about with tabus which, however unmeaning, have a
+direct connection with their powers. Out of such conceptions the
+Irish kingly <i>geasa</i> arose. Their observance made the earth
+fruitful, produced abundance and prosperity, and kept both the king
+and his land from misfortune. In later times these were supposed to
+be dependent on the "goodness" or the reverse of the king, but this
+was a departure from the older idea, which is clearly stated in the
+<i>Book of Rights</i>.<a id="footnotetag884" name=
+"footnotetag884"></a><a href="#footnote884"><sup>884</sup></a> The
+kings were divinities on whom depended fruitfulness and plenty, and
+who must therefore submit to obey their <i>geasa</i>. Some of their
+prerogatives seem also to be connected with this state of things.
+Thus they might eat of certain foods or go to certain places on
+particular days.<a id="footnotetag885" name=
+"footnotetag885"></a><a href="#footnote885"><sup>885</sup></a> In
+primitive societies kings and priests often prohibit ordinary
+mortals from eating things which they desire for themselves by
+making them <i>tabu</i>, and <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page254" id="page254"></a>{254}</span> in other cases the fruits
+of the earth can only be eaten after king or priest has partaken of
+them ceremonially. This may have been the case in Ireland. The
+privilege relating to places may have meant that these were sacred
+and only to be entered by the king at certain times and in his
+sacred capacity.</p>
+<p>As a reflection from this state of things, the heroes of the
+sagas, C&uacute;chulainn and Fionn, had numerous <i>geasa</i>
+applicable to themselves, some of them religious, some magical,
+others based on primitive ideas of honour, others perhaps the
+invention of the narrators.<a id="footnotetag886" name=
+"footnotetag886"></a><a href="#footnote886"><sup>886</sup></a></p>
+<p><i>Geasa</i>, whether in the sense of tabus or of obligations,
+could be imposed by any one, and must be obeyed, for disobedience
+produced disastrous effects. Probably the obligation was framed as
+an incantation or spell, and the power of the spell being fully
+believed in, obedience would follow as a matter of course.<a id=
+"footnotetag887" name="footnotetag887"></a><a href=
+"#footnote887"><sup>887</sup></a> Examples of such <i>geasa</i> are
+numerous in Irish literature. C&uacute;chulainn's father-in-law put
+<i>geasa</i> on him that he should know no rest until he found out
+the cause of the exile of the sons of Doel. And Grainne put
+<i>geasa</i> on Diarmaid that he should elope with her, and this he
+did, though the act was repugnant to him.</p>
+<p>Among savages the punishment which is supposed to follow
+tabu-breaking is often produced through auto-suggestion when a tabu
+has been unconsciously infringed and this has afterwards been
+discovered. Fear produces the result which is feared. The result is
+believed, however, to be the working of divine vengeance. In the
+case of Irish <i>geasa</i>, destruction and death usually followed
+their infringement, as in the case of Diarmaid and
+C&uacute;chulainn. But the best instance is found in the tale of
+<i>The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel</i>, in which <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>{255}</span> the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk avenge themselves for Eochaid's action by
+causing the destruction of his descendant Conaire, who is forced to
+break his <i>geasa</i>. These are first minutely detailed; then it
+is shown how, almost in spite of himself, Conaire was led on to
+break them, and how, in the sequel, his tragic death
+occurred.<a id="footnotetag888" name="footnotetag888"></a><a href=
+"#footnote888"><sup>888</sup></a> Viewed in this light as the
+working of divine vengeance to a remote descendant of the offender
+by forcing him to break his tabus, the story is one of the most
+terrible in the whole range of Irish literature.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote881" name=
+"footnote881"></a><b>Footnote 881:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag881">(return)</a>
+<p>The religious interdictions mentioned by C&aelig;sar (vi. 13)
+may be regarded as tabus, while the spoils of war placed in a
+consecrated place (vi. 18), and certain animals among the Britons
+(v. 12), were clearly under tabu.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote882" name=
+"footnote882"></a><b>Footnote 882:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag882">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 332 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote883" name=
+"footnote883"></a><b>Footnote 883:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag883">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Book of Rights</i>, ed. O'Donovan, 5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote884" name=
+"footnote884"></a><b>Footnote 884:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag884">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Book of Rights</i>, 7.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote885" name=
+"footnote885"></a><b>Footnote 885:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag885">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 3 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote886" name=
+"footnote886"></a><b>Footnote 886:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag886">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 107; O'Grady, ii. 175.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote887" name=
+"footnote887"></a><b>Footnote 887:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag887">(return)</a>
+<p>In Highland tales <i>geasa</i> is translated "spells."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote888" name=
+"footnote888"></a><b>Footnote 888:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag888">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxii. 27 f. The story of <i>Da Choca's Hostel</i> has
+for its subject the destruction of Cormac through breaking his
+<i>geasa</i> (<i>RC</i> xxi. 149 f.).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id=
+"page256"></a>{256}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap18" id="chap18">CHAPTER XVIII.</a></h2>
+<h3>FESTIVALS.</h3>
+<p>The Celtic year was not at first regulated by the solstices and
+equinoxes, but by some method connected with agriculture or with
+the seasons. Later, the year was a lunar one, and there is some
+evidence of attempts at synchronising solar and lunar time. But
+time was mainly measured by the moon, while in all calculations
+night preceded day.<a id="footnotetag889" name=
+"footnotetag889"></a><a href="#footnote889"><sup>889</sup></a> Thus
+<i>oidhche Samhain</i> was the night preceding Samhain (November
+1st), not the following night. The usage survives in our "sennight"
+and "fortnight." In early times the year had two, possibly three
+divisions, marking periods in pastoral or agricultural life, but it
+was afterwards divided into four periods, while the year began with
+the winter division, opening at Samhain. A twofold, subdivided into
+a fourfold division is found in Irish texts,<a id="footnotetag890"
+name="footnotetag890"></a><a href="#footnote890"><sup>890</sup></a>
+and may be tabulated as follows:&mdash;</p>
+<table summary="Festivals">
+<tr>
+<td>A. Geimredh (winter half)</td>
+<td>
+<table summary="Winter half">
+<tr>
+<td>1st quarter, <i>Geimredh</i>, beginning with the festival of
+<i>Samhain</i>, November 1st.</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>2nd quarter, <i>Earrach</i>, beginning February 1st (sometimes
+called <i>Oimelc</i>).</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>B. Samradh (summer half)</td>
+<td>
+<table summary="Summer half">
+<tr>
+<td>3rd quarter, <i>Samradh</i>, beginning with the festival of
+<i>Beltane</i>, May 1st (called also <i>C&eacute;t-soman</i> or
+<i>C&eacute;t-samain</i>, 1st day of <i>Samono-s</i>; cf. Welsh
+<i>Cyntefyn</i>).</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td>4th quarter, <i>Foghamar</i>, beginning with the festival of
+<i>Lugnasadh</i>, August 1st (sometimes called
+<i>Brontroghain</i>).</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id=
+"page257"></a>{257}</span>
+<p>These divisions began with festivals, and clear traces of three
+of them occur over the whole Celtic area, but the fourth has now
+been merged in S. Brigit's day. Beltane and Samhain marked the
+beginning of the two great divisions, and were perhaps at first
+movable festivals, according as the signs of summer or winter
+appeared earlier or later. With the adoption of the Roman calendar
+some of the festivals were displaced, <i>e.g.</i> in Gaul, where
+the Calends of January took the place of Samhain, the ritual being
+also transferred.</p>
+<p>None of the four festivals is connected with the times of
+equinox and solstice. This points to the fact that originally the
+Celtic year was independent of these. But Midsummer day was also
+observed not only by the Celts, but by most European folk, the
+ritual resembling that of Beltane. It has been held, and an old
+tradition in Ireland gives some support to the theory, that under
+Christian influences the old pagan feast of Beltane was merged in
+that of S. John Baptist on Midsummer day.<a id="footnotetag891"
+name="footnotetag891"></a><a href="#footnote891"><sup>891</sup></a>
+But, though there are Christian elements in the Midsummer ritual,
+denoting a desire to bring it under Church influence, the pagan
+elements in folk-custom are strongly marked, and the festival is
+deeply rooted in an earlier paganism all over Europe. Without much
+acquaintance with astronomy, men must have noted the period of the
+sun's longest course from early times, and it would probably be
+observed ritually. The festivals of Beltane and Midsummer may have
+arisen independently, and entered into competition with each other.
+Or Beltane may have been an early pastoral festival marking the
+beginning of summer when the herds went out to pasture, and
+Midsummer a more purely agricultural festival. <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>{258}</span> And since
+their ritual aspect and purpose as seen in folk-custom are similar,
+they may eventually have borrowed each from the other. Or they may
+be later separate fixed dates of an earlier movable summer
+festival. For our purpose we may here consider them as twin halves
+of such a festival. Where Midsummer was already observed, the
+influence of the Roman calendar would confirm that observance. The
+festivals of the Christian year also affected the older
+observances. Some of the ritual was transferred to saints' days
+within the range of the pagan festival days, thus the Samhain
+ritual is found observed on S. Martin's day. In other cases, holy
+days took the place of the old festivals&mdash;All Saints' and All
+Souls' that of Samhain, S. Brigit's day that of February 1st, S.
+John Baptist's day that of Midsummer, Lammas that of Lugnasad, and
+some attempt was made to hallow, if not to oust, the older
+ritual.</p>
+<p>The Celtic festivals being primarily connected with agricultural
+and pastoral life, we find in their ritual survivals traces not
+only of a religious but of a magical view of things, of acts
+designed to assist the powers of life and growth. The proof of this
+will be found in a detailed examination of the surviving customs
+connected with them.</p>
+<h3>SAMHAIN.</h3>
+<p>Samhain,<a id="footnotetag892" name=
+"footnotetag892"></a><a href="#footnote892"><sup>892</sup></a>
+beginning the Celtic year, was an important social and religious
+occasion. The powers of blight were beginning their ascendancy, yet
+the future triumph of the powers of growth was not forgotten.
+Probably Samhain had gathered up into itself other feasts occurring
+earlier or later. <span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id=
+"page259"></a>{259}</span> Thus it bears traces of being a harvest
+festival, the ritual of the earlier harvest feast being transferred
+to the winter feast, as the Celts found themselves in lands where
+harvest is not gathered before late autumn. The harvest rites may,
+however, have been associated with threshing rather than
+ingathering. Samhain also contains in its ritual some of the old
+pastoral cults, while as a New Year feast its ritual is in great
+part that of all festivals of beginnings.</p>
+<p>New fire was brought into each house at Samhain from the sacred
+bonfire,<a id="footnotetag893" name="footnotetag893"></a><a href=
+"#footnote893"><sup>893</sup></a> itself probably kindled from the
+need-fire by the friction of pieces of wood. This preserved its
+purity, the purity necessary to a festival of beginnings.<a id=
+"footnotetag894" name="footnotetag894"></a><a href=
+"#footnote894"><sup>894</sup></a> The putting away of the old fires
+was probably connected with various rites for the expulsion of
+evils, which usually occur among many peoples at the New Year
+festival. By that process of dislocation which scattered the
+Samhain ritual over a wider period and gave some of it to
+Christmas, the kindling of the Yule log may have been originally
+connected with this festival.</p>
+<p>Divination and forecasting the fate of the inquirer for the
+coming year also took place. Sometimes these were connected with
+the bonfire, stones placed in it showing by their appearance the
+fortune or misfortune awaiting their owners.<a id="footnotetag895"
+name="footnotetag895"></a><a href="#footnote895"><sup>895</sup></a>
+Others, like those described by Burns in his "Hallowe'en," were
+unconnected with the bonfire and were of an erotic nature.<a id=
+"footnotetag896" name="footnotetag896"></a><a href=
+"#footnote896"><sup>896</sup></a></p>
+<p>The slaughter of animals for winter consumption which took place
+at Samhain, or, as now, at Martinmas, though connected with
+economic reasons, had a distinctly religious aspect, as it had
+among the Teutons. In recent times in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>{260}</span> Ireland
+one of the animals was offered to S. Martin, who may have taken the
+place of a god, and ill-luck followed the non-observance of the
+custom.<a id="footnotetag897" name="footnotetag897"></a><a href=
+"#footnote897"><sup>897</sup></a> The slaughter was followed by
+general feasting. This later slaughter may be traced back to the
+pastoral stage, in which the animals were regarded as divine, and
+one was slain annually and eaten sacramentally. Or, if the
+slaughter was more general, the animals would be propitiated. But
+when the animals ceased to be worshipped, the slaughter would
+certainly be more general, though still preserving traces of its
+original character. The pastoral sacrament may also have been
+connected with the slaying and eating of an animal representing the
+corn-spirit at harvest time. In one legend S. Martin is associated
+with the animal slain at Martinmas, and is said to have been cut up
+and eaten in the form of an ox,<a id="footnotetag898" name=
+"footnotetag898"></a><a href="#footnote898"><sup>898</sup></a> as
+if a former divine animal had become an anthropomorphic divinity,
+the latter being merged in the personality of a Christian
+saint.</p>
+<p>Other rites, connected with the Calends of January as a result
+of dislocation, point also in this direction. In Gaul and Germany
+riotous processions took place with men dressed in the heads and
+skins of animals.<a id="footnotetag899" name=
+"footnotetag899"></a><a href="#footnote899"><sup>899</sup></a> This
+rite is said by Tille to have been introduced from Italy, but it is
+more likely to have been a native custom.<a id="footnotetag900"
+name="footnotetag900"></a><a href="#footnote900"><sup>900</sup></a>
+As the people ate the flesh of the slain animals sacramentally, so
+they clothed themselves in the skins to promote further contact
+with their divinity. Perambulating the township sunwise dressed in
+the skin of a cow took place until recently in the Hebrides at New
+Year, in order to keep off misfortune, a piece of the hide being
+burned and the smoke inhaled by each person and animal in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id=
+"page261"></a>{261}</span> the township.<a id="footnotetag901"
+name="footnotetag901"></a><a href="#footnote901"><sup>901</sup></a>
+Similar customs have been found in other Celtic districts, and
+these animal disguises can hardly be separated from the sacramental
+slaughter at Samhain.<a id="footnotetag902" name=
+"footnotetag902"></a><a href="#footnote902"><sup>902</sup></a></p>
+<p>Evils having been or being about to be cast off in the New Year
+ritual, a few more added to the number can make little difference.
+Hence among primitive peoples New Year is often characterised by
+orgiastic rites. These took place at the Calends in Gaul, and were
+denounced by councils and preachers.<a id="footnotetag903" name=
+"footnotetag903"></a><a href="#footnote903"><sup>903</sup></a> In
+Ireland the merriment at Samhain is often mentioned in the
+texts,<a id="footnotetag904" name="footnotetag904"></a><a href=
+"#footnote904"><sup>904</sup></a> and similar orgiastic rites lurk
+behind the Hallowe'en customs in Scotland and in the licence still
+permitted to youths in the quietest townships of the West Highlands
+at Samhain eve.</p>
+<p>Samhain, as has been seen, was also a festival of the dead,
+whose ghosts were fed at this time.<a id="footnotetag905" name=
+"footnotetag905"></a><a href="#footnote905"><sup>905</sup></a></p>
+<p>As the powers of growth were in danger and in eclipse in winter,
+men thought it necessary to assist them. As a magical aid the
+Samhain bonfire was chief, and it is still lit in the Highlands.
+Brands were carried round, and from it the new fire was lit in each
+house. In North Wales people jumped through the fire, and when it
+was extinct, rushed away to escape the "black sow" who would take
+the hindmost.<a id="footnotetag906" name=
+"footnotetag906"></a><a href="#footnote906"><sup>906</sup></a> The
+bonfire represented the sun, and was intended to strengthen it. But
+representing the sun, it had all the sun's force, hence those who
+jumped through it were strengthened and purified. The Welsh
+reference to the hindmost and to the black sow may point to a
+former human sacrifice, perhaps of any one <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>{262}</span> who
+stumbled in jumping through the fire. Keating speaks of a Druidic
+sacrifice in the bonfire, whether of man or beast is not
+specified.<a id="footnotetag907" name="footnotetag907"></a><a href=
+"#footnote907"><sup>907</sup></a> Probably the victim, like the
+scapegoat, was laden with the accumulated evils of the year, as in
+similar New Year customs elsewhere. Later belief regarded the
+sacrifice, if sacrifice there was, as offered to the powers of
+evil&mdash;the black sow, unless this animal is a reminiscence of
+the corn-spirit in its harmful aspect. Earlier powers, whether of
+growth or of blight, came to be associated with Samhain as demoniac
+beings&mdash;the "malignant bird flocks" which blighted crops and
+killed animals, the <i>samhanach</i> which steals children, and
+Mongfind the banshee, to whom "women and the rabble" make petitions
+on Samhain eve.<a id="footnotetag908" name=
+"footnotetag908"></a><a href="#footnote908"><sup>908</sup></a>
+Witches, evil-intentioned fairies, and the dead were particularly
+active then.</p>
+<p>Though the sacrificial victim had come to be regarded as an
+offering to the powers of blight, he may once have represented a
+divinity of growth or, in earlier times, the corn-spirit. Such a
+victim was slain at harvest, and harvest is often late in northern
+Celtic regions, while the slaying was sometimes connected not with
+the harvest field, but with the later threshing. This would bring
+it near the Samhain festival. The slaying of the corn-spirit was
+derived from the earlier slaying of a tree or vegetation-spirit
+embodied in a tree and also in a human or animal victim. The
+corn-spirit was embodied in the last sheaf cut as well as in an
+animal or human being.<a id="footnotetag909" name=
+"footnotetag909"></a><a href="#footnote909"><sup>909</sup></a> This
+human victim may have been regarded as a king, since in late
+popular custom a mock king is chosen at winter festivals.<a id=
+"footnotetag910" name="footnotetag910"></a><a href=
+"#footnote910"><sup>910</sup></a> In other cases the effigy of a
+saint is <span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id=
+"page263"></a>{263}</span> hung up and carried round the different
+houses, part of the dress being left at each. The saint has
+probably succeeded to the traditional ritual of the divine
+victim.<a id="footnotetag911" name="footnotetag911"></a><a href=
+"#footnote911"><sup>911</sup></a> The primitive period in which the
+corn-spirit was regarded as female, with a woman as her human
+representative, is also recalled in folk-custom. The last sheaf is
+called the Maiden or the Mother, while, as in Northamptonshire,
+girls choose a queen on S. Catharine's day, November 26th, and in
+some Christmas pageants "Yule's wife," as well as Yule, is present,
+corresponding to the May queen of the summer festival.<a id=
+"footnotetag912" name="footnotetag912"></a><a href=
+"#footnote912"><sup>912</sup></a> Men also masqueraded as women at
+the Calends. The dates of these survivals may be explained by that
+dislocation of the Samhain festival already pointed out. This view
+of the Samhain human sacrifices is supported by the Irish offerings
+to the Fomorians&mdash;gods of growth, later regarded as gods of
+blight, and to Cromm Cruaich, in both cases at Samhain.<a id=
+"footnotetag913" name="footnotetag913"></a><a href=
+"#footnote913"><sup>913</sup></a> With the evolution of religious
+thought, the slain victim came to be regarded as an offering to
+evil powers.</p>
+<p>This aspect of Samhain, as a festival to promote and assist
+festivity, is further seen in the belief in the increased activity
+of fairies at that time. In Ireland, fairies are connected with the
+Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, the divinities of growth, and in many
+folk-tales they are associated with agricultural processes. The use
+of evergreens at Christmas is perhaps also connected with the
+carrying of them round the fields in older times, as an evidence
+that the life of nature was not extinct.<a id="footnotetag914"
+name="footnotetag914"></a><a href=
+"#footnote914"><sup>914</sup></a></p>
+<p>Samhain may thus be regarded as, in origin, an old pastoral and
+agricultural festival, which in time came to be looked upon as
+affording assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with
+the powers of blight. Perhaps some myth <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>{264}</span>
+describing this combat may lurk behind the story of the battle of
+Mag-tured fought on Samhain between the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann and
+the Fomorians. While the powers of blight are triumphant in winter,
+the Tuatha D&eacute;a are represented as the victors, though they
+suffer loss and death. Perhaps this enshrines the belief in the
+continual triumph of life and growth over blight and decay, or it
+may arise from the fact that Samhain was both a time of rejoicing
+for the ingathered harvest, and of wailing for the coming supremacy
+of winter and the reign of the powers of blight.</p>
+<h3>BELTANE.</h3>
+<p>In Cormac's <i>Glossary</i> and other texts, "Beltane" is
+derived from <i>bel-tene</i>, "a goodly fire," or from
+<i>bel-dine</i>, because newly-born (<i>dine</i>) cattle were
+offered to Bel, an idol-god.<a id="footnotetag915" name=
+"footnotetag915"></a><a href="#footnote915"><sup>915</sup></a> The
+latter is followed by those who believe in a Celtic Belus,
+connected with Baal. No such god is known, however, and the god
+Belenos is in no way connected with the Semitic divinity. M.
+D'Arbois assumes an unknown god of death, Beltene (from
+<i>beltu</i>, "to die"), whose festival Beltane was.<a id=
+"footnotetag916" name="footnotetag916"></a><a href=
+"#footnote916"><sup>916</sup></a> But Beltane was a festival of
+life, of the sun shining in his strength. Dr. Stokes gives a more
+acceptable explanation of the word. Its primitive form was
+<i>belo-te</i>[<i>p</i>]<i>ni&acirc;</i>, from <i>belo-s</i>,
+"clear," "shining," the root of the names Belenos and Belisama, and
+<i>te</i>[<i>p</i>]<i>nos</i>, "fire." Thus the word would mean
+something like "bright fire," perhaps the sun or the bonfire, or
+both.<a id="footnotetag917" name="footnotetag917"></a><a href=
+"#footnote917"><sup>917</sup></a></p>
+<p>The folk-survivals of the Beltane and Midsummer festivals show
+that both were intended to promote fertility.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id=
+"page265"></a>{265}</span>
+<p>One of the chief ritual acts at Beltane was the kindling of
+bonfires, often on hills. The house-fires in the district were
+often extinguished, the bonfire being lit by friction from a
+rotating wheel&mdash;the German "need-fire."<a id="footnotetag918"
+name="footnotetag918"></a><a href="#footnote918"><sup>918</sup></a>
+The fire kept off disease and evil, hence cattle were driven
+through it, or, according to Cormac, between two fires lit by
+Druids, in order to keep them in health during the year.<a id=
+"footnotetag919" name="footnotetag919"></a><a href=
+"#footnote919"><sup>919</sup></a> Sometimes the fire was lit
+beneath a sacred tree, or a pole covered with greenery was
+surrounded by the fuel, or a tree was burned in the fire.<a id=
+"footnotetag920" name="footnotetag920"></a><a href=
+"#footnote920"><sup>920</sup></a> These trees survive in the
+Maypole of later custom, and they represented the
+vegetation-spirit, to whom also the worshippers assimilated
+themselves by dressing in leaves. They danced sunwise round the
+fire or ran through the fields with blazing branches or wisps of
+straw, imitating the course of the sun, and thus benefiting the
+fields.<a id="footnotetag921" name="footnotetag921"></a><a href=
+"#footnote921"><sup>921</sup></a> For the same reason the tree
+itself was probably borne through the fields. Houses were decked
+with boughs and thus protected by the spirit of vegetation.<a id=
+"footnotetag922" name="footnotetag922"></a><a href=
+"#footnote922"><sup>922</sup></a></p>
+<p>An animal representing the spirit of vegetation may have been
+slain. In late survivals of Beltane at Dublin, a horse's skull and
+bones were thrown into the fire,<a id="footnotetag923" name=
+"footnotetag923"></a><a href="#footnote923"><sup>923</sup></a> the
+attenuated form of an earlier sacrifice or slaying of a divine
+victim, by whom strength was transferred to all the animals which
+passed through the fire. In some cases a human victim may have been
+slain. This is suggested by customs surviving in Perthshire in the
+eighteenth century, when a cake was broken up and distributed, and
+the person who received a certain <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page266" id="page266"></a>{266}</span> blackened portion was
+called the "Beltane carline" or "devoted." A pretence was made of
+throwing him into the fire, or he had to leap three times through
+it, and during the festival he was spoken of as "dead."<a id=
+"footnotetag924" name="footnotetag924"></a><a href=
+"#footnote924"><sup>924</sup></a> Martin says that malefactors were
+burned in the fire,<a id="footnotetag925" name=
+"footnotetag925"></a><a href="#footnote925"><sup>925</sup></a> and
+though he cites no authority, this agrees with the Celtic use of
+criminals as victims. Perhaps the victim was at one time a human
+representative of the vegetation-spirit.</p>
+<p>Beltane cakes or bannocks, perhaps made of the grain of the
+sacred last sheaf from the previous harvest, and therefore
+sacramental in character, were also used in different ways in
+folk-survivals. They were rolled down a slope&mdash;a magical
+imitative act, symbolising and aiding the course of the sun. The
+cake had also a divinatory character. If it broke on reaching the
+foot of the slope this indicated the approaching death of its
+owner. In another custom in Perthshire, part of a cake was thrown
+over the shoulder with the words, "This I give to thee, preserve
+thou my horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; this to thee,
+O fox, preserve thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow; this to
+thee, O eagle." Here there is an appeal to beneficial and noxious
+powers, whether this was the original intention of the rite.<a id=
+"footnotetag926" name="footnotetag926"></a><a href=
+"#footnote926"><sup>926</sup></a> But if the cakes were made of the
+last sheaf, they were probably at one time eaten sacramentally,
+their sacrificial use emerging later.</p>
+<p>The bonfire was a sun-charm, representing and assisting the sun.
+Rain-charms were also used at Beltane. Sacred wells were visited
+and the ceremony performed with their waters, these perhaps being
+sprinkled over the tree or the fields to promote a copious rainfall
+for the benefit of vegetation. <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page267" id="page267"></a>{267}</span> The use of such rites at
+Beltane and at other festivals may have given rise to the belief
+that wells were especially efficacious then for purposes of
+healing. The custom of rolling in the grass to benefit by May dew
+was probably connected with magical rites in which moisture played
+an important part.<a id="footnotetag927" name=
+"footnotetag927"></a><a href="#footnote927"><sup>927</sup></a></p>
+<p>The idea that the powers of growth had successfully combated
+those of blight may have been ritually represented. This is
+suggested by the mimic combats of Summer and Winter at this time,
+to which reference has already been made. Again, the May king and
+queen represent earlier personages who were regarded as embodying
+the spirits of vegetation and fertility at this festival, and whose
+marriage or union magically assisted growth and fertility, as in
+numerous examples of this ritual marriage elsewhere.<a id=
+"footnotetag928" name="footnotetag928"></a><a href=
+"#footnote928"><sup>928</sup></a> It may be assumed that a
+considerable amount of sexual licence also took place with the same
+magical purpose. Sacred marriage and festival orgy were an appeal
+to the forces of nature to complete their beneficial work, as well
+as a magical aid to them in that work. Analogy leads to the
+supposition that the king of the May was originally a priest-king,
+the incarnation of the spirit of vegetation. He or his surrogate
+was slain, while his bodily force was unabated, in order that it
+might be passed on undiminished to his successor. But the
+persistent place given to the May queen rather than to the king
+suggests the earlier prominence of women and of female spirits of
+fertility or of a great Mother-goddess in such rites. It is also
+significant that in the Perthshire ritual the man chosen was still
+called the <i>Beltane carlane</i> or <i>cailleach</i> ("old
+woman"). And if, as Professor Pearson maintains, witch <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>{268}</span> orgies
+are survivals of old sex-festivals, then the popular belief in the
+activity of witches on Beltane eve, also shows that the festival
+had once been mainly one in which women took part. Such orgies
+often took place on hills which had been the sites of a cult in
+former times.<a id="footnotetag929" name=
+"footnotetag929"></a><a href="#footnote929"><sup>929</sup></a></p>
+<h3>MIDSUMMER.</h3>
+<p>The ritual of the Midsummer festival did not materially differ
+from that of Beltane, and as folk-survivals show, it was practised
+not only by the Celts, but by many other European peoples. It was,
+in fact, a primitive nature festival such as would readily be
+observed by all under similar psychic conditions and in like
+surroundings. A bonfire was again the central rite of this
+festival, the communal nature of which is seen in the fact that all
+must contribute materials to it. In local survivals, mayor and
+priest, representing the earlier local chief and priest, were
+present, while a service in church preceded the procession to the
+scene of the bonfire. Dancing sunwise round the fire to the
+accompaniment of songs which probably took the place of hymns or
+tunes in honour of the Sun-god, commonly occurred, and by imitating
+the sun's action, may have been intended to make it more powerful.
+The livelier the dance the better would be the harvest.<a id=
+"footnotetag930" name="footnotetag930"></a><a href=
+"#footnote930"><sup>930</sup></a> As the fire represented the sun,
+it possessed the purifying and invigorating powers of the sun;
+hence leaping through the fire preserved from disease, brought
+prosperity, or removed barrenness. Hence also cattle were driven
+through the fire. <span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id=
+"page269"></a>{269}</span> But if any one stumbled as he leaped,
+ill-luck was supposed to follow him. He was devoted to the
+<i>fadets</i> or spirits,<a id="footnotetag931" name=
+"footnotetag931"></a><a href="#footnote931"><sup>931</sup></a> and
+perhaps, like the "devoted" Beltane victim, he may formerly have
+been sacrificed. Animal sacrifices are certainly found in many
+survivals, the victims being often placed in osier baskets and
+thrown into the fire. In other districts great human effigies of
+osier were carried in procession and burned.<a id="footnotetag932"
+name="footnotetag932"></a><a href=
+"#footnote932"><sup>932</sup></a></p>
+<p>The connection of such sacrifices with the periodical slaying of
+a representative of the vegetation-spirit has been maintained by
+Mannhardt and Dr. Frazer.<a id="footnotetag933" name=
+"footnotetag933"></a><a href="#footnote933"><sup>933</sup></a> As
+has been seen, periodic sacrifices for the fertility of the land
+are mentioned by C&aelig;sar, Strabo, and Diodorus, human victims
+and animals being enclosed in an osier image and burned.<a id=
+"footnotetag934" name="footnotetag934"></a><a href=
+"#footnote934"><sup>934</sup></a> These images survive in the osier
+effigies just referred to, while they may also be connected with
+the custom of decking the human representatives of the spirit of
+vegetation in greenery. The holocausts may be regarded as
+extensions of the earlier custom of slaying one victim, the
+incarnation of a vegetation-spirit. This slaying was gradually
+regarded as sacrificial, but as the beneficial effect of the
+sacrifice on growth was still believed in, it would naturally be
+thought that still better effects would be produced if many victims
+were offered. The victims were burned in a fire representing the
+sun, and vegetation was thus doubly benefited, by the victims and
+by the sun-god.</p>
+<p>The oldest conception of the vegetation-spirit was that of a
+tree-spirit which had power over rain, sunshine, and every species
+of fruitfulness. For this reason a tree had a prominent place both
+in the Beltane and Midsummer feasts. It was carried in procession,
+imparting its benefits to each house or <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>{270}</span> field.
+Branches of it were attached to each house for the same purpose. It
+was then burned, or it was set up to procure benefits to vegetation
+during the year and burned at the next Midsummer festival.<a id=
+"footnotetag935" name="footnotetag935"></a><a href=
+"#footnote935"><sup>935</sup></a> The sacred tree was probably an
+oak, and, as has been seen, the mistletoe rite probably took place
+on Midsummer eve, as a preliminary to cutting down the sacred tree
+and in order to secure the life or soul of the tree, which must
+first be secured before the tree could be cut down. The life of the
+tree was in the mistletoe, still alive in winter when the tree
+itself seemed to be dead. Such beliefs as this concerning the
+detachable soul or life survive in <i>M&auml;rchen</i>, and are
+still alive among savages.<a id="footnotetag936" name=
+"footnotetag936"></a><a href="#footnote936"><sup>936</sup></a></p>
+<p>Folk-survivals show that a human or an animal representative of
+the vegetation-spirit, brought into connection with the tree, was
+also slain or burned along with the tree.<a id="footnotetag937"
+name="footnotetag937"></a><a href="#footnote937"><sup>937</sup></a>
+Thus the cutting of the mistletoe would be regarded as a
+preliminary to the slaying of the human victim, who, like the tree,
+was the representative of the spirit of vegetation.</p>
+<p>The bonfire representing the sun, and the victims, like the
+tree, representing the spirit of vegetation, it is obvious why the
+fire had healing and fertilising powers, and why its ashes and the
+ashes or the flesh of the victims possessed the same powers. Brands
+from the fire were carried through the fields or villages, as the
+tree had been, or placed on the fields or in houses, where they
+were carefully preserved for a year. All this aided growth and
+prosperity, just as the smoke of the fire, drifting over the
+fields, produced fertility. Ashes from the fire, and probably the
+calcined bones or even the flesh of the victims, were scattered on
+the fields or preserved and mixed <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page271" id="page271"></a>{271}</span> with the seed corn. Again,
+part of the flesh may have been eaten sacramentally, since, as has
+been seen, Pliny refers to the belief of the Celts in the eating of
+human flesh as most wholesome.</p>
+<p>In the Stone Age, as with many savages, a circle typified the
+sun, and as soon as the wheel was invented its rolling motion at
+once suggested that of the sun. In the <i>Edda</i> the sun is "the
+beautiful, the shining wheel," and similar expressions occur in the
+<i>Vedas</i>. Among the Celts the wheel of the sun was a favourite
+piece of symbolism, and this is seen in various customs at the
+Midsummer festival. A burning wheel was rolled down a slope or
+trundled through the fields, or burning brands were whirled round
+so as to give the impression of a fiery wheel. The intention was
+primarily to imitate the course of the sun through the heavens, and
+so, on the principle of imitative magic, to strengthen it. But
+also, as the wheel was rolled through the fields, so it was hoped
+that the direct beneficial action of the sun upon them would
+follow. Similar rites might be performed not only at Midsummer, but
+at other times, to procure blessing or to ward off evil,
+<i>e.g.</i> carrying fire round houses or fields or cattle or round
+a child <i>deiseil</i> or sunwise,<a id="footnotetag938" name=
+"footnotetag938"></a><a href="#footnote938"><sup>938</sup></a> and,
+by a further extension of thought, the blazing wheel, or the
+remains of the burning brands thrown to the winds, had also the
+effect of carrying off accumulated evils.<a id="footnotetag939"
+name="footnotetag939"></a><a href=
+"#footnote939"><sup>939</sup></a></p>
+<p>Beltane and Midsummer thus appear as twin halves of a spring or
+early summer festival, the intention of which was to <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>{272}</span> promote
+fertility and health. This was done by slaying the spirit of
+vegetation in his representative&mdash;tree, animal, or man. His
+death quickened the energies of earth and man. The fire also
+magically assisted the course of the sun. Survival of the ancient
+rites are or were recently found in all Celtic regions, and have
+been constantly combated by the Church. But though they were
+continued, their true meaning was forgotten, and they were mainly
+performed for luck or out of sheer conservatism. Sometimes a
+Christian aspect was given to them, <i>e.g.</i> by connecting the
+fires with S. John, or by associating the rites with the service of
+the Church, or by the clergy being present at them. But their true
+nature was still evident as acts of pagan worship and magic which
+no veneer of Christianity could ever quite conceal.<a id=
+"footnotetag940" name="footnotetag940"></a><a href=
+"#footnote940"><sup>940</sup></a></p>
+<h3>LUGNASAD.</h3>
+<p>The 1st of August, coming midway between Beltane and Samhain,
+was an important festival among the Celts. In Christian times the
+day became Lammas, but its name still survives in Irish as
+Lugnasad, in Gaelic as Lunasdal or Lunasduinn, and in Manx as Laa
+Luanys, and it is still observed as a fair or feast in many
+districts. Formerly assemblies at convenient centres were held on
+this day, not only for religious purposes, but for commerce and
+pleasure, both of these being of course saturated with religion.
+"All Ireland" met at Taillti, just as "all Gaul" met at Lugudunum,
+"Lug's town," or Lyons, in honour of Augustus, though the feast
+there had formerly been in honour of the god Lugus.<a id=
+"footnotetag941" name="footnotetag941"></a><a href=
+"#footnote941"><sup>941</sup></a> The festival was <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>{273}</span> here
+Romanised, as it was also in Britain, where its name appears as
+<i>Goel-aoust</i>, <i>Gul-austus</i>, and <i>Gwyl Awst</i>, now the
+"August feast," but formerly the "feast of Augustus," the name
+having replaced one corresponding to Lugnasad.<a id=
+"footnotetag942" name="footnotetag942"></a><a href=
+"#footnote942"><sup>942</sup></a></p>
+<p>Cormac explains the name Lugnasad as a festival of Lugh mac
+Ethlenn, celebrated by him in the beginning of autumn, and the
+<i>Rennes Dindsenchas</i> accounts for its origin by saying that
+Lug's foster-mother, Tailtiu, having died on the Calends of August,
+he directed an assembly for lamentation to be held annually on that
+day at her tomb.<a id="footnotetag943" name=
+"footnotetag943"></a><a href="#footnote943"><sup>943</sup></a> Lug
+is thus the founder of his own festival, for that it was his, and
+not Tailtiu's, is clear from the fact that his name is attached to
+it. As Lammas was a Christian harvest thanksgiving, so also was
+Lugnasad a pagan harvest feast, part of the ritual of which passed
+over to Samhain. The people made glad before the sun-god&mdash;Lug
+perhaps having that character&mdash;who had assisted them in the
+growth of the things on which their lives depended. Marriages were
+also arranged at this feast, probably because men had now more
+leisure and more means for entering upon matrimony. Possibly
+promiscuous love-making also occurred as a result of the festival
+gladness, agricultural districts being still notoriously immoral.
+Some evidence points to the connection of the feast with Lug's
+marriage, though this has been allegorised into his wedding the
+"sovereignty of Erin." Perhaps we have here a hint of the rite of
+the sacred marriage, for the purpose of magically fertilising the
+fields against next year's sowing.</p>
+<p>Due observance of the feast produced abundance of corn, fruit,
+milk, and fish. Probably the ritual observed included the
+preservation of the last sheaf as representing the corn-spirit,
+giving some of it to the cattle to strengthen them, and mingling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id=
+"page274"></a>{274}</span> it with next year's corn to impart to it
+the power of the corn-spirit. It may also have included the slaying
+of an animal or human incarnation of the corn-spirit, whose flesh
+and blood quickened the soil and so produced abundance next year,
+or, when partaken of by the worshippers, brought blessings to them.
+To neglect such rites, abundant instances of which exist in
+folk-custom, would be held to result in scarcity. This would also
+explain, as already suggested, why the festival was associated with
+the death of Tailtiu or of Carman. The euhemerised queen-goddess
+Tailtiu and the woman Carman had once been corn-goddesses, evolved
+from more primitive corn-spirits, and slain at the feast in their
+female representatives. The story of their death and burial at the
+festival was a dim memory of this ancient rite, and since the
+festival was also connected with the sun-god Lug, it was easy to
+bring him into relationship with the earlier goddess. Elsewhere the
+festival, in its memorial aspect, was associated with a king,
+probably because male victims had come to be representatives of a
+corn-god who had taken the place of the goddess.</p>
+<hr />
+<p>Some of the ritual of these festivals is illustrated by
+scattered notices in classical writers, and on the whole they
+support our theory that the festivals originated in a female cult
+of spirits or goddesses of fertility. Strabo speaks of sacrifices
+offered to Demeter and Kore, according to the ritual followed at
+Samothrace, in an island near Britain, <i>i.e.</i> to native
+goddesses equated with them. He also describes the ritual of the
+Namnite women on an island in the Loire. They are called Bacchantes
+because they conciliated Bacchus with mysteries and sacrifices; in
+other words, they observed an orgiastic cult of a god equated with
+Bacchus. No man must set foot on the island, but the women left it
+once a year for intercourse with the other sex. Once a year the
+temple of the god was unroofed, and roofed <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>{275}</span> again
+before sunset. If any woman dropped her load of materials (and it
+was said this always happened), she was torn in pieces and her
+limbs carried round the temple.<a id="footnotetag944" name=
+"footnotetag944"></a><a href="#footnote944"><sup>944</sup></a>
+Dionysius Periegetes says the women were crowned with ivy, and
+celebrated their mysteries by night in honour of Earth and
+Proserpine with great clamour.<a id="footnotetag945" name=
+"footnotetag945"></a><a href="#footnote945"><sup>945</sup></a>
+Pliny also makes a reference to British rites in which nude women
+and girls took part, their bodies stained with woad.<a id=
+"footnotetag946" name="footnotetag946"></a><a href=
+"#footnote946"><sup>946</sup></a></p>
+<p>At a later time, S. Gregory of Tours speaks of the image of a
+goddess Berecynthia drawn on a litter through the streets, fields,
+and vineyards of Augustodunum on the days of her festival, or when
+the fields were threatened with scarcity. The people danced and
+sang before it. The image was covered with a white veil.<a id=
+"footnotetag947" name="footnotetag947"></a><a href=
+"#footnote947"><sup>947</sup></a> Berecynthia has been conjectured
+by Professor Anwyl to be the goddess Brigindu, worshipped at
+Valnay.<a id="footnotetag948" name="footnotetag948"></a><a href=
+"#footnote948"><sup>948</sup></a></p>
+<p>These rites were all directed towards divinities of fertility.
+But in harvest customs in Celtic Scotland and elsewhere two sheaves
+of corn were called respectively the Old Woman and the Maiden, the
+corn-spirit of the past year and that of the year to come, and
+corresponding to Demeter and Kore in early Greek agricultural
+ritual. As in Greece, so among the Celts, the primitive
+corn-spirits had probably become more individualised goddesses with
+an elaborate cult, observed on an island or at other sacred spots.
+The cult probably varied here and there, and that of a god of
+fertility may have taken the place of the cult of goddesses. A god
+was worshipped by the Namnite women, according to Strabo, goddesses
+according to Dionysius. The mangled victim was probably regarded as
+representative <span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id=
+"page276"></a>{276}</span> of a divinity, and perhaps part of the
+flesh was mixed with the seed-corn, like the grain of the Maiden
+sheaf, or buried in the earth. This rite is common among savages,
+and its presence in old European ritual is attested by survivals.
+That these rites were tabu to men probably points to the fact that
+they were examples of an older general custom, in which all such
+rites were in the hands of women who cultivated the earth, and who
+were the natural priestesses of goddesses of growth and fertility,
+of vegetation and the growing corn. Another example is found in the
+legend and procession of Godiva at Coventry&mdash;the survival of a
+pagan cult from which men were excluded.<a id="footnotetag949"
+name="footnotetag949"></a><a href=
+"#footnote949"><sup>949</sup></a></p>
+<p>Pliny speaks of the nudity of the women engaged in the cult.
+Nudity is an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites,
+and painting the body is also a widespread ritual act. Dressing
+with leaves or green stuff, as among the Namnite women, and often
+with the intention of personating the spirit of vegetation, is also
+customary. By unveiling the body, and especially the sexual organs,
+women more effectually represented the goddess of fertility, and
+more effectually as her representatives, or through their own
+powers, magically conveyed fertility to the fields. Nakedness thus
+became a powerful magico-religious symbol, and it is found as part
+of the ritual for producing rain.<a id="footnotetag950" name=
+"footnotetag950"></a><a href="#footnote950"><sup>950</sup></a></p>
+<p>There is thus abundant evidence of the cult of fertility,
+vegetation, and corn-spirits, who tended to become divinities, male
+or female. Here and there, through conservatism, the cult remained
+in the hands of women, but more generally it had become a ritual in
+which both men and women took part&mdash;that <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page277" id="page277"></a>{277}</span> of the
+great agricultural festivals. Where a divinity had taken the place
+of the vaguer spirits, her image, like that of Berecynthia, was
+used in the ritual, but the image was probably the successor of the
+tree which embodied the vegetation-spirit, and was carried through
+the fields to fertilise them. Similar processions of images, often
+accompanied by a ritual washing of the image in order to invigorate
+the divinity, or, as in the similar May-day custom, to produce
+rain, are found in the Teutonic cult of Nerthus, the Phrygian of
+Cybele, the Hindu of Bhavani, and the Roman ritual of the Bona Dea.
+The image of Berecynthia was thus probably washed also. Washing the
+images of saints, usually to produce rain, has sometimes taken the
+place of the washing of a divine image, and similarly the relics of
+a saint are carried through a field, as was the tree or image. The
+community at Iona perambulated a newly sown field with S. Columba's
+relics in time of drought, and shook his tunic three times in the
+air, and were rewarded by a plentiful rain, and later, by a
+bounteous harvest.<a id="footnotetag951" name=
+"footnotetag951"></a><a href="#footnote951"><sup>951</sup></a></p>
+<p>Many of these local cults were pre-Celtic, but we need not
+therefore suppose that the Celts, or the Aryans as a whole, had no
+such cults.<a id="footnotetag952" name=
+"footnotetag952"></a><a href="#footnote952"><sup>952</sup></a> The
+Aryans everywhere adopted local cults, but this they would not have
+done if, as is supposed, they had themselves outgrown them. The
+cults were local, but the Celts had similar local cults, and easily
+accepted those of the people they conquered. We cannot explain the
+persistence of such primitive cults as lie behind the great Celtic
+festivals, both in classical times and over the whole area of
+Europe among the peasantry, by referring them solely to a pre-Aryan
+folk. They were as much Aryan as pre-Aryan. They belong to those
+unchanging strata of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id=
+"page278"></a>{278}</span> religion which have so largely supplied
+the soil in which its later and more spiritual growths have
+flourished. And among these they still emerge, unchanged and
+unchanging, like the gaunt outcrops of some ancient rock formation
+amid rich vegetation and fragrant flowers.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote889" name=
+"footnote889"></a><b>Footnote 889:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag889">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xvi. 45; C&aelig;sar, vi. 18. See my article "Calendar
+(Celtic)" in Hastings' <i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Rel. and
+Ethics</i>, iii. 78 f., for a full discussion of the problems
+involved.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote890" name=
+"footnote890"></a><b>Footnote 890:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag890">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, <i>Book of Rights</i>, Intro. lii f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote891" name=
+"footnote891"></a><b>Footnote 891:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag891">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, li.; Bertrand, 105; Keating, 300.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote892" name=
+"footnote892"></a><b>Footnote 892:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag892">(return)</a>
+<p>Samhain may mean "summer-end," from <i>sam</i>, "summer," and
+<i>fuin</i>, "sunset" or "end," but Dr. Stokes (<i>US</i> 293)
+makes <i>samani</i>- mean "assembly," <i>i.e.</i> the gathering of
+the people to keep the feast.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote893" name=
+"footnote893"></a><b>Footnote 893:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag893">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 125, 300.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote894" name=
+"footnote894"></a><b>Footnote 894:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag894">(return)</a>
+<p>See MacBain, <i>CM</i> ix. 328.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote895" name=
+"footnote895"></a><b>Footnote 895:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag895">(return)</a>
+<p>Brand, i. 390; Ramsay, <i>Scotland and Scotsmen in the
+Eighteenth Century</i>, ii. 437; <i>Stat. Account</i>, xi. 621.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote896" name=
+"footnote896"></a><b>Footnote 896:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag896">(return)</a>
+<p>Hazlitt, 297-298, 340; Campbell, <i>Witchcraft</i>, 285 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote897" name=
+"footnote897"></a><b>Footnote 897:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag897">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, 72.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote898" name=
+"footnote898"></a><b>Footnote 898:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag898">(return)</a>
+<p>Fitzgerald, <i>RC</i> vi. 254.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote899" name=
+"footnote899"></a><b>Footnote 899:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag899">(return)</a>
+<p>See Chambers, <i>Medi&aelig;val Stage</i>, App. N, for the
+evidence from canons and councils regarding these.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote900" name=
+"footnote900"></a><b>Footnote 900:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag900">(return)</a>
+<p>Tille, <i>Yule and Christmas</i>, 96.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote901" name=
+"footnote901"></a><b>Footnote 901:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag901">(return)</a>
+<p>Chambers, <i>Popular Rhymes</i>, 166.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote902" name=
+"footnote902"></a><b>Footnote 902:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag902">(return)</a>
+<p>Hutchinson, <i>View of Northumberland</i>, ii. 45; Thomas,
+<i>Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel.</i> xxxviii. 335 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote903" name=
+"footnote903"></a><b>Footnote 903:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag903">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Patrol. Lot.</i> xxxix. 2001.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote904" name=
+"footnote904"></a><b>Footnote 904:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag904">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 205; <i>RC</i> v. 331; Leahy, i. 57.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote905" name=
+"footnote905"></a><b>Footnote 905:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag905">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page169">169</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote906" name=
+"footnote906"></a><b>Footnote 906:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag906">(return)</a>
+<p>The writer has himself seen such bonfires in the Highlands. See
+also Hazlitt, 298; Pennant, <i>Tour</i>, ii. 47; Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i>
+515, <i>CFL</i> i. 225-226. In Egyptian mythology, Typhon assailed
+Horus in the form of a black swine.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote907" name=
+"footnote907"></a><b>Footnote 907:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag907">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 300.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote908" name=
+"footnote908"></a><b>Footnote 908:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag908">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 556; <i>RC</i> x. 214, 225, xxiv. 172;
+O'Grady, ii. 374; <i>CM</i> ix. 209.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote909" name=
+"footnote909"></a><b>Footnote 909:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag909">(return)</a>
+<p>See Mannhardt, <i>Mythol. Forschung.</i> 333 f.; Frazer,
+<i>Adonis</i>, <i>passim</i>; Thomas, <i>Rev. de l'Hist. des
+Rel.</i> xxxviii. 325 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote910" name=
+"footnote910"></a><b>Footnote 910:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag910">(return)</a>
+<p>Hazlitt, 35; Chambers, <i>Medi&aelig;val Stage</i>, i. 261.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote911" name=
+"footnote911"></a><b>Footnote 911:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag911">(return)</a>
+<p>Chambers, <i>Book of Days</i>, ii. 492; Hazlitt, 131.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote912" name=
+"footnote912"></a><b>Footnote 912:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag912">(return)</a>
+<p>Hazlitt, 97; Davies, <i>Extracts from Munic. Records of
+York</i>, 270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote913" name=
+"footnote913"></a><b>Footnote 913:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag913">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page237">237</a>, <i>supra</i>; <i>LL</i> 16,
+213.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote914" name=
+"footnote914"></a><b>Footnote 914:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag914">(return)</a>
+<p>Chambers, <i>Med. Stage</i>, i. 250 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote915" name=
+"footnote915"></a><b>Footnote 915:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag915">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, <i>s.v.</i> "Belltaine," "Bel"; <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i.
+232.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote916" name=
+"footnote916"></a><b>Footnote 916:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag916">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 136.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote917" name=
+"footnote917"></a><b>Footnote 917:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag917">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>US</i> 125, 164. See his earlier derivation, dividing
+the word into <i>belt</i>, connected with Lithuan. <i>baltas</i>,
+"white," and <i>aine</i>, the termination in <i>sechtmaine</i>,
+"week" (<i>TIG</i> xxxv.).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote918" name=
+"footnote918"></a><b>Footnote 918:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag918">(return)</a>
+<p>Need-fire (Gael. <i>Teinne-eiginn</i>, "necessity fire") was
+used to kindle fire in time of cattle plague. See Grimm, <i>Teut.
+Myth.</i> 608 f.; Martin, 113; Jamieson's <i>Dictionary</i>,
+<i>s.v.</i> "neidfyre."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote919" name=
+"footnote919"></a><b>Footnote 919:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag919">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, <i>s.v.</i>; Martin, 105, says that the Druids
+extinguished all fires until their dues were paid. This may have
+been a tradition in the Hebrides.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote920" name=
+"footnote920"></a><b>Footnote 920:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag920">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>PN</i> i. 216; Hone, <i>Everyday Book</i>, i. 849, ii.
+595.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote921" name=
+"footnote921"></a><b>Footnote 921:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag921">(return)</a>
+<p>Pennant, <i>Tour in Scotland</i>, i. 291.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote922" name=
+"footnote922"></a><b>Footnote 922:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag922">(return)</a>
+<p>Hazlitt, 339, 397.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote923" name=
+"footnote923"></a><b>Footnote 923:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag923">(return)</a>
+<p>Hone, <i>Everyday Book</i>, ii. 595. See p. <a href=
+"#page215">215</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote924" name=
+"footnote924"></a><b>Footnote 924:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag924">(return)</a>
+<p>Sinclair, <i>Stat. Account</i>, xi. 620.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote925" name=
+"footnote925"></a><b>Footnote 925:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag925">(return)</a>
+<p>Martin, 105.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote926" name=
+"footnote926"></a><b>Footnote 926:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag926">(return)</a>
+<p>For these usages see Ramsay, <i>Scotland and Scotsmen in the
+Eighteenth Century</i>, ii. 439 f.; Sinclair, <i>Stat. Account</i>,
+v. 84, xi. 620, xv. 517. For the sacramental and sacrificial use of
+similar loaves, see Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, i. 94,
+ii. 78; Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> iii. 1239 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote927" name=
+"footnote927"></a><b>Footnote 927:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag927">(return)</a>
+<p><i>New Stat. Account</i>, Wigtownshire, 208; Hazlitt, 38, 323,
+340.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote928" name=
+"footnote928"></a><b>Footnote 928:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag928">(return)</a>
+<p>See Miss Owen, <i>Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians</i>, 50;
+Frazer, <i>Golden Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, ii. 205.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote929" name=
+"footnote929"></a><b>Footnote 929:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag929">(return)</a>
+<p>For notices of Beltane survivals see Keating, 300; Campbell,
+<i>Journey from Edinburgh</i>, i. 143; Ramsay, <i>Scotland and
+Scotsmen</i>, ii. 439 f.; <i>Old Stat. Account</i>, v. 84, xi. 620,
+xv. 517; Gregor, <i>Folk-lore of N.E. of Scotland</i>, 167. The
+paganism of the survivals is seen in the fact that Beltane fires
+were frequently prohibited by Scottish ecclesiastical councils.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote930" name=
+"footnote930"></a><b>Footnote 930:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag930">(return)</a>
+<p>Meyrac, <i>Traditions ... des Ardennes</i>, 68.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote931" name=
+"footnote931"></a><b>Footnote 931:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag931">(return)</a>
+<p>Bertrand, 119.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote932" name=
+"footnote932"></a><b>Footnote 932:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag932">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 407; Gaidoz, 21; Mannhardt, <i>Baumkultus</i>, 514,
+523; Brand, i. 8, 323.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote933" name=
+"footnote933"></a><b>Footnote 933:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag933">(return)</a>
+<p>Mannhardt, <i>op. cit.</i> 525 f.; Frazer, <i>Golden
+Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, iii. 319.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote934" name=
+"footnote934"></a><b>Footnote 934:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag934">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page234">234</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote935" name=
+"footnote935"></a><b>Footnote 935:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag935">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, <i>op. cit.</i> i. 74; Brand, i. 222, 237, 246, 318;
+Hone, <i>Everyday Book</i>, ii. 595; Mannhardt, <i>op. cit.</i>
+177; Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> 621, 777 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote936" name=
+"footnote936"></a><b>Footnote 936:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag936">(return)</a>
+<p>See my <i>Childhood of Fiction</i>, ch. v.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote937" name=
+"footnote937"></a><b>Footnote 937:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag937">(return)</a>
+<p>Frazer, i. 82, ii. 247 f., 275; Mannhardt, 315 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote938" name=
+"footnote938"></a><b>Footnote 938:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag938">(return)</a>
+<p>Martin, 117. The custom of walking <i>deiseil</i> round an
+object still survives, and, as an imitation of the sun's course, it
+is supposed to bring good luck or ward off evil. For the same
+reason the right hand turn was of good augury. Medb's charioteer,
+as she departed for the war, made her chariot turn to the right to
+repel evil omens (<i>LU</i> 55). Curiously enough, Pliny (xxviii.
+2) says that the Gauls preferred the left-hand turn in their
+religious rites, though Athen&aelig;us refers to the right-hand
+turn among them. <i>Deiseil</i> is from <i>dekso-s</i>, "right,"
+and <i>svel</i>, "to turn."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote939" name=
+"footnote939"></a><b>Footnote 939:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag939">(return)</a>
+<p>Hone, i. 846; Hazlitt, ii. 346.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote940" name=
+"footnote940"></a><b>Footnote 940:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag940">(return)</a>
+<p>This account of the Midsummer ritual is based on notices found
+in Hone, <i>Everyday Book</i>; Hazlitt, ii. 347 f.; Gaidoz, <i>Le
+Dieu Soleil</i>; Bertrand; Deloche, <i>RC</i> ix. 435;
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, xii. 315; Frazer, <i>Golden
+Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, iii. 266 f.; Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i> ii.
+617 f.; Monnier, 186 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote941" name=
+"footnote941"></a><b>Footnote 941:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag941">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 51; Guiraud, <i>Les Assembl&eacute;es
+provinciales dans l'Empire Romain</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote942" name=
+"footnote942"></a><b>Footnote 942:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag942">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, i. 215, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 44; Loth, <i>Annales de
+Bretagne</i>, xiii. No. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote943" name=
+"footnote943"></a><b>Footnote 943:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag943">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 51.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote944" name=
+"footnote944"></a><b>Footnote 944:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag944">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, iv. 4. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote945" name=
+"footnote945"></a><b>Footnote 945:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag945">(return)</a>
+<p>Dion. Per. v. 570.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote946" name=
+"footnote946"></a><b>Footnote 946:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag946">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xxii. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote947" name=
+"footnote947"></a><b>Footnote 947:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag947">(return)</a>
+<p>Greg, <i>de Glor. Conf.</i> 477; Sulp. Sev. <i>Vita S.
+Martini</i>, 9; Pass. S. Symphor. Migne, <i>Pat. Graec.</i> v.
+1463, 1466. The cult of Cybele had been introduced into Gaul, and
+the ritual here described resembles it, but we are evidently
+dealing here with the cult of a native goddess. See, however,
+Frazer, <i>Adonis</i>, 176.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote948" name=
+"footnote948"></a><b>Footnote 948:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag948">(return)</a>
+<p>Anwyl, <i>Celtic Religion</i>, 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote949" name=
+"footnote949"></a><b>Footnote 949:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag949">(return)</a>
+<p>See Hartland, <i>Science of Fairy-Tales</i>, 84 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote950" name=
+"footnote950"></a><b>Footnote 950:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag950">(return)</a>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s suggests that nudity, being a frequent symbol
+of submission to a conqueror, acquired a similar significance in
+religious rites (<i>AL</i> 180). But the magical aspect of nudity
+came first in time.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote951" name=
+"footnote951"></a><b>Footnote 951:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag951">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamnan, <i>Vita S. Col.</i> ii. 45.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote952" name=
+"footnote952"></a><b>Footnote 952:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag952">(return)</a>
+<p>See Gomme, <i>Ethnology in Folk-lore</i>, 30 f., <i>Village
+Community</i>, 114.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id=
+"page279"></a>{279}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap19" id="chap19">CHAPTER XIX.</a></h2>
+<h3>ACCESSORIES OF CULT.</h3>
+<h4>TEMPLES.</h4>
+<p>In primitive religion the place of worship is seldom a temple
+made with hands, but rather an enclosed space in which the symbol
+or image of the god stands. The sacredness of the god makes the
+place of his cult sacred. Often an open space in the forest is the
+scene of the regular cult. There the priests perform the sacred
+rites; none may enter it but themselves; and the trembling
+worshipper approaches it with awe lest the god should slay him if
+he came too near.</p>
+<p>The earliest temples of the Gauls were sacred groves, one of
+which, near Massilia, is described by Lucan. No bird built in it,
+no animal lurked near, the leaves constantly shivered when no
+breeze stirred them. Altars stood in its midst, and the images of
+the gods were misshapen trunks of trees. Every tree was stained
+with sacrificial blood. The poet then describes marvels heard or
+seen in the grove&mdash;the earth groaning, dead yews reviving,
+trees surrounded with flame yet not consumed, and huge serpents
+twining round the oaks. The people feared to approach the grove,
+and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight lest
+he should then meet its divine guardian.<a id="footnotetag953"
+name="footnotetag953"></a><a href="#footnote953"><sup>953</sup></a>
+Dio speaks of human sacrifices offered to Andrasta in a British
+grove, and in 61 A.D. the woods of Mona, devoted to strange rites,
+were cut down by <span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id=
+"page280"></a>{280}</span> Roman soldiers.<a id="footnotetag954"
+name="footnotetag954"></a><a href="#footnote954"><sup>954</sup></a>
+The sacred <i>Dru-nemeton</i> of the Galatian Celts may have been a
+grove.<a id="footnotetag955" name="footnotetag955"></a><a href=
+"#footnote955"><sup>955</sup></a> Place-names also point to the
+widespread existence of such groves, since the word <i>nemeton</i>,
+"grove," occurs in many of them, showing that the places so called
+had been sites of a cult. In Ireland, <i>fid-nemed</i> stood for
+"sacred grove."<a id="footnotetag956" name=
+"footnotetag956"></a><a href="#footnote956"><sup>956</sup></a> The
+ancient groves were still the objects of veneration in Christian
+times, though fines were levied against those who still clung to
+the old ways.<a id="footnotetag957" name=
+"footnotetag957"></a><a href="#footnote957"><sup>957</sup></a></p>
+<p>Sacred groves were still used in Gallo-Roman times, and the
+Druids may have had a preference for them, a preference which may
+underlie the words of the scholiast on Lucan, that "the Druids
+worship the gods without temples in woods." But probably more
+elaborate temples, great tribal sanctuaries, existed side by side
+with these local groves, especially in Cisalpine Gaul, where the
+Boii had a temple in which were stored the spoils of war, while the
+Insubri had a similar temple.<a id="footnotetag958" name=
+"footnotetag958"></a><a href="#footnote958"><sup>958</sup></a>
+These were certainly buildings. The "consecrated place" in
+Transalpine Gaul, which C&aelig;sar mentions, and where at fixed
+periods judgments were given, might be either a grove or a temple.
+C&aelig;sar uses the same phrase for sacred places where the spoils
+of war were heaped; these may have been groves, but Diodorus speaks
+of treasure collected in "temples and sacred places" ([Greek: en
+tois hierois chai temenesin]), and Plutarch speaks of the "temple"
+where the Arverni hung C&aelig;sar's sword.<a id="footnotetag959"
+name="footnotetag959"></a><a href="#footnote959"><sup>959</sup></a>
+The "temple" of the Namnite women, unroofed and re-roofed in a day,
+must have been a building. There is no evidence that the insular
+Celts had temples. In <span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id=
+"page281"></a>{281}</span> Gallo-Roman times, elaborate temples,
+perhaps occupying sites of earlier groves or temples, sprang up
+over the Romano-Celtic area. They were built on Roman models, many
+of them were of great size, and they were dedicated to Roman or
+Gallo-Roman divinities.<a id="footnotetag960" name=
+"footnotetag960"></a><a href="#footnote960"><sup>960</sup></a>
+Smaller shrines were built by grateful worshippers at sacred
+springs to their presiding divinity, as many inscriptions show. In
+the temples stood images of the gods, and here were stored sacred
+vessels, sometimes made of the skulls of enemies, spoils of war
+dedicated to the gods, money collected for sacred purposes, and war
+standards, especially those which bore divine symbols.</p>
+<p>The old idea that stone circles were Druidic temples, that human
+sacrifices were offered on the "altar-stone," and libations of
+blood poured into the cup-markings, must be given up, along with
+much of the astronomical lore associated with the circles.
+Stonehenge dates from the close of the Neolithic Age, and most of
+the smaller circles belong to the early Bronze Age, and are
+probably pre-Celtic. In any case they were primarily places of
+sepulture. As such they would be the scene of ancestor worship, but
+yet not temples in the strict sense of the word. The larger
+circles, burial-places of great chiefs or kings, would become
+central places for the recurring rites of ghost-worship, possibly
+also rallying places of the tribe on stated occasions. But whether
+this ghost-worship was ever transmuted into the cult of a god at
+the circles is uncertain and, indeed, unlikely. The Celts would
+naturally regard these places as sacred, since the ghosts of the
+dead, even those of a vanquished people, are always dangerous, and
+they also took over the myths and legends<a id="footnotetag961"
+name="footnotetag961"></a><a href="#footnote961"><sup>961</sup></a>
+associated with <span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id=
+"page282"></a>{282}</span> them, such, <i>e.g.</i>, as regarded the
+stones themselves, or trees growing within the circles, as
+embodiments of the dead, while they may also have used them as
+occasional places of secondary interment. Whether they were ever
+led to copy such circles themselves is uncertain, since their own
+methods of interment seem to have been different. We have seen that
+the gods may in some cases have been worshipped at tumuli, and that
+Lugnasad was, at some centres, connected with commemorative cults
+at burial-places (mounds, not circles). But the reasons for this
+are obscure, nor is there any hint that other Celtic festivals were
+held near burial mounds. Probably such commemorative rites at
+places of sepulture during Lugnasad were only part of a wider
+series occurring elsewhere, and we cannot assume from such vague
+notices that stone circles were Druidic temples where worship of an
+Oriental nature was carried on.</p>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s is disposed to accept the old idea that
+Stonehenge was the temple of Apollo in the island of the
+Hyperboreans, mentioned by Diodorus, where the sun-god was
+worshipped.<a id="footnotetag962" name=
+"footnotetag962"></a><a href="#footnote962"><sup>962</sup></a> But
+though that temple was circular, it had walls adorned with votive
+offerings. Nor does the temple unroofed yearly by the Namnite women
+imply a stone circle, for there is not the slightest particle of
+evidence that the circles were ever roofed in any way.<a id=
+"footnotetag963" name="footnotetag963"></a><a href=
+"#footnote963"><sup>963</sup></a> Stone circles with mystic trees
+growing in them, one of them with a well by which entrance was
+gained to T&iacute;r fa Tonn, are mentioned in Irish tales. They
+were connected with magic rites, but are not spoken of as
+temples.<a id="footnotetag964" name="footnotetag964"></a><a href=
+"#footnote964"><sup>964</sup></a></p>
+<h4>ALTARS.</h4>
+<p>Lucan describes realistically the awful sacrifices of the Gauls
+on cruel altars not a whit milder than those of Diana, <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>{283}</span> and he
+speaks of "altars piled with offerings" in the sacred grove at
+Marseilles.<a id="footnotetag965" name=
+"footnotetag965"></a><a href="#footnote965"><sup>965</sup></a>
+Cicero says that human victims were sacrificed on altars, and
+Tacitus describes the altars of Mona smeared with human
+blood.<a id="footnotetag966" name="footnotetag966"></a><a href=
+"#footnote966"><sup>966</sup></a> "Druids' altars" are mentioned in
+the Irish "Expedition of Dathi," and Cormac speaks of
+<i>indelba</i>, or altars adorned with emblems.<a id=
+"footnotetag967" name="footnotetag967"></a><a href=
+"#footnote967"><sup>967</sup></a> Probably many of these altars
+were mere heaps of stone like the Norse <i>horg</i>, or a great
+block of stone. Some sacrifices, however, were too extensive to be
+offered on an altar, but in such cases the blood would be sprinkled
+upon it. Under Roman influence, Celtic altars took the form of
+those of the conquerors, with inscriptions containing names of
+native or Roman gods and bas-reliefs depicting some of these. The
+old idea that dolmens were Celtic altars is now abandoned. They
+were places of sepulture of the Neolithic or early Bronze Age, and
+were originally covered with a mound of earth. During the era of
+Celtic paganism they were therefore hidden from sight, and it is
+only in later times that the earth has been removed and the massive
+stones, arranged so as to form a species of chamber, have been laid
+bare.</p>
+<h4>IMAGES.</h4>
+<p>The Gauls, according to C&aelig;sar, possessed <i>plurima
+simulacra</i> of the native Mercury, but he does not refer to
+images of other gods. We need not infer from this that the Celts
+had a prejudice against images, for among the Irish Celts images
+are often mentioned, and in Gaul under Roman rule many images
+existed.</p>
+<p>The existence of images among the Celts as among other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id=
+"page284"></a>{284}</span> peoples, may owe something to the cult
+of trees and of stones set up over the dead. The stone, associated
+with the dead man's spirit, became an image of himself, perhaps
+rudely fashioned in his likeness. A rough-hewn tree trunk became an
+image of the spirit or god of trees. On the other hand, some
+anthropomorphic images, like the pal&aelig;olithic or
+Mycen&aelig;an figurines, may have been fashioned without the
+intermediary of tree-trunk or stone pillar. Maximus of Tyre says
+that the Celtic image of Zeus was a lofty oak, perhaps a rough-hewn
+trunk rather than a growing tree, and such roughly carved
+tree-trunks, images of gods, are referred to by Lucan in his
+description of the Massilian grove.<a id="footnotetag968" name=
+"footnotetag968"></a><a href="#footnote968"><sup>968</sup></a>
+Pillar stones set up over the graves of the dead are often
+mentioned in Irish texts. These would certainly be associated with
+the dead; indeed, existing legends show that they were believed to
+be tenanted by the ghosts and to have the power of motion. This
+suggests that they had been regarded as images of the dead. Other
+stones honoured in Ireland were the <i>cloch labrais</i>, an
+oracular stone; the <i>lia fail</i>, or coronation stone, which
+shouted when a king of the Milesian race seated himself upon it;
+and the <i>lia adrada</i>, or stone of adoration, apparently a
+boundary stone.<a id="footnotetag969" name=
+"footnotetag969"></a><a href="#footnote969"><sup>969</sup></a> The
+<i>plurima simulacra</i> of the Gaulish Mercury may have been
+boundary stones like those dedicated to Mercury or Hermes among the
+Romans and Greeks. Did C&aelig;sar conclude, or was it actually the
+case, that the Gauls dedicated such stones to a god of boundaries
+who might be equated with Mercury? Many such standing stones still
+exist in France, and their number must have been greater in
+C&aelig;sar's time. Seeing them the objects of superstitious
+observances, he may have concluded that they were <i>simulacra</i>
+of a god. Other Romans besides himself had been struck by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id=
+"page285"></a>{285}</span> the resemblance of these stones to their
+Hermai, and perhaps the Gauls, if they did not already regard them
+as symbols of a god, acquiesced in the resemblance. Thus, on the
+menhir of Kervadel are sculptured four figures, one being that of
+Mercury, dating from Gallo-Roman times. Beneath another, near
+Peronne, a bronze statuette of Mercury was discovered.<a id=
+"footnotetag970" name="footnotetag970"></a><a href=
+"#footnote970"><sup>970</sup></a> This would seem to show that the
+Gauls had a cult of pillar stones associated with a god of
+boundaries. C&aelig;sar probably uses the word <i>simulacrum</i> in
+the sense of "symbol" rather than "image," though he may have meant
+native images not fully carved in human shape, like the Irish
+<i>c&eacute;rmand</i>, <i>cerstach</i>, ornamented with gold and
+silver, the "chief idol" of north Ireland, or like the similarly
+ornamented "images" of Cromm Cruaich and his satellites.<a id=
+"footnotetag971" name="footnotetag971"></a><a href=
+"#footnote971"><sup>971</sup></a> The adoration of sacred stones
+continued into Christian times and was much opposed by the
+Church.<a id="footnotetag972" name="footnotetag972"></a><a href=
+"#footnote972"><sup>972</sup></a> S. Samson of Dol (sixth century)
+found men dancing round a <i>simulacrum abominabile</i>, which
+seems to have been a kind of standing stone, and having besought
+them to desist, he carved a cross upon it.<a id="footnotetag973"
+name="footnotetag973"></a><a href="#footnote973"><sup>973</sup></a>
+Several <i>menhirion</i> in France are now similarly
+ornamented.<a id="footnotetag974" name=
+"footnotetag974"></a><a href="#footnote974"><sup>974</sup></a></p>
+<p>The number of existing Gallo-Roman images shows that the Celts
+had not adopted a custom which was foreign to them, and they must
+have already possessed rude native images. The disappearance of
+these would be explained if they were made of perishable material.
+Wooden images of the <i>Matres</i> have been occasionally found,
+and these may be pre-Roman. Some of the images of the three-headed
+and crouching gods show no sign of Roman influences in their
+modelling, and they may have been copied from earlier images of
+wood. We also find <span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id=
+"page286"></a>{286}</span> divine figures on pre-Roman coins.<a id=
+"footnotetag975" name="footnotetag975"></a><a href=
+"#footnote975"><sup>975</sup></a> Certain passages in classical
+writings point to the existence of native images. A statue of a
+goddess existed in a temple at Marseilles, according to Justin, and
+the Galatian Celts had images of the native Juppiter and Artemis,
+while the conquering Celts who entered Rome bowed to the seated
+senators as to statues of the gods.<a id="footnotetag976" name=
+"footnotetag976"></a><a href="#footnote976"><sup>976</sup></a> The
+Gauls placed rich ornaments on the images of the gods, and
+presumably these were native "idols."</p>
+<p>"Idols" are frequently mentioned in Irish texts, and there is no
+doubt that these mean images.<a id="footnotetag977" name=
+"footnotetag977"></a><a href="#footnote977"><sup>977</sup></a>
+Cormac mac Art refused to worship "idols," and was punished by the
+Druids.<a id="footnotetag978" name="footnotetag978"></a><a href=
+"#footnote978"><sup>978</sup></a> The idols of Cromm Cruaich and
+his satellites, referred to in the <i>Dindsenchas</i>, were carved
+to represent the human form; the chief one was of gold, the others
+of stone. These were miraculously overthrown by S. Patrick; but in
+the account of the miracle the chief idol was of stone adorned with
+gold and silver, the others, numbering twelve, were ornamented with
+bronze.<a id="footnotetag979" name="footnotetag979"></a><a href=
+"#footnote979"><sup>979</sup></a> They stood in Mag Slecht, and
+similar sacred places with groups of images evidently existed
+elsewhere, <i>e.g.</i> at Rath Archaill, "where the Druid's altars
+and images are."<a id="footnotetag980" name=
+"footnotetag980"></a><a href="#footnote980"><sup>980</sup></a> The
+lady Cessair, before coming to Ireland, is said to have taken
+advice of her <i>laimh-dhia</i>, or "hand gods," perhaps small
+images used for divination.<a id="footnotetag981" name=
+"footnotetag981"></a><a href="#footnote981"><sup>981</sup></a></p>
+<p>For the British Celts the evidence is slender, but idolatry in
+the sense of "image-worship" is frequently mentioned in the lives
+of early saints.<a id="footnotetag982" name=
+"footnotetag982"></a><a href="#footnote982"><sup>982</sup></a>
+Gildas also speaks of images <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page287" id="page287"></a>{287}</span> "mouldering away within and
+without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed
+features."<a id="footnotetag983" name="footnotetag983"></a><a href=
+"#footnote983"><sup>983</sup></a> This pathetic picture of the
+forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may refer to Romano-Celtic
+images, but the "stiff and deformed features" suggest rather native
+art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing the human form,
+however artistic they may have been in other directions.</p>
+<p>If the native Celts of Ireland had images, there is no reason to
+suppose, especially considering the evidence just adduced, that the
+Gauls, or at least the Druids, were antagonistic to images. This
+last is M. Reinach's theory, part of a wider hypothesis that the
+Druids were pre-Celtic, but became the priests of the Celts, who
+till then had no priests. The Druids prohibited image-worship, and
+this prohibition existed in Gaul, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, from the end
+of pal&aelig;olithic times. Pythagoras and his school were opposed
+to image-worship, and the classical writers claimed a connection
+between the Pythagoreans and the Druids. M. Reinach thinks there
+must have been some analogy between them, and that was hostility to
+anthropomorphism. But the analogy is distinctly stated to have lain
+in the doctrine of immortality or metempsychosis. Had the Druids
+been opposed to image-worship, classical observers could not have
+failed to notice the fact. M. Reinach then argues that the Druids
+caused the erection of the megalithic monuments in Gaul, symbols
+not images. They are thus Druidic, though not Celtic. The monuments
+argue a powerful priesthood; the Druids were a powerful priesthood;
+therefore the Druids caused the monuments to be built. This is not
+a powerful argument!<a id="footnotetag984" name=
+"footnotetag984"></a><a href="#footnote984"><sup>984</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id=
+"page288"></a>{288}</span>
+<p>As has been seen, some purely Celtic images existed in Gaul. The
+Gauls, who used nothing but wood for their houses, probably knew
+little of the art of carving stone. They would therefore make most
+of their images of wood&mdash;a perishable material. The insular
+Celts had images, and if, as C&aelig;sar maintained, the Druids
+came from Britain to Gaul, this points at least to a similarity of
+cult in the two regions. Youthful Gauls who aspired to Druidic
+knowledge went to Britain to obtain it. Would the Druids of Gaul
+have permitted this, had they been iconoclasts? No single text
+shows that the Druids had any antipathy to images, while the Gauls
+certainly had images of worshipful animals. Further, even if the
+Druids were priests of a pre-Celtic folk, they must have permitted
+the making of images, since many "menhir-statues" exist on French
+soil, at Aveyron, Tarn, and elsewhere.<a id="footnotetag985" name=
+"footnotetag985"></a><a href="#footnote985"><sup>985</sup></a> The
+Celts were in constant contact with image-worshipping peoples, and
+could hardly have failed to be influenced by them, even if such a
+priestly prohibition existed, just as Israel succumbed to images in
+spite of divine commands. That they would have been thus influenced
+is seen from the number of images of all kinds dating from the
+period after the Roman conquest.</p>
+<p>Incidental proofs of the fondness of the Celts for images are
+found in ecclesiastical writings and in late survivals. The
+procession of the image of Berecynthia has already been described,
+and such processions were common in Gaul, and imply a regular
+folk-custom. S. Martin of Tours stopped a funeral procession
+believing it to be such a pagan rite.<a id="footnotetag986" name=
+"footnotetag986"></a><a href="#footnote986"><sup>986</sup></a>
+Councils and edicts prohibited these processions in Gaul, but a
+more effectual way was to Christianise them. The Rogation
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id=
+"page289"></a>{289}</span> tide processions with crucifix and
+Madonna, and the carrying of S. John's image at the Midsummer
+festivals, were a direct continuation of the older practices.
+Images were often broken by Christian saints in Gaul, as they had
+been over-turned by S. Patrick in Ireland. "Stiff and deformed"
+many of them must have been, if one may judge from the
+<i>Groah-goard</i> or "Venus of Quinipily," for centuries the
+object of superstitious rites in Brittany.<a id="footnotetag987"
+name="footnotetag987"></a><a href="#footnote987"><sup>987</sup></a>
+With it may be compared the fetich-stone or image of which an old
+woman in the island of Inniskea, the guardian of a sacred well, had
+charge. It was kept wrapped up to hide it from profane eyes, but at
+certain periods it was brought out for adoration.<a id=
+"footnotetag988" name="footnotetag988"></a><a href=
+"#footnote988"><sup>988</sup></a></p>
+<p>The images and bas-reliefs of the Gallo-Roman period fall mainly
+into two classes. In the first class are those representing native
+divinities, like Esus, Tarvos Trigaranos, Smertullos, Cernunnos,
+the horned and crouching gods, the god with the hammer, and the god
+with the wheel. Busts and statues of some water-goddesses exist,
+but more numerous are the representations of Epona. One of these is
+provided with a box pedestal in which offerings might be placed.
+The <i>Matres</i> are frequently figured, usually as three seated
+figures with baskets of fruit or flowers, or with one or more
+infants, like the Madonna. Images of triple-headed gods, supposed
+to be Cernunnos, have been found, but are difficult to place in any
+category.<a id="footnotetag989" name="footnotetag989"></a><a href=
+"#footnote989"><sup>989</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id=
+"page290"></a>{290}</span>
+<p>To the images of the second class is usually attached the Roman
+name of a god, but generally the native Celtic name is added, but
+the images themselves are of the traditional Roman type. Among
+statues and statuettes of bronze, that of Mercury occurs most
+often. This may point to the fact that C&aelig;sar's
+<i>simulacra</i> of the native Mercury were images, and that the
+old preference for representing this god continued in Roman times.
+Small figures of divinities in white clay have been found in large
+numbers, and may have been <i>ex votos</i> or images of household
+<i>lararia</i>.<a id="footnotetag990" name=
+"footnotetag990"></a><a href="#footnote990"><sup>990</sup></a></p>
+<h4>SYMBOLS.</h4>
+<p>Images of the gods in Gaul can be classified by means of their
+symbols&mdash;the mallet and cup (a symbol of plenty) borne by the
+god with the hammer, the wheel of the sun-god, the cornucopia and
+torque carried by Cernunnos. Other symbols occur on images, altars,
+monuments, and coins. These are the swastika and triskele, probably
+symbols of the sun;<a id="footnotetag991" name=
+"footnotetag991"></a><a href="#footnote991"><sup>991</sup></a>
+single or concentric circles, sometimes with rays;<a id=
+"footnotetag992" name="footnotetag992"></a><a href=
+"#footnote992"><sup>992</sup></a> crosses; and a curious <b>S</b>
+figure. The triskele and the circles are sometimes found on faces
+figured on coins. They may therefore have been tattoo markings of a
+symbolic character. The circle and cross are often incised on
+bronze images of Dispater. Much speculation has been aroused by the
+<b>S</b> figure, which occurs on coins, while nine models of this
+symbol hang from a ring carried by the god with the wheel, but the
+most probable is that which sees in it a thunderbolt.<a id=
+"footnotetag993" name="footnotetag993"></a><a href=
+"#footnote993"><sup>993</sup></a> But lacking any old text
+interpreting <span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id=
+"page291"></a>{291}</span> these various symbols, all explanations
+of them must be conjectural. Some of them are not purely Celtic,
+but are of world-wide occurrence.</p>
+<h4>CULT OF WEAPONS.</h4>
+<p>Here some reference may be made to the Celtic cult of weapons.
+As has been seen, a hammer is the symbol of one god, and it is not
+unlikely that a cult of the hammer had preceded that of the god to
+whom the hammer was given as a symbol. Esus is also represented
+with an axe. We need not repeat what has already been said
+regarding the primitive and universal cult of hammer or axe,<a id=
+"footnotetag994" name="footnotetag994"></a><a href=
+"#footnote994"><sup>994</sup></a> but it is interesting to notice,
+in connection with other evidence for a Celtic cult of weapons,
+that there is every reason to believe that the phrase <i>sub ascia
+dedicare</i>, which occurs in inscriptions on tombs from Gallia
+Lugdunensis, usually with the figure of an axe incised on the
+stone, points to the cult of the axe, or of a god whose symbol the
+axe was.<a id="footnotetag995" name="footnotetag995"></a><a href=
+"#footnote995"><sup>995</sup></a> In Irish texts the power of
+speech is attributed to weapons, but, according to the Christian
+scribe, this was because demons spoke from them, for the people
+worshipped arms in those days.<a id="footnotetag996" name=
+"footnotetag996"></a><a href="#footnote996"><sup>996</sup></a> Thus
+it may have been believed that spirits tenanted weapons, or that
+weapons had souls. Evidence of the cult itself is found in the fact
+that on Gaulish coins a sword is figured, stuck in the ground, or
+driving a chariot, or with a warrior dancing before it, or held in
+the hand of a dancing warrior.<a id="footnotetag997" name=
+"footnotetag997"></a><a href="#footnote997"><sup>997</sup></a> The
+latter are ritual acts, and resemble that described by Spenser as
+performed by Irish warriors in his day, who said prayers or
+incantations before a sword stuck in the earth.<a id=
+"footnotetag998" name="footnotetag998"></a><a href=
+"#footnote998"><sup>998</sup></a> Swords were also addressed in
+songs composed <span class="pagenum"><a name="page292" id=
+"page292"></a>{292}</span> by Irish bards, and traditional remains
+of such songs are found in Brittany.<a id="footnotetag999" name=
+"footnotetag999"></a><a href="#footnote999"><sup>999</sup></a> They
+represent the chants of the ancient cult. Oaths were taken by
+weapons, and the weapons were believed to turn against those who
+lied.<a id="footnotetag1000" name="footnotetag1000"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1000"><sup>1000</sup></a> The magical power of weapons,
+especially of those over which incantations had been said, is
+frequently referred to in traditional tales and Irish texts.<a id=
+"footnotetag1001" name="footnotetag1001"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1001"><sup>1001</sup></a> A reminiscence of the cult or
+of the magical power of weapons may be found in the wonderful
+"glaives of light" of Celtic folk-tales, and the similar mystical
+weapon of the Arthurian romances.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote953" name=
+"footnote953"></a><b>Footnote 953:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag953">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, <i>Pharsalia</i>, iii. 399 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote954" name=
+"footnote954"></a><b>Footnote 954:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag954">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Tac. <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote955" name=
+"footnote955"></a><b>Footnote 955:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag955">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, xii. 51. <i>Drunemeton</i> may mean "great temple"
+(D'Arbois, <i>Les Celtes</i>, 203).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote956" name=
+"footnote956"></a><b>Footnote 956:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag956">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 164.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote957" name=
+"footnote957"></a><b>Footnote 957:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag957">(return)</a>
+<p>Holder, ii. 712. Cf. "Indiculus" in Grimm, <i>Teut. Myth.</i>
+1739, "de sacris silvarum, quas nimidas (= nemeta) vocant."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote958" name=
+"footnote958"></a><b>Footnote 958:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag958">(return)</a>
+<p>Livy, xxiii. 24; Polyb. ii. 32.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote959" name=
+"footnote959"></a><b>Footnote 959:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag959">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 13, 17; Diod. Sic. v. 27; Plutarch,
+<i>C&aelig;sar</i>, 26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote960" name=
+"footnote960"></a><b>Footnote 960:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag960">(return)</a>
+<p>See examples in Dom Martin, i. 134 f.; cf. Greg. Tours, <i>Hist.
+Franc.</i> i. 30.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote961" name=
+"footnote961"></a><b>Footnote 961:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag961">(return)</a>
+<p>See Reinach, "Les monuments de pierre brute dans le langage et
+les croyances populaires," <i>Rev. Arch.</i> 1893, i. 339; Evans,
+"The Roll-Right Stones," <i>Folk-Lore</i>, vi. 20 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote962" name=
+"footnote962"></a><b>Footnote 962:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag962">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 194; Diod. Sic. ii. 47.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote963" name=
+"footnote963"></a><b>Footnote 963:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag963">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, 197.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote964" name=
+"footnote964"></a><b>Footnote 964:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag964">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 246; Kennedy, 271.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote965" name=
+"footnote965"></a><b>Footnote 965:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag965">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, i. 443, iii. 399f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote966" name=
+"footnote966"></a><b>Footnote 966:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag966">(return)</a>
+<p>Cicero, <i>pro Fonteio</i>, x. 21; Tac. <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30. Cf.
+Pomp. Mela, iii. 2. 18.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote967" name=
+"footnote967"></a><b>Footnote 967:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag967">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 284; Cormac, 94. Cf. <i>IT</i> iii.
+211, for the practice of circumambulating altars.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote968" name=
+"footnote968"></a><b>Footnote 968:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag968">(return)</a>
+<p>Max. Tyr. <i>Dissert.</i> viii. 8; Lucan, iii. 412f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote969" name=
+"footnote969"></a><b>Footnote 969:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag969">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, iv. 142.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote970" name=
+"footnote970"></a><b>Footnote 970:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag970">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. Arch.</i> i. pl. iii-v.; Reinach, <i>RC</i> xi. 224,
+xiii. 190.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote971" name=
+"footnote971"></a><b>Footnote 971:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag971">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>Martyr. of Oengus</i>, 186-187.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote972" name=
+"footnote972"></a><b>Footnote 972:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag972">(return)</a>
+<p>See the Twenty-third Canon of Council of Arles, the Twenty-third
+of the Council of Tours, 567, and ch. 65 of the <i>Capitularia</i>,
+789.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote973" name=
+"footnote973"></a><b>Footnote 973:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag973">(return)</a>
+<p>Mabillon, <i>Acta</i>, i. 177.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote974" name=
+"footnote974"></a><b>Footnote 974:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag974">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> 1893, xxi. 335.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote975" name=
+"footnote975"></a><b>Footnote 975:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag975">(return)</a>
+<p>Blanchet, i. 152-153, 386.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote976" name=
+"footnote976"></a><b>Footnote 976:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag976">(return)</a>
+<p>Justin, xliii. 5; Strabo, xii. 5. 2; Plutarch, <i>de Virt.
+Mul.</i> xx.; Livy, v. 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote977" name=
+"footnote977"></a><b>Footnote 977:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag977">(return)</a>
+<p>Cormac, 94.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote978" name=
+"footnote978"></a><b>Footnote 978:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag978">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 356. See also Stokes, <i>Martyr. of Oengus</i>, 186;
+<i>RC</i> xii. 427, &sect; 15; Joyce, <i>SH</i> 274 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote979" name=
+"footnote979"></a><b>Footnote 979:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag979">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 213<i>b</i>; <i>Trip. Life</i>, i. 90, 93.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote980" name=
+"footnote980"></a><b>Footnote 980:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag980">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 284.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote981" name=
+"footnote981"></a><b>Footnote 981:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag981">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 49.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote982" name=
+"footnote982"></a><b>Footnote 982:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag982">(return)</a>
+<p>Jocelyn, <i>Vita S. Kentig.</i> 27, 32, 34; Ailred, <i>Vita S.
+Ninian.</i> 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote983" name=
+"footnote983"></a><b>Footnote 983:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag983">(return)</a>
+<p>Gildas, &sect; 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote984" name=
+"footnote984"></a><b>Footnote 984:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag984">(return)</a>
+<p>For the whole argument see Reinach, <i>RC</i> xiii. 189 f.
+Bertrand, <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xv. 345, supports a similar theory,
+and, according to both writers, Gallo-Roman art was the result of
+the weakening of Druidic power by the Romans.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote985" name=
+"footnote985"></a><b>Footnote 985:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag985">(return)</a>
+<p>L'Abb&eacute; Hermet, Assoc. pour l'avancement des Sciences,
+<i>Compte Rendu</i>, 1900, ii. 747; <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, v.
+147.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote986" name=
+"footnote986"></a><b>Footnote 986:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag986">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Corp. Scrip. Eccl. Lat.</i> i. 122.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote987" name=
+"footnote987"></a><b>Footnote 987:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag987">(return)</a>
+<p>Monnier, 362. The image bears part of an inscription ... LIT...
+and it has been thought that this read ILITHYIA originally. The
+name is in keeping with the rites still in use before the image.
+This would make it date from Roman times. If so, it is a poor
+specimen of the art of the period. But it may be an old native
+image to which later the name of the Roman goddess was given.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote988" name=
+"footnote988"></a><b>Footnote 988:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag988">(return)</a>
+<p>Roden, <i>Progress of the Reformation in Ireland</i>, 51. The
+image was still existing in 1851.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote989" name=
+"footnote989"></a><b>Footnote 989:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag989">(return)</a>
+<p>For figures of most of these, see <i>Rev. Arch.</i> vols. xvi.,
+xviii., xix., xxxvi.; <i>RC</i> xvii. 45, xviii. 254, xx. 309,
+xxii. 159, xxiv. 221; Bertrand, <i>passim</i>; Courcelle-Seneuil,
+<i>Les Dieux Gaulois d'apres les Monuments Figures</i>, Paris,
+1910.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote990" name=
+"footnote990"></a><b>Footnote 990:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag990">(return)</a>
+<p>See Courcelle-Seneuil, <i>op. cit.</i>; Reinach, <i>BF
+passim</i>, <i>Catalogue Sommaire du Mus&eacute;e des Ant.
+nat.</i><sup>4</sup> 115-116.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote991" name=
+"footnote991"></a><b>Footnote 991:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag991">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>Catal.</i> 29, 87; <i>Rev. Arch.</i> xvi. 17;
+Blanchet, i. 169, 316; Huchet, <i>L'art gaulois</i>, ii. 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote992" name=
+"footnote992"></a><b>Footnote 992:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag992">(return)</a>
+<p>Blanchet, i. 158; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 143, 150, 152.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote993" name=
+"footnote993"></a><b>Footnote 993:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag993">(return)</a>
+<p>Blanchet, i. 17; Flouest, <i>Deux St&egrave;les</i> (Append.),
+Paris, 1885; Reinach, <i>BF</i> 33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote994" name=
+"footnote994"></a><b>Footnote 994:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag994">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page30">30</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote995" name=
+"footnote995"></a><b>Footnote 995:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag995">(return)</a>
+<p>Hirschfeld in <i>CIL</i> xiii. 256.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote996" name=
+"footnote996"></a><b>Footnote 996:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag996">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 107; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 131.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote997" name=
+"footnote997"></a><b>Footnote 997:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag997">(return)</a>
+<p>Blanchet, i. 160 f.; Muret de la Tour, <i>Catalogue</i>, 6922,
+6941, etc.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote998" name=
+"footnote998"></a><b>Footnote 998:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag998">(return)</a>
+<p><i>View of the State of Ireland</i>, 57.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote999" name=
+"footnote999"></a><b>Footnote 999:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag999">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xx. 7; Martin, <i>&Eacute;tudes de la Myth. Celt.</i>
+164.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1000" name=
+"footnote1000"></a><b>Footnote 1000:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1000">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 206; <i>RC</i> ix. 144.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1001" name=
+"footnote1001"></a><b>Footnote 1001:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1001">(return)</a>
+<p><i>CM</i> xiii. 168 f.; Miss Hull, 44, 221, 223.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293" id=
+"page293"></a>{293}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap20" id="chap20">CHAPTER XX.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE DRUIDS.</h3>
+<p>Pliny thought that the name "Druid" was a Greek appellation
+derived from the Druidic cult of the oak ([Greek:
+<i>drus</i>]).<a id="footnotetag1002" name=
+"footnotetag1002"></a><a href="#footnote1002"><sup>1002</sup></a>
+The word, however, is purely Celtic, and its meaning probably
+implies that, like the sorcerer and medicine-man everywhere, the
+Druid was regarded as "the knowing one." It is composed of two
+parts&mdash;<i>dru</i>-, regarded by M. D'Arbois as an intensive,
+and <i>vids</i>, from <i>vid</i>, "to know," or "see."<a id=
+"footnotetag1003" name="footnotetag1003"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1003"><sup>1003</sup></a> Hence the Druid was "the very
+knowing or wise one." It is possible, however, that <i>dru</i>- is
+connected with the root which gives the word "oak" in Celtic
+speech&mdash;Gaulish <i>deruo</i>, Irish <i>dair</i>, Welsh
+<i>derw</i>&mdash;and that the oak, occupying a place in the cult,
+was thus brought into relation with the name of the priesthood. The
+Gaulish form of the name was probably <i>druis</i>, the Old Irish
+was <i>drai</i>. The modern forms in Irish and Scots Gaelic,
+<i>drui</i> and <i>draoi</i> mean "sorcerer."</p>
+<p>M. D'Arbois and others, accepting C&aelig;sar's dictum that "the
+system (of Druidism) is thought to have been devised in Britain,
+and brought thence into Gaul," maintain that the Druids were
+priests of the Goidels in Britain, who imposed themselves upon the
+Gaulish conquerors of the Goidels, and that Druidism then passed
+over into Gaul about 200 B.C.<a id="footnotetag1004" name=
+"footnotetag1004"></a><a href="#footnote1004"><sup>1004</sup></a>
+But it is hardly <span class="pagenum"><a name="page294" id=
+"page294"></a>{294}</span> likely that, even if the Druids were
+accepted as priests by conquering Gauls in Britain, they should
+have affected the Gauls of Gaul who were outside the reflex
+influence of the conquered Goidels, and should have there obtained
+that power which they possessed. Goidels and Gauls were allied by
+race and language and religion, and it would be strange if they did
+not both possess a similar priesthood. Moreover, the Goidels had
+been a continental people, and Druidism was presumably flourishing
+among them then. Why did it not influence kindred Celtic tribes
+without Druids, <i>ex hypothesi</i>, at that time? Further, if we
+accept Professor Meyer's theory that no Goidel set foot in Britain
+until the second century A.D., the Gauls could not have received
+the Druidic priesthood from the Goidels.</p>
+<p>C&aelig;sar merely says, "it is thought (<i>existimatur</i>)
+that Druidism came to Gaul from Britain."<a id="footnotetag1005"
+name="footnotetag1005"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1005"><sup>1005</sup></a> It was a pious opinion, perhaps
+his own, or one based on the fact that those who wished to perfect
+themselves in Druidic art went to Britain. This may have been
+because Britain had been less open to foreign influences than Gaul,
+and its Druids, unaffected by these, were thought to be more
+powerful than those of Gaul. Pliny, on the other hand, seems to
+think that Druidism passed over into Britain from Gaul.<a id=
+"footnotetag1006" name="footnotetag1006"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1006"><sup>1006</sup></a></p>
+<p>Other writers&mdash;Sir John Rh[^y]s, Sir G.L. Gomme, and M.
+Reinach&mdash;support on different grounds the theory that the
+Druids were a pre-Celtic priesthood, accepted by the Celtic
+conquerors. Sir John Rh[^y]s thinks that the Druidism of the
+aborigines of Gaul and Britain made terms with the Celtic
+conquerors. It was accepted by the Goidels, but not by the
+Brythons. Hence in Britain there were Brythons without Druids,
+aborigines under the sway of Druidism, and Goidels who combined
+Aryan polytheism with Druidism. Druidism <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page295" id="page295"></a>{295}</span> was also
+the religion of the aborigines from the Baltic to Gibraltar, and
+was accepted by the Gauls.<a id="footnotetag1007" name=
+"footnotetag1007"></a><a href="#footnote1007"><sup>1007</sup></a>
+But if so, it is difficult to see why the Brythons, akin to them,
+did not accept it. Our knowledge of Brythonic religion is too
+scanty for us to prove that the Druids had or had not sway over
+them, but the presumption is that they had. Nor is there any
+historical evidence to show that the Druids were originally a
+non-Celtic priesthood. Everywhere they appear as the supreme and
+dominant priesthood of the Celts, and the priests of a conquered
+people could hardly have obtained such power over the conquerors.
+The relation of the Celts to the Druids is quite different from
+that of conquerors, who occasionally resort to the medicine-men of
+the conquered folk because they have stronger magic or greater
+influence with the autochthonous gods. The Celts did not resort to
+the Druids occasionally; <i>ex hypothesi</i> they accepted them
+completely, were dominated by them in every department of life,
+while their own priests, if they had any, accepted this order of
+things without a murmur. All this is incredible. The picture drawn
+by C&aelig;sar, Strabo, and others of the Druids and their position
+among the Celts as judges, choosers of tribal chiefs and kings,
+teachers, as well as ministers of religion, suggests rather that
+they were a native Celtic priesthood, long established among the
+people.</p>
+<p>Sir G.L. Gomme supports the theory that the Druids were a
+pre-Celtic priesthood, because, in his opinion, much of their
+belief in magic as well as their use of human sacrifice and the
+redemption of one life by another, is opposed to "Aryan sentiment."
+Equally opposed to this are their functions of settling
+controversies, judging, settling the succession to property, and
+arranging boundaries. These views are supported by a comparison of
+the position of the Druids relatively to the Celts <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page296" id="page296"></a>{296}</span> with that
+of non-Aryan persons in India who render occasional priestly
+services to Hindu village communities.<a id="footnotetag1008" name=
+"footnotetag1008"></a><a href="#footnote1008"><sup>1008</sup></a>
+Whether this comparison of occasional Hindu custom with Celtic
+usage two thousand years ago is just, may be questioned. As already
+seen, it was no mere occasional service which the Druids rendered
+to the Celts, and it is this which makes it difficult to credit
+this theory. Had the Celtic house-father been priest and judge in
+his own clan, would he so readily have surrendered his rights to a
+foreign and conquered priesthood? On the other hand, kings and
+chiefs among the Celts probably retained some priestly functions,
+derived from the time when the offices of the priest-king had not
+been differentiated. C&aelig;sar's evidence certainly does not
+support the idea that "it is only among the rudest of the so-called
+Celtic tribes that we find this superimposing of an apparently
+official priesthood." According to him, the power of the Druids was
+universal in Gaul, and had their position really corresponded to
+that of the pariah priests of India, occasional priests of Hindu
+villages, the determined hostility of the Roman power to them
+because they wielded such an enormous influence over Celtic thought
+and life, is inexplainable. If, further, Aryan sentiment was so
+opposed to Druidic customs, why did Aryan Celts so readily accept
+the Druids? In this case the receiver is as bad as the thief. Sir
+G.L. Gomme clings to the belief that the Aryans were people of a
+comparatively high civilisation, who had discarded, if they ever
+possessed, a savage "past." But old beliefs and customs still
+survive through growing civilisation, and if the views of Professor
+Sergi and others are correct, the Aryans were even less civilised
+than the peoples whom they conquered.<a id="footnotetag1009" name=
+"footnotetag1009"></a><a href="#footnote1009"><sup>1009</sup></a>
+Shape-shifting, magic, human sacrifice, priestly domination, were
+as much Aryan as non-Aryan, and if the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page297" id="page297"></a>{297}</span> Celts had
+a comparatively pure religion, why did they so soon allow it to be
+defiled by the puerile superstitions of the Druids?</p>
+<p>M. Reinach, as we have seen, thinks that the Celts had no
+images, because these were prohibited by their priests. This
+prohibition was pre-Celtic in Gaul, since there are no Neolithic
+images, though there are great megalithic structures, suggesting
+the existence of a great religious aristocracy. This aristocracy
+imposed itself on the Celts.<a id="footnotetag1010" name=
+"footnotetag1010"></a><a href="#footnote1010"><sup>1010</sup></a>
+We have seen that there is no reason for believing that the Celts
+had no images, hence this argument is valueless. M. Reinach then
+argues that the Celts accepted Druidism <i>en bloc</i>, as the
+Romans accepted Oriental cults and the Greeks the native Pelasgic
+cults. But neither Romans nor Greeks abandoned their own faith.
+Were the Celts a people without priests and without religion? We
+know that they must have accepted many local cults, but that they
+adopted the whole aboriginal faith and its priests <i>en bloc</i>
+is not credible. M. Reinach also holds that when the Celts appear
+in history Druidism was in its decline; the Celt, or at least the
+military caste among the Celts, was reasserting itself. But the
+Druids do not appear as a declining body in the pages of
+C&aelig;sar, and their power was still supreme, to judge by the
+hostility of the Roman Government to them. If the military caste
+rebelled against them, this does not prove that they were a foreign
+body. Such a strife is seen wherever priest and soldier form
+separate castes, each desiring to rule, as in Egypt.</p>
+<p>Other writers argue that we do not find Druids existing in the
+Danube region, in Cisalpine territory, nor in Transalpine Gaul,
+"outside the limits of the region occupied by the
+Celt&aelig;."<a id="footnotetag1011" name=
+"footnotetag1011"></a><a href="#footnote1011"><sup>1011</sup></a>
+This could only have weight if any of the classical <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page298" id="page298"></a>{298}</span> writers
+had composed a formal treatise on the Druids, showing exactly the
+regions where they existed. They merely describe Druidism as a
+general Celtic institution, or as they knew it in Gaul or Britain,
+and few of them have any personal knowledge of it. There is no
+reason to believe that Druids did not exist wherever there were
+Celts. The Druids and Semnotheoi of the Celts and Galat&aelig;
+referred to <i>c.</i> 200 B.C. were apparently priests of other
+Celts than those of Gaul, and Celtic groups of Cisalpine Gaul had
+priests, though these are not formally styled Druids.<a id=
+"footnotetag1012" name="footnotetag1012"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1012"><sup>1012</sup></a> The argument <i>ex silentio</i>
+is here of little value, since the references to the Druids are so
+brief, and it tells equally against their non-Celtic origin, since
+we do not hear of Druids in Aquitania, a non-Celtic region.<a id=
+"footnotetag1013" name="footnotetag1013"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1013"><sup>1013</sup></a></p>
+<p>The theory of the non-Celtic origin of the Druids assumes that
+the Celts had no priests, or that these were effaced by the Druids.
+The Celts had priests called <i>gutuatri</i> attached to certain
+temples, their name perhaps meaning "the speakers," those who spoke
+to the gods.<a id="footnotetag1014" name=
+"footnotetag1014"></a><a href="#footnote1014"><sup>1014</sup></a>
+The functions of the Druids were much more general, according to
+this theory, hence M. D'Arbois supposes that, before their
+intrusion, the Celts had no other priests than the
+<i>gutuatri</i>.<a id="footnotetag1015" name=
+"footnotetag1015"></a><a href="#footnote1015"><sup>1015</sup></a>
+But the probability is that they were a Druidic class, ministers of
+local sanctuaries, and related to the Druids as the Levites were to
+the priests of Israel, since the Druids were a composite priesthood
+with a variety of functions. If the priests and servants of
+Belenos, described by Ausonius and called by him <i>oedituus
+Beleni</i>, were <i>gutuatri</i>, then the latter must have been
+connected with the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page299" id=
+"page299"></a>{299}</span> Druids, since he says they were of
+Druidic stock.<a id="footnotetag1016" name=
+"footnotetag1016"></a><a href="#footnote1016"><sup>1016</sup></a>
+Lucan's "priest of the grove" may have been a <i>gutuatros</i>, and
+the priests (<i>sacerdotes</i>) and other ministers
+(<i>antistites</i>) of the Boii may have been Druids properly so
+called and <i>gutuatri</i>.<a id="footnotetag1017" name=
+"footnotetag1017"></a><a href="#footnote1017"><sup>1017</sup></a>
+Another class of temple servants may have existed. Names beginning
+with the name of a god and ending in <i>gnatos</i>, "accustomed
+to," "beloved of," occur in inscriptions, and may denote persons
+consecrated from their youth to the service of a grove or temple.
+On the other hand, the names may mean no more than that those
+bearing them were devoted to the cult of one particular god.</p>
+<p>Our supposition that the <i>gutuatri</i> were a class of Druids
+is supported by classical evidence, which tends to show that the
+Druids were a great inclusive priesthood with different classes
+possessing different functions&mdash;priestly, prophetic, magical,
+medical, legal, and poetical. C&aelig;sar attributes these to the
+Druids as a whole, but in other writers they are in part at least
+in the hands of different classes. Diodorus refers to the Celtic
+philosophers and theologians (Druids), diviners, and bards, as do
+also Strabo and Timagenes, Strabo giving the Greek form of the
+native name for the diviners, [Greek: ouateis], the Celtic form
+being probably <i>v&aacute;tis</i> (Irish,
+<i>f&aacute;ith</i>).<a id="footnotetag1018" name=
+"footnotetag1018"></a><a href="#footnote1018"><sup>1018</sup></a>
+These may have been also poets, since <i>v&aacute;tis</i> means
+both singer and poet; but in all three writers the bards are a
+fairly distinct class, who sing the deeds of famous men (so
+Timagenes). Druid and diviner were also closely connected, since
+the Druids studied nature and moral philosophy, and the diviners
+were also students of nature, according to Strabo and Timagenes. No
+sacrifice was complete without a Druid, say Diodorus and Strabo,
+but both speak of the diviners as concerned with sacrifice. Druids
+also prophesied as well as diviners, according <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page300" id="page300"></a>{300}</span> to Cicero
+and Tacitus.<a id="footnotetag1019" name=
+"footnotetag1019"></a><a href="#footnote1019"><sup>1019</sup></a>
+Finally, Lucan mentions only Druids and bards.<a id=
+"footnotetag1020" name="footnotetag1020"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1020"><sup>1020</sup></a> Diviners were thus probably a
+Druidic sub-class, standing midway between the Druids proper and
+the bards, and partaking of some of the functions of both. Pliny
+speaks of "Druids and this race of prophets and doctors,"<a id=
+"footnotetag1021" name="footnotetag1021"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1021"><sup>1021</sup></a> and this suggests that some
+were priests, some diviners, while some practised an empiric
+medical science.</p>
+<p>On the whole this agrees with what is met with in Ireland, where
+the Druids, though appearing in the texts mainly as magicians, were
+also priests and teachers. Side by side with them were the
+<i>Filid</i>, "learned poets,"<a id="footnotetag1022" name=
+"footnotetag1022"></a><a href="#footnote1022"><sup>1022</sup></a>
+composing according to strict rules of art, and higher than the
+third class, the Bards. The <i>Filid</i>, who may also have been
+known as <i>F&aacute;thi</i>, "prophets,"<a id="footnotetag1023"
+name="footnotetag1023"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1023"><sup>1023</sup></a> were also diviners according to
+strict rules of augury, while some of these auguries implied a
+sacrifice. The Druids were also diviners and prophets. When the
+Druids were overthrown at the coming of Christianity, the
+<i>Filid</i> remained as a learned class, probably because they had
+abandoned all pagan practices, while the Bards were reduced to a
+comparatively low status. M. D'Arbois supposes that there was
+rivalry between the Druids and the <i>Filid</i>, who made common
+cause with the Christian missionaries, but this is not supported by
+evidence. The three classes in Gaul&mdash;Druids, <i>Vates</i>, and
+Bards&mdash;thus correspond to the three classes in
+Ireland&mdash;Druids, <i>F&aacute;thi</i> or <i>Filid</i>, and
+Bards.<a id="footnotetag1024" name="footnotetag1024"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1024"><sup>1024</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301" id=
+"page301"></a>{301}</span>
+<p>We may thus conclude that the Druids were a purely Celtic
+priesthood, belonging both to the Goidelic and Gaulish branches of
+the Celts. The idea that they were not Celtic is sometimes
+connected with the supposition that Druidism was something
+superadded to Celtic religion from without, or that Celtic
+polytheism was not part of the creed of the Druids, but sanctioned
+by them, while they had a definite theological system with only a
+few gods.<a id="footnotetag1025" name=
+"footnotetag1025"></a><a href="#footnote1025"><sup>1025</sup></a>
+These are the ideas of writers who see in the Druids an occult and
+esoteric priesthood. The Druids had grown up <i>pari passu</i> with
+the growth of the native religion and magic. Where they had become
+more civilised, as in the south of Gaul, they may have given up
+many magical practices, but as a class they were addicted to magic,
+and must have taken part in local cults as well as in those of the
+greater gods. That they were a philosophic priesthood advocating a
+pure religion among polytheists is a baseless theory. Druidism was
+not a formal system outside Celtic religion. It covered the whole
+ground of Celtic religion; in other words, it was that religion
+itself.</p>
+<p>The Druids are first referred to by pseudo-Aristotle and Sotion
+in the second century B.C., the reference being preserved by
+Diogenes Laertius: "There are among the Celt&aelig; and
+Galat&aelig; those called Druids and Semnotheoi."<a id=
+"footnotetag1026" name="footnotetag1026"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1026"><sup>1026</sup></a> The two words may be
+synonymous, or they may describe two classes of priests, or, again,
+the Druids may have been Celtic, and the Semnotheoi Galatic (?
+Galatian) priests. C&aelig;sar's account comes next in time. Later
+writers gives the Druids a lofty place and speak vaguely of the
+Druidic philosophy and science. C&aelig;sar also refers to their
+science, but both he and Strabo <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page302" id="page302"></a>{302}</span> speak of their human
+sacrifices. Suetonius describes their religion as cruel and savage,
+and Mela, who speaks of their learning, regards their human
+sacrifices as savagery.<a id="footnotetag1027" name=
+"footnotetag1027"></a><a href="#footnote1027"><sup>1027</sup></a>
+Pliny says nothing of the Druids as philosophers, but hints at
+their priestly functions, and connects them with magico-medical
+rites.<a id="footnotetag1028" name="footnotetag1028"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1028"><sup>1028</sup></a> These divergent opinions are
+difficult to account for. But as the Romans gained closer
+acquaintance with the Druids, they found less philosophy and more
+superstition among them. For their cruel rites and hostility to
+Rome, they sought to suppress them, but this they never would have
+done had the Druids been esoteric philosophers. It has been thought
+that Pliny's phrase, "Druids and that race of prophets and
+doctors," signifies that, through Roman persecution, the Druids
+were reduced to a kind of medicine-men.<a id="footnotetag1029"
+name="footnotetag1029"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1029"><sup>1029</sup></a> But the phrase rather describes
+the varied functions of the Druids, as has been seen, nor does it
+refer to the state to which the repressive edict reduced them, but
+to that in which it found them. Pliny's information was also
+limited.</p>
+<p>The vague idea that the Druids were philosophers was repeated
+parrot-like by writer after writer, who regarded barbaric races as
+Rousseau and his school looked upon the "noble savage." Roman
+writers, sceptical of a future life, were fascinated by the idea of
+a barbaric priesthood teaching the doctrine of immortality in the
+wilds of Gaul. For this teaching the poet Lucan sang their praises.
+The Druids probably first impressed Greek and Latin observers by
+their magic, their organisation, and the fact that, like many
+barbaric priesthoods, but unlike those of Greece and Rome, they
+taught certain doctrines. Their knowledge was divinely conveyed to
+them; "they speak the language of the gods;"<a id="footnotetag1030"
+name="footnotetag1030"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1030"><sup>1030</sup></a> hence it was easy to read
+anything into this teaching. Thus the Druidic legend <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page303" id="page303"></a>{303}</span> rapidly
+grew. On the other hand, modern writers have perhaps exaggerated
+the force of the classical evidence. When we read of Druidic
+associations we need not regard these as higher than the organised
+priesthoods of barbarians. Their doctrine of metempsychosis, if it
+was really taught, involved no ethical content as in
+Pythagoreanism. Their astronomy was probably astrological<a id=
+"footnotetag1031" name="footnotetag1031"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1031"><sup>1031</sup></a>; their knowledge of nature a
+series of cosmogonic myths and speculations. If a true Druidic
+philosophy and science had existed, it is strange that it is always
+mentioned vaguely and that it exerted no influence upon the thought
+of the time.</p>
+<p>Classical sentiment also found a connection between the Druidic
+and Pythagorean systems, the Druids being regarded as conforming to
+the doctrines and rules of the Greek philosopher.<a id=
+"footnotetag1032" name="footnotetag1032"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1032"><sup>1032</sup></a> It is not improbable that some
+Pythagorean doctrines may have reached Gaul, but when we examine
+the point at which the two systems were supposed to meet, namely,
+the doctrine of metempsychosis and immortality, upon which the
+whole idea of this relationship was founded, there is no real
+resemblance. There are Celtic myths regarding the rebirth of gods
+and heroes, but the eschatological teaching was apparently this,
+that the soul was clothed with a body in the other-world. There was
+no doctrine of a series of rebirths on this earth as a punishment
+for sin. The Druidic teaching of a bodily immortality was
+mistakenly assumed to be the same as the Pythagorean doctrine of
+the soul reincarnated in body after body. Other points of
+resemblance were then discovered. The organisation of the Druids
+was assumed by Ammianus to be a kind of corporate
+life&mdash;<i>sodaliciis adstricti consortiis</i>&mdash;while the
+Druidic mind was always searching into lofty things,<a id=
+"footnotetag1033" name="footnotetag1033"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1033"><sup>1033</sup></a> but <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page304" id="page304"></a>{304}</span> those who
+wrote most fully of the Druids knew nothing of this.</p>
+<p>The Druids, like the priests of all religions, doubtless sought
+after such knowledge as was open to them, but this does not imply
+that they possessed a recondite philosophy or a secret theology.
+They were governed by the ideas current among all barbaric
+communities, and they were at once priests, magicians, doctors, and
+teachers. They would not allow their sacred hymns to be written
+down, but taught them in secret,<a id="footnotetag1034" name=
+"footnotetag1034"></a><a href="#footnote1034"><sup>1034</sup></a>
+as is usual wherever the success of hymn or prayer depends upon the
+right use of the words and the secrecy observed in imparting them
+to others. Their ritual, as far as is known to us, differs but
+little from that of other barbarian folk, and it included human
+sacrifice and divination with the victim's body. They excluded the
+guilty from a share in the cult&mdash;the usual punishment meted
+out to the tabu-breaker in all primitive societies.</p>
+<p>The idea that the Druids taught a secret
+doctrine&mdash;monotheism, pantheism, or the like&mdash;is
+unsupported by evidence. Doubtless they communicated secrets to the
+initiated, as is done in barbaric mysteries everywhere, but these
+secrets consist of magic and mythic formul&aelig;, the exhibition
+of <i>Sacra</i>, and some teaching about the gods or about moral
+duties. These are kept secret, not because they are abstract
+doctrines, but because they would lose their value and because the
+gods would be angry if they were made too common. If the Druids
+taught religious and moral matters secretly, these were probably no
+more than an extension of the threefold maxim inculcated by them
+according to Diogenes Laertius: "To worship the gods, to do no
+evil, and to exercise courage."<a id="footnotetag1035" name=
+"footnotetag1035"></a><a href="#footnote1035"><sup>1035</sup></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page305" id=
+"page305"></a>{305}</span> To this would be added cosmogonic myths
+and speculations, and magic and religious formul&aelig;. This will
+become more evident as we examine the position and power of the
+Druids.</p>
+<p>In Gaul, and to some extent in Ireland, the Druids formed a
+priestly corporation&mdash;a fact which helped classical observers
+to suppose that they lived together like the Pythagorean
+communities. While the words of Ammianus&mdash;<i>sodaliciis
+adstricti consortiis</i>&mdash;may imply no more than some kind of
+priestly organisation, M. Bertrand founds on them a theory that the
+Druids were a kind of monks living a community life, and that Irish
+monasticism was a transformation of this system.<a id=
+"footnotetag1036" name="footnotetag1036"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1036"><sup>1036</sup></a> This is purely imaginative.
+Irish Druids had wives and children, and the Druid Diviciacus was a
+family man, while C&aelig;sar says not a word of community life
+among the Druids. The hostility of Christianity to the Druids would
+have prevented any copying of their system, and Irish monasticism
+was modelled on that of the Continent. Druidic organisation
+probably denoted no more than that the Druids were bound by certain
+ties, that they were graded in different ranks or according to
+their functions, and that they practised a series of common cults.
+In Gaul one chief Druid had authority over the others, the position
+being an elective one.<a id="footnotetag1037" name=
+"footnotetag1037"></a><a href="#footnote1037"><sup>1037</sup></a>
+The insular Druids may have been similarly organised, since we hear
+of a chief Druid, <i>primus magus</i>, while the <i>Filid</i> had
+an <i>Ard-file</i>, or chief, elected to his office.<a id=
+"footnotetag1038" name="footnotetag1038"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1038"><sup>1038</sup></a> The priesthood was not a caste,
+but was open to those who showed aptitude for it. There was a long
+novitiate, extending even to twenty years, just as, in Ireland, the
+novitiate of the <i>File</i> lasted from seven to twelve
+years.<a id="footnotetag1039" name="footnotetag1039"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1039"><sup>1039</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page306" id=
+"page306"></a>{306}</span>
+<p>The Druids of Gaul assembled annually in a central spot, and
+there settled disputes, because they were regarded as the most just
+of men.<a id="footnotetag1040" name="footnotetag1040"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1040"><sup>1040</sup></a> Individual Druids also decided
+disputes or sat as judges in cases of murder. How far it was
+obligatory to bring causes before them is unknown, but those who
+did not submit to a decision were interdicted from the sacrifices,
+and all shunned them. In other words, they were tabued. A
+magico-religious sanction thus enforced the judgments of the
+Druids. In Galatia the twelve tetrarchs had a council of three
+hundred men, and met in a place called Drunemeton to try cases of
+murder.<a id="footnotetag1041" name="footnotetag1041"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1041"><sup>1041</sup></a> Whether it is philologically
+permissible to connect <i>Dru</i>- with the corresponding syllable
+in "Druid" or not, the likeness to the Gaulish assembly at a
+"consecrated place," perhaps a grove (<i>nemeton</i>), is obvious.
+We do not know that Irish Druids were judges, but the <i>Filid</i>
+exercised judgments, and this may be a relic of their connection
+with the Druids.<a id="footnotetag1042" name=
+"footnotetag1042"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1042"><sup>1042</sup></a></p>
+<p>Diodorus describes the Druids exhorting combatants to peace, and
+taming them like wild beasts by enchantment.<a id="footnotetag1043"
+name="footnotetag1043"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1043"><sup>1043</sup></a> This suggests interference to
+prevent the devastating power of the blood-feud or of tribal wars.
+They also appear to have exercised authority in the election of
+rulers. Convictolitanis was elected to the magistracy by the
+priests in Gaul, "according to the custom of the State."<a id=
+"footnotetag1044" name="footnotetag1044"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1044"><sup>1044</sup></a> In Ireland, after partaking of
+the flesh of a white bull, probably a sacrificial animal, a man lay
+down to sleep, while four Druids chanted over him "to render his
+witness truthful." He then saw in a vision the person who should be
+elected king, and what he was doing at the moment.<a id=
+"footnotetag1045" name="footnotetag1045"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1045"><sup>1045</sup></a> Possibly the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page307" id="page307"></a>{307}</span> Druids
+used hypnotic suggestion; the medium was apparently
+clairvoyant.</p>
+<p>Dio Chrysostom alleges that kings were ministers of the Druids,
+and could do nothing without them.<a id="footnotetag1046" name=
+"footnotetag1046"></a><a href="#footnote1046"><sup>1046</sup></a>
+This agrees on the whole with the witness of Irish texts. Druids
+always accompany the king, and have great influence over him.
+According to a passage in the <i>T&aacute;in</i>, "the men of
+Ulster must not speak before the king, the king must not speak
+before his Druid," and even Conchobar was silent until the Druid
+Cathbad had spoken.<a id="footnotetag1047" name=
+"footnotetag1047"></a><a href="#footnote1047"><sup>1047</sup></a>
+This power, resembling that of many other priesthoods, must have
+helped to balance that of the warrior class, and it is the more
+credible when we recall the fact that the Druids claimed to have
+made the universe.<a id="footnotetag1048" name=
+"footnotetag1048"></a><a href="#footnote1048"><sup>1048</sup></a>
+The priest-kingship may have been an old Celtic institution, and
+this would explain why, once the offices were separated, priests
+had or claimed so much political power.</p>
+<p>That political power must have been enhanced by their position
+as teachers, and it is safe to say that submission to their powers
+was inculcated by them. Both in Gaul and in Ireland they taught
+others than those who intended to become Druids.<a id=
+"footnotetag1049" name="footnotetag1049"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1049"><sup>1049</sup></a> As has been seen, their
+teachings were not written down, but transmitted orally. They
+taught immortality, believing that thus men would be roused to
+valour, buttressing patriotism with dogma. They also imparted "many
+things regarding the stars and their motions, the extent of the
+universe and the earth, the nature of things, and the power and
+might of the immortal gods." Strabo also speaks of their teaching
+in moral science.<a id="footnotetag1050" name=
+"footnotetag1050"></a><a href="#footnote1050"><sup>1050</sup></a>
+As <span class="pagenum"><a name="page308" id=
+"page308"></a>{308}</span> has been seen, it is easy to exaggerate
+all this. Their astronomy was probably of a humble kind and mingled
+with astrology; their natural philosophy a mass of cosmogonic myths
+and speculations; their theology was rather mythology; their moral
+philosophy a series of maxims such as are found in all barbaric
+communities. Their medical lore, to judge from what Pliny says, was
+largely magical. Some Druids, <i>e.g.</i> in the south of Gaul, may
+have had access to classical learning, and C&aelig;sar speaks of
+the use of Greek characters among them. This could hardly have been
+general, and in any case must have superseded the use of a native
+script, to which the use of ogams in Ireland, and perhaps also in
+Gaul, was supplementary. The Irish Druids may have had written
+books, for King Loegaire desired that S. Patrick's books and those
+of the Druids should be submitted to the ordeal by water as a test
+of their owners' claims.<a id="footnotetag1051" name=
+"footnotetag1051"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1051"><sup>1051</sup></a></p>
+<p>In religious affairs the Druids were supreme, since they alone
+"knew the gods and divinities of heaven."<a id="footnotetag1052"
+name="footnotetag1052"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1052"><sup>1052</sup></a> They superintended and arranged
+all rites and attended to "public and private sacrifices," and "no
+sacrifice was complete without the intervention of a Druid."<a id=
+"footnotetag1053" name="footnotetag1053"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1053"><sup>1053</sup></a> The dark and cruel rites of the
+Druids struck the Romans with horror, and they form a curious
+contrast to their alleged "philosophy." They used divination and
+had regular formul&aelig; of incantation as well as ritual acts by
+which they looked into the future.<a id="footnotetag1054" name=
+"footnotetag1054"></a><a href="#footnote1054"><sup>1054</sup></a>
+Before all matters of importance, especially before warlike
+expeditions, their advice was sought because they could scan the
+future.</p>
+<p>Name-giving and a species of baptism were performed by the
+Druids or on their initiative. Many examples of this <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page309" id="page309"></a>{309}</span> occur in
+Irish texts, thus of Conall Cernach it is said, "Druids came to
+baptize the child into heathenism, and they sang the heathen
+baptism (<i>baithis geintl&iacute;dhe</i>) over the little child",
+and of Ailill that he was "baptized in Druidic streams".<a id=
+"footnotetag1055" name="footnotetag1055"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1055"><sup>1055</sup></a> In Welsh story we read that
+Gwri was "baptized with the baptism which was usual at that
+time".<a id="footnotetag1056" name="footnotetag1056"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1056"><sup>1056</sup></a> Similar illustrations are
+common at name-giving among many races,<a id="footnotetag1057"
+name="footnotetag1057"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1057"><sup>1057</sup></a> and it is probable that the
+custom in the Hebrides of the midwife dropping three drops of water
+on the child <i>in Nomine</i> and giving it a temporary name, is a
+survival of this practice. The regular baptism takes place later,
+but this preliminary rite keeps off fairies and ensures burial in
+consecrated ground, just as the pagan rite was protective and
+admitted to the tribal privileges.<a id="footnotetag1058" name=
+"footnotetag1058"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1058"><sup>1058</sup></a></p>
+<p>In the burial rites, which in Ireland consisted of a lament,
+sacrifices, and raising a stone inscribed with ogams over the
+grave, Druids took part. The Druid Dergdamsa pronounced a discourse
+over the Ossianic hero Mag-neid, buried him with his arms, and
+chanted a rune. The ogam inscription would also be of Druidic
+composition, and as no sacrifice was complete without the
+intervention of Druids, they must also have assisted at the lavish
+sacrifices which occurred at Celtic funerals.</p>
+<p>Pliny's words, "the Druids and that race of prophets and
+doctors", suggest that the medical art may have been in the hands
+of a special class of Druids though all may have had a smattering
+of it. It was mainly concerned with the use of herbs, and was mixed
+up with magical rites, which may have <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page310" id="page310"></a>{310}</span> been
+regarded as of more importance than the actual medicines
+used.<a id="footnotetag1059" name="footnotetag1059"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1059"><sup>1059</sup></a> In Ireland Druids also
+practised the healing art. Thus when C&uacute;chulainn was ill,
+Emer said, "If it had been Fergus, C&uacute;chulainn would have
+taken no rest till he had found a Druid able to discover the cause
+of that illness."<a id="footnotetag1060" name=
+"footnotetag1060"></a><a href="#footnote1060"><sup>1060</sup></a>
+But other persons, not referred to as Druids, are mentioned as
+healers, one of them a woman, perhaps a reminiscence of the time
+when the art was practised by women.<a id="footnotetag1061" name=
+"footnotetag1061"></a><a href="#footnote1061"><sup>1061</sup></a>
+These healers may, however, have been attached to the Druidic
+corporation in much the same way as were the bards.</p>
+<p>Still more important were the magical powers of the
+Druids&mdash;giving or withholding sunshine or rain, causing
+storms, making women and cattle fruitful, using spells, rhyming to
+death, exercising shape-shifting and invisibility, and producing a
+magic sleep, possibly hypnotic. They were also in request as
+poisoners.<a id="footnotetag1062" name=
+"footnotetag1062"></a><a href="#footnote1062"><sup>1062</sup></a>
+Since the Gauls went to Britain to perfect themselves in Druidic
+science, it is possible that the insular Druids were more devoted
+to magic than those of Gaul, but since the latter are said to have
+"tamed the people as wild beasts are tamed", it is obvious that
+this refers to their powers as magicians rather than to any
+recondite philosophy possessed by them. Yet they were clear-sighted
+enough to use every means by which they might gain political power,
+and some of them may have been open to the influence of classical
+learning even before the Roman invasion. In the next chapter the
+magic of the Druids will be described in detail.</p>
+<p>The Druids, both in Gaul (at the mistletoe rite) and in Ireland,
+were dressed in white, but Strabo speaks of their scarlet and gold
+embroidered robes, their golden necklets and bracelets.<a id=
+"footnotetag1063" name="footnotetag1063"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1063"><sup>1063</sup></a> Again, the chief Druid of the
+king of Erin wore <span class="pagenum"><a name="page311" id=
+"page311"></a>{311}</span> a coloured cloak and had earrings of
+gold, and in another instance a Druid wears a bull's hide and a
+white-speckled bird headpiece with fluttering wings.<a id=
+"footnotetag1064" name="footnotetag1064"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1064"><sup>1064</sup></a> There was also some special
+tonsure used by the Druids,<a id="footnotetag1065" name=
+"footnotetag1065"></a><a href="#footnote1065"><sup>1065</sup></a>
+which may have denoted servitude to the gods, as it was customary
+for a warrior to vow his hair to a divinity if victory was granted
+him. Similarly the Druid's hair would be presented to the gods, and
+the tonsure would mark their minister.</p>
+<p>Some writers have tried to draw a distinction between the Druids
+of Gaul and of Ireland, especially in the matter of their priestly
+functions.<a id="footnotetag1066" name=
+"footnotetag1066"></a><a href="#footnote1066"><sup>1066</sup></a>
+But, while a few passages in Irish texts do suggest that the Irish
+Druids were priests taking part in sacrifices, etc., nearly all
+passages relating to cult or ritual seem to have been deliberately
+suppressed. Hence the Druids appear rather as magicians&mdash;a
+natural result, since, once the people became Christian, the
+priestly character of the Druids would tend to be lost sight of.
+Like the Druids of Gaul, they were teachers and took part in
+political affairs, and this shows that they were more than mere
+magicians. In Irish texts the word "Druid" is somewhat loosely used
+and is applied to kings and poets, perhaps because they had been
+pupils of the Druids. But it is impossible to doubt that the Druids
+in Ireland fulfilled functions of a public priesthood. They appear
+in connection with all the colonies which came to Erin, the
+annalists regarding the priests or medicine-men of different races
+as Druids, through lack of historic perspective. But one fact shows
+that they were priests of the Celtic religion in Ireland. The
+euhemerised Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are masters of Druidic
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page312" id=
+"page312"></a>{312}</span> lore. Thus both the gods and the priests
+who served them were confused by later writers. The opposition of
+Christian missionaries to the Druids shows that they were priests;
+if they were not, it remains to be discovered what body of men did
+exercise priestly functions in pagan Ireland. In Ireland their
+judicial functions may have been less important than in Gaul, and
+they may not have been so strictly organised; but here we are in
+the region of conjecture. They were exempt from military service in
+Gaul, and many joined their ranks on this account, but in Ireland
+they were "bonny fechters," just as in Gaul they occasionally
+fought like medi&aelig;val bishops.<a id="footnotetag1067" name=
+"footnotetag1067"></a><a href="#footnote1067"><sup>1067</sup></a>
+In both countries they were present on the field of battle to
+perform the necessary religious or magical rites.</p>
+<p>Since the Druids were an organised priesthood, with powers of
+teaching and of magic implicitly believed in by the folk,
+possessing the key of the other-world, and dominating the whole
+field of religion, it is easy to see how much veneration must have
+been paid them. Connoting this with the influence of the Roman
+Church in Celtic regions and the power of the Protestant minister
+in the Highlands and in Wales, some have thought that there is an
+innate tendency in the Celt to be priest-ridden. If this be true,
+we can only say, "the people wish to have it so, and the
+priests&mdash;pagan, papist, or protestant&mdash;bear rule through
+their means!"</p>
+<p>Thus a close examination of the position and functions of the
+Druids explains away two popular misconceptions. They were not
+possessed of any recondite and esoteric wisdom. And the culling of
+mistletoe instead of being the most important, was but a
+subordinate part of their functions.</p>
+<p>In Gaul the Roman power broke the sway of the Druids, aided
+perhaps by the spread of Christianity, but it was Christianity
+alone which routed them in Ireland and in Britain <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page313" id="page313"></a>{313}</span> outside
+the Roman pale. The Druidic organisation, their power in politics
+and in the administration of justice, their patriotism, and also
+their use of human sacrifice and magic, were all obnoxious to the
+Roman Government, which opposed them mainly on political grounds.
+Magic and human sacrifice were suppressed because they were
+contrary to Roman manners. The first attack was in the reign of
+Augustus, who prohibited Roman citizens from taking part in the
+religion of the Druids.<a id="footnotetag1068" name=
+"footnotetag1068"></a><a href="#footnote1068"><sup>1068</sup></a>
+Tiberius next interdicted the Druids, but this was probably aimed
+at their human sacrifices, for the Druids were not suppressed,
+since they existed still in the reign of Claudius, who is said to
+have abolished <i>Druidarum religionem dirae immanitatis</i>.<a id=
+"footnotetag1069" name="footnotetag1069"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1069"><sup>1069</sup></a> The earlier legislation was
+ineffective; that of Claudius was more thorough, but it, too, was
+probably aimed mainly at human sacrifice and magic, since Aurelius
+Victor limits it to the "notorious superstitions" of the
+Druids.<a id="footnotetag1070" name="footnotetag1070"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1070"><sup>1070</sup></a> It did not abolish the native
+religion, as is proved by the numerous inscriptions to Celtic gods,
+and by the fact that, as Mela informs us, human victims were still
+offered symbolically,<a id="footnotetag1071" name=
+"footnotetag1071"></a><a href="#footnote1071"><sup>1071</sup></a>
+while the Druids were still active some years later. A parallel is
+found in the British abolition of S[=a]ti in India, while
+permitting the native religion to flourish.</p>
+<p>Probably more effective was the policy begun by Augustus.
+Magistrates were inaugurated and acted as judges, thus ousting the
+Druids, and native deities and native ritual were assimilated to
+those of Rome. Celtic religion was Romanised, and if the Druids
+retained priestly functions, it could only be by their becoming
+Romanised also. Perhaps the new State religion in Gaul simply
+ignored them. The annual assembly of deputies at Lugudunum round
+the altar of Rome and <span class="pagenum"><a name="page314" id=
+"page314"></a>{314}</span> Augustus had a religious character, and
+was intended to rival and to supersede the annual gathering of the
+Druids.<a id="footnotetag1072" name="footnotetag1072"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1072"><sup>1072</sup></a> The deputies elected a flamen
+of the province who had surveillance of the cult, and there were
+also flamens for each city. Thus the power of the Druids in
+politics, law, and religion was quietly undermined, while Rome also
+struck a blow at their position as teachers by establishing schools
+throughout Gaul.<a id="footnotetag1073" name=
+"footnotetag1073"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1073"><sup>1073</sup></a></p>
+<p>M. D'Arbois maintains that, as a result of persecution, the
+Druids retired to the depths of the forests, and continued to teach
+there in secret those who despised the new learning of Rome, basing
+his opinion on passages of Lucan and Mela, both writing a little
+after the promulgation of the laws.<a id="footnotetag1074" name=
+"footnotetag1074"></a><a href="#footnote1074"><sup>1074</sup></a>.
+But neither Lucan nor Mela refer to an existing state of things,
+and do not intend their readers to suppose that the Druids fled to
+woods and caverns. Lucan speaks of them <i>dwelling</i> in woods,
+<i>i.e.</i> their sacred groves, and resuming their rites after
+C&aelig;sar's conquest not after the later edicts, and he does not
+speak of the Druids teaching there.<a id="footnotetag1075" name=
+"footnotetag1075"></a><a href="#footnote1075"><sup>1075</sup></a>
+Mela seems to be echoing C&aelig;sar's account of the twenty years'
+novitiate, but adds to it that the teaching was given in secret,
+confusing it, however, with that given to others than candidates
+for the priesthood. Thus he says: "Docent multa nobilissimos gentis
+clam et diu vicenis annis aut in specu aut in abditis
+saltibus,"<a id="footnotetag1076" name=
+"footnotetag1076"></a><a href="#footnote1076"><sup>1076</sup></a>
+but there is not the slightest evidence that this secrecy was the
+result of the edicts. Moreover, the attenuated sacrificial rites
+which he describes were evidently practised <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page315" id="page315"></a>{315}</span> quite
+openly. Probably some Druids continued their teaching in their
+secret and sacred haunts, but it is unlikely that noble Gauls would
+resort to them when Greco-Roman culture was now open to them in the
+schools, where they are found receiving instruction in 21
+A.D.<a id="footnotetag1077" name="footnotetag1077"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1077"><sup>1077</sup></a> Most of the Druids probably
+succumbed to the new order of things. Some continued the old rites
+in a modified manner as long as they could obtain worshippers.
+Others, more fanatical, would suffer from the law when they could
+not evade its grasp. Some of these revolted against Rome after
+Nero's death, and it was perhaps to this class that those Druids
+belonged who prophesied the world-empire of the Celts in 70
+A.D.<a id="footnotetag1078" name="footnotetag1078"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1078"><sup>1078</sup></a> The fact that Druids existed at
+this date shows that the proscription had not been complete. But
+the complete Romanising of Gaul took away their occupation, though
+even in the fourth century men still boasted of their Druidic
+descent.<a id="footnotetag1079" name="footnotetag1079"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1079"><sup>1079</sup></a></p>
+<p>The insular Druids opposed the legions in Southern Britain, and
+in Mona in 62 A.D. they made a last stand with the warriors against
+the Romans, gesticulating and praying to the gods. But with the
+establishment of Roman power in Britain their fate must have
+resembled that of the Druids of Gaul. A recrudescence of Druidism
+is found, however, in the presence of <i>magi</i> (Druids) with
+Vortigern after the Roman withdrawal.<a id="footnotetag1080" name=
+"footnotetag1080"></a><a href="#footnote1080"><sup>1080</sup></a>
+Outside the Roman pale the Druids were still rampant and practised
+their rites as before, according to Pliny.<a id="footnotetag1081"
+name="footnotetag1081"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1081"><sup>1081</sup></a> Much later, in the sixth
+century, they opposed Christian missionaries in Scotland, just as
+in Ireland they opposed S. Patrick and his monks, who combated "the
+hard-hearted Druids." Finally, Christianity was victorious and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page316" id=
+"page316"></a>{316}</span> powers of the Druids passed in large
+measure to the Christian clergy or remained to some extent with the
+<i>Filid</i>.<a id="footnotetag1082" name=
+"footnotetag1082"></a><a href="#footnote1082"><sup>1082</sup></a>
+In popular belief the clerics had prevailed less by the persuasive
+power of the gospel, than by successfully rivalling the magic of
+the Druids.</p>
+<p>Classical writers speak of <i>Dryades</i> or "Druidesses" in the
+third century. One of them predicted his approaching death to
+Alexander Severus, another promised the empire to Diocletian,
+others were consulted by Aurelian.<a id="footnotetag1083" name=
+"footnotetag1083"></a><a href="#footnote1083"><sup>1083</sup></a>
+Thus they were divineresses, rather than priestesses, and their
+name may be the result of misconception, unless they assumed it
+when Druids no longer existed as a class. In Ireland there were
+divineresses&mdash;<i>ban-filid</i> or <i>ban-f&aacute;thi</i>,
+probably a distinct class with prophetic powers. Kings are warned
+against "pythonesses" as well as Druids, and Dr. Joyce thinks these
+were Druidesses.<a id="footnotetag1084" name=
+"footnotetag1084"></a><a href="#footnote1084"><sup>1084</sup></a>
+S. Patrick also armed himself against "the spells of women" and of
+Druids.<a id="footnotetag1085" name="footnotetag1085"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1085"><sup>1085</sup></a> Women in Ireland had a
+knowledge of futurity, according to Solinus, and the women who took
+part with the Druids like furies at Mona, may have been
+divineresses.<a id="footnotetag1086" name=
+"footnotetag1086"></a><a href="#footnote1086"><sup>1086</sup></a>
+In Ireland it is possible that such women were called "Druidesses,"
+since the word <i>ban-drui</i> is met with, the women so called
+being also styled <i>ban-fili</i>, while the fact that they
+belonged to the class of the <i>Filid</i> brings them into
+connection with the Druids.<a id="footnotetag1087" name=
+"footnotetag1087"></a><a href="#footnote1087"><sup>1087</sup></a>
+But <i>ban-drui</i> may have been applied to women with priestly
+functions, such as certainly existed in Ireland&mdash;<i>e.g.</i>
+the virgin guardians of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page317" id=
+"page317"></a>{317}</span> sacred fires, to whose functions
+Christian nuns succeeded.<a id="footnotetag1088" name=
+"footnotetag1088"></a><a href="#footnote1088"><sup>1088</sup></a>
+We know also that the British queen Boudicca exercised priestly
+functions, and such priestesses, apart from the <i>Dryades</i>,
+existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at Arles speak of
+an <i>antistita deae</i>, and at Le Prugnon of a <i>flaminica
+sacerdos</i> of the goddess Thucolis.<a id="footnotetag1089" name=
+"footnotetag1089"></a><a href="#footnote1089"><sup>1089</sup></a>
+These were servants of a goddess like the priestess of the Celtic
+Artemis in Galatia, in whose family the priesthood was
+hereditary.<a id="footnotetag1090" name=
+"footnotetag1090"></a><a href="#footnote1090"><sup>1090</sup></a>
+The virgins called Gallizen&aelig;, who practised divination and
+magic in the isle of Sena, were priestesses of a Gaulish god, and
+some of the women who were "possessed by Dionysus" and practised an
+orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire, were probably of the same
+kind.<a id="footnotetag1091" name="footnotetag1091"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1091"><sup>1091</sup></a> They were priestesses of some
+magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the
+sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards
+the accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the
+story of Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to
+be based on actual observation and are paralleled from other
+regions.<a id="footnotetag1092" name="footnotetag1092"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1092"><sup>1092</sup></a></p>
+<p>The existence of such priestesses and divineresses over the
+Celtic area is to be explained by our hypothesis that many Celtic
+divinities were at first female and served by women, who were
+possessed of the tribal lore. Later, men assumed their functions,
+and hence arose the great priesthoods, but conservatism
+sporadically retained such female cults and priestesses, some
+goddesses being still served by women&mdash;the Galatian Artemis,
+or the goddesses of Gaul, with their female <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page318" id="page318"></a>{318}</span> servants.
+Time also brought its revenges, for when paganism passed away, much
+of its folk-ritual and magic remained, practised by wise women or
+witches, who for generations had as much power over ignorant minds
+as the Christian priesthood. The fact that C&aelig;sar and Tacitus
+speak of Germanic but not of Celtic priestesses, can hardly, in
+face of these scattered notices, be taken as a proof that women had
+no priestly <i>r&ocirc;le</i> in Celtic religion. If they had not,
+that religion would be unique in the world's history.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1002" name=
+"footnote1002"></a><b>Footnote 1002:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1002">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xvi. 249.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1003" name=
+"footnote1003"></a><b>Footnote 1003:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1003">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 85, following Thurneysen.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1004" name=
+"footnote1004"></a><b>Footnote 1004:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1004">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>op. cit.</i> 12 f.; Deloche, <i>Revue des Deux
+Mondes</i>, xxxiv. 466; Desjardins, <i>Geog. de la Gaule
+Romaine</i>, ii. 518.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1005" name=
+"footnote1005"></a><b>Footnote 1005:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1005">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1006" name=
+"footnote1006"></a><b>Footnote 1006:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1006">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xxx. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1007" name=
+"footnote1007"></a><b>Footnote 1007:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1007">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 69 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1008" name=
+"footnote1008"></a><b>Footnote 1008:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1008">(return)</a>
+<p>Gomme, <i>Ethnol. in Folk-lore</i>, 58, <i>Village
+Community</i>, 104.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1009" name=
+"footnote1009"></a><b>Footnote 1009:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1009">(return)</a>
+<p>Sergi, <i>The Mediterranean Race</i>, 295.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1010" name=
+"footnote1010"></a><b>Footnote 1010:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1010">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, "L'Art plastique en Gaule et le Druidisme," <i>RC</i>
+xiii. 189.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1011" name=
+"footnote1011"></a><b>Footnote 1011:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1011">(return)</a>
+<p>Holmes, <i>C&aelig;sar's Conquest of Gaul</i>, 15; Dottin,
+270.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1012" name=
+"footnote1012"></a><b>Footnote 1012:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1012">(return)</a>
+<p>Diog. Laert. i. 1; Livy xxiii. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1013" name=
+"footnote1013"></a><b>Footnote 1013:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1013">(return)</a>
+<p>Desjardins, <i>op. cit.</i> ii. 519; but cf. Holmes, 535.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1014" name=
+"footnote1014"></a><b>Footnote 1014:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1014">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Gutuatros</i> is perhaps from <i>gutu</i>-, "voice" (Holder,
+i. 2046; but see Loth, <i>RC</i> xxviii. 120). The existence of the
+<i>gutuatri</i> is known from a few inscriptions (see Holder), and
+from Hirtius, <i>de Bell. Gall.</i> viii. 38, who mentions a
+<i>gutuatros</i> put to death by C&aelig;sar.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1015" name=
+"footnote1015"></a><b>Footnote 1015:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1015">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 2 f., <i>Les Celtes</i>, 32.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1016" name=
+"footnote1016"></a><b>Footnote 1016:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1016">(return)</a>
+<p>Ausonius, <i>Professor.</i> v. 7, xi. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1017" name=
+"footnote1017"></a><b>Footnote 1017:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1017">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, iii. 424; Livy, xxiii. 24.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1018" name=
+"footnote1018"></a><b>Footnote 1018:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1018">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 31; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Timagenes <i>apud</i> Amm.
+Marc. xv. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1019" name=
+"footnote1019"></a><b>Footnote 1019:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1019">(return)</a>
+<p>Cicero, <i>de Div.</i> i. 41. 90; Tac. <i>Hist.</i> iv. 54.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1020" name=
+"footnote1020"></a><b>Footnote 1020:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1020">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Phars.</i> i. 449 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1021" name=
+"footnote1021"></a><b>Footnote 1021:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1021">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HN</i> xxx. i.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1022" name=
+"footnote1022"></a><b>Footnote 1022:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1022">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Filid</i>, sing. <i>File</i>, is from <i>velo</i>, "I see"
+(Stokes, <i>US</i> 277).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1023" name=
+"footnote1023"></a><b>Footnote 1023:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1023">(return)</a>
+<p><i>F&aacute;thi</i> is cognate with <i>Vates</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1024" name=
+"footnote1024"></a><b>Footnote 1024:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1024">(return)</a>
+<p>In Wales there had been Druids as there were Bards, but all
+trace of the second class is lost. Long after the Druids had passed
+away, the fiction of the <i>derwydd-vardd</i> or Druid-bard was
+created, and the later bards were held to be depositories of a
+supposititious Druidic theosophy, while they practised the old
+rites in secret. The late word <i>derwydd</i> was probably invented
+from <i>derw</i>, "oak," by some one who knew Pliny's derivation.
+See D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 81.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1025" name=
+"footnote1025"></a><b>Footnote 1025:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1025">(return)</a>
+<p>For these views see Dottin, 295; Holmes, 17; Bertrand, 192-193,
+268-269.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1026" name=
+"footnote1026"></a><b>Footnote 1026:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1026">(return)</a>
+<p>Diog. Laert. i. proem. 1. For other references see C&aelig;sar,
+vi. 13, 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Diod. Sic, v. 28;
+Lucan, i. 460; Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1027" name=
+"footnote1027"></a><b>Footnote 1027:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1027">(return)</a>
+<p>Suet. <i>Claud.</i> 25; Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1028" name=
+"footnote1028"></a><b>Footnote 1028:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1028">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xxx. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1029" name=
+"footnote1029"></a><b>Footnote 1029:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1029">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, <i>Les Druides</i>, 77.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1030" name=
+"footnote1030"></a><b>Footnote 1030:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1030">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 31. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1031" name=
+"footnote1031"></a><b>Footnote 1031:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1031">(return)</a>
+<p>See Cicero, <i>de Div.</i> i. 41.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1032" name=
+"footnote1032"></a><b>Footnote 1032:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1032">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 28; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Hippolytus, <i>Refut.
+H&aelig;r.</i> i. 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1033" name=
+"footnote1033"></a><b>Footnote 1033:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1033">(return)</a>
+<p>Amm. Marc. xv. 9.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1034" name=
+"footnote1034"></a><b>Footnote 1034:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1034">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1035" name=
+"footnote1035"></a><b>Footnote 1035:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1035">(return)</a>
+<p>Diog. Laert. 6. Celtic enthusiasts see in this triple maxim
+something akin to the Welsh triads, which they claim to be
+Druidic!</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1036" name=
+"footnote1036"></a><b>Footnote 1036:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1036">(return)</a>
+<p>Bertrand, 280.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1037" name=
+"footnote1037"></a><b>Footnote 1037:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1037">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1038" name=
+"footnote1038"></a><b>Footnote 1038:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1038">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Trip. Life</i>, ii. 325, i. 52, ii. 402; <i>IT</i> i. 373;
+<i>RC</i> xxvi. 33. The title <i>rig-file</i>, "king poet,"
+sometimes occurs.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1039" name=
+"footnote1039"></a><b>Footnote 1039:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1039">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1040" name=
+"footnote1040"></a><b>Footnote 1040:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1040">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 13; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1041" name=
+"footnote1041"></a><b>Footnote 1041:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1041">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, xii. 5. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1042" name=
+"footnote1042"></a><b>Footnote 1042:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1042">(return)</a>
+<p>Their judicial powers were taken from them because their speech
+had become obscure. Perhaps they gave their judgments in archaic
+language.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1043" name=
+"footnote1043"></a><b>Footnote 1043:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1043">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 31. 5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1044" name=
+"footnote1044"></a><b>Footnote 1044:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1044">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vii. 33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1045" name=
+"footnote1045"></a><b>Footnote 1045:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1045">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 213; D'Arbois, v. 186.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1046" name=
+"footnote1046"></a><b>Footnote 1046:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1046">(return)</a>
+<p>Dio, <i>Orat.</i> xlix.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1047" name=
+"footnote1047"></a><b>Footnote 1047:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1047">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 93.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1048" name=
+"footnote1048"></a><b>Footnote 1048:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1048">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ancient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 22.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1049" name=
+"footnote1049"></a><b>Footnote 1049:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1049">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 13, 14; Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, line 1070
+f.; <i>IT</i> i. 325; <i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 74; <i>Trip. Life</i>,
+99; cf. O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 201.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1050" name=
+"footnote1050"></a><b>Footnote 1050:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1050">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1051" name=
+"footnote1051"></a><b>Footnote 1051:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1051">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Trip. Life</i>, 284.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1052" name=
+"footnote1052"></a><b>Footnote 1052:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1052">(return)</a>
+<p>Lucan, i. 451.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1053" name=
+"footnote1053"></a><b>Footnote 1053:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1053">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. v. 31. 4; cf. C&aelig;sar, vi. 13, 16; Strabo, iv. 4.
+5.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1054" name=
+"footnote1054"></a><b>Footnote 1054:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1054">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page248">248</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1055" name=
+"footnote1055"></a><b>Footnote 1055:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1055">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xiv. 29; Miss Hull, 4, 23, 141; <i>IT</i> iii. 392,
+423; Stokes, <i>F&eacute;lire</i>, Intro. 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1056" name=
+"footnote1056"></a><b>Footnote 1056:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1056">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 56.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1057" name=
+"footnote1057"></a><b>Footnote 1057:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1057">(return)</a>
+<p>See my art. "Baptism (Ethnic)" in Hastings'
+<i>Encyclop&aelig;dia of Religion and Ethics</i>, ii. 367 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1058" name=
+"footnote1058"></a><b>Footnote 1058:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1058">(return)</a>
+<p>Carmichael, <i>Carm. Gadel.</i> i. 115.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1059" name=
+"footnote1059"></a><b>Footnote 1059:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1059">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page206">206</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1060" name=
+"footnote1060"></a><b>Footnote 1060:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1060">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 215.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1061" name=
+"footnote1061"></a><b>Footnote 1061:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1061">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 221, 641.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1062" name=
+"footnote1062"></a><b>Footnote 1062:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1062">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 34.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1063" name=
+"footnote1063"></a><b>Footnote 1063:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1063">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xvi. 45; <i>Trip. Life</i>, ii. 325; Strabo,
+iv. 275.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1064" name=
+"footnote1064"></a><b>Footnote 1064:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1064">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxii. 285; O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 215.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1065" name=
+"footnote1065"></a><b>Footnote 1065:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1065">(return)</a>
+<p>Reeves' ed. of Adamnan's <i>Life of S. Col.</i> 237; Todd, <i>S.
+Patrick</i>, 455; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i. 234. For the relation of the
+Druidic tonsure to the peculiar tonsure of the Celtic Church, see
+Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 213, <i>CB</i><sup>4</sup> 72; Gougaud, <i>Les
+Chr&eacute;tient&eacute;s Celtiques</i>, 198.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1066" name=
+"footnote1066"></a><b>Footnote 1066:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1066">(return)</a>
+<p>See Hyde, <i>Lit. Hist. of Ireland</i>, 88; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i.
+239.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1067" name=
+"footnote1067"></a><b>Footnote 1067:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1067">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14, ii. 10.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1068" name=
+"footnote1068"></a><b>Footnote 1068:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1068">(return)</a>
+<p>Suetonius, <i>Claud.</i> 25.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1069" name=
+"footnote1069"></a><b>Footnote 1069:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1069">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny <i>HN</i> xxx. 1; Suet. <i>Claud.</i> 25.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1070" name=
+"footnote1070"></a><b>Footnote 1070:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1070">(return)</a>
+<p><i>de C&aelig;saribus</i>, 4, "famos&aelig; superstitiones"; cf.
+p. <a href="#page328">328</a>, <i>infra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1071" name=
+"footnote1071"></a><b>Footnote 1071:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1071">(return)</a>
+<p>Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1072" name=
+"footnote1072"></a><b>Footnote 1072:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1072">(return)</a>
+<p>Mommsen, <i>Rom. Gesch.</i> v. 94.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1073" name=
+"footnote1073"></a><b>Footnote 1073:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1073">(return)</a>
+<p>Bloch (Lavisse), <i>Hist. de France</i>, i. 2, 176 f., 391 f.;
+Duruy, "Comment p&eacute;rit l'institution Druidique," <i>Rev.
+Arch.</i> xv. 347; de Coulanges, "Comment le Druidisme a disparu,"
+<i>RC</i> iv. 44.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1074" name=
+"footnote1074"></a><b>Footnote 1074:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1074">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Les Druides</i>, 73.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1075" name=
+"footnote1075"></a><b>Footnote 1075:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1075">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Phars.</i> i. 453, "Ye Druids, after arms were laid aside,
+sought once again your barbarous ceremonials.... In remote forests
+do ye inhabit the deep glades."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1076" name=
+"footnote1076"></a><b>Footnote 1076:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1076">(return)</a>
+<p>Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1077" name=
+"footnote1077"></a><b>Footnote 1077:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1077">(return)</a>
+<p>Tacit. iii. 43.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1078" name=
+"footnote1078"></a><b>Footnote 1078:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1078">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> iv. 54.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1079" name=
+"footnote1079"></a><b>Footnote 1079:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1079">(return)</a>
+<p>Ausonius, <i>Prof.</i> v. 12, xi. 17.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1080" name=
+"footnote1080"></a><b>Footnote 1080:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1080">(return)</a>
+<p>Nennius, 40. In the Irish version they are called "Druids." See
+p. <a href="#page238">238</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1081" name=
+"footnote1081"></a><b>Footnote 1081:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1081">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xxx. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1082" name=
+"footnote1082"></a><b>Footnote 1082:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1082">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamnan, <i>Vita S. Col.</i>, i. 37. ii. 35, etc.; Reeves'
+<i>Adamnan</i>, 247 f.; Stokes, <i>Three Homilies</i>, 24 f.;
+<i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 15; <i>RC</i> xvii. 142 f.;
+<i>IT</i> i. 23.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1083" name=
+"footnote1083"></a><b>Footnote 1083:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1083">(return)</a>
+<p>Lampridius, <i>Alex. Sev.</i> 60; Vopiscus, <i>Numerienus</i>,
+14, <i>Aurelianus</i>, 44.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1084" name=
+"footnote1084"></a><b>Footnote 1084:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1084">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, 31, 221; cf. Meyer,
+<i>Contributions to Irish Lexicog.</i> 176 Joyce, <i>SH</i> i.
+238.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1085" name=
+"footnote1085"></a><b>Footnote 1085:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1085">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 56.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1086" name=
+"footnote1086"></a><b>Footnote 1086:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1086">(return)</a>
+<p>Solinus, 35; Tac. <i>Ann.</i> xiv. 30.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1087" name=
+"footnote1087"></a><b>Footnote 1087:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1087">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 326, xvi. 34, 277; Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>,
+331. In <i>LL</i> 75<i>b</i> we hear of "three Druids and three
+Druidesses."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1088" name=
+"footnote1088"></a><b>Footnote 1088:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1088">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page69">69</a>, <i>supra</i>; Keating, 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1089" name=
+"footnote1089"></a><b>Footnote 1089:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1089">(return)</a>
+<p>Jullian, 100; Holder, <i>s.v.</i> "Thucolis."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1090" name=
+"footnote1090"></a><b>Footnote 1090:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1090">(return)</a>
+<p>Plutarch, <i>Vir. mul.</i> 20.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1091" name=
+"footnote1091"></a><b>Footnote 1091:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1091">(return)</a>
+<p>Mela, iii. 6; Strabo, iv. 4. 6.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1092" name=
+"footnote1092"></a><b>Footnote 1092:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1092">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>RC</i> xviii. 1 f. The fact that the rites were
+called Dionysiac is no reason for denying the fact that some
+orgiastic rites were practised. Classical writers usually reported
+all barbaric rites in terms of their own religion. M. D'Arbois (vi.
+325) points out that Circe was not a virgin, and had not eight
+companions.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page319" id=
+"page319"></a>{319}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap21" id="chap21">CHAPTER XXI.</a></h2>
+<h3>MAGIC.</h3>
+<p>The Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical
+practices, many of which could be used by any one, though, on the
+whole, they were in the hands of the Druids, who in many aspects
+were little higher than the shamans of barbaric tribes. But similar
+magical rites were also attributed to the gods, and it is probably
+for this reason that the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann and many of the
+divinities who appear in the <i>Mabinogion</i> are described as
+magicians. Kings are also spoken of as wizards, perhaps a
+reminiscence of the powers of the priest king. But since many of
+the primitive cults had been in the hands of women, and as these
+cults implied a large use of magic, they may have been the earliest
+wielders of magic, though, with increasing civilisation, men took
+their place as magicians. Still side by side with the
+magic-wielding Druids, there were classes of women who also dealt
+in magic, as we have seen. Their powers were feared, even by S.
+Patrick, who classes the "spells of women" along with those of
+Druids, and, in a mythic tale, by the father of Connla, who, when
+the youth was fascinated by a goddess, feared that he would be
+taken by the "spells of women" (<i>brichta ban</i>).<a id=
+"footnotetag1093" name="footnotetag1093"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1093"><sup>1093</sup></a> In other tales women perform
+all such magical actions as are elsewhere ascribed to Druids.<a id=
+"footnotetag1094" name="footnotetag1094"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1094"><sup>1094</sup></a> And after the Druids had passed
+away precisely <span class="pagenum"><a name="page320" id=
+"page320"></a>{320}</span> similar actions&mdash;power over the
+weather, the use of incantations and amulets, shape-shifting and
+invisibility, etc.&mdash;were, and still are in remote Celtic
+regions, ascribed to witches. Much of the Druidic art, however, was
+also supposed to be possessed by saints and clerics, both in the
+past and in recent times. But women remained as magicians when the
+Druids had disappeared, partly because of female conservatism,
+partly because, even in pagan times, they had worked more or less
+secretly. At last the Church proscribed them and persecuted
+them.</p>
+<p>Each clan, tribe, or kingdom had its Druids, who, in time of
+war, assisted their hosts by magic art. This is reflected back upon
+the groups of the mythological cycle, each of which has its Druids
+who play no small part in the battles fought. Though Pliny
+recognises the priestly functions of the Druids, he associates them
+largely with magic, and applies the name <i>magus</i> to
+them.<a id="footnotetag1095" name="footnotetag1095"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1095"><sup>1095</sup></a> In Irish ecclesiastical
+literature, <i>drui</i> is used as the translation of <i>magus</i>,
+<i>e.g.</i> in the case of the Egyptian magicians, while
+<i>magi</i> is used in Latin lives of saints as the equivalent of
+the vernacular <i>druides</i>.<a id="footnotetag1096" name=
+"footnotetag1096"></a><a href="#footnote1096"><sup>1096</sup></a>
+In the sagas and in popular tales <i>Druidecht</i>, "Druidism,"
+stands for "magic," and <i>slat an draoichta</i>, "rod of
+Druidism," is a magic wand.<a id="footnotetag1097" name=
+"footnotetag1097"></a><a href="#footnote1097"><sup>1097</sup></a>
+The Tuatha D&eacute; Danann were said to have learned "Druidism"
+from the four great master Druids of the region whence they had
+come to Ireland, and even now, in popular tales, they are often
+called "Druids" or "Danann Druids."<a id="footnotetag1098" name=
+"footnotetag1098"></a><a href="#footnote1098"><sup>1098</sup></a>
+Thus in Ireland at least there is clear evidence of the great
+magical power claimed by Druids.</p>
+<p>That power was exercised to a great extent over the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page321" id="page321"></a>{321}</span> elements,
+some of which Druids claimed to have created. Thus the Druid
+Cathbad covered the plain over which Deirdre was escaping with "a
+great-waved sea."<a id="footnotetag1099" name=
+"footnotetag1099"></a><a href="#footnote1099"><sup>1099</sup></a>
+Druids also produced blinding snow-storms, or changed day into
+night&mdash;feats ascribed to them even in the Lives of
+Saints.<a id="footnotetag1100" name="footnotetag1100"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1100"><sup>1100</sup></a> Or they discharge
+"shower-clouds of fire" on the opposing hosts, as in the case of
+the Druid Mag Ruith, who made a magic fire, and flying upwards
+towards it, turned it upon the enemy, whose Druid in vain tried to
+divert it.<a id="footnotetag1101" name=
+"footnotetag1101"></a><a href="#footnote1101"><sup>1101</sup></a>
+When the Druids of Cormac dried up all the waters in the land,
+another Druid shot an arrow, and where it fell there issued a
+torrent of water.<a id="footnotetag1102" name=
+"footnotetag1102"></a><a href="#footnote1102"><sup>1102</sup></a>
+The Druid Mathgen boasted of being able to throw mountains on the
+enemy, and frequently Druids made trees or stones appear as armed
+men, dismaying the opposing host in this way. They could also fill
+the air with the clash of battle, or with the dread cries of
+eldritch things.<a id="footnotetag1103" name=
+"footnotetag1103"></a><a href="#footnote1103"><sup>1103</sup></a>
+Similar powers are ascribed to other persons. The daughters of
+Calatin raised themselves aloft on an enchanted wind, and
+discovered C&uacute;chulainn when he was hidden away by Cathbad.
+Later they produced a magic mist to discomfit the hero.<a id=
+"footnotetag1104" name="footnotetag1104"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1104"><sup>1104</sup></a> Such mists occur frequently in
+the sagas, and in one of them the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann arrived
+in Ireland. The priestesses of Sena could rouse sea and wind by
+their enchantments, and, later, Celtic witches have claimed the
+same power.</p>
+<p>In folk-survivals the practice of rain-making is connected with
+sacred springs, and even now in rural France processions to
+shrines, usually connected with a holy well, are common in time of
+drought. Thus people and priest go to the fountain of Baranton in
+procession, singing hymns, and there pray for <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page322" id="page322"></a>{322}</span> rain. The
+priest then dips his foot in the water, or throws some of it on the
+rocks.<a id="footnotetag1105" name="footnotetag1105"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1105"><sup>1105</sup></a> In other cases the image of a
+saint is carried to a well and asperged, as divine images formerly
+were, or the waters are beaten or thrown into the air.<a id=
+"footnotetag1106" name="footnotetag1106"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1106"><sup>1106</sup></a> Another custom was that a
+virgin should clean out a sacred well, and formerly she had to be
+nude.<a id="footnotetag1107" name="footnotetag1107"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1107"><sup>1107</sup></a> Nudity also forms part of an
+old ritual used in Gaul. In time of drought the girls of the
+village followed the youngest virgin in a state of nudity to seek
+the herb <i>belinuntia</i>. This she uprooted, and was then led to
+a river and there asperged by the others. In this case the
+asperging imitated the falling rain, and was meant to produce it
+automatically. While some of these rites suggest the use of magic
+by the folk themselves, in others the presence of the Christian
+priest points to the fact that, formerly, a Druid was necessary as
+the rain producer. In some cases the priest has inherited through
+long ages the rain-making or tempest-quelling powers of the pagan
+priesthood, and is often besought to exercise them.<a id=
+"footnotetag1108" name="footnotetag1108"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1108"><sup>1108</sup></a></p>
+<p>Causing invisibility by means of a spell called <i>feth
+fiada</i>, which made a person unseen or hid him in a magic mist,
+was also used by the Druids as well as by Christian saints. S.
+Patrick's hymn, called <i>F&acirc;ed Fiada</i>, was sung by him
+when his enemies lay in wait, and caused a glamour in them. The
+incantation itself, <i>fith-fath</i>, is still remembered in
+Highland glens.<a id="footnotetag1109" name=
+"footnotetag1109"></a><a href="#footnote1109"><sup>1109</sup></a>
+In the case of S. Patrick he and his followers appeared as deer,
+and this power of shape-shifting was wielded both by Druids and
+women. The Druid Fer Fidail carried off a maiden by taking the form
+of a <span class="pagenum"><a name="page323" id=
+"page323"></a>{323}</span> woman, and another Druid deceived
+C&uacute;chulainn by taking the form of the fair Niamh.<a id=
+"footnotetag1110" name="footnotetag1110"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1110"><sup>1110</sup></a> Other Druids are said to have
+been able to take any shape that pleased them.<a id=
+"footnotetag1111" name="footnotetag1111"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1111"><sup>1111</sup></a> These powers were reflected
+back upon the gods and mythical personages like Taliesin or
+Amairgen, who appear in many forms. The priestesses of Sena could
+assume the form of animals, and an Irish Circe in the <i>Rennes
+Dindsenchas</i> called Dalb the Rough changed three men and their
+wives into swine by her spells.<a id="footnotetag1112" name=
+"footnotetag1112"></a><a href="#footnote1112"><sup>1112</sup></a>
+This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas.
+The children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel
+stepmother; Saar, the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the
+power of the Druid Fear Doirche when she rejected his love; and
+similarly Tuirrenn, mother of Oisin's hounds, was transformed into
+a stag-hound by the fairy mistress of her husband Iollann.<a id=
+"footnotetag1113" name="footnotetag1113"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1113"><sup>1113</sup></a> In other instances in the
+sagas, women appear as birds.<a id="footnotetag1114" name=
+"footnotetag1114"></a><a href="#footnote1114"><sup>1114</sup></a>
+These transformation tales may be connected with totemism, for when
+this institution is decaying the current belief in shape-shifting
+is often made use of to explain descent from animals or the tabu
+against eating certain animals. In some of these Irish
+shape-shifting tales we find this tabu referred to. Thus, when the
+children of Lir were turned into swans, it was proclaimed that no
+one should kill a swan. The reason of an existing tabu seemed to be
+sufficiently explained when it was told that certain human beings
+had become swans. It is not impossible that the Druids made use of
+hypnotic suggestion to persuade others that they had assumed
+another form, as Red Indian shamans have been known to do, or even
+hallucinated others into the belief that their own form had been
+changed.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page324" id=
+"page324"></a>{324}</span>
+<p>By a "drink of oblivion" Druids and other persons could make one
+forget even the most dearly beloved. Thus C&uacute;chulainn was
+made to forget Fand, and his wife Emer to forget her
+jealousy.<a id="footnotetag1115" name=
+"footnotetag1115"></a><a href="#footnote1115"><sup>1115</sup></a>
+This is a reminiscence of potent drinks brewed from herbs which
+caused hallucinations, <i>e.g.</i> that of the change of shape. In
+other cases they were of a narcotic nature and caused a deep sleep,
+an instance being the draught given by Grainne to Fionn and his
+men.<a id="footnotetag1116" name="footnotetag1116"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1116"><sup>1116</sup></a> Again, the "Druidic sleep" is
+suggestive of hypnotism, practised in distant ages and also by
+present-day savages. When Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he
+cast her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her
+wickedness.<a id="footnotetag1117" name=
+"footnotetag1117"></a><a href="#footnote1117"><sup>1117</sup></a>
+In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are
+hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of
+hand of soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing
+it.<a id="footnotetag1118" name="footnotetag1118"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1118"><sup>1118</sup></a> These point to knowledge of
+hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a spectral army is
+opposed to an enemy's force to whom it is an hallucinatory
+appearance&mdash;perhaps an exaggeration of natural hypnotic
+powers.<a id="footnotetag1119" name="footnotetag1119"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1119"><sup>1119</sup></a></p>
+<p>Druids also made a "hedge," the <i>airbe druad</i>, round an
+army, perhaps circumambulating it and saying spells so that the
+attacking force might not break through. If any one could leap this
+"hedge," the spell was broken, but he lost his life. This was done
+at the battle of Cul Dremne, at which S. Columba was present and
+aided the heroic leaper with his prayers.<a id="footnotetag1120"
+name="footnotetag1120"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1120"><sup>1120</sup></a></p>
+<p>A primitive piece of sympathetic magic used still by savages is
+recorded in the <i>Rennes Dindsenchas</i>. In this story one man
+says spells over his spear and hurls it into his <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page325" id="page325"></a>{325}</span>
+opponent's shadow, so that he falls dead.<a id="footnotetag1121"
+name="footnotetag1121"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1121"><sup>1121</sup></a> Equally primitive is the
+Druidic "sending" a wisp of straw over which the Druid sang spells
+and flung it into his victim's face, so that he became mad. A
+similar method is used by the Eskimo <i>angekok</i>. All madness
+was generally ascribed to such a "sending."</p>
+<p>Several of these instances have shown the use of spells, and the
+Druid was believed to possess powerful incantations to discomfit an
+enemy or to produce other magical results. A special posture was
+adopted&mdash;standing on one leg, with one arm outstretched and
+one eye closed, perhaps to concentrate the force of the
+spell,<a id="footnotetag1122" name="footnotetag1122"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1122"><sup>1122</sup></a> but the power lay mainly in the
+spoken words, as we have seen in discussing Celtic formul&aelig; of
+prayer. Such spells were also used by the <i>Filid</i>, or poets,
+since most primitive poetry has a magical aspect. Part of the
+training of the bard consisted in learning traditional
+incantations, which, used with due ritual, produced the magic
+result.<a id="footnotetag1123" name="footnotetag1123"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1123"><sup>1123</sup></a> Some of these incantations have
+already come before our notice, and probably some of the verses
+which C&aelig;sar says the Druids would not commit to writing were
+of the nature of spells.<a id="footnotetag1124" name=
+"footnotetag1124"></a><a href="#footnote1124"><sup>1124</sup></a>
+The virtue of the spell lay in the spoken formula, usually
+introducing the name of a god or spirit, later a saint, in order to
+procure his intervention, through the power inherent in the name.
+Other charms recount an effect already produced, and this, through
+mimetic magic, is supposed to cause its repetition. The earliest
+written documents bearing upon the paganism of the insular Celts
+contain an appeal to "the science of Goibniu" to preserve butter,
+and another, for magical healing, runs, "I admire the healing which
+Diancecht left in his family, in order to bring health to those he
+succoured." These are found in an eighth or ninth century MS., and,
+with their appeal to pagan <span class="pagenum"><a name="page326"
+id="page326"></a>{326}</span> gods, were evidently used in
+Christian times.<a id="footnotetag1125" name=
+"footnotetag1125"></a><a href="#footnote1125"><sup>1125</sup></a>
+Most Druidic magic was accompanied by a spell&mdash;transformation,
+invisibility, power over the elements, and the discovery of hidden
+persons or things. In other cases spells were used in medicine or
+for healing wounds. Thus the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann told the
+Fomorians that they need not oppose them, because their Druids
+would restore the slain to life, and when C&uacute;chulainn was
+wounded we hear less of medicines than of incantations used to
+stanch his blood.<a id="footnotetag1126" name=
+"footnotetag1126"></a><a href="#footnote1126"><sup>1126</sup></a>
+In other cases the Druid could remove barrenness by spells.</p>
+<p>The survival of the belief in spells among modern Celtic peoples
+is a convincing proof of their use in pagan times, and throws light
+upon their nature. In Brittany they are handed down in certain
+families, and are carefully guarded from the knowledge of others.
+The names of saints instead of the old gods are found in them, but
+in some cases diseases are addressed as personal beings. In the
+Highlands similar charms are found, and are often handed down from
+male to female, and from female to male. They are also in common
+use in Ireland. Besides healing diseases, such charms are supposed
+to cause fertility or bring good luck, or even to transfer the
+property of others to the reciter, or, in the case of darker magic,
+to cause death or disease.<a id="footnotetag1127" name=
+"footnotetag1127"></a><a href="#footnote1127"><sup>1127</sup></a>
+In Ireland, sorcerers could "rime either a man or beast to death,"
+and this recalls the power of satire in the mouth of <i>File</i> or
+Druid. It raised blotches on the face of the victim, or even caused
+his death.<a id="footnotetag1128" name=
+"footnotetag1128"></a><a href="#footnote1128"><sup>1128</sup></a>
+Among primitive races powerful internal emotion affects the body in
+curious ways, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page327" id=
+"page327"></a>{327}</span> and in this traditional power of the
+satire or "rime" we have probably an exaggerated reference to
+actual fact. In other cases the "curse of satire" affected nature,
+causing seas and rivers to sink back.<a id="footnotetag1129" name=
+"footnotetag1129"></a><a href="#footnote1129"><sup>1129</sup></a>
+The satires made by the bards of Gaul, referred to by Diodorus, may
+have been believed to possess similar powers.<a id=
+"footnotetag1130" name="footnotetag1130"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1130"><sup>1130</sup></a> Contrariwise, the <i>Filid</i>,
+on uttering an unjust judgment, found their faces covered with
+blotches.<a id="footnotetag1131" name=
+"footnotetag1131"></a><a href="#footnote1131"><sup>1131</sup></a></p>
+<p>A magical sleep is often caused by music in the sagas,
+<i>e.g.</i> by the harp of Dagda, or by the branch carried by
+visitants from Elysium.<a id="footnotetag1132" name=
+"footnotetag1132"></a><a href="#footnote1132"><sup>1132</sup></a>
+Many "fairy" lullabies for producing sleep are even now extant in
+Ireland and the Highlands.<a id="footnotetag1133" name=
+"footnotetag1133"></a><a href="#footnote1133"><sup>1133</sup></a>
+As music forms a part of all primitive religion, its soothing
+powers would easily be magnified. In orgiastic rites it caused
+varying emotions until the singer and dancer fell into a deep
+slumber, and the tales of those who joined in a fairy dance and
+fell asleep, awaking to find that many years had passed, are mythic
+extensions of the power of music in such orgiastic cults. The music
+of the <i>Filid</i> had similar powers to that of Dagda's harp,
+producing laughter, tears, and a delicious slumber,<a id=
+"footnotetag1134" name="footnotetag1134"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1134"><sup>1134</sup></a> and Celtic folk-tales abound in
+similar instances of the magic charm of music.</p>
+<p>We now turn to the use of amulets among the Celts. Some of these
+were symbolic and intended to bring the wearer under the protection
+of the god whom they symbolised. As has been seen, a Celtic god had
+as his symbol a wheel, probably representing the sun, and numerous
+small wheel discs made of different materials have been found in
+Gaul and <span class="pagenum"><a name="page328" id=
+"page328"></a>{328}</span> Britain.<a id="footnotetag1135" name=
+"footnotetag1135"></a><a href="#footnote1135"><sup>1135</sup></a>
+These were evidently worn as amulets, while in other cases they
+were offered to river divinities, since many are met with in river
+beds or fords. Their use as protective amulets is shown by a stele
+representing a person wearing a necklace to which is attached one
+of these wheels. In Irish texts a Druid is called Mag Ruith,
+explained as <i>magus rotarum</i>, because he made his Druidical
+observations by wheels.<a id="footnotetag1136" name=
+"footnotetag1136"></a><a href="#footnote1136"><sup>1136</sup></a>
+This may point to the use of such amulets in Ireland. A curious
+amulet, connected with the Druids, became famous in Roman times and
+is described by Pliny. This was the "serpents' egg," formed from
+the foam produced by serpents twining themselves together. The
+serpents threw the "egg" into the air, and he who sought it had to
+catch it in his cloak before it fell, and flee to a running stream,
+beyond which the serpents, like the witches pursuing Tam o'
+Shanter, could not follow him. This "egg" was believed to cause its
+owner to obtain access to kings or to gain lawsuits, and a Roman
+citizen was put to death in the reign of Claudius for bringing such
+an amulet into court. Pliny had seen this "egg." It was about the
+size of an apple, with a cartilaginous skin covered with
+discs.<a id="footnotetag1137" name="footnotetag1137"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1137"><sup>1137</sup></a> Probably it was a fossil
+echinus, such as has been found in Gaulish tombs.<a id=
+"footnotetag1138" name="footnotetag1138"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1138"><sup>1138</sup></a> Such "eggs" were doubtless
+connected with the cult of the serpent, or some old myth of an egg
+produced by serpents may have been made use of to account for their
+formation. This is the more likely, as rings or beads of glass
+found in tumuli in Wales, Cornwall, and the Highlands are called
+"serpents' glass" (<i>glain naidr</i>), and are believed to be
+formed in the same way as the "egg." These, as well as old
+spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page329" id="page329"></a>{329}</span> the
+Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, <i>e.g.</i> against
+the bite of a serpent, and are highly prized by their owners.<a id=
+"footnotetag1139" name="footnotetag1139"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1139"><sup>1139</sup></a></p>
+<p>Pliny speaks also of the Celtic belief in the magical virtues of
+coral, either worn as an amulet or taken in powder as a medicine,
+while it has been proved that the Celts during a limited period of
+their history placed it on weapons and utensils, doubtless as an
+amulet.<a id="footnotetag1140" name="footnotetag1140"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1140"><sup>1140</sup></a> Other amulets&mdash;white
+marble balls, quartz pebbles, models of the tooth of the boar, or
+pieces of amber, have been found buried with the dead.<a id=
+"footnotetag1141" name="footnotetag1141"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1141"><sup>1141</sup></a> Little figures of the boar, the
+horse, and the bull, with a ring for suspending them to a necklet,
+were worn as amulets or images of these divine animals, and phallic
+amulets were also worn, perhaps as a protection against the evil
+eye.<a id="footnotetag1142" name="footnotetag1142"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1142"><sup>1142</sup></a></p>
+<p>A cult of stones was probably connected with the belief in the
+magical power of certain stones, like the <i>Lia Fail</i>, which
+shrieked aloud when Conn knocked against it. His Druids explained
+that the number of the shrieks equalled the number of his
+descendants who should be kings of Erin.<a id="footnotetag1143"
+name="footnotetag1143"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1143"><sup>1143</sup></a> This is an &aelig;tiological
+myth accounting for the use of this fetich-stone at coronations.
+Other stones, probably the object of a cult or possessing magical
+virtues, were used at the installation of chiefs, who stood on them
+and vowed to follow in the steps of their predecessors, a pair of
+feet being carved on the stone to represent those of the first
+chief.<a id="footnotetag1144" name="footnotetag1144"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1144"><sup>1144</sup></a> Other stones had more musical
+virtues&mdash;the "conspicuous stone" of <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page330" id="page330"></a>{330}</span> Elysium
+from which arose a hundred strains, and the melodious stone of Loch
+L&aacute;ig. Such beliefs existed into Christian times. S.
+Columba's stone altar floated on the waves, and on it a leper had
+crossed in the wake of the saint's coracle to Erin. But the same
+stone was that on which, long before, the hero Fionn had
+slipped.<a id="footnotetag1145" name="footnotetag1145"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1145"><sup>1145</sup></a></p>
+<p>Connected with the cult of stones are magical observances at
+fixed rocks or boulders, regarded probably as the abode of a
+spirit. These observances are in origin pre-Celtic, but were
+practised by the Celts. Girls slide down a stone to obtain a lover,
+pregnant women to obtain an easy delivery, or contact with such
+stones causes barren women to have children or gives vitality to
+the feeble. A small offering is usually left on the stone.<a id=
+"footnotetag1146" name="footnotetag1146"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1146"><sup>1146</sup></a> Similar rites are practised at
+megalithic monuments, and here again the custom is obviously
+pre-Celtic in origin. In this case the spirits of the dead must
+have been expected to assist the purposes of the rites, or even to
+incarnate themselves in the children born as a result of barren
+women resorting to these stones.<a id="footnotetag1147" name=
+"footnotetag1147"></a><a href="#footnote1147"><sup>1147</sup></a>
+Sometimes when the purpose of the stones has been forgotten and
+some other legendary origin attributed to them, the custom adapts
+itself to the legend. In Ireland many dolmens are known, not as
+places of sepulture, but as "Diarmaid and Grainne's beds"&mdash;the
+places where these eloping lovers slept. Hence they have powers of
+fruitfulness and are visited by women who desire children. The rite
+is thus one of sympathetic magic.</p>
+<p>Holed dolmens or naturally pierced blocks are used for the
+magical cure of sickness both in Brittany and Cornwall, the patient
+being passed through the hole.<a id="footnotetag1148" name=
+"footnotetag1148"></a><a href="#footnote1148"><sup>1148</sup></a>
+Similar rites <span class="pagenum"><a name="page331" id=
+"page331"></a>{331}</span> are used with trees, a slit being often
+made in the trunk of a sapling, and a sickly child passed through
+it. The slit is then closed and bound, and if it joins together at
+the end of a certain time, this is a proof that the child will
+recover.<a id="footnotetag1149" name="footnotetag1149"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1149"><sup>1149</sup></a> In these rites the spirit in
+stone or tree was supposed to assist the process of healing, or the
+disease was transferred to them, or, again, there was the idea of a
+new birth with consequent renewed life, the act imitating the
+process of birth. These rites are not confined to Celtic regions,
+but belong to that universal use of magic in which the Celts freely
+participated.</p>
+<p>Since Christian writers firmly believed in the magical powers of
+the Druids, aided however by the devil, they taught that Christian
+saints had miraculously overcome them with their own weapons. S.
+Patrick dispelled snow-storms and darkness raised by Druids, or
+destroyed Druids who had brought down fire from heaven. Similar
+deeds are attributed to S. Columba and others.<a id=
+"footnotetag1150" name="footnotetag1150"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1150"><sup>1150</sup></a> The moral victory of the Cross
+was later regarded also as a magical victory. Hence also lives of
+Celtic saints are full of miracles which are simply a reproduction
+of Druidic magic&mdash;controlling the elements, healing, carrying
+live coals without hurt, causing confusion by their curses,
+producing invisibility or shape-shifting, making the ice-cold
+waters of a river hot by standing in them at their devotions, or
+walking unscathed through the fiercest storms.<a id=
+"footnotetag1151" name="footnotetag1151"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1151"><sup>1151</sup></a> They were soon regarded as more
+expert magicians than the Druids themselves. They may have laid
+claim to magical powers, or perhaps they used a natural shrewdness
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page332" id=
+"page332"></a>{332}</span> in such a way as to suggest magic. But
+all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my
+Druid"&mdash;the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they
+were imbued with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S.
+Columba sent a white stone to King Brude at Inverness for the cure
+of his Druid Broichan, who drank the water poured over it, and was
+healed.<a id="footnotetag1152" name="footnotetag1152"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1152"><sup>1152</sup></a> Soon similar virtues were
+ascribed to the relics of the saints themselves, and at a later
+time, when most Scotsmen ceased to believe in the saints, they
+thought that the ministers of the kirk had powers like those of
+pagan Druid and Catholic saint. Ministers were levitated, or shone
+with a celestial light, or had clairvoyant gifts, or, with dire
+results, cursed the ungodly or the benighted prelatist. They
+prophesied, used trance-utterance, and exercised gifts of healing.
+Angels ministered to them, as when Samuel Rutherford, having fallen
+into a well when a child, was pulled out by an angel.<a id=
+"footnotetag1153" name="footnotetag1153"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1153"><sup>1153</sup></a> The substratum of primitive
+belief survives all changes of creed, and the folk impartially
+attributed magical powers to pagan Druid, Celtic saints, old crones
+and witches, and Presbyterian ministers.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1093" name=
+"footnote1093"></a><b>Footnote 1093:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1093">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 56; D'Arbois, v. 387.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1094" name=
+"footnote1094"></a><b>Footnote 1094:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1094">(return)</a>
+<p>See, <i>e.g.</i>, "The Death of Muirchertach," <i>RC</i> xxiii.
+394.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1095" name=
+"footnote1095"></a><b>Footnote 1095:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1095">(return)</a>
+<p><i>HN</i> xxx. 4, 13.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1096" name=
+"footnote1096"></a><b>Footnote 1096:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1096">(return)</a>
+<p>Zimmer, <i>Gloss. Hibern.</i> 183; Reeves, <i>Adamnan</i>,
+260.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1097" name=
+"footnote1097"></a><b>Footnote 1097:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1097">(return)</a>
+<p>Kennedy, 175; cf. <i>IT</i> i. 220.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1098" name=
+"footnote1098"></a><b>Footnote 1098:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1098">(return)</a>
+<p>See <i>RC</i> xii. 52 f.; D'Arbois, v. 403-404; O'Curry, <i>MS.
+Mat.</i> 505; Kennedy, 75, 196, 258.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1099" name=
+"footnote1099"></a><b>Footnote 1099:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1099">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 277.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1100" name=
+"footnote1100"></a><b>Footnote 1100:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1100">(return)</a>
+<p>Stokes, <i>Three Middle Irish Homilies</i>, 24; <i>IT</i> iii.
+325.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1101" name=
+"footnote1101"></a><b>Footnote 1101:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1101">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 83; Miss Hull, 215; D'Arbois, v. 424; O'Curry,
+<i>MC</i> ii. 215.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1102" name=
+"footnote1102"></a><b>Footnote 1102:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1102">(return)</a>
+<p>Keating, 341; O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 271.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1103" name=
+"footnote1103"></a><b>Footnote 1103:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1103">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 81.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1104" name=
+"footnote1104"></a><b>Footnote 1104:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1104">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 240 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1105" name=
+"footnote1105"></a><b>Footnote 1105:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1105">(return)</a>
+<p>Maury, 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1106" name=
+"footnote1106"></a><b>Footnote 1106:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1106">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, ii. 226 f., i. 101, ii. 225;
+B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, <i>Superstitions et Survivances</i>,
+iii. 169 f.; <i>Stat. Account</i>, viii. 52.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1107" name=
+"footnote1107"></a><b>Footnote 1107:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1107">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. des Trad.</i> 1893, 613; S&eacute;billot, ii. 224.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1108" name=
+"footnote1108"></a><b>Footnote 1108:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1108">(return)</a>
+<p>B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, iii. 218 f.; S&eacute;billot, i.
+100, 109; <i>RC</i> ii. 484; Frazer, <i>Golden
+Bough</i><sup>2</sup>, i. 67.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1109" name=
+"footnote1109"></a><b>Footnote 1109:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1109">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 387; <i>IT</i> i. 52; Dixon, <i>Gairloch</i>, 165;
+Carmichael, <i>Carm. Gad.</i> ii. 25.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1110" name=
+"footnote1110"></a><b>Footnote 1110:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1110">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xvi. 152; Miss Hull, 243.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1111" name=
+"footnote1111"></a><b>Footnote 1111:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1111">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 133; <i>IT</i> ii. 373.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1112" name=
+"footnote1112"></a><b>Footnote 1112:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1112">(return)</a>
+<p>Mela, iii. 6; <i>RC</i> xv. 471.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1113" name=
+"footnote1113"></a><b>Footnote 1113:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1113">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 1 f.; Kennedy, 235.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1114" name=
+"footnote1114"></a><b>Footnote 1114:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1114">(return)</a>
+<p>Bird-women pursued by C&uacute;chulainn; D'Arbois, v. 178; for
+other instances see O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 426; Miss Hull,
+82.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1115" name=
+"footnote1115"></a><b>Footnote 1115:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1115">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 215.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1116" name=
+"footnote1116"></a><b>Footnote 1116:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1116">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 279.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1117" name=
+"footnote1117"></a><b>Footnote 1117:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1117">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 86.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1118" name=
+"footnote1118"></a><b>Footnote 1118:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1118">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, <i>Vita S. Kent.</i> c. 1.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1119" name=
+"footnote1119"></a><b>Footnote 1119:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1119">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 446.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1120" name=
+"footnote1120"></a><b>Footnote 1120:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1120">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Conor, <i>Rer. Hib. Scrip.</i> ii. 142; Stokes, <i>Lives of
+Saints</i>, xxviii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1121" name=
+"footnote1121"></a><b>Footnote 1121:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1121">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xv. 444.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1122" name=
+"footnote1122"></a><b>Footnote 1122:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1122">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page251">251</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1123" name=
+"footnote1123"></a><b>Footnote 1123:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1123">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 240.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1124" name=
+"footnote1124"></a><b>Footnote 1124:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1124">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page248">248</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a>,
+<i>supra</i>; C&aelig;sar, <i>vi</i>. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1125" name=
+"footnote1125"></a><b>Footnote 1125:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1125">(return)</a>
+<p>Zimmer, <i>Gloss. Hiber.</i> 271. Other Irish incantations,
+appealing to the saints, are found in the <i>Codex Regularum</i> at
+Klosternenburg (<i>RC</i> ii. 112).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1126" name=
+"footnote1126"></a><b>Footnote 1126:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1126">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, i. 137; Kennedy, 301.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1127" name=
+"footnote1127"></a><b>Footnote 1127:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1127">(return)</a>
+<p>Sauv&eacute;, <i>RC</i> vi. 67 f.; Carmichael, <i>Carm.
+Gadel.</i>, <i>passim</i>; <i>CM</i> xii. 38; Joyce, <i>SH</i> i.
+629 f.; Camden, <i>Britannia</i>, iv. 488; Scot, <i>Discovery of
+Witchcraft</i>, iii. 15.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1128" name=
+"footnote1128"></a><b>Footnote 1128:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1128">(return)</a>
+<p>For examples see O'Curry, <i>MS. Met.</i> 248; D'Arbois, ii.
+190; <i>RC</i> xii. 71, xxiv. 279; Stokes, <i>TIG</i> xxxvi. f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1129" name=
+"footnote1129"></a><b>Footnote 1129:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1129">(return)</a>
+<p>Windisch, <i>T&aacute;in</i>, line 3467.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1130" name=
+"footnote1130"></a><b>Footnote 1130:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1130">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 31.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1131" name=
+"footnote1131"></a><b>Footnote 1131:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1131">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, i. 271.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1132" name=
+"footnote1132"></a><b>Footnote 1132:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1132">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xii. 109; Nutt-Meyer, i. 2; D'Arbois, v. 445.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1133" name=
+"footnote1133"></a><b>Footnote 1133:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1133">(return)</a>
+<p>Petrie, <i>Ancient Music of Ireland</i>, i. 73; <i>The Gael</i>,
+i. 235 (fairy lullaby of MacLeod of MacLeod).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1134" name=
+"footnote1134"></a><b>Footnote 1134:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1134">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 255.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1135" name=
+"footnote1135"></a><b>Footnote 1135:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1135">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Arch&aelig;ologia</i>, xxxix. 509; <i>Proc. Soc. Ant.</i>
+iii. 92; Gaidoz, <i>Le Dieu Gaul. du Soleil</i>, 60 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1136" name=
+"footnote1136"></a><b>Footnote 1136:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1136">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 409; but see Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 215.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1137" name=
+"footnote1137"></a><b>Footnote 1137:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1137">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, <i>HN</i> xxix. 3. 54.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1138" name=
+"footnote1138"></a><b>Footnote 1138:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1138">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. Arch.</i> i. 227, xxxiii. 283.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1139" name=
+"footnote1139"></a><b>Footnote 1139:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1139">(return)</a>
+<p>Hoare, <i>Modern Wiltshire</i>, 56; Camden, <i>Britannia</i>,
+815; Hazlitt, 194; Campbell, <i>Witchcraft</i>, 84. In the
+Highlands spindle-whorls are thought to have been perforated by the
+adder, which then passes through the hole to rid itself of its old
+skin.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1140" name=
+"footnote1140"></a><b>Footnote 1140:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1140">(return)</a>
+<p>Pliny, xxxii. 2. 24; Reinach, <i>RC</i> xx. 13 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1141" name=
+"footnote1141"></a><b>Footnote 1141:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1141">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. Arch.</i> i. 227; Greenwell, <i>British Barrows</i>,
+165; Elton, 66; Renel, 95f., 194f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1142" name=
+"footnote1142"></a><b>Footnote 1142:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1142">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>BF</i> 286, 289, 362.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1143" name=
+"footnote1143"></a><b>Footnote 1143:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1143">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS Mat.</i> 387. See a paper by Hartland, "The Voice
+of the Stone of Destiny," <i>Folk-lore Journal</i>, xiv. 1903.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1144" name=
+"footnote1144"></a><b>Footnote 1144:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1144">(return)</a>
+<p>Petrie, <i>Trans. Royal Irish Acad.</i> xviii. pt. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1145" name=
+"footnote1145"></a><b>Footnote 1145:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1145">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 393 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1146" name=
+"footnote1146"></a><b>Footnote 1146:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1146">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, i. 334 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1147" name=
+"footnote1147"></a><b>Footnote 1147:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1147">(return)</a>
+<p>Trollope, <i>Brittany</i>, ii. 229;
+B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, <i>Superstitions et Survivances</i>,
+i. 529 f.; Borlase, <i>Dolmens of Ireland</i>, iii. 580, 689, 841
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1148" name=
+"footnote1148"></a><b>Footnote 1148:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1148">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Rev. des Trad.</i> 1894, 494; B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud,
+i. 529, ii. 367; Elworthy, <i>Evil Eye</i>, 70.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1149" name=
+"footnote1149"></a><b>Footnote 1149:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1149">(return)</a>
+<p>B&eacute;renger-F&eacute;raud, i. 523; Elworthy, 69, 106;
+Reinach, <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, iv. 33.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1150" name=
+"footnote1150"></a><b>Footnote 1150:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1150">(return)</a>
+<p>Kennedy, 324; Adamnan, <i>Vita S. Col.</i> ii. 35.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1151" name=
+"footnote1151"></a><b>Footnote 1151:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1151">(return)</a>
+<p>Life of S. Fechin of Fore, <i>RC</i> xii. 333; Life of S.
+Kieran, O'Grady, ii. 13; Amra Cholumbchille, <i>RC</i> xx. 41; Life
+of S. Moling, <i>RC</i> xxvii. 293; and other lives <i>passim</i>.
+See also Plummer, <i>Vit&aelig; Sanctorum Hiberni&aelig;</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1152" name=
+"footnote1152"></a><b>Footnote 1152:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1152">(return)</a>
+<p>Adamnan, ii. 34. This pebble was long preserved, but
+mysteriously disappeared when the person who sought it was doomed
+to die.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1153" name=
+"footnote1153"></a><b>Footnote 1153:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1153">(return)</a>
+<p>Wodrow, <i>Analecta</i>, <i>passim</i>; Walker, <i>Six Saints of
+the Covenant</i>, ed. by Dr. Hay Fleming.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page333" id=
+"page333"></a>{333}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap22" id="chap22">CHAPTER XXII.</a></h2>
+<h3>THE STATE OF THE DEAD.</h3>
+<p>Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none
+so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is
+there a farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if
+any, have doubted the existence of a future state, but their
+conceptions of it have differed greatly. But of all the races of
+antiquity, outside Egypt, the Celts seem to have cherished the most
+ardent belief in the world beyond the grave, and to have been
+preoccupied with its joys. Their belief, so far as we know it, was
+extremely vivid, and its chief characteristic was life in the body
+after death, in another region.<a id="footnotetag1154" name=
+"footnotetag1154"></a><a href="#footnote1154"><sup>1154</sup></a>
+This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a doctrine by the
+Druids, made it the admiration of classical onlookers. But besides
+this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a distant
+past, that the dead lived on in the grave&mdash;the two conceptions
+being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of
+belief in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul
+could exist apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that
+they believed in a future existence of the soul as a shade. This
+belief is certainly found in some late Welsh poems, where the
+ghosts are described as wandering in the Caledonian forest, but
+these can hardly be made use of as evidence for the old pagan
+doctrine. The evidence for the latter may be gathered <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page334" id="page334"></a>{334}</span> from
+classical observers, from arch&aelig;ology and from Irish
+texts.</p>
+<p>C&aelig;sar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress
+this on them that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another
+(<i>ab aliis ... ad alios</i>) after death, and by this chiefly
+they think to incite men to valour, the fear of death being
+overlooked." Later he adds, that at funerals all things which had
+been dear to the dead man, even living creatures, were thrown on
+the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time slaves and beloved
+clients were also consumed.<a id="footnotetag1155" name=
+"footnotetag1155"></a><a href="#footnote1155"><sup>1155</sup></a>
+Diodorus says: "Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed
+that the souls of men were immortal, and after completing their
+term of existence they live again, the soul passing into another
+body. Hence at the burial of the dead some threw letters addressed
+to dead relatives on the funeral pile, believing that the dead
+would read them in the next world."<a id="footnotetag1156" name=
+"footnotetag1156"></a><a href="#footnote1156"><sup>1156</sup></a>
+Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the
+souls of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these
+breeches-wearing folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as
+that of the mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent
+which would be repaid in the next world, because men's souls are
+immortal.<a id="footnotetag1157" name=
+"footnotetag1157"></a><a href="#footnote1157"><sup>1157</sup></a>
+These passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed
+simply in transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all
+these writers cite one common original, but C&aelig;sar makes no
+reference to Pythagoras. A comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine
+shows that the Celtic belief differed materially from it. According
+to the former, men's souls entered new bodies, even those of
+animals, in this world, and as an expiation. There is nothing of
+this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body is not a prison-house of
+the soul in which it must expiate its former sins, and the soul
+receives it not in this world but in another. The real point of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page335" id=
+"page335"></a>{335}</span> connection was the insistence of both
+upon immortality, the Druids teaching that it was bodily
+immortality. Their doctrine no more taught transmigration than does
+the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. Roman writers, aware
+that Pythagoras taught immortality <i>via</i> a series of
+transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine of bodily
+immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body
+meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or
+believing in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be
+struck with the vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon
+conduct. The only thing like it of which they knew was the
+Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at in this light, C&aelig;sar's words
+need not convey the idea of transmigration, and it is possible that
+he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these writers meant that
+the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly have added the
+passages regarding debts being paid in the other world, or letters
+conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit the dead
+there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of the
+soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it
+may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was
+tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a
+region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier
+conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul,
+after the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and
+there received its body complete and glorified. The two
+conceptions, Hindu and Celtic, may have sprung from early "Aryan"
+belief.</p>
+<p>This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says
+of the Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of
+man's existence is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world
+(or region, <i>in orbe alio</i>) the spirit animates the members.
+Death, if your lore be true, is but the centre of a <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page336" id="page336"></a>{336}</span> long
+life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic warrior had no fear of
+death.<a id="footnotetag1158" name="footnotetag1158"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1158"><sup>1158</sup></a> Thus Lucan conceived the
+Druidic doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region.
+That region was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the
+Egyptian Aalu with its rich and varied existence. Classical
+writers, of course, may have known of what appears to have been a
+sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old beliefs, that the soul might
+take the form of an animal, but this was not the Druidic teaching.
+Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths telling of the
+rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have been
+misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But
+such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes,
+Strabo, and Mela,<a id="footnotetag1159" name=
+"footnotetag1159"></a><a href="#footnote1159"><sup>1159</sup></a>
+speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their testimony is
+probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela appears to
+copy C&aelig;sar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on
+to the next world.</p>
+<p>This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish
+sagas, in which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The
+dead who return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a
+body. Thus, when C&uacute;chulainn returns at the command of S.
+Patrick, he is described exactly as if he were still in the flesh.
+"His hair was thick and black ... in his head his eye gleamed swift
+and grey.... Blacker than the side of a cooking spit each of his
+two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His clothes and weapons are
+fully described, while his chariot and horses are equally
+corporeal.<a id="footnotetag1160" name=
+"footnotetag1160"></a><a href="#footnote1160"><sup>1160</sup></a>
+Similar descriptions of the dead who return are not infrequent,
+<i>e.g.</i> that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom every one
+believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich, who
+reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page337" id=
+"page337"></a>{337}</span> clad in his former splendour, and
+recited the lost story of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>.<a id=
+"footnotetag1161" name="footnotetag1161"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1161"><sup>1161</sup></a> Thus the Irish Celts believed
+that in another world the spirit animated the members. This bodily
+existence is also suggested in Celtic versions of the "Dead Debtor"
+folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape a dead man
+helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but in
+the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears
+as a living person in corporeal form.<a id="footnotetag1162" name=
+"footnotetag1162"></a><a href="#footnote1162"><sup>1162</sup></a>
+Equally substantial and corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking,
+and fighting are the divine folk of the <i>s&iacute;d</i> or of
+Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in the texts. To the
+Celts, gods, <i>s&iacute;de</i>, and the dead, all alike had a
+bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other
+ways differed from the earthly body.</p>
+<p>The arch&aelig;ological evidence of burial customs among the
+Celts also bears witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area
+a rich profusion of grave-goods has been found, consisting of
+weapons, armour, chariots, utensils, ornaments, and coins.<a id=
+"footnotetag1163" name="footnotetag1163"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1163"><sup>1163</sup></a> Some of the interments
+undoubtedly point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the
+grave. Male and female skeletons are often in close proximity, in
+one case the arm of the male encircling the neck of the female. In
+other cases the remains of children are found with these. Or while
+the lower interment is richly provided with grave-goods, above it
+lie irregularly several skeletons, without grave-goods, and often
+with head separated from the body, pointing to decapitation, while
+in one case the arms had been tied behind the back.<a id=
+"footnotetag1164" name="footnotetag1164"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1164"><sup>1164</sup></a> All this <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page338" id="page338"></a>{338}</span> suggests,
+taken in connection with classical evidence regarding burial
+customs, that the future life was life in the body, and that it was
+a <i>replica</i> of this life, with the same affections, needs, and
+energies. Certain passages in Irish texts also describe burials,
+and tell how the dead were interred with ornaments and weapons,
+while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his
+armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be
+expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented
+their attack.<a id="footnotetag1165" name=
+"footnotetag1165"></a><a href="#footnote1165"><sup>1165</sup></a>
+Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many
+tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive
+with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes
+sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead
+husbands.<a id="footnotetag1166" name=
+"footnotetag1166"></a><a href="#footnote1166"><sup>1166</sup></a></p>
+<p>The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was
+probably linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead,
+and one shared by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave.
+This conception was never forgotten, even in regions where the
+theory of a distant land of the dead was evolved, or where the body
+was consumed by fire before burial. It appears from such practices
+as binding the dead with cords, or laying heavy stones or a mound
+of earth on the grave, probably to prevent their egress, or feeding
+the dead with sacrificial food at the grave, or from the belief
+that the dead come forth not as spirits, but in the body from the
+grave. This primitive conception, of which the belief in a
+subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long survived among
+various <span class="pagenum"><a name="page339" id=
+"page339"></a>{339}</span> races, <i>e.g.</i> the Scandinavians,
+who believed in the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while
+they also had their conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the
+Slavs, side by side with Christian conceptions.<a id=
+"footnotetag1167" name="footnotetag1167"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1167"><sup>1167</sup></a> It also survived among the
+Celts, though another belief in the <i>orbis alius</i> had arisen.
+This can be shown from modern and ancient folk-belief and
+custom.</p>
+<p>In numerous Celtic folk-tales the dead rise in the body, not as
+ghosts, from the grave, which is sometimes described as a house in
+which they live. They perform their ordinary occupations in house
+or field; they eat with the living, or avenge themselves upon them;
+if scourged, blood is drawn from their bodies; and, in one curious
+Breton tale, a dead husband visits his wife in bed and she then has
+a child by him, because, as he said, "sa compte d'enfants" was not
+yet complete.<a id="footnotetag1168" name=
+"footnotetag1168"></a><a href="#footnote1168"><sup>1168</sup></a>
+In other stories a corpse becomes animated and speaks or acts in
+presence of the living, or from the tomb itself when it is
+disturbed.<a id="footnotetag1169" name=
+"footnotetag1169"></a><a href="#footnote1169"><sup>1169</sup></a>
+The earliest literary example of such a tale is the tenth century
+"Adventures of Nera," based on older sources. In this Nera goes to
+tie a withy to the foot of a man who has been hung. The corpse begs
+a drink, and then forces Nera to carry him to a house, where he
+kills two sleepers.<a id="footnotetag1170" name=
+"footnotetag1170"></a><a href="#footnote1170"><sup>1170</sup></a>
+All such stories, showing as they do that a corpse is really
+living, must in essence be of great antiquity. Another common
+belief, found over the Celtic area, is that the dead rise from the
+grave, not as ghosts, when they will, and that they appear <i>en
+masse</i> on the night of All Saints, and join the living.<a id=
+"footnotetag1171" name="footnotetag1171"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1171"><sup>1171</sup></a></p>
+<p>As a result of such beliefs, various customs are found in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page340" id=
+"page340"></a>{340}</span> use, apparently to permit of the corpse
+having freedom of movement, contrary to the older custom of
+preventing its egress from the grave. In the west of Ireland the
+feet of the corpse are left free, and the nails are drawn from the
+coffin at the grave. In the Hebrides the threads of the shroud are
+cut or the bindings of feet, hands, and face are raised when the
+body is placed in the coffin, and in Brittany the arms and feet are
+left free when the corpse is dressed.<a id="footnotetag1172" name=
+"footnotetag1172"></a><a href="#footnote1172"><sup>1172</sup></a>
+The reason is said to be that the spirit may have less trouble in
+getting to the spirit world, but it is obvious that a more material
+view preceded and still underlies this later gloss. Many stories
+are told illustrating these customs, and the earlier belief,
+Christianised, appears in the tale of a woman who haunted her
+friends because they had made her grave-clothes so short that the
+fires of Purgatory burnt her knees.<a id="footnotetag1173" name=
+"footnotetag1173"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1173"><sup>1173</sup></a></p>
+<p>Earlier customs recorded among the Celts also point to the
+existence of this primitive belief influencing actual custom.
+Nicander says that the Celts went by night to the tombs of great
+men to obtain oracles, so much did they believe that they were
+still living there.<a id="footnotetag1174" name=
+"footnotetag1174"></a><a href="#footnote1174"><sup>1174</sup></a>
+In Ireland, oracles were also sought by sleeping on funeral cairns,
+and it was to the grave of Fergus that two bards resorted in order
+to obtain from him the lost story of the <i>T&aacute;in</i>. We
+have also seen how, in Ireland, armed heroes exerted a sinister
+influence upon enemies from their graves, which may thus have been
+regarded as their homes&mdash;a belief also underlying the Welsh
+story of Bran's head.</p>
+<p>Where was the world of the dead situated? M. Reinach has shown,
+by a careful comparison of the different uses of the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page341" id="page341"></a>{341}</span> word
+<i>orbis</i>, that Lucan's words do not necessarily mean "another
+world," but "another region," <i>i.e.</i> of this world.<a id=
+"footnotetag1175" name="footnotetag1175"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1175"><sup>1175</sup></a> If the Celts cherished so
+firmly the belief that the dead lived on in the grave, a belief in
+an underworld of the dead was bound in course of time to have been
+evolved as part of their creed. To it all graves and tumuli would
+give access. Classical observers apparently held that the Celtic
+future state was like their own in being an underworld region,
+since they speak of the dead Celts as <i>inferi</i>, or as going
+<i>ad Manes</i>, and Plutarch makes Camma speak of descending to
+her dead husband.<a id="footnotetag1176" name=
+"footnotetag1176"></a><a href="#footnote1176"><sup>1176</sup></a>
+What differentiated it from their own gloomy underworld was its
+exuberant life and immortality. This aspect of a subterranean land
+presented no difficulty to the Celt, who had many tales of an
+underworld or under-water region more beautiful and blissful than
+anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have been that of
+the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the roots of
+things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had
+descended,<a id="footnotetag1177" name=
+"footnotetag1177"></a><a href="#footnote1177"><sup>1177</sup></a>
+probably a myth of their coming forth from his subterranean
+kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful
+life.</p>
+<p>Several writers, notably M. D'Arbois, assume that the <i>orbis
+alius</i> of the dead was the Celtic island Elysium. But that
+Elysium <i>never</i> appears in the tales as a land of the dead. It
+is a land of gods and deathless folk who are not those who have
+passed from this world by death. Mortals may reach it by favour,
+but only while still in life. It might be argued that Elysium was
+regarded in pagan times as the land of the dead, but after
+Christian eschatological views prevailed, it became a kind of
+fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after
+being carefully examined, they show that Elysium <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page342" id="page342"></a>{342}</span> had
+always been a place distinct from that of the departed, though
+there may have arisen a tendency to confuse the two.</p>
+<p>If there was a genuine Celtic belief in an island of the dead,
+it could have been no more than a local one, else C&aelig;sar would
+not have spoken as he does of the Celtic Dispater. Such a local
+belief now exists on the Breton coast, but it is mainly concerned
+with the souls of the drowned.<a id="footnotetag1178" name=
+"footnotetag1178"></a><a href="#footnote1178"><sup>1178</sup></a> A
+similar local belief may explain the story told by Procopius, who
+says that Brittia (Britain), an island lying off the mouth of the
+Rhine, is divided from north to south by a wall beyond which is a
+noxious region. This is a distorted reminiscence of the Roman wall,
+which would appear to run in this direction if Ptolemy's map, in
+which Scotland lies at right angles to England, had been consulted.
+Thither fishermen from the opposite coast are compelled to ferry
+over at dead of night the shades of the dead, unseen to them, but
+marshalled by a mysterious leader.<a id="footnotetag1179" name=
+"footnotetag1179"></a><a href="#footnote1179"><sup>1179</sup></a>
+Procopius may have mingled some local belief with the current
+tradition that Ulysses' island of the shades lay in the north, or
+in the west.<a id="footnotetag1180" name=
+"footnotetag1180"></a><a href="#footnote1180"><sup>1180</sup></a>
+In any case his story makes of the gloomy land of the shades a very
+different region from the blissful Elysium of the Celts and from
+their joyous <i>orbis alius</i>, nor is it certain that he is
+referring to a Celtic people.</p>
+<p>Traces of the idea of an underworld of the dead exist in Breton
+folk-belief. The dead must travel across a subterranean ocean, and
+though there is scarcely any tradition regarding what happens on
+landing, M. S&eacute;billot thinks that formerly "there existed in
+the subterranean world a sort of centralisation of the different
+states of the dead." If so, this must have been founded on pagan
+belief. The interior of the earth is <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page343" id="page343"></a>{343}</span> also believed to be the
+abode of fabulous beings, of giants, and of fantastic animals, and
+there is also a subterranean fairy world. In all this we may see a
+survival of the older belief, modified by Christian teaching, since
+the Bretons suppose that purgatory and hell are beneath the earth
+and accessible from its surface.<a id="footnotetag1181" name=
+"footnotetag1181"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1181"><sup>1181</sup></a></p>
+<p>Some British folk-lore brought to Greece by Demetrius and
+reported by Plutarch might seem to suggest that certain
+persons&mdash;the mighty dead&mdash;were privileged to pass to the
+island Elysium. Some islands near Britain were called after gods
+and heroes, and the inhabitants of one of these were regarded as
+sacrosanct by the Britons, like the priestesses of Sena. They were
+visited by Demetrius, who was told that the storms which arose
+during his visit were caused by the passing away of some of the
+"mighty" or of the "great souls." It may have been meant that such
+mighty ones passed to the more distant islands, but this is
+certainly not stated. In another island, Kronos was imprisoned,
+watched over by Briareus, and guarded by demons.<a id=
+"footnotetag1182" name="footnotetag1182"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1182"><sup>1182</sup></a> Plutarch refers to these
+islands in another work, repeating the story of Kronos, and saying
+that his island is mild and fragrant, that people live there
+waiting on the god who sometimes appears to them and prevents their
+departing. Meanwhile they are happy and know no care, spending
+their time in sacrificing and hymn-singing or in studying legends
+and philosophy.</p>
+<p>Plutarch has obviously mingled Celtic Elysium beliefs with the
+classical conception of the Druids.<a id="footnotetag1183" name=
+"footnotetag1183"></a><a href="#footnote1183"><sup>1183</sup></a>
+In Elysium there is <span class="pagenum"><a name="page344" id=
+"page344"></a>{344}</span> no care, and favoured mortals who pass
+there are generally prevented from returning to earth. The
+reference to Kronos may also be based partly on myths of Celtic
+gods of Elysium, partly on tales of heroes who departed to
+mysterious islands or to the hollow hills where they lie asleep,
+but whence they will one day return to benefit their people. So
+Arthur passed to Avalon, but in other tales he and his warriors are
+asleep beneath Craig-y-Ddinas, just as Fionn and his men rest
+within this or that hill in the Highlands. Similar legends are told
+of other Celtic heroes, and they witness to the belief that great
+men who had died would return in the hour of their people's need.
+In time they were thought not to have died at all, but to be merely
+sleeping and waiting for their hour.<a id="footnotetag1184" name=
+"footnotetag1184"></a><a href="#footnote1184"><sup>1184</sup></a>
+The belief is based on the idea that the dead are alive in grave or
+barrow, or in a spacious land below the earth, or that dead
+warriors can menace their foes from the tomb.</p>
+<p>Thus neither in old sagas, nor in <i>M&auml;rchen</i>, nor in
+popular tradition, is the island Elysium a world of the dead. For
+the most part the pagan eschatology has been merged in that of
+Christianity, while the Elysium belief has remained intact and
+still survives in a whole series of beautiful tales.</p>
+<p>The world of the dead was in all respects a <i>replica</i> of
+this world, but it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish
+belief&mdash;a survival of the older conception of the bodily state
+of the dead&mdash;they resume their tools, crafts, and occupations,
+and they preserve their old feelings. Hence, when they appear on
+earth, it is in bodily form and in their customary dress. Like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page345" id=
+"page345"></a>{345}</span> the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers
+unpaid debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany,
+Ireland, and the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor
+after a death, feed and clothe the dead in the other world.<a id=
+"footnotetag1185" name="footnotetag1185"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1185"><sup>1185</sup></a> If the world of the dead was
+subterranean,&mdash;a theory supported by current
+folk-belief,<a id="footnotetag1186" name=
+"footnotetag1186"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1186"><sup>1186</sup></a>&mdash;the Earth-goddess or the
+Earth-god, who had been first the earth itself, then a being living
+below its surface and causing fertility, could not have become the
+divinity of the dead until the multitude of single graves or
+barrows, in each of which the dead lived, had become a wide
+subterranean region of the dead. This divinity was the source of
+life and growth; hence he or she was regarded as the progenitor of
+mankind, who had come forth from the underworld and would return
+there at death. It is not impossible that the Breton conception of
+Ankou, death personified, is a reminiscence of the Celtic Dispater.
+He watches over all things beyond the grave, and carries off the
+dead to his kingdom. But if so he has been altered for the worse by
+medi&aelig;val ideas of "Death the skeleton".<a id=
+"footnotetag1187" name="footnotetag1187"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1187"><sup>1187</sup></a> He is a grisly god of death,
+whereas the Celtic Dis was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed
+a happy immortality. They were not cold phantasms, but alive and
+endowed with corporeal form and able to enjoy the things of a
+better existence, and clad in the beautiful raiment and gaudy
+ornaments which were loved so much on earth. Hence Celtic warriors
+did not fear death, and suicide was extremely common, while Spanish
+Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others celebrated the
+birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with joy.<a id=
+"footnotetag1188" name="footnotetag1188"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1188"><sup>1188</sup></a> Lucan's words are thus the
+truest expression of Celtic eschatology&mdash;"In another
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page346" id=
+"page346"></a>{346}</span> region the spirit animates the members;
+death, if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring
+life."</p>
+<p>There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral
+retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since
+the hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor,
+it may have been held, as many other races have believed, that
+cowards would miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of
+the Irish Christian visions of the other-world and in existing
+folk-belief, certain characteristics of hell may not be derived
+from Christian eschatology, <i>e.g.</i> the sufferings of the dead
+from cold.<a id="footnotetag1189" name=
+"footnotetag1189"></a><a href="#footnote1189"><sup>1189</sup></a>
+This might point to an old belief in a cold region whither some of
+the dead were banished. In the <i>Adventures of S. Columba's
+Clerics</i>, hell is reached by a bridge over a glen of fire,<a id=
+"footnotetag1190" name="footnotetag1190"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1190"><sup>1190</sup></a> and a narrow bridge leading to
+the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here
+it may be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such
+Christian writings as the <i>Dialogues</i> of S. Gregory the
+Great.<a id="footnotetag1191" name="footnotetag1191"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1191"><sup>1191</sup></a> It might be contended that the
+Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory of
+retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in
+classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor
+is there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in
+which Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till
+"the day of Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the
+Lord," does not refer to such a judgment.<a id="footnotetag1192"
+name="footnotetag1192"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1192"><sup>1192</sup></a> If an ethical blindness be
+attributed to the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of
+retribution, it should <span class="pagenum"><a name="page347" id=
+"page347"></a>{347}</span> be remembered that we must not judge a
+people's ethics wholly by their views of future punishment.
+Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up to a certain stage were as
+unethical as the Celts in this respect, and the Christian hell, as
+conceived by many theologians, is far from suggesting an ethical
+Deity.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1154" name=
+"footnote1154"></a><b>Footnote 1154:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1154">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 370.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1155" name=
+"footnote1155"></a><b>Footnote 1155:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1155">(return)</a>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, vi. 14, 19.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1156" name=
+"footnote1156"></a><b>Footnote 1156:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1156">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v, 28.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1157" name=
+"footnote1157"></a><b>Footnote 1157:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1157">(return)</a>
+<p>Val. Max. vi. 6. 10.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1158" name=
+"footnote1158"></a><b>Footnote 1158:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1158">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Phars.</i> i. 455 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1159" name=
+"footnote1159"></a><b>Footnote 1159:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1159">(return)</a>
+<p>Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1160" name=
+"footnote1160"></a><b>Footnote 1160:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1160">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 275.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1161" name=
+"footnote1161"></a><b>Footnote 1161:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1161">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1162" name=
+"footnote1162"></a><b>Footnote 1162:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1162">(return)</a>
+<p>Larminie, 155; Hyde, <i>Beside the Fire</i>, 21, 153; <i>CM</i>
+xiii. 21; Campbell, <i>WHT</i>, ii. 21; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. p.
+xii.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1163" name=
+"footnote1163"></a><b>Footnote 1163:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1163">(return)</a>
+<p>Von Sacken, <i>Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt</i>; Greenwell,
+<i>British Barrows</i>; <i>RC</i> x. 234; <i>Antiquary</i>, xxxvii.
+125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.; Anderson, <i>Scotland in Pagan
+Times</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1164" name=
+"footnote1164"></a><b>Footnote 1164:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1164">(return)</a>
+<p><i>L'Anthropologie</i>, vi. 586; Greenwell, <i>op. cit.</i>
+119.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1165" name=
+"footnote1165"></a><b>Footnote 1165:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1165">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, <i>Annals</i>, i. 145, 180;
+<i>RC</i> xv. 28. In one case the enemy disinter the body of the
+king of Connaught, and rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a
+victory. This nearly coincides with the dire results following the
+disinterment of Bran's head (O'Donovan, i. 145; cf. p. <a href=
+"#page242">242</a>, <i>supra</i>).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1166" name=
+"footnote1166"></a><b>Footnote 1166:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1166">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 130<i>a</i>; <i>RC</i> xxiv. 185; O'Curry, <i>MC</i>
+i. p. cccxxx; Campbell, <i>WHT</i> iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1167" name=
+"footnote1167"></a><b>Footnote 1167:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1167">(return)</a>
+<p>Vigfusson-Powell, <i>Corpus Poet. Boreale</i>, i. 167, 417-418,
+420; and see my <i>Childhood of Fiction</i>, 103 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1168" name=
+"footnote1168"></a><b>Footnote 1168:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1168">(return)</a>
+<p>Larminie, 31; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, ii. 146, 159, 161, 184, 257
+(the <i>r&ocirc;le</i> of the dead husband is usually taken by a
+<i>lutin</i> or <i>follet</i>, Luzel, <i>Veill&eacute;es
+Bretons</i>, 79); <i>Rev. des Trad. Pop.</i> ii. 267; <i>Ann. de
+Bretagne</i>, viii. 514.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1169" name=
+"footnote1169"></a><b>Footnote 1169:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1169">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. 313. Cf. also an incident in the
+<i>Voyage of Maelduin</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1170" name=
+"footnote1170"></a><b>Footnote 1170:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1170">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> x. 214f. Cf. Kennedy, 162; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i.
+217, for variants.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1171" name=
+"footnote1171"></a><b>Footnote 1171:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1171">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 156; see p. <a href="#page170">170</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1172" name=
+"footnote1172"></a><b>Footnote 1172:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1172">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 156; Campbell, <i>Superstitions</i>, 241;
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, xiii. 60; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. 213.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1173" name=
+"footnote1173"></a><b>Footnote 1173:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1173">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-Lore</i>, ii. 26; Yeats, <i>Celtic Twilight</i>,
+166.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1174" name=
+"footnote1174"></a><b>Footnote 1174:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1174">(return)</a>
+<p>Tertullian, <i>de Anima</i>, 21.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1175" name=
+"footnote1175"></a><b>Footnote 1175:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1175">(return)</a>
+<p>Reinach, <i>RC</i> xxii. 447.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1176" name=
+"footnote1176"></a><b>Footnote 1176:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1176">(return)</a>
+<p>Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. <i>Virt. mul</i>
+20.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1177" name=
+"footnote1177"></a><b>Footnote 1177:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1177">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page229">229</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1178" name=
+"footnote1178"></a><b>Footnote 1178:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1178">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many
+local beliefs (cf. S&eacute;billot, ii. 149).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1179" name=
+"footnote1179"></a><b>Footnote 1179:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1179">(return)</a>
+<p>Procop. <i>De Bello Goth.</i> vi. 20.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1180" name=
+"footnote1180"></a><b>Footnote 1180:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1180">(return)</a>
+<p>Claudian, <i>In Rufin.</i> i. 123.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1181" name=
+"footnote1181"></a><b>Footnote 1181:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1181">(return)</a>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, i. 418 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1182" name=
+"footnote1182"></a><b>Footnote 1182:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1182">(return)</a>
+<p><i>de Defectu Orac.</i> 18. An occasional name for Britain in
+the <i>Mabinogion</i> is "the island of the Mighty" (Loth, i. 69,
+<i>et passim</i>). To the storm incident and the passing of the
+mighty, there is a curious parallel in Fijian belief. A clap of
+thunder was explained as "the noise of a spirit, we being near the
+place in which spirits plunge to enter the other world, and a chief
+in the neighbourhood having just died" (Williams, <i>Fiji</i>, i.
+204).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1183" name=
+"footnote1183"></a><b>Footnote 1183:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1183">(return)</a>
+<p><i>de Facie Lun[oe]</i>, 26.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1184" name=
+"footnote1184"></a><b>Footnote 1184:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1184">(return)</a>
+<p>See Hartland, <i>Science of Fairy Tales</i>, 209; Macdougall,
+<i>Folk and Hero Tales</i>, 73, 263; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. p.
+xxx. Mortals sometimes penetrated to the presence of these heroes,
+who awoke. If the visitor had the courage to tell them that the
+hour had not yet come, they fell asleep again, and he escaped. In
+Brittany, rocky clefts are believed to be the entrance to the world
+of the dead, like the cave of Lough Dearg. Similar stories were
+probably told of these in pagan times, though they are now adapted
+to Christian beliefs in purgatory or hell.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1185" name=
+"footnote1185"></a><b>Footnote 1185:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1185">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. p. xl, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail,
+<i>Folk-Lore</i>, vi. 170.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1186" name=
+"footnote1186"></a><b>Footnote 1186:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1186">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page338">338</a>, <i>supra</i>, and Logan,
+<i>Scottish Gael</i>, ii. 374; <i>Folk-Lore,</i> viii. 208,
+253.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1187" name=
+"footnote1187"></a><b>Footnote 1187:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1187">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. 96, 127, 136f., and Intro, xlv.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1188" name=
+"footnote1188"></a><b>Footnote 1188:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1188">(return)</a>
+<p>Philostratus, <i>Apoll. of Tyana</i>, v. 4; Val. Max. ii. 6.
+12.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1189" name=
+"footnote1189"></a><b>Footnote 1189:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1189">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>1</sup>, ii. 91; Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 146. The
+punishment of suffering from ice and snow appears in the
+<i>Apocalypse of Paul</i> and in later Christian accounts of
+hell.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1190" name=
+"footnote1190"></a><b>Footnote 1190:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1190">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxvi. 153.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1191" name=
+"footnote1191"></a><b>Footnote 1191:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1191">(return)</a>
+<p>Bk. iv. ch. 36.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1192" name=
+"footnote1192"></a><b>Footnote 1192:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1192">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Erdathe</i>, according to D'Arbois, means (1) "the day in
+which the dead will resume his colour," from <i>dath</i>, "colour";
+(2) "the agreeable day," from <i>data</i>, "agreeable" (D'Arbois,
+i. 185; cf. <i>Les Druides</i>, 135).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page348" id=
+"page348"></a>{348}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap23" id="chap23">CHAPTER XXIII.</a></h2>
+<h3>REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION.</h3>
+<p>In Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or
+heroes, and, probably because this belief was obnoxious to
+Christian scribes, while some MSS. tell of it in the case of
+certain heroic personages, in others these same heroes are said to
+have been born naturally. There is no textual evidence that it was
+attributed to ordinary mortals, and it is possible that, if
+classical observers did not misunderstand the Celtic doctrine of
+the future life, their references to rebirth may be based on
+mythical tales regarding gods or heroes. We shall study these tales
+as they are found in Irish texts.</p>
+<p>In the mythological cycle, as has been seen, Etain, in insect
+form, fell into a cup of wine. She was swallowed by Etar, and in
+due time was reborn as a child, who was eventually married by
+Eochaid Airem, but recognized and carried off by her divine spouse
+Mider. Etain, however, had quite forgotten her former existence as
+a goddess.<a id="footnotetag1193" name=
+"footnotetag1193"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1193"><sup>1193</sup></a></p>
+<p>In one version of C&uacute;chulainn's birth story Dechtire and
+her women fly away as birds, but are discovered at last by her
+brother Conchobar in a strange house, where Dechtire gives birth to
+a child, of whom the god Lug is apparently the father. In another
+version the birds are not Dechtire and her women, for she
+accompanies Conchobar as his charioteer. They arrive at the house,
+the mistress of <span class="pagenum"><a name="page349" id=
+"page349"></a>{349}</span> which gives birth to a child, which
+Dechtire brings up. It dies, and on her return from the burial
+Dechtire swallows a small animal when drinking. Lug appears to her
+by night, and tells her that he was the child, and that now she was
+with child by him (<i>i.e.</i> he was the animal swallowed by her).
+When he was born he would be called Setanta, who was later named
+C&uacute;chulainn. C&uacute;chulainn, in this version, is thus a
+rebirth of Lug, as well as his father.<a id="footnotetag1194" name=
+"footnotetag1194"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1194"><sup>1194</sup></a></p>
+<p>In the <i>Tale of the Two Swineherds</i>, Friuch and Rucht are
+herds of the gods Ochall and Bodb. They quarrel, and their fighting
+in various animal shapes is fully described. Finally they become
+two worms, which are swallowed by two cows; these then give birth
+to the Whitehorn and to the Black Bull of Cuailgne, the animals
+which were the cause of the <i>T&aacute;in.</i> The swineherds were
+probably themselves gods in the older versions of this tale.<a id=
+"footnotetag1195" name="footnotetag1195"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1195"><sup>1195</sup></a></p>
+<p>Other stories relate the rebirth of heroes. Conchobar is
+variously said to be son of Nessa by her husband Cathbad, or by her
+lover Fachtna. But in the latter version an incident is found which
+points to a third account. Nessa brings Cathbad a draught from a
+river, but in it are two worms which he forces her to swallow. She
+gives birth to a son, in each of whose hands is a worm, and he is
+called Conchobar, after the name of the river into which he fell
+soon after his birth. The incident closes with the words, "It was
+from these worms that she became pregnant, say some."<a id=
+"footnotetag1196" name="footnotetag1196"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1196"><sup>1196</sup></a> Possibly the divinity of the
+river had taken the form of the worms and was reborn as Conchobar.
+We may compare the story of the birth of Conall Cernach. His mother
+was childless, until a <span class="pagenum"><a name="page350" id=
+"page350"></a>{350}</span> Druid sang spells over a well in which
+she bathed, and drank of its waters. With the draught she swallowed
+a worm, "and the worm was in the hand of the boy as he lay in his
+mother's womb; and he pierced the hand and consumed it."<a id=
+"footnotetag1197" name="footnotetag1197"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1197"><sup>1197</sup></a></p>
+<p>The personality of Fionn is also connected with the rebirth
+idea. In one story, Mongan, a seventh-century king, had a dispute
+with his poet regarding the death of the hero Fothad. The Fian
+Caoilte returns from the dead to prove Mongan right, and he says,
+"We were with thee, with Fionn." Mongan bids him be silent, because
+he did not wish his identity with Fionn to be made known. "Mongan,
+however, was Fionn, though he would not let it be told."<a id=
+"footnotetag1198" name="footnotetag1198"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1198"><sup>1198</sup></a> In another story Mongan is son
+of Manannan, who had prophesied of this event. Manannan appeared to
+the wife of Fiachna when he was fighting the Saxons, and told her
+that unless she yielded herself to him her husband would be slain.
+On hearing this she agreed, and next day the god appeared fighting
+with Fiachna's forces and routed the slain. "So that this Mongan is
+a son of Manannan mac Lir, though he is called Mongan son of
+Fiachna."<a id="footnotetag1199" name=
+"footnotetag1199"></a><a href="#footnote1199"><sup>1199</sup></a>
+In a third version Manannan makes the bargain with Fiachna, and in
+his form sleeps with the woman. Simultaneously with Mongan's birth,
+Fiachna's attendant had a son who became Mongan's servant, and a
+warrior's wife bears a daughter who became his wife. Manannan took
+Mongan to the Land of Promise and kept him there until he was
+sixteen.<a id="footnotetag1200" name="footnotetag1200"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1200"><sup>1200</sup></a> Many magical powers and the
+faculty of shape-shifting are attributed to Mongan, and in some
+stories he is brought into connection <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page351" id="page351"></a>{351}</span> with the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>.<a id="footnotetag1201" name=
+"footnotetag1201"></a><a href="#footnote1201"><sup>1201</sup></a>
+Probably a myth told how he went to Elysium instead of dying, for
+he comes from "the Land of Living Heart" to speak with S. Columba,
+who took him to see heaven. But he would not satisfy the saints'
+curiosity regarding Elysium, and suddenly vanished, probably
+returning there.<a id="footnotetag1202" name=
+"footnotetag1202"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1202"><sup>1202</sup></a></p>
+<p>This twofold account of Mongan's birth is curious. Perhaps the
+idea that he was a rebirth of Fionn may have been suggested by the
+fact that his father was called Fiachna Finn, while it is probable
+that some old myth of a son of Manannan's called Mongan was
+attached to the personality of the historic Mongan.</p>
+<p>About the era of Mongan, King Diarmaid had two wives, one of
+whom was barren. S. Finnen gave her holy water to drink, and she
+brought forth a lamb; then, after a second draught, a trout, and
+finally, after a third, Aed Slane, who became high king of Ireland
+in 594. This is a Christianised version of the story of Conall
+Cernach's birth.<a id="footnotetag1203" name=
+"footnotetag1203"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1203"><sup>1203</sup></a></p>
+<p>In Welsh mythology the story of Taliesin affords an example of
+rebirth. After the transformation combat of the goddess Cerridwen
+and Gwion, resembling that of the swine-herds, Gwion becomes a
+grain of wheat, which Cerridwen in the form of a hen swallows, with
+the result that he is reborn of her as Taliesin.<a id=
+"footnotetag1204" name="footnotetag1204"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1204"><sup>1204</sup></a></p>
+<p>Most of these stories no longer exist in their primitive form,
+and various ideas are found in them&mdash;conception by magical
+means, divine descent through the <i>amour</i> of a divinity and a
+mortal, and rebirth.</p>
+<p>As to the first, the help of magician or priest is often
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page352" id=
+"page352"></a>{352}</span> invoked in savage society and even in
+European folk-custom in case of barrenness. Prayers, charms,
+potions, or food are the means used to induce conception, but
+perhaps at one time these were thought to cause it of themselves.
+In many tales the swallowing of a seed, fruit, insect, etc.,
+results in the birth of a hero or heroine, and it is probable that
+these stories embody actual belief in such a possibility. If the
+stories of Conall Cernach and Aed Slane are not attenuated
+instances of rebirth, say, of the divinity of a well, they are
+examples of this belief. The gift of fruitfulness is bestowed by
+Druid and saint, but in the story of Conall it is rather the
+swallowing of the worm than the Druid's incantation that causes
+conception, and is the real <i>motif</i> of the tale.</p>
+<p>Where the rebirth of a divinity occurs as the result of the
+swallowing of a small animal, it is evident that the god has first
+taken this form. The Celt, believing in conception by swallowing
+some object, and in shape-shifting, combined his information, and
+so produced a third idea, that a god could take the form of a small
+animal, which, when swallowed, became his rebirth.<a id=
+"footnotetag1205" name="footnotetag1205"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1205"><sup>1205</sup></a> If, as the visits of barren
+women to dolmens and megalithic monuments suggest, the Celts
+believed in the possibility of the spirit of a dead man entering a
+woman and being born of her or at least aiding conception,&mdash;a
+belief held by other races,<a id="footnotetag1206" name=
+"footnotetag1206"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1206"><sup>1206</sup></a>&mdash;this may have given rise
+to myths regarding the rebirth of gods by human mothers. At all
+events this latter Celtic belief is paralleled by the American
+Indian myths, <i>e.g.</i> of the Thlinkeet god Yehl who transformed
+himself now into a pebble, now into a blade of grass, and, being
+thus swallowed by women, was reborn.</p>
+<p>In the stories of Etain and of Lud, reborn as Setanta, this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page353" id=
+"page353"></a>{353}</span> idea of divine transformation and
+rebirth occurs. A similar idea may underlie the tale of Fionn and
+Mongan. As to the tales of Gwion and the Swineherds, the latter the
+servants of gods, and perhaps themselves regarded once as
+divinities, who in their rebirth as bulls are certainly divine
+animals, they present some features which require further
+consideration. The previous transformations in both cases belong to
+the Transformation Combat formula of many <i>M&auml;rchen</i>, and
+obviously were not part of the original form of the myths. In all
+such <i>M&auml;rchen</i> the antagonists are males, hence the
+rebirth incident could not form part of them. In the Welsh tale of
+Gwion and in the corresponding Taliesin poem, the ingenious fusion
+of the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula with an existing myth of rebirth
+must have taken place at an early date.<a id="footnotetag1207"
+name="footnotetag1207"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1207"><sup>1207</sup></a> This is also true of <i>The Two
+Swineherds</i>, but in this case, since the myth told how two gods
+took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to
+be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to
+the usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn.
+The fusion is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a
+remembrance of their former transformations,<a id="footnotetag1208"
+name="footnotetag1208"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1208"><sup>1208</sup></a> just as Mongan knows of his
+former existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such
+remembrance. Etain had forgotten her former existence, and
+C&uacute;chulainn does not appear to know that he is a rebirth of
+Lug.</p>
+<p>The relation of Lug to C&uacute;chulainn deserves further
+inquiry. While the god is reborn he is also existing as Lug, just
+as <span class="pagenum"><a name="page354" id=
+"page354"></a>{354}</span> having been swallowed as a worm by
+Dechtire, he appears in his divine form and tells her he will be
+born of her. In the <i>T&aacute;in</i> he appears fighting for
+C&uacute;chulainn, whom he there calls his son. There are thus two
+aspects of the hero's relationship to Lug; in one he is a rebirth
+of the god, in the other he is his son, as indeed he seems to
+represent himself in <i>The Wooing of Emer</i>, and as he is called
+by Laborcham just before his death.<a id="footnotetag1209" name=
+"footnotetag1209"></a><a href="#footnote1209"><sup>1209</sup></a>
+In one of the birth-stories he is clearly Lug's son by Dechtire.
+But both versions may simply be different aspects of one belief,
+namely, that a god could be reborn as a mortal and yet continue his
+divine existence, because all birth is a kind of rebirth. The men
+of Ulster sought a wife for C&uacute;chulainn, "knowing that his
+rebirth would be of himself," <i>i.e.</i> his son would be himself
+even while he continued to exist as his father. Examples of such a
+belief occur elsewhere, <i>e.g.</i> in the <i>Laws</i> of Manu,
+where the husband is said to be reborn of his wife, and in ancient
+Egypt, where the gods were called "self-begotten," because each was
+father to the son who was his true image or himself. Likeness
+implied identity, in primitive belief. Thus the belief in mortal
+descent from the gods among the Celts may have involved the theory
+of a divine avatar. The god became father of a mortal by a woman,
+and part of himself passed over to the child, who was thus the god
+himself.</p>
+<p>Conchobar was also a rebirth of a god, but he was named from the
+river whence his mother had drawn water containing the worms which
+she swallowed. This may point to a lost version in which he was the
+son of a river-god by Nessa. This was quite in accordance with
+Celtic belief, as is shown by such names as Dubrogenos, from
+<i>dubron</i>, "water," and <i>genos</i>, "born of"; Divogenos,
+Divogena, "son or daughter of a god," possibly a river-god, since
+<i>deivos</i> is a frequent river <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page355" id="page355"></a>{355}</span> name; and Rhenogenus, "son
+of the Rhine."<a id="footnotetag1210" name=
+"footnotetag1210"></a><a href="#footnote1210"><sup>1210</sup></a>
+The persons who first bore these names were believed to have been
+begotten by divinities. Mongan's descent from Manannan, god of the
+sea, is made perfectly clear, and the Welsh name Morgen =
+<i>Morigenos</i>, "son of the sea," probably points to a similar
+tale now lost. Other Celtic names are frequently pregnant with
+meaning, and tell of a once-existing rich mythology of divine
+<i>amours</i> with mortals. They show descent from
+deities&mdash;Camulogenus (son of Camulos), Esugenos (son of Esus),
+Boduogenus (son of Bodva); or from tree-spirits&mdash;Dergen (son
+of the oak), Vernogenus (son of the alder); or from divine
+animals&mdash;Arthgen (son of the bear), Urogenus (son of the
+urus).<a id="footnotetag1211" name="footnotetag1211"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1211"><sup>1211</sup></a> What was once an epithet
+describing divine filiation became later a personal name. So in
+Greece names like Apollogenes, Diogenes, and Hermogenes, had once
+been epithets of heroes born of Apollo, Zeus, and Hermes.</p>
+<p>Thus it was a vital Celtic belief that divinities might unite
+with mortals and beget children. Heroes enticed away to Elysium
+enjoyed the love of its goddesses&mdash;C&uacute;chulainn that of
+Fand; Connla, Bran, and Oisin that of unnamed divinities. So, too,
+the goddess Morrigan offered herself to C&uacute;chulainn. The
+Christian Celts of the fifth century retained this belief, though
+in a somewhat altered form. S. Augustine and others describe the
+shaggy demons called <i>dusii</i> by the Gauls, who sought the
+couches of women in order to gratify their desires.<a id=
+"footnotetag1212" name="footnotetag1212"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1212"><sup>1212</sup></a> <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page356" id="page356"></a>{356}</span> The <i>dusii</i> are akin
+to the <i>incubi</i> and <i>fauni</i>, and do not appear to
+represent the higher gods reduced to the form of demons by
+Christianity, but rather a species of lesser divinities, once the
+object of popular devotion.</p>
+<p>These beliefs are also connected with the Celtic notions of
+transformation and transmigration&mdash;the one signifying the
+assuming of another shape for a time, the other the passing over of
+the soul or the personality into another body, perhaps one actually
+existing, but more usually by actual rebirth. As has been seen,
+this power of transformation was claimed by the Druids and by other
+persons, or attributed to them, and they were not likely to
+minimise their powers, and would probably boast of them on all
+occasions. Such boasts are put into the mouths of the Irish
+Amairgen and the Welsh Taliesin. As the Milesians were approaching
+Ireland, Amairgen sang verses which were perhaps part of a ritual
+chant:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"I am the wind which blows over the sea,</p>
+<p>I am the wave of the ocean,</p>
+<p>I am the bull of seven battles,</p>
+<p>I am the eagle on the rock...</p>
+<p>I am a boar for courage,</p>
+<p>I am a salmon in the water, etc."<a id="footnotetag1213" name=
+"footnotetag1213"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1213"><sup>1213</sup></a></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>Professor Rh[^y]s points out that some of these verses need not
+mean actual transformation, but mere likeness, through "a primitive
+formation of predicate without the aid of a particle corresponding
+to such a word as 'like.'"<a id="footnotetag1214" name=
+"footnotetag1214"></a><a href="#footnote1214"><sup>1214</sup></a>
+Enough, however, remains to show the claim of the magician.
+Taliesin, in many poems, makes similar claims, and says, "I have
+been in a multitude of shapes before I assumed a consistent
+form"&mdash;that of a sword, a tear, a star, an eagle, etc. Then he
+was created, without father or mother.<a id="footnotetag1215" name=
+"footnotetag1215"></a><a href="#footnote1215"><sup>1215</sup></a>
+Similar pretensions are common to the medicine-man everywhere. But
+from another <span class="pagenum"><a name="page357" id=
+"page357"></a>{357}</span> point of view they may be mere poetic
+extravagances such as are common in Celtic poetry.<a id=
+"footnotetag1216" name="footnotetag1216"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1216"><sup>1216</sup></a> Thus C&uacute;chulainn says: "I
+was a hound strong for combat ... their little champion ... the
+casket of every secret for the maidens," or, in another place, "I
+am the bark buffeted from wave to wave ... the ship after the
+losing of its rudder ... the little apple on the top of the tree
+that little thought of its falling."<a id="footnotetag1217" name=
+"footnotetag1217"></a><a href="#footnote1217"><sup>1217</sup></a>
+These are metaphoric descriptions of a comparatively simple kind.
+The full-blown bombast appears in the <i>Colloquy of the Two
+Sages</i>, where Nede and Fercertne exhaust language in describing
+themselves to each other.<a id="footnotetag1218" name=
+"footnotetag1218"></a><a href="#footnote1218"><sup>1218</sup></a>
+Other Welsh bards besides Taliesin make similar boasts to his, and
+Dr. Skene thinks that their claims "may have been mere
+bombast."<a id="footnotetag1219" name=
+"footnotetag1219"></a><a href="#footnote1219"><sup>1219</sup></a>
+Still some current belief in shape-shifting, or even in rebirth,
+underlies some of these boastings and gives point to them.
+Amairgen's "I am" this or that, suggests the inherent power of
+transformation; Taliesin's "I have been," the actual
+transformations. Such assertions do not involve "the powerful
+pantheistic doctrine which is at once the glory and error of Irish
+philosophy," as M. D'Arbois claims,<a id="footnotetag1220" name=
+"footnotetag1220"></a><a href="#footnote1220"><sup>1220</sup></a>
+else are savage medicine-men, boastful of their shape-shifting
+powers, philosophic pantheists. The poems are merely highly
+developed forms of primitive beliefs in shape-shifting, such as are
+found among all savages and barbaric folk, but expressed in the
+boastful language in which the Celt delighted.</p>
+<p>How were the successive shape-shiftings effected? To answer this
+we shall first look at the story of Tuan Mac Caraill, who survived
+from the days of Partholan to those of S. Finnen. He was a decrepit
+man at the coming of Nemed, <span class="pagenum"><a name="page358"
+id="page358"></a>{358}</span> and one night, having lain down to
+sleep, he awoke as a stag, and lived in this form to old age. In
+the same way he became a boar, a hawk, and a salmon, which was
+caught and eaten by Cairell's wife, of whom he was born as Tuan,
+with a perfect recollection of his different forms.<a id=
+"footnotetag1221" name="footnotetag1221"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1221"><sup>1221</sup></a></p>
+<p>This story, the invention of a ninth or tenth century Christian
+scribe to account for the current knowledge of the many invasions
+of Ireland,<a id="footnotetag1222" name=
+"footnotetag1222"></a><a href="#footnote1222"><sup>1222</sup></a>
+must have been based on pagan myths of a similar kind, involving
+successive transformations and a final rebirth. Such a myth may
+have been told of Taliesin, recounting his transformations and his
+final rebirth, the former being replaced at a later time by the
+episode of the Transformation Combat, involving no great lapse of
+time. Such a series of successive shapes&mdash;of every beast, a
+dragon, a wolf, a stag, a salmon, a seal, a swan&mdash;were
+ascribed to Mongan and foretold by Manannan, and Mongan refers to
+some of them in his colloquy with S. Columba&mdash;"when I was a
+deer ... a salmon ... a seal ... a roving wolf ... a man."<a id=
+"footnotetag1223" name="footnotetag1223"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1223"><sup>1223</sup></a> Perhaps the complete story was
+that of a fabulous hero in human form, who assumed different
+shapes, and was finally reborn. But the transformation of an old
+man, or an old animal, into new youthful and vigorous forms might
+be regarded as a kind of transmigration&mdash;an extension of the
+transformation idea, but involving no metempsychosis, no passing of
+the soul into another body by rebirth. Actual transmigration or
+rebirth occurs only at the end of the series, and, as in the case
+of Etain, Lug, etc., the pre-existent person is born of a woman
+after being swallowed by her. Possibly the transformation belief
+has reacted on the other, and <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page359" id="page359"></a>{359}</span> obscured a belief in actual
+metempsychosis as a result of the soul of an ancestor passing into
+a woman and being reborn as her next child. Add to this that the
+soul is often thought of as a tiny animal, and we see how a
+<i>point d'appui</i> for the more materialistic belief was
+afforded. The insect or worms of the rebirth stories may have been
+once forms of the soul. It is easy also to see how, a theory of
+conception by swallowing various objects being already in
+existence, it might be thought possible that eating a
+salmon&mdash;a transformed man&mdash;would cause his rebirth from
+the eater.</p>
+<p>The Celts may have had no consistent belief on this subject, the
+general idea of the future life being of a different kind. Or
+perhaps the various beliefs in transformation, transmigration,
+rebirth, and conception by unusual means, are too inextricably
+mingled to be separated. The nucleus of the tales seems to be the
+possibility of rebirth, and the belief that the soul was still clad
+in a bodily form after death and was itself a material thing. But
+otherwise some of them are not distinctively Celtic, and have been
+influenced by old <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig; of successive
+changes adopted by or forced upon some person, who is finally
+reborn. This formul&aelig; is already old in the fourteenth century
+B.C. Egyptian story of the <i>Two Brothers</i>.</p>
+<p>Such Celtic stories as these may have been known to classical
+authors, and have influenced their statements regarding
+eschatology. Yet it can hardly be said that the tales themselves
+bear witness to a general transmigration doctrine current among the
+Celts, since the stories concern divine or heroic personages. Still
+the belief may have had a certain currency among them, based on
+primitive theories of soul life. Evidence that it existed side by
+side with the more general doctrines of the future life may be
+found in old or existing folk-belief. In some cases the dead have
+an animal form, as in the <i>Voyage of Maelduin</i>, where birds on
+an island are said to <span class="pagenum"><a name="page360" id=
+"page360"></a>{360}</span> be souls, or in the legend of S.
+Maelsuthain, whose pupils appear to him after death as birds.<a id=
+"footnotetag1224" name="footnotetag1224"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1224"><sup>1224</sup></a> The bird form of the soul after
+death is still a current belief in the Hebrides. Butterflies in
+Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France bats or butterflies,
+are believed to be souls of the dead.<a id="footnotetag1225" name=
+"footnotetag1225"></a><a href="#footnote1225"><sup>1225</sup></a>
+King Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been
+changed into the form of a raven, and in medi&aelig;val Wales souls
+of the wicked appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels,
+or hares, or serve their term of penitence as cows or bulls, or
+remain as crows till the day of judgment.<a id="footnotetag1226"
+name="footnotetag1226"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1226"><sup>1226</sup></a> Unbaptized infants become
+birds; drowned sailors appear as beasts or birds; and the souls of
+girls deceived by lovers haunt them as hares.<a id=
+"footnotetag1227" name="footnotetag1227"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1227"><sup>1227</sup></a></p>
+<p>These show that the idea of transmigration may not have been
+foreign to the Celtic mind, and it may have arisen from the idea
+that men assumed their totem animal's shape at death. Some tales of
+shape-shifting are probably due to totemism, and it is to be noted
+that in Kerry peasants will not eat hares because they contain the
+souls of their grandmothers.<a id="footnotetag1228" name=
+"footnotetag1228"></a><a href="#footnote1228"><sup>1228</sup></a>
+On the other hand, some of these survivals may mean no more than
+that the soul itself has already an animal form, in which it would
+naturally be seen after death. In Celtic folk-belief the soul is
+seen leaving the body in sleep as a bee, butterfly, gnat, mouse, or
+mannikin.<a id="footnotetag1229" name=
+"footnotetag1229"></a><a href="#footnote1229"><sup>1229</sup></a>
+Such a belief is found among most savage races, and might easily be
+mistaken for transmigration, or also assist the formation of the
+idea of transmigration. Though the folk-survivals show that
+transmigration was not <span class="pagenum"><a name="page361" id=
+"page361"></a>{361}</span> necessarily alleged of all the dead, it
+may have been a sufficiently vital belief to colour the mythology,
+as we see from the existing tales, adulterated though these may
+have been.</p>
+<p>The general belief has its roots in primitive ideas regarding
+life and its propagation&mdash;ideas which some hold to be
+un-Celtic and un-Aryan. But Aryans were "primitive" at some period
+of their history, and it would be curious if, while still in a
+barbarous condition, they had forgotten their old beliefs. In any
+case, if they adopted similar beliefs from non-Aryan people, this
+points to no great superiority on their part. Such beliefs
+originated the idea of rebirth and transmigration.<a id=
+"footnotetag1230" name="footnotetag1230"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1230"><sup>1230</sup></a> Nevertheless this was not a
+characteristically Celtic eschatological belief; that we find in
+the theory that the dead lived on in the body or assumed a body in
+another region, probably underground.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1193" name=
+"footnote1193"></a><b>Footnote 1193:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1193">(return)</a>
+<p>For textual details see Zimmer, <i>Zeit. f&uuml;r Vergl.
+Sprach.</i> xxviii. 585 f. The tale is obviously archaic. For a
+translation see Leahy, i. 8 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1194" name=
+"footnote1194"></a><b>Footnote 1194:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1194">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 134 f.; D'Arbois, v. 22. There is a suggestion in
+one of the versions of another story, in which Setanta is child of
+Conchobar and his sister Dechtire.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1195" name=
+"footnote1195"></a><b>Footnote 1195:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1195">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 245; <i>RC</i> xv. 465; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 69.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1196" name=
+"footnote1196"></a><b>Footnote 1196:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1196">(return)</a>
+<p>Stowe MS. 992, <i>RC</i> vi. 174; <i>IT</i> ii. 210; D'Arbois,
+v. 3f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1197" name=
+"footnote1197"></a><b>Footnote 1197:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1197">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was
+barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter
+(<i>RC</i> xxii. 18).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1198" name=
+"footnote1198"></a><b>Footnote 1198:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1198">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 45 f., text and translation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1199" name=
+"footnote1199"></a><b>Footnote 1199:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1199">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 42 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1200" name=
+"footnote1200"></a><b>Footnote 1200:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1200">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Ibid.</i> 58. The simultaneous birth formula occurs in many
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i>, though that of the future wife is not
+common.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1201" name=
+"footnote1201"></a><b>Footnote 1201:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1201">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 52, 57, 85, 87.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1202" name=
+"footnote1202"></a><b>Footnote 1202:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1202">(return)</a>
+<p><i>ZCP</i> ii. 316 f. Here Mongan comes directly from Elysium,
+as does Oisin before meeting S. Patrick.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1203" name=
+"footnote1203"></a><b>Footnote 1203:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1203">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 345; O'Grady, ii. 88. Cf. Rees, 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1204" name=
+"footnote1204"></a><b>Footnote 1204:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1204">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. <a href="#page116">116</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1205" name=
+"footnote1205"></a><b>Footnote 1205:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1205">(return)</a>
+<p>In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently
+after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1206" name=
+"footnote1206"></a><b>Footnote 1206:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1206">(return)</a>
+<p>See my <i>Religion: Its Origin and Forms</i>, 76-77.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1207" name=
+"footnote1207"></a><b>Footnote 1207:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1207">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 532. After relating various shapes in which he has
+been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received,
+and that he rested in her womb as a child. The reference in this
+early poem from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of
+the <i>M&auml;rchen</i> formula with a myth of rebirth was already
+well known. See also Guest, iii. 362, for verses in which the
+transformations during the combat are exaggerated.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1208" name=
+"footnote1208"></a><b>Footnote 1208:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1208">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 276, 532.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1209" name=
+"footnote1209"></a><b>Footnote 1209:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1209">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 67; D'Arbois, v. 331.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1210" name=
+"footnote1210"></a><b>Footnote 1210:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1210">(return)</a>
+<p>For various forms of <i>geno</i>-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes,
+<i>US</i> 110.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1211" name=
+"footnote1211"></a><b>Footnote 1211:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1211">(return)</a>
+<p>For all these names see Holder, <i>s.v.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1212" name=
+"footnote1212"></a><b>Footnote 1212:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1212">(return)</a>
+<p>S. Aug. <i>de Civ. Dei</i>, xv. 23; Isidore, <i>Orat.</i> viii.
+2. 103. <i>Dusios</i> may be connected with Lithuanian
+<i>dvaese</i>, "spirit," and perhaps with [Greek: Thehos] (Holder,
+<i>s.v.</i>). D'Arbois sees in the <i>dusii</i> water-spirits, and
+compares river-names like Dhuys, Duseva, Dusius (vi. 182; <i>RC</i>
+xix. 251). The word may be connected with Irish <i>duis</i>,
+glossed "noble" (Stokes, <i>TIG</i> 76). The Bretons still believe
+in fairies called <i>duz</i>, and our word <i>dizzy</i> may be
+connected with <i>dusios</i>, and would then have once signified
+the madness following on the <i>amour</i>, like Greek [Greek:
+nympholeptos], or "the inconvenience of their succubi," described
+by Kirk in his <i>Secret Commonwealth of the Elves</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1213" name=
+"footnote1213"></a><b>Footnote 1213:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1213">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 12<i>b</i>; <i>TOS</i> v. 234.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1214" name=
+"footnote1214"></a><b>Footnote 1214:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1214">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 549.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1215" name=
+"footnote1215"></a><b>Footnote 1215:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1215">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 276, 309, etc.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1216" name=
+"footnote1216"></a><b>Footnote 1216:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1216">(return)</a>
+<p>Sigerson, <i>Bards of the Gael</i>, 379.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1217" name=
+"footnote1217"></a><b>Footnote 1217:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1217">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 288; Hyde, <i>Lit. Hist. of Ireland</i>, 300.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1218" name=
+"footnote1218"></a><b>Footnote 1218:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1218">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> xxvi. 21.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1219" name=
+"footnote1219"></a><b>Footnote 1219:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1219">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, ii. 506.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1220" name=
+"footnote1220"></a><b>Footnote 1220:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1220">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 246, where he also derives Erigena's pantheism
+from Celtic beliefs, such as he supposes to be exemplified by these
+poems.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1221" name=
+"footnote1221"></a><b>Footnote 1221:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1221">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 15<i>a</i>; D'Arbois, ii. 47 f.; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 294
+f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1222" name=
+"footnote1222"></a><b>Footnote 1222:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1222">(return)</a>
+<p>Another method of accounting for this knowledge was to imagine a
+long-lived personage like Fintan who survived for 5000 years.
+D'Arbois, ii. ch. 4. Here there was no transformation or
+rebirth.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1223" name=
+"footnote1223"></a><b>Footnote 1223:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1223">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 24; <i>ZCP</i> ii. 316.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1224" name=
+"footnote1224"></a><b>Footnote 1224:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1224">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 78.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1225" name=
+"footnote1225"></a><b>Footnote 1225:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1225">(return)</a>
+<p>Wood-Martin, <i>Pagan Ireland</i>, 140; <i>Choice Notes</i>, 61;
+Monnier, 143; Maury, 272.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1226" name=
+"footnote1226"></a><b>Footnote 1226:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1226">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Choice Notes</i>, 69; Rees, 92; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, ii. 82,
+86, 307; <i>Rev. des Trad. Pop.</i> xii. 394.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1227" name=
+"footnote1227"></a><b>Footnote 1227:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1227">(return)</a>
+<p>Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, ii. 80; <i>Folk-lore Jour.</i> v. 189.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1228" name=
+"footnote1228"></a><b>Footnote 1228:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1228">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Folk-Lore</i>, iv. 352.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1229" name=
+"footnote1229"></a><b>Footnote 1229:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1229">(return)</a>
+<p>Carmichael, <i>Carm. Gadel.</i> ii. 334; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i>
+602; Le Braz<sup>2</sup>, i. 179, 191, 200.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1230" name=
+"footnote1230"></a><b>Footnote 1230:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1230">(return)</a>
+<p>Mr. Nutt, <i>Voyage of Bran</i>, derived the origin of the
+rebirth conception from orgiastic cults.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page362" id=
+"page362"></a>{362}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2><a name="chap24" id="chap24">CHAPTER XXIV.</a></h2>
+<h3>ELYSIUM.</h3>
+<p>The Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of
+religion, mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series
+of Irish and Welsh tales. We do not know that a similar conception
+existed among the continental Celts, but, considering the likeness
+of their beliefs in other matters to those of the insular Celts,
+there is a strong probability that it did. There are four typical
+presentations of the Elysium conception. In Ireland, while the gods
+were believed to have retired within the hills or
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>, it is not unlikely that some of them had always
+been supposed to live in these or in a subterranean world, and it
+is therefore possible that what may be called the subterranean or
+<i>s&iacute;d</i> type of Elysium is old. But other types also
+appear&mdash;that of a western island Elysium, of a world below the
+waters, and of a world co-extensive with this and entered by a
+mist.</p>
+<p>The names of the Irish Elysium are sometimes of a general
+character&mdash;Mag M&oacute;r, "the Great Plain"; Mag Mell, "the
+Pleasant Plain"; T&iacute;r n'Aill, "the Other-world"; Tir na
+m-Beo, "the Land of the Living"; T&iacute;r na n-Og, "the Land of
+Youth"; and T&iacute;r Tairngiri, "the Land of
+Promise"&mdash;possibly of Christian origin. Local names are
+T&iacute;r fa Tonn, "Land under Waves"; I-Bresail and the Land of
+Falga, names of the island Elysium. The last denotes the Isle of
+Man as Elysium, and it may have been so regarded by Goidels in
+Britain at an <span class="pagenum"><a name="page363" id=
+"page363"></a>{363}</span> early time.<a id="footnotetag1231" name=
+"footnotetag1231"></a><a href="#footnote1231"><sup>1231</sup></a>
+To this period may belong the tales of C&uacute;chulainn's raid on
+Falga, carried at a later time to Ireland. T&iacute;r Tairngiri is
+also identified with the Isle of Man.<a id="footnotetag1232" name=
+"footnotetag1232"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1232"><sup>1232</sup></a></p>
+<p>A brief r&eacute;sum&eacute; of the principal Elysium tales is
+necessary as a preliminary to a discussion of the problems which
+they involve, though it can give but little idea of the beauty and
+romanticism of the tales themselves. These, if not actually
+composed in pagan times, are based upon story-germs current before
+the coming of Christianity to Ireland.</p>
+<p>1. <i>The s&iacute;d Elysium.</i>&mdash;In the story of Etain,
+when Mider discovered her in her rebirth, he described the land
+whither he would carry her, its music and its fair people, its warm
+streams, its choice mead and wine. There is eternal youth, and love
+is blameless. It is within Mider's <i>s&iacute;d</i>, and Etain
+accompanies him there. In the sequel King Eochaid's Druid discovers
+the <i>s&iacute;d</i>, which is captured by the king, who then
+regains Etain.<a id="footnotetag1233" name=
+"footnotetag1233"></a><a href="#footnote1233"><sup>1233</sup></a>
+Other tales refer to the <i>s&iacute;d</i> in similar terms, and
+describe its treasures, its food and drink better than those of
+earth. It is in most respects similar to the island Elysium, save
+that it is localised on earth.</p>
+<p>2. <i>The island Elysium.</i>&mdash;The story of the voyage of
+Bran is found fragmentarily in the eleventh century <i>LU</i>, and
+complete in the fourteenth and sixteenth century MSS. It tells how
+Bran heard mysterious music when asleep. On waking he found a
+silver branch with blossoms, and next day there appeared a
+mysterious woman singing the glory of the land overseas, its music,
+its wonderful tree, its freedom from pain and death. It is one of
+thrice fifty islands to the west of Erin, and there she dwells with
+thousands of "motley women." Before she disappears the branch leaps
+into her hand. Bran <span class="pagenum"><a name="page364" id=
+"page364"></a>{364}</span> set sail with his comrades and met
+Manannan crossing the sea in his chariot. The god told him that the
+sea was a flowery plain, Mag Mell, and that all around, unseen to
+Bran, were people playing and drinking "without sin." He bade him
+sail on to the Land of Women. Then the voyagers went on and reached
+the Isle of Joy, where one of their number remained behind. At last
+they came to the Land of Women, and we hear of their welcome, the
+dreamlike lapse of time, the food and drink which had for each the
+taste he desired. Finally the tale recounts their home-sickness,
+the warning they received not to set foot on Erin, how one of their
+number leaped ashore and turned to ashes, how Bran from his boat
+told of his wanderings and then disappeared for ever.<a id=
+"footnotetag1234" name="footnotetag1234"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1234"><sup>1234</sup></a></p>
+<p>Another story tells how Connla was visited by a goddess from Mag
+Mell. Her people dwell in a <i>s&iacute;d</i> and are called "men
+of the <i>s&iacute;d</i>." She invites him to go to the immortal
+land, and departs, leaving him an apple, which supports him for a
+month without growing less. Then she reappears and tells Connla
+that "the Ever-Living Ones" desire him to join them. She bids him
+come with her to the Land of Joy where there are only women. He
+steps into her crystal boat and vanishes from his father and the
+Druid who has vainly tried to exercise his spells against
+her.<a id="footnotetag1235" name="footnotetag1235"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1235"><sup>1235</sup></a> In this tale there is a
+confusion between the <i>s&iacute;d</i> and the island Elysium.</p>
+<p>The eighteenth century poem of Oisin in T&iacute;r na n-Og is
+probably based on old legends, and describes how Niam, daughter of
+the king of T&iacute;r na n-Og, placed <i>geasa</i> on Oisin to
+accompany her to that land of immortal youth and beauty. He mounted
+on her steed, which plunged forwards across the sea, and brought
+them to the land where Oisin spent three <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page365" id="page365"></a>{365}</span> hundred
+years before returning to Ireland, and there suffering, as has been
+seen, from the breaking of the tabu not to set foot on the soil of
+Erin.<a id="footnotetag1236" name="footnotetag1236"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1236"><sup>1236</sup></a></p>
+<p>In <i>Serglige Conculaind</i>, "C&uacute;chulainn's Sickness,"
+the goddess Fand, deserted by Manannan, offers herself to the hero
+if he will help her sister's husband Labraid against his enemies in
+Mag Mell. Labraid lives in an island frequented by troops of women,
+and possessing an inexhaustible vat of mead and trees with magic
+fruit. It is reached with marvellous speed in a boat of bronze.
+After a preliminary visit by his charioteer Laeg, C&uacute;chulainn
+goes thither, vanquishes Labraid's foes, and remains a month with
+Fand. He returns to Ireland, and now we hear of the struggle for
+him between his wife Emer and Fand. But Manannan suddenly appears,
+reawakens Fand's love, and she departs with him. The god shakes his
+cloak between her and C&uacute;chulainn to prevent their ever
+meeting again.<a id="footnotetag1237" name=
+"footnotetag1237"></a><a href="#footnote1237"><sup>1237</sup></a>
+In this story Labraid, Fand, and Liban, Fand's sister, though
+dwellers on an island Elysium, are called <i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk.
+The two regions are partially confused, but not wholly, since
+Manannan is described as coming from his own land (Elysium) to woo
+Fand. Apparently Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword (who,
+though called "chief of the <i>s&iacute;de</i>", is certainly a
+war-god) is at enmity with Manannan's hosts, and it is these with
+whom C&uacute;chulainn has to fight.<a id="footnotetag1238" name=
+"footnotetag1238"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1238"><sup>1238</sup></a></p>
+<p>In an Ossianic tale several of the Fians were carried off to the
+Land of Promise. After many adventures, Fionn, Diarmaid, and others
+discover them, and threaten to destroy the land if they are not
+restored. Its king, Avarta, agrees to the restoration, and with
+fifteen of his men carries the Fians to Erin on one <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page366" id="page366"></a>{366}</span> horse.
+Having reached there, he bids them look at a certain field, and
+while they are doing so, he and his men disappear.<a id=
+"footnotetag1239" name="footnotetag1239"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1239"><sup>1239</sup></a></p>
+<p>3. <i>Land under Waves.</i>&mdash;Fiachna, of the men of the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>, appeared to the men of Connaught, and begged
+their help against Goll, who had abducted his wife. Loegaire and
+his men dive with Fiachna into Loch Naneane, and reach a wonderful
+land, with marvellous music and where the rain is ale. They and the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk attack the fort of Mag Mell and defeat Goll.
+Each then obtains a woman of the <i>s&iacute;de</i>, but at the end
+of a year they become homesick. They are warned not to descend from
+horseback in Erin. Arrived among their own people, they describe
+the marvels of T&iacute;r fa Tonn, and then return there, and are
+no more seen.<a id="footnotetag1240" name=
+"footnotetag1240"></a><a href="#footnote1240"><sup>1240</sup></a>
+Here, again, the <i>s&iacute;d</i> Elysium and Land under Waves are
+confused, and the divine tribes are at war, as in the story of
+C&uacute;chulainn.</p>
+<p>In a section of the Ossianic tale just cited, Fionn and his men
+arrive on an island, where Diarmaid reaches a beautiful country at
+the bottom of a well. This is T&iacute;r fa Tonn, and Diarmaid
+fights its king who has usurped his nephew's inheritance, and thus
+recovers it for him.<a id="footnotetag1241" name=
+"footnotetag1241"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1241"><sup>1241</sup></a></p>
+<p>4. <i>Co-extensive with this world.</i>&mdash;An early example
+of this type is found in the <i>Adventures of Cormac</i>. A divine
+visitant appeared to Cormac and gave him in exchange for his wife,
+son, and daughter, his branch of golden apples, which when shaken
+produced sweetest music, dispelling sorrow. After a year Cormac set
+out to seek his family, and as he journeyed encountered a mist in
+which he discovered a strange house. Its master and
+mistress&mdash;Manannan and his consort&mdash;offered him shelter.
+The god brought in a pig, every quarter of which <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page367" id="page367"></a>{367}</span> was
+cooked in the telling of a true tale, the pig afterwards coming to
+life again. Cormac, in his tale, described how he had lost his
+family, whereupon Manannan made him sleep, and brought his wife and
+children in. Later he produced a cup which broke when a lie was
+told, but became whole again when a true word was spoken. The god
+said Cormac's wife had now a new husband, and the cup broke, but
+was restored when the goddess declared this to be a lie. Next
+morning all had disappeared, and Cormac and his family found
+themselves in his own palace, with cup and branch by their
+side.<a id="footnotetag1242" name="footnotetag1242"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1242"><sup>1242</sup></a> Similarly, in <i>The Champion's
+Ecstasy</i>, a mysterious horseman appears out of a mist to Conn
+and leads him to a palace, where he reveals himself as the god Lug,
+and where there is a woman called "the Sovereignty of Erin." Beside
+the palace is a golden tree.<a id="footnotetag1243" name=
+"footnotetag1243"></a><a href="#footnote1243"><sup>1243</sup></a>
+In the story of Bran, Mag Mell is said to be all around the hero,
+though he knows it not&mdash;an analogous conception to what is
+found in these tales, and another instance is that of the
+mysterious house entered by Conchobar and Dechtire.<a id=
+"footnotetag1244" name="footnotetag1244"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1244"><sup>1244</sup></a> Mag Mell may thus have been
+regarded as a mysterious district of Erin. This magic mist
+enclosing a marvellous dwelling occurs in many other tales, and it
+was in a mist that the Tuatha D&eacute;a came to Ireland.</p>
+<p>A certain correspondence to these Irish beliefs is found in
+Brythonic story, but here the Elysium conception has been
+influenced by Christian ideas. Elysium is called <i>Annwfn</i>,
+meaning "an abyss," "the state of the dead," "hell," and it is also
+conceived of as <i>is elfydd</i>, "beneath the earth."<a id=
+"footnotetag1245" name="footnotetag1245"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1245"><sup>1245</sup></a> But in the tales it bears no
+likeness to these meanings of the word, save in so far as it has
+been confused by their Christian redactors with hell. It is a
+region on the earth's surface or <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page368" id="page368"></a>{368}</span> an over-or under-sea world,
+in which some of the characteristics of the Irish Elysium are
+found&mdash;a cauldron, a well of drink sweeter than wine, and
+animals greatly desired by mortals, while it is of great beauty and
+its people are not subject to death or disease. Hence the name
+<i>Annwfn</i> has probably taken the place of some earlier pagan
+title of Elysium.</p>
+<p>In the tale of Pwyll, the earliest reference to <i>Annwfn</i>
+occurs. It is ruled by Arawn, at war with Hafgan. Arawn obtains the
+help of Pwyll by exchanging kingdoms with him for a year, and Pwyll
+defeats Hafgan. It is a beautiful land, where merriment and
+feasting go on continuously, and its queen is of great loveliness.
+It has no subterranean character, and is conceived apparently as
+contiguous to Pwyll's kingdom.<a id="footnotetag1246" name=
+"footnotetag1246"></a><a href="#footnote1246"><sup>1246</sup></a>
+In other tales it is the land whence Gwydion and others obtain
+various animals.<a id="footnotetag1247" name=
+"footnotetag1247"></a><a href="#footnote1247"><sup>1247</sup></a>
+The later folk-conception of the demoniac dogs of Annwfn may be
+based on an old myth of dogs with which its king hunted. These are
+referred to in the story of Pwyll.<a id="footnotetag1248" name=
+"footnotetag1248"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1248"><sup>1248</sup></a></p>
+<p><i>Annwfn</i> is also the name of a land under waves or over
+sea, called also <i>Caer Sidi</i>, "the revolving castle," about
+which "are ocean's streams." It is "known to Manawyddan and
+Pryderi," just as the Irish Elysium was ruled by Manannan.<a id=
+"footnotetag1249" name="footnotetag1249"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1249"><sup>1249</sup></a> Another "Caer of Defence" is
+beneath the waves.<a id="footnotetag1250" name=
+"footnotetag1250"></a><a href="#footnote1250"><sup>1250</sup></a>
+Perhaps the two ideas were interchangeable. The people of this land
+are free from death and disease, and in it is "an abundant well,
+sweeter than white wine the drink in it." There also is a cauldron
+belonging to the lord of Annwfn, which was stolen by Arthur and his
+men. Such a cauldron is the property of people belonging to a water
+world in the <i>Mabinogion</i>.<a id="footnotetag1251" name=
+"footnotetag1251"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1251"><sup>1251</sup></a></p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page369" id=
+"page369"></a>{369}</span>
+<p>The description of the isle of Avallon (later identified with
+Glastonbury), whither Arthur was carried, completes the likeness to
+the Irish Elysium. No tempest, excess of heat or cold, nor noxious
+animal afflicts it; it is blessed with eternal spring and with
+fruit and flowers growing without labour; it is the land of eternal
+youth, unvisited by death or disease. It has a <i>regia virgo</i>
+lovelier than her lovely attendants; she cured Arthur of his
+wounds, hence she is the Morgen of other tales, and she and her
+maidens may be identified with the divine women of the Irish isle
+of women. Morgen is called a <i>dea phantastica</i>, and she may be
+compared with Liban, who cured C&uacute;chulainn of his
+sickness.<a id="footnotetag1252" name=
+"footnotetag1252"></a><a href="#footnote1252"><sup>1252</sup></a></p>
+<p>The identification of Avallon with Glastonbury is probably
+post-pagan, and the names applied to Glastonbury&mdash;Avallon,
+<i>Insula Pomonum</i>, <i>Insula vitrea</i>&mdash;may be primitive
+names of Elysium. William of Malmesbury derives <i>Insula
+Pomonum</i> in its application to Glastonbury from a native name
+<i>Insula Avallonioe</i>, which he connects with the Brythonic
+<i>avalla</i>, "apples," because Glastenig found an apple tree
+there.<a id="footnotetag1253" name="footnotetag1253"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1253"><sup>1253</sup></a> The name may thus have been
+connected with marvellous apple trees, like those of the Irish
+Elysium. But he also suggests that it may be derived from the name
+of Avalloc, living there with his daughters. Avalloc is evidently
+the "Rex Avallon" (Avallach) to whose palace Arthur was carried and
+healed by the <i>regia virgo</i>.<a id="footnotetag1254" name=
+"footnotetag1254"></a><a href="#footnote1254"><sup>1254</sup></a>
+He may therefore have been a mythic lord of Elysium, and his
+daughters would correspond to the maidens of the isle. William also
+derives "Glastonbury" from the name of an eponymous founder
+Glastenig, or from its native name <i>Ynesuuitron</i>, "Glass
+Island." This name <span class="pagenum"><a name="page370" id=
+"page370"></a>{370}</span> reappears in Chretien's <i>Eric</i> in
+the form "l'isle de verre." Giraldus explains the name from the
+glassy waters around Glastonbury, but it may be an early name of
+Elysium.<a id="footnotetag1255" name="footnotetag1255"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1255"><sup>1255</sup></a> Glass must have appealed to the
+imagination of Celt, Teuton, and Slav, for we hear of Merlin's
+glass house, a glass fort discovered by Arthur, a glass tower
+attacked by the Milesians, Etain's glass <i>grianan</i>, and a boat
+of glass which conveyed Connla to Elysium. In Teutonic and Slavonic
+myth and <i>M&auml;rchen</i>, glass mountains, on which dwell
+mysterious personages, frequently occur.</p>
+<p>The origin of the Celtic Elysium belief may be found in
+universal myths of a golden age long ago in some distant Elysian
+region, where men had lived with the gods. Into that region brave
+mortals might still penetrate, though it was lost to mankind as a
+whole. In some mythologies this Elysium is the land whither men go
+after death. Possibly the Celtic myth of man's early intercourse
+with the gods in a lost region took two forms. In one it was a
+joyful subterranean region whither the Celt hoped to go after
+death. In the other it was not recoverable, nor was it the land of
+the dead, but favoured mortals might reach it in life. The Celtic
+Elysium belief, as known through the tales just cited, is always of
+this second kind. We surmise, however, that the land of the dead
+was a joyous underworld ruled over by a god of fertility and of the
+dead, and from that region men had originally come forth. The later
+association of gods with the <i>s&iacute;d</i> was a continuation
+of this belief, but now the <i>s&iacute;d</i> are certainly not a
+land of the dead, but Elysium pure and simple. There must therefore
+have been at an early period a tendency to distinguish between the
+happy region of the dead, and the distant Elysium, if the two were
+ever really connected. The subject is obscure, but it is not
+impossible that another origin of the Elysium idea may <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page371" id="page371"></a>{371}</span> be found
+in the phenomenon of the setting sun: it suggested to the
+continental Celts that far off there was a divine land where the
+sun-god rested. When the Celts reached the coast this divine
+western land would necessarily be located in a far-off island, seen
+perhaps on the horizon. Hence it would also be regarded as
+connected with the sea-god, Manannan, or by whatsoever name he was
+called. The distant Elysium, whether on land or across the sea, was
+conceived in identical terms, and hence also whenever the hollow
+hills or <i>s&iacute;d</i> were regarded as an abode of the gods,
+they also were described just as Elysium was.</p>
+<p>The idea of a world under the waters is common to many
+mythologies, and, generally speaking, it originated in the
+animistic belief that every part of nature has its indwelling
+spirits. Hence the spirits or gods of the waters were thought of as
+dwelling below the waters. Tales of supernatural beings appearing
+out of the waters, the custom of throwing offerings therein, the
+belief that human beings were carried below the surface or could
+live in the region beneath the waves, are all connected with this
+animistic idea. Among the Celts this water-world assumed many
+aspects of Elysium, and it has names in common with it, <i>e.g.</i>
+it is called Mag Mell. Hence in many popular tales it is hardly
+differentiated from the island Elysium; oversea and under-waves are
+often synonymous. Hence, too, the belief that such water-worlds as
+I-Bresail, or Welsh fairy-lands, or sunken cities off the Breton
+coast, rise periodically to the surface, and would remain there
+permanently, like an island Elysium, if some mortal would fulfil
+certain conditions.<a id="footnotetag1256" name=
+"footnotetag1256"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1256"><sup>1256</sup></a></p>
+<p>The Celtic belief in T&iacute;r fa Tonn is closely connected
+with <span class="pagenum"><a name="page372" id=
+"page372"></a>{372}</span> the current belief in submerged towns or
+lands, found in greatest detail on the Breton coast. Here there are
+many such legends, but most prominent are those which tell how the
+town of Is was submerged because of the wickedness of its people,
+or of Dahut, its king's daughter, who sometimes still seeks the
+love of mortals. It is occasionally seen below the waves or even on
+their surface.<a id="footnotetag1257" name=
+"footnotetag1257"></a><a href="#footnote1257"><sup>1257</sup></a>
+Elsewhere in Celtic regions similar legends are found, and the
+submersion is the result of a curse, of the breaking of a tabu, or
+of neglect to cover a sacred well.<a id="footnotetag1258" name=
+"footnotetag1258"></a><a href="#footnote1258"><sup>1258</sup></a>
+Probably the tradition of actual cataclysms or inroads of the sea,
+such as the Celts encountered on the coasts of Holland, may account
+for some of these legends, which then mingled with myths of the
+divine water-world.</p>
+<p>The idea that Elysium is co-extensive with this world and hidden
+in a mist is perhaps connected with the belief in the magical
+powers of the gods. As the Druids could raise a mist at will, so
+too might the gods, who then created a temporary Elysium in it.
+From such a mist, usually on a hill, supernatural beings often
+emerged to meet mortals, and in <i>M&auml;rchen</i> fairyland is
+sometimes found within a mist.<a id="footnotetag1259" name=
+"footnotetag1259"></a><a href="#footnote1259"><sup>1259</sup></a>
+It was already believed that part of the gods' land was not far
+off; it was invisibly on or within the hills on whose slopes men
+saw the mist swirling mysteriously. Hence the mist may simply have
+concealed the <i>s&iacute;d</i> of the gods. But there may also
+have been a belief that this world was actually interpenetrated by
+the divine world, for this is believed of fairyland in Welsh and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page373" id=
+"page373"></a>{373}</span> Irish folk-lore. Men may unwittingly
+interfere with it, or have it suddenly revealed to them, or be
+carried into it and made invisible.<a id="footnotetag1260" name=
+"footnotetag1260"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1260"><sup>1260</sup></a></p>
+<p>In most of the tales Elysium is a land without grief or death,
+where there is immortal youth and peace, and every kind of delight.
+But in some, while the sensuous delights are still the same, the
+inhabitants are at war, invite the aid of mortals to overcome their
+foes, and are even slain in fight. Still in both groups Elysium is
+a land of gods and supernatural folk whither mortals are invited by
+favour. It is never the world of the dead; its people are not
+mortals who have died and gone thither. The two conceptions of
+Elysium as a land of peace and deathlessness, and as a land where
+war and death may occur, may both be primitive. The latter may have
+been formed by reflecting back on the divine world the actions of
+the world of mortals, and it would also be on a parallel with the
+conception of the world of the dead where warriors perhaps still
+fought, since they were buried with their weapons. There were also
+myths of gods warring with each other. But men may also have felt
+that the gods were not as themselves, that their land must be one
+of peace and deathlessness. Hence the idea of the peaceful Elysium,
+which perhaps found most favour with the people. Mr. Nutt thought
+that the idea of a warlike Elysium may have resulted from
+Scandinavian influence acting on existing tales of a peaceful
+Elysium,<a id="footnotetag1261" name="footnotetag1261"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1261"><sup>1261</sup></a> but we know that old myths of
+divine wars already existed. Perhaps this conception arose among
+the Celts as a warlike people, appealing to their warrior
+instincts, while the peaceful Elysium may have been the product of
+the Celts as an agricultural folk, for we have seen that the Celt
+was now a fighter, now a farmer. In its peaceful aspect Elysium is
+"a familiar, cultivated land," where the fruits of the earth are
+produced without <span class="pagenum"><a name="page374" id=
+"page374"></a>{374}</span> labour, and where there are no storms or
+excess of heat or cold&mdash;the fancies which would appeal to a
+toiling, agricultural people. There food is produced magically, yet
+naturally, and in agricultural ritual men sought to increase their
+food supply magically. In the tales this process is, so to speak,
+heightened.<a id="footnotetag1262" name=
+"footnotetag1262"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1262"><sup>1262</sup></a></p>
+<p>Some writers have maintained that Elysium is simply the land of
+the dead, although nothing in the existing tales justifies this
+interpretation. M. D'Arbois argues for this view, resting his
+theory mainly on a passage in the story of Connla, interpreted by
+him in a way which does not give its real meaning.<a id=
+"footnotetag1263" name="footnotetag1263"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1263"><sup>1263</sup></a> The words are spoken by the
+goddess to Connla, and their sense is&mdash;"The Ever-Living Ones
+invite thee. Thou art a champion to Tethra's people. They see thee
+every day in the assemblies of thy fatherland, among thy familiar
+loved ones."<a id="footnotetag1264" name=
+"footnotetag1264"></a><a href="#footnote1264"><sup>1264</sup></a>
+M. D'Arbois assumes that Tethra, a Fomorian, is lord of Elysium,
+and that after his defeat by the Tuatha D&eacute;a, he, like
+Kronos, took refuge there, and now reigns as lord of the dead. By
+translating <i>ar-dot-chiat</i> ("they see thee," 3rd plur., pres.
+ind.) as "on t'y verra," he maintains that Connla, by going to
+Elysium, will be seen among the gatherings of his dead kinsfolk.
+But the words, "Thou art a champion to Tethra's people," cannot be
+made to mean that Tethra is a god of the dead. It means simply that
+Connla is a mighty warrior, one of those whom Tethra, a war-god,
+would have approved. The phrase, "Tethra's mighty men," used
+elsewhere,<a id="footnotetag1265" name=
+"footnotetag1265"></a><a href="#footnote1265"><sup>1265</sup></a>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page375" id=
+"page375"></a>{375}</span> is a conventional one for warriors. The
+rest of the goddess's words imply that the Immortals from afar, or
+perhaps "Tethra's mighty men," <i>i.e.</i> warriors in this world,
+see Connla in the assemblies of his fatherland in Erin, among his
+familiar friends. Dread death awaits <i>them</i>, she has just
+said, but the Immortals desire Connla to escape that by coming to
+Elysium. Her words do not imply that he will meet his dead
+ancestors there, nor is she in any sense a goddess of death. If the
+dead went to Elysium, there would be little need for inviting a
+living person to go there. Had Connla's dead ancestors or Tethra's
+people (warriors) been in Elysium, this would contradict the
+picture drawn by the goddess of the land whither she desires him to
+go&mdash;a land of women, not of men. Moreover, the rulers of
+Elysium are always members of the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann or the
+<i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk, never a Fomorian like Tethra.<a id=
+"footnotetag1266" name="footnotetag1266"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1266"><sup>1266</sup></a></p>
+<p>M. D'Arbois also assumes that "Spain" in Nennius' account of the
+Irish invasions and in Irish texts means the land of the dead, and
+that it was introduced in place of some such title as Mag
+M&oacute;r or Mag Mell by "the euhemerising process of the Irish
+Christians." But in other documents penned by Irish Christians
+these and other pagan titles of Elysium remain unchanged. Nor is
+there the slightest proof that the words used by Tuan MacCaraill
+about the invaders of Ireland, "They all died," were rendered in an
+original text, now lost according to M. D'Arbois, "They set sail
+for Mag M&oacute;r or Mag Mell," a formula in which Nennius saw
+indications of a return to Spain.<a id="footnotetag1267" name=
+"footnotetag1267"></a><a href="#footnote1267"><sup>1267</sup></a>
+Spain, in this hypothetical text, was the Land of the Dead or
+Elysium, whence the invaders <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page376" id="page376"></a>{376}</span> came. This "lost original"
+exists in M. D'Arbois imagination, and there is not the slightest
+evidence for these alterations. Once, indeed, Tailtiu is called
+daughter of Magh M&oacute;r, King of Spain, but here a person, not
+a place, is spoken of.<a id="footnotetag1268" name=
+"footnotetag1268"></a><a href="#footnote1268"><sup>1268</sup></a>
+Sir John Rh[^y]s accepts the identification of Spain with Elysium
+as the land of the dead, and finds in every reference to Spain a
+reference to the Other-world, which he regards as a region ruled by
+"dark divinities." But neither the lords of Elysium nor the Celtic
+Dispater were dark or gloomy deities, and the land of the dead was
+certainly not a land of darkness any more than Elysium. The
+numerous references to Spain probably point to old traditions
+regarding a connection between Spain and Ireland in early times,
+both commercial and social, and it is not impossible that Goidelic
+invaders did reach Ireland from Spain.<a id="footnotetag1269" name=
+"footnotetag1269"></a><a href="#footnote1269"><sup>1269</sup></a>
+Early maps and geographers make Ireland and Spain contiguous; hence
+in an Irish tale Ireland is visible from Spain, and this
+geographical error would strengthen existing traditions.<a id=
+"footnotetag1270" name="footnotetag1270"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1270"><sup>1270</sup></a> "Spain" was used vaguely, but
+it does not appear to have meant Elysium or the Land of the Dead.
+If it did, it is strange that the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann are never
+brought into connection with it.</p>
+<p>One of the most marked characteristics of the Celtic Elysium is
+its deathlessness. It is "the land of the living" or of "the
+Ever-Living Ones," and of eternal youth. Most primitive races
+believe that death is an accident befalling men who are naturally
+immortal; hence freedom from such an accident naturally
+characterises the people of the divine land. But, as in other
+mythologies, that immortality is more or less dependent on the
+eating or drinking of some <span class="pagenum"><a name="page377"
+id="page377"></a>{377}</span> food or drink of immortality.
+Manannan had immortal swine, which, killed one day, came alive next
+day, and with their flesh he made the Tuatha D&eacute; Danann
+immortal. Immortality was also conferred by the drinking of
+Goibniu's ale, which, either by itself or with the flesh of swine,
+formed his immortal feast. The food of Elysium was inexhaustible,
+and whoever ate it found it to possess that taste which he
+preferred. The fruit of certain trees in Elysium was also believed
+to confer immortality and other qualities. Laeg saw one hundred and
+fifty trees growing in Mag Mell; their nuts fed three hundred
+people. The apple given by the goddess to Connla was inexhaustible,
+and he was still eating it with her when Teigue, son of Cian,
+visited Elysium. "When once they had partaken of it, nor age nor
+dimness could affect them."<a id="footnotetag1271" name=
+"footnotetag1271"></a><a href="#footnote1271"><sup>1271</sup></a>
+Apples, crimson nuts, and rowan berries are specifically said to be
+the food of the gods in the tale of <i>Diarmaid and Grainne</i>.
+Through carelessness one of the berries was dropped on earth, and
+from it grew a tree, the berries of which had the effect of wine or
+mead, and three of them eaten by a man of a hundred years made him
+youthful. It was guarded by a giant.<a id="footnotetag1272" name=
+"footnotetag1272"></a><a href="#footnote1272"><sup>1272</sup></a> A
+similar tree growing on earth&mdash;a rowan guarded by a dragon, is
+found in the tale of Fraoch, who was bidden to bring a branch of it
+to Ailill. Its berries had the virtue of nine meals; they healed
+the wounded, and added a year to a man's life.<a id=
+"footnotetag1273" name="footnotetag1273"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1273"><sup>1273</sup></a> At the wells which were the
+source of Irish rivers were supposed to grow hazel-trees with
+crimson nuts, which fell into the water and were eaten by
+salmon.<a id="footnotetag1274" name="footnotetag1274"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1274"><sup>1274</sup></a> If these were caught and eaten,
+the eater obtained wisdom and knowledge. These wells were in Erin,
+but in some instances <span class="pagenum"><a name="page378" id=
+"page378"></a>{378}</span> the well with its hazels and salmon is
+in the Other-world,<a id="footnotetag1275" name=
+"footnotetag1275"></a><a href="#footnote1275"><sup>1275</sup></a>
+and it is obvious that the crimson nuts are the same as the food of
+the gods in <i>Diarmaid and Grainne</i>.</p>
+<p>Why should immortality be dependent on the eating of certain
+foods? Most of man's irrational ideas have some reason in them, and
+probably man's knowledge that without food life would come to an
+end, joined to his idea of deathlessness, led him to believe that
+there was a certain food which produced immortality just as
+ordinary food supported life. On it gods and deathless beings were
+fed. Similarly, as water cleansed and invigorated, it was thought
+that some special kind of water had these powers in a marvellous
+degree. Hence arose the tales of the Fountain of Youth and the
+belief in healing wells. From the knowledge of the nourishing power
+of food, sprang the idea that some food conferred the qualities
+inherent in it, <i>e.g.</i> the flesh of divine animals eaten
+sacramentally, and that gods obtained their immortality from eating
+or drinking. This idea is widespread. The Babylonian gods had food
+and water of Life; Egyptian myth spoke of the bread and beer of
+eternity which nourished the gods; the Hindus and Iranians knew of
+the divine <i>soma</i> or <i>haoma</i>; and in Scandinavian myth
+the gods renewed their youth by tasting Iduna's golden apples.</p>
+<p>In Celtic Elysium tales, the fruit of a tree is most usually the
+food of immortality. The fruit never diminishes and always
+satisfies, and it is the food of the gods. When eaten by mortals it
+confers immortality upon them; in other words, it makes them of
+like nature to the gods, and this is doubtless derived from the
+widespread idea that the eating of food given by a stranger makes a
+man of one kin with him. Hence to eat the food of gods, fairies, or
+of the dead, binds the mortal to them and he cannot leave their
+land. This might be <span class="pagenum"><a name="page379" id=
+"page379"></a>{379}</span> illustrated from a wide range of myth
+and folk-belief. When Connla ate the apple he at once desired to go
+to Elysium, and he could not leave it once he was there; he had
+become akin to its people. In the stories of Bran and Oisin, they
+are not said to have eaten such fruit, but the primitive form of
+the tales may have contained this incident, and this would explain
+why they could not set foot on earth unscathed, and why Bran and
+his followers, or, in the tale of Fiachna, Loegaire and his men who
+had drunk the ale of Elysium, returned thither. In other tales, it
+is true, those who eat food in Elysium can return to
+earth&mdash;Cormac and C&uacute;chulainn; but had we the primitive
+form of these tales we should probably find that they had refrained
+from eating. The incident of the fruit given by an immortal to a
+mortal may have borrowed something from the wide folk-custom of the
+presentation of an apple as a gage of love or as a part of the
+marriage rite.<a id="footnotetag1276" name=
+"footnotetag1276"></a><a href="#footnote1276"><sup>1276</sup></a>
+Its acceptance denotes willingness to enter upon betrothal or
+marriage. But as in the Roman rite of <i>confarreatio</i> with its
+savage parallels, the underlying idea is probably that which has
+just been considered, namely, that the giving and acceptance of
+food produces the bond of kinship.</p>
+<p>As various nuts and fruits were prized in Ireland as food, and
+were perhaps used in some cases to produce an intoxicant,<a id=
+"footnotetag1277" name="footnotetag1277"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1277"><sup>1277</sup></a> it is evident that the trees of
+Elysium were, primarily, a magnified form of earthly trees. But all
+such trees were doubtless objects of a cult before their produce
+was generally eaten; they were first sacred or totem-trees, and
+their food eaten only occasionally and sacramentally. If so, this
+would explain why they grew in Elysium and their fruit was the food
+of the gods. For whatever man eats or drinks is <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page380" id="page380"></a>{380}</span> generally
+supposed to have been first eaten and drunk by the gods, like the
+<i>soma</i>. But, growing in Elysium, these trees, like the trees
+of most myths of Elysium, are far more marvellous than any known on
+earth. They have branches of silver and golden apples; they have
+magical supplies of fruit, they produce wonderful music which
+sometimes causes sleep or oblivion; and birds perch in their
+branches and warble melody "such that the sick would sleep to it."
+It should be noted also that, as Miss Hull points out, in some
+tales the branch of a divine tree becomes a talisman leading the
+mortal to Elysium; in this resembling the golden bough plucked by
+&AElig;neas before visiting the underworld.<a id="footnotetag1278"
+name="footnotetag1278"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1278"><sup>1278</sup></a> This, however, is not the
+fundamental characteristic of the tree, in Irish story. Possibly,
+as Mr. A.B. Cook maintains, the branch giving entrance to Elysium
+is derived from the branch borne by early Celtic kings of the wood,
+while the tree is an imaginative form of those which incarnated a
+vegetation spirit.<a id="footnotetag1279" name=
+"footnotetag1279"></a><a href="#footnote1279"><sup>1279</sup></a>
+Be this as it may, it is rather the fruit eaten by the mortal which
+binds him to the Immortal Land.</p>
+<p>The inhabitants of Elysium are not only immortal, but also
+invisible at will. They make themselves visible to one person only
+out of many present with him. Connla alone sees the goddess,
+invisible to his father and the Druid. Mananuan is visible to Bran,
+but there are many near the hero whom he does not see; and when the
+same god comes to Fand, he is invisible to C&uacute;chulainn and
+those with him. So Mider says to Etain, "We behold, and are not
+beheld."<a id="footnotetag1280" name="footnotetag1280"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1280"><sup>1280</sup></a> Occasionally, too, the people
+of Elysium have the power of shape-shifting&mdash;Fand and Liban
+appear to C&uacute;chulainn as birds.</p>
+<p>The hazel of knowledge connects wisdom with the gods' world, and
+in Celtic belief generally civilisation and culture <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page381" id="page381"></a>{381}</span> were
+supposed to have come from the gods. The things of their land were
+coveted by men, and often stolen thence by them. In Welsh and Irish
+tales, often with reference to the Other-world, a magical cauldron
+has a prominent place. Dagda possessed such a cauldron and it was
+inexhaustible, and a vat of inexhaustible mead is described in the
+story of <i>C&uacute;chulain's Sickness</i>. Whatever was put into
+such cauldrons satisfied all, no matter how numerous they might
+be.<a id="footnotetag1281" name="footnotetag1281"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1281"><sup>1281</sup></a> C&uacute;chulainn obtained one
+from the daughter of the king of Scath, and also carried off the
+king's three cows.<a id="footnotetag1282" name=
+"footnotetag1282"></a><a href="#footnote1282"><sup>1282</sup></a>
+In an analogous story, he stole from C&uacute;roi, by the
+connivance of his wife Bl&aacute;thnat, her father Mider's
+cauldron, three cows, and the woman herself. But in another version
+C&uacute;chulainn and C&uacute;roi go to Mider's stronghold in the
+Isle of Falga (Elysium), and steal cauldron, cows, and
+Bl&aacute;thnat. These were taken from C&uacute;chulainn by
+C&uacute;roi; hence his revenge as in the previous tale.<a id=
+"footnotetag1283" name="footnotetag1283"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1283"><sup>1283</sup></a> Thus the theft was from
+Elysium. In the Welsh poem "The Spoils of Annwfn," Arthur stole a
+cauldron from Annwfn. Its rim was encrusted with pearls, voices
+issued from it, it was kept boiling by the breath of nine maidens,
+and it would not boil a coward's food.<a id="footnotetag1284" name=
+"footnotetag1284"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1284"><sup>1284</sup></a></p>
+<p>As has been seen from the story of Gwion, he was set to watch a
+cauldron which must boil until it yielded "three drops of the grace
+of inspiration." It belonged to Tegid Voel and Cerridwen, divine
+rulers of a Land under the Waters.<a id="footnotetag1285" name=
+"footnotetag1285"></a><a href="#footnote1285"><sup>1285</sup></a>
+In the <i>Mabinogi</i> of Branwen, her brother Bran received a
+cauldron from two beings, a man and a huge woman, who came from a
+lake. This cauldron was given by him to the <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page382" id="page382"></a>{382}</span> king of
+Erin, and it had the property of restoring to life the slain who
+were placed in it.<a id="footnotetag1286" name=
+"footnotetag1286"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1286"><sup>1286</sup></a></p>
+<p>The three properties of the cauldron&mdash;inexhaustibility,
+inspiration, and regeneration&mdash;may be summed up in one word,
+fertility; and it is significant that the god with whom such a
+cauldron was associated, Dagda, was a god of fertility. But we have
+just seen it associated, directly or indirectly, with
+goddesses&mdash;Cerridwen, Branwen, the woman from the
+lake&mdash;and perhaps this may point to an earlier cult of
+goddesses of fertility, later transferred to gods. In this light
+the cauldron's power of restoring to life is significant, since in
+early belief life is associated with what is feminine. Woman as the
+fruitful mother suggested that the Earth, which produced and
+nourished, was also female. Hence arose the cult of the
+Earth-mother who was often also a goddess of love as well as of
+fertility. Cerridwen, in all probability, was a goddess of
+fertility, and Branwen a goddess of love.<a id="footnotetag1287"
+name="footnotetag1287"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1287"><sup>1287</sup></a> The cult of fertility was
+usually associated with orgiastic and indiscriminate love-making,
+and it is not impossible that the cauldron, like the Hindu
+<i>yoni</i>, was a symbol of fertility.<a id="footnotetag1288"
+name="footnotetag1288"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1288"><sup>1288</sup></a> Again, the slaughter and
+cooking of animals was usually regarded as a sacred act in
+primitive life. The animals were cooked in enormous cauldrons,
+which were found as an invariable part of the furniture of every
+Celtic house.<a id="footnotetag1289" name=
+"footnotetag1289"></a><a href="#footnote1289"><sup>1289</sup></a>
+The quantities of meat which they contained may have suggested
+inexhaustibility to people to whom the cauldron was already a
+symbol of fertility. Thus the symbolic cauldron of a fertility cult
+was merged with the cauldron used in the religious <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page383" id="page383"></a>{383}</span> slaughter
+and cooking of animal food. The cauldron was also used in ritual.
+The Cimri slaughtered human victims over a cauldron and filled it
+with their blood; victims sacrificed to Teutates were suffocated in
+a vat (<i>semicupium</i>); and in Ireland "a cauldron of truth" was
+used in the ordeal of boiling water.<a id="footnotetag1290" name=
+"footnotetag1290"></a><a href="#footnote1290"><sup>1290</sup></a>
+Like the food of men which was regarded as the food of the gods,
+the cauldron of this world became the marvellous cauldron of the
+Other-world, and as it then became necessary to explain the origin
+of such cauldrons on earth, myths arose, telling how they had been
+stolen from the divine land by adventurous heroes,
+C&uacute;chulainn, Arthur, etc. In other instances, the cauldron is
+replaced by a magic vessel or cup stolen from supernatural beings
+by heroes of the Fionn saga or of <i>M&auml;rchen</i>.<a id=
+"footnotetag1291" name="footnotetag1291"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1291"><sup>1291</sup></a> Here, too, it may be noted that
+the Graal of Arthurian romance has affinities with the Celtic
+cauldron. In the <i>Conte du Graal</i> of pseudo-Chr&eacute;tien, a
+cup comes in of itself and serves all present with food. This is a
+simple conception of the Graal, but in other poems its magical and
+sacrosanct character is heightened. It supplies the food which the
+eater prefers, it gives immortal youth and immunity from wounds. In
+these respects it presents an unmistakable likeness to the cauldron
+of Celtic myth. But, again, it was the vessel in which Christ had
+instituted the Blessed Sacrament; it contained His Blood; and it
+had been given by our Lord to Joseph of Arimathea. Thus in the
+Graal there was a fusion of the magic cauldron of Celtic paganism
+and the Sacred Chalice of Christianity, with the product made
+mystic and glorious in a most wonderful manner. The story of the
+Graal became immensely popular, and, deepening in ethical,
+mystical, and romantic import as time went on, was taken up
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page384" id=
+"page384"></a>{384}</span> by one poet after another, who "used it
+as a type of the loftiest goal of man's effort."<a id=
+"footnotetag1292" name="footnotetag1292"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1292"><sup>1292</sup></a></p>
+<p>In other ways myth told how the gifts of civilisation came from
+the gods' world. When man came to domesticate animals, it was
+believed in course of time that the knowledge of domestication or,
+more usually, the animals themselves had come from the gods, only,
+in this case, the animals were of a magical, supernatural kind.
+Such a belief underlies the stories in which C&uacute;chulainn
+steals cows from their divine owners. In other instances, heroes
+who obtain a wife from the <i>s&iacute;d</i>-folk, obtain also
+cattle from the <i>s&iacute;d</i>.<a id="footnotetag1293" name=
+"footnotetag1293"></a><a href="#footnote1293"><sup>1293</sup></a>
+As has been seen the swine given to Pryderi by Arawn, king of
+Annwfn, and hitherto unknown to man, are stolen from him by
+Gwydion, Pryderi being son of Pwyll, a temporary king of Annwfn,
+and in all probability both were lords of Elysium. The theft, in
+the original form of the myth, must thus have been from Elysium,
+though we have a hint in "The Spoils of Annwfn" that Gwydion
+(Gweir) was unsuccessful and was imprisoned in Annwfn, to which
+imprisonment the later blending of Annwfn with hell gave a doleful
+aspect.<a id="footnotetag1294" name="footnotetag1294"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1294"><sup>1294</sup></a> In a late Welsh MS., a white
+roebuck and a puppy (or, in the <i>Triads</i>, a bitch, a roebuck,
+and a lapwing) were stolen by Am&aelig;thon from Annwfn, and the
+story presents archaic features.<a id="footnotetag1295" name=
+"footnotetag1295"></a><a href="#footnote1295"><sup>1295</sup></a>
+In some of these tales the animals are transferred to earth by a
+divine or semi-divine being, in whom we may see an early Celtic
+culture-hero. The tales are attenuated forms of older myths which
+showed how all domestic animals were at first the property of the
+gods, and an echo of these is still heard in <i>M&auml;rchen</i>
+describing the theft of cattle from fairyland. In <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page385" id="page385"></a>{385}</span> the most
+primitive form of the tales the theft was doubtless from the
+underworld of gods of fertility, the place whither the dead went.
+But with the rise of myths telling of a distant Elysium, it was
+inevitable that some tales should connect the animals and the theft
+with that far-off land. So far as the Irish and Welsh tales are
+concerned, the thefts seem mainly to be from Elysium.<a id=
+"footnotetag1296" name="footnotetag1296"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1296"><sup>1296</sup></a></p>
+<p>Love-making has a large place in the Elysium tales. Goddesses
+seek the love of mortals, and the mortal desires to visit Elysium
+because of their enticements. But the love-making of Elysium is
+"without sin, without crime," and this phrase may perhaps suggest
+the existence of ritual sex-unions at stated times for magical
+influence upon the fertility of the earth, these unions not being
+regarded as immoral, even when they trespassed on customary tribal
+law. In some of the stories Elysium is composed of many islands,
+one of which is the "island of women."<a id="footnotetag1297" name=
+"footnotetag1297"></a><a href="#footnote1297"><sup>1297</sup></a>
+These women and their queen give their favours to Bran and his men
+or to Maelduin and his company. Similar "islands of women" occur in
+<i>M&auml;rchen</i>, still current among Celtic peoples, and actual
+islands were or still are called by that name&mdash;Eigg and
+Groagez off the Breton coast.<a id="footnotetag1298" name=
+"footnotetag1298"></a><a href="#footnote1298"><sup>1298</sup></a>
+Similar islands of women are known to Chinese, Japanese, and Ainu
+folk-lore, to Greek mythology (Circe's and Calypso's islands), and
+to ancient Egyptian conceptions of the future life.<a id=
+"footnotetag1299" name="footnotetag1299"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1299"><sup>1299</sup></a> They were also <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page386" id="page386"></a>{386}</span> known
+elsewhere,<a id="footnotetag1300" name=
+"footnotetag1300"></a><a href="#footnote1300"><sup>1300</sup></a>
+and we may therefore assume that in describing such an island as
+part of Elysium, the Celts were using something common to universal
+folk-belief. But it may also owe something to actual custom, to the
+memory of a time when women performed their rites in seclusion, a
+seclusion perhaps recalled in the references to the mysterious
+nature of the island, its inaccessibility, and its disappearance
+once the mortal leaves it. To these rites men may have been
+admitted by favour, but perhaps to their detriment, because of
+their temporary partner's extreme erotic madness. This is the case
+in the Chinese tales of the island of women, and this, rather than
+home-sickness, may explain the desire of Bran, Oisin, etc., to
+leave Elysium. Celtic women performed orgiastic rites on islands,
+as has been seen.<a id="footnotetag1301" name=
+"footnotetag1301"></a><a href="#footnote1301"><sup>1301</sup></a>
+All this may have originated the belief in an island of beautiful
+divine women as part of Elysium, while it also heightened its
+sensuous aspect.</p>
+<p>Borrowed from the delight which the Celt took in music is the
+recurring reference to the marvellous music which swelled in
+Elysium. There, as the goddess says to Bran, "there is nothing
+rough or harsh, but sweet music striking on the ear." It sounded
+from birds on every tree, from the branches of trees, from
+marvellous stones, and from the harps of divine musicians. And this
+is recalled in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="page387" id=
+"page387"></a>{387}</span> ravishing music which the belated
+traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots&mdash;"what pipes
+and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!" The romantic beauty of Elysium is
+described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other
+sagas or <i>M&auml;rchen</i>, and it is insisted on by those who
+come to lure mortals there. The beauty of its
+landscapes&mdash;hills, white cliffs, valleys, sea and shore, lakes
+and rivers,&mdash;of its trees, its inhabitants, and its
+birds,&mdash;the charm of its summer haze, is obviously the product
+of the imagination of a people keenly alive to natural beauty. The
+opening lines sung by the goddess to Bran strike a note which
+sounds through all Celtic literature:</p>
+<div class="poem">
+<div class="stanza">
+<p>"There is a distant isle, around which sea-horses glisten,</p>
+<p>...</p>
+<p>A beauty of a wondrous land, whose aspects are lovely,</p>
+<p>Whose view is a fair country, incomparable in its haze.</p>
+<p>It is a day of lasting weather, that showers silver on the
+land;</p>
+<p>A pure white cliff on the range of the sea,</p>
+<p>Which from the sun receives its heat."</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+<p>So Oisin describes it: "I saw a country all green and full of
+flowers, with beautiful smooth plains, blue hills, and lakes and
+waterfalls." All this and more than this is the reflection of
+nature as it is found in Celtic regions, and as it was seen by the
+eye of Celtic dreamers, and interpreted to a poetic race by
+them.</p>
+<p>In Irish accounts of the <i>s&iacute;d</i>, Dagda has the
+supremacy, wrested later from him by Oengus, but generally each
+owner of a <i>s&iacute;d</i> is its lord. In Welsh tradition Arawn
+is lord of Annwfn, but his claims are contested by a rival, and
+other lords of Elysium are known. Manannan, a god of the sea,
+appears to be lord of the Irish island Elysium which is called "the
+land of Manannan," perhaps because it was easy to associate an
+oversea world "around which sea-horses glisten" with a god whose
+mythic steeds were the waves. But as it <span class=
+"pagenum"><a name="page388" id="page388"></a>{388}</span> lay
+towards the sunset, and as some of its aspects may have been
+suggested by the glories of the setting sun, the sun-god Lug was
+also associated with it, though he hardly takes the place of
+Manannan.</p>
+<p>Most of the aspects of Elysium appear unchanged in later
+folk-belief, but it has now become fairyland&mdash;a place within
+hills, mounds, or <i>s&iacute;d</i>, of marvellous beauty, with
+magic properties, and where time lapses as in a dream. A wonderful
+oversea land is also found in <i>M&auml;rchen</i> and tradition,
+and T&iacute;r na n-Og is still a living reality to the Celt. There
+is the fountain of youth, healing balsams, life-giving fruits,
+beautiful women or fairy folk. It is the true land of heart's
+desire. In the eleventh century MSS. from which our knowledge of
+Elysium is mainly drawn, but which imply a remote antiquity for the
+materials and ideas of the tales, the <i>s&iacute;d</i>-world is
+still the world of divine beings, though these are beginning to
+assume the traits of fairies. Probably among the people themselves
+the change had already begun to be made, and the land of the gods
+was simply fairyland. In Wales the same change had taken place, as
+is seen by Giraldus' account of Elidurus enticed to a subterranean
+fairyland by two small people.<a id="footnotetag1302" name=
+"footnotetag1302"></a><a href=
+"#footnote1302"><sup>1302</sup></a></p>
+<p>Some of the Elysium tales have been influenced by Christian
+conceptions, and in a certain group, the <i>Imrama</i> or
+"Voyages," Elysium finally becomes the Christian paradise or
+heaven. But the Elysium conception also reacted on Christian ideas
+of paradise. In the <i>Voyage of Maelduin</i>, which bears some
+resemblance to the story of Bran, the Christian influence is still
+indefinite, but it is more marked in the <i>Voyage of Snedgus and
+MacRiagla</i>. One island has become a kind of intermediate state,
+where dwell Enoch and Elijah, and many others waiting for the day
+of judgment. Another <span class="pagenum"><a name="page389" id=
+"page389"></a>{389}</span> island resembles the Christian heaven.
+But in the <i>Voyage of Brandan</i> the pagan elements have
+practically disappeared; there is an island of hell and an island
+of paradise.<a id="footnotetag1303" name=
+"footnotetag1303"></a><a href="#footnote1303"><sup>1303</sup></a>
+The island conception is the last relic of paganism, but now the
+voyage is undertaken for the purpose of revenge or penance or
+pilgrimage. Another series of tales of visionary journeys to hell
+or heaven are purely Christian, yet the joys of heaven have a
+sensuous aspect which recalls those of the pagan Elysium. In one of
+these, <i>The Tidings of Doomsday</i>,<a id="footnotetag1304" name=
+"footnotetag1304"></a><a href="#footnote1304"><sup>1304</sup></a>
+there are two hells, and besides heaven there is a place for the
+<i>boni non valde</i>, resembling the island of Enoch and Elijah in
+the <i>Voyage of Snedgus</i>. The connection of Elysium with the
+Christian paradise is seen in the title <i>Tir Tairngiri</i>, "The
+Land of Promise," which is applied to the heavenly kingdom or the
+land flowing with milk and honey in early glosses, <i>e.g.</i> on
+Heb. iv. 4, vi. 15, where Canaan and the <i>regnum c[oe]lorum</i>
+are called <i>T&iacute;r Tairngiri</i>, and in a gloss to 1 Cor. x.
+4, where the heavenly land is called T&iacute;r Tairngiri
+Innamb&eacute;o, "The Land of Promise of the Living Ones," thus
+likening it to the "Land of the Living" in the story of Connla.</p>
+<p>Sensuous as many of the aspects of Elysium are, they have yet a
+spiritual aspect which must not be overlooked. The emphasis placed
+on its beauty, its music, its rest and peace, its oblivion, is
+spiritual rather than sensual, while the dwelling of favoured
+mortals there with divine beings is suggestive of that union with
+the divine which is the essence of all religion. Though men are
+lured to seek it, they do not leave it, or they go back to it after
+a brief absence, and Laeg says that he would prefer Elysium to the
+kingship of all Ireland, and his <span class="pagenum"><a name=
+"page390" id="page390"></a>{390}</span> words are echoed by others.
+And the lure of the goddess often emphasises the freedom from
+turmoil, grief, and the rude alarms of earthly life. This "sweet
+and blessed country" is described with all the passion of a
+poetical race who dreamed of perfect happiness, and saw in the joy
+of nature's beauty, the love of women, and the thought of unbroken
+peace and harmony, no small part of man's truest life. Favoured
+mortals had reached Elysium, and the hope that he, too, might be so
+favoured buoyed up the Celt as he dreamed over this state, which
+was so much more blissful even than the future state of the dead.
+Many races have imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has
+so filled it with magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it
+as the Celts. They stood on the cliffs which faced the west, and as
+the pageant of sunset passed before them, or as at midday the light
+shimmered on the far horizon and on shadowy islands, they gazed
+with wistful eyes as if to catch a glimpse of Elysium beyond the
+fountains of the deep and the halls of the setting sun. In all this
+we see the Celtic version of a primitive and instinctive human
+belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and disappointment and
+strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes and believes
+that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time, eternal
+happiness and eternal love.</p>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1231" name=
+"footnote1231"></a><b>Footnote 1231:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1231">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 213.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1232" name=
+"footnote1232"></a><b>Footnote 1232:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1232">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 431.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1233" name=
+"footnote1233"></a><b>Footnote 1233:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1233">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 311; <i>IT</i> i. 113 f.; O'Curry, <i>MC</i> iii.
+190.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1234" name=
+"footnote1234"></a><b>Footnote 1234:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1234">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 1 f., text and translation.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1235" name=
+"footnote1235"></a><b>Footnote 1235:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1235">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 120<i>a</i>; Windisch, <i>Irische Gramm.</i> 120 f.;
+D'Arbois, v. 384 f.; <i>Gaelic Journal</i>, ii. 307.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1236" name=
+"footnote1236"></a><b>Footnote 1236:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1236">(return)</a>
+<p><i>TOS</i> iv. 234. See also Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 385; Kennedy,
+240.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1237" name=
+"footnote1237"></a><b>Footnote 1237:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1237">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LU</i> 43 f.; <i>IT</i> i. 205 f.; O'Curry, <i>Atlantis</i>,
+ii., iii.; D'Arbois, v. 170; Leahy, i. 60 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1238" name=
+"footnote1238"></a><b>Footnote 1238:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1238">(return)</a>
+<p>"From Manannan came foes."</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1239" name=
+"footnote1239"></a><b>Footnote 1239:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1239">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 223 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1240" name=
+"footnote1240"></a><b>Footnote 1240:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1240">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Grady, ii. 290. In this story the sea is identified with
+Fiachna's wife.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1241" name=
+"footnote1241"></a><b>Footnote 1241:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1241">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 253 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1242" name=
+"footnote1242"></a><b>Footnote 1242:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1242">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> iii. 211 f.; D'Arbois, ii. 185.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1243" name=
+"footnote1243"></a><b>Footnote 1243:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1243">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MS. Mat.</i> 388.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1244" name=
+"footnote1244"></a><b>Footnote 1244:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1244">(return)</a>
+<p>A similar idea occurs in many Fian tales.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1245" name=
+"footnote1245"></a><b>Footnote 1245:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1245">(return)</a>
+<p>Evans, <i>Welsh Dict. s.v.</i> "Annwfn"; Anwyl, 60; Gaidoz,
+<i>ZCP</i> i. 29 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1246" name=
+"footnote1246"></a><b>Footnote 1246:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1246">(return)</a>
+<p>Loth, i. 27 f.; see p. <a href="#page111">111</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1247" name=
+"footnote1247"></a><b>Footnote 1247:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1247">(return)</a>
+<p>Pp. <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1248" name=
+"footnote1248"></a><b>Footnote 1248:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1248">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 75; Loth, i. 29 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1249" name=
+"footnote1249"></a><b>Footnote 1249:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1249">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264, 276. Cf. the <i>Ille tournoiont</i> of the Graal
+romances and the revolving houses of <i>M&auml;rchen</i>. A
+revolving rampart occurs in "Maelduin" (<i>RC</i> x. 81).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1250" name=
+"footnote1250"></a><b>Footnote 1250:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1250">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 285.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1251" name=
+"footnote1251"></a><b>Footnote 1251:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1251">(return)</a>
+<p>Pp. <a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href="#page116">116</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1252" name=
+"footnote1252"></a><b>Footnote 1252:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1252">(return)</a>
+<p>Chretien, <i>Eric</i>, 1933 f.; Geoffrey, <i>Vita Merlini</i>,
+41; San Marte, <i>Geoffrey</i>, 425. Another Irish Liban is called
+Muirgen, which is the same as Morgen. See Girald. Cambr. <i>Spec.
+Eccl.</i> Rolls Series, iv. 48.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1253" name=
+"footnote1253"></a><b>Footnote 1253:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1253">(return)</a>
+<p>William of Malmesbury, <i>de Ant. Glaston. Eccl.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1254" name=
+"footnote1254"></a><b>Footnote 1254:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1254">(return)</a>
+<p>San Marte, 425.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1255" name=
+"footnote1255"></a><b>Footnote 1255:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1255">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Op. cit.</i> iv. 49.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1256" name=
+"footnote1256"></a><b>Footnote 1256:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1256">(return)</a>
+<p>Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 434; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 170; Hardiman,
+<i>Irish Minst.</i> i. 367; S&eacute;billot, ii. 56 f.; Girald.
+Cambr. ii. 12. The underworld is sometimes reached through a well
+(cf. p. <a href="#page282">282</a>, <i>supra</i>; <i>TI</i> iii.
+209).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1257" name=
+"footnote1257"></a><b>Footnote 1257:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1257">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Le Braz</i><sup>2</sup>, i. p. xxxix, ii. 37 f.; Albert le
+Grand, <i>Vies de Saints de Bretagne</i>, 63.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1258" name=
+"footnote1258"></a><b>Footnote 1258:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1258">(return)</a>
+<p>A whole class of such Irish legends is called <i>Tomhadna</i>,
+"Inundations." A typical instance is that of the town below Lough
+Neagh, already referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis, <i>Top. Hib.</i>
+ii. 9; cf. a Welsh instance in <i>Itin. Cambr.</i> i. 2. See
+Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL, passim</i>; Kennedy, 282; <i>Rev. des Trad.
+Pop.</i> ix. 79.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1259" name=
+"footnote1259"></a><b>Footnote 1259:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1259">(return)</a>
+<p><i>Scott. Celt. Rev.</i> i. 70; Campbell, <i>WHT</i> Nos. 38,
+52; Loth, i. 38.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1260" name=
+"footnote1260"></a><b>Footnote 1260:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1260">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>Tales</i>, 158; Rh[^y]s, <i>CFL</i> i. 230.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1261" name=
+"footnote1261"></a><b>Footnote 1261:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1261">(return)</a>
+<p>Nutt-Meyer, i. 159.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1262" name=
+"footnote1262"></a><b>Footnote 1262:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1262">(return)</a>
+<p>In the Vedas, Elysium has also a strong agricultural aspect,
+probably for the same reasons.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1263" name=
+"footnote1263"></a><b>Footnote 1263:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1263">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, ii. 119, 192, 385, vi. 197, 219; <i>RC</i> xxvi. 173;
+<i>Les Druides</i>, 121.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1264" name=
+"footnote1264"></a><b>Footnote 1264:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1264">(return)</a>
+<p>For the text see Windisch, <i>Ir. Gram.</i> 120: "Totchurethar
+bii bithbi at g&eacute;rait do d&aacute;inib Tethrach. ar-dot-chiat
+each dia i n-d&aacute;laib tathardai eter dugnathu inmaini." Dr.
+Stokes and Sir John Rh[^y]s have both privately confirmed the
+interpretation given above.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1265" name=
+"footnote1265"></a><b>Footnote 1265:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1265">(return)</a>
+<p>"Dialogue of the Sages," <i>RC</i> xxvi. 33 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1266" name=
+"footnote1266"></a><b>Footnote 1266:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1266">(return)</a>
+<p>Tethra was husband of the war-goddess Badb, and in one text his
+name is glossed <i>badb</i> (Cormac, <i>s.v.</i> "Tethra"). The
+name is also glossed <i>muir</i>, "sea," by O'Cleary, and the sea
+is called "the plain of Tethra" (<i>Arch. Rev.</i> i. 152). These
+obscure notices do not necessarily denote that he was ruler of an
+oversea Elysium.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1267" name=
+"footnote1267"></a><b>Footnote 1267:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1267">(return)</a>
+<p>Nennius, <i>Hist. Brit.</i> &sect; 13; D'Arbois, ii. 86, 134,
+231.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1268" name=
+"footnote1268"></a><b>Footnote 1268:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1268">(return)</a>
+<p><i>LL</i> 8<i>b</i>; Keating, 126.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1269" name=
+"footnote1269"></a><b>Footnote 1269:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1269">(return)</a>
+<p>Both art <i>motifs</i> and early burial customs in the two
+countries are similar. See Reinach, <i>RC</i> xxi. 88;
+<i>L'Anthropologie</i>, 1889, 397; Siret, <i>Les Premiere Ages du
+Metal dans le Sud. Est. de l'Espagne.</i></p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1270" name=
+"footnote1270"></a><b>Footnote 1270:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1270">(return)</a>
+<p>Orosius, i. 2. 71; <i>LL</i> 11<i>b</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1271" name=
+"footnote1271"></a><b>Footnote 1271:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1271">(return)</a>
+<p>D'Arbois, v. 384; O'Grady, ii. 385.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1272" name=
+"footnote1272"></a><b>Footnote 1272:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1272">(return)</a>
+<p><i>TOS</i> iii. 119; Joyce, <i>OCR</i> 314. For a folk-tale
+version see <i>Folk-lore</i>, vii. 321.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1273" name=
+"footnote1273"></a><b>Footnote 1273:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1273">(return)</a>
+<p>Leahy, i. 36; Campbell, <i>LF</i> 29; <i>CM</i> xiii. 285;
+<i>Dean of Lismore's Book</i>, 54.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1274" name=
+"footnote1274"></a><b>Footnote 1274:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1274">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 143; Cormac, 35.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1275" name=
+"footnote1275"></a><b>Footnote 1275:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1275">(return)</a>
+<p>See p. <a href="#page187">187</a>, <i>supra</i>; <i>IT</i> iii.
+213.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1276" name=
+"footnote1276"></a><b>Footnote 1276:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1276">(return)</a>
+<p>See Gaidoz, "La Requisition de l'Amour et la Symbolisme de la
+Pomme," <i>Ann. de l'&Eacute;cole Pratique des Hautes
+&Eacute;tudes</i>, 1902; Fraser, <i>Pausanias</i>, iii. 67.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1277" name=
+"footnote1277"></a><b>Footnote 1277:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1277">(return)</a>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, <i>HL</i> 359.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1278" name=
+"footnote1278"></a><b>Footnote 1278:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1278">(return)</a>
+<p>"The Silver Bough in Irish Legend," <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xii.
+431.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1279" name=
+"footnote1279"></a><b>Footnote 1279:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1279">(return)</a>
+<p>Cook, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, xvii. 158.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1280" name=
+"footnote1280"></a><b>Footnote 1280:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1280">(return)</a>
+<p><i>IT</i> i. 133.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1281" name=
+"footnote1281"></a><b>Footnote 1281:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1281">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Donovan, <i>Battle of Mag Rath</i>, 50; D'Arbois, v. 67;
+<i>IT</i> i. 96. Dagda's cauldron came from Murias, probably an
+oversea world.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1282" name=
+"footnote1282"></a><b>Footnote 1282:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1282">(return)</a>
+<p>Miss Hull, 244. Scath is here the Other-world, conceived,
+however, as a dismal abode.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1283" name=
+"footnote1283"></a><b>Footnote 1283:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1283">(return)</a>
+<p>O'Curry, <i>MC</i> ii. 97, iii. 79; Keating, 284 f.; <i>RC</i>
+xv. 449.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1284" name=
+"footnote1284"></a><b>Footnote 1284:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1284">(return)</a>
+<p>Skene, i. 264; cf. <i>RC</i> xxii. 14.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1285" name=
+"footnote1285"></a><b>Footnote 1285:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1285">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page116">116</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1286" name=
+"footnote1286"></a><b>Footnote 1286:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1286">(return)</a>
+<p>Guest, iii. 321 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1287" name=
+"footnote1287"></a><b>Footnote 1287:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1287">(return)</a>
+<p>See pp. <a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>,
+<i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1288" name=
+"footnote1288"></a><b>Footnote 1288:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1288">(return)</a>
+<p>For the use of a vessel in ritual as a symbol of deity, see
+Crooke, <i>Folk-Lore</i>, viii. 351 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1289" name=
+"footnote1289"></a><b>Footnote 1289:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1289">(return)</a>
+<p>Diod. Sic. v. 28; Athen. iv. 34; Joyce, <i>SH</i> ii. 124;
+<i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, iv. 327. The cauldrons of Irish
+houses are said in the texts to be inexhaustible (cf. <i>RC</i>
+xxiii. 397).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1290" name=
+"footnote1290"></a><b>Footnote 1290:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1290">(return)</a>
+<p>Strabo, vii. 2. 1; Lucan, Usener's ed., p. 32; <i>IT</i> iii.
+210; <i>Antient Laws of Ireland</i>, i. 195 f.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1291" name=
+"footnote1291"></a><b>Footnote 1291:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1291">(return)</a>
+<p>Curtin, <i>HTI</i> 249, 262.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1292" name=
+"footnote1292"></a><b>Footnote 1292:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1292">(return)</a>
+<p>See Villemarqu&eacute;, <i>Contes Pop. des anciens Bretons</i>,
+Paris, 1842; Rh[^y]s, <i>AL</i>; and especially Nutt, <i>Legend of
+the Holy Grail</i>, 1888.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1293" name=
+"footnote1293"></a><b>Footnote 1293:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1293">(return)</a>
+<p>"Adventures of Nera," <i>RC</i> x. 226; <i>RC</i> xvi. 62,
+64.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1294" name=
+"footnote1294"></a><b>Footnote 1294:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1294">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page106">106</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1295" name=
+"footnote1295"></a><b>Footnote 1295:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1295">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page107">107</a>, <i>supra</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1296" name=
+"footnote1296"></a><b>Footnote 1296:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1296">(return)</a>
+<p>For parallel myths see <i>Rig-Veda</i>, i. 53. 2; Campbell,
+<i>Travels in South Africa</i>, i. 306; Johnston, <i>Uganda
+Protectorate</i>, ii. 704; Ling Roth, <i>Natives of Sarawak</i>, i.
+307; and cf. the myth of Prometheus.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1297" name=
+"footnote1297"></a><b>Footnote 1297:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1297">(return)</a>
+<p>This is found in the stories of Bran, Maelduin, Connla, in Fian
+tales (O'Grady, ii. 228, 238), in the "Children of Tuirenn," and in
+Gaelic <i>M&auml;rchen</i>.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1298" name=
+"footnote1298"></a><b>Footnote 1298:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1298">(return)</a>
+<p>Martin, 277; S&eacute;billot, ii. 76.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1299" name=
+"footnote1299"></a><b>Footnote 1299:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1299">(return)</a>
+<p>Burton, <i>Thousand Nights and a Night</i>, x. 239; Chamberlain,
+<i>Aino Folk-Tales</i>, 38; <i>L'Anthropologie</i>, v. 507;
+Maspero, <i>Hist. anc. des peuples de l'Orient</i>, i. 183. The
+lust of the women of these islands is fatal to their lovers.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1300" name=
+"footnote1300"></a><b>Footnote 1300:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1300">(return)</a>
+<p>An island near New Guinea is called "the land of women." On it
+men are allowed to land temporarily, but only the female offspring
+of the women are allowed to survive (<i>L' Anthrop.</i> v. 507).
+The Indians of Florida had a tradition of an island in a lake
+inhabited by the fairest women (Chateaubriand, <i>Autob.</i> 1824,
+ii. 24), and Fijian mythology knows of an Elysian island of
+goddesses, near the land of the gods, to which a few favoured
+mortals are admitted (Williams, <i>Fiji</i>, i. 114).</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1301" name=
+"footnote1301"></a><b>Footnote 1301:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1301">(return)</a>
+<p>P. <a href="#page274">274</a>, <i>supra</i>. Islands may have
+been regarded as sacred because of such cults, as the folk-lore
+reported by Plutarch suggests (p. <a href="#page343">343</a>,
+<i>supra</i>). Celtic saints retained the veneration for islands,
+and loved to dwell on them, and the idea survives in folk-belief.
+Cf. the veneration of Lewismen for the Flannan islands.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1302" name=
+"footnote1302"></a><b>Footnote 1302:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1302">(return)</a>
+<p>Gir. Camb. <i>Itin. Camb.</i> i. 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1303" name=
+"footnote1303"></a><b>Footnote 1303:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1303">(return)</a>
+<p>Translations of some of these <i>Voyages</i> by Stokes are given
+in <i>RC</i>, vols. ix. x. and xiv. See also Zimmer, "Brendan's
+Meerfahrt," <i>Zeits. f&uuml;r Deut. Alt.</i> xxxiii.; cf.
+Nutt-Meyer, ch. 4, 8.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<blockquote class="footnote"><a id="footnote1304" name=
+"footnote1304"></a><b>Footnote 1304:</b><a href=
+"#footnotetag1304">(return)</a>
+<p><i>RC</i> iv. 243.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page391" id=
+"page391"></a>{391}</span>
+<hr class="full" />
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+<br />
+<p>Abnoba, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Adamnan, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p>Aed Abrat, <a href="#page65">65</a>.</p>
+<p>Aed Slane, <a href="#page351">351</a>.</p>
+<p>Aeracura, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href=
+"#page44">44</a>.</p>
+<p>Afanc, <a href="#page190">190</a>.</p>
+<p>Agricultural rites, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page4">4</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a>,
+<a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href=
+"#page227">227</a>, <a href="#page237">237</a>. See <a href=
+"#index-festivals">Festivals</a>.</p>
+<p>Aife, <a href="#page129">129</a>.</p>
+<p>Aill&eacute;n, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Aine, <a href="#page70">70</a> f.</p>
+<p>Aitherne, <a href="#page84">84</a>.</p>
+<p>Albiorix, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>All Saints' Day, <a href="#page170">170</a>.</p>
+<p>All Souls' Day, <a href="#page170">170</a>.</p>
+<p>Allat, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>.</p>
+<p>Alpine race, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href=
+"#page12">12</a>.</p>
+<p>Altars, <a href="#page282">282</a> f.</p>
+<p>Am&aelig;thon, <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href=
+"#page384">384</a>.</p>
+<p>Amairgen, <a href="#page55">55</a>, <a href=
+"#page172">172</a>.</p>
+<p>Ambicatus, <a href="#page19">19</a>, <a href=
+"#page222">222</a>.</p>
+<p>Amours with mortals, divine, <a href="#page128">128</a>,
+<a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page348">348</a>, <a href=
+"#page350">350</a>, <a href="#page355">355</a>.</p>
+<p>Amulets, <a href="#page30">30</a>, <a href="#page327">327</a>
+f., <a href="#page323">323</a>.</p>
+<p>Ancestor worship, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href=
+"#page200">200</a>.</p>
+<p>Andarta, <a href="#page41">41</a>.</p>
+<p>Andrasta, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href=
+"#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Anextiomarus, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Animal gods, anthropomorphic, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href=
+"#page139">139</a> f., <a href="#page158">158</a>, <a href=
+"#page210">210</a>, <a href="#page212">212</a>, <a href=
+"#page226">226</a>.</p>
+<p>Animal worship, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href=
+"#page186">186</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a> f., <a href=
+"#page260">260</a>.</p>
+<p>Animals, burial of, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href=
+"#page211">211</a>, <a href="#page221">221</a>.</p>
+<p>Animals, descent from, <a href="#page213">213</a>, <a href=
+"#page216">216</a> f.</p>
+<p>Animals, domestic, from the gods' land, <a href=
+"#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page384">384</a>.</p>
+<p>Animals, dressing as, <a href="#page217">217</a>, <a href=
+"#page260">260</a>.</p>
+<p>Animals, sacramental eating of, <a href="#page221">221</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Animals, slaughter of, <a href="#page382">382</a>.</p>
+<p>Animals, tabooed, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Animism, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href=
+"#page185">185</a>.</p>
+<p>Ankou, <a href="#page345">345</a>.</p>
+<p>Annwfn, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a>,
+<a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href=
+"#page367">367</a> f., <a href="#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Anu, <a href="#page67">67</a> f., <a href="#page72">72</a>,
+<a href="#page73">73</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>Anwyl, Prof., <a href="#page41">41</a> note, <a href=
+"#page96">96</a>.</p>
+<p>Apollo, <a href="#page25">25</a>, <a href="#page27">27</a>,
+<a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a>, <a href=
+"#page183">183</a>, <a href="#page231">231</a>.</p>
+<p>Arawn, <a href="#page111">111</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>,
+<a href="#page384">384</a>, <a href="#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Arch&aelig;ology, <a href="#page2">2</a>.</p>
+<p>Arduinna, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Arianrhod, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href=
+"#page105">105</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href=
+"#page109">109</a> f.</p>
+<p>Artemis, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a>,
+<a href="#page177">177</a>, <a href="#page242">242</a>.</p>
+<p>Artaios, <a href="#page24">24</a>, <a href=
+"#page121">121</a>.</p>
+<p>Arthur, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page97">97</a>,
+<a href="#page109">109</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href=
+"#page119">119</a> f., <a href="#page211">211</a>, <a href=
+"#page242">242</a>, <a href="#page344">344</a>, <a href=
+"#page369">369</a>, <a href="#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Arthurian cycle, <a href="#page119">119</a>, <a href=
+"#page383">383</a>.</p>
+<p>Artor, <a href="#page121">121</a>.</p>
+<p>Arvalus, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Astrology, <a href="#page248">248</a>.</p>
+<p>Augustus, <a href="#page23">23</a>, <a href=
+"#page90">90</a>.</p>
+<p>Auto-suggestion, <a href="#page254">254</a>.</p>
+<p>Avagddu, <a href="#page116">116</a>.</p>
+<p>Avallon, <a href="#page120">120</a>, <a href=
+"#page369">369</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Bacchus, <a href="#page274">274</a>.</p>
+<p>Badb, <a href="#page58">58</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>,
+<a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page136">136</a>, <a href=
+"#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>.</p>
+<p>Badbcatha, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href=
+"#page71">71</a>.</p>
+<p>Balor, <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href="#page35">35</a> note,
+<a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href=
+"#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page90">90</a>.</p>
+<p>Banba, <a href="#page50">50</a>, <a href="#page73">73</a>,
+<a href="#page74">74</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Banfeinnidi</i>, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Bangaisgedaig</i>, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p>Baptism, <a href="#page196">196</a> note, <a href=
+"#page308">308</a> f.</p>
+<p>Bards, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page299">299</a>,
+<a href="#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p>Barintus, <a href="#page88">88</a>.</p>
+<p>Barrex, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Barri, S., <a href="#page88">88</a>.</p>
+<p>Bear, cult of, <a href="#page212">212</a>.</p>
+<p>Beddoe, Dr., <a href="#page12">12</a>.</p>
+<p>Belatucadros, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href=
+"#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Belenos, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href="#page102">102</a>,
+<a href="#page113">113</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href=
+"#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page264">264</a>, <a href=
+"#page298">298</a>.</p>
+<p>Belg&aelig;, <a href="#page9">9</a> f.</p>
+<p>Beli, <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>,
+<a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a> f., <a href=
+"#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Belinuntia</i>, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href=
+"#page322">322</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page392" id=
+"page392"></a>{392}</span>
+<p>Belinus, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href="#page102">102</a>,
+<a href="#page113">113</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p>Belisama, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page68">68-69</a>,
+<a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Bellovesus, <a href="#page19">19</a>.</p>
+<p>Beltane, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page194">194</a>,
+<a href="#page239">239</a>, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href=
+"#page264">264</a>.</p>
+<p>Bericynthia, <a href="#page44">44</a>, <a href=
+"#page275">275</a>.</p>
+<p>Bertrand, M., <a href="#page305">305</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Bile</i>, <a href="#page162">162</a>, <a href=
+"#page201">201</a>.</p>
+<p>Bile, <a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page60">60</a>,
+<a href="#page103">103</a>.</p>
+<p>Bird gods, <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href=
+"#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page247">247</a>.</p>
+<p>Birth, <a href="#page196">196</a>, <a href=
+"#page345">345</a>.</p>
+<p>Black Annis' Bower, <a href="#page67">67</a>.</p>
+<p>Blathnat, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page109">109</a>,
+<a href="#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Blodeuwedd, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href=
+"#page105">105</a> f., <a href="#page108">108</a>.</p>
+<p>Blood, <a href="#page240">240</a>, <a href=
+"#page244">244</a>.</p>
+<p>Blood, Brotherhood, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href=
+"#page240">240</a>.</p>
+<p>Boand, <a href="#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page191">191</a>.</p>
+<p>Boar, cult of, <a href="#page42">42</a>.</p>
+<p>Bodb, <a href="#page83">83</a>.</p>
+<p>Bodb Dearg, <a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>,
+<a href="#page86">86</a>.</p>
+<p>Bormana, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Borvo, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>Boudicca, <a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Boughs, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href=
+"#page270">270</a>.</p>
+<p>Boundary stones, <a href="#page284">284</a>.</p>
+<p>Braciaca, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>Bran, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>,
+<a href="#page100">100</a> f., <a href="#page107">107</a>, <a href=
+"#page111">111</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href=
+"#page160">160</a>, <a href="#page242">242</a>, <a href=
+"#page363">363</a>, <a href="#page379">379</a> f.</p>
+<p>Branwen, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href="#page103">103</a>
+f., <a href="#page381">381</a> f., <a href="#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Braziers, god of, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Brennius, <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Brennus, <a href="#page160">160</a>.</p>
+<p>Bres, <a href="#page53">53</a>, <a href="#page54">54</a>,
+<a href="#page58">58-59</a>.</p>
+<p>Brian, <a href="#page73">73</a> f.</p>
+<p>Bride, S., <a href="#page69">69</a>.</p>
+<p>Bridge, <a href="#page346">346</a>.</p>
+<p>Bridge of Life, <a href="#page228">228</a>.</p>
+<p>Brigantia, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href=
+"#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Brigindo, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href=
+"#page275">275</a>.</p>
+<p>Brigit, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page58">58</a>,
+<a href="#page68">68</a> f., <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>.</p>
+<p>Brigit, St., <a href="#page68">68</a> f., <a href=
+"#page88">88</a> note, <a href="#page257">257</a>.</p>
+<p>Broca, <a href="#page9">9</a>.</p>
+<p>Bronze Age, <a href="#page148">148</a>.</p>
+<p>Brother-sister unions, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href=
+"#page113">113</a>.</p>
+<p>Brown Bull, <a href="#page130">130</a>.</p>
+<p>Brownie, <a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a>,
+<a href="#page245">245</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Brug</i>. See <a href="#index-sid"><i>S&iacute;d</i></a>.</p>
+<p>Brythons, <a href="#page13">13</a>.</p>
+<p>Brythons, gods of, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href=
+"#page95">95</a> f., <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p>Buanann, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page73">73</a>,
+<a href="#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>Bull, cult of, <a href="#page38">38</a>, <a href=
+"#page140">140</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a>, <a href=
+"#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>.</p>
+<p>Burial rites, <a href="#page309">309</a>, <a href=
+"#page337">337</a> f.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Caer Sidi, <a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href=
+"#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>.</p>
+<p>C&aelig;sar, <a href="#page22">22</a>, <a href="#page29">29</a>,
+<a href="#page219">219</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>, <a href=
+"#page233">233</a>, <a href="#page283">283</a>, <a href=
+"#page294">294</a>, <a href="#page334">334</a>.</p>
+<p>Cakes, <a href="#page266">266</a>.</p>
+<p>Calatin, <a href="#page131">131</a> f.</p>
+<p>Calendar, <a href="#page175">175</a> f., <a href=
+"#page252">252</a>.</p>
+<p>Camulos, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page149">149</a>.</p>
+<p>Candlemas, <a href="#page69">69</a>.</p>
+<p>Cannibalism, <a href="#page239">239</a>, <a href=
+"#page271">271</a>.</p>
+<p>Caoilte, <a href="#page61">61</a>, <a href="#page142">142</a>,
+<a href="#page152">152</a>, <a href="#page336">336</a>.</p>
+<p>Caractacus, <a href="#page103">103</a>.</p>
+<p>Carman, <a href="#page167">167</a>.</p>
+<p>Carpenters, god of, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Cassiterides, <a href="#page39">39</a>.</p>
+<p>Cassivellaunus, <a href="#page113">113</a>.</p>
+<p>Castor and Pollux, <a href="#page136">136</a>.</p>
+<p>Caswallawn, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href=
+"#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page112">112-113</a>.</p>
+<p>Cathbad, <a href="#page127">127</a>.</p>
+<p>Cathubodua, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href=
+"#page71">71</a>.</p>
+<p>Caturix, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>Cauldron, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page92">92</a>,
+<a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href=
+"#page120">120</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>, <a href=
+"#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Celt&aelig;, <a href="#page8">8</a>, <a href="#page9">9</a>,
+<a href="#page15">15</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtiberians, <a href="#page176">176</a>, <a href=
+"#page246">246</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtic and Teutonic religion, <a href="#page11">11</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtic empire, <a href="#page18">18</a> f.</p>
+<p>Celtic origins, <a href="#page8">8</a> f.</p>
+<p>Celtic people, types of, <a href="#page8">8</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtic religion, evolution of, <a href="#page3">3</a> f.</p>
+<p>Celtic religion, higher aspects of, <a href="#page6">6</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtic religion, homogeneity of, <a href="#page5">5</a>.</p>
+<p>Celtic religion, Roman influence on, <a href="#page5">5</a>.</p>
+<p>Celts, gods of, <a href="#page158">158</a>.</p>
+<p>Celts, religiosity of, <a href="#page2">2</a>.</p>
+<p>Celts, temperament of, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page14">14</a>.</p>
+<p>Cenn Cruaich, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page79">79</a>
+note.</p>
+<p>Cera, <a href="#page77">77</a>.</p>
+<p>Cernunnos, <a href="#page29">29</a> f., <a href=
+"#page32">32</a>, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>, <a href="#page212">212</a>, <a href=
+"#page282">282</a>.</p>
+<p>Cerridwen, <a href="#page116">116</a> f., <a href=
+"#page351">351</a>, <a href="#page358">358</a> f.</p>
+<p>Cessair, <a href="#page50">50</a>.</p>
+<p>Cethlenn, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href=
+"#page81">81</a>.</p>
+<p>Cetnad, <a href="#page249">249</a>.</p>
+<p>Charms, <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href=
+"#page356">356</a>.</p>
+<p>Church and paganism, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href=
+"#page7">7</a>, <a href="#page48">48</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a>,
+<a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href=
+"#page152">152</a> f., <a href="#page174">174</a> f., <a href=
+"#page203">203</a> f., <a href="#page238">238</a>, <a href=
+"#page249">249</a>, <a href="#page258">258</a>, <a href=
+"#page272">272</a>, <a href="#page280">280</a>, <a href=
+"#page285">285</a>, <a href="#page288">288-289</a>, <a href=
+"#page315">315</a>, <a href="#page321">321</a>, <a href=
+"#page331">331</a>, <a href="#page389">389</a>.</p>
+<p>Cian, <a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a>.</p>
+<p>Clairvoyance, <a href="#page307">307</a>.</p>
+<p>Cleena, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Clota, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Clutoida, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Cocidius, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Cock, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Columba, S., <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href="#page66">66</a>,
+<a href="#page88">88</a> note, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page315">315</a>, <a href=
+"#page324">324</a>, <a href="#page331">331-332</a>, <a href=
+"#page358">358</a>.</p>
+<p>Combats, ritual, <a href="#page263">263</a>, <a href=
+"#page267">267</a>.</p>
+<p>Comedov&aelig;, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<p>Comyn, M., <a href="#page143">143</a>, <a href=
+"#page151">151</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page393" id=
+"page393"></a>{393}</span>
+<p>Conaire, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page220">220</a>,
+<a href="#page252">252</a>, <a href="#page255">255</a>.</p>
+<p>Conall Cernach, <a href="#page134">134</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>, <a href="#page230">230</a>, <a href=
+"#page240">240</a>.</p>
+<p>Conan, <a href="#page142">142</a>.</p>
+<p>Conception, magical, <a href="#page351">351</a>.</p>
+<p>Conchobar, <a href="#page127">127</a>, <a href=
+"#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>, <a href=
+"#page182">182</a>, <a href="#page232">232</a>, <a href=
+"#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p>Conn, <a href="#page367">367</a>.</p>
+<p>Conncrithir, <a href="#page73">73</a>.</p>
+<p>Connla, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page65">65</a>,
+<a href="#page364">364</a>, <a href="#page374">374</a>, <a href=
+"#page377">377</a>, <a href="#page379">379</a>, <a href=
+"#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Conservatism in belief, <a href="#page193">193</a>.</p>
+<p>Coral, <a href="#page329">329</a>.</p>
+<p>Coranians, <a href="#page114">114</a>.</p>
+<p>Cordelia, <a href="#page99">99</a>.</p>
+<p>Cormac, <a href="#page67">67</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>,
+<a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page366">366</a>.</p>
+<p>Corn-spirit, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href=
+"#page107">107</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href=
+"#page168">168</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href=
+"#page213">213</a>, <a href="#page260">260</a>, <a href=
+"#page262">262</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a> f., <a href=
+"#page275">275</a>.</p>
+<p>Corotacus, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Cosmogony, <a href="#page227">227</a> f.</p>
+<p>Couvade, <a href="#page130">130</a>, <a href=
+"#page224">224</a>.</p>
+<p>Crafts, gods of, <a href="#page93">93</a>.</p>
+<p>Cranes, <a href="#page38">38</a>.</p>
+<p>Craniology, <a href="#page8">8</a> f.</p>
+<p>Creation, <a href="#page230">230</a>.</p>
+<p>Creiddylad, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href="#page99">99</a>,
+<a href="#page113">113</a>.</p>
+<p>Creidne, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page77">77</a>.</p>
+<p>Creirwy, <a href="#page116">116</a>.</p>
+<p>Crom Dubh, <a href="#page80">80</a>.</p>
+<p>Crom Eocha, <a href="#page79">79</a>.</p>
+<p>Cromm Cruaich, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href=
+"#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a>, <a href=
+"#page286">286</a>.</p>
+<p>Cross, <a href="#page290">290</a>.</p>
+<p>Cross-roads, <a href="#page174">174</a>.</p>
+<p>Cruithne, <a href="#page17">17</a>.</p>
+<p>C&uacute;chulainn, <a href="#page72">72</a>, <a href=
+"#page109">109</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href=
+"#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href=
+"#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page240">240</a>, <a href=
+"#page252">252</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href=
+"#page336">336</a>, <a href="#page349">349</a>, <a href=
+"#page355">355</a>, <a href="#page357">357</a>, <a href=
+"#page365">365</a>, <a href="#page369">369</a>, <a href=
+"#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>C&uacute;chulainn saga, <a href="#page38">38</a>, <a href=
+"#page63">63</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href=
+"#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page97">97</a>, <a href=
+"#page127">127</a> f., <a href="#page145">145</a>, <a href=
+"#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page207">207</a>.</p>
+<p>Culann, <a href="#page128">128</a>.</p>
+<p>Culture goddesses, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href=
+"#page68">68</a> f.</p>
+<p>Culture gods and heroes, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href=
+"#page58">58</a>, <a href="#page92">92-93</a>, <a href=
+"#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page124">124</a> note, <a href="#page136">136</a>.</p>
+<p>Cumal, <a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href="#page142">142</a>,
+<a href="#page145">145</a> f., <a href="#page148">148</a> f.</p>
+<p>C&uacute;roi, <a href="#page109">109</a>, <a href=
+"#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Cursing wells, <a href="#page137">137</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Dagda, <a href="#page44">44</a>, <a href="#page61">61</a>,
+<a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href=
+"#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page74">74-75</a>, <a href=
+"#page77">77</a> f., <a href="#page327">327</a>, <a href=
+"#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Damona, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href=
+"#page215">215</a>.</p>
+<p>Dance, ritual, <a href="#page246">246</a>, <a href=
+"#page268">268</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>.</p>
+<p>Danu, <a href="#page63">63</a>, <a href="#page67">67</a> f.,
+<a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href=
+"#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Daoine-sidhe</i>, <a href="#page62">62</a>.</p>
+<p>D'Arbois, M., <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href=
+"#page38">38</a>, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href=
+"#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page74">74</a>, <a href=
+"#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a>, <a href=
+"#page264">264</a>, <a href="#page293">293</a>, <a href=
+"#page314">314</a>, <a href="#page341">341</a>, <a href=
+"#page357">357</a>, <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p>
+<p>Day of Judgment, <a href="#page347">347</a>.</p>
+<p>Dead, condition and cult of, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href=
+"#page165">165</a> f., <a href="#page282">282</a>, <a href=
+"#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page333">333</a> f., <a href=
+"#page340">340</a>, <a href="#page344">344</a> f., <a href=
+"#page378">378</a>.</p>
+<p>Dead Debtor, <a href="#page337">337</a>.</p>
+<p>Dead, land of, and Elysium, <a href="#page340">340</a> f.</p>
+<p>Dead living in grave, <a href="#page338">338-339</a>.</p>
+<p>Debility of Ultonians, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href=
+"#page129">129</a> f., <a href="#page224">224</a>.</p>
+<p>Dechelette, M., <a href="#page166">166</a>.</p>
+<p>Dechtire, <a href="#page127">127</a> f., <a href=
+"#page348">348</a>, <a href="#page354">354</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Deiseil</i>, <a href="#page193">193</a>, <a href=
+"#page237">237</a>, <a href="#page271">271</a>.</p>
+<p>Dei Terreni, <a href="#page64">64</a>.</p>
+<p>Demeter, <a href="#page44">44</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>,
+<a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page274">274</a>.</p>
+<p>Demons, <a href="#page173">173</a> f., <a href=
+"#page188">188</a>.</p>
+<p>Devorgilla, <a href="#page133">133</a>.</p>
+<p>Diana, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href="#page177">177</a>.</p>
+<p>Diancecht, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a>,
+<a href="#page207">207</a>, <a href="#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p>Diarmaid, <a href="#page82">82</a>, <a href="#page83">83</a>,
+<a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href=
+"#page142">142</a>, <a href="#page147">147</a>, <a href=
+"#page150">150</a>, <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href=
+"#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page252">252</a>, <a href=
+"#page254">254</a>, <a href="#page351">351</a>, <a href=
+"#page365">365-366</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Dii Casses,</i> <a href="#page39">39</a>.</p>
+<p>Diodorus Siculus, <a href="#page334">334</a>.</p>
+<p>Dionysus, <a href="#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Dioscuri, <a href="#page136">136</a>.</p>
+<p>Dirona, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Dirra, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Disablot, <a href="#page169">169</a>.</p>
+<p>Disir, <a href="#page169">169</a>.</p>
+<p>Dispater, <a href="#page29">29</a> f., <a href="#page44">44</a>,
+<a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href=
+"#page169">169</a>, <a href="#page218">218</a>, <a href=
+"#page229">229</a>, <a href="#page341">341</a>, <a href=
+"#page345">345</a>, <a href="#page376">376</a>.</p>
+<p>Distortion, <a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href=
+"#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page134">134</a>.</p>
+<p>Divination, <a href="#page235">235</a>, <a href=
+"#page247">247</a> f., <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href=
+"#page266">266</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a>.</p>
+<p>Divine descent, <a href="#page351">351</a>, <a href=
+"#page354">354</a>.</p>
+<p>Divine kings, <a href="#page253">253</a>.</p>
+<p>Divineresses, <a href="#page316">316</a>.</p>
+<p>Diviners, <a href="#page299">299</a>.</p>
+<p>Divining rod, <a href="#page248">248</a>.</p>
+<p>Dolmens, <a href="#page283">283</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>,
+<a href="#page352">352</a>.</p>
+<p>Domestication, <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href=
+"#page214">214</a>, <a href="#page225">225</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Domin&aelig;</i>, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<p>Domnu, <a href="#page57">57</a> note, <a href="#page59">59</a>,
+<a href="#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>D&ocirc;n, <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href="#page63">63</a>,
+<a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>Donnotaurus, <a href="#page138">138</a>, <a href=
+"#page209">209</a>.</p>
+<p>Dragon, <a href="#page114">114</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>,
+<a href="#page188">188</a>.</p>
+<p>Drink of oblivion, <a href="#page324">324</a>.</p>
+<p>Druidesses, <a href="#page250">250</a>, <a href=
+"#page316">316</a>.</p>
+<p>Druidic Hedge, <a href="#page324">324</a>.</p>
+<p>Druidic sending, <a href="#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-druids" id="index-druids">Druids</a>, <a href=
+"#page6">6</a>, <a href="#page22">22</a>, <a href="#page61">61</a>,
+<a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href=
+"#page161">161</a> f., <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href=
+"#page180">180</a>, <a href="#page201">201</a>, <a href=
+"#page205">205</a> f., <a href="#page235">235</a> f., <a href=
+"#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page246">246</a> f., <a href=
+"#page250">250</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href=
+"#page280">280-281</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a> f., <a href=
+"#page293">293</a> f., <a href="#page312">312</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids and Filid, <a href="#page305">305</a> f.</p>
+<p>Druids and magic, <a href="#page310">310</a>, <a href=
+"#page319">319</a>, <a href="#page325">325</a> f.</p>
+<p>Druids and medicine, <a href="#page309">309</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids and monasticism, <a href="#page305">305</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids and Pythagoras, <a href="#page303">303</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids and Rome, <a href="#page312">312</a> f.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page394" id=
+"page394"></a>{394}</span>
+<p>Druids, classical references to, <a href="#page301">301</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Druids, dress of, <a href="#page310">310</a> f.</p>
+<p>Druids, origin of, <a href="#page292">292</a> f.</p>
+<p>Druids, poems of, <a href="#page2">2</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids, power of, <a href="#page312">312</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids, teaching of, <a href="#page307">307</a> f., <a href=
+"#page314">314</a>, <a href="#page333">333</a>.</p>
+<p>Druids, varieties of, <a href="#page298">298</a> f.</p>
+<p>Drunemeton, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href=
+"#page280">280</a>, <a href="#page306">306</a>.</p>
+<p>Dualism, <a href="#page57">57</a> f., <a href="#page60">60</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Dumias, <a href="#page25">25</a>.</p>
+<p>Dusii, <a href="#page355">355</a>.</p>
+<p>Dwelling of gods. See <a href="#index-gods">Gods, abode
+of</a>.</p>
+<p>Dylan, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a>,
+<a href="#page178">178</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p><i>Each uisge</i>, <a href="#page188">188</a>.</p>
+<p>Earth and Under-earth, <a href="#page35">35</a>, <a href=
+"#page37">37</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>.</p>
+<p>Earth cults, <a href="#page3">3</a>.</p>
+<p>Earth divinities, <a href="#page31">31</a>, <a href=
+"#page35">35</a>, <a href="#page37">37</a>, <a href=
+"#page40">40</a>, <a href="#page42">42</a>, <a href=
+"#page44">44</a> f., <a href="#page57">57</a> note, <a href=
+"#page65">65</a>, <a href="#page67">67</a> f., <a href=
+"#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page110">110</a>, <a href=
+"#page162">162</a>, <a href="#page169">169</a>, <a href=
+"#page227">227</a>, <a href="#page229">229</a> f., <a href=
+"#page345">345</a>.</p>
+<p>Eclipses, <a href="#page178">178</a>.</p>
+<p>Ecne, <a href="#page74">74</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>Ecstasy, <a href="#page251">251</a>.</p>
+<p>Egg, serpent's, <a href="#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Elatha, <a href="#page53">53</a>, <a href="#page58">58</a>,
+<a href="#page60">60</a>.</p>
+<p>Elcmar, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>.</p>
+<p>Elements, cult of, <a href="#page171">171</a> f.</p>
+<p>Elphin, <a href="#page118">118</a>.</p>
+<p>Elves, <a href="#page66">66</a> note.</p>
+<p>Elysium, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a> f.,
+<a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href=
+"#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href=
+"#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href=
+"#page120">120</a>, <a href="#page163">163</a>, <a href=
+"#page201">201</a>, <a href="#page229">229</a> f., <a href=
+"#page350">350</a>, <a href="#page362">362</a> f.</p>
+<p>Elysium, and Paradise, <a href="#page388">388</a> f.</p>
+<p>Elysium, characteristics of, <a href="#page373">373</a> ff.</p>
+<p>Elysium, lords of, <a href="#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Elysium, names of, <a href="#page362">362</a>.</p>
+<p>Elysium, origin of, <a href="#page370">370</a> f.</p>
+<p>Elysium, varieties of, <a href="#page363">363</a> f.</p>
+<p>Emer, <a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>,
+<a href="#page135">135</a>.</p>
+<p>Enbarr, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href=
+"#page135">135</a>.</p>
+<p>Eochaid, <a href="#page83">83</a>.</p>
+<p>Eochaid Ollathair, <a href="#page78">78</a>.</p>
+<p>Eochaid O'Flynn, <a href="#page64">64</a>.</p>
+<p>Eogabail, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Epona, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page189">189</a>, <a href="#page213">213</a> f.</p>
+<p>Eri, <a href="#page53">53</a>.</p>
+<p>Eridanus, <a href="#page27">27</a>.</p>
+<p>Eriu, <a href="#page73">73-74</a>.</p>
+<p>Esus, <a href="#page29">29</a>, <a href="#page38">38</a>,
+<a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href=
+"#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Etain, <a href="#page82">82</a> f., <a href="#page223">223</a>,
+<a href="#page348">348</a>, <a href="#page363">363</a>, <a href=
+"#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Etair, <a href="#page82">82</a>.</p>
+<p>Ethics, <a href="#page304">304</a>, <a href=
+"#page307">307</a>.</p>
+<p>Ethne, <a href="#page31">31</a> note, <a href=
+"#page89">89</a>.</p>
+<p>Euhemerisation, <a href="#page49">49</a> f., <a href=
+"#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href=
+"#page95">95</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href=
+"#page127">127</a>.</p>
+<p>Eurosswyd, <a href="#page100">100</a>.</p>
+<p>Evans, Dr., <a href="#page200">200</a>.</p>
+<p>Evil eye, <a href="#page59">59</a>.</p>
+<p>Evnissyen, <a href="#page98">98</a>.</p>
+<p>Exogamy, <a href="#page222">222</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Ex votos</i>, <a href="#page195">195</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Fachan, <a href="#page251">251</a>.</p>
+<p>Fairies, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href="#page45">45</a> f.,
+<a href="#page62">62</a>, <a href="#page64">64</a> f., <a href=
+"#page70">70</a>, <a href="#page73">73</a>, <a href=
+"#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>, <a href=
+"#page114">114</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href=
+"#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page173">173</a>, <a href=
+"#page178">178</a> note, <a href="#page183">183</a>, <a href=
+"#page185">185</a> f., <a href="#page190">190</a>, <a href=
+"#page201">201</a>, <a href="#page203">203</a>, <a href=
+"#page262">262</a>, <a href="#page263">263</a>, <a href=
+"#page378">378</a>.</p>
+<p>Fairyland, <a href="#page372">372</a>, <a href=
+"#page385">385</a>, <a href="#page388">388</a>.</p>
+<p><i>F&aacute;ith</i>, <a href="#page106">106</a>, <a href=
+"#page300">300</a>, <a href="#page309">309</a>.</p>
+<p>Falga, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>,
+<a href="#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Fand, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href="#page87">87</a>,
+<a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href=
+"#page365">365</a>, <a href="#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Ferdia, <a href="#page131">131</a>.</p>
+<p>Fergus, <a href="#page142">142</a>, <a href=
+"#page336">336</a>.</p>
+<p>Fertility cults, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href=
+"#page73">73</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href=
+"#page83">83</a>, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href=
+"#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href=
+"#page114">114-115</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a>, <a href=
+"#page330">330</a>, <a href="#page352">352</a>, <a href=
+"#page382">382</a> f.</p>
+<p><a name="index-festivals" id="index-festivals">Festivals</a>,
+<a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page256">256</a> f.</p>
+<p>Festivals of dead, <a href="#page167">167</a>.</p>
+<p>Fetich, <a href="#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Fiachna, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page350">350</a>,
+<a href="#page366">366</a>, <a href="#page379">379</a>.</p>
+<p>Fians, <a href="#page143">143</a>, <a href=
+"#page365">365</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Filid</i>, <a href="#page248">248</a> f., <a href=
+"#page300">300</a>, <a href="#page305">305</a> f., <a href=
+"#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Findbennach</i>, <a href="#page130">130</a>.</p>
+<p>Finnen, S., <a href="#page351">351</a>.</p>
+<p>Finntain, <a href="#page50">50</a>.</p>
+<p>Fionn, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href="#page118">118</a>,
+<a href="#page120">120-121</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page142">142</a> f., <a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href=
+"#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href=
+"#page344">344</a>, <a href="#page350">350</a>, <a href=
+"#page365">365-366</a>.</p>
+<p>Fionn saga, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href="#page97">97</a>,
+<a href="#page111">111</a>, <a href="#page120">120</a>, <a href=
+"#page142">142</a> f.</p>
+<p><i>Fir Dea</i>, <a href="#page63">63</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Fir Domnann</i>, <a href="#page52">52</a> f., <a href=
+"#page157">157</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Fir S&iacute;de</i>, <a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href=
+"#page65">65</a>.</p>
+<p>Firbolgs, <a href="#page52">52</a>, <a href=
+"#page57">57</a>.</p>
+<p>Fires, <a href="#page199">199</a> f., <a href=
+"#page259">259</a>, <a href="#page261">261</a> f., <a href=
+"#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a>, <a href=
+"#page270">270</a>.</p>
+<p>Fires, sacred, <a href="#page69">69</a>.</p>
+<p>Fish, sacred, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href=
+"#page220">220</a>.</p>
+<p>Flann Manistrech, <a href="#page64">64</a>.</p>
+<p>Flood, <a href="#page228">228</a>, <a href=
+"#page231">231</a>.</p>
+<p>Fomorians, <a href="#page51">51</a>, <a href="#page52">52</a>
+f., <a href="#page55">55-56</a>, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href=
+"#page72">72</a>, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href=
+"#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href=
+"#page114">114</a>, <a href="#page133">133</a>, <a href=
+"#page189">189</a>, <a href="#page237">237</a>, <a href=
+"#page251">251</a>.</p>
+<p>Food of immortality, <a href="#page377">377</a> f.</p>
+<p>Food as bond of relationship, <a href="#page379">379</a>.</p>
+<p>Forest divinities, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href=
+"#page108">108</a>.</p>
+<p>Fotla, <a href="#page73">73-74</a>.</p>
+<p>Foundation sacrifices, <a href="#page238">238</a>.</p>
+<p>Fountains, <a href="#page171">171</a>, <a href=
+"#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a>.</p>
+<p>Fountains of youth, <a href="#page378">378</a>, <a href=
+"#page388">388</a>.</p>
+<p>Fraoch, <a href="#page377">377</a>.</p>
+<p>Friuch, <a href="#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p>Frazer, Dr. J.G., <a href="#page170">170</a>, <a href=
+"#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a>.</p>
+<p>Fuamnach, <a href="#page22">22</a>.</p>
+<p>Funeral sacrifices, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href=
+"#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a>.</p>
+<p>Future life, <a href="#page333">333</a> f.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page395" id=
+"page395"></a>{395}</span><br />
+<p>Galat&aelig;, <a href="#page18">18</a>.</p>
+<p>Galli, <a href="#page19">19</a>.</p>
+<p>Gallizen&aelig;, <a href="#page317">317</a>. See <a href=
+"#index-priestesses">Priestesses</a>.</p>
+<p>Galioin, <a href="#page52">52</a>, <a href="#page57">57</a>.</p>
+<p>Garbh mac Stairn, <a href="#page139">139</a>.</p>
+<p>Gargantua, <a href="#page124">124</a> note, <a href=
+"#page230">230</a>.</p>
+<p>Garman, <a href="#page167">167</a>.</p>
+<p>Gauls, <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href="#page20">20</a>.</p>
+<p>Gavida, <a href="#page89">89</a>, <a href=
+"#page109">109</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-geasa" id="index-geasa"><i>Geasa</i></a>,
+<a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href=
+"#page134">134</a>, <a href="#page144">144</a>, <a href=
+"#page150">150</a> f., <a href="#page160">160</a>, <a href=
+"#page252">252</a> f. See <a href="#index-tabu">Tabu</a>.</p>
+<p>Geoffrey of Monmouth, <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href=
+"#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page119">119</a>.</p>
+<p>Ghosts, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page67">67</a>,
+<a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href="#page169">169</a>, <a href=
+"#page262">262</a>, <a href="#page281">281</a>, <a href=
+"#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href=
+"#page336">336</a>.</p>
+<p>Ghosts in trees, <a href="#page202">202</a> f.</p>
+<p>Gildas, <a href="#page171">171</a>.</p>
+<p>Gilla Coemain, <a href="#page64">64</a>.</p>
+<p>Gilv&aelig;thwy, <a href="#page104">104</a>.</p>
+<p>Glass, <a href="#page370">370</a>.</p>
+<p>Glastonbury, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href=
+"#page121">121</a>, <a href="#page369">369</a>.</p>
+<p>Goborchin, <a href="#page189">189</a>.</p>
+<p>God of Connaught, <a href="#page92">92</a>.</p>
+<p>God of Druidism, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href=
+"#page105">105</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a>.</p>
+<p>God of Ulster, <a href="#page92">92</a>.</p>
+<p>Goddesses and mortals, <a href="#page355">355</a>.</p>
+<p>Goddesses, pre-eminence of, <a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href=
+"#page124">124</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>Godiva, <a href="#page276">276</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-gods" id="index-gods">Gods, abode of</a>,
+<a href="#page228">228</a> f., <a href="#page362">362</a>, <a href=
+"#page372">372</a>.</p>
+<p>Gods, children of, <a href="#page159">159</a>.</p>
+<p>Gods, fertility and civilisation from land of, <a href=
+"#page100">100</a>, <a href="#page106">106-107</a>, <a href=
+"#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page380">380</a> f., <a href="#page383">383</a>.</p>
+<p>Gods uniting with mortals, <a href="#page159">159</a>.</p>
+<p>Goibniu, <a href="#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page103">103</a>,
+<a href="#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p>Goidels, <a href="#page16">16</a>, <a href="#page17">17</a>,
+<a href="#page96">96</a>.</p>
+<p>Goll mac Morna, <a href="#page142">142</a>.</p>
+<p>Gomme, Sir G.L., <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page295">295</a>.</p>
+<p>Goose, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Govannon, <a href="#page109">109</a> f.</p>
+<p>Graal, <a href="#page383">383</a>.</p>
+<p>Grainne, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href=
+"#page254">254</a>.</p>
+<p>Grannos, <a href="#page26">26</a>, <a href="#page42">42</a> f.,
+<a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href=
+"#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>Gregory of Tours, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href=
+"#page196">196</a>, <a href="#page275">275</a>.</p>
+<p>Groves, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page198">198</a>,
+<a href="#page279">279</a> f.</p>
+<p>Growth, divinities of, <a href="#page5">5</a>, <a href=
+"#page44">44</a>, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href=
+"#page82">82</a>, <a href="#page92">92</a>, <a href=
+"#page182">182</a>.</p>
+<p>Gruagach, <a href="#page245">245</a>.</p>
+<p>Guinevere, <a href="#page123">123</a>.</p>
+<p>Gurgiunt, <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p>Gutuatri, <a href="#page298">298</a> f.</p>
+<p>Gwawl, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a>.</p>
+<p>Gweir, <a href="#page106">106</a>.</p>
+<p>Gwion, <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page351">351</a>,
+<a href="#page381">381</a>.</p>
+<p>Gwydion, <a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href="#page105">105</a>
+f., <a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>,
+<a href="#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Gwyn, <a href="#page55">55</a>, <a href="#page113">113</a>,
+<a href="#page115">115</a>.</p>
+<p>Gwythur, <a href="#page55">55</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Hades, <a href="#page135">135</a>.</p>
+<p>Hafgan, <a href="#page111">111</a>, <a href=
+"#page368">368</a>.</p>
+<p>Hallowe'en, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href=
+"#page281">281</a>.</p>
+<p>Hallstatt, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href=
+"#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Hallucinations, <a href="#page323">323-324</a>.</p>
+<p>Hammer as divine symbol, <a href="#page30">30</a>, <a href=
+"#page291">291</a>.</p>
+<p>Hammer, God with, <a href="#page30">30</a> f., <a href=
+"#page35">35</a>, <a href="#page36">36</a> f., <a href=
+"#page79">79</a>.</p>
+<p>Haoma, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Hare, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Harvest, <a href="#page259">259</a>, <a href=
+"#page273">273</a>.</p>
+<p>Head-hunting, <a href="#page240">240</a>.</p>
+<p>Heads, cult of, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href=
+"#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href=
+"#page240">240</a> f.</p>
+<p>Healing plants, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href=
+"#page206">206</a> f.</p>
+<p>Healing ritual, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href=
+"#page193">193</a> f.</p>
+<p>Healing springs, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href=
+"#page186">186</a>.</p>
+<p>Hearth as altar, <a href="#page165">165</a> f.</p>
+<p>Heaven and earth, <a href="#page227">227</a>.</p>
+<p>Hen, <a href="#page219">219</a>.</p>
+<p>Hephaistos, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Heracles, <a href="#page25">25</a>, <a href="#page75">75</a>,
+<a href="#page133">133</a>.</p>
+<p>Heroes in hills, <a href="#page344">344</a>.</p>
+<p>Hills, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p>
+<p>Holder, A., <a href="#page23">23</a>.</p>
+<p>Horned helmets, <a href="#page217">217</a>.</p>
+<p>Horns, gods with, <a href="#page32">32</a> f.</p>
+<p>Horse, <a href="#page213">213</a> f.</p>
+<p>Hu Gadarm, <a href="#page124">124</a> note.</p>
+<p>Hyde, Dr., <a href="#page143">143-144</a>.</p>
+<p>Hyperboreans, <a href="#page18">18</a>, <a href=
+"#page27">27</a>.</p>
+<p>Hypnotism, <a href="#page307">307</a>, <a href=
+"#page310">310</a>, <a href="#page323">323-324</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Iberians, <a href="#page13">13</a>.</p>
+<p>Icauna, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Iconoclasm, <a href="#page287">287</a>.</p>
+<p>Igerna, <a href="#page120">120</a>.</p>
+<p>Images, <a href="#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page85">85</a>,
+<a href="#page204">204</a>, <a href="#page277">277</a>, <a href=
+"#page283">283</a> f.</p>
+<p><i>Imbas Forosnai</i>, <a href="#page248">248</a>.</p>
+<p>Immortality, <a href="#page158">158</a>, <a href=
+"#page333">333</a>, <a href="#page376">376</a>.</p>
+<p>Incantations, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href=
+"#page248">248</a> f., <a href="#page254">254</a>, <a href=
+"#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page325">325</a>.</p>
+<p>Incest, <a href="#page223">223</a> f.</p>
+<p>Indech, <a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page58">58</a>.</p>
+<p>Inspiration, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href=
+"#page118">118</a>.</p>
+<p>Invisibility, <a href="#page322">322</a>, <a href=
+"#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Is, <a href="#page372">372</a>.</p>
+<p>Iuchar, Iucharbar, <a href="#page63">63</a>, <a href=
+"#page73">73</a> f.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Janus, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>.</p>
+<p>Joyce, Dr., <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href=
+"#page143">143</a>, <a href="#page236">236</a>.</p>
+<p>Juno, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<p>Junones, <a href="#page45">45</a>.</p>
+<p>Jullian, <a href="#page178">178</a>.</p>
+<p>Juppiter, <a href="#page29">29</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Kalevala, <a href="#page142">142</a>.</p>
+<p>Keane, <a href="#page9">9</a>.</p>
+<p>Keating, <a href="#page51">51</a>, <a href=
+"#page143">143</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page396" id=
+"page396"></a>{396}</span>
+<p>Kei, <a href="#page122">122</a> f.</p>
+<p>Keres, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p>Kieva, <a href="#page99">99</a>.</p>
+<p>King and fertility, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href=
+"#page253">253</a>.</p>
+<p>Kings, divine, <a href="#page160">160</a> f., <a href=
+"#page243">243</a>.</p>
+<p>Kings, election of, <a href="#page306">306</a>.</p>
+<p>Kore, <a href="#page44">44</a>, <a href=
+"#page274">274-275</a>.</p>
+<p>Kronos, <a href="#page59">59</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>La T&egrave;ne, <a href="#page208">208</a>.</p>
+<p>Labraid, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href="#page365">365</a>,
+<a href="#page369">369</a>, <a href="#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Lakes, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page194">194</a>.</p>
+<p>Lammas, <a href="#page273">273</a>.</p>
+<p>Land under waves, <a href="#page371">371</a>.</p>
+<p>Lear, <a href="#page86">86</a>.</p>
+<p>Ler, Lir, <a href="#page49">49</a> note, <a href=
+"#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page320">320</a>.</p>
+<p>Lia Fail, <a href="#page329">329</a>.</p>
+<p>Liban, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href="#page365">365</a>.</p>
+<p>Libations, <a href="#page244">244</a> f., <a href=
+"#page247">247</a>.</p>
+<p>Ligurians, <a href="#page13">13</a>.</p>
+<p>Llew, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href="#page104">104</a>,
+<a href="#page106">106</a>.</p>
+<p>Lludd Llawereint, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href=
+"#page99">99</a>, <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href=
+"#page113">113</a> f., <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p>Llyr, <a href="#page98">98</a> f.</p>
+<p>Lochlanners, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href=
+"#page147">147</a>.</p>
+<p>Lodens, <a href="#page113">113</a>.</p>
+<p>Loegaire, <a href="#page64">64</a>, <a href="#page137">137</a>,
+<a href="#page379">379</a>.</p>
+<p>Lonnrot, <a href="#page142">142</a>.</p>
+<p>Loth, M., <a href="#page108">108</a>.</p>
+<p>Love, <a href="#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Lucan, <a href="#page38">38</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page279">279</a>, <a href="#page282">282</a>, <a href=
+"#page335">335</a> f., <a href="#page345">345</a>.</p>
+<p>Luchtine, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Lucian, <a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href=
+"#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Lug, <a href="#page31">31</a> note, <a href="#page35">35</a>
+note, <a href="#page59">59</a>, <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href=
+"#page61">61</a>, <a href="#page74">74</a>, <a href=
+"#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page89">89</a> f., <a href=
+"#page103">103</a>, <a href="#page108">108</a> f., <a href=
+"#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page131">131</a>, <a href=
+"#page134">134</a>, <a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href=
+"#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a>, <a href=
+"#page348">348</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a> f.</p>
+<p>Lugaid, <a href="#page132">132</a>.</p>
+<p>Lugnasad, <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href="#page109">109</a>,
+<a href="#page167">167</a> f., <a href="#page272">272</a> f.</p>
+<p>Lugoves, <a href="#page91">91</a>.</p>
+<p>Lugus, <a href="#page90">90</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a>.</p>
+<p>Lycanthropy, <a href="#page216">216</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Mabinogion, <a href="#page2">2</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Mabon, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href=
+"#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>MacBain, Dr., <a href="#page16">16</a>, <a href=
+"#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>.</p>
+<p>MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne, <a href=
+"#page74">74</a>.</p>
+<p>Macha, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page129">129</a>,
+<a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page241">241</a>.</p>
+<p>MacIneely, <a href="#page89">89</a>.</p>
+<p>MacPherson, <a href="#page142">142</a>, <a href=
+"#page155">155</a> f.</p>
+<p>Madonna, <a href="#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Maelduin, <a href="#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Maelrubha, S. <a href="#page243">243</a>.</p>
+<p>Magic, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href="#page105">105</a>,
+<a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page292">292</a>, <a href=
+"#page319">319</a>.</p>
+<p>Magic, agricultural, <a href="#page260">260</a>, <a href=
+"#page265">265-266</a>, <a href="#page271">271</a>, <a href=
+"#page273">273</a>, <a href="#page276">276</a> note.</p>
+<p>Magico-medical rites, <a href="#page330">330</a> f., <a href=
+"#page332">332</a>.</p>
+<p>Magonia, <a href="#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p>Magtured, <a href="#page53">53</a> f., <a href=
+"#page84">84</a>.</p>
+<p>Man, origin of, <a href="#page36">36</a>, <a href=
+"#page228">228</a>.</p>
+<p>Manannan, <a href="#page49">49</a> note, <a href=
+"#page64">64-65</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href=
+"#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page86">86</a> f., <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href=
+"#page134">134</a>, <a href="#page147">147</a>, <a href=
+"#page178">178</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a>, <a href=
+"#page231">231</a>, <a href="#page350">350</a> f., <a href=
+"#page358">358</a>, <a href="#page364">364</a> f., <a href=
+"#page380">380</a>, <a href="#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Manawyddan, <a href="#page87">87</a>, <a href="#page98">98</a>
+f., <a href="#page100">100</a> f., <a href="#page111">111</a>,
+<a href="#page368">368</a>.</p>
+<p>Mannhardt, <a href="#page269">269</a>.</p>
+<p>Maponos, <a href="#page27">27</a>, <a href=
+"#page123">123</a>.</p>
+<p><i>M&auml;rchen</i> formul&aelig;, <a href="#page77">77</a>,
+<a href="#page82">82</a>, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href=
+"#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page95">95</a>, <a href=
+"#page107">107-108</a>, <a href="#page111">111</a>, <a href=
+"#page116">116</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href=
+"#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page133">133</a>, <a href=
+"#page143">143</a>, <a href="#page148">148</a>, <a href=
+"#page152">152</a>, <a href="#page187">187</a>, <a href=
+"#page337">337</a>, <a href="#page353">353</a>, <a href=
+"#page384">384</a>.</p>
+<p>Marriage, sacred, <a href="#page163">163</a>, <a href=
+"#page267">267</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a>.</p>
+<p>Mars, <a href="#page27">27</a> f., <a href="#page85">85</a>,
+<a href="#page180">180</a>, <a href="#page214">214</a>.</p>
+<p>Martin, S., <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href=
+"#page243">243</a>, <a href="#page260">260</a>.</p>
+<p>Martinmas, <a href="#page259">259</a>. f.</p>
+<p>Math, <a href="#page104">104</a> f.</p>
+<p>Matholwych, <a href="#page98">98</a>.</p>
+<p>Matres, <a href="#page40">40</a>, <a href="#page44">44</a> f.,
+<a href="#page72">72-73</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>, <a href=
+"#page169">169</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a>, <a href=
+"#page214">214</a>, <a href="#page285">285</a>, <a href=
+"#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Matriarchate, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href=
+"#page223">223</a>.</p>
+<p>Matron&aelig;, <a href="#page46">46</a>, <a href=
+"#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>May-day, <a href="#page114">114</a>.</p>
+<p>May-queen, <a href="#page163">163</a>, <a href=
+"#page267">267</a>.</p>
+<p>Medb, <a href="#page130">130</a> f.</p>
+<p>Medicine, <a href="#page309">309</a> f.</p>
+<p>Mediterranean race, <a href="#page9">9</a>.</p>
+<p>Medros, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href=
+"#page209">209</a>.</p>
+<p>Megaliths, <a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href=
+"#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page330">330</a>, <a href=
+"#page352">352</a>. See <a href=
+"#index-stonehenge">Stonehenge</a>.</p>
+<p>Men, cults of, <a href="#page3">3</a>.</p>
+<p>Mercury, <a href="#page24">24</a> f., <a href="#page34">34</a>,
+<a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page284">284</a> f.</p>
+<p>Merlin, <a href="#page120">120</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Mermaids, <a href="#page190">190</a>.</p>
+<p>Metempsychosis, <a href="#page303">303</a>, <a href=
+"#page348">348</a> f.</p>
+<p>Meyer, Prof., <a href="#page16">16</a>, <a href=
+"#page294">294</a>.</p>
+<p>Miach, <a href="#page27">27</a>.</p>
+<p>Mider, <a href="#page82">82</a> f., <a href="#page209">209</a>,
+<a href="#page363">363</a>, <a href="#page380">380-381</a>.</p>
+<p>Midsummer, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href="#page92">92</a>,
+<a href="#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page184">184</a>, <a href=
+"#page191">191</a>, <a href="#page194">194</a>, <a href=
+"#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page215">215</a>, <a href=
+"#page235">235</a>, <a href="#page239">239</a>, <a href=
+"#page257">257</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a> f.</p>
+<p>Mile, <a href="#page54">54</a>.</p>
+<p>Milesians, <a href="#page55">55</a>, <a href="#page60">60</a>,
+<a href="#page78">78</a>.</p>
+<p>Minerva, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page68">68</a>,
+<a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Miracles, <a href="#page331">331</a>, <a href=
+"#page351">351</a>.</p>
+<p>Mistletoe, <a href="#page162">162</a>, <a href=
+"#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page199">199</a>, <a href=
+"#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a> f., <a href=
+"#page270">270</a>.</p>
+<p>Mithraism, <a href="#page209">209</a>.</p>
+<p>Moccus, <a href="#page24">24</a>, <a href=
+"#page210">210</a>.</p>
+<p>Modranicht, <a href="#page169">169</a>.</p>
+<p>Modron, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href=
+"#page183">183</a>.</p>
+<p>Mogons, <a href="#page27">27</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p>Mongan, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page120">120</a>,
+<a href="#page350">350</a> f., <a href="#page358">358</a>.</p>
+<p>Moon, <a href="#page175">175</a> f., <a href=
+"#page246">246</a>.</p>
+<p>Morgen, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a>,
+<a href="#page369">369</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page397" id=
+"page397"></a>{397}</span>
+<p>Morrigan, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a>,
+<a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href="#page130">130-131</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136-137</a>, <a href="#page159">159</a>, <a href=
+"#page172">172</a>.</p>
+<p>Morvran, <a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href=
+"#page118">118</a>.</p>
+<p>Mounds, <a href="#page63">63</a>, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p>
+<p>Mountain gods, <a href="#page39">39</a>.</p>
+<p>Mountains, <a href="#page171">171</a> f.</p>
+<p>Mowat, M., <a href="#page33">33</a>, <a href=
+"#page36">36</a>.</p>
+<p>Muireartach, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href=
+"#page179">179</a>.</p>
+<p>Muirne, <a href="#page148">148</a>.</p>
+<p>Mule, <a href="#page214">214</a>.</p>
+<p>Mullo, <a href="#page214">214</a>.</p>
+<p>Music, <a href="#page329">329</a>, <a href=
+"#page386">386</a>.</p>
+<p>Mythological school, <a href="#page83">83</a>, <a href=
+"#page89">89</a>, <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href=
+"#page119">119</a>, <a href="#page122">122</a>, <a href=
+"#page133">133</a> f.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Name, <a href="#page246">246</a>.</p>
+<p>Name-giving, <a href="#page308">308</a> f.</p>
+<p>Nantosvelta, <a href="#page31">31</a>.</p>
+<p>Nature divinities and spirits, <a href="#page48">48</a>,
+<a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page171">171</a> f.</p>
+<p>Needfire, <a href="#page199">199</a>.</p>
+<p>Nemaind, <a href="#page58">58</a>.</p>
+<p>Neman, <a href="#page71">71</a>.</p>
+<p>Nemedians, <a href="#page51">51</a> f.</p>
+<p><i>Nemeton</i>, <a href="#page161">161</a>.</p>
+<p>Nemetona, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href=
+"#page71">71</a>.</p>
+<p>Nennius, <a href="#page119">119</a>.</p>
+<p>Neo-Druidic heresy, <a href="#page2">2</a> note.</p>
+<p>Neptune, <a href="#page85">85</a>.</p>
+<p>Nera, <a href="#page339">339</a>.</p>
+<p>Nessa, <a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href=
+"#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p>N&eacute;t, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href="#page58">58</a>,
+<a href="#page71">71</a>.</p>
+<p>Neton, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>New Year, <a href="#page170">170</a>, <a href=
+"#page259">259</a>, <a href="#page261">261</a>.</p>
+<p>Night, <a href="#page256">256</a>.</p>
+<p>Niskas, <a href="#page185">185</a>.</p>
+<p>Nodons, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href="#page114">114</a>,
+<a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>.</p>
+<p>Norse influence, <a href="#page99">99</a>, <a href=
+"#page127">127</a>.</p>
+<p>Nuada, <a href="#page53">53</a> f., <a href="#page61">61</a>,
+<a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a>, <a href=
+"#page90">90</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>.</p>
+<p>Nuada Necht, <a href="#page85">85</a> f.</p>
+<p>Nudd, <a href="#page113">113</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a> f.,
+<a href="#page124">124</a>, <a href="#page160">160</a>.</p>
+<p>Nudd Hael, <a href="#page86">86</a>.</p>
+<p>Nudity, <a href="#page275">275-276</a>, <a href=
+"#page322">322</a>.</p>
+<p>Nutt, Mr., <a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href=
+"#page373">373</a>.</p>
+<p>Nymphs, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Nynnyaw, <a href="#page113">113</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Oak, <a href="#page199">199</a>.</p>
+<p>Oaths, <a href="#page172">172</a> f., <a href=
+"#page292">292</a>.</p>
+<p>O'Curry, <a href="#page65">65</a>, <a href=
+"#page143">143</a>.</p>
+<p>O'Davoren, <a href="#page91">91</a>.</p>
+<p>Oengus, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href="#page81">81</a>,
+<a href="#page86">86</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href=
+"#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Oghams, <a href="#page75">75</a>.</p>
+<p>Ogma, <a href="#page54">54</a>, <a href="#page74">74-75</a>.</p>
+<p>Ogm&iacute;os, <a href="#page25">25</a>, <a href=
+"#page75">75</a>.</p>
+<p>Oilill Olom, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Oisin, <a href="#page142">142</a>, <a href=
+"#page150">150-151</a>, <a href="#page152">152</a> f., <a href=
+"#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page364">364</a>, <a href=
+"#page379">379</a>, <a href="#page387">387</a>.</p>
+<p>Omens, <a href="#page247">247</a> f.</p>
+<p>Oracles, <a href="#page179">179</a>, <a href=
+"#page196">196</a>.</p>
+<p>Oran, <a href="#page238">238</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Orbis alius</i>, <a href="#page340">340</a>.</p>
+<p>Orbsen, <a href="#page87">87</a>.</p>
+<p>Ordeals, <a href="#page196">196</a> f., <a href=
+"#page383">383</a>.</p>
+<p>Orgiastic rites, <a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href=
+"#page261">261</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href=
+"#page386">386</a>.</p>
+<p>Osiris, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Paradise, <a href="#page388">388</a> f.</p>
+<p>Partholan, <a href="#page51">51</a>.</p>
+<p>Pastoral stage, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page225">225</a>, <a href="#page260">260</a>.</p>
+<p>Patrick, S., <a href="#page61">61</a>. <a href="#page64">64</a>,
+<a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href=
+"#page76">76</a>, <a href="#page79">79-80</a>, <a href=
+"#page132">132</a>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href=
+"#page152">152</a> f., <a href="#page171">171</a>, <a href=
+"#page193">193</a>, <a href="#page237">237</a>, <a href=
+"#page242">242</a>, <a href="#page249">249</a>, <a href=
+"#page251">251</a>, <a href="#page286">286</a>, <a href=
+"#page315">315</a> f., <a href="#page319">319</a>.</p>
+<p>Peanfahel, <a href="#page17">17</a>.</p>
+<p>Peisgi, <a href="#page185">185</a>.</p>
+<p>Penn Cruc, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p>
+<p>Pennocrucium, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p>
+<p>Perambulation, <a href="#page277">277</a>.</p>
+<p>Persephone, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href=
+"#page85">85</a>.</p>
+<p>Picts, <a href="#page16">16</a> f., <a href="#page217">217</a>,
+<a href="#page220">220</a>, <a href="#page222">222</a>.</p>
+<p>Pillar of sky, <a href="#page228">228</a>.</p>
+<p>Place-names, <a href="#page16">16</a> note, <a href=
+"#page17">17</a>, <a href="#page19">19</a>, <a href=
+"#page120">120</a>, <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href=
+"#page209">209</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Plants, <a href="#page176">176</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Pliny, <a href="#page162">162</a>, <a href="#page175">175</a>,
+<a href="#page198">198</a>, <a href="#page205">205</a> f., <a href=
+"#page328">328</a>.</p>
+<p>Plutarch, <a href="#page343">343</a>.</p>
+<p>Pluto, <a href="#page34">34</a> f.</p>
+<p>Plutus, <a href="#page35">35</a>.</p>
+<p>Poeninus, <a href="#page39">39</a>.</p>
+<p>Poetry, divinities of, <a href="#page68">68</a>, <a href=
+"#page75">75</a>.</p>
+<p>Pollux, <a href="#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p>Polyandry, <a href="#page74">74</a>, <a href="#page223">223</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Polygamy, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href=
+"#page224">224</a>.</p>
+<p>Prayer, <a href="#page245">245</a> f.</p>
+<p>Pre-Celtic cults, <a href="#page48">48</a>, <a href=
+"#page81">81</a>, <a href="#page93">93</a>, <a href=
+"#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page202">202</a>, <a href=
+"#page219">219</a>, <a href="#page224">224</a>, <a href=
+"#page277">277</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a> f., <a href=
+"#page361">361</a>.</p>
+<p>Priesthood. See <a href="#index-druids">Druids</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-priestesses" id=
+"index-priestesses">Priestesses</a>, <a href="#page69">69</a>,
+<a href="#page180">180</a>, <a href="#page192">192</a> f., <a href=
+"#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page246">246</a>, <a href=
+"#page250">250</a>, <a href="#page316">316</a>, <a href=
+"#page321">321</a>.</p>
+<p>Priest-kings, <a href="#page161">161</a>, <a href=
+"#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page267">267</a>, <a href=
+"#page296">296</a>, <a href="#page307">307</a>.</p>
+<p>Procopius, <a href="#page342">342</a>.</p>
+<p>Prophecy, <a href="#page250">250</a> f, <a href=
+"#page300">300</a> f.</p>
+<p>Pryderi, <a href="#page98">98</a> f., <a href="#page110">110</a>
+f., <a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>,
+<a href="#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Pwyll, <a href="#page110">110</a> f., <a href=
+"#page112">112</a>, <a href="#page368">368</a>, <a href=
+"#page385">385</a>.</p>
+<p>Pythagoras, <a href="#page303">303</a>, <a href=
+"#page334">334</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p><i>Quadrivi&aelig;</i>, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Ragnarok, <a href="#page232">232</a>.</p>
+<p>Rain-making, <a href="#page266">266</a>, <a href=
+"#page321">321</a> f.</p>
+<p>Rebirth, <a href="#page88">88</a>, <a href="#page117">117</a>,
+<a href="#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page348">348</a> f.</p>
+<p>Reinach, M., <a href="#page31">31</a> note, <a href=
+"#page38">38</a>, <a href="#page137">137</a>, <a href=
+"#page211">211</a>, <a href="#page287">287</a>, <a href=
+"#page297">297</a>, <a href="#page317">317</a>, <a href=
+"#page340">340</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page398" id=
+"page398"></a>{398}</span>
+<p>Relics, <a href="#page332">332</a>.</p>
+<p>Retribution, <a href="#page346">346</a>.</p>
+<p>Rhiannon, <a href="#page98">98</a> f., <a href=
+"#page110">110</a> f.</p>
+<p>Rh[^y]s, Sir J., <a href="#page15">15</a>, <a href=
+"#page16">16</a>, <a href="#page24">24</a>, <a href=
+"#page55">55</a>, <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href=
+"#page68">68</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>, <a href=
+"#page82">82</a> f., <a href="#page91">91</a>, <a href=
+"#page93">93</a>, <a href="#page100">100</a>, <a href=
+"#page101">101</a> f., <a href="#page103">103</a>, <a href=
+"#page106">106</a>, <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href=
+"#page122">122</a>, <a href="#page135">135</a>, <a href=
+"#page183">183</a>, <a href="#page219">219</a>, <a href=
+"#page282">282</a>, <a href="#page294">294</a>, <a href=
+"#page356">356</a>, <a href="#page376">376</a>.</p>
+<p>Rigantona, <a href="#page111">111</a>.</p>
+<p>Rigisama, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>River divinities, <a href="#page43">43</a>, <a href=
+"#page46">46</a>, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href=
+"#page182">182</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href=
+"#page354">354</a>.</p>
+<p>Rivers, cult of, <a href="#page172">172</a>, <a href=
+"#page180">180</a> f.</p>
+<p>Rivers, names of, <a href="#page182">182</a>.</p>
+<p>Roman and Celtic gods, <a href="#page22">22</a> f., <a href=
+"#page289">289</a> f.</p>
+<p>Romans and Druids, <a href="#page312">312</a> f.</p>
+<p>Ruadan, <a href="#page58">58</a>.</p>
+<p>Ruad-rofhessa, <a href="#page77">77</a>.</p>
+<p>Rucht, <a href="#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p>Rudiobus, <a href="#page214">214</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Saar, <a href="#page150">150</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacramental rites, <a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href=
+"#page260">260</a>, <a href="#page266">266</a>, <a href=
+"#page271">271</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrifice of aged, <a href="#page242">242</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrifice of animals, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href=
+"#page181">181</a>, <a href="#page189">189</a>, <a href=
+"#page205">205</a>, <a href="#page242">242</a> f., <a href=
+"#page260">260</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrifice, foundation, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page238">238</a> f.</p>
+<p>Sacrifice, human, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href=
+"#page79">79</a>, <a href="#page165">165</a>, <a href=
+"#page190">190</a>, <a href="#page198">198</a>, <a href=
+"#page233">233</a> f., <a href="#page261">261</a>, <a href=
+"#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a>, <a href=
+"#page304">304</a>, <a href="#page308">308</a>, <a href=
+"#page313">313</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrifice to dead, <a href="#page165">165</a> f., <a href=
+"#page234">234</a>, <a href="#page337">337</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrificial offerings, <a href="#page6">6</a>, <a href=
+"#page174">174</a>, <a href="#page181">181</a>, <a href=
+"#page185">185</a>, <a href="#page190">190</a>, <a href=
+"#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page198">198</a>, <a href=
+"#page233">233</a> f., <a href="#page299">299</a>, <a href=
+"#page308">308</a>.</p>
+<p>Sacrificial survivals, <a href="#page244">244</a> f.</p>
+<p>Saints, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a>,
+<a href="#page217">217</a>, <a href="#page251">251</a>, <a href=
+"#page285">285</a> f., <a href="#page288">288</a>, <a href=
+"#page331">331</a> f., <a href="#page386">386</a> note.</p>
+<p>Saints and wells, <a href="#page193">193</a>.</p>
+<p>Saints' days and pagan festivals, <a href=
+"#page258">258</a>.</p>
+<p>Salmon of knowledge, <a href="#page149">149</a>, <a href=
+"#page187">187</a>, <a href="#page377">377</a>.</p>
+<p>Samhain, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page70">70</a>,
+<a href="#page80">80</a>, <a href="#page167">167-168</a>, <a href=
+"#page170">170</a>, <a href="#page222">222</a>, <a href=
+"#page256">256</a> f., <a href="#page258">258</a> f.</p>
+<p>Satire, <a href="#page326">326</a>.</p>
+<p>Saturn, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<p>Scandinavia and Ireland, <a href="#page148">148</a>.</p>
+<p>Scathach, <a href="#page129">129</a>, <a href=
+"#page135">135</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Scotti</i>, <a href="#page17">17</a>.</p>
+<p>Sea, <a href="#page110">110</a>, <a href="#page178">178</a>.</p>
+<p>S&eacute;billot, <a href="#page342">342</a>.</p>
+<p>Segomo, <a href="#page214">214</a>.</p>
+<p>Segovesus, <a href="#page19">19</a>.</p>
+<p>Selvanus, <a href="#page37">37</a>.</p>
+<p>Semnotheoi, <a href="#page298">298</a>, <a href=
+"#page301">301</a>.</p>
+<p>Sequana, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Sergi, Prof., <a href="#page9">9</a>, <a href=
+"#page296">296</a>.</p>
+<p>Serpent, <a href="#page35">35</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a>,
+<a href="#page188">188</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Serpent with ram's head, <a href="#page34">34</a>, <a href=
+"#page44">44</a>, <a href="#page166">166</a>, <a href=
+"#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Serpent's egg, <a href="#page328">328</a>.</p>
+<p>Serpent's glass, <a href="#page328">328</a>.</p>
+<p>Setanta, <a href="#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-shape" id="index-shape">Shape-shifting</a>,
+<a href="#page104">104</a>, <a href="#page105">105</a>, <a href=
+"#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page130">130</a>, <a href=
+"#page131">131</a>, <a href="#page150">150</a>, <a href=
+"#page221">221</a>, <a href="#page322">322</a> f., <a href=
+"#page350">350</a>, <a href="#page356">356</a> f.</p>
+<p><a name="index-sid" id="index-sid"><i>S&iacute;d</i></a>,
+<a href="#page63">63</a>, <a href="#page64">64</a> note, <a href=
+"#page65">65</a>, <a href="#page78">78</a>.</p>
+<p>Silvanus, <a href="#page29">29</a>, <a href="#page36">36</a>,
+<a href="#page218">218</a>.</p>
+<p>Sinend, <a href="#page187">187</a>, <a href=
+"#page191">191</a>.</p>
+<p>Sinnan, <a href="#page43">43</a>.</p>
+<p>Sirona, <a href="#page42">42</a>.</p>
+<p>Skene, Dr., <a href="#page16">16</a>, <a href=
+"#page108">108</a>.</p>
+<p>Slain gods and human victims, <a href="#page159">159</a>,
+<a href="#page168">168</a> f., <a href="#page199">199</a>, <a href=
+"#page226">226</a>, <a href="#page235">235</a>, <a href=
+"#page239">239</a>, <a href="#page262">262</a>, <a href=
+"#page269">269</a>, <a href="#page272">272</a>.</p>
+<p>Sleep, magic, <a href="#page327">327</a>.</p>
+<p>Smertullos, <a href="#page35">35</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>, <a href="#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Smiths, god of, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Smiths, magic of, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Solar hero, <a href="#page133">133</a>.</p>
+<p>Soma, <a href="#page76">76</a>.</p>
+<p>Soul as animal, <a href="#page360">360</a>.</p>
+<p>Soul, separable, <a href="#page140">140</a>, <a href=
+"#page162">162</a>, <a href="#page270">270</a>.</p>
+<p>Spain, <a href="#page375">375</a>.</p>
+<p>Spells, <a href="#page246">246</a>, <a href="#page254">254</a>,
+<a href="#page325">325</a> f.</p>
+<p>Squatting gods, <a href="#page32">32</a> f.</p>
+<p>Sreng, <a href="#page84">84</a>.</p>
+<p>Stag, <a href="#page213">213</a>.</p>
+<p>Stanna, <a href="#page42">42</a>.</p>
+<p>Stokes, Dr., <a href="#page16">16</a>, <a href="#page56">56</a>,
+<a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href=
+"#page222">222</a>, <a href="#page264">264</a>.</p>
+<p>Stone circles, <a href="#page281">281</a>.</p>
+<p><a name="index-stonehenge" id="index-stonehenge">Stonehenge</a>,
+<a href="#page27">27</a>, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page200">200</a>, <a href="#page281">281-282</a>.</p>
+<p>Stones, cult of, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href=
+"#page284">284</a>, <a href="#page329">329</a>.</p>
+<p>Sualtaim, <a href="#page128">128</a>.</p>
+<p>Submerged towns, <a href="#page231">231</a>, <a href=
+"#page372">372</a>.</p>
+<p>Sucellos, <a href="#page30">30</a> f.</p>
+<p>Suicide, <a href="#page234">234</a>, <a href=
+"#page345">345</a>.</p>
+<p>Sul, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page69">69</a>,
+<a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Sulevi&aelig;, <a href="#page46">46</a>.</p>
+<p>Sun, <a href="#page178">178</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a>.</p>
+<p>Sun myths, <a href="#page83">83</a>.</p>
+<p>Swan-maidens, <a href="#page82">82</a>.</p>
+<p>Swastika, <a href="#page290">290</a>.</p>
+<p>Swine, <a href="#page25">25</a>, <a href="#page106">106</a>,
+<a href="#page117">117</a>, <a href="#page209">209</a> f.</p>
+<p>Swineherds, The Two, <a href="#page349">349</a>.</p>
+<p>Symbols, <a href="#page290">290</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p><a name="index-tabu" id="index-tabu">Tabu</a>, <a href=
+"#page69">69</a>, <a href="#page102">102</a>, <a href=
+"#page128">128</a>, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href=
+"#page144">144</a>, <a href="#page186">186</a>, <a href=
+"#page191">191</a> f., <a href="#page210">210</a>, <a href=
+"#page219">219</a>, <a href="#page252">252</a> f., <a href=
+"#page276">276</a>, <a href="#page304">304</a>, <a href=
+"#page306">306</a>, <a href="#page323">323</a>, <a href=
+"#page372">372</a>. See <i><a href=
+"#index-geasa">Geasa</a></i>.</p>
+<p>Tadg, <a href="#page221">221</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Taghairm</i>, <a href="#page249">249</a>.</p>
+<p>Tailtiu, <a href="#page167">167</a>, <a href="#page273">273</a>,
+<a href="#page376">376</a>.</p>
+<p><i>T&aacute;in b&oacute; Cuailgne</i>, <a href=
+"#page127">127</a>, <a href="#page130">130</a> f.</p>
+<p>Taliesin, <a href="#page95">95</a>, <a href="#page97">97</a>,
+<a href="#page116">116</a>, <a href="#page323">323</a>, <a href=
+"#page335">335</a>, <a href="#page356">356</a>, <a href=
+"#page358">358</a>.</p>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="page399" id=
+"page399"></a>{399}</span>
+<p>Taran, <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p>Taranis, <a href="#page29">29</a>, <a href="#page30">30</a>,
+<a href="#page234">234</a>.</p>
+<p>Taranos, <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Tarbh Uisge</i>, <a href="#page189">189</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Tarvos Trigaranos</i>, <a href="#page38">38</a>, <a href=
+"#page137">137</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href=
+"#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Tattooing, <a href="#page17">17</a>, <a href=
+"#page217">217</a>.</p>
+<p>Tegid Voel, <a href="#page116">116</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Teinm Laegha</i>, <a href="#page249">249</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Tempestarii</i>, <a href="#page175">175</a>, <a href=
+"#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p>Temples, <a href="#page85">85</a>, <a href="#page279">279</a>
+f.</p>
+<p>Tethra, <a href="#page58">58-59</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>,
+<a href="#page75">75</a>, <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p>
+<p>Teutates, <a href="#page28">28</a>, <a href="#page125">125</a>,
+<a href="#page234">234</a>.</p>
+<p>Teyrnon, <a href="#page111">111</a>.</p>
+<p>Three-headed gods, <a href="#page32">32</a> f.</p>
+<p>Thumb of knowledge, <a href="#page149">149</a>.</p>
+<p>Thurnam, Dr., <a href="#page12">12</a>.</p>
+<p><i>T&iacute;r na n-Og</i>, <a href="#page151">151</a>, <a href=
+"#page362">362</a>, <a href="#page364">364</a>.</p>
+<p>Tombs as sacred places, <a href="#page165">165</a>.</p>
+<p>Tonsure, <a href="#page311">311</a>.</p>
+<p>Torque, <a href="#page34">34</a>.</p>
+<p>Totatis, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p>
+<p>Totemism, <a href="#page149">149</a>, <a href=
+"#page187">187</a>, <a href="#page201">201</a> f., <a href=
+"#page216">216</a>, <a href="#page323">323</a>, <a href=
+"#page360">360</a>, <a href="#page379">379</a>.</p>
+<p>Toutatis, <a href="#page28">28</a>.</p>
+<p>Transformation. See <a href=
+"#index-shape">Shape-shifting</a>.</p>
+<p>Transformation Combat, <a href="#page353">353</a>.</p>
+<p>Transmigration, <a href="#page334">334</a> f., <a href=
+"#page348">348</a> f., <a href="#page356">356</a>, <a href=
+"#page359">359</a> f.</p>
+<p>Tree cults, <a href="#page162">162</a>, <a href=
+"#page169">169</a>, <a href="#page174">174</a>, <a href=
+"#page194">194</a>, <a href="#page198">198</a> f., <a href=
+"#page208">208</a>, <a href="#page265">265</a>, <a href=
+"#page269">269</a>, <a href="#page331">331</a>, <a href=
+"#page379">379</a>.</p>
+<p>Tree descent from, <a href="#page202">202</a>.</p>
+<p>Trees of Elysium, <a href="#page380">380</a>.</p>
+<p>Trees of Immortality, <a href="#page377">377</a> f.</p>
+<p>Triads, <a href="#page34">34</a> f., <a href="#page39">39</a>,
+<a href="#page95">95</a> f., <a href="#page109">109</a>, <a href=
+"#page113">113-114</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href=
+"#page118">118</a>, <a href="#page120">120</a>, <a href=
+"#page123">123</a>, <a href="#page124">124</a> note.</p>
+<p>Triple goddesses, <a href="#page44">44</a> f.</p>
+<p>Tristram, <a href="#page103">103</a>.</p>
+<p>Tuan MacCairill, <a href="#page57">57</a>, <a href=
+"#page357">357</a>, <a href="#page375">375</a>.</p>
+<p>Tuatha D&eacute; Danann, <a href="#page49">49</a> f., <a href=
+"#page60">60</a>, <a href="#page61">61</a>, <a href=
+"#page63">63</a> f., <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a> f., <a href="#page146">146</a>, <a href=
+"#page158">158</a>, <a href="#page168">168</a>, <a href=
+"#page173">173</a>.</p>
+<p>Tutelar divinities, <a href="#page40">40</a>, <a href=
+"#page45">45</a>, <a href="#page73">73</a>.</p>
+<p>Tuag, <a href="#page87">87</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Twrch Trwyth</i>, <a href="#page108">108</a>, <a href=
+"#page119">119</a>, <a href="#page211">211</a>.</p>
+<p>Tyr, <a href="#page84">84</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Underworld, <a href="#page60">60</a>, <a href=
+"#page102">102</a>, <a href="#page112">112</a>, <a href=
+"#page341">341</a>.</p>
+<p>Urien, <a href="#page101">101</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Urwisg</i>, <a href="#page189">189</a>.</p>
+<p>Uthyr, <a href="#page101">101</a>, <a href="#page120">120</a>,
+<a href="#page122">122</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Valkyries, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p>Vegetation cults, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href=
+"#page215">215</a>.</p>
+<p>Vegetation gods and spirits, <a href="#page38">38</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <a href=
+"#page159">159</a>, <a href="#page162">162</a> f., <a href=
+"#page199">199</a>, <a href="#page208">208</a>, <a href=
+"#page215">215</a>, <a href="#page243">243</a>, <a href=
+"#page265">265</a>, <a href="#page269">269</a>.</p>
+<p>Venus of Quinipily, <a href="#page289">289</a>.</p>
+<p>Vera, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p>
+<p>Vesta, <a href="#page69">69</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Vierges noires</i>, <a href="#page46">46</a>.</p>
+<p>Vintius, <a href="#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p><i>Virgines</i>, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<p>Viviane, <a href="#page122">122</a>.</p>
+<p>Vortigern, <a href="#page121">121</a>, <a href=
+"#page238">238</a>, <a href="#page315">315</a>.</p>
+<p>Vosegus, <a href="#page39">39</a>.</p>
+<p>Votive offerings, <a href="#page185">185</a>.</p>
+<p>Vulcan, <a href="#page47">47</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>War chants, <a href="#page246">246</a>.</p>
+<p>War goddesses, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href=
+"#page93">93</a>.</p>
+<p>War gods, <a href="#page4">4</a>, <a href="#page27">27</a> f.,
+<a href="#page48">48</a>, <a href="#page71">71</a>, <a href=
+"#page92">92</a>, <a href="#page115">115</a>, <a href=
+"#page118">118</a>, <a href="#page123">123</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>.</p>
+<p>Warrior, ideal, <a href="#page132">132</a>, <a href=
+"#page136">136</a>.</p>
+<p>Warrior, power of dead, <a href="#page338">338</a>.</p>
+<p>Washer at the Ford, <a href="#page73">73</a>.</p>
+<p>Water bull, <a href="#page189">189</a>.</p>
+<p>Water fairies, <a href="#page70">70</a>, <a href=
+"#page73">73</a> note, <a href="#page190">190</a>.</p>
+<p>Water, guardians of, <a href="#page195">195</a>.</p>
+<p>Water horse, <a href="#page188">188</a>.</p>
+<p>Water world, <a href="#page192">192</a> note, <a href=
+"#page371">371</a>.</p>
+<p>Waves, fighting the, <a href="#page178">178</a>.</p>
+<p>Waves, nine, <a href="#page179">179</a>.</p>
+<p>Weapons, <a href="#page291">291</a>.</p>
+<p>Wells, <a href="#page77">77</a>, <a href="#page180">180</a> f.,
+<a href="#page184">184</a>, <a href="#page191">191</a>, <a href=
+"#page193">193</a> f., <a href="#page321">321</a>, <a href=
+"#page372">372</a>.</p>
+<p>Wells, origin of, <a href="#page230">230</a>.</p>
+<p>Wheel, god with, <a href="#page29">29</a>.</p>
+<p>Wheel symbol, <a href="#page29">29</a>, <a href=
+"#page271">271</a>, <a href="#page327">327</a>.</p>
+<p>White women, <a href="#page73">73</a>.</p>
+<p>Wind, <a href="#page180">180</a>.</p>
+<p>Windisch, Prof., <a href="#page16">16</a>.</p>
+<p>Wisdom, <a href="#page74">74</a>.</p>
+<p>Wisdom from eating animal, <a href="#page149">149</a> note.</p>
+<p>Wolf god, <a href="#page36">36</a>, <a href="#page216">216</a>,
+<a href="#page218">218</a>.</p>
+<p>Witch, <a href="#page201">201</a>, <a href="#page203">203</a>,
+<a href="#page262">262</a>, <a href="#page268">268</a>, <a href=
+"#page318">318</a>, <a href="#page321">321</a>.</p>
+<p>Women and magic, <a href="#page319">319</a> f.</p>
+<p>Women as first civilisers, <a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href=
+"#page45">45</a>, <a href="#page192">192</a>, <a href=
+"#page317">317</a>.</p>
+<p>Women as warriors, <a href="#page72">72</a>.</p>
+<p>Women, cults of, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <a href="#page5">5</a>,
+<a href="#page41">41</a>, <a href="#page69">69</a>, <a href=
+"#page163">163</a> f., <a href="#page225">225</a> f., <a href=
+"#page274">274</a> f., <a href="#page317">317</a>.</p>
+<p>Women, islands of, <a href="#page385">385</a> f.</p>
+<p>World catastrophe, <a href="#page228">228</a>, <a href=
+"#page232">232</a>.</p>
+<p>World, origin of, <a href="#page230">230</a>.</p>
+<p>Wren, <a href="#page221">221</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Yama, <a href="#page101">101</a>.</p>
+<p>Year, division of, <a href="#page256">256</a>.</p>
+<p>Yule log, <a href="#page170">170</a>, <a href=
+"#page259">259</a>.</p>
+<br />
+<p>Zeus, <a href="#page66">66</a>, <a href="#page84">84</a>,
+<a href="#page199">199</a> f.</p>
+<p>Zimmer, <a href="#page56">56</a>, <a href="#page141">141</a>,
+<a href="#page147">147</a>.</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Religion of the Ancient Celts, by J. A. MacCulloch
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Religion of the Ancient Celts
+
+Author: J. A. MacCulloch
+
+Release Date: January 12, 2005 [EBook #14672]
+[Date last updated: December 14, 2005]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Ted Garvin, David King, and the PG Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RELIGION
+
+OF THE
+
+ANCIENT CELTS
+
+BY
+
+J.A. MACCULLOCH
+
+
+
+HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE CATHEDRAL
+
+AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY"
+"RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE"
+"THE CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND PRIMITIVE THOUGHT"
+
+Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
+
+1911
+
+Printed by
+
+MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED,
+
+FOR
+
+T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
+
+LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
+
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
+
+TO
+
+ANDREW LANG
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent
+growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study,
+earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and
+connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains
+of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under
+polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois
+de Jubainville in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts
+by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to
+have dawned, and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of
+Celtic religion. In this country the place of honour among students of
+that religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures _On
+the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_
+(1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that
+time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable
+researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I
+would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his
+Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on _The Arthurian
+Legend_, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school,
+and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the
+darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host
+of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer,
+studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in
+the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement
+with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced
+that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in
+spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must
+remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently
+the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable
+little book on _Celtic Religion_, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh
+ground.[1]
+
+In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and have
+endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of view and
+in the light of the anthropological method. I have also interpreted the
+earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals over the Celtic area
+wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so. The results are summarised
+in the introductory chapter of the work, and students of religion, and
+especially of Celtic religion, must judge how far they form a true
+interpretation of the earlier faith of our Celtic forefathers, much of
+which resembles primitive religion and folk-belief everywhere.
+
+Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and we are
+left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the existing
+materials, and to the light shed on them by the comparative study of
+religions. As this book was written during a long residence in the Isle
+of Skye, where the old language of the people still survives, and where
+the _genius loci_ speaks everywhere of things remote and strange, it may
+have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than
+in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how
+much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited
+his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters
+which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not be!
+
+I have to thank Miss Turner and Miss Annie Gilchrist for valuable help
+rendered in the work of research, and the London Library for obtaining
+for me several works not already in its possession. Its stores are an
+invaluable aid to all students working at a distance from libraries.
+
+J.A. MACCULLOCH.
+
+THE RECTORY,
+BRIDGE OF ALLAN,
+_October_ 1911.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] See also my article "Celts" in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion
+and Ethics_, vol. iii.
+
+[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Throughout this book, some characters are used
+which are not part of the Latin-1 character set used in this e-book. The
+string "[^y]" is used to represent a lower-case "Y" with a circumflex
+mark on top of it, "[=a]" is used to represent a lower-case "A" with a
+line on top of it, and "[oe]" is used to represent the "oe"-ligature.
+Numbers in braces such as "{3}" are used to represent the superscription
+of numbers, which was used in the book to give edition numbers to
+books.]
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAP.                                               PAGE
+
+I. INTRODUCTORY                                        1
+II. THE CELTIC PEOPLE                                  8
+III. THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS       22
+IV. THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE                      49
+V. THE TUATHA DE DANANN                               63
+VI. THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS                          95
+VII. THE CUCHULAINN CYCLE                            127
+VIII. THE FIONN SAGA                                 142
+IX.  GODS AND MEN                                    158
+X.  THE CULT OF THE DEAD                             165
+XI. PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP                         171
+XII. RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP                          181
+XIII. TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP                         198
+XIV. ANIMAL WORSHIP                                  208
+XV. COSMOGONY                                        227
+XVI. SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION               233
+XVII. TABU                                           252
+XVIII. FESTIVALS                                     256
+XIX. ACCESSORIES OF CULT                             279
+XX. THE DRUIDS                                       293
+XXI. MAGIC                                           319
+XXII. THE STATE OF THE DEAD                          333
+XXIII. REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION                    348
+XXIV. ELYSIUM                                        362
+
+
+
+LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES THROUGHOUT THIS WORK
+
+(_This list is not a Bibliography._)
+
+BRAND: Rev. J. Brand, _Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great
+Britain._ 3 vols. 1870.
+
+BLANCHET: A. Blanchet, _Traite des monnaies gauloises._ 2 vols. Paris,
+1905.
+
+BERTRAND: A. Bertrand, _Religion des gaulois._ Paris, 1897.
+
+CAMPBELL, _WHT_: J.F. Campbell, _Popular Tales of the West Highlands._ 4
+vols. Edinburgh, 1890.
+
+CAMPBELL _LF_: J.F. Campbell, _Leabhar na Feinne._ London, 1872.
+
+CAMPBELL, _Superstitions_: J.G. Campbell, _Superstitions of the
+Highlands and Islands of Scotland._ 1900.
+
+CAMPBELL, _Witchcraft_: J.G. Campbell, _Witchcraft and Second Sight in
+the Highlands and Islands of Scotland._ 1902.
+
+CORMAC: _Cormac's Glossary._ Tr. by J. O'Donovan. Ed. by W. Stokes.
+Calcutta, 1868.
+
+COURCELLE--SENEUIL.: J.L. Courcelle-Seneuil, _Les dieux gaulois d'apres
+les monuments figures._ Paris, 1910.
+
+_CIL_: _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum._ Berlin, 1863 f.
+
+_CM_: _Celtic Magazine._ Inverness, 1875 f.
+
+CURTIN, _HTI_: J. Curtin, _Hero Tales of Ireland._ 1894.
+
+CURTIN, _Tales_: J. Curtin, _Tales of the Fairies and Ghost World._
+1895.
+
+DALZELL: Sir J.G. Dalzell, _Darker Superstitions of Scotland._ 1835.
+
+D'ARBOIS: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Cours de litterature celtique._
+12 vols. Paris, 1883-1902.
+
+D'ARBOIS _Les Celtes_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les Celtes._ Paris,
+1904.
+
+D'ARBOIS _Les Druides_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les Druides et les
+dieux celtiques a formes d'animaux._ Paris, 1906.
+
+D'ARBOIS _PH_: H. D'Arbois de Jubainville, _Les premiers habitants de
+l'Europe._ 2 vols. Paris, 1889-1894.
+
+DOM MARTIN: Dom Martin, _Le religion des gaulois._ 2 vols. Paris, 1727.
+
+DOTTIN: G. Dottin, _Manuel pour servir a l'etude de l'antiquite
+celtique._ Paris, 1906.
+
+ELTON: C.I. Elton, _Origins of English History._ London, 1890.
+
+FRAZER, _GB_{2}: J.G. Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}. 3 vols. 1900.
+
+GUEST: Lady Guest, _The Mabinogion._ 3 vols. Llandovery, 1849.
+
+HAZLITT: W.C. Hazlitt, _Faiths and Folk-lore: A Dictionary of National
+Beliefs, Superstitions, and Popular Customs._ 2 vols. 1905.
+
+HOLDER: A. Holder, _Altceltischer Sprachschatz._ 3 vols. Leipzig, 1891
+f.
+
+HULL: Miss E. Hull, _The Cuchullin Saga._ London, 1898.
+
+_IT_: See Windisch-Stokes.
+
+_JAI_: _Journal of the Anthropological Institute._ London, 1871 f.
+
+JOYCE, _OCR_: P.W. Joyce, _Old Celtic Romances_{2}. London, 1894.
+
+JOYCE, _PN_: P.W. Joyce, _History of Irish Names of Places_{4}. 2 vols.
+London, 1901.
+
+JOYCE, _SH_: P.W. Joyce, _Social History of Ancient Ireland._ 2 vols.
+London, 1903.
+
+JULLIAN: C. Jullian, _Recherches sur la religion gauloise._ Bordeaux,
+1903.
+
+KEATING: Keating, _History of Ireland._ Tr. O'Mahony. London, 1866.
+
+KENNEDY: P. Kennedy, _Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts._ 1866.
+
+LARMINIE: W. Larminie, _West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances._ 1893.
+
+LEAHY: Leahy, _Heroic Romances of Ireland._ 2 vols. London, 1905.
+
+LE BRAZ: A. Le Braz, _La Legende de la Mort chez les Bretons
+armoricains._ 2 vols. Paris, 1902.
+
+_LL_: _Leabhar Laignech_ (Book of Leinster), facsimile reprint. London,
+1880.
+
+LOTH: Loth, _Le Mabinogion._ 2 vols. Paris, 1889.
+
+_LU_: _Leabhar na h-Uidhre_ (Book of the Dun Cow), facsimile reprint.
+London, 1870.
+
+MACBAIN: A. MacBain, _Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language._
+Inverness, 1896.
+
+MACDOUGALL: Macdougall, _Folk and Hero Tales._ London, 1891.
+
+MACKINLAY: J.M. Mackinlay, _Folk-lore of Scottish Lochs and Springs._
+Glasgow, 1893.
+
+MARTIN: M. Martin, _Description of the Western Islands of Scotland_{2}.
+London, 1716.
+
+MAURY: A. Maury, _Croyances et legendes du Moyen Age._ Paris, 1896.
+
+MONNIER: D. Monnier, _Traditions populaires comparees._ Paris, 1854.
+
+MOORE: A.W. Moore, _Folk-lore of the Isle of Man._ 1891.
+
+NUTT-MEYER: A. Nutt and K. Meyer, _The Voyage of Bran._ 2 vols. London,
+1895-1897.
+
+O'CURRY _MC_: E. O'Curry, _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish._ 4
+vols. London, 1873.
+
+O'CURRY _MS. Mat_: E. O'Curry, _MS. Materials of Ancient Irish History._
+Dublin, 1861.
+
+O'GRADY: S.H. O'Grady, _Silva Gadelica._ 2 vols. 1892.
+
+REES: Rev. W.J. Rees, _Lives of Cambro-British Saints._ Llandovery,
+1853.
+
+REINACH, BF: S. Reinach, _Bronzes Figures de la Gaule romaine._ Paris,
+1900.
+
+REINACH, BF _Catal. Sommaire_: S. Reinach, _Catalogue Commaire du Musee
+des Antinquitee Nationales_{4}. Paris.
+
+REINACH, BF CMR: S. Reinach, _Cultes, Mythes, et Religions._ 2 vols.
+Paris, 1905.
+
+RC: _Revue Celtique._ Paris, 1870 f.
+
+RENEL: C. Renel, _Religions de la Gaule._ Paris 1906.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _AL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _The Arthurian Legend._ Oxford, 1891.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _CB_{4}: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Celtic Britain_{4}. London, 1908.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _CFL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Celtic Folk-Lore._ 2 vols. Oxford,
+1901.
+
+RH[^Y]S, _HL_: Sir John Rh[^y]s, _Hibbert Lectures on Celtic
+Heathendom._ London, 1888.
+
+SEBILLOT: P. Sebillot, _La Folk-lore de la France._ 4 vols. Paris, 1904
+f.
+
+SKENE: W.F. Skene, _Four Ancient Books of Wales._ 2 vols. Edinburgh,
+1868.
+
+STOKES, _TIG_: Whitley Stokes, _Three Irish Glossaries._ London, 1862.
+
+STOKES, _Trip. Life_: Whitley Stokes, _The Tripartite Life of Patrick._
+London 1887.
+
+STOKES, _US_: Whitley Stokes, _Urkeltischer Sprachschatz._ Goettingen,
+1894 (in Fick's _Vergleichende Woerterbuch_{4}).
+
+TAYLOR: I. Taylor, _Origin of the Aryans._ London, n.d.
+
+_TSC_: _Transactions of Society of Cymmrodor._
+
+_TOS_: _Transactions of the Ossianic Society._ Dublin 1854-1861.
+
+_Trip. Life_: See Stokes.
+
+WILDE: Lady Wilde, _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland._ 2
+vols. 1887.
+
+WINDISCH, _Tain_: E. Windisch, _Die altirische Heldensage Tain Bo
+Cualgne._ Leipzig, 1905.
+
+WINDISCH-STOKES, _IT_: E. Windisch and W. Stokes, _Irische Texte._
+Leipzig, 1880 f.
+
+WOOD-MARTIN: Wood-Martin, _Elder Faiths of Ireland._ 2 vols. London,
+1903.
+
+_ZCP_: _Zeitschrift fuer Celtische Philologie._ Halle, 1897 f.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+INTRODUCTORY.
+
+
+To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell
+its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of
+Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case
+liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult,
+remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and
+aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic
+religion! The bygone faith of a people who have inspired the world with
+noble dreams must be constructed painfully, and often in fear and
+trembling, out of fragmentary and, in many cases, transformed remains.
+
+We have the surface observations of classical observers, dedications in
+the Romano-Celtic area to gods mostly assimilated to the gods of the
+conquerors, figured monuments mainly of the same period, coins, symbols,
+place and personal names. For the Irish Celts there is a mass of written
+material found mainly in eleventh and twelfth century MSS. Much of this,
+in spite of alteration and excision, is based on divine and heroic
+myths, and it also contains occasional notices of ritual. From Wales
+come documents like the _Mabinogion_, and strange poems the personages
+of which are ancient gods transformed, but which tell nothing of rite or
+cult.[2] Valuable hints are furnished by early ecclesiastical documents,
+but more important is existing folk-custom, which preserves so much of
+the old cult, though it has lost its meaning to those who now use it.
+Folk-tales may also be inquired of, if we discriminate between what in
+them is Celtic and what is universal. Lastly, Celtic burial-mounds and
+other remains yield their testimony to ancient belief and custom.
+
+From these sources we try to rebuild Celtic paganism and to guess at its
+inner spirit, though we are working in the twilight on a heap of
+fragments. No Celt has left us a record of his faith and practice, and
+the unwritten poems of the Druids died with them. Yet from these
+fragments we see the Celt as the seeker after God, linking himself by
+strong ties to the unseen, and eager to conquer the unknown by religious
+rite or magic art. For the things of the spirit have never appealed in
+vain to the Celtic soul, and long ago classical observers were struck
+with the religiosity of the Celts. They neither forgot nor transgressed
+the law of the gods, and they thought that no good befell men apart from
+their will.[3] The submission of the Celts to the Druids shows how they
+welcomed authority in matters of religion, and all Celtic regions have
+been characterised by religious devotion, easily passing over to
+superstition, and by loyalty to ideals and lost causes. The Celts were
+born dreamers, as their exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much
+that is spiritual and romantic in more than one European literature is
+due to them.
+
+The analogy of religious evolution in other faiths helps us in
+reconstructing that of the Celts. Though no historic Celtic group was
+racially pure, the profound influence of the Celtic temperament soon
+"Celticised" the religious contributions of the non-Celtic element which
+may already have had many Celtic parallels. Because a given Celtic rite
+or belief seems to be "un-Aryan," it need not necessarily be borrowed.
+The Celts had a savage past, and, conservative as they were, they kept
+much of it alive. Our business, therefore, lies with Celtic religion as
+a whole. These primitive elements were there before the Celts migrated
+from the old "Aryan" home; yet since they appear in Celtic religion to
+the end, we speak of them as Celtic. The earliest aspect of that
+religion, before the Celts became a separate people, was a cult of
+nature spirits, or of the life manifested in nature. But men and women
+probably had separate cults, and, of the two, perhaps that of the latter
+is more important. As hunters, men worshipped the animals they slew,
+apologising to them for the slaughter. This apologetic attitude, found
+with all primitive hunters, is of the nature of a cult. Other animals,
+too sacred to be slain, would be preserved and worshipped, the cult
+giving rise to domestication and pastoral life, with totemism as a
+probable factor. Earth, producing vegetation, was the fruitful mother;
+but since the origin of agriculture is mainly due to women, the Earth
+cult would be practised by them, as well as, later, that of vegetation
+and corn spirits, all regarded as female. As men began to interest
+themselves in agriculture, they would join in the female cults, probably
+with the result of changing the sex of the spirits worshipped. An
+Earth-god would take the place of the Earth-mother, or stand as her
+consort or son. Vegetation and corn spirits would often become male,
+though many spirits, even when they were exalted into divinities,
+remained female.
+
+With the growth of religion the vaguer spirits tended to become gods and
+goddesses, and worshipful animals to become anthropomorphic divinities,
+with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims. And as the
+cult of vegetation spirits centred in the ritual of planting and sowing,
+so the cult of the divinities of growth centred in great seasonal and
+agricultural festivals, in which the key to the growth of Celtic
+religion is to be found. But the migrating Celts, conquering new lands,
+evolved divinities of war; and here the old female influence is still at
+work, since many of these are female. In spite of possessing so many
+local war-gods, the Celts were not merely men of war. Even the _equites_
+engaged in war only when occasion arose, and agriculture as well as
+pastoral industry was constantly practised, both in Gaul and Britain,
+before the conquest.[4] In Ireland, the belief in the dependence of
+fruitfulness upon the king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished
+there.[5] Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave rise to culture
+divinities, perhaps evolved from gods of growth, since later myths
+attributed to them both the origin of arts and crafts, and the
+introduction of domestic animals among men. Possibly some culture gods
+had been worshipful animals, now worshipped as gods, who had given these
+animals to man. Culture-goddesses still held their place among
+culture-gods, and were regarded as their mothers. The prominence of
+these divinities shows that the Celts were more than a race of warriors.
+
+The pantheon was thus a large one, but on the whole the divinities of
+growth were more generally important. The older nature spirits and
+divine animals were never quite forgotten, especially by the folk, who
+also preserved the old rituals of vegetation spirits, while the gods of
+growth were worshipped at the great festivals. Yet in essence the lower
+and the higher cults were one and the same, and, save where Roman
+influence destroyed Celtic religion, the older primitive strands are
+everywhere apparent. The temperament of the Celt kept him close to
+nature, and he never quite dropped the primitive elements of his
+religion. Moreover, the early influence of female cults of female
+spirits and goddesses remained to the end as another predominant factor.
+
+Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character, each tribe
+possessing its own group, each god having functions similar to those of
+other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more universal character,
+absorbing divinities with similar functions. Still this local character
+must be borne in mind. The numerous divinities of Gaul, with differing
+names--but, judging by their assimilation to the same Roman divinity,
+similar functions, are best understood as gods of local groups. This is
+probably true also of Britain and Ireland. But those gods worshipped far
+and wide over the Celtic area may be gods of the undivided Celts, or
+gods of some dominant Celtic group extending their influence on all
+sides, or, in some cases, popular gods whose cult passed beyond the
+tribal bounds. If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the
+local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be made
+to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere the
+same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in
+local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul. Moreover, the comparison of the
+various testimonies of onlookers points to a general similarity, while
+the permanence of the primitive elements in Celtic religion must have
+tended to keep it everywhere the same. Though in Gaul we have only
+inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those testimonies,
+as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both regions, point to the
+similarity of religious phenomena. The Druids, as a more or less
+organised priesthood, would assist in preserving the general likeness.
+
+Thus the primitive nature-spirits gave place to greater or lesser gods,
+each with his separate department and functions. Though growing
+civilisation tended to separate them from the soil, they never quite
+lost touch with it. In return for man's worship and sacrifices, they
+gave life and increase, victory, strength, and skill. But these
+sacrifices, had been and still often were rites in which the
+representative of a god was slain. Some divinities were worshipped over
+a wide area, most were gods of local groups, and there were spirits of
+every place, hill, wood, and stream. Magic rites mingled with the cult,
+but both were guided by an organised priesthood. And as the Celts
+believed in unseen gods, so they believed in an unseen region whither
+they passed after death.
+
+Our knowledge of the higher side of Celtic religion is practically a
+blank, since no description of the inner spiritual life has come down to
+us. How far the Celts cultivated religion in our sense of the term, or
+had glimpses of Monotheism, or were troubled by a deep sense of sin, is
+unknown. But a people whose spiritual influence has later been so great,
+must have had glimpses of these things. Some of them must have known the
+thirst of the soul for God, or sought a higher ethical standard than
+that of their time. The enthusiastic reception of Christianity, the
+devotion of the early Celtic saints, and the character of the old Celtic
+church, all suggest this.
+
+The relation of the Celtic church to paganism was mainly intolerant,
+though not wholly so. It often adopted the less harmful customs of the
+past, merging pagan festivals in its own, founding churches on the sites
+of the old cult, dedicating sacred wells to a saint. A saint would visit
+the tomb of a pagan to hear an old epic rehearsed, or would call up
+pagan heroes from hell and give them a place in paradise. Other saints
+recall dead heroes from the Land of the Blessed, and learn the nature of
+that wonderland and the heroic deeds
+
+  "Of the old days, which seem to be
+   Much older than any history
+   That is written in any book."
+
+Reading such narratives, we gain a lesson in the fine spirit of
+Christian tolerance and Christian sympathy.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[2] Some writers saw in the bardic poetry a Druidic-esoteric system and
+traces of a cult practised secretly by the bards--the "Neo-Druidic
+heresy"; see Davies, _Myth. of the Brit. Druids_, 1809; Herbert, _The
+Neo-Druidic Heresy_, 1838. Several French writers saw in "Druidism" a
+monotheistic faith, veiled under polytheism.
+
+[3] Livy, v. 46; Caesar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, _Cyneg_.
+xxxv. 1.
+
+[4] Caesar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained there and
+cultivated the lands."
+
+[5] Cf. Pliny, _HN_ xvii. 7, xviii. 18 on the wheeled ploughs and
+agricultural methods of Gauls and Britons. Cf. also Strabo, iv. 1. 2,
+iv. 5. 5; Girald. Camb. _Top. Hib._ i. 4, _Descr. Camb._ i. 8; Joyce,
+_SH_ ii. 264.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE CELTIC PEOPLE.
+
+
+Scrutiny reveals the fact that Celtic-speaking peoples are of differing
+types--short and dark as well as tall and fairer Highlanders or
+Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types of Irishmen. Men
+with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But all alike have
+the same character and temperament, a striking witness to the influence
+which the character as well as the language of the Celts, whoever they
+were, made on all with whom they mingled. Ethnologically there may not
+be a Celtic race, but something was handed down from the days of
+comparative Celtic purity which welded different social elements into a
+common type, found often where no Celtic tongue is now spoken. It
+emerges where we least expect it, and the stolid Anglo-Saxon may
+suddenly awaken to something in himself due to a forgotten Celtic strain
+in his ancestry.
+
+Two main theories of Celtic origins now hold the field:
+
+(1) The Celts are identified with the progenitors of the short,
+brachycephalic "Alpine race" of Central Europe, existing there in
+Neolithic times, after their migrations from Africa and Asia. The type
+is found among the Slavs, in parts of Germany and Scandinavia, and in
+modern France in the region of Caesar's "Celtae," among the Auvergnats,
+the Bretons, and in Lozere and Jura. Representatives of the type have
+been found in Belgian and French Neolithic graves.[6] Professor Sergi
+calls this the "Eurasiatic race," and, contrary to general opinion,
+identifies it with the Aryans, a savage people, inferior to the
+dolichocephalic Mediterranean race, whose language they Aryanised.[7]
+Professor Keane thinks that they were themselves an Aryanised folk
+before reaching Europe, who in turn gave their acquired Celtic and
+Slavic speech to the preceding masses. Later came the Belgae, Aryans, who
+acquired the Celtic speech of the people they conquered.[8]
+
+Broca assumed that the dark, brachycephalic people whom he identified
+with Caesar's "Celtae," differed from the Belgae, were conquered by them,
+and acquired the language of their conquerors, hence wrongly called
+Celtic by philologists. The Belgae were tall and fair, and overran Gaul,
+except Aquitaine, mixing generally with the Celtae, who in Caesar's time
+had thus an infusion of Belgic blood.[9] But before this conquest, the
+Celtae had already mingled with the aboriginal dolichocephalic folk of
+Gaul, Iberians, or Mediterraneans of Professor Sergi. The latter had
+apparently remained comparatively pure from admixture in Aquitaine, and
+are probably the Aquitani of Caesar.[10]
+
+But were the short, brachycephalic folk Celts? Caesar says the people who
+call themselves "Celtae" were called Gauls by the Romans, and Gauls,
+according to classical writers, were tall and fair.[11] Hence the Celtae
+were not a short, dark race, and Caesar himself says that Gauls
+(including Celtae) looked with contempt on the short Romans.[12] Strabo
+also says that Celtae and Belgae had the same Gaulish appearance, i.e.
+tall and fair. Caesar's statement that Aquitani, Galli, and Belgae differ
+in language, institutions, and laws is vague and unsupported by
+evidence, and may mean as to language no more than a difference in
+dialects. This is also suggested by Strabo's words, Celtae and Belgae
+"differ a little" in language.[13] No classical writer describes the
+Celts as short and dark, but the reverse. Short, dark people would have
+been called Iberians, without respect to skulls. Classical observers
+were not craniologists. The short, brachycephalic type is now prominent
+in France, because it has always been so, eliminating the tall, fair
+Celtic type. Conquering Celts, fewer in number than the broad and
+narrow-headed aborigines, intermarried or made less lasting alliances
+with them. In course of time the type of the more numerous race was
+bound to prevail. Even in Caesar's day the latter probably outnumbered
+the tall and fair Celts, who had, however, Celticised them. But
+classical writers, who knew the true Celt as tall and fair, saw that
+type only, just as every one, on first visiting France or Germany, sees
+his generalised type of Frenchman or German everywhere. Later, he
+modifies his opinion, but this the classical observers did not do.
+Caesar's campaigns must have drained Gaul of many tall and fair Celts.
+This, with the tendency of dark types to out-number fair types in South
+and Central Europe, may help to explain the growing prominence of the
+dark type, though the tall, fair type is far from uncommon.[14]
+
+(2) The second theory, already anticipated, sees in Gauls and Belgae a
+tall, fair Celtic folk, speaking a Celtic language, and belonging to the
+race which stretched from Ireland to Asia Minor, from North Germany to
+the Po, and were masters of Teutonic tribes till they were driven by
+them from the region between Elbe and Rhine.[15] Some Belgic tribes
+claimed a Germanic ancestry,[16] but "German" was a word seldom used
+with precision, and in this case may not mean Teutonic. The fair hair of
+this people has made many suppose that they were akin to the Teutons.
+But fairness is relative, and the dark Romans may have called brown hair
+fair, while they occasionally distinguished between the "fair" Gauls and
+fairer Germans. Their institutions and their religions (_pace_ Professor
+Rh[^y]s) differed, and though they were so long in contact the names of
+their gods and priests are unlike.[17] Their languages, again, though of
+"Aryan" stock, differ more from each other than does Celtic from Italic,
+pointing to a long period of Italo-Celtic unity, before Italiotes and
+Celts separated, and Celts came in contact with Teutons.[18] The typical
+German differs in mental and moral qualities from the typical Celt.
+Contrast an east country Scot, descendant of Teutonic stock, with a West
+Highlander, and the difference leaps to the eyes. Celts and Germans of
+history differ, then, in relative fairness, character, religion, and
+language.
+
+The tall, blonde Teutonic type of the Row graves is dolichocephalic. Was
+the Celtic type (assuming that Broca's "Celts" were not true Celts)
+dolicho or brachy? Broca thinks the Belgae or "Kymri" were
+dolichocephalic, but all must agree with him that the skulls are too few
+to generalise from. Celtic iron-age skulls in Britain are
+dolichocephalic, perhaps a recrudescence of the aboriginal type. Broca's
+"Kymric" skulls are mesocephalic; this he attributes to crossing with
+the short round-heads. The evidence is too scanty for generalisation,
+while the Walloons, perhaps descendants of the Belgae, have a high index,
+and some Gauls of classical art are broad-headed.[19]
+
+Skulls of the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age) are mainly
+broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic brachycephalic
+skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5 inches shorter),
+Selaigneaux, and Borreby.[20] Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled
+Belgae on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow
+folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belgae
+(Broca's Kymri), and thinks that Gaulish skulls were round, with
+beetling brows.[21] Professors Ripley and Sergi, disregarding their
+difference in stature and higher cephalic index, identify them with the
+short Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.[22]
+Might not both, however, have originally sprung from a common stock and
+reached Europe at different times?[23]
+
+But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching conclusions
+regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At some very remote
+period there may have been a Celtic type, as at some further period
+there may have been an Aryan type. But the Celts, as we know them, must
+have mingled with the aborigines of Europe and become a mixed race,
+though preserving and endowing others with their racial and mental
+characteristics. Some Gauls or Belgae were dolichocephalic, to judge by
+their skulls, others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a
+relative term. Classical observers probably generalised from the higher
+classes, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But the
+higher classes may have had varying skulls, as well as stature and
+colour of hair,[24] and Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed
+stock, and a short, dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those
+distant ages we must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed
+their characteristics, as well as the Celts themselves. What happened on
+the Eurasian steppe, the hypothetical cradle of the "Aryans," whence the
+Celts came "stepping westwards," seems clear to some, but in truth is a
+book sealed with seven seals. The men whose Aryan speech was to dominate
+far and wide may already have possessed different types of skull, and
+that age was far from "the very beginning."
+
+Thus the Celts before setting out on their _Wanderjahre_ may already
+have been a mixed race, even if their leaders were of purer stock. But
+they had the bond of common speech, institutions, and religion, and they
+formed a common Celtic type in Central and Western Europe. Intermarriage
+with the already mixed Neolithic folk of Central Europe produced further
+removal from the unmixed Celtic racial type; but though both reacted on
+each other as far as language, custom, and belief were concerned, on the
+whole the Celtic elements predominated in these respects. The Celtic
+migration into Gaul produced further racial mingling with descendants of
+the old palaeolithic stock, dolichocephalic Iberians and Ligurians, and
+brachycephalic swarthy folk (Broca's Celts). Thus even the first Celtic
+arrivals in Britain, the Goidels, were a people of mixed race, though
+probably relatively purer than the late coming Brythons, the latest of
+whom had probably mingled with the Teutons. Hence among Celtic-speaking
+folk or their descendants--short, dark, broad-beaded Bretons, tall, fair
+or rufous Highlanders, tall chestnut-haired Welshmen or Irishmen,
+Highlanders of Norse descent, short, dark, narrow-headed Highlanders,
+Irishmen, and Welshmen--there is a common Celtic _facies_, the result of
+old Celtic characteristics powerful enough so to impress themselves on
+such varied peoples in spite of what they gave to the Celtic incomers.
+These peoples became Celtic, and Celtic in speech and character they
+have remained, even where ancestral physical types are reasserting
+themselves. The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or
+Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic
+characteristics--vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness,
+imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties,
+sentimental love of their country, religiosity passing over easily to
+superstition, and a comparatively high degree of sexual morality. Some
+of these traits were already noted by classical observers.
+
+Celtic speech had early lost the initial _p_ of old Indo-European
+speech, except in words beginning with _pt_ and, perhaps, _ps_. Celtic
+_pare_ (Lat. _prae_) became _are_, met with in _Aremorici_, "the dwellers
+by the sea," _Arecluta_, "by the Clyde," the region watered by the
+Clyde. Irish _athair_, Manx _ayr_, and Irish _iasg_, represent
+respectively Latin _pater_ and _piscis_. _P_ occurring between vowels
+was also lost, e.g. Irish _caora_, "sheep," is from _kaperax_; _for_,
+"upon" (Lat. _super_), from _uper_. This change took place before the
+Goidelic Celts broke away and invaded Britain in the tenth century B.C.,
+but while Celts and Teutons were still in contact, since Teutons
+borrowed words with initial _p_, e.g. Gothic _fairguni_, "mountain,"
+from Celtic _percunion_, later _Ercunio_, the Hercynian forest. The loss
+must have occurred before 1000 B.C. But after the separation of the
+Goidelic group a further change took place. Goidels preserved the sound
+represented by _qu_, or more simply by _c_ or _ch_, but this was changed
+into _p_ by the remaining continental Celts, who carried with them into
+Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Britain (the Brythons) words in which _q_ became
+_p_. The British _Epidii_ is from Gaulish _epos_, "horse," which is in
+Old Irish _ech_ (Lat. _equus_). The Parisii take their name from
+_Qarisii_, the Pictones or Pictavi of Poictiers from _Pictos_ (which in
+the plural _Pidi_ gives us "Picts"), derived from _quicto_. This change
+took place after the Goidelic invasion of Britain in the tenth century
+B.C. On the other hand, some continental Celts may later have regained
+the power of pronouncing _q_. In Gaul the _q_ of _Sequana_ (Seine) was
+not changed to _p_, and a tribe dwelling on its banks was called the
+Sequani. This assumes that Sequana was a pre-Celtic word, possibly
+Ligurian.[25] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks, however, that Goidelic tribes,
+identified by him with Caesar's Celtae, existed in Gaul and Spain before
+the coming of the Galli, and had preserved _q_ in their speech. To them
+we owe Sequana, as well as certain names with _q_ in Spain.[26] This at
+least is certain, that Goidelic Celts of the _q_ group occupied Gaul and
+Spain before reaching Britain and Ireland. Irish tradition and
+archaeological data confirm this.[27] But whether their descendants were
+represented by Caesar's "Celtae" must be uncertain. Celtae and Galli,
+according to Caesar, were one and the same,[28] and must have had the
+same general form of speech.
+
+The dialects of Goidelic speech--Irish, Manx, Gaelic, and that of the
+continental Goidels--preserved the _q_ sound; those of Gallo-Brythonic
+speech--Gaulish, Breton, Welsh, Cornish--changed _q_ into _p_. The
+speech of the Picts, perhaps connected with the Pictones of Gaul, also
+had this _p_ sound. Who, then, were the Picts? According to Professor
+Rh[^y]s they were pre-Aryans,[29] but they must have been under the
+influence of Brythonic Celts. Dr. Skene regarded them as Goidels
+speaking a Goidelic dialect with Brythonic forms.[30] Mr. Nicholson
+thinks they were Goidels who had preserved the Indo-European _p_.[31]
+But might they not be descendants of a Brythonic group, arriving early
+in Britain and driven northwards by newcomers? Professor Windisch and
+Dr. Stokes regard them as Celts, allied to the Brythons rather than to
+the Goidels, the phonetics of their speech resembling those of Welsh
+rather than Irish.[32]
+
+The theory of an early Goidelic occupation of Britain has been contested
+by Professor Meyer,[33] who holds that the first Goidels reached Britain
+from Ireland in the second century, while Dr. MacBain[34] was of the
+opinion that England, apart from Wales and Cornwall, knew no Goidels,
+the place-names being Brythonic. But unless all Goidels reached Ireland
+from Gaul or Spain, as some did, Britain was more easily reached than
+Ireland by migrating Goidels from the Continent. Prominent Goidelic
+place-names would become Brythonic, but insignificant places would
+retain their Goidelic form, and to these we must look for decisive
+evidence.[35] A Goidelic occupation by the ninth century B.C. is
+suggested by the name "Cassiterides" (a word of the _q_ group) applied
+to Britain. If the Goidels occupied Britain first, they may have called
+their land _Qretanis_ or _Qritanis_, which Pictish invaders would change
+to _Pretanis_, found in Welsh "Ynys Pridain," Pridain's Isle, or Isle of
+the Picts, "pointing to the original underlying the Greek [Greek:
+Pretanikai Nesoi] or Pictish Isles,"[36] though the change may be due to
+continental _p_ Celts trading with _q_ Celts in Britain. With the
+Pictish occupation would agree the fact that Irish Goidels called the
+Picts who came to Ireland _Cruithne=Qritani=Pre-tani_. In Ireland they
+almost certainly adopted Goidelic speech.
+
+Whether or not all the Pictish invaders of Britain were called
+"Pictavi," this word or Picti, perhaps from _quicto_ (Irish _cicht_,
+"engraver"),[37] became a general name for this people. _Q_ had been
+changed into _p_ on the Continent; hence "Pictavi" or "Pictones," "the
+tattooed men," those who "engraved" figures on their bodies, as the
+Picts certainly did. Dispossessed and driven north by incoming Brythons
+and Belgae, they later became the virulent enemies of Rome. In 306
+Eumenius describes all the northern tribes as "Caledonii and other
+Picts," while some of the tribes mentioned by Ptolemy have Brythonic
+names or names with Gaulish cognates. Place-names in the Pictish area,
+personal names in the Pictish chronicle, and Pictish names like
+"Peanfahel,"[38] have Brythonic affinities. If the Picts spoke a
+Brythonic dialect, S. Columba's need of an interpreter when preaching to
+them would be explained.[39] Later the Picts were conquered by Irish
+Goidels, the Scotti. The Picts, however, must already have mingled with
+aboriginal peoples and with Goidels, if these were already in Britain,
+and they may have adopted their supposed non-Aryan customs from the
+aborigines. On the other hand, the matriarchate seems at one time to
+have been Celtic, and it may have been no more than a conservative
+survival in the Pictish royal house, as it was elsewhere.[40] Britons,
+as well as Caledonii, had wives in common.[41] As to tattooing, it was
+practised by the Scotti ("the scarred and painted men"?), and the
+Britons dyed themselves with woad, while what seem to be tattoo marks
+appear on faces on Gaulish coins.[42] Tattooing, painting, and
+scarifying the body are varieties of one general custom, and little
+stress can be laid on Pictish tattooing as indicating a racial
+difference. Its purpose may have been ornamental, or possibly to impart
+an aspect of fierceness, or the figures may have been totem marks, as
+they are elsewhere. Finally, the description of the Caledonii, a Pictish
+people, possessing flaming hair and mighty limbs, shows that they
+differed from the short, dark pre-Celtic folk.[43]
+
+The Pictish problem must remain obscure, a welcome puzzle to
+antiquaries, philologists, and ethnologists. Our knowledge of Pictish
+religion is too scanty for the interpretation of Celtic religion to be
+affected by it. But we know that the Picts offered sacrifice before
+war--a Celtic custom, and had Druids, as also had the Celts.
+
+The earliest Celtic "kingdom" was in the region between the upper waters
+of the Rhine, the Elbe, and the Danube, where probably in Neolithic
+times the formation of their Celtic speech as a distinctive language
+began. Here they first became known to the Greeks, probably as a
+semi-mythical people, the Hyperboreans--the folk dwelling beyond the
+Ripoean mountains whence Boreas blew--with whom Hecataeus in the fourth
+century identifies them. But they were now known as Celts, and their
+territory as Celtica, while "Galatas" was used as a synonym of "Celtae,"
+in the third century B.C.[44] The name generally applied by the Romans
+to the Celts was "Galli" a term finally confined by them to the people
+of Gaul.[45] Successive bands of Celts went forth from this
+comparatively restricted territory, until the Celtic "empire" for some
+centuries before 300 B.C. included the British Isles, parts of the
+Iberian peninsula, Gaul, North Italy, Belgium, Holland, great part of
+Germany, and Austria. When the German tribes revolted, Celtic bands
+appeared in Asia Minor, and remained there as the Galatian Celts.
+Archaeological discoveries with a Celtic _facies_ have been made in most
+of these lands but even more striking is the witness of place-names.
+Celtic _dunon_, a fort or castle (the Gaelic _dun_), is found in
+compound names from Ireland to Southern Russia. _Magos_, "a field," is
+met with in Britain, France, Switzerland, Prussia, Italy, and Austria.
+River and mountain names familiar in Britain occur on the Continent. The
+Pennine range of Cumberland has the same name as the Appenines. Rivers
+named for their inherent divinity, _devos_, are found in Britain and on
+the Continent--Dee, Deva, etc.
+
+Besides this linguistic, had the Celts also a political unity over their
+great "empire," under one head? Such a unity certainly did not prevail
+from Ireland to the Balkan peninsula, but it prevailed over a large part
+of the Celtic area. Livy, following Timagenes, who perhaps cited a lost
+Celtic epos, speaks of king Ambicatus ruling over the Celts from Spain
+to Germany, and sending his sister's sons, Bellovesus and Segovesus,
+with many followers, to found new colonies in Italy and the Hercynian
+forest.[46] Mythical as this may be, it suggests the hegemony of one
+tribe or one chief over other tribes and chiefs, for Livy says that the
+sovereign power rested with the Bituriges who appointed the king of
+Celticum, viz. Ambicatus. Some such unity is necessary to explain Celtic
+power in the ancient world, and it was made possible by unity of race or
+at least of the congeries of Celticised peoples, by religious
+solidarity, and probably by regular gatherings of all the kings or
+chiefs. If the Druids were a Celtic priesthood at this time, or already
+formed a corporation as they did later in Gaul, they must have
+endeavoured to form and preserve such a unity. And if it was never so
+compact as Livy's words suggest, it must have been regarded as an ideal
+by the Celts or by their poets, Ambicatus serving as a central figure
+round which the ideas of empire crystallised. The hegemony existed in
+Gaul, where the Arverni and their king claimed power over the other
+tribes, and where the Romans tried to weaken the Celtic unity by
+opposing to them the Aedni.[47] In Belgium the hegemony was in the hands
+of the Suessiones, to whose king Belgic tribes in Britain submitted.[48]
+In Ireland the "high king" was supreme over other smaller kings, and in
+Galatia the unity of the tribes was preserved by a council with regular
+assemblies.[49]
+
+The diffusion of the Ambicatus legend would help to preserve unity by
+recalling the mythic greatness of the past. The Boii and Insubri
+appealed to transalpine Gauls for aid by reminding them of the deeds of
+their ancestors.[50] Nor would the Druids omit to infuse into their
+pupils' minds the sentiment of national greatness. For this and for
+other reasons, the Romans, to whom "the sovereignty of all Gaul" was an
+obnoxious watch-word, endeavoured to suppress them.[51] But the Celts
+were too widely scattered ever to form a compact empire.[52] The Roman
+empire extended itself gradually in the consciousness of its power; the
+cohesion of the Celts in an empire or under one king was made impossible
+by their migrations and diffusion. Their unity, such as it was, was
+broken by the revolt of the Teutonic tribes, and their subjugation was
+completed by Rome. The dreams of wide empire remained dreams. For the
+Celts, in spite of their vigour, have been a race of dreamers, their
+conquests in later times, those of the spirit rather than of the mailed
+fist. Their superiority has consisted in imparting to others their
+characteristics; organised unity and a vast empire could never be
+theirs.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[6] Ripley, _Races of Europe_; Wilser, _L'Anthropologie_, xiv. 494;
+Collignon, _ibid._ 1-20; Broca, _Rev. d'Anthrop._ ii. 589 ff.
+
+[7] Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, 241 ff., 263 ff.
+
+[8] Keane, _Man, Past and Present_, 511 ff., 521, 528.
+
+[9] Broca, _Mem. d'Anthrop._ i. 370 ff. Hovelacque thinks, with Keane,
+that the Gauls learned Celtic from the dark round-heads. But Galatian
+and British Celts, who had never been in contact with the latter, spoke
+Celtic. See Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, 311-312.
+
+[10] Caesar, i. 1; Collignon, _Mem. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_, 3{me} ser.
+i. 67.
+
+[11] Caesar, i. 1.
+
+[12] Caesar, ii. 30.
+
+[13] Caesar, i. 1; Strabo, iv. 1. 1.
+
+[14] Cf. Holmes, 295; Beddoe, _Scottish Review_, xix. 416.
+
+[15] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 175.
+
+[16] Caesar, ii. 4; Strabo, vii. 1. 2. Germans are taller and fairer than
+Gauls; Tacitus, _Agric._ ii. Cf. Beddoe, _JAI_ xx. 354-355.
+
+[17] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 374. Welsh Gwydion and Teutonic Wuotan may have
+the same root, see p. 105. Celtic Taranis has been compared to Donar,
+but there is no connection, and Taranis was not certainly a thunder-god.
+Much of the folk-religion was alike, but this applies to folk-religion
+everywhere.
+
+[18] D'Arbois, ii. 251.
+
+[19] Beddoe, _L'Anthropologie_, v. 516. Tall, fair, and highly
+brachycephalic types are still found in France, _ibid._ i. 213;
+Bortrand-Reinach, _Les Celtes_, 39.
+
+[20] Beddoe, 516; _L'Anthrop._, v. 63; Taylor, 81; Greenwell, _British
+Barrows_, 680.
+
+[21] _Fort. Rev._ xvi. 328; _Mem. of London Anthr. Soc._, 1865.
+
+[22] Ripley, 309; Sergi, 243; Keane, 529; Taylor, 112.
+
+[23] Taylor, 122, 295.
+
+[24] The Walloons are both dark and fair.
+
+[25] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 132.
+
+[26] Rh[^y]s, _Proc. Phil. Soc._ 1891; "Celtae and Galli," _Proc. Brit.
+Acad._ ii. D'Arbois points out that we do not know that these words are
+Celtic (_RC_ xii, 478).
+
+[27] See pp. 51, 376.
+
+[28] Caesar, i. 1.
+
+[29] _CB_{4} 160.
+
+[30] Skene, i. ch. 8; see p. 135.
+
+[31] _ZCP_ iii. 308; _Keltic Researches_.
+
+[32] Windisch, "Kelt. Sprachen," Ersch-Gruber's _Encylopaedie_; Stokes,
+_Linguistic Value of the Irish Annals_.
+
+[33] _THSC_ 1895-1896, 55 f.
+
+[34] _CM_ xii. 434.
+
+[35] In the Isle of Skye, where, looking at names of prominent places
+alone, Norse derivatives are to Gaelic as 3 to 2, they are as 1 to 5
+when names of insignificant places, untouched by Norse influence, are
+included.
+
+[36] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 241.
+
+[37] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 22.
+
+[38] Bede, _Eccl. Hist._ i. 12.
+
+[39] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._
+
+[40] See p. 222.
+
+[41] Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Caesar, v. 14. See p. 223.
+
+[42] Isidore, _Etymol._ ix. 2, 103; Rh[^y]s, _CB_ 242-243; Caesar, v. 14;
+Nicholson, _ZCP_ in. 332.
+
+[43] Tacitus, _Agric._ ii.
+
+[44] If _Celtae_ is from _qelo_, "to raise," it may mean "the lofty,"
+just as many savages call themselves "the men," _par excellence_.
+Rh[^y]s derives it from _qel_, "to slay," and gives it the sense of
+"warriors." See Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _US_ 83. _Galatae_ is from _gala_
+(Irish _gal_), "bravery." Hence perhaps "warriors."
+
+[45] "Galli" may be connected with "Galatae," but D'Arbois denies this.
+For all these titles see his _PH_ ii. 396 ff.
+
+[46] Livy, v. 31 f.; D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 304, 391.
+
+[47] Strabo, iv. 10. 3; Caesar, i. 31, vii. 4; _Frag. Hist. Graec._ i.
+437.
+
+[48] Caesar, ii. 4.
+
+[49] Strabo, xii. 5. 1.
+
+[50] Polybius, ii. 22.
+
+[51] Caesar, i. 2, 1-3.
+
+[52] On the subject of Celtic unity see Jullian, "Du patriotisme
+gaulois," _RC_ xxiii. 373.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS.
+
+
+The passage in which Caesar sums up the Gaulish pantheon runs: "They
+worship chiefly the god Mercury; of him there are many symbols, and they
+regard him as the inventor of all the arts, as the guide of travellers,
+and as possessing great influence over bargains and commerce. After him
+they worship Apollo and Mars, Juppiter and Minerva. About these they
+hold much the same beliefs as other nations. Apollo heals diseases,
+Minerva teaches the elements of industry and the arts, Juppiter rules
+over the heavens, Mars directs war.... All the Gauls assert that they
+are descended from Dispater, their progenitor."[53]
+
+As will be seen in this chapter, the Gauls had many other gods than
+these, while the Roman gods, by whose names Caesar calls the Celtic
+divinities, probably only approximately corresponded to them in
+functions. As the Greeks called by the names of their own gods those of
+Egypt, Persia, and Babylonia, so the Romans identified Greek, Teutonic,
+and Celtic gods with theirs. The identification was seldom complete, and
+often extended only to one particular function or attribute. But, as in
+Gaul, it was often part of a state policy, and there the fusion of cults
+was intended to break the power of the Druids. The Gauls seem to have
+adopted Roman civilisation easily, and to have acquiesced in the process
+of assimilation of their divinities to those of their conquerors. Hence
+we have thousands of inscriptions in which a god is called by the name
+of the Roman deity to whom he was assimilated and by his own Celtic
+name--Jupiter Taranis, Apollo Grannus, etc. Or sometimes to the name of
+the Roman god is added a descriptive Celtic epithet or a word derived
+from a Celtic place-name. Again, since Augustus reinstated the cult of
+the Lares, with himself as chief Lar, the epithet Augustus was given to
+all gods to whom the character of the Lares could be ascribed, e.g.
+Belenos Augustus. Cults of local gods became cults of the genius of the
+place, coupled with the genius of the emperor. In some cases, however,
+the native name stands alone. The process was aided by art. Celtic gods
+are represented after Greco-Roman or Greco-Egyptian models. Sometimes
+these carry a native divine symbol, or, in a few cases, the type is
+purely native, e.g. that of Cernunnos. Thus the native paganism was
+largely transformed before Christianity appeared in Gaul. Many Roman
+gods were worshipped as such, not only by the Romans in Gaul, but by the
+Gauls, and we find there also traces of the Oriental cults affected by
+the Romans.[54]
+
+There were probably in Gaul many local gods, tribal or otherwise, of
+roads and commerce, of the arts, of healing, etc., who, bearing
+different names, might easily be identified with each other or with
+Roman gods. Caesar's Mercury, Mars, Minerva, etc., probably include many
+local Minervas, Mars, and Mercuries. There may, however, have been a few
+great gods common to all Gaul, universally worshipped, besides the
+numerous local gods, some of whom may have been adopted from the
+aborigines. An examination of the divine names in Holder's
+_Altceltischer Sprachschatz_ will show how numerous the local gods of
+the continental Celts must have been. Professor Anwyl reckons that 270
+gods are mentioned once on inscriptions, 24 twice, 11 thrice, 10 four
+times, 3 five times, 2 seven times, 4 fifteen times, 1 nineteen times
+(Grannos), and 1 thirty-nine times (Belenos).[55]
+
+The god or gods identified with Mercury were very popular in Gaul, as
+Caesar's words and the witness of place-names derived from the Roman name
+of the god show. These had probably supplanted earlier names derived
+from those of the corresponding native gods. Many temples of the god
+existed, especially in the region of the Allobrogi, and bronze
+statuettes of him have been found in abundance. Pliny also describes a
+colossal statue designed for the Arverni who had a great temple of the
+god on the Puy de Dome.[56] Mercury was not necessarily the chief god,
+and at times, e.g. in war, the native war-gods would be prominent. The
+native names of the gods assimilated to Mercury are many in number; in
+some cases they are epithets, derived from the names of places where a
+local "Mercury" was worshipped, in others they are derived from some
+function of the gods.[57] One of these titles is Artaios, perhaps
+cognate with Irish _art_, "god," or connected with _artos_, "bear."
+Professor Rh[^y]s, however, finds its cognate in Welsh _ar_, "ploughed
+land," as if one of the god's functions connected him with
+agriculture.[58] This is supported by another inscription to Mercurius
+Cultor at Wurtemberg. Local gods of agriculture must thus have been
+assimilated to Mercury. A god Moccus, "swine," was also identified with
+Mercury, and the swine was a frequent representative of the corn-spirit
+or of vegetation divinities in Europe. The flesh of the animal was often
+mixed with the seed corn or buried in the fields to promote fertility.
+The swine had been a sacred animal among the Celts, but had apparently
+become an anthropomorphic god of fertility, Moccus, assimilated to
+Mercury, perhaps because the Greek Hermes caused fertility in flocks and
+herds. Such a god was one of a class whose importance was great among
+the Celts as an agricultural people.
+
+Commerce, much developed among the settled Gauls, gave rise to a god or
+gods who guarded roads over which merchants travelled, and boundaries
+where their transactions took place. Hence we have an inscription from
+Yorkshire, "To the god who invented roads and paths," while another
+local god of roads, equated with Mercury, was Cimiacinus.[59]
+
+Another god, Ogmios, a native god of speech, who draws men by chains
+fastened to the tip of his tongue, is identified in Lucian with
+Heracles, and is identical with the Goidelic Ogma.[60] Eloquence and
+speech are important matters among primitive peoples, and this god has
+more likeness to Mercury as a culture-god than to Heracles, Greek
+writers speaking of eloquence as binding men with the chains of Hermes.
+
+Several local gods, of agriculture, commerce, and culture, were thus
+identified with Mercury, and the Celtic Mercury was sometimes worshipped
+on hilltops, one of the epithets of the god, Dumias, being connected
+with the Celtic word for hill or mound. Irish gods were also associated
+with mounds.
+
+Many local gods were identified with Apollo both in his capacity of god
+of healing and also that of god of light.[61] The two functions are not
+incompatible, and this is suggested by the name Grannos, god of thermal
+springs both in Britain and on the Continent. The name is connected with
+a root which gives words meaning "burning," "shining," etc., and from
+which comes also Irish _grian_, "sun." The god is still remembered in a
+chant sung round bonfires in Auvergne. A sheaf of corn is set on fire,
+and called "Granno mio," while the people sing, "Granno, my friend;
+Granno, my father; Granno, my mother."[62] Another god of thermal
+springs was Borvo, Bormo, or Bormanus, whose name is derived from
+_borvo_, whence Welsh _berw_, "boiling," and is evidently connected with
+the bubbling of the springs.[63] Votive tablets inscribed Grannos or
+Borvo show that the offerers desired healing for themselves or others.
+
+The name Belenos found over a wide area, but mainly in Aquileia, comes
+from _belo-s_, bright, and probably means "the shining one." It is thus
+the name of a Celtic sun-god, equated with Apollo in that character. If
+he is the Belinus referred to by Geoffrey of Monmouth,[64] his cult must
+have extended into Britain from the Continent, and he is often mentioned
+by classical writers, while much later Ausonius speaks of his priest in
+Gaul.[65] Many place and personal names point to the popularity of his
+cult, and inscriptions show that he, too, was a god of health and of
+healing-springs. The plant _Belinuntia_ was called after him and
+venerated for its healing powers.[66] The sun-god's functions of light
+and fertility easily passed over into those of health-giving, as our
+study of Celtic festivals will show.
+
+A god with the name Maponos, connected with words denoting
+"youthfulness," is found in England and Gaul, equated with Apollo, who
+himself is called _Bonus Puer_ in a Dacian inscription. Another god
+Mogons or Mogounos, whose name is derived from _Mago_, "to increase,"
+and suggests the idea of youthful strength, may be a form of the
+sun-god, though some evidence points to his having been a sky-god.[67]
+
+The Celtic Apollo is referred to by classical writers. Diodorus speaks
+of his circular temple in an island of the Hyperboreans, adorned with
+votive offerings. The kings of the city where the temple stood, and its
+overseers, were called "Boreads," and every nineteenth year the god
+appeared dancing in the sky at the spring equinox.[68] The
+identifications of the temple with Stonehenge and of the Boreads with
+the Bards are quite hypothetical. Apollonius says that the Celts
+regarded the waters of Eridanus as due to the tears of Apollo--probably
+a native myth attributing the creation of springs and rivers to the
+tears of a god, equated by the Greeks with Apollo.[69] The Celtic
+sun-god, as has been seen, was a god of healing springs.
+
+Some sixty names or titles of Celtic war-gods are known, generally
+equated with Mars.[70] These were probably local tribal divinities
+regarded as leading their worshippers to battle. Some of the names show
+that these gods were thought of as mighty warriors, e.g. Caturix,
+"battle-king," Belatu-Cadros--a common name in Britain--perhaps meaning
+"comely in slaughter,"[71] and Albiorix, "world-king."[72] Another name,
+Rigisamus, from _rix_ and _samus_, "like to," gives the idea of
+"king-like."[73]
+
+Toutatis, Totatis, and Tutatis are found in inscriptions from Seckau,
+York, and Old Carlisle, and may be identified with Lucan's Teutates, who
+with Taranis and Esus mentioned by him, is regarded as one of three
+pan-Celtic gods.[74] Had this been the case we should have expected to
+find many more inscriptions to them. The scholiast on Lucan identifies
+Teutates now with Mars, now with Mercury. His name is connected with
+_teuta_, "tribe," and he is thus a tribal war-god, regarded as the
+embodiment of the tribe in its warlike capacity.
+
+Neton, a war-god of the Accetani, has a name connected with Irish _nia_,
+"warrior," and may be equated with the Irish war-god Net. Another god,
+Camulos, known from British and continental inscriptions, and figured on
+British coins with warlike emblems, has perhaps some connection with
+Cumal, father of Fionn, though it is uncertain whether Cumal was an
+Irish divinity.[75]
+
+Another god equated with Mars is the Gaulish Braciaca, god of malt.
+According to classical writers, the Celts were drunken race, and besides
+importing quantities of wine, they made their own native drinks, e.g.
+[Greek: chourmi], the Irish _cuirm_, and _braccat_, both made from malt
+(_braich_).[76] These words, with the Gaulish _brace_, "spelt,"[77] are
+connected with the name of this god, who was a divine personification of
+the substance from which the drink was made which produced, according to
+primitive ideas, the divine frenzy of intoxication. It is not clear why
+Mars should have been equated with this god.
+
+Caesar says that the Celtic Juppiter governed heaven. A god who carries a
+wheel, probably a sun-god, and another, a god of thunder, called
+Taranis, seem to have been equated with Juppiter. The sun-god with the
+wheel was not equated with Apollo, who seems to have represented Celtic
+sun-gods only in so far as they were also gods of healing. In some cases
+the god with the wheel carries also a thunderbolt, and on some altars,
+dedicated to Juppiter, both a wheel and a thunderbolt are figured. Many
+races have symbolised the sun as a circle or wheel, and an old Roman
+god, Summanus, probably a sun-god, later assimilated to Juppiter, had as
+his emblem a wheel. The Celts had the same symbolism, and used the wheel
+symbol as an amulet,[78] while at the midsummer festivals blazing
+wheels, symbolising the sun, were rolled down a slope. Possibly the god
+carries a thunderbolt because the Celts, like other races, believed that
+lightning was a spark from the sun.
+
+Three divinities have claims to be the god whom Caesar calls Dispater--a
+god with a hammer, a crouching god called Cernunnos, and a god called
+Esus or Silvanus. Possibly the native Dispater was differently envisaged
+in different districts, so that these would be local forms of one god.
+
+1. The god Taranis mentioned by Lucan is probably the Taranoos and
+Taranucnos of inscriptions, sometimes equated with Juppiter.[79] These
+names are connected with Celtic words for "thunder"; hence Taranis is a
+thunder-god. The scholiasts on Lucan identify him now with Juppiter, now
+with Dispater. This latter identification is supported by many who
+regard the god with the hammer as at once Taranis and Dispater, though
+it cannot be proved that the god with the hammer is Taranis. On one
+inscription the hammer-god is called Sucellos; hence we may regard
+Taranis as a distinct deity, a thunder-god, equated with Juppiter, and
+possibly represented by the Taran of the Welsh tale of _Kulhwych_.[80]
+
+Primitive men, whose only weapon and tool was a stone axe or hammer,
+must have regarded it as a symbol of force, then of supernatural force,
+hence of divinity. It is represented on remains of the Stone Age, and
+the axe was a divine symbol to the Mycenaeans, a hieroglyph of Neter to
+the Egyptians, and a worshipful object to Polynesians and Chaldeans. The
+cult of axe or hammer may have been widespread, and to the Celts, as to
+many other peoples, it was a divine symbol. Thus it does not necessarily
+denote a thunderbolt, but rather power and might, and possibly, as the
+tool which shaped things, creative might. The Celts made _ex voto_
+hammers of lead, or used axe-heads as amulets, or figured them on altars
+and coins, and they also placed the hammer in the hand of a god.[81]
+
+The god with the hammer is a gracious bearded figure, clad in Gaulish
+dress, and he carries also a cup. His plastic type is derived from that
+of the Alexandrian Serapis, ruler of the underworld, and that of
+Hades-Pluto.[82] His emblems, especially that of the hammer, are also
+those of the Pluto of the Etruscans, with whom the Celts had been in
+contact.[83] He is thus a Celtic Dispater, an underworld god, possibly
+at one time an Earth-god and certainly a god of fertility, and ancestor
+of the Celtic folk. In some cases, like Serapis, he carries a _modius_
+on his head, and this, like the cup, is an emblem of chthonian gods, and
+a symbol of the fertility of the soil. The god being benevolent, his
+hammer, like the tool with which man forms so many things, could only be
+a symbol of creative force.[84] As an ancestor of the Celts, the god is
+naturally represented in Celtic dress. In one bas-relief he is called
+Sucellos, and has a consort, Nantosvelta.[85] Various meanings have been
+assigned to "Sucellos," but it probably denotes the god's power of
+striking with the hammer. M. D'Arbois hence regards him as a god of
+blight and death, like Balor.[86] But though this Celtic Dispater was a
+god of the dead who lived on in the underworld, he was not necessarily a
+destructive god. The underworld god was the god from whom or from whose
+kingdom men came forth, and he was also a god of fertility. To this we
+shall return.
+
+2. A bearded god, probably squatting, with horns from each of which
+hangs a torque, is represented on an altar found at Paris.[87] He is
+called Cernunnos, perhaps "the horned," from _cerna_, "horn," and a
+whole group of nameless gods, with similar or additional attributes,
+have affinities with him.
+
+(a) A bronze statuette from Autun represents a similar figure, probably
+horned, who presents a torque to two ram's-headed serpents. Fixed above
+his ears are two small heads.[88] On a monument from Vandoeuvres is a
+squatting horned god, pressing a sack. Two genii stand beside him on a
+serpent, while one of them holds a torque.[89]
+
+(b) Another squatting horned figure with a torque occurs on an altar
+from Reims. He presses a bag, from which grain escapes, and on it an ox
+and stag are feeding. A rat is represented on the pediment above, and on
+either side stand Apollo and Mercury.[90] On the altar of Saintes is a
+squatting but headless god with torque and purse. Beside him is a
+goddess with a cornucopia, and a smaller divinity with a cornucopia and
+an apple. A similar squatting figure, supported by male and female
+deities, is represented on the other side of the altar.[91] On the altar
+of Beaune are three figures, one horned with a cornucopia, another
+three-headed, holding a basket.[92] Three figures, one female and two
+male, are found on the Dennevy altar. One god is three-faced, the other
+has a cornucopia, which he offers to a serpent.[93]
+
+(c) Another image represents a three-faced god, holding a serpent with a
+ram's head.[94]
+
+(d) Above a seated god and goddess on an altar from Malmaison is a block
+carved to represent three faces. To be compared with these are seven
+steles from Reims, each with a triple face but only one pair of eyes.
+Above some of these is a ram's head. On an eighth stele the heads are
+separated.[95]
+
+Cernunnos may thus have been regarded as a three-headed, horned,
+squatting god, with a torque and ram's-headed serpent. But a horned god
+is sometimes a member of a triad, perhaps representing myths in which
+Cernunnos was associated with other gods. The three-headed god may be
+the same as the horned god, though on the Beaune altar they are
+distinct. The various representations are linked together, but it is not
+certain that all are varying types of one god. Horns, torque, horned
+snake, or even the triple head may have been symbols pertaining to more
+than one god, though generally associated with Cernunnos.
+
+The squatting attitude of the god has been differently explained, and
+its affinities regarded now as Buddhist, now as Greco-Egyptian.[96] But
+if the god is a Dispater, and the ancestral god of the Celts, it is
+natural, as M. Mowat points out, to represent him in the typical
+attitude of the Gauls when sitting, since they did not use seats.[97]
+While the horns were probably symbols of power and worn also by chiefs
+on their helmets,[98] they may also show that the god was an
+anthropomorphic form of an earlier animal god, like the wolf-skin of
+other gods. Hence also horned animals would be regarded as symbols of
+the god, and this may account for their presence on the Reims monument.
+Animals are sometimes represented beside the divinities who were their
+anthropomorphic forms.[99] Similarly the ram's-headed serpent points to
+animal worship. But its presence with three-headed and horned gods is
+enigmatic, though, as will be seen later, it may have been connected
+with a cult of the dead, while the serpent was a chthonian animal.[100]
+These gods were gods of fertility and of the underworld of the dead.
+While the bag or purse (interchangeable with the cornucopia) was a
+symbol of Mercury, it was also a symbol of Pluto, and this may point to
+the fact that the gods who bear it had the same character as Pluto. The
+significance of the torque is also doubtful, but the Gauls offered
+torques to the gods, and they may have been regarded as vehicles of the
+warrior's strength which passed from him to the god to whom the victor
+presented it.
+
+Though many attempts have been made to prove the non-Celtic origin of
+the three-headed divinities or of their images,[101] there is no reason
+why the conception should not be Celtic, based on some myth now lost to
+us. The Celts had a cult of human heads, and fixed them up on their
+houses in order to obtain the protection of the ghost. Bodies or heads
+of dead warriors had a protective influence on their land or tribe, and
+myth told how the head of the god Bran saved his country from invasion.
+In other myths human heads speak after being cut off.[102] It might thus
+easily have been believed that the representation of a god's head had a
+still more powerful protective influence, especially when it was
+triplicated, thus looking in all directions, like Janus.
+
+The significance of the triad on these monuments is uncertain but since
+the supporting divinities are now male, now female, now male and female,
+it probably represents myths of which the horned or three-headed god was
+the central figure. Perhaps we shall not be far wrong in regarding such
+gods, on the whole, as Cernunnos, a god of abundance to judge by his
+emblems, and by the cornucopia held by his companions, probably
+divinities of fertility. In certain cases figures of squatting and
+horned goddesses with cornucopia occur.[103] These may be consorts of
+Cernunnos, and perhaps preceded him in origin. We may also go further
+and see in this god of abundance and fertility at once an Earth and an
+Under-earth god, since earth and under-earth are much the same to
+primitive thought, and fertility springs from below the earth's surface.
+Thus Cernunnos would be another form of the Celtic Dispater. Generally
+speaking, the images of Cernunnos are not found where those of the god
+with the hammer (Dispater) are most numerous. These two types may thus
+be different local forms of Dispater. The squatting attitude of
+Cernunnos is natural in the image of the ancestor of a people who
+squatted. As to the symbols of plenty, we know that Pluto was confounded
+with Plutus, the god of riches, because corn and minerals came out of
+the earth, and were thus the gifts of an Earth or Under-earth god.
+Celtic myth may have had the same confusion.
+
+On a Paris altar and on certain steles a god attacks a serpent with a
+club. The serpent is a chthonian animal, and the god, called Smertullos,
+may be a Dispater.[104] Gods who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier
+animal divinities, sometimes have the animals as symbols or attendants,
+or are regarded as hostile to them. In some cases Dispater may have
+outgrown the serpent symbolism, the serpent being regarded locally as
+his foe; this assumes that the god with the club is the same as the god
+with the hammer. But in the case of Cernunnos the animal remained as his
+symbol.
+
+Dispater was a god of growth and fertility, and besides being lord of
+the underworld of the dead, not necessarily a dark region or the abode
+of "dark" gods as is so often assumed by writers on Celtic religion, he
+was ancestor of the living. This may merely have meant that, as in other
+mythologies, men came to the surface of the earth from an underground
+region, like all things whose roots struck deep down into the earth. The
+lord of the underworld would then easily be regarded as their
+ancestor.[105]
+
+3. The hammer and the cup are also the symbols of a god called Silvanus,
+identified by M. Mowat with Esus,[106] a god represented cutting down a
+tree with an axe. Axe and hammer, however, are not necessarily
+identical, and the symbols are those of Dispater, as has been seen. A
+purely superficial connection between the Roman Silvanus and the Celtic
+Dispater may have been found by Gallo-Roman artists in the fact that
+both wear a wolf-skin, while there may once have been a Celtic wolf
+totem-god of the dead.[107] The Roman god was also associated with the
+wolf. This might be regarded as one out of many examples of a mere
+superficial assimilation of Roman and Celtic divinities, but in this
+case they still kept certain symbols of the native Dispater--the cup and
+hammer. Of course, since the latter was also a god of fertility, there
+was here another link with Silvanus, a god of woods and vegetation. The
+cult of the god was widespread--in Spain, S. Gaul, the Rhine provinces,
+Cisalpine Gaul, Central Europe and Britain. But one inscription gives
+the name Selvanos, and it is not impossible that there was a native god
+Selvanus. If so, his name may have been derived from _selva_,
+"possession," Irish _sealbh_, "possession," "cattle," and he may have
+been a chthonian god of riches, which in primitive communities consisted
+of cattle.[108] Domestic animals, in Celtic mythology, were believed to
+have come from the god's land. Selvanus would thus be easily identified
+with Silvanus, a god of flocks.
+
+Thus the Celtic Dispater had various names and forms in different
+regions, and could be assimilated to different foreign gods. Since Earth
+and Under-earth are so nearly connected, this divinity may once have
+been an Earth-god, and as such perhaps took the place of an earlier
+Earth-mother, who now became his consort or his mother. On a monument
+from Salzbach, Dispater is accompanied by a goddess called Aeracura,
+holding a basket of fruit, and on another monument from Ober-Seebach,
+the companion of Dispater holds a cornucopia. In the latter instance
+Dispater holds a hammer and cup, and the goddess may be Aeracura.
+Aeracura is also associated with Dispater in several inscriptions.[109]
+It is not yet certain that she is a Celtic goddess, but her presence
+with this evidently Celtic god is almost sufficient proof of the fact.
+She may thus represent the old Earth-goddess, whose place the native
+Dispater gradually usurped.
+
+Lucan mentions a god Esus, who is represented on a Paris altar as a
+woodman cutting down a tree, the branches of which are carried round to
+the next side of the altar, on which is represented a bull with three
+cranes--Tarvos Trigaranos. The same figure, unnamed, occurs on another
+altar at Treves, but in this case the bull's head appears in the
+branches, and on them sit the birds. M. Reinach applies one formula to
+the subjects of these altars--"The divine Woodman hews the Tree of the
+Bull with Three Cranes."[110] The whole represents some myth unknown to
+us, but M. D'Arbois finds in it some allusion to events in the
+Cuchulainn saga. To this we shall return.[111] Bull and tree are perhaps
+both divine, and if the animal, like the images of the divine bull, is
+three-horned, then the three cranes (_garanus_, "crane") may be a rebus
+for three-horned (_trikeras_), or more probably three-headed
+(_trikarenos_).[112] In this case woodman, tree, and bull might all be
+representatives of a god of vegetation. In early ritual, human, animal,
+or arboreal representatives of the god were periodically destroyed to
+ensure fertility, but when the god became separated from these
+representatives, the destruction or slaying was regarded as a sacrifice
+to the god, and myths arose telling how he had once slain the animal. In
+this case, tree and bull, really identical, would be mythically regarded
+as destroyed by the god whom they had once represented. If Esus was a
+god of vegetation, once represented by a tree, this would explain why,
+as the scholiast on Lucan relates, human sacrifices to Esus were
+suspended from a tree. Esus was worshipped at Paris and at Treves; a
+coin with the name AEsus was found in England; and personal names like
+Esugenos, "son of Esus," and Esunertus, "he who has the strength of
+Esus," occur in England, France, and Switzerland.[113] Thus the cult of
+this god may have been comparatively widespread. But there is no
+evidence that he was a Celtic Jehovah or a member, with Teutates and
+Taranis, of a pan-Celtic triad, or that this triad, introduced by Gauls,
+was not accepted by the Druids.[114] Had such a great triad existed,
+some instance of the occurrence of the three names on one inscription
+would certainly have been found. Lucan does not refer to the gods as a
+triad, nor as gods of all the Celts, or even of one tribe. He lays
+stress merely on the fact that they were worshipped with human
+sacrifice, and they were apparently more or less well-known local
+gods.[115]
+
+The insular Celts believed that some of their gods lived on or in hills.
+We do not know whether such a belief was entertained by the Gauls,
+though some of their deities were worshipped on hills, like the Puy de
+Dome. There is also evidence of mountain worship among them. One
+inscription runs, "To the Mountains"; a god of the Pennine Alps,
+Poeninus, was equated with Juppiter; and the god of the Vosges mountains
+was called Vosegus, perhaps still surviving in the giant supposed to
+haunt them.[116]
+
+Certain grouped gods, _Dii Casses_, were worshipped by Celts on the
+right bank of the Rhine, but nothing is known regarding their functions,
+unless they were road gods. The name means "beautiful" or "pleasant,"
+and _Cassi_ appears in personal and tribal names, and also in
+_Cassiterides_, an early name of Britain, perhaps signifying that the
+new lands were "more beautiful" than those the Celts had left. When tin
+was discovered in Britain, the Mediterranean traders called it [Greek:
+chassiteros], after the name of the place where it was found, as
+_cupreus_, "copper," was so called from Cyprus.[117]
+
+Many local tutelar divinities were also worshipped. When a new
+settlement was founded, it was placed under the protection of a tribal
+god, or the name of some divinised river on whose banks the village was
+placed, passed to the village itself, and the divinity became its
+protector. Thus Dea Bibracte, Nemausus, and Vasio were tutelar
+divinities of Bibracte, Nimes, and Vaison. Other places were called
+after Belenos, or a group of divinities, usually the _Matres_ with a
+local epithet, watched over a certain district.[118] The founding of a
+town was celebrated in an annual festival, with sacrifices and libations
+to the protecting deity, a practice combated by S. Eloi in the eighth
+century. But the custom of associating a divinity with a town or region
+was a great help to patriotism. Those who fought for their homes felt
+that they were fighting for their gods, who also fought on their side.
+Several inscriptions, "To the genius of the place," occur in Britain,
+and there are a few traces of tutelar gods in Irish texts, but generally
+local saints had taken their place.
+
+The Celtic cult of goddesses took two forms, that of individual and that
+of grouped goddesses, the latter much more numerous than the grouped
+gods. Individual goddesses were worshipped as consorts of gods, or as
+separate personalities, and in the latter case the cult was sometimes
+far extended. Still more popular was the cult of grouped goddesses. Of
+these the _Matres_, like some individual goddesses, were probably early
+Earth-mothers, and since the primitive fertility-cults included all that
+might then be summed up as "civilisation," such goddesses had already
+many functions, and might the more readily become divinities of special
+crafts or even of war. Many individual goddesses are known only by their
+names, and were of a purely local character.[119] Some local goddesses
+with different names but similar functions are equated with the same
+Roman goddess; others were never so equated.
+
+The Celtic Minerva, or the goddesses equated with her, "taught the
+elements of industry and the arts,"[120] and is thus the equivalent of
+the Irish Brigit. Her functions are in keeping with the position of
+woman as the first civiliser--discovering agriculture, spinning, the art
+of pottery, etc. During this period goddesses were chiefly worshipped,
+and though the Celts had long outgrown this primitive stage, such
+culture-goddesses still retained their importance. A goddess equated
+with Minerva in Southern France and Britain is Belisama, perhaps from
+_qval_, "to burn" or "shine."[121] Hence she may have been associated
+with a cult of fire, like Brigit and like another goddess Sul, equated
+with Minerva at Bath and in Hesse, and in whose temple perpetual fires
+burned.[122] She was also a goddess of hot springs. Belisama gave her
+name to the Mersey,[123] and many goddesses in Celtic myth are
+associated with rivers.
+
+Some war-goddesses are associated with Mars--Nemetona (in Britain and
+Germany), perhaps the same as the Irish Nemon, and Cathubodua, identical
+with the Irish war-goddess Badb-catha, "battle-crow," who tore the
+bodies of the slain.[124] Another goddess Andrasta, "invincible,"
+perhaps the same as the Andarta of the Voconces, was worshipped by the
+people of Boudicca with human sacrifices, like the native Bellona of the
+Scordisci.[125]
+
+A goddess of the chase was identified with Artemis in Galatia, where she
+had a priestess Camma, and also in the west. At the feast of the
+Galatian goddess dogs were crowned with flowers, her worshippers feasted
+and a sacrifice was made to her, feast and sacrifice being provided out
+of money laid aside for every animal taken in the chase.[126] Other
+goddesses were equated with Diana, and one of her statues was destroyed
+in Christian times at Treves.[127] These goddesses may have been thought
+of as rushing through the forest with an attendant train, since in later
+times Diana, with whom they were completely assimilated, became, like
+Holda, the leader of the "furious host" and also of witches'
+revels.[128] The Life of Caesarius of Arles speaks of a "demon" called
+Diana by the rustics. A bronze statuette represents the goddess riding a
+wild boar,[129] her symbol and, like herself, a creature of the forest,
+but at an earlier time itself a divinity of whom the goddess became the
+anthropomorphic form.
+
+Goddesses, the earlier spirits of the waters, protected rivers and
+springs, or were associated with gods of healing wells. Dirona or Sirona
+is associated with Grannos mainly in Eastern Gaul and the Rhine
+provinces, and is sometimes represented carrying grapes and grain.[130]
+Thus this goddess may once have been connected with fertility, perhaps
+an Earth-mother, and if her name means "the long-lived,"[131] this would
+be an appropriate title for an Earth-goddess. Another goddess, Stanna,
+mentioned in an inscription at Perigueux, is perhaps "the standing or
+abiding one," and thus may also have been Earth-goddess.[132] Grannos
+was also associated with the local goddesses Vesunna and Aventia, who
+gave their names to Vesona and Avanche. His statue also stood in the
+temple of the goddess of the Seine, Sequana.[133] With Bormo were
+associated Bormana in Southern Gaul, and Damona in Eastern Gaul--perhaps
+an animal goddess, since the root of her name occurs in Irish _dam_,
+"ox," and Welsh _dafad_, "sheep." Dea Brixia was the consort of
+Luxovius, god of the waters of Luxeuil. Names of other goddesses of the
+waters are found on _ex votos_ and plaques which were placed in or near
+them. The Roman Nymphae, sometimes associated with Bormo, were the
+equivalents of the Celtic water-goddesses, who survived in the
+water-fairies of later folk-belief. Some river-goddesses gave their
+names to many rivers in the Celtic area--the numerous Avons being named
+from Abnoba, goddess of the sources of the Danube, and the many Dees and
+Dives from Divona. Clota was goddess of the Clyde, Sabrina had her
+throne "beneath the translucent wave" of the Severn, Icauna was goddess
+of the Yonne, Sequana of the Seine, and Sinnan of the Shannon.
+
+In some cases forests were ruled by goddesses--that of the Ardennes by
+Dea Arduinna, and the Black Forest, perhaps because of the many waters
+in it, by Dea Abnoba.[134] While some goddesses are known only by being
+associated with a god, e.g. Kosmerta with Mercury in Eastern Gaul,
+others have remained separate, like Epona, perhaps a river-goddess
+merged with an animal divinity, and known from inscriptions as a
+horse-goddess.[135] But the most striking instance is found in the
+grouped goddesses.
+
+Of these the _Deoe Matres_, whose name has taken a Latin form and whose
+cult extended to the Teutons, are mentioned in many inscriptions all
+over the Celtic area, save in East and North-West Gaul.[136] In art they
+are usually represented as three in number, holding fruit, flowers, a
+cornucopia, or an infant. They were thus goddesses of fertility, and
+probably derived from a cult of a great Mother-goddess, the Earth
+personified. She may have survived as a goddess Berecynthia; worshipped
+at Autun, where her image was borne through the fields to promote
+fertility, or as the goddesses equated with Demeter and Kore, worshipped
+by women on an island near Britain.[137] Such cults of a Mother-goddess
+lie behind many religions, but gradually her place was taken by an
+Earth-god, the Celtic Dispater or Dagda, whose consort the goddess
+became. She may therefore be the goddess with the cornucopia on
+monuments of the horned god, or Aeracura, consort of Dispater, or a
+goddess on a monument at Epinal holding a basket of fruit and a
+cornucopia, and accompanied by a ram's-headed serpent.[138] These
+symbols show that this goddess was akin to the _Matres_. But she
+sometimes preserved her individuality, as in the case of Berecynthia and
+the _Matres_, though it is not quite clear why she should have been thus
+triply multiplied. A similar phenomenon is found in the close connection
+of Demeter and Persephone, while the Celts regarded three as a sacred
+number. The primitive division of the year into three seasons--spring,
+summer, and winter--may have had its effect in triplicating a goddess of
+fertility with which the course of the seasons was connected.[139] In
+other mythologies groups of three goddesses are found, the Hathors in
+Egypt, the Moirai, Gorgons, and Graiae of Greece, the Roman Fates, and
+the Norse Nornae, and it is noticeable that the _Matres_ were sometimes
+equated with the Parcae and Fates.[140]
+
+In the _Matres_, primarily goddesses of fertility and plenty, we have
+one of the most popular and also primitive aspects of Celtic religion.
+They originated in an age when women cultivated the ground, and the
+Earth was a goddess whose cult was performed by priestesses. But in
+course of time new functions were bestowed on the _Matres_. Possibly
+river-goddesses and others are merely mothers whose functions have
+become specialised. The _Matres_ are found as guardians of individuals,
+families, houses, of towns, a province, or a whole nation, as their
+epithets in inscriptions show. The _Matres Domesticae_ are household
+goddesses; the _Matres Treverae_, or _Gallaicae_, or _Vediantae_, are the
+mothers of Treves, of the Gallaecae, of the Vediantii; the _Matres
+Nemetiales_ are guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields
+as _Matres Campestrae_ they brought prosperity to towns and people.[141]
+They guarded women, especially in childbirth, as _ex votos_ prove, and
+in this aspect they are akin to the _Junones_ worshipped also in Gaul
+and Britain. The name thus became generic for most goddesses, but all
+alike were the lineal descendants of the primitive Earth-mother.[142]
+
+Popular superstition has preserved the memory of these goddesses in the
+three _bonnes dames_, _dames blanches_, and White Women, met by
+wayfarers in forests, or in the three fairies or wise women of
+folk-tales, who appear at the birth of children. But sometimes they have
+become hateful hags. The _Matres_ and other goddesses probably survived
+in the beneficent fairies of rocks and streams, in the fairy Abonde who
+brought riches to houses, or Esterelle of Provence who made women
+fruitful, or Aril who watched over meadows, or in beings like Melusine,
+Viviane, and others.[143] In Gallo-Roman Britain the cult of the
+_Matres_ is found, but how far it was indigenous there is uncertain. A
+Welsh name for fairies, _Y Mamau_, "the Mothers," and the phrase, "the
+blessing of the Mothers" used of a fairy benediction, may be a
+reminiscence of such goddesses.[144] The presence of similar goddesses
+in Ireland will be considered later.[145] Images of the _Matres_ bearing
+a child have sometimes been taken for those of the Virgin, when found
+accidentally, and as they are of wood blackened with age, they are known
+as _Vierges Noires_, and occupy an honoured place in Christian
+sanctuaries. Many churches of Notre Dame have been built on sites where
+an image of the Virgin is said to have been miraculously found--the
+image probably being that of a pagan Mother. Similarly, an altar to the
+_Matres_ at Vaison is now dedicated to the Virgin as the "good
+Mother."[146]
+
+In inscriptions from Eastern and Cisalpine Gaul, and from the Rhine and
+Danube region, the _Matronae_ are mentioned, and this name is probably
+indicative of goddesses like the _Matres_.[147] It is akin to that of
+many rivers, e.g. the Marne or Meyrone, and shows that the Mothers were
+associated with rivers. The Mother river fertilised a large district,
+and exhibited the characteristic of the whole group of goddesses.
+
+Akin also to the _Matres_ are the _Suleviae_, guardian goddesses called
+_Matres_ in a few inscriptions; the _Comedovae_, whose name perhaps
+denotes guardianship or power; the _Dominae_, who watched over the home,
+perhaps the _Dames_ of mediaeval folk-lore; and the _Virgines_, perhaps
+an appellative of the _Matres_, and significant when we find that virgin
+priestesses existed in Gaul and Ireland.[148] The _Proxumae_ were
+worshipped in Southern Gaul, and the _Quadriviae_, goddesses of
+cross-roads, at Cherbourg.[149]
+
+Some Roman gods are found on inscriptions without being equated with
+native deities. They may have been accepted by the Gauls as new gods, or
+they had perhaps completely ousted similar native gods. Others, not
+mentioned by Caesar, are equated with native deities, Juno with Clivana,
+Saturn with Arvalus, and to a native Vulcan the Celts vowed spoils of
+war.[150] Again, many native gods are not equated with Roman deities on
+inscriptions. Apart from the divinities of Pyrenaean inscriptions, who
+may not be Celtic, the names of over 400 native deities, whether equated
+with Roman gods or not, are known. Some of these names are mere
+epithets, and most of the gods are of a local character, known here by
+one name, there by another. Only in a very few cases can it be asserted
+that a god was worshipped over the whole Celtic area by one name, though
+some gods in Gaul, Britain, and Ireland with different names have
+certainly similar functions.[151]
+
+The pantheon of the continental Celts was a varied one. Traces of the
+primitive agricultural rites, and of the priority of goddesses to gods,
+are found, and the vaguer aspects of primitive nature worship are seen
+behind the cult of divinities of sky, sun, thunder, forests, rivers, or
+in deities of animal origin. We come next to evidence of a higher stage,
+in divinities of culture, healing, the chase, war, and the underworld.
+We see divinities of Celtic groups--gods of individuals, the family, the
+tribe. Sometimes war-gods assumed great prominence, in time of war, or
+among the aristocracy, but with the development of commerce, gods
+associated with trade and the arts of peace came to the front.[152] At
+the same time the popular cults of agricultural districts must have
+remained as of old. With the adoption of Roman civilisation, enlightened
+Celts separated themselves from the lower aspects of their religion, but
+this would have occurred with growing civilisation had no Roman ever
+entered Gaul. In rural districts the more savage aspects of the cult
+would still have remained, but that these were entirely due to an
+aboriginal population is erroneous. The Celts must have brought such
+cults with them or adopted cults similar to their own wherever they
+came. The persistence of these cults is seen in the fact that though
+Christianity modified them, it could not root them out, and in
+out-of-the-way corners, survivals of the old ritual may still be found,
+for everywhere the old religion of the soil dies hard.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[53] Caesar, _de Bell. Gall._ vi. 17, 18.
+
+[54] Bloch (Lavisse), _Hist, de France_, i. 2, 419; Reinaoh, _BF_ 13,
+23.
+
+[55] _Trans. Gaelic Soc. of Inverness_, xxvi. p. 411 f.
+
+[56] Vallentin, _Les Dieux de la cite des Allobroges_, 15; Pliny, _HN_
+xxxiv. 7.
+
+[57] These names are Alaunius, Arcecius, Artaius, Arvernorix, Arvernus,
+Adsmerius, Canetonensis, Clavariatis, Cissonius, Cimbrianus, Dumiatis,
+Magniacus, Moecus, Toeirenus, Vassocaletus, Vellaunus, Visuoius,
+Biausius, Cimiacinus, Naissatis. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[58] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 6.
+
+[59] Huebner, vii. 271; _CIL_ iii. 5773.
+
+[60] Lucian, _Heracles_, 1 f. Some Gaulish coins figure a head to which
+are bound smaller heads. In one case the cords issue from the mouth
+(Blanchet, i. 308, 316-317). These may represent Lucian's Ogmios, but
+other interpretations have been put upon them. See Robert, _RC_ vii.
+388; Jullian, 84.
+
+[61] The epithets and names are Anextiomarus, Belenos, Bormo, Borvo, or
+Bormanus, Cobledulitavus, Cosmis (?), Grannos, Livicus, Maponos, Mogo or
+Mogounos, Sianus, Toutiorix, Viudonnus, Virotutis. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[62] Pommerol, _Ball. de Soc. d'ant. de Paris_, ii. fasc. 4.
+
+[63] See Holder, _s.v._ Many place-names are derived from _Borvo, e.g._
+Bourbon l'Archambaut, which gave its name to the Bourbon dynasty, thus
+connected with an old Celtic god.
+
+[64] See p. 102, _infra_.
+
+[65] Jul. Cap. _Maxim._ 22; Herodian, viii. 3; Tert. _Apol._ xxiv. 70;
+Auson. _Prof._ xi. 24.
+
+[66] Stokes derives _belinuntia_ from _beljo_-, a tree or leaf, Irish
+_bile_, _US_ 174.
+
+[67] Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _US_ 197; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 23; see p. 180,
+_infra_.
+
+[68] Diod. Sic. ii. 47.
+
+[69] Apoll. Rhod. iv. 609.
+
+[70] Albiorix, Alator, Arixo, Beladonnis, Barrex, Belatucadros,
+Bolvinnus, Braciaca, Britovis, Buxenus, Cabetius, Camulus, Cariocecius,
+Caturix, Cemenelus, Cicollius, Carrus, Cocosus, Cociduis, Condatis,
+Cnabetius, Corotiacus, Dinomogetimarus, Divanno, Dunatis, Glarinus,
+Halamardus, Harmogius, Ieusdriuus, Lacavus, Latabius, Leucetius,
+Leucimalacus, Lenus, Mullo, Medocius, Mogetius, Nabelcus, Neton, Ocelos,
+Ollondios, Rudianus, Rigisamus, Randosatis, Riga, Segomo, Sinatis,
+Smertatius, Toutates, Tritullus, Vesucius, Vincius, Vitucadros,
+Vorocius. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[71] D'Arbois, ii. 215; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 37.
+
+[72] So Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 42.
+
+[73] Huebner, 61.
+
+[74] Holder, _s.v._; Lucan, i. 444 f. The opinions of writers who take
+this view are collected by Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 137.
+
+[75] Holder, _s.v._ The Gaulish name Camulogenus, "born of Cumel,"
+represents the same idea as in Fionn's surname, MacCumall.
+
+[76] Athen. iv. 36; Dioscorides, ii. 110; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 116, 120; _IT_
+i. 437, 697.
+
+[77] Pliny, _HN_ xviii. 7.
+
+[78] Gaidoz, _Le Dieu Gaulois de Soleil_; Reinach, _CS_ 98, _BF_ 35;
+Blanchet, i. 27.
+
+[79] Lucan, _Phar._ i. 444. Another form, Tanaros, may be simply the
+German Donar.
+
+[80] Loth, i. 270.
+
+[81] Gaidoz, _RC_ vi. 457; Reinach, _OS_ 65, 138; Blanchet, i. 160. The
+hammer is also associated with another Celtic Dispater, equated with
+Sylvanus, who was certainly not a thunder-god.
+
+[82] Reinach, _BF_ 137 f.; Courcelle-Seneuil, 115 f.
+
+[83] Barthelemy, _RC_ i. l f.
+
+[84] See Flouest, _Rev. Arch._ v. 17.
+
+[85] Reinach, _RC_ xvii. 45.
+
+[86] D'Arbois, ii. 126. He explains Nantosvelta as meaning "She who is
+brilliant in war." The goddess, however, has none of the attributes of a
+war-goddess. M. D'Arbois also saw in a bas-relief of the hammer-god, a
+female figure, and a child, the Gaulish equivalents of Balor, Ethne, and
+Lug (_RC_ xv. 236). M. Reinach regards Sucellos, Nantosvelta, and a bird
+which is figured with them, as the same trio, because pseudo-Plutarch
+(_de Fluv._ vi. 4) says that _lougos_ means "crow" in Celtic. This is
+more than doubtful. In any case Ethne has no warlike traits in Irish
+story, and as Lug and Balor were deadly enemies, it remains to be
+explained why they appear tranquilly side by side. See _RC_ xxvi. 129.
+Perhaps Nantosvelta, like other Celtic goddesses, was a river nymph.
+_Nanto_ Gaulish is "valley," and _nant_ in old Breton is "gorge" or
+"brook." Her name might mean "shining river." See Stokes, _US_ 193, 324.
+
+[87] _RC_ xviii. 254. Cernunnos may be the Juppiter Cernenos of an
+inscription from Pesth, Holder, _s.v._
+
+[88] Reinach, _BF_ 186, fig. 177.
+
+[89] _Rev. Arch._ xix. 322, pl. 9.
+
+[90] Bertrand, _Rev. Arch._ xv. 339, xvi. pl. 12.
+
+[91] Ibid. xv. pl. 9, 10.
+
+[92] Ibid. xvi. 9.
+
+[93] Ibid. pl. 12 _bis_.
+
+[94] Bertrand, _Rev. Arch._ xvi. 8.
+
+[95] Ibid. xvi. 10 f.
+
+[96] Ibid. xv., xvi.; Reinach, _BF_ 17, 191.
+
+[97] _Bull. Epig._ i. 116; Strabo, iv. 3; Diod. Sic. v. 28.
+
+[98] Diod. Sic. v. 30; Reinach, _BF_ 193.
+
+[99] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[100] See p. 166, _infra_.
+
+[101] See, e.g., Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 29; de Witte, _Rev. Arch._ ii.
+387, xvi. 7; Bertrand, _ibid._ xvi. 3.
+
+[102] See pp. 102, 242, _infra_; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 554; Curtin, 182; _RC_
+xxii. 123, xxiv. 18.
+
+[103] Dom Martin, ii. 185; Reinach, _BF_ 192, 199.
+
+[104] See, however, p. 136, _infra_; and for another interpretation of
+this god as equivalent of the Irish Lug slaying Balor, see D'Arbois, ii.
+287.
+
+[105] See p. 229, _infra_.
+
+[106] Reinach, _BF_ 162, 184; Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 62, _Rev. Epig._
+1887, 319, 1891, 84.
+
+[107] Reinach, _BF_ 141, 153, 175, 176, 181; see p. 218, _infra_.
+Flouest, _Rev. Arch._ 1885, i. 21, thinks that the identification was
+with an earlier chthonian Silvanus. Cf. Jullian, 17, note 3, who
+observes that the Gallo-Roman assimilations were made "sur le doinaine
+archaisant des faits populaires et rustiques de l'Italie." For the
+inscriptions, see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[108] Stokes, _US_ 302; MacBain, 274; _RC_ xxvi. 282.
+
+[109] Gaidoz, _Rev. Arch._ ii. 1898; Mowat, _Bull. Epig._ i. 119;
+Courcelle-Seneuil, 80 f.; Pauly-Wissowa, _Real. Lex._ i. 667;
+Daremberg-Saglio, _Dict._ ii., _s.v._ "Dispater."
+
+[110] Lucan, i. 444; _RC_ xviii. 254, 258.
+
+[111] See p. 127, _infra_.
+
+[112] For a supposed connection between this bas-relief and the myth of
+Geryon, see Reinach, _BF_ 120; _RC_ xviii. 258 f.
+
+[113] _Coins of the Ancient Britons_, 386; Holder, i. 1475, 1478.
+
+[114] For these theories see Dom Martin, ii. 2; Bertrand, 335 f.
+
+[115] Cf. Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 149.
+
+[116] Orelli, 2107, 2072; Monnier, 532; Tacitus, xxi. 38.
+
+[117] Holder, i. 824; Reinach, _Rev. Arch._ xx. 262; D'Arbois, _Les
+Celtes_, 20. Other grouped gods are the Bacucei, Castoeci, Icotii,
+Ifles, Lugoves, Nervini, and Silvani. See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[118] For all these see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[119] Professor Anwyl gives the following statistics: There are 35
+goddesses mentioned once, 2 twice, 3 thrice, 1 four times, 2 six times,
+2 eleven times, 1 fourteen times (Sirona), 1 twenty-one times
+(Rosmerta), 1 twenty-six times (Epona) (_Trans. Gael. Soc. Inverness_,
+xxvi. 413).
+
+[120] Caesar, vi. 17.
+
+[121] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 54; _Rev. Arch._ i. 201. See Holder,
+_s.v._
+
+[122] Solinus, xxii. 10; Holder, _s.v._
+
+[123] Ptolemy, ii. 2.
+
+[124] See p. 71, _infra_.
+
+[125] Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Amm. Mare, xxvii. 4. 4.
+
+[126] Plutarch, _de Vir. Mul._ 20; Arrian, _Cyneg._ xxxiv. 1.
+
+[127] S. Greg. _Hist._ viii. 15.
+
+[128] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 283, 933; Reinach, _RC_ xvi. 261.
+
+[129] Reinach, _BF_ 50.
+
+[130] Holder, i. 1286; Robert, _RC_ iv. 133.
+
+[131] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 27.
+
+[132] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 43.
+
+[133] Holder, _s.v._; Bulliot, _RC_ ii. 22.
+
+[134] Holder, i. 10, 89.
+
+[135] Holder, _s.v._; see p. 213, _infra_.
+
+[136] Holder, ii. 463. They are very numerous in South-East Gaul, where
+also three-headed gods are found.
+
+[137] See pp. 274-5, _infra_.
+
+[138] Courcelle-Seneuil, 80-81.
+
+[139] See my article "Calendar" in Hastings' _Encyclop. of Religion and
+Ethics_, iii. 80.
+
+[140] _CIL_ v. 4208, 5771, vii. 927; Holder, ii. 89.
+
+[141] For all these titles see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[142] There is a large literature devoted to the _Matres_. See De Wal,
+_Die Maeder Gottinem_; Vallentin, _Le Culte des Matrae_; Daremberg-Saglio,
+_Dict. s.v. Matres_; Ihm, _Jahrbuch. des Vereins von Alterth. in
+Rheinlande_, No. 83; Roscher, _Lexicon_, ii. 2464 f.
+
+[143] See Maury, _Fees du Moyen Age_; Sebillot, i. 262; Monnier, 439 f.;
+Wright, _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_, 286 f.; Vallentin, _RC_ iv. 29. The
+_Matres_ may already have had a sinister aspect in Roman times, as they
+appear to be intended by an inscription _Lamiis Tribus_ on an altar at
+Newcastle. Huebner, 507.
+
+[144] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 28. Cf. _Y Foel Famau_, "the hill of the
+Mothers," in the Clwydian range.
+
+[145] See p. 73, _infra_.
+
+[146] Vallentin, _op. cit._ iv. 29; Maury, _Croyances du Moyen Age_,
+382.
+
+[147] Holder, _s.v._
+
+[148] See pp. 69, 317, _infra_.
+
+[149] For all these see Holder, _s.v._; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 103; _RC_ iv. 34.
+
+[150] Florus, ii. 4.
+
+[151] See the table of identifications, p. 125, _infra_.
+
+[152] We need not assume with Jullian, 18, that there was one supreme
+god, now a war-god, now a god of peace. Any prominent god may have
+become a war-god on occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE.
+
+
+Three divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland, one
+telling of the Tuatha De Danann, the others of Cuchulainn and of the
+Fians. They are distinct in character and contents, but the gods of the
+first cycle often help the heroes of the other groups, as the gods of
+Greece and India assisted the heroes of the epics. We shall see that
+some of the personages of these cycles may have been known in Gaul; they
+are remembered in Wales, but, in the Highlands, where stories of
+Cuchulainn and Fionn are still told, the Tuatha De Danann are less known
+now than in 1567, when Bishop Carsewell lamented the love of the
+Highlanders for "idle, turbulent, lying, worldly stories concerning the
+Tuatha Dedanans."[153]
+
+As the new Achaean religion in Greece and the Vedic sacred books of India
+regarded the aboriginal gods and heroes as demons and goblins, so did
+Christianity in Ireland sometimes speak of the older gods there. On the
+other hand, it was mainly Christian scribes who changed the old
+mythology into history, and made the gods and heroes kings. Doubtless
+myths already existed, telling of the descent of rulers and people from
+divinities, just as the Gauls spoke of their descent from Dispater, or
+as the Incas of Peru, the Mikados of Japan, and the kings of Uganda
+considered themselves offspring of the gods. This is a universal
+practice, and made it the more easy for Christian chroniclers to
+transmute myth into history. In Ireland, as elsewhere, myth doubtless
+told of monstrous races inhabiting the land in earlier days, of the
+strife of the aborigines and incomers, and of their gods, though the
+aboriginal gods may in some cases have been identified with Celtic gods,
+or worshipped in their own persons. Many mythical elements may therefore
+be looked for in the euhemerised chronicles of ancient Ireland. But the
+chroniclers themselves were but the continuers of a process which must
+have been at work as soon as the influence of Christianity began to be
+felt.[154] Their passion, however, was to show the descent of the Irish
+and the older peoples from the old Biblical personages, a process dear
+to the modern Anglo-Israelite, some of whose arguments are based on the
+wild romancing of the chroniclers.
+
+Various stories were told of the first peopling of Ireland. Banba, with
+two other daughters of Cain, arrived with fifty women and three men,
+only to die of the plague. Three fishermen next discovered Ireland, and
+"of the island of Banba of Fair Women with hardihood they took
+possession." Having gone to fetch their wives, they perished in the
+deluge at Tuath Inba.[155] A more popular account was that of the coming
+of Cessair, Noah's granddaughter, with her father, husband, a third man,
+Ladru, "the first dead man of Erin," and fifty damsels. Her coming was
+the result of the advice of a _laimh-dhia_, or "hand-god," but their
+ship was wrecked, and all save her husband, Finntain, who survived for
+centuries, perished in the flood.[156] Cessair's ship was less
+serviceable than her grandparent's! Followed the race of Partholan, "no
+wiser one than the other," who increased on the land until plague swept
+them away, with the exception of Tuan mac Caraill, who after many
+transformations, told the story of Ireland to S. Finnen centuries
+after.[157] The survival of Finntain and Tuan, doubles of each other,
+was an invention of the chroniclers, to explain the survival of the
+history of colonists who had all perished. Keating, on the other hand,
+rejecting the sole survivor theory as contradictory to Scripture,
+suggests that "aerial demons," followers of the invaders, revealed all
+to the chroniclers, unless indeed they found it engraved with "an iron
+pen and lead in the rocks."[158]
+
+Two hundred years before Partholan's coming, the Fomorians had
+arrived,[159] and they and their chief Cichol Gricenchos fought
+Partholan at Mag Itha, where they were defeated. Cichol was footless,
+and some of his host had but one arm and one leg.[160] They were demons,
+according to the chroniclers, and descendants of the luckless Ham.
+Nennius makes Partholan and his men the first Scots who came from Spain
+to Ireland. The next arrivals were the people of Nemed who returned to
+Spain, whence they came (Nennius), or died to a man (Tuan). They also
+were descendants of the inevitable Noah, and their sojourn in Ireland
+was much disturbed by the Fomorians who had recovered from their defeat,
+and finally overpowered the Nemedians after the death of Nemed.[161]
+From Tory Island the Fomorians ruled Ireland, and forced the Nemedians
+to pay them annually on the eve of Samhain (Nov. 1st) two-thirds of
+their corn and milk and of the children born during the year. If the
+Fomorians are gods of darkness, or, preferably, aboriginal deities, the
+tribute must be explained as a dim memory of sacrifice offered at the
+beginning of winter when the powers of darkness and blight are in the
+ascendant. The Fomorians had a tower of glass in Tory Island. This was
+one day seen by the Milesians, to whom appeared on its battlements what
+seemed to be men. A year after they attacked the tower and were
+overwhelmed in the sea.[162] From the survivors of a previously wrecked
+vessel of their fleet are descended the Irish. Another version makes the
+Nemedians the assailants. Thirty of them survived their defeat, some of
+them going to Scotland or Man (the Britons), some to Greece (to return
+as the Firbolgs), some to the north, where they learned magic and
+returned as the Tuatha De Danann.[163] The Firbolgs, "men of bags,"
+resenting their ignominious treatment by the Greeks, escaped to Ireland.
+They included the Firbolgs proper, the Fir-Domnann, and the
+Galioin.[164] The Fomorians are called their gods, and this, with the
+contemptuous epithets bestowed on them, may point to the fact that the
+Firbolgs were the pre-Celtic folk of Ireland and the Fomorians their
+divinities, hostile to the gods of the Celts or regarded as dark
+deities. The Firbolgs are vassals of Ailill and Medb, and with the Fir
+Domnann and Galioin are hostile to Cuchulainn and his men,[165] just as
+Fomorians were to the Tuatha De Danann. The strifes of races and of
+their gods are inextricably confused.
+
+The Tuatha De Danann arrived from heaven--an idea in keeping with their
+character as beneficent gods, but later legend told how they came from
+the north. They reached Ireland on Beltane, shrouded in a magic mist,
+and finally, after one or, in other accounts, two battles, defeated the
+Firbolgs and Fomorians at Magtured. The older story of one battle may be
+regarded as a euhemerised account of the seeming conflict of nature
+powers.[166] The first battle is described in a fifteenth to sixteenth
+century MS.,[167] and is referred to in a fifteenth century account of
+the second battle, full of archaic reminiscences, and composed from
+various earlier documents.[168] The Firbolgs, defeated in the first
+battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile Nuada, leader
+of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand, and as no king with a blemish
+could sit on the throne, the crown was given to Bres, son of the
+Fomorian Elatha and his sister Eri, a woman of the Tuatha De Danann. One
+day Eri espied a silver boat speeding to her across the sea. From it
+stepped forth a magnificent hero, and without delay the pair, like the
+lovers in Theocritus, "rejoiced in their wedlock." The hero, Elatha,
+foretold the birth of Eri's son, so beautiful that he would be a
+standard by which to try all beautiful things. He gave her his ring, but
+she was to part with it only to one whose finger it should fit. This was
+her child Bres, and by this token he was later, as an exile, recognised
+by his father, and obtained his help against the Tuatha De Danann. Like
+other wonderful children, Bres grew twice as quickly as any other child
+until he was seven.[169] Though Elatha and Eri are brother and sister,
+she is among the Tuatha De Danann.[170] There is the usual inconsistency
+of myth here and in other accounts of Fomorian and Tuatha De Danann
+unions. The latter had just landed, but already had united in marriage
+with the Fomorians. This inconsistency escaped the chroniclers, but it
+points to the fact that both were divine not human, and that, though in
+conflict, they united in marriage as members of hostile tribes often do.
+
+The second battle took place twenty-seven years after the first, on
+Samhain. It was fought like the first on the plain of Mag-tured, though
+later accounts made one battle take place at Mag-tured in Mayo, the
+other at Mag-tured in Sligo.[171] Inconsistently, the conquering Tuatha
+De Danann in the interval, while Bres is their king, must pay tribute
+imposed by the Fomorians. Obviously in older accounts this tribute must
+have been imposed before the first battle and have been its cause. But
+why should gods, like the Tuatha De Danann, ever have been in
+subjection? This remains to be seen, but the answer probably lies in
+parallel myths of the subjection or death of divinities like Ishtar,
+Adonis, Persephone, and Osiris. Bres having exacted a tribute of the
+milk of all hornless dun cows, the cows of Ireland were passed through
+fire and smeared with ashes--a myth based perhaps on the Beltane fire
+ritual.[172] The avaricious Bres was satirised, and "nought but decay
+was on him from that hour,"[173] and when Nuada, having recovered,
+claimed the throne, he went to collect an army of the Fomorians, who
+assembled against the Tuatha De Danann. In the battle Indech wounded
+Ogma, and Balor slew Nuada, but was mortally wounded by Lug. Thereupon
+the Fomorians fled to their own region.
+
+The Tuatha De Danann remained masters of Ireland until the coming of the
+Milesians, so named from an eponymous Mile, son of Bile. Ith, having
+been sent to reconnoitre, was slain, and the Milesians now invaded
+Ireland in force. In spite of a mist raised by the Druids, they landed,
+and, having met the three princes who slew Ith, demanded instant battle
+or surrender of the land. The princes agreed to abide by the decision of
+the Milesian poet Amairgen, who bade his friends re-embark and retire
+for the distance of nine waves. If they could then effect a landing,
+Ireland was theirs. A magic storm was raised, which wrecked many of
+their ships, but Amairgen recited verses, fragments, perhaps, of some
+old ritual, and overcame the dangers. After their defeat the survivors
+of the Tuatha De Danann retired into the hills to become a fairy folk,
+and the Milesians (the Goidels or Scots) became ancestors of the Irish.
+
+Throughout the long story of the conquests of Ireland there are many
+reduplications, the same incidents being often ascribed to different
+personages.[174] Different versions of similar occurrences, based on
+older myths and traditions, may already have been in existence, and
+ritual practices, dimly remembered, required explanation. In the hands
+of the chroniclers, writing history with a purpose and combining their
+information with little regard to consistency, all this was reduced to a
+more or less connected narrative. At the hands of the prosaic
+chroniclers divinity passed from the gods, though traces of it still
+linger.
+
+  "Ye are gods, and, behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at
+     last.
+   In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of
+     things,
+   Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for
+     kings."
+
+From the annalistic point of view the Fomorians are sea demons or
+pirates, their name being derived from _muir_, "sea," while they are
+descended along with other monstrous beings from them. Professor
+Rh[^y]s, while connecting the name with Welsh _foawr_, "giant" (Gaelic
+_famhair_), derives the name from _fo_, "under," and _muir_, and regards
+them as submarine beings.[175] Dr. MacBain connected them with the
+fierce powers of the western sea personified, like the _Muireartach_, a
+kind of sea hag, of a Fionn ballad.[176] But this association of the
+Fomorians with the ocean may be the result of a late folk-etymology,
+which wrongly derived their name from _muir_. The Celtic experience of
+the Lochlanners or Norsemen, with whom the Fomorians are
+associated,[177] would aid the conception of them as sea-pirates of a
+more or less demoniacal character. Dr. Stokes connects the second
+syllable _mor_ with _mare_ in "nightmare," from _moro_, and regards them
+as subterranean as well as submarine.[178] But the more probable
+derivation is that of Zimmer and D'Arbois, from _fo_ and _morio_ (_mor_,
+"great"),[179] which would thus agree with the tradition which regarded
+them as giants. They were probably beneficent gods of the aborigines,
+whom the Celtic conquerors regarded as generally evil, perhaps equating
+them with the dark powers already known to them. They were still
+remembered as gods, and are called "champions of the _sid_," like the
+Tuatha De Danann.[180] Thus King Bres sought to save his life by
+promising that the kine of Ireland would always be in milk, then that
+the men of Ireland would reap every quarter, and finally by revealing
+the lucky days for ploughing, sowing, and reaping.[181] Only an
+autochthonous god could know this, and the story is suggestive of the
+true nature of the Fomorians. The hostile character attributed to them
+is seen from the fact that they destroyed corn, milk, and fruit. But in
+Ireland, as elsewhere, this destructive power was deprecated by begging
+them not to destroy "corn nor milk in Erin beyond their fair
+tribute."[182] Tribute was also paid to them on Samhain, the time when
+the powers of blight feared by men are in the ascendant. Again, the
+kingdom of Balor, their chief, is still described as the kingdom of
+cold.[183] But when we remember that a similar "tribute" was paid to
+Cromm Cruaich, a god of fertility, and that after the conquest of the
+Tuatha De Danann they also were regarded as hostile to agriculture,[184]
+we realise that the Fomorians must have been aboriginal gods of
+fertility whom the conquering Celts regarded as hostile to them and
+their gods. Similarly, in folk-belief the beneficent corn-spirit has
+sometimes a sinister and destructive aspect.[185] Thus the stories of
+"tribute" would be distorted reminiscences of the ritual of gods of the
+soil, differing little in character from that of the similar Celtic
+divinities. What makes it certain that the Fomorians were aboriginal
+gods is that they are found in Ireland before the coming of the early
+colonist Partholan. They were the gods of the pre-Celtic folk--Firbolgs,
+Fir Domnann, and Galioin[186]--all of them in Ireland before the Tuatha
+De Danaan arrived, and all of them regarded as slaves, spoken of with
+the utmost contempt. Another possibility, however, ought to be
+considered. As the Celtic gods were local in character, and as groups of
+tribes would frequently be hostile to other groups, the Fomorians may
+have been local gods of a group at enmity with another group,
+worshipping the Tuatha De Danaan.
+
+The strife of Fomorians and Tuatha De Danann suggests the dualism of all
+nature religions. Demons or giants or monsters strive with gods in
+Hindu, Greek, and Teutonic mythology, and in Persia the primitive
+dualism of beneficent and hurtful powers of nature became an ethical
+dualism--the eternal opposition of good and evil. The sun is vanquished
+by cloud and storm, but shines forth again in vigour. Vegetation dies,
+but undergoes a yearly renewal. So in myth the immortal gods are wounded
+and slain in strife. But we must not push too far the analogy of the
+apparent strife of the elements and the wars of the gods. The one
+suggested the other, especially where the gods were elemental powers.
+But myth-making man easily developed the suggestion; gods were like men
+and "could never get eneuch o' fechtin'." The Celts knew of divine
+combats before their arrival in Ireland, and their own hostile powers
+were easily assimilated to the hostile gods of the aborigines.
+
+The principal Fomorians are described as kings. Elatha was son of Net,
+described by Cormac as "a battle god of the heathen Gael," i.e. he is
+one of the Tuatha De Danann, and has as wives two war-goddesses, Badb
+and Nemaind.[187] Thus he resembles the Fomorian Tethra whose wife is a
+_badb_ or "battle-crow," preying on the slain.[188] Elatha's name,
+connected with words meaning "knowledge," suggests that he was an
+aboriginal culture-god.[189] In the genealogies, Fomorians and Tuatha De
+Danann are inextricably mingled. Bres's temporary position as king of
+the Tuatha Dea may reflect some myth of the occasional supremacy of the
+powers of blight. Want and niggardliness characterise his reign, and
+after his defeat a better state of things prevails. Bres's consort was
+Brigit, and their son Ruadan, sent to spy on the Tuatha De Danann, was
+slain. His mother's wailing for him was the first mourning wail ever
+heard in Erin.[190] Another god, Indech, was son of Dea Domnu, a
+Fomorian goddess of the deep, i.e. of the underworld and probably also
+of fertility, who may hold a position among the Fomorians similar to
+that of Danu among the Tuatha De Danann. Indech was slain by Ogma, who
+himself died of wounds received from his adversary.
+
+Balor had a consort Cethlenn, whose venom killed Dagda. His one eye had
+become evil by contact with the poisonous fumes of a concoction which
+his father's Druids were preparing. The eyelid required four men to
+raise it, when his evil eye destroyed all on whom its glance fell. In
+this way Balor would have slain Lug at Mag-tured, but the god at once
+struck the eye with a sling-stone and slew him.[191] Balor, like the
+Greek Medusa, is perhaps a personification of the evil eye, so much
+feared by the Celts. Healthful influences and magical charms avert it;
+hence Lug, a beneficent god, destroys Balor's maleficence.
+
+Tethra, with Balor and Elatha, ruled over Erin at the coming of the
+Tuatha De Danann. From a phrase used in the story of Connla's visit to
+Elysium, "Thou art a hero of the men of Tethra," M. D'Arbois assumes
+that Tethra was ruler of Elysium, which he makes one with the land of
+the dead. The passage, however, bears a different interpretation, and
+though a Fomorian, Tethra, a god of war, might be regarded as lord of
+all warriors.[192] Elysium was not the land of the dead, and when M.
+D'Arbois equates Tethra with Kronos, who after his defeat became ruler
+of a land of dead heroes, the analogy, like other analogies with Greek
+mythology, is misleading. He also equates Bres, as temporary king of the
+Tuatha De Danann, with Kronos, king of heaven in the age of gold.
+Kronos, again, slain by Zeus, is parallel to Balor slain by his grandson
+Lug. Tethra, Bres, and Balor are thus separate fragments of one god
+equivalent to Kronos.[193] Yet their personalities are quite distinct.
+Each race works out its mythology for itself, and, while parallels are
+inevitable, we should not allow these to override the actual myths as
+they have come down to us.
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s makes Bile, ancestor of the Milesians who came from
+Spain, a Goidelic counterpart of the Gaulish Dispater, lord of the dead,
+from whom the Gauls claimed descent. But Bile, neither a Fomorian nor of
+the Tuatha De Danann, is an imaginary and shadowy creation. Bile is next
+equated with a Brythonic Beli, assumed to be consort of Don, whose
+family are equivalent to the Tuatha De Danann.[194] Beli was a mythic
+king whose reign was a kind of golden age, and if he was father of Don's
+children, which is doubtful, Bile would then be father of the Tuatha De
+Danann. But he is ancestor of the Milesians, their opponents according
+to the annalists. Beli is also equated with Elatha, and since Don,
+reputed consort of Beli, was grandmother of Llew, equated with Irish
+Lug, grandson of Balor, Balor is equivalent to Beli, whose name is
+regarded by Professor Rh[^y]s as related etymologically to Balor's.[195]
+Bile, Balor, and Elatha are thus Goidelic equivalents of the shadowy
+Beli. But they also are quite distinct personalities, nor are they ever
+hinted at as ancestral gods of the Celts, or gods of a gloomy
+underworld. In Celtic belief the underworld was probably a fertile
+region and a place of light, nor were its gods harmful and evil, as
+Balor was.
+
+On the whole, the Fomorians came to be regarded as the powers of nature
+in its hostile aspect. They personified blight, winter, darkness, and
+death, before which men trembled, yet were not wholly cast down, since
+the immortal gods of growth and light, rulers of the bright other-world,
+were on their side and fought against their enemies. Year by year the
+gods suffered deadly harm, but returned as conquerors to renew the
+struggle once more. Myth spoke of this as having happened once for all,
+but it went on continuously.[196] Gods were immortal and only seemed to
+die. The strife was represented in ritual, since men believe that they
+can aid the gods by magic, rite, or prayer. Why, then, do hostile
+Fomorians and Tuatha De Danann intermarry? This happens in all
+mythologies, and it probably reflects, in the divine sphere, what takes
+place among men. Hostile peoples carry off each the other's women, or
+they have periods of friendliness and consequent intermarriage. Man
+makes his gods in his own image, and the problem is best explained by
+facts like these, exaggerated no doubt by the Irish annalists.
+
+The Tuatha De Danann, in spite of their euhemerisation, are more than
+human. In the north where they learned magic, they dwelt in four cities,
+from each of which they brought a magical treasure--the stone of Fal,
+which "roared under every king," Lug's unconquerable spear, Nuada's
+irresistible sword, the Dagda's inexhaustible cauldron. But they are
+more than wizards or Druids. They are re-born as mortals; they have a
+divine world of their own, they interfere in and influence human
+affairs. The euhemerists did not go far enough, and more than once their
+divinity is practically acknowledged. When the Fian Caoilte and a woman
+of the Tuatha De Danann appear before S. Patrick, he asks, "Why is she
+youthful and beautiful, while you are old and wrinkled?" And Caoilte
+replies, "She is of the Tuatha De Danann, who are unfading and whose
+duration is perennial. I am of the sons of Milesius, that are perishable
+and fade away."[197]
+
+After their conversion, the Celts, sons of Milesius, thought that the
+gods still existed in the hollow hills, their former dwellings and
+sanctuaries, or in far-off islands, still caring for their former
+worshippers. This tradition had its place with that which made them a
+race of men conquered by the Milesians--the victory of Christianity over
+paganism and its gods having been transmuted into a strife of races by
+the euhemerists. The new faith, not the people, conquered the old gods.
+The Tuatha De Danann became the _Daoine-sidhe_, a fairy folk, still
+occasionally called by their old name, just as individual fairy kings or
+queens bear the names of the ancient gods. The euhemerists gave the
+Fomorians a monstrous and demoniac character, which they did not always
+give to the Tuatha De Danann; in this continuing the old tradition that
+Fomorians were hostile and the Tuatha De Danann beneficent and mild.
+
+The mythological cycle is not a complete "body of divinity"; its
+apparent completeness results from the chronological order of the
+annalists. Fragments of other myths are found in the _Dindsenchas_;
+others exist as romantic tales, and we have no reason to believe that
+all the old myths have been preserved. But enough remains to show the
+true nature of the Tuatha De Danann--their supernatural character, their
+powers, their divine and unfailing food and drink, their mysterious and
+beautiful abode. In their contents, their personages, in the actions
+that are described in them, the materials of the "mythological cycle,"
+show how widely it differs from the Cuchulainn and Fionn cycles.[198]
+"The white radiance of eternity" suffuses it; the heroic cycles, magical
+and romantic as they are, belong far more to earth and time.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[153] For some Highland references to the gods in saga and _Maerchen_,
+see _Book of the Dean of Lismore_, 10; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 77. The
+sea-god Lir is probably the Liur of Ossianic ballads (Campbell, _LF_
+100, 125), and his son Manannan is perhaps "the Son of the Sea" in a
+Gaelic song (Carmichael, _CG_ ii. 122). Manannan and his daughters are
+also known (Campbell, _witchcraft_, 83).
+
+[154] The euhemerising process is first seen in tenth century poems by
+Eochaid hua Flainn, but was largely the work of Flainn Manistrech, _ob._
+1056. It is found fully fledged in the _Book of Invasions_.
+
+[155] Keating, 105-106.
+
+[156] Keating, 107; _LL_ 4_b_. Cf. _RC_ xvi. 155.
+
+[157] _LL_ 5.
+
+[158] Keating, 111. Giraldus Cambrensis, _Hist. Irel._ c. 2, makes
+Roanus survive and tell the tale of Partholan to S. Patrick. He is the
+Caoilte mac Ronan of other tales, a survivor of the Fians, who held many
+racy dialogues with the Saint. Keating abuses Giraldus for equating
+Roanus with Finntain in his "lying history," and for calling him Roanus
+instead of Ronanus, a mistake in which he, "the guide bull of the herd,"
+is followed by others.
+
+[159] Keating, 164.
+
+[160] _LL_ 5_a_.
+
+[161] Keating, 121; _LL_ 6_a_; _RC_ xvi. 161.
+
+[162] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ 13.
+
+[163] _LL_ 6, 8_b_.
+
+[164] _LL_ 6_b_, 127_a_; _IT_ iii. 381; _RC_ xvi. 81.
+
+[165] _LL_ 9_b_, 11_a_.
+
+[166] See Cormac, _s.v._ "Nescoit," _LU_ 51.
+
+[167] _Harl. MSS._ 2, 17, pp. 90-99. Cf. fragment from _Book of
+Invasions_ in _LL_ 8.
+
+[168] _Harl. MS._ 5280, translated in _RC_ xii. 59 f.
+
+[169] _RC_ xii. 60; D'Arbois, v. 405 f.
+
+[170] For Celtic brother-sister unions see p. 224.
+
+[171] O'Donovan, _Annals_, i. 16.
+
+[172] _RC_ xv. 439.
+
+[173] _RC_ xii. 71.
+
+[174] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks the Partholan story is the aboriginal,
+the median the Celtic version of the same event. Partholan, with initial
+_p_ cannot be Goidelic (_Scottish Review_, 1890, "Myth. Treatment of
+Celtic Ethnology").
+
+[175] _HL_ 591.
+
+[176] _CM_ ix. 130; Campbell _LF_ 68.
+
+[177] _RC_ xii. 75.
+
+[178] _US_ 211.
+
+[179] D'Arbois, ii. 52; _RC_ xii. 476.
+
+[180] _RC_ xii. 73.
+
+[181] _RC_ xii. 105.
+
+[182] _RC_ xxii. 195.
+
+[183] Larmime, "Kian, son of Kontje."
+
+[184] See p. 78; _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[185] Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forsch._ 310 f.
+
+[186] "Fir Domnann," "men of Domna," a goddess (Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 597), or a
+god (D'Arbois, ii. 130). "Domna" is connected with Irish-words meaning
+"deep" (Windisch, _IT_ i. 498; Stokes, _US_ 153). Domna, or Domnu, may
+therefore have been a goddess of the deep, not the sea so much as the
+underworld, and so perhaps an Earth-mother from whom the Fir Domnann
+traced their descent.
+
+[187] Cormac, _s.v._ "Neith"; D'Arbois, v. 400; _RC_ xii. 61.
+
+[188] _LU_ 50. Tethra is glossed _badb_ (_IT_ i. 820).
+
+[189] _IT_ i. 521; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 274 f.
+
+[190] _RC_ xii. 95.
+
+[191] _RC_ xii. 101.
+
+[192] See p. 374.
+
+[193] D'Arbois, ii. 198, 375.
+
+[194] _HL_ 90-91.
+
+[195] _HL_ 274, 319, 643. For Beli, see p. 112, _infra_.
+
+[196] Whatever the signification of the battle of Mag-tured may be, the
+place which it was localised is crowded with Neolithic megaliths,
+dolmens, etc. To later fancy these were the graves of warriors slain in
+a great battle fought there, and that battle became the fight between
+Fomorians and Tuatha De Dananns. Mag-tured may have been the scene of a
+battle between their respective worshippers.
+
+[197] O'Grady, ii. 203.
+
+[198] It should be observed that, as in the Vedas, the Odyssey, the
+Japanese _Ko-ji-ki_, as well as in barbaric and savage mythologies,
+_Maerchen_ formulae abound in the Irish mythological cycle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE TUATHA DE DANANN
+
+
+The meaning formerly given to _Tuatha De Danann_ was "the men of science
+who were gods," _danann_ being here connected with _dan_, "knowledge."
+But the true meaning is "the tribes _or_ folk of the goddess Danu,"[199]
+which agrees with the cognates _Tuatha_ or _Fir Dea_, "tribes _or_ men
+of the goddess." The name was given to the group, though Danu had only
+three sons, Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharbar. Hence the group is also called
+_fir tri ndea_, "men of the three gods."[200] The equivalents in Welsh
+story of Danu and her folk are Don and her children. We have seen that
+though they are described as kings and warriors by the annalists, traces
+of their divinity appear. In the Cuchulainn cycle they are supernatural
+beings and sometimes demons, helping or harming men, and in the Fionn
+cycle all these characteristics are ascribed to them. But the theory
+which prevailed most is that which connected them with the hills or
+mounds, the last resting-places of the mighty dead. Some of these bore
+their names, while other beings were also associated with the mounds
+(_sid_)--Fomorians and Milesian chiefs, heroes of the sagas, or those
+who had actually been buried in them.[201] Legend told how, after the
+defeat of the gods, the mounds were divided among them, the method of
+division varying in different versions. In an early version the Tuatha
+De Danann are immortal and the Dagda divides the _sid_.[202] But in a
+poem of Flann Manistrech (_ob._ 1056) they are mortals and die.[203] Now
+follows a regular chronology giving the dates of their reigns and their
+deaths, as in the poem of Gilla Coemain (eleventh century).[204] Hence
+another legend told how, Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divided the _sid_,
+yet even here Manannan is said to have conferred immortality upon the
+Tuatha De Danann.[205] The old pagan myths had shown that gods might
+die, while in ritual their representatives were slain, and this may have
+been the starting-point of the euhemerising process. But the divinity of
+the Tuatha De Danann is still recalled. Eochaid O'Flynn (tenth century),
+doubtful whether they are men or demons, concludes, "though I have
+treated of these deities in order, yet have I not adored them."[206]
+Even in later times they were still thought of as gods in exile, a view
+which appears in the romantic tales and sagas existing side by side with
+the notices of the annalists. They were also regarded as fairy kings and
+queens, and yet fairies of a different order from those of ordinary
+tradition. They are "fairies or sprites with corporeal forms, endowed
+with immortality," and yet also _dei terreni_ or _side_ worshipped by
+the folk before the coming of S. Patrick. Even the saint and several
+bishops were called by the fair pagan daughters of King Loegaire, _fir
+side_, "men of the _sid_," that is, gods.[207] The _sid_ were named
+after the names of the Tuatha De Danann who reigned in them, but the
+tradition being localised in different places, several mounds were
+sometimes connected with one god. The _sid_ were marvellous underground
+palaces, full of strange things, and thither favoured mortals might go
+for a time or for ever. In this they correspond exactly to the oversea
+Elysium, the divine land.
+
+But why were the Tuatha De Danann associated with the mounds? If fairies
+or an analogous race of beings were already in pagan times connected
+with hills or mounds, gods now regarded as fairies would be connected
+with them. Dr. Joyce and O'Curry think that an older race of aboriginal
+gods or _sid-folk_ preceded the Tuatha Dea in the mounds.[208] These may
+have been the Fomorians, the "champions of the _sid_," while in _Mesca
+Ulad_ the Tuatha Dea go to the underground dwellings and speak with the
+_side_ already there. We do not know that the fairy creed as such
+existed in pagan times, but if the _side_ and the Tuatha De Danann were
+once distinct, they were gradually assimilated. Thus the Dagda is called
+"king of the _side_"; Aed Abrat and his daughters, Fand and Liban, and
+Labraid, Liban's husband, are called _side_, and Manannan is Fand's
+consort.[209] Labraid's island, like the _sid_ of Mider and the land to
+which women of the _side_ invite Connla, differs but little from the
+usual divine Elysium, while Mider, one of the _side_, is associated with
+the Tuatha De Danann.[210] The _side_ are once said to be female, and
+are frequently supernatural women who run away or marry mortals.[211]
+Thus they may be a reminiscence of old Earth goddesses. But they are not
+exclusively female, since there are kings of the _side_, and as the name
+_Fir side_, "men of the _side_," shows, while S. Patrick and his friends
+were taken for _sid_-folk.
+
+The formation of the legend was also aided by the old cult of the gods
+on heights, some of them sepulchral mounds, and now occasionally sites
+of Christian churches.[212] The Irish god Cenn Cruaich and his Welsh
+equivalent Penn Cruc, whose name survives in _Pennocrucium_, have names
+meaning "chief _or_ head of the mound."[213] Other mounds or hills had
+also a sacred character. Hence gods worshipped at mounds, dwelling or
+revealing themselves there, still lingered in the haunted spots; they
+became fairies, or were associated with the dead buried in the mounds,
+as fairies also have been, or were themselves thought to have died and
+been buried there. The haunting of the mounds by the old gods is seen in
+a prayer of S. Columba's, who begs God to dispel "this host (i.e. the
+old gods) around the cairns that reigneth."[214] An early MS also tells
+how the Milesians allotted the underground part of Erin to the Tuatha
+Dea who now retired within the hills; in other words, they were gods of
+the hills worshipped by the Milesians on hills.[215] But, as we shall
+see, the gods dwelt elsewhere than in hills.[216]
+
+Tumuli may already in pagan times have been pointed out as tombs of gods
+who died in myth or ritual, like the tombs of Zeus in Crete and of
+Osiris in Egypt. Again, fairies, in some aspects, are ghosts of the
+dead, and haunt tumuli; hence, when gods became fairies they would do
+the same. And once they were thought of as dead kings, any notable
+tumuli would be pointed out as theirs, since it is a law in folk-belief
+to associate tumuli or other structures not with the dead or with their
+builders, but with supernatural or mythical or even historical
+personages. If _side_ ever meant "ghosts," it would be easy to call the
+dead gods by this name, and to connect them with the places of the
+dead.[217]
+
+Many strands went to the weaving of the later conception of the gods,
+but there still hung around them an air of mystery, and the belief that
+they were a race of men was never consistent with itself.
+
+Danu gave her name to the whole group of gods, and is called their
+mother, like the Egyptian Neith or the Semitic Ishtar.[218] In the
+annalists she is daughter of Dagda, and has three sons. She may be akin
+to the goddess Anu, whom Cormac describes as "_mater deorum
+hibernensium_. It was well she nursed the gods." From her name he
+derives _ana_, "plenty," and two hills in Kerry are called "the Paps of
+Anu."[219] Thus as a goddess of plenty Danu or Anu may have been an
+early Earth-mother, and what may be a dim memory of Anu in
+Leicestershire confirms this view. A cave on the Dane Hills is called
+"Black Annis' Bower," and she is said to have been a savage woman who
+devoured human victims.[220] Earth-goddesses usually have human victims,
+and Anu would be no exception. In the cult of Earth divinities Earth and
+under-Earth are practically identical, while Earth-goddesses like
+Demeter and Persephone were associated with the underworld, the dead
+being Demeter's folk. The fruits of the earth with their roots below the
+surface are then gifts of the earth- or under-earth goddess. This may
+have been the case with Danu, for in Celtic belief the gifts of
+civilisation came from the underworld or from the gods. Professor
+Rh[^y]s finds the name Anu in the dat. _Anoniredi_, "chariot of Anu," in
+an inscription from Vaucluse, and the identification is perhaps
+established by the fact that goddesses of fertility were drawn through
+the fields in a vehicle.[221] Cormac also mentions Buanann as mother and
+nurse of heroes, perhaps a goddess worshipped by heroes.[222]
+
+Danu is also identified with Brigit, goddess of knowledge (_dan_),
+perhaps through a folk-etymology. She was worshipped by poets, and had
+two sisters of the same name connected with leechcraft and
+smithwork.[223] They are duplicates or local forms of Brigit, a goddess
+of culture and of poetry, so much loved by the Celts. She is thus the
+equivalent of the Gaulish goddess equated with Minerva by Caesar, and
+found on inscriptions as Minerva Belisama and Brigindo. She is the Dea
+Brigantia of British inscriptions.[224] One of the seats of her worship
+was the land of the Brigantes, of whom she was the eponymous goddess,
+and her name (cf. Ir. _brig_, "power" or "craft"; Welsh _bri_, "honour,"
+"renown") suggests her high functions. But her popularity is seen in the
+continuation of her personality and cult in those of S. Brigit, at whose
+shrine in Kildare a sacred fire, which must not be breathed on, or
+approached by a male, was watched daily by nineteen nuns in turn, and on
+the twentieth day by the saint herself.[225] Similar sacred fires were
+kept up in other monasteries,[226] and they point to the old cult of a
+goddess of fire, the nuns being successors of a virgin priesthood like
+the vestals, priestesses of Vesta. As has been seen, the goddesses
+Belisama and Sul, probably goddesses of fire, resembled Brigit in
+this.[227] But Brigit, like Vesta, was at once a goddess of fire and of
+fertility, as her connection with Candlemas and certain ritual survivals
+also suggest. In the Hebrides on S. Bride's day (Candlemas-eve) women
+dressed a sheaf of oats in female clothes and set it with a club in a
+basket called "Briid's bed." Then they called, "Briid is come, Briid is
+welcome." Or a bed was made of corn and hay with candles burning beside
+it, and Bride was invited to come as her bed was ready. If the mark of
+the club was seen in the ashes, this was an omen of a good harvest and a
+prosperous year.[228] It is also noteworthy that if cattle cropped the
+grass near S. Brigit's shrine, next day it was as luxuriant as ever.
+
+Brigit, or goddesses with similar functions, was regarded by the Celts
+as an early teacher of civilisation, inspirer of the artistic, poetic,
+and mechanical faculties, as well as a goddess of fire and fertility. As
+such she far excelled her sons, gods of knowledge. She must have
+originated in the period when the Celts worshipped goddesses rather than
+gods, and when knowledge--leechcraft, agriculture, inspiration--were
+women's rather than men's. She had a female priesthood, and men were
+perhaps excluded from her cult, as the tabued shrine at Kildare
+suggests. Perhaps her fire was fed from sacred oak wood, for many
+shrines of S. Brigit were built under oaks, doubtless displacing pagan
+shrines of the goddess.[229] As a goddess, Brigit is more prominent than
+Danu, also a goddess of fertility, even though Danu is mother of the
+gods.
+
+Other goddesses remembered in tradition are Cleena and Vera, celebrated
+in fairy and witch lore, the former perhaps akin to a river-goddess
+Clota, the Clutoida (a fountain-nymph) of the continental Celts; the
+latter, under her alternative name Dirra, perhaps a form of a goddess of
+Gaul, Dirona.[230] Aine, one of the great fairy-queens of Ireland, has
+her seat at Knockainy in Limerick, where rites connected with her former
+cult are still performed for fertility on Midsummer eve. If they were
+neglected she and her troops performed them, according to local
+legend.[231] She is thus an old goddess of fertility, whose cult, even
+at a festival in which gods were latterly more prominent, is still
+remembered. She is also associated with the waters as a water-nymph
+captured for a time as a fairy-bride by the Earl of Desmond.[232] But
+older legends connect her with the _sid_. She was daughter of Eogabal,
+king of the _sid_ of Knockainy, the grass on which was annually
+destroyed at Samhain by his people, because it had been taken from them,
+its rightful owners. Oilill Olomm and Ferchus resolved to watch the
+_sid_ on Samhain-eve. They saw Eogabal and Aine emerge from it. Ferchus
+killed Eogabal, and Oilill tried to outrage Aine, who bit the flesh from
+his ear. Hence his name of "Bare Ear."[233] In this legend we see how
+earlier gods of fertility come to be regarded as hostile to growth.
+Another story tells of the love of Aillen, Eogabal's son, for Manannan's
+wife and that of Aine for Manannan. Aine offered her favours to the god
+if he would give his wife to her brother, and "the complicated bit of
+romance," as S. Patrick calls it, was thus arranged.[234]
+
+Although the Irish gods are warriors, and there are special war-gods,
+yet war-goddesses are more prominent, usually as a group of
+three--Morrigan, Neman, and Macha. A fourth, Badb, sometimes takes the
+place of one of these, or is identical with Morrigan, or her name, like
+that of Morrigan, may be generic.[235] _Badb_ means "a scald-crow,"
+under which form the war-goddesses appeared, probably because these
+birds were seen near the slain. She is also called Badbcatha,
+"battle-Badb," and is thus the equivalent of _-athubodua,_ or, more
+probably, _Cathubodua_, mentioned in an inscription from Haute-Savoie,
+while this, as well as personal names like _Boduogenos_, shows that a
+goddess Bodua was known to the Gauls.[236] The _badb_ or battle-crow is
+associated with the Fomorian Tethra, but Badb herself is consort of a
+war-god Net, one of the Tuatha De Danann, who may be the equivalent of
+Neton, mentioned in Spanish inscriptions and equated with Mars.
+Elsewhere Neman is Net's consort, and she may be the Nemetona of
+inscriptions, e.g. at Bath, the consort of Mars. Cormac calls Net and
+Neman "a venomous couple," which we may well believe them to have
+been.[237] To Macha were devoted the heads of slain enemies, "Macha's
+mast," but she, according to the annalists, was slain at Mag-tured,
+though she reappears in the Cuchulainn saga as the Macha whose
+ill-treatment led to the "debility" of the Ulstermen.[238] The name
+Morrigan may mean "great queen," though Dr. Stokes, connecting _mor_
+with the same syllable in "Fomorian," explains it as
+"nightmare-queen."[239] She works great harm to the Fomorians at
+Mag-tured, and afterwards proclaims the victory to the hills, rivers,
+and fairy-hosts, uttering also a prophecy of the evils to come at the
+end of time.[240] She reappears prominently in the Cuchulainn saga,
+hostile to the hero because he rejects her love, yet aiding the hosts of
+Ulster and the Brown Bull, and in the end trying to prevent the hero's
+death.[241]
+
+The prominent position of these goddesses must be connected with the
+fact that women went out to war--a custom said to have been stopped by
+Adamnan at his mother's request, and that many prominent heroines of the
+heroic cycles are warriors, like the British Boudicca, whose name may be
+connected with _boudi_, "victory." Specific titles were given to such
+classes of female warriors--_bangaisgedaig_, _banfeinnidi_, etc.[242]
+But it is possible that these goddesses were at first connected with
+fertility, their functions changing with the growing warlike tendencies
+of the Celts. Their number recalls that of the threefold _Matres_, and
+possibly the change in their character is hinted in the Romano-British
+inscription at Benwell to the _Lamiis Tribus_, since Morrigan's name is
+glossed _lamia_.[243] She is also identified with Anu, and is mistress
+of Dagda, an Earth-god, and with Badb and others expels the Fomorians
+when they destroyed the agricultural produce of Ireland.[244] Probably
+the scald-crow was at once the symbol and the incarnation of the
+war-goddesses, who resemble the Norse Valkyries, appearing sometimes as
+crows, and the Greek Keres, bird-like beings which drank the blood of
+the slain. It is also interesting to note that Badb, who has the
+character of a prophetess of evil, is often identified with the "Washer
+at the Ford," whose presence indicates death to him whose armour or
+garments she seems to cleanse.[245]
+
+The _Matres_, goddesses of fertility, do not appear by name in Ireland,
+but the triplication of such goddesses as Morrigan and Brigit, the
+threefold name of Dagda's wife, or the fact that Arm, Danu, and Buanan
+are called "mothers," while Buanan's name is sometimes rendered "good
+mother," may suggest that such grouped goddesses were not unknown. Later
+legend knows of white women who assist in spinning, or three hags with
+power over nature, or, as in the _Battle of Ventry_, of three
+supernatural women who fall in love with Conncrithir, aid him in fight,
+and heal his wounds. In this document and elsewhere is mentioned the
+"_sid_ of the White Women."[246] Goddesses of fertility are usually
+goddesses of love, and the prominence given to females among the _side_,
+the fact that they are often called _Be find_, "White Women," like
+fairies who represent the _Matres_ elsewhere, and that they freely offer
+their love to mortals, may connect them with this group of goddesses.
+Again, when the Milesians arrived in Ireland, three kings of the Tuatha
+Dea had wives called Eriu, Banba, and Fotla, who begged that Ireland
+should be called after them. This was granted, but only Eriu (Erin)
+remained in general use.[247] The story is an aetiological myth
+explaining the names of Ireland, but the three wives may be a group like
+the _Matres_, guardians of the land which took its name from them.
+
+Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba, who give a title to the whole group, are
+called _tri dee Donand_, "the three gods (sons of) Danu," or, again,
+"gods of _dan_" (knowledge), perhaps as the result of a folk-etymology,
+associating _dan_ with their mother's name Danu.[248] Various attributes
+are personified as their descendants, Wisdom being son of all
+three.[249] Though some of these attributes may have been actual gods,
+especially Ecne or Wisdom, yet it is more probable that the
+personification is the result of the subtleties of bardic science, of
+which similar examples occur.[250] On the other hand, the fact that Ecne
+is the son of three brothers, may recall some early practice of
+polyandry of which instances are met with in the sagas.[251] M. D'Arbois
+has suggested that Iuchar and Iucharba are mere duplicates of Brian, who
+usually takes the leading place, and he identifies them with three kings
+of the Tuatha Dea reigning at the time of the Milesian invasion--
+MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne, so called, according to Keating,
+because the hazel (_coll_), the plough (_cecht_), and the sun (_grian_)
+were "gods of worship" to them. Both groups are grandsons of Dagda, and
+M. D'Arbois regards this second group as also triplicates of one god,
+because their wives Fotla, Banba, and Eriu all bear names of Ireland
+itself, are personifications of the land, and thus may be "reduced to
+unity."[252] While this reasoning is ingenious, it should be remembered
+that we must not lay too much stress upon Irish divine genealogies,
+while each group of three may have been similar local gods associated at
+a later time as brothers. Their separate personality is suggested by the
+fact that the Tuatha De Danann are called after them "the Men of the
+Three Gods," and their supremacy appears in the incident of Dagda, Lug,
+and Ogma consulting them before the fight at Mag-tured--a natural
+proceeding if they were gods of knowledge or destiny.[253] The brothers
+are said to have slain the god Cian, and to have been themselves slain
+by Lug, and on this seems to have been based the story of _The Children
+of Tuirenn_, in which they perish through their exertions in obtaining
+the _eric_ demanded by Lug.[254] Here they are sons of Tuirenn, but more
+usually their mother Danu or Brigit is mentioned.
+
+Another son of Brigit's was Ogma, master of poetry and inventor of
+_ogham_ writing, the word being derived from his name.[255] It is more
+probable that Ogma's name is a derivative from some word signifying
+"speech" or "writing," and that the connection with "ogham" may be a
+mere folk-etymology. Ogma appears as the champion of the gods,[256] a
+position given him perhaps from the primitive custom of rousing the
+warriors' emotions by eloquent speeches before a battle. Similarly the
+Babylonian Marduk, "seer of the gods," was also their champion in fight.
+Ogma fought and died at Mag-tured; but in other accounts he survives,
+captures Tethra's sword, goes on the quest for Dagda's harp, and is
+given a _sid_ after the Milesian victory. Ogma's counterpart in Gaul is
+Ogmios, a Herakles and a god of eloquence, thus bearing the dual
+character of Ogma, while Ogma's epithet _grianainech_, "of the smiling
+countenance," recalls Lucian's account of the "smiling face" of
+Ogmios.[257] Ogma's high position is the result of the admiration of
+bardic eloquence among the Celts, whose loquacity was proverbial, and to
+him its origin was doubtless ascribed, as well as that of poetry. The
+genealogists explain his relationship to the other divinities in
+different ways, but these confusions may result from the fact that gods
+had more than one name, of which the annalists made separate
+personalities. Most usually Ogma is called Brigit's son. Her functions
+were like his own, but in spite of the increasing supremacy of gods over
+goddesses, he never really eclipsed her.
+
+Among other culture gods were those associated with the arts and
+crafts--the development of Celtic art in metal-work necessitating the
+existence of gods of this art. Such a god is Goibniu, eponymous god of
+smiths (Old Ir. _goba_, "smith"), and the divine craftsman at the battle
+of Mag-tured, making spears which never failed to kill.[258] Smiths have
+everywhere been regarded as uncanny--a tradition surviving from the
+first introduction of metal among those hitherto accustomed to stone
+weapons and tools. S. Patrick prayed against the "spells of women,
+smiths, and Druids," and it is thus not surprising to find that Goibniu
+had a reputation for magic, even among Christians. A spell for making
+butter, in an eighth century MS. preserved at S. Gall, appeals to his
+"science."[259] Curiously enough, Goibniu is also connected with the
+culinary art in myth, and, like Hephaistos, prepares the feast of the
+gods, while his ale preserves their immortality.[260] The elation
+produced by heady liquors caused them to be regarded as draughts of
+immortality, like Soma, Haoma, or nectar. Goibniu survives in tradition
+as the _Gobhan Saer_, to whom the building of round towers is ascribed.
+
+Another god of crafts was Creidne the brazier (Ir. _cerd_, "artificer";
+cf. Scots _caird_, "tinker"), who assisted in making a silver hand for
+Nuada, and supplied with magical rapidity parts of the weapons used at
+Mag-tured.[261] According to the annalists, he was drowned while
+bringing golden ore from Spain.[262] Luchtine, god of carpenters,
+provided spear-handles for the battle, and with marvellous skill flung
+them into the sockets of the spear-heads.[263]
+
+Diancecht, whose name may mean "swift in power," was god of medicine,
+and, with Creidne's help, fashioned a silver hand for Nuada.[264] His
+son Miach replaced this by a magic restoration of the real hand, and in
+jealousy his father slew him--a version of the _Maerchen_ formula of the
+jealous master. Three hundred and sixty-five herbs grew from his grave,
+and were arranged according to their properties by his sister Airmed,
+but Diancecht again confused them, "so that no one knows their proper
+cures."[265] At the second battle of Mag-tured, Diancecht presided over
+a healing-well containing magic herbs. These and the power of spells
+caused the mortally wounded who were placed in it to recover. Hence it
+was called "the spring of health."[266] Diancecht, associated with a
+healing-well, may be cognate with Grannos. He is also referred to in the
+S. Gall MS., where his healing powers are extolled.
+
+An early chief of the gods is Dagda, who, in the story of the battle of
+Mag-tured, is said to be so called because he promised to do more than
+all the other gods together. Hence they said, "It is thou art the _good
+hand_" (_dag-dae_). The _Coir Anmann_ explains _Dagda_ as "fire of god"
+(_daig_ and _dea_). The true derivation is from _dagos_, "good," and
+_deivos_, "god," though Dr. Stokes considers _Dagda_ as connected with
+_dagh_, whence _daghda_, "cunning."[267] Dagda is also called Cera, a
+word perhaps derived from _kar_ and connected with Lat. _cerus_,
+"creator" and other names of his are _Ruad-rofhessa_, "lord of great
+knowledge," and _Eochaid Ollathair_, "great father," "for a great father
+to the Tuatha De Danann was he."[268] He is also called "a beautiful
+god," and "the principal god of the pagans."[269] After the battle he
+divides the _brugs_ or _sid_ among the gods, but his son Oengus, having
+been omitted, by a stratagem succeeded in ousting his father from
+his _sid_, over which he now himself reigned[270]--possibly the survival
+of an old myth telling of a superseding of Dagda's cult by that of
+Oengus, a common enough occurrence in all religions. In another version,
+Dagda being dead, Bodb Dearg divides the _sid_, and Manannan makes the
+Tuatha Dea invisible and immortal. He also helps Oengus to drive out his
+foster-father Elemar from his _brug_, where Oengus now lives as a
+god.[271] The underground _brugs_ are the gods' land, in all respects
+resembling the oversea Elysium, and at once burial-places of the
+euhemerised gods and local forms of the divine land. Professor Rh[^y]s
+regards Dagda as an atmospheric god; Dr. MacBain sees in him a sky-god.
+More probably he is an early Earth-god and a god of agriculture. He has
+power over corn and milk, and agrees to prevent the other gods from
+destroying these after their defeat by the Milesians--former beneficent
+gods being regarded as hurtful, a not uncommon result of the triumph of
+a new faith.[272] Dagda is called "the god of the earth" "because of the
+greatness of his power."[273] Mythical objects associated with him
+suggest plenty and fertility--his cauldron which satisfied all comers,
+his unfailing swine, one always living, the other ready for cooking, a
+vessel of ale, and three trees always laden with fruit. These were in
+his _sid_, where none ever tasted death;[274] hence his _sid_ was a
+local Elysium, not a gloomy land of death, but the underworld in its
+primitive aspect as the place of gods of fertility. In some myths he
+appears with a huge club or fork, and M. D'Arbois suggests that he may
+thus be an equivalent of the Gaulish god with the mallet.[275] This is
+probable, since the Gaulish god may have been a form of Dispater, an
+Earth or under-Earth god of fertility.
+
+If Dagda was a god of fertility, he may have been an equivalent of a god
+whose image was called _Cenn_ or _Cromm Cruaich_, "Head _or_ Crooked One
+of the Mound," or "Bloody Head _or_ Crescent."[276] Vallancey, citing a
+text now lost, says that _Crom-eocha_ was a name of Dagda, and that a
+motto at the sacrificial place at Tara read, "Let the altar ever blaze
+to Dagda."[277] These statements may support this identification. The
+cult of Cromm is preserved in some verses:
+
+  "He was their god,
+   The withered Cromm with many mists...
+   To him without glory
+   They would kill their piteous wretched offspring,
+   With much wailing and peril,
+   To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
+   Milk and corn
+   They would ask from him speedily
+   In return for a third of their healthy issue,
+   Great was the horror and fear of him.
+   To him noble Gaels would prostrate themselves."[278]
+
+Elsewhere we learn that this sacrifice in return for the gifts of corn
+and milk from the god took place at Samhain, and that on one occasion
+the violent prostrations of the worshippers caused three-fourths of them
+to die. Again, "they beat their palms, they pounded their bodies ...
+they shed falling showers of tears."[279] These are reminiscences of
+orgiastic rites in which pain and pleasure melt into one. The god must
+have been a god of fertility; the blood of the victims was poured on the
+image, the flesh, as in analogous savage rites and folk-survivals, may
+have been buried in the fields to promote fertility. If so, the victims'
+flesh was instinct with the power of the divinity, and, though their
+number is obviously exaggerated, several victims may have taken the
+place of an earlier slain representative of the god. A mythic _Crom
+Dubh_, "Black Crom," whose festival occurs on the first Sunday in
+August, may be another form of Cromm Cruaich. In one story the name is
+transferred to S. Patrick's servant, who is asked by the fairies when
+they will go to Paradise. "Not till the day of judgment," is the answer,
+and for this they cease to help men in the processes of agriculture. But
+in a variant Manannan bids Crom ask this question, and the same result
+follows.[280] These tales thus enshrine the idea that Crom and the
+fairies were ancient gods of growth who ceased to help men when they
+deserted them for the Christian faith. If the sacrifice was offered at
+the August festival, or, as the texts suggest, at Samhain, after
+harvest, it must have been on account of the next year's crop, and the
+flesh may have been mingled with the seed corn.
+
+Dagda may thus have been a god of growth and fertility. His wife or
+mistress was the river-goddess, Boand (the Boyne),[281] and the children
+ascribed to him were Oengus, Bodb Dearg, Danu, Brigit, and perhaps Ogma.
+The euhemerists made him die of Cethlenn's venom, long after the battle
+of Mag-tured in which he encountered her.[282] Irish mythology is
+remarkably free from obscene and grotesque myths, but some of these
+cluster round Dagda. We hear of the Gargantuan meal provided for him in
+sport by the Fomorians, and of which he ate so much that "not easy was
+it for him to move and unseemly was his apparel," as well as his conduct
+with a Fomorian beauty. Another amour of his was with Morrigan, the
+place where it occurred being still known as "The Couple's Bed."[283] In
+another tale Dagda acts as cook to Conaire the great.[284]
+
+The beautiful and fascinating Oengus is sometimes called _Mac Ind Oc_,
+"Son of the Young Ones," i.e. Dagda and Boand, or _In Mac Oc_, "The
+Young Son." This name, like the myth of his disinheriting his father,
+may point to his cult superseding that of Dagda. If so, he may then have
+been affiliated to the older god, as was frequently done in parallel
+cases, e.g. in Babylon. Oengus may thus have been the high god of some
+tribe who assumed supremacy, ousting the high god of another tribe,
+unless we suppose that Dagda was a pre-Celtic god with functions similar
+to those of Oengus, and that the Celts adopted his cult but gave that of
+Oengus a higher place. In one myth the supremacy of Oengus is seen.
+After the first battle of Mag-tured, Dagda is forced to become the slave
+of Bres, and is much annoyed by a lampooner who extorts the best pieces
+of his rations. Following the advice of Oengus, he not only causes the
+lampooner's death, but triumphs over the Fomorians.[285] On insufficient
+grounds, mainly because he was patron of Diarmaid, beloved of women, and
+because his kisses became birds which whispered love thoughts to youths
+and maidens, Oengus has been called the Eros of the Gaels. More probably
+he was primarily a supreme god of growth, who occasionally suffered
+eclipse during the time of death in nature, like Tammuz and Adonis, and
+this may explain his absence from Mag-tured. The beautiful story of his
+vision of a maiden with whom he fell violently in love contains too many
+_Maerchen_ formulae to be of any mythological or religious value. His
+mother Boand caused search to be made for her, but without avail. At
+last she was discovered to be the daughter of a semi-divine lord of a
+_sid_, but only through the help of mortals was the secret of how she
+could be taken wrung from him. She was a swan-maiden, and on a certain
+day only would Oengus obtain her. Ultimately she became his wife. The
+story is interesting because it shows how the gods occasionally required
+mortal aid.[286]
+
+Equally influenced by _Maerchen_ formulae is the story of Oengus and
+Etain. Etain and Fuamnach were wives of Mider, but Fuamnach was jealous
+of Etain, and transformed her into an insect. In this shape Oengus found
+her, and placed her in a glass _grianan_ or bower filled with flowers,
+the perfume of which sustained her. He carried the _grianan_ with him
+wherever he went, but Fuamnach raised a magic wind which blew Etain away
+to the roof of Etair, a noble of Ulster. She fell through a smoke-hole
+into a golden cup of wine, and was swallowed by Etair's wife, of whom
+she was reborn.[287] Professor Rh[^y]s resolves all this into a sun and
+dawn myth. Oengus is the sun, Etain the dawn, the _grianan_ the expanse
+of the sky.[288] But the dawn does not grow stronger with the sun's
+influence, as Etain did under that of Oengus. At the sun's appearance
+the dawn begins
+
+    "to faint in the light of the sun she loves,
+  To faint in his light and to die."
+
+The whole story is built up on the well-known _Marchen_ formulae of the
+"True Bride" and the "Two Brothers," but accommodated to well-known
+mythic personages, and the _grianan_ is the Celtic equivalent of various
+objects in stories of the "Cinderella" type, in which the heroine
+conceals herself, the object being bought by the hero and kept in his
+room.[289] Thus the tale reveals nothing of Etain's divine functions,
+but it illustrates the method of the "mythological" school in
+discovering sun-heroes and dawn-maidens in any incident, mythical or
+not.
+
+Oengus appears in the Fionn cycle as the fosterer and protector of
+Diarmaid.[290] With Mider, Bodb, and Morrigan, he expels the Fomorians
+when they destroy the corn, fruit, and milk of the Tuatha De
+Danann.[291] This may point to his functions as a god of fertility.
+
+Although Mider appears mainly as a king of the _side_ and ruler of the
+_brug_ of Bri Leith, he is also connected with the Tuatha Dea.[292]
+Learning that Etain had been reborn and was now married to King Eochaid,
+he recovered her from him, but lost her again when Eochaid attacked his
+_brug_. He was ultimately avenged in the series of tragic events which
+led to the death of Eochaid's descendant Conaire. Though his _sid_ is
+located in Ireland, it has so much resemblance to Elysium that Mider
+must be regarded as one of its lords. Hence he appears as ruler of the
+Isle of Falga, i.e. the Isle of Man regarded as Elysium. Thence his
+daughter Blathnat, his magical cows and cauldron, were stolen by
+Cuchulainn and Curoi, and his three cranes from Bri Leith by
+Aitherne[293]--perhaps distorted versions of the myths which told how
+various animals and gifts came from the god's land. Mider may be the
+Irish equivalent of a local Gaulish god, Medros, depicted on bas-reliefs
+with a cow or bull.[294]
+
+The victory of the Tuatha Dea at the first battle of Mag-tured, in June,
+their victory followed, however, by the deaths of many of them at the
+second battle in November, may point to old myths dramatising the
+phenomena of nature, and connected with the ritual of summer and winter
+festivals. The powers of light and growth are in the ascendant in
+summer; they seem to die in winter. Christian euhemerists made use of
+these myths, but regarded the gods as warriors who were slain, not as
+those who die and revive again. At the second battle, Nuada loses his
+life; at the first, though his forces are victorious, his hand was cut
+off by the Fomorian Sreng, for even when victorious the gods must
+suffer. A silver hand was made for him by Diancecht, and hence he was
+called Nuada _Argetlam_, "of the silver hand." Professor Rh[^y]s regards
+him as a Celtic Zeus, partly because he is king of the Tuatha De Danann,
+partly because he, like Zeus or Tyr, who lost tendons or a hand through
+the wiles of evil gods, is also maimed.[295] Similarly in the _Rig-Veda_
+the Acvins substitute a leg of iron for the leg of Vispala, cut off in
+battle, and the sun is called "golden-handed" because Savitri cut off
+his hand and the priests replaced it by one of gold. The myth of Nuada's
+hand may have arisen from primitive attempts at replacing lopped-off
+limbs, as well as from the fact that no Irish king must have any bodily
+defect, or possibly because an image of Nuada may have lacked a hand or
+possessed one of silver. Images were often maimed or given artificial
+limbs, and myths then arose to explain the custom.[296] Nuada appears to
+be a god of life and growth, but he is not a sun-god. His Welsh
+equivalent is Llud Llawereint, or "silver-handed," who delivers his
+people from various scourges. His daughter Creidylad is to be wedded to
+Gwythur, but is kidnapped by Gwyn. Arthur decides that they must fight
+for her yearly on 1st May until the day of judgment, when the victor
+would gain her hand.[297] Professor Rh[^y]s regards Creidylad as a
+Persephone, wedded alternately to light and dark divinities.[298] But
+the story may rather be explanatory of such ritual acts as are found in
+folk-survivals in the form of fights between summer and winter, in which
+a Queen of May figures, and intended to assist the conflict of the gods
+of growth with those of blight.[299] Creidylad is daughter of a probable
+god of growth, nor is it impossible that the story of the battle of
+Mag-tured is based on mythic explanations of such ritual combats.
+
+The Brythons worshipped Nuada as Nodons in Romano-British times. The
+remains of his temple exist near the mouth of the Severn, and the god
+may have been equated with Mars, though certain symbols seem to connect
+him with the waters as a kind of Neptune.[300] An Irish mythic poet
+Nuada Necht may be the Nechtan who owned a magic well whence issued the
+Boyne, and was perhaps a water-god. If such a water-god was associated
+with Nuada, he and Nodons might be a Celtic Neptune.[301] But the
+relationship and functions of these various personages are obscure, nor
+is it certain that Nodons was equated with Neptune or that Nuada was a
+water-god. His name may be cognate with words meaning "growth,"
+"possession," "harvest," and this supports the view taken here of his
+functions.[302] The Welsh Nudd Hael, or "the Generous," who possessed a
+herd of 21,000 milch kine, may be a memory of this god, and it is
+possible that, as a god of growth, Nuada had human incarnations called
+by his name.[303]
+
+Ler, whose name means "sea," and who was a god of the sea, is father of
+Manannan as well as of the personages of the beautiful story called _The
+Children of Lir_, from which we learn practically all that is known of
+him. He resented not being made ruler of the Tuatha Dea, but was later
+reconciled when the daughter of Bodb Dearg was given to him as his wife.
+On her death, he married her sister, who transformed her step-children
+into swans.[304] Ler is the equivalent of the Brythonic Llyr, later
+immortalised by Shakespeare as King Lear.
+
+The greatness of Manannan mac Lir, "son of the sea," is proved by the
+fact that he appears in many of the heroic tales, and is still
+remembered in tradition and folk-tale. He is a sea-god who has become
+more prominent than the older god of the sea, and though not a supreme
+god, he must have had a far-spreading cult. With Bodb Dearg he was
+elected king of the Tuatha De Danann. He made the gods invisible and
+immortal, gave them magical food, and assisted Oengus in driving out
+Elemar from his _sid_. Later tradition spoke of four Manannans, probably
+local forms of the god, as is suggested by the fact that the true name
+of one of them is said to be Orbsen, son of Allot. Another, the son of
+Ler, is described as a renowned trader who dwelt in the Isle of Man, the
+best of pilots, weather-wise, and able to transform himself as he
+pleased. The _Coir Anmann_ adds that the Britons and the men of Erin
+deemed him god of the sea.[305] That position is plainly seen in many
+tales, e.g. in the magnificent passage of _The Voyage of Bran_, where he
+suddenly sweeps into sight, riding in a chariot across the waves from
+the Land of Promise; or in the tale of _Cuchulainn's Sickness_, where
+his wife Fand sees him, "the horseman of the crested sea," coming across
+the waves. In the _Agallamh na Senorach_ he appears as a cavalier
+breasting the waves. "For the space of nine waves he would be submerged
+in the sea, but would rise on the crest of the tenth without wetting
+chest or breast."[306] In one archaic tale he is identified with a great
+sea wave which swept away Tuag, while the waves are sometimes called
+"the son of Lir's horses"--a name still current in Ireland, or, again,
+"the locks of Manannan's wife."[307] His position as god of the sea may
+have given rise to the belief that he was ruler of the oversea Elysium,
+and, later, of the other-world as a magical domain coterminous with this
+earth. He is still remembered in the Isle of Man, which may owe its name
+to him, and which, like many another island, was regarded by the Goidels
+as the island Elysium under its name of Isle of Falga. He is also the
+Manawyddan of Welsh story.
+
+Manannan appears in the Cuchulainn and Fionn cycles, usually as a ruler
+of the Other-world. His wife Fand was Cuchulainn's mistress, Diarmaid
+was his pupil in fairyland, and Cormac was his guest there. Even in
+Christian times surviving pagan beliefs caused legend to be busy with
+his name. King Fiachna was fighting the Scots and in great danger, when
+a stranger appeared to his wife and announced that he would save her
+husband's life if she would consent to abandon herself to him. She
+reluctantly agreed, and the child of the _amour_ was the seventh-century
+King Mongan, of whom the annalist says, "every one knows that his real
+father was Manannan."[308] Mongan was also believed to be a rebirth of
+Fionn. Manannan is still remembered in folk-tradition, and in the Isle
+of Man, where his grave is to be seen, some of his ritual survived until
+lately, bundles of rushes being placed for him on midsummer eve on two
+hills.[309] Barintus, who steers Arthur to the fortunate isles, and S.
+Barri, who crossed the sea on horseback, may have been legendary forms
+of a local sea-god akin to Manannan, or of Manannan himself.[310] His
+steed was Enbarr, "water foam _or_ hair," and Manannan was "the horseman
+of the maned sea." "Barintus," perhaps connected with _barr find_,
+"white-topped," would thus be a surname of the god who rode on Enbarr,
+the foaming wave, or who was himself the wave, while his mythic
+sea-riding was transferred to the legend of S. Barri, if such a person
+ever existed.
+
+Various magical possessions were ascribed to Manannan--his armour and
+sword, the one making the wearer invulnerable, the other terrifying all
+who beheld it; his horse and canoe; his swine, which came to life again
+when killed; his magic cloak; his cup which broke when a lie was spoken;
+his tablecloth, which, when waved, produced food. Many of these are
+found everywhere in _Maerchen_, and there is nothing peculiarly Celtic in
+them. We need not, therefore, with the mythologists, see in his armour
+the vapoury clouds or in his sword lightning or the sun's rays. But
+their magical nature as well as the fact that so much wizardry is
+attributed to Manannan, points to a copious mythology clustering round
+the god, now for ever lost.
+
+The parentage of Lug is differently stated, but that account which makes
+him son of Cian and of Ethne, daughter of Balor, is best attested.[311]
+Folk-tradition still recalls the relation of Lug and Balor. Balor, a
+robber living in Tory Island, had a daughter whose son was to kill her
+father. He therefore shut her up in an inaccessible place, but in
+revenge for Balor's stealing MacIneely's cow, the latter gained access
+to her, with the result that Ethne bore three sons, whom Balor cast into
+the sea. One of them, Lug, was recovered by MacIneely and fostered by
+his brother Gavida. Balor now slew MacIneely, but was himself slain by
+Lug, who pierced his single eye with a red-hot iron.[312] In another
+version, Kian takes MacIneely's place and is aided by Manannan, in
+accordance with older legends.[313] But Lug's birth-story has been
+influenced in these tales by the _Maerchen_ formula of the girl hidden
+away because it has been foretold that she will have a son who will slay
+her father.
+
+Lug is associated with Manannan, from whose land he comes to assist the
+Tuatha Dea against the Fomorians. His appearance was that of the sun,
+and by this brilliant warrior's prowess the hosts were utterly
+defeated.[314] This version, found in _The Children of Tuirenn_, differs
+from the account in the story of Mag-tured. Here Lug arrives at the
+gates of Tara and offers his services as a craftsman. Each offer is
+refused, until he proclaims himself "the man of each and every art," or
+_samildanach_, "possessing many arts." Nuada resigns his throne to him
+for thirteen days, and Lug passes in review the various craftsmen (i.e.
+the gods), and though they try to prevent such a marvellous person
+risking himself in fight, he escapes, heads the warriors, and sings his
+war-song. Balor, the evil-eyed, he slays with a sling-stone, and his
+death decided the day against the Fomorians. In this account Lug
+_samildanach_ is a patron of the divine patrons of crafts; in other
+words, he is superior to a whole group of gods. He was also inventor of
+draughts, ball-play, and horsemanship. But, as M. D'Arbois shows,
+_samildanach_ is the equivalent of "inventor of all arts," applied by
+Caesar to the Gallo-Roman Mercury, who is thus an equivalent of Lug.[315]
+This is attested on other grounds. As Lug's name appears in Irish Louth
+(_Lug-magh_) and in British Lugu-vallum, near Hadrian's Wall, so in Gaul
+the names Lugudunum (Lyons), Lugudiacus, and Lugselva ("devoted to
+Lugus") show that a god Lugus was worshipped there. A Gaulish feast of
+Lugus in August--the month of Lug's festival in Ireland--was perhaps
+superseded by one in honour of Augustus. No dedication to Lugus has yet
+been found, but images of and inscriptions to Mercury abound at
+Lugudunum Convenarum.[316] As there were three Brigits, so there may
+have been several forms of Lugus, and two dedications to the _Lugoves_
+have been found in Spain and Switzerland, one of them inscribed by the
+shoemakers of Uxama.[317] Thus the Lugoves may have been multiplied
+forms of Lugus or _Lugovos_, "a hero," the meaning given to "Lug" by
+O'Davoren.[318] Shoe-making was not one of the arts professed by Lug,
+but Professor Rh[^y]s recalls the fact that the Welsh Lleu, whom he
+equates with Lug, disguised himself as a shoemaker.[319] Lugus, besides
+being a mighty hero, was a great Celtic culture-god, superior to all
+other culture divinities.
+
+The euhemerists assigned a definite date to Lug's death, but side by
+side with this the memory of his divinity prevailed, and he appears as
+the father and helper of Cuchulainn, who was possibly a rebirth of the
+god.[320] His high position appears in the fact that the Gaulish
+assembly at Lugudunum was held in his honour, like the festival of
+Lugnasad in Ireland. Craftsmen brought their wares to sell at this
+festival of the god of crafts, while it may also have been a harvest
+festival.[321] Whether it was a strictly solar feast is doubtful, though
+Professor Rh[^y]s and others insist that Lug is a sun-god. The name of
+the Welsh Lleu, "light," is equated with Lug, and the same meaning
+assigned to the latter.[322] This equation has been contested and is
+doubtful, Lugus probably meaning "hero."[323] Still the sun-like traits
+ascribed to Lug before Mag-tured suggest that he was a sun-god, and
+solar gods elsewhere, e.g. the Polynesian Maui, are culture-gods as
+well. But it should be remembered that Lug is not associated with the
+true solar festivals of Beltane and Midsummer.
+
+While our knowledge of the Tuatha De Danann is based upon a series of
+mythic tales and other records, that of the gods of the continental
+Celts, apart from a few notices in classical authors and elsewhere,
+comes from inscriptions. But as far as can be judged, though the names
+of the two groups seldom coincide, their functions must have been much
+alike, and their origins certainly the same. The Tuatha De Danann were
+nature divinities of growth, light, agriculture--their symbols and
+possessions suggesting fertility, e.g. the cauldron. They were
+divinities of culture and crafts, and of war. There must have been many
+other gods in Ireland than those described here, while some of those may
+not have been worshipped all over Ireland. Generally speaking, there
+were many local gods in Gaul with similar functions but different names,
+and this may have been true of Ireland. Perhaps the different names
+given to Dagda, Manannan, and others were simply names of similar local
+gods, one of whom became prominent, and attracted to himself the names
+of the others. So, too, the identity of Danu and Brigit might be
+explained, or the fact that there were three Brigits. We read also in
+the texts of the god of Connaught, or of Ulster, and these were
+apparently regional divinities, or of "the god of Druidism"--perhaps a
+god worshipped specially by Druids.[324] The remote origin of some of
+these divinities may be sought in the primitive cult of the Earth
+personified as a fertile being, and in that of vegetation and
+corn-spirits, and the vague spirits of nature in all its aspects. Some
+of these still continued to be worshipped when the greater gods had been
+evolved. Though animal worship was not lacking in Ireland, divinities
+who are anthropomorphic forms of earlier animal-gods are less in
+evidence than on the Continent. The divinities of culture, crafts, and
+war, and of departments of nature, must have slowly assumed the definite
+personality assigned them in Irish religion. But, doubtless, they
+already possessed that before the Goidels reached Ireland. Strictly
+speaking, the underground domain assigned later to the Tuatha De Danann
+belongs only to such of them as were associated with fertility. But in
+course of time most of the group, as underground dwellers, were
+connected with growth and increase. These could be blighted by their
+enemies, or they themselves could withhold them when their worshippers
+offended them.[325]
+
+Irish mythology points to the early pre-eminence of goddesses. As
+agriculture and many of the arts were first in the hands of women,
+goddesses of fertility and culture preceded gods, and still held their
+place when gods were evolved. Even war-goddesses are prominent in
+Ireland. Celtic gods and heroes are often called after their mothers,
+not their fathers, and women loom largely in the tales of Irish
+colonisation, while in many legends they play a most important part.
+Goddesses give their name to divine groups, and, even where gods are
+prominent, their actions are free, their personalities still clearly
+defined. The supremacy of the divine women of Irish tradition is once
+more seen in the fact that they themselves woo and win heroes; while
+their capacity for love, their passion, their eternal youthfulness and
+beauty are suggestive of their early character as goddesses of
+ever-springing fertility.[326]
+
+This supremacy of goddesses is explained by Professor Rh[^y]s as
+non-Celtic, as borrowed by the Celts from the aborigines.[327] But it is
+too deeply impressed on the fabric of Celtic tradition to be other than
+native, and we have no reason to suppose that the Celts had not passed
+through a stage in which such a state of things was normal. Their innate
+conservatism caused them to preserve it more than other races who had
+long outgrown such a state of things.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[199] _HL_ 89; Stokes, _RC_ xii. 129. D'Arbois, ii. 125, explains it as
+"Folk of the god whose mother is called Danu."
+
+[200] _RC_ xii. 77. The usual Irish word for "god" is _dia_; other names
+are _Fiadu_, _Art_, _Dess_.
+
+[201] See Joyce, _SII_. i. 252, 262; _PN_ i. 183.
+
+[202] _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[203] _LL_ 11.
+
+[204] _LL_ 127. The mounds were the sepulchres of the euhemerised gods.
+
+[205] _Book of Fermoy_, fifteenth century.
+
+[206] _LL_ 11_b_.
+
+[207] _IT_ i. 14, 774; Stokes, _TL_ i. 99, 314, 319. _Sid_ is a fairy
+hill, the hill itself or the dwelling within it. Hence those who dwell
+in it are _Aes_ or _Fir side_, "men of the mound," or _side_, fairy
+folk. The primitive form is probably _sedos_, from _sed_, "abode" or
+"seat"; cf. Greek [Greek: edos] "a temple." Thurneysen suggests a
+connection with a word equivalent to Lat. _sidus_, "constellation," or
+"dwelling of the gods."
+
+[208] Joyce, _SH_ i. 252; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 505.
+
+[209] "Vision of Oengus," _RC_ iii. 344; _IT_ i. 197 f.
+
+[210] Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 118; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 71; see p. 363,
+_infra_.
+
+[211] Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 118, Sec. 6; _IT_ iii. 407; _RC_ xvi. 139.
+
+[212] Shore, _JAI_ xx. 9.
+
+[213] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 203 f. _Pennocrucium_ occurs in the _Itinerary_ of
+Antoninus.
+
+[214] Keating, 434.
+
+[215] Joyce, _SH_ i. 252.
+
+[216] See p. 228. In Scandinavia the dead were called elves, and lived
+feasting in their barrows or in hills. These became the seat of
+ancestral cults. The word "elf" also means any divine spirit, later a
+fairy. "Elf" and _side_ may thus, like the "elf-howe" and the _sid_ or
+mound, have a parallel history. See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet.
+Boreale_, i. 413 f.
+
+[217] Tuan MacCairill (_LU_ 166) calls the Tuatha Dea, "dee ocus andee,"
+and gives the meaning as "poets and husbandmen." This phrase, with the
+same meaning, is used in "Coir Anmann" (_IT_ iii. 355), but there we
+find that it occurred in a pagan formula of blessing--"The blessing of
+gods and not-gods be on thee." But the writer goes on to say--"These
+were their gods, the magicians, and their non-gods, the husbandmen."
+This may refer to the position of priest-kings and magicians as gods.
+Rh[^y]s compares Sanskrit _deva_ and _adeva_ (_HL_ 581). Cf. the phrase
+in a Welsh poem (Skene, i. 313), "Teulu Oeth et Anoeth," translated by
+Rh[^y]s as "Household of Power and Not-Power" (_CFL_ ii. 620), but the
+meaning is obscure. See Loth, i. 197.
+
+[218] _LL_ 10_b_.
+
+[219] Cormac, 4. Stokes (_US_ 12) derives Anu from _(p)an_, "to
+nourish"; cf. Lat. _panis_.
+
+[220] _Leicester County Folk-lore_, 4. The _Coir Anmann_ says that Anu
+was worshipped as a goddess of plenty (_IT_ iii. 289).
+
+[221] Rh[^y]s, _Trans. 3rd Inter. Cong. Hist. of Rel._ ii. 213. See
+Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 251 ff., and p. 275, _infra_.
+
+[222] Rh[^y]s, _ibid._ ii. 213. He finds her name in the place-name
+_Bononia_ and its derivatives.
+
+[223] Cormac, 23.
+
+[224] Caesar, vi. 17; Holder, _s.v._; Stokes, _TIG_ 33.
+
+[225] Girald. Cambr. _Top. Hib._ ii. 34 f. Vengeance followed upon rash
+intrusion. For the breath tabu see Frazer, _Early Hist. of the
+Kingship_, 224.
+
+[226] Joyce, _SH_ i. 335.
+
+[227] P. 41, _supra_.
+
+[228] Martin, 119; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 248.
+
+[229] Frazer, _op. cit._ 225.
+
+[230] Joyce, _PN_ i. 195; O'Grady, ii. 198; Wood-Martin, i. 366; see p.
+42, _supra_.
+
+[231] Fitzgerald, _RC_ iv. 190. Aine has no connection with Anu, nor is
+she a moon-goddess, as is sometimes supposed.
+
+[232] _RC_ iv. 189.
+
+[233] Keating, 318; _IT_ iii. 305; _RC_ xiii. 435.
+
+[234] O'Grady, ii. 197.
+
+[235] _RC_ xii. 109, xxii. 295; Cormac, 87; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxiii.
+
+[236] Holder, i. 341; _CIL_ vii. 1292; Caesar, ii. 23.
+
+[237] _LL_ 11_b_; Cormac, s.v. _Neit_; _RC_ iv. 36; _Arch. Rev._ i. 231;
+Holder, ii. 714, 738.
+
+[238] Stokes, _TIG, LL_ 11_a_.
+
+[239] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 43; Stokes, _RC_ xii. 128.
+
+[240] _RC_ xii. 91, 110.
+
+[241] See p. 131.
+
+[242] Petrie, _Tara_, 147; Stokes, _US_ 175; Meyer, _Cath Finntraga_,
+Oxford, 1885, 76 f.; _RC_ xvi. 56, 163, xxi. 396.
+
+[243] _CIL_ vii. 507; Stokes, _US_ 211.
+
+[244] _RC_ i. 41, xii. 84.
+
+[245] _RC_ xxi. 157, 315; Miss Hull, 247. A _baobh_ (a common Gaelic
+name for "witch") appears to Oscar and prophesies his death in a Fionn
+ballad (Campbell, _The Fians_, 33). In Brittany the "night-washers,"
+once water-fairies, are now regarded as _revenants_ (Le Braz, i. 52).
+
+[246] Joyce, _SH_ i. 261; Miss Hull, 186; Meyer, _Cath Finntraga_, 6,
+13; _IT_ i. 131, 871.
+
+[247] _LL_ 10_a_.
+
+[248] _LL_ 10_a_, 30_b_, 187_c_.
+
+[249] _RC_ xxvi. 13; _LL_ 187_c_.
+
+[250] Cf. the personification of the three strains of Dagda's harp
+(Leahy, ii. 205).
+
+[251] See p. 223, _infra_.
+
+[252] D'Arbois, ii. 372.
+
+[253] _RC_ xii. 77, 83.
+
+[254] _LL_ 11; _Atlantis_, London, 1858-70, iv. 159.
+
+[255] O'Donovan, _Grammar_, Dublin, 1845, xlvii.
+
+[256] _RC_ xii. 77.
+
+[257] Lucian, _Herakles_.
+
+[258] _RC_ xii. 89. The name is found in Gaulish Gobannicnos, and in
+Welsh Abergavenny.
+
+[259] _IT_ i. 56; Zimmer, _Glossae Hibernicae_, 1881, 270.
+
+[260] _Atlantis_, 1860, iii. 389.
+
+[261] _RC_ xii. 89.
+
+[262] _LL_ ll_a_.
+
+[263] _RC_ xii. 93.
+
+[264] Connac, 56, and _Coir Anmann_ (_IT_ iii. 357) divide the name as
+_dia-na-cecht_ and explain it as "god of the powers."
+
+[265] _RC_ xii. 67. For similar stories of plants springing from graves,
+see my _Childhood of Fiction_, 115.
+
+[266] _RC_ xii, 89, 95.
+
+[267] _RC_ vi. 369; Cormac, 23.
+
+[268] Cormac, 47, 144; _IT_ iii. 355, 357.
+
+[269] _IT_ iii. 355; D'Arbois, i. 202.
+
+[270] _LL_ 246_a_.
+
+[271] _Irish MSS. Series_, i. 46; D'Arbois, ii. 276. In a MS. edited by
+Dr. Stirn, Oengus was Dagda's son by Elemar's wife, the amour taking
+place in her husband's absence. This incident is a parallel to the
+birth-stories of Mongan and Arthur, and has also the Fatherless Child
+theme, since Oengus goes in tears to Mider because he has been taunted
+with having no father or mother. In the same MS. it is the Dagda who
+instructs Oengus how to obtain Elemar's _sid_. See _RC_ xxvii. 332,
+xxviii. 330.
+
+[272] _LL_ 245_b_.
+
+[273] _IT_ iii. 355.
+
+[274] O'Donovan, _Battle of Mag-Rath_, Dublin, 1842, 50; _LL_ 246_a_.
+
+[275] D'Arbois, v. 427, 448.
+
+[276] The former is Rh[^y]s's interpretation (_HL_ 201) connecting
+_Cruaich_ with _cruach_, "a heap"; the latter is that of D'Arbois (ii.
+106), deriving _Cruaich_ from _cru_, "blood." The idea of the image
+being bent or crooked may have been due to the fact that it long stood
+ready to topple over, as a result of S. Patrick's miracle. See p. 286,
+_infra_.
+
+[277] Vallancey, in _Coll. de Rebus Hib._ 1786, iv. 495.
+
+[278] _LL_ 213_b_. D'Arbois thinks Cromm was a Fomorian, the equivalent
+of Taranis (ii. 62). But he is worshipped by Gaels. _Crin_, "withered,"
+probably refers to the idol's position after S. Patrick's miracle, no
+longer upright but bent like an old man. Dr. Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of
+Ireland_, 87, with exaggerated patriotism, thinks the sacrificial
+details are copied by a Christian scribe from the Old Testament, and are
+no part of the old ritual.
+
+[279] _RC_ xvi. 35, 163.
+
+[280] Fitzgerald, _RL_ iv. 175.
+
+[281] _RC_ xxvi. 19.
+
+[282] _Annals of the Four Masters_, A.M. 3450.
+
+[283] _RC_ xii. 83, 85; Hyde, _op. cit._ 288.
+
+[284] _LU_ 94.
+
+[285] _RC_ xii. 65. Elsewhere three supreme "ignorances" are ascribed to
+Oengus (_RL_ xxvi. 31).
+
+[286] _RC_ iii. 342.
+
+[287] _LL_ 11_c_; _LU_ 129; _IT_ i. 130. Cf. the glass house, placed
+between sky and moon, to which Tristan conducts the queen. Bedier,
+_Tristan et Iseut_, 252. In a fragmentary version of the story Oengus is
+Etain's wooer, but Mider is preferred by her father, and marries her. In
+the latter half of the story, Oengus does not appear (see p. 363,
+_infra_). Mr. Nutt (_RC_ xxvii. 339) suggests that Oengus, not Mider,
+was the real hero of the story, but that its Christian redactors gave
+Mider his place in the second part. The fragments are edited by Stirn
+(_ZCP_ vol. v.).
+
+[288] _HL_ 146.
+
+[289] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, 114, 153. The tale has some unique
+features, as it alone among Western _Maerchen_ and saga variants of the
+"True Bride" describes the malicious woman as the wife of Mider. In
+other words, the story implies polygamy, rarely found in European
+folk-tales.
+
+[290] O'Grady, _TOS_ iii.
+
+[291] _RC_ i. 41.
+
+[292] O'Curry, _MC_ i. 71.
+
+[293] _LL_ 117_a_. See p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[294] Cumont, _RC_ xxvi. 47; D'Arbois, _RC_ xxvii. 127, notes the
+difficulty of explaining the change of _e_ to _i_ in the names.
+
+[295] _HL_ 121.
+
+[296] See Crooke, _Folk-Lore_, viii. 341. Cf. Herod, ii. 131.
+
+[297] Loth, i. 269.
+
+[298] _HL_ 563.
+
+[299] Train, _Isle of Man_, Douglas, 1845, ii. 118; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._
+ii. ch. 24; Frazer, _GB_{2} ii. 99 f.
+
+[300] Bathurst, _Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park_, 1879; Holder, _s.v._
+"Nodons."
+
+[301] See Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 122; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 30.
+
+[302] Stokes, _US_ 194-195; Rh[^y]s, _HL_, 128, _IT_ i. 712.
+
+[303] Loth, ii. 235, 296. See p. 160, _infra_.
+
+[304] Joyce, _OCR_.
+
+[305] For these four Manannans see Cormac 114, _RC_ xxiv. 270, _IT_ iii.
+357.
+
+[306] O'Grady, ii.
+
+[307] _Bodley Dindsenchas_, No. 10, _RC_ xii. 105; Joyce, _SH_ i. 259;
+_Otia Merseiana_, ii. "Song of the Sea."
+
+[308] _LU_ 133.
+
+[309] Moore, 6.
+
+[310] Geoffrey, _Vita Merlini_, 37; Rees, 435. Other saintly legends are
+derived from myths, e.g. that of S. Barri in his boat meeting S.
+Scuithne walking on the sea. Scuithne maintains he is walking on a
+field, and plucks a flower to prove it, while Barri confutes him by
+pulling a salmon out of the sea. This resembles an episode in the
+meeting of Bran and Manannan (Stokes, _Felire_, xxxix.; Nutt-Meyer, i.
+39). Saints are often said to assist men just as the gods did.
+Columcille and Brigit appeared over the hosts of Erin assisting and
+encouraging them _(RC_ xxiv. 40).
+
+[311] _RC_ xii. 59.
+
+[312] _Folk-Lore Journal_, v. 66; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 314.
+
+[313] Larminie, "Kian, son of Kontje."
+
+[314] Joyce, _OCR_ 37.
+
+[315] D'Arbois, vi. 116, _Les Celtes_, 39, _RC_ xii. 75, 101, 127, xvi.
+77. Is the defaced inscription at Geitershof, _Deo M ... Sam ..._
+(Holder, ii. 1335), a dedication to Mercury Samildanach? An echo of
+Lug's story is found in the Life of S. Herve, who found a devil in his
+monastery in the form of a man who said he was a good carpenter, mason,
+locksmith, etc., but who could not make the sign of the cross. Albert le
+Grand, _Saints de la Bretagne_, 49, _RC_ vii. 231.
+
+[316] Holder, _s.v._; D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 44, _RC_ vii. 400.
+
+[317] Holder, _s.v._ "Lugus."
+
+[318] Stokes, _TIG_ 103. Gaidoz contests the identification of the
+Lugoves and of Lug with Mercury, and to him the Lugoves are grouped
+divinities like the _Matres_ (_RC_ vi. 489).
+
+[319] _HL_ 425.
+
+[320] See p. 349, _infra_.
+
+[321] See p. 272, _infra_.
+
+[322] _HL_ 409.
+
+[323] See Loth, _RC_ x. 490.
+
+[324] Leahy, i. 138, ii. 50, 52, _LU_ 124_b_.
+
+[325] _LL_ 215_a_; see p. 78, _supra_.
+
+[326] See, further, p. 385, _infra_.
+
+[327] _The Welsh People_, 61. Professor Rh[^y]s admits that the theory
+of borrowing "cannot easily be proved."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS
+
+
+Our knowledge of the gods of the Brythons, i.e. as far as Wales is
+concerned, is derived, apart from inscriptions, from the _Mabinogion_,
+which, though found in a fourteenth century MS., was composed much
+earlier, and contains elements from a remote past. Besides this, the
+_Triads_, probably of twelfth-century origin, the _Taliesin_, and other
+poems, though obscure and artificial, the work of many a "confused bard
+drivelling" (to cite the words of one of them), preserve echoes of the
+old mythology.[328] Some of the gods may lurk behind the personages of
+Geoffrey of Monmouth's _Historia Britonum_ and of the Arthurian cycle,
+though here great caution is required. The divinities have become heroes
+and heroines, kings and princesses, and if some of the episodes are
+based on ancient myths, they are treated in a romantic spirit. Other
+episodes are mere _Maerchen_ formulae. Like the wreckage of some rich
+galleon, the _debris_ of the old mythology has been used to construct a
+new fabric, and the old divinities have even less of the god-like traits
+of the personages of the Irish texts.
+
+Some of the personages bear similar names to the Irish divinities, and
+in some cases there is a certain similarity of incidents to those of the
+Irish tales.[329] Are, then, the gods dimly revealed in Welsh literature
+as much Goidelic as Brythonic? Analysing the incidents of the
+_Mabinogion_, Professor Anwyl has shown that they have an entirely local
+character, and are mainly associated with the districts of Dyfed and
+Gwent, of Anglesey, and of Gwynedd, of which Pryderi, Branwen, and
+Gwydion are respectively the heroic characters.[330] These are the
+districts where a strong Goidelic element prevailed, whether these
+Goidels were the original inhabitants of Britain, driven there by
+Brythons,[331] or tribes who had settled there from Ireland,[332] or
+perhaps a mixture of both. In any case they had been conquered by
+Brythons and had become Brythonic in speech from the fifth century
+onwards. On account of this Goidelic element, it has been claimed that
+the personages of the _Mabinogion_ are purely Goidelic. But examination
+proves that only a few are directly parallel in name with Irish
+divinities, and while here there are fundamental likenesses, the
+_incidents_ with Irish parallels may be due to mere superficial
+borrowings, to that interchange of _Maerchen_ and mythical _donnees_
+which has everywhere occurred. Many incidents have no Irish parallels,
+and most of the characters are entirely different in name from Irish
+divinities. Hence any theory which would account for the likenesses,
+must also account for the differences, and must explain why, if the
+_Mabinogion_ is due to Irish Goidels, there should have been few or no
+borrowings in Welsh literature from the popular Cuchulainn and Ossianic
+sagas,[333] and why, at a time when Brythonic elements were uppermost,
+such care should have been taken to preserve Goidelic myths. If the
+tales emanated from native Welsh Goidels, the explanation might be that
+they, the kindred of the Irish Goidels, must have had a certain
+community with them in divine names and myths, while others of their
+gods, more local in character, would differ in name. Or if they are
+Brythonic, the likenesses might be accounted for by an early community
+in myth and cult among the common ancestors of Brythons and
+Goidels.[334] But as the date of the composition of the _Mabinogion_ is
+comparatively late, at a time when Brythons had overrun these Goidelic
+districts, more probably the tales contain a mingling of Goidelic (Irish
+or Welsh) and Brythonic divinities, though some of these may be
+survivals of the common Celtic heritage.[335] Celtic divinities were
+mainly of a local, tribal character. Hence some would be local Goidelic
+divinities, others, classed with these, local Brythonic divinities. This
+would explain the absence of divinities and heroes of other local
+Brythonic groups, e.g. Arthur, from the _Mabinogion_. But with the
+growing importance of these, they attracted to their legend the folk of
+the _Mabinogion_ and other tales. These are associated with Arthur in
+_Kulhwych_, and the Don group mingles with that of Taliesin in the
+_Taliesin_ poems.[336] Hence Welsh literature, as far as concerns the
+old religion, may be regarded as including both local Goidelic and
+Brythonic divinities, of whom the more purely Brythonic are Arthur,
+Gwynn, Taliesin, etc.[337] They are regarded as kings and queens, or as
+fairies, or they have magical powers. They are mortal and die, and the
+place of their burial is pointed out, or existing tumuli are associated
+with them, All this is parallel to the history of the Tuatha De Danann,
+and shows how the same process of degradation had been at work in Wales
+as in Ireland.
+
+The story of the Llyr group is told in the _Mabinogion_ of Branwen and
+of Manawyddan. They are associated with the Pwyll group, and apparently
+opposed to that of Don. Branwen is married to Matholwych, king of
+Ireland, but is ill-treated by him on account of the insults of the
+mischievous Evnissyen, in spite of the fact that Bran had atoned for the
+insult by many gifts, including that of a cauldron of regeneration. Now
+he crosses with an army to Ireland, where Evnissyen throws Branwen's
+child, to whom the kingdom is given, on the fire. A fight ensues; the
+dead Irish warriors are resuscitated in the cauldron, but Evnissyen, at
+the cost of his life, destroys it. Bran is slain, and by his directions
+his head is cut off and carried first to Harlech, then to Gwales, where
+it will entertain its bearers for eighty years. At the end of that time
+it is to be taken to London and buried. Branwen, departing with the
+bearers, dies of a broken heart at Anglesey, and meanwhile Caswallyn,
+son of Beli, seizes the kingdom.[338] Two of the bearers of the head are
+Manawyddan and Pryderi, whose fortunes we follow in the _Mabinogi_ of
+the former. Pryderi gives his mother Rhiannon to Manawyddan as his wife,
+along with some land which by magic art is made barren. After following
+different crafts, they are led by a boar to a strange castle, where
+Rhiannon and Pryderi disappear along with the building. Manawyddan, with
+Pryderi's wife Kieva, set out as shoemakers, but are forced to abandon
+this craft on account of the envy of the craftsmen. Finally, we learn
+how Manawyddan overcame the enchanter Llwyt, who, because of an insult
+offered by Pryderi's father to his friend Gwawl, had made Rhiannon and
+Pryderi disappear. They are now restored, and Llwyt seeks no further
+revenge.
+
+The story of Branwen is similar to a tale of which there are variants in
+Teutonic and Scandinavian sagas, but the resemblance is closer to the
+latter.[339] Possibly a similar story with their respective divinities
+or heroes for its characters existed among Celts, Teutons, and Norsemen,
+but more likely it was borrowed from Norsemen who occupied both sides of
+the Irish Sea in the ninth and tenth century, and then naturalised by
+furnishing it with Celtic characters. But into this framework many
+native elements were set, and we may therefore scrutinise the story for
+Celtic mythical elements utilised by its redactor, who probably did not
+strip its Celtic personages of their earlier divine attributes. In the
+two _Mabinogi_ these personages are Llyr, his sons Bran and Manawyddan,
+his daughter Branwen, their half-brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, sons of
+Llyr's wife Penardim, daughter of Beli, by a previous marriage with
+Eurosswyd.
+
+Llyr is the equivalent of the Irish Ler, the sea-god, but two other
+Llyrs, probably duplicates of himself, are known to Welsh story--Llyr
+Marini, and the Llyr, father of Cordelia, of the chroniclers.[340] He is
+constantly confused with Lludd Llawereint, e.g. both are described as
+one of three notable prisoners of Britain, and both are called fathers
+of Cordelia or Creiddylad.[341] Perhaps the two were once identical, for
+Manannan is sometimes called son of Alloid (= Lludd), in Irish texts, as
+well as son of Ler.[342] But the confusion may be accidental, nor is it
+certain that Nodons or Lludd was a sea-god. Llyr's prison was that of
+Eurosswyd,[343] whose wife he may have abducted and hence suffered
+imprisonment. In the _Black Book of Caermarthen_ Bran is called son of Y
+Werydd or "Ocean," according to M. Loth's interpretation of the name,
+which would thus point to Llyr's position as a sea-god. But this is
+contested by Professor Rh[^y]s who makes Ywerit wife of Llyr, the name
+being in his view a form of the Welsh word for Ireland. In Geoffrey and
+the chroniclers Llyr becomes a king of Britain whose history and that of
+his daughters was immortalised by Shakespeare. Geoffrey also refers to
+Llyr's burial in a vault built in honour of Janus.[344] On this
+Professor Rh[^y]s builds a theory that Llyr was a form of the Celtic Dis
+with two faces and ruler of a world of darkness.[345] But there is no
+evidence that the Celtic Dispater was lord of a gloomy underworld, and
+it is best to regard Llyr as a sea-divinity.
+
+Manawyddan is not god-like in these tales in the sense in which the
+majestic Manannan of Irish story is, though elsewhere we learn that
+"deep was his counsel."[346] Though not a magician, he baffles one of
+the great wizards of Welsh story, and he is also a master craftsman, who
+instructs Pryderi in the arts of shoe-making, shield-making, and
+saddlery. In this he is akin to Manannan, the teacher of Diarmaid.
+Incidents of his career are reflected in the _Triads_, and his union
+with Rhiannon may point to an old myth in which they were from the first
+a divine pair, parents of Pryderi. This would give point to his
+deliverance of Pryderi and Rhiannon from the hostile magician.[347]
+Rhiannon resembles the Irish Elysium goddesses, and Manawyddan, like
+Manannan, is lord of Elysium in a _Taliesin_ poem.[348] He is a
+craftsman and follows agriculture, perhaps a reminiscence of the old
+belief that fertility and culture come from the god's land. Manawyddan,
+like other divinities, was drawn into the Arthurian cycle, and is one of
+those who capture the famous boar, the _Twrch Trwyth_.[349]
+
+Bran, or Bendigeit Vran ("Bran the Blessed"), probably an old pagan
+title which appropriately enough denotes one who figured later in
+Christian hagiology, is so huge that no house or ship can hold him.
+Hence he wades over to Ireland, and as he draws near is thought to be a
+mountain. This may be an archaic method of expressing his divinity--a
+gigantic non-natural man like some of the Tuatha Dea and Ossianic
+heroes. But Bran also appears as the _Urdawl Ben_, or "Noble Head,"
+which makes time pass to its bearers like a dream, and when buried
+protects the land from invasion. Both as a giant squatting on a rock and
+as a head, Bran is equated by Professor Rh[^y]s with Cernunnos, the
+squatting god, represented also as a head, and also with the Welsh Urien
+whose attribute was a raven, the supposed meaning of Bran's name.[350]
+He further equates him with Uthr Ben, "Wonderful Head," the superior
+bard, harper and piper of a _Taliesin_ poem.[351] Urien, Bran, and Uthr
+are three forms of a god worshipped by bards, and a "dark" divinity,
+whose wading over to Ireland signifies crossing to Hades, of which he,
+like Yama, who first crossed the rapid waters to the land of death, is
+the ruler.[352] But Bran is not a "dark" god in the sense implied here.
+Cernunnos is god of a happy underworld, and there is nothing dark or
+evil in him or in Bran and his congeners. Professor Rh[^y]s's "dark"
+divinities are sometimes, in his view, "light" gods, but they cannot be
+both. The Celtic lords of the dead had no "dark" character, and as gods
+of fertility they were, so to speak, in league with the sun-god, the
+slayer of Bran, according to Professor Rh[^y]s's ingenious theory. And
+although to distracted Irish secretaries Ireland may be Hades, its
+introduction into this _Mabinogi_ merely points to the interpretation of
+a mythico-historic connection between Wales and Ireland. Thus if Bran is
+Cernunnos, this is because he is a lord of the underworld of fertility,
+the counterpart of which is the distant Elysium, to which Bran seems
+rather to belong. Thus, in presence of his head, time passes as a dream
+in feasting and joy. This is a true Elysian note, and the tabued door of
+the story is also suggestive of the tabus of Elysium, which when broken
+rob men of happiness.[353] As to the power of the head in protecting the
+land, this points to actual custom and belief regarding the relics of
+the dead and the power of divine images or sculptured heads.[354] The
+god Bran has become a king and law-giver in the _Mabinogion_ and the
+_Triads_,[355] while Geoffrey of Monmouth describes how Belinus and
+Brennus, in the Welsh version Beli and Bran, dispute the crown of
+Britain, are reconciled, and finally conquer Gaul and Rome.[356] The
+mythic Bran is confused with Brennus, leader of the Gauls against Rome
+in 390 B.C., and Belinus may be the god Belenos, as well as Beli, father
+of Lludd and Caswallawn. But Bran also figures as a Christian
+missionary. He is described as hostage at Rome for his son Caradawc,
+returning thence as preacher of Christianity to the Cymry--a legend
+arising out of a misunderstanding of his epithet "Blessed" and a
+confusing of his son with the historic Caractacus.[357] Hence Bran's
+family is spoken of as one of the three saintly families of Prydein, and
+he is ancestor of many saints.[358]
+
+Branwen, "White Bosom," daughter of a sea-god, may be a sea-goddess,
+"Venus of the northern sea,"[359] unless with Mr. Nutt we connect her
+with the cauldron described in her legend,[360] symbol of an orgiastic
+cult, and regard her as a goddess of fertility. But the connection is
+not clear in the story, though in some earlier myth the cauldron may
+have been her property. As Brangwaine, she reappears in romance, giving
+a love-potion to Tristram--perhaps a reminiscence of her former
+functions as a goddess of love, or earlier of fertility. In the
+_Mabinogion_ she is buried in Anglesey at Ynys Bronwen, where a cairn
+with bones discovered in 1813 was held to be the grave and remains of
+Branwen.[361]
+
+The children of Don, the equivalent of Danu, and probably like her, a
+goddess of fertility, are Gwydion, Gilvaethwy, Amaethon, Govannon, and
+Arianrhod, with her sons, Dylan and Llew.[362] These correspond,
+therefore, in part to the Tuatha Dea, though the only members of the
+group who bear names similar to the Irish gods are Govannon (= Goibniu)
+and possibly Llew (= Lug). Gwydion as a culture-god corresponds to Ogma.
+In the _Triads_ Beli is called father of Arianrhod,[363] and assuming
+that this Arianrhod is identical with the daughter of Don, Professor
+Rh[^y]s regards Beli as husband of Don. But the identification is far
+from certain, and the theory built upon it that Beli is one with the
+Irish Bile, and that both are lords of a dark underworld, has already
+been found precarious.[364] In later belief Don was associated with the
+stars, the constellation Cassiopeia being called her court. She is
+described as "wise" in a _Taliesin_ poem.[365]
+
+This group of divinities is met with mainly in the _Mabinogi_ of Math,
+which turns upon Gilvaethwy's illicit love of Math's "foot-holder"
+Goewin. To assist him in his _amour_, Gwydion, by a magical trick,
+procures for Math from the court of Pryderi certain swine sent him by
+Arawn, king of Annwfn. In the battle which follows when the trick is
+discovered, Gwydion slays Pryderi by enchantment. Math now discovers
+that Gilvaethwy has seduced Goewin, and transforms him and Gwydion
+successively into deer, swine, and wolves. Restored to human form,
+Gwydion proposes that Arianrhod should be Math's foot-holder, but Math
+by a magic test discovers that she is not a virgin. She bears two sons,
+Dylan, fostered by Math, and another whom Gwydion nurtures and for whom
+he afterwards by a trick obtains a name from Arianrhod, who had sworn
+never to name him. The name is Llew Llaw Gyffes, "Lion of the Sure
+Hand." By magic, Math and Gwydion form a wife for Llew out of flowers.
+She is called Blodeuwedd, and later, at the instigation of a lover,
+Gronw, she discovers how Llew can be killed. Gronw attacks and wounds
+him, and he flies off as an eagle. Gwydion seeks for Llew, discovers
+him, and retransforms him to human shape. Then he changes Blodeuwedd
+into an owl, and slays Gronw.[366] Several independent tales have gone
+to the formation of this _Mabinogi_, but we are concerned here merely
+with the light it may throw on the divine characters who figure in it.
+
+Math or Math Hen, "the Ancient,"[367] is probably an old divinity of
+Gwyned, of which he is called lord. He is a king and a magician,
+pre-eminent in wizardry, which he teaches to Gwydion, and in a _Triad_
+he is called one of the great men of magic and metamorphosis of
+Britain.[368] More important are his traits of goodness to the
+suffering, and justice with no trace of vengeance to the wrong-doer.
+Whether these are derived from his character as a god or from the Celtic
+kingly ideal, it is impossible to say, though the former is by no means
+unlikely. Possibly his supreme magical powers make him the equivalent of
+the Irish "god of Druidism," but this is uncertain, since all gods were
+more or less dowered with these.
+
+Gwydion's magical powers are abundantly illustrated in the tale. At
+Pryderi's court he changes fungus into horses and dogs, and afterwards
+slays Pryderi by power of enchantments; he produces a fleet by magic
+before Arianrhod's castle; with Math's help he forms Blodeuwedd out of
+flowers; he gives Llew his natural shape when he finds him as a wasted
+eagle on a tree, his flesh and the worms breeding in it dropping from
+him; he transforms the faithless Blodeuwedd into an owl. Some of these
+and other deeds are referred to in the _Taliesin_ poems, while Taliesin
+describes himself as enchanted by Gwydion.[369] In the _Triads_ he is
+one of the three great astrologers of Prydein, and this emphasis laid on
+his powers of divination is significant when it is considered that his
+name may be derived from a root _vet_, giving words meaning "saying" or
+"poetry," while cognate words are Irish _faith_, "a prophet" or "poet,"
+German _wuth_, "rage," and the name of Odinn.[370] The name is
+suggestive of the ecstasy of inspiration producing prophetic and poetic
+utterance. In the _Mabinogion_ he is a mighty bard, and in a poem, he,
+under the name of Gweir, is imprisoned in the Other-world, and there
+becomes a bard, thus receiving inspiration from the gods' land.[371] He
+is the ideal _faith_--diviner, prophet, and poet, and thus the god of
+those professing these arts. Strabo describes how the Celtic _vates_
+(_faith_) was also a philosopher, and this character is given in a poem
+to Seon (probably = Gwydion), whose artists are poets and
+magicians.[372] But he is also a culture-god, bringing swine to men from
+the gods' land. For though Pryderi is described as a mortal who has
+himself received the swine from Annwfn (Elysium), there is no doubt that
+he himself was a lord of Annwfn, and it was probably on account of
+Gwydion's theft from Annwfn that he, as Gweir, was imprisoned there
+"through the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi."[373] A raid is here made
+directly on the god's land for the benefit of men, and it is
+unsuccessful, but in the _Mabinogi_ a different version of the raid is
+told. Perhaps Gwydion also brought kine from Annwfn, since he is called
+one of the three herds of Britain,[374] while he himself may once have
+been an animal god, then an anthropomorphic deity associated with
+animals. Thus in the _Mabinogi_, when Gwydion flees with the swine, he
+rests each night at a place one of the syllables of which is _Moch_,
+"swine"--an aetiological myth explaining why places which were once sites
+of the cult of a swine-god, afterwards worshipped as Gwydion, were so
+called.
+
+Gwydion has also a tricky, fraudulent character in the _Mabinogi_, and
+although "in his life there was counsel," yet he had a "vicious
+muse."[375] It is also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod
+and father of Dylan and Llew--the mythic reflections of a time when such
+unions, perhaps only in royal houses, were permissible. Instances occur
+in Irish tales, and Arthur was also his sister's lover.[376] In later
+belief Gwydion was associated with the stars; and the Milky Way was
+called Caer Gwydion. Across it he had chased the faithless
+Blodeuwedd.[377] Professor Rh[^y]s equates him with Odinn, and regards
+both as representing an older Celto-Teutonic hero, though many of the
+alleged similarities in their respective mythologies are not too
+obvious.[378]
+
+Amaethon the good is described in _Kulhwych_ as the only husbandman who
+could till or dress a certain piece of land, though Kulhwych will not be
+able to force him or to make him follow him.[379] This, together with
+the name Amaethon, from Cymric _amaeth_, "labourer" or "ploughman," throws
+some light on his functions.[380] He was a god associated with
+agriculture, either as one who made waste places fruitful, or possibly
+as an anthropomorphic corn divinity. But elsewhere his taking a roebuck
+and a whelp, and in a _Triad_, a lapwing from Arawn, king of Annwfn, led
+to the battle of Godeu, in which he fought Arawn, aided by Gwydion, who
+vanquished one of Arawn's warriors, Bran, by discovering his name.[381]
+Amaethon, who brings useful animals from the gods' land, plays the same
+part as Gwydion, bringer of the swine. The dog and deer are frequent
+representatives of the corn-spirit, of which Amaethon may have been an
+anthropomorphic form, or they, with the lapwing, may have been earlier
+worshipful animals, associated with Amaethon as his symbols, while later
+myth told how he had procured them from Annwfn.
+
+The divine functions of Llew Llaw Gyffes are hardly apparent in the
+_Mabinogi_. The incident of Blodeuwedd's unfaithfulness is simply that
+of the _Maerchen_ formula of the treacherous wife who discovers the
+secret of her husband's life, and thus puts him at her lover's
+mercy.[382] But since Llew is not slain, but changes to eagle form, this
+unusual ending may mean that he was once a bird divinity, the eagle
+later becoming his symbol. Some myth must have told of his death, or he
+was afterwards regarded as a mortal who died, for a poem mentions his
+tomb, and adds, "he was a man who never gave justice to any one." Dr.
+Skene suggests that truth, not justice, is here meant, and finds in this
+a reference to Llew's disguises.[383] Professor Rh[^y]s, for reasons not
+held convincing by M. Loth, holds that _Llew_, "lion," was a
+misapprehension for his true name _Lleu_, interpreted by him
+"light."[384] This meaning he also gives to _Lug_, equating Lug and
+Llew, and regarding both as sun-gods. He also equates _Llaw Gyffes_,
+"steady _or_ strong hand," with Lug's epithet _Lam fada_, "long hand,"
+suggesting that _gyffes_ may have meant "long," although it was Llew's
+steadiness of hand in shooting which earned him the title.[385] Again,
+Llew's rapid growth need not make him the sun, for this was a privilege
+of many heroes who had no connection with the sun. Llew's unfortunate
+matrimonial affairs are also regarded as a sun myth. Blodeuwedd is a
+dawn goddess dividing her love between the sun-god and the prince of
+darkness. Llew as the sun is overcome by the latter, but is restored by
+the culture-hero Gwydion, who slays the dark rival. The transformation
+of Blodeuwedd into an owl means that the Dawn has become the Dusk.[386]
+As we have seen, all this is a _Maerchen_ formula with no mythical
+significance. Evidence of the precariousness of such an interpretation
+is furnished from the similar interpretation of the story of Curoi's
+wife, Blathnat, whose lover Cuchulainn slew Curoi.[387] Here a supposed
+sun-god is the treacherous villain who kills a dark divinity, husband of
+a dawn goddess.
+
+If Llew is a sun-god, the equivalent of Lug, it is curious that he is
+never connected with the August festival in Wales which corresponds to
+Lugnasad in Ireland. There may be some support to the theory which makes
+him a sun-god in a _Triad_ where he is one of the three _ruddroawc_ who
+cause a year's sterility wherever they set their feet, though in this
+Arthur excels them, for he causes seven years' sterility![388] Does this
+point to the scorching of vegetation by the summer sun? The mythologists
+have not made use of this incident. On the whole the evidence for Llew
+as a sun-god is not convincing. The strongest reason for identifying him
+with Lug rests on the fact that both have uncles who are smiths and have
+similar names--Govannon and Gavida (Goibniu). Like Amaethon, Govannon,
+the artificer or smith (_gof_, "smith"), is mentioned in _Kulhwych_ as
+one whose help must be gained to wait at the end of the furrows to
+cleanse the iron of the plough.[389] Here he is brought into connection
+with the plough, but the myth to which the words refer is lost. A
+_Taliesin_ poem associates him with Math--"I have been with artificers,
+with the old Math and with Govannon," and refers to his _Caer_ or
+castle.[390]
+
+Arianrhod, "silver wheel," has a twofold character. She pretends to be a
+virgin, and disclaims all knowledge of her son Llew, yet she is mistress
+of Gwydion. In the _Triads_ she appears as one of the three blessed (or
+white) ladies of Britain.[391] Perhaps these two aspects of her
+character may point to a divergence between religion and mythology, the
+cult of a virgin goddess of whom myth told discreditable things. More
+likely she was an old Earth-goddess, at once a virgin and a fruitful
+mother, like Artemis, the virgin goddess, yet neither chaste nor fair,
+or like a Babylonian goddess addressed as at once "mother, wife, and
+maid." Arianrhod, "beauty famed beyond summer's dawn," is mentioned in a
+_Taliesin_ poem, and she was later associated with the constellation
+Corona Borealis.[392] Possibly her real name was forgotten, and that of
+Arianrhod derived from a place-name, "Caer Arianrhod," associated with
+her. The interpretation which makes her a dawn goddess, mother of light,
+Lleu, and darkness, Dylan, is far from obvious.[393] Dylan, after his
+baptism, rushed into the sea, the nature of which became his. No wave
+ever broke under him; he swam like a fish; and hence was called Dylan
+Eil Ton or "son of the wave." Govannon, his uncle, slew him, an incident
+interpreted as the defeat of darkness, which "hies away to lurk in the
+sea." Dylan, however, has no dark traits and is described as a blonde.
+The waves lament his death, and, as they dash against the shore, seek to
+avenge it. His grave is "where the wave makes a sullen sound," but
+popular belief identifies him with the waves, and their noise as they
+press into the Conway is his dying groan. Not only is he _Eil Ton_, "son
+of the wave," but also _Eil Mor_, "son of the sea."[394] He is thus a
+local sea-god, and like Manannan identified with the waves, and yet
+separate from them, since they mourn his death. The _Mabinogi_ gives us
+the _debris_ of myths explaining how an anthropomorphic sea-god was
+connected with the goddess Arianrhod and slain by a god Govannon.
+
+Another _Mabinogion_ group is that of Pwyll, prince of Dyved, his wife
+Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi.[395] Pwyll agrees with Arawn, king of
+Annwfn (Elysium), to reign over his kingdom for a year. At the end of
+that time he slays Arawn's rival Havgan. Arawn sends him gifts, and
+Pwyll is now known as Pen or Head of Annwfn, a title showing that he was
+once a god, belonging to the gods' land, later identified with the
+Christian Hades. Pwyll now agrees with Rhiannon,[396] who appears
+mysteriously on a magic hillock, and whom he captures, to rid her of an
+unwelcome suitor Gwawl. He imprisons him in a magical bag, and Rhiannon
+weds Pwyll. The story thus resolves itself into the formula of the Fairy
+Bride, but it paves the way for the vengeance taken on Pryderi and
+Rhiannon by Gwawl's friend Llwyt. Rhiannon has a son who is stolen as
+soon as born. She is accused of slaying him and is degraded, but Teyrnon
+recovers the child from its super-human robber and calls him Gwri. As he
+grows up, Teyrnon notices his resemblance to Pwyll, and takes him to his
+court. Rhiannon is reinstated, and because she cries that her anguish
+(_pryderi_) is gone, the boy is now called Pryderi. Here, again, we have
+_Maerchen_ incidents, which also appear in the Fionn saga.[397]
+
+Though there is little that is mythological here, it is evident that
+Pwyll is a god and Rhiannon a goddess, whose early importance, like that
+of other Celtic goddesses, appears from her name, a corruption of
+Rigantona, "great queen." Elsewhere we hear of her magic birds whose
+song charmed Bran's companions for seven years, and of her marriage to
+Manawyddan--an old myth in which Manawyddan may have been Pryderi's
+father, while possibly in some other myth Pryderi may have been child of
+Rigantona and Teyrnon (=Tigernonos, "king").[398] We may postulate an
+old Rhiannon saga, fragments of which are to be found in the _Mabinogi_,
+and there may have been more than one goddess called Rigantona, later
+fused into one. But in the tales she is merely a queen of old romance.
+
+Pryderi, as has been seen, was despoiled of his swine by Gwydion. They
+were the gift of Arawn, but in the _Triads_ they seem to have been
+brought from Annwfn by Pwyll, while Pryderi acted as swineherd.[399]
+Both Pwyll and Pryderi are thus connected with those myths which told of
+the bringing of domestic animals from the gods' land. But since they are
+certainly gods, associated with the gods' land, this is perhaps the
+result of misunderstanding. A poem speaks of the magic cauldron of Pen
+Annwfn, i.e. Pwyll, and this points to a myth explaining his connection
+with Annwfn in a different way from the account in the _Mabinogi_. The
+poem also tells how Gweir was imprisoned in Caer Sidi (=Annwfn) "through
+the messenger of Pwyll and Pryderi."[400] They are thus lords of Annwfn,
+whose swine Gweir (Gwydion) tries to steal. Elsewhere Caer Sidi is
+associated with Manawyddan and Pryderi, perhaps a reference to their
+connection as father and son.[401] Thus Pryderi and Pwyll belong to the
+bright Elysium, and may once have been gods of fertility associated with
+the under-earth region, which was by no means a world of darkness.
+Whatever be the meaning of the death of Pryderi at the hands of Gwydion,
+it is connected with later references to his grave.[402]
+
+A fourth group is that of Beli and his sons, referred to in the
+_Mabinogi_ of Branwen, where one of them, Caswallawn, usurps the throne,
+and thus makes Manawyddan, like MacGregor, landless. In the _Dream of
+Maxen_, the sons of Beli are Lludd, Caswallawn, Nynnyaw, and
+Llevelys.[403] Geoffrey calls Beli Heli, and speaks of an earlier king
+Belinus, at enmity with his brother Brennius.[404] But probably Beli or
+Heli and Belinus are one and the same, and both represent the earlier
+god Belenos. Caswellawn becomes Cassivellaunus, opponent of Caesar, but
+in the _Mabinogi_ he is hostile to the race of Llyr, and this may be
+connected with whatever underlies Geoffrey's account of the hostility of
+Belinus and Brennius (=Bran, son of Llyr), perhaps, like the enmity of
+the race of D[^o]n to Pryderi, a reminiscence of the strife of rival
+tribes or of Goidel and Brython.[405] As has been seen, the evidence for
+regarding Beli as D[^o]n's consort or the equivalent of Bile is slender.
+Nor, if he is Belenos, the equivalent of Apollo, is he in any sense a
+"dark" god. He is regarded as a victorious champion, preserver of his
+"honey isle" and of the stability of his kingdom, in a _Taliesin_ poem
+and in the _Triads_.[406]
+
+The personality of Casswallawn is lost in that of the historic
+Cassivellaunus, but in a reference to him in the _Triads_ where, with
+Caradawc and Gweirydd, he bears the title "war king," we may see a
+glimpse of his divine character, that of a god of war, invisibly leading
+on armies to battle, and as such embodied in great chiefs who bore his
+name.[407] Nynnyaw appears in Geoffrey's pages as Nennius, who dies of
+wounds inflicted by Caesar, to the great grief of Cassivellaunus.[408]
+
+The theory that Lludd Llaw Ereint or _Lodens Lamargentios_ represents
+_Nodens_ (Nuada) _L[=a]margentios_, the change being the result of
+alliteration, has been contested,[409] while if the Welsh Lludd and Nudd
+were identical it is strange that they should have become distinct
+personalities, Gwyn, son of Nudd, being the lover of Creiddylad,
+daughter of Lludd,[410] unless in some earlier myth their love was that
+of brother and sister. Lludd is also confused or is identical with Llyr,
+just as the Irish Ler is with Alloid. He is probably the son of Beli
+who, in the tale of _Lludd and Llevelys_, by the advice of Llevelys rids
+his country of three plagues.[411] These are, first, the Coranians who
+hear every whisper, and whom he destroys by throwing over them water in
+which certain insects given him by Levelys have been bruised. The second
+is a shriek on May-eve which makes land and water barren, and is caused
+by a dragon which attacks the dragon of the land. These Lludd captures
+and imprisons at Dinas Emreis, where they afterwards cause trouble to
+Vortigern at the building of his castle. The third is that of the
+disappearance of a year's supply of food by a magician, who lulls every
+one to sleep and who is captured by Lludd. Though the Coranians appear
+in the _Triads_ as a hostile tribe,[412] they may have been a
+supernatural folk, since their name is perhaps derived from _cor_,
+"dwarf," and they are now regarded as mischievous fairies.[413] They may
+thus be analogous to the Fomorians, and their story, like that of the
+dragon and the magician who produce blight and loss of food, may be
+based on older myth or ritual embodying the belief in powers hostile to
+fertility, though it is not clear why those powers should be most active
+on May-day. But this may be a misunderstanding, and the dragons are
+overcome on May-eve. The references in the tale to Lludd's generosity
+and liberality in giving food may reflect his function as a god of
+growth, but, like other euhemerised gods, he is also called a mighty
+warrior, and is said to have rebuilt the walls of Caer Ludd (London),
+his name still surviving in "Ludgate Hill," where he was buried.[414]
+This legend doubtless points to some ancient cult of Lludd at this spot.
+
+Nudd already discussed under his title Nodons, is less prominent than
+his son Gwyn, whose fight with Gwthur we have explained as a mythic
+explanation of ritual combats for the increase of fertility. He also
+appears as a hunter and as a great warrior,[415] "the hope of armies,"
+and thus he may be a god of fertility who became a god of war and the
+chase. But legend associated him with Annwfn, and regarded him, like the
+Tuatha Dea, as a king of fairyland.[416] In the legend of S. Collen, the
+saint tells two men, whom he overhears speaking of Gwyn and the fairies,
+that these are demons. "Thou shalt receive a reproof from Gwyn," said
+one of them, and soon after Collen was summoned to meet the king of
+Annwfn on Glastonbury Tor. He climbed the hill with a flask of holy
+water, and saw on its top a splendid castle, with crowds of beautiful
+and youthful folk, while the air resounded with music. He was brought to
+Gwyn, who politely offered him food, but "I will not eat of the leaves
+of the tree," cried the saint; and when he was asked to admire the
+dresses of the crowd, all he would say was that the red signified
+burning, the blue coldness. Then he threw the holy water over them, and
+nothing was left but the bare hillside.[417] Though Gwyn's court on
+Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium, which was actually located there,
+the story marks the hostility of the Church to the cult of Gwyn, perhaps
+practised on hilltops, and this is further seen in the belief that he
+hunts souls of the wicked and is connected with Annwfn in its later
+sense of hell. But a mediant view is found in _Kulhwych_, where it is
+said of him that he restrains the demons of hell lest they should
+destroy the people of this world. In the _Triads_ he is, like other
+gods, a great magician and astrologer.[418]
+
+Another group, unknown to the _Mabinogion_, save that Taliesin is one of
+the bearers of Bran's head, is found in the _Book of Taliesin_ and in
+the late story of Taliesin. These, like the _Arthur_ cycle, often refer
+to personages of the _Mabinogion_; hence we gather that local groups of
+gods, originally distinct, were later mingled in story, the references
+in the poems reflecting this mingling. Late as is the _Hanes Taliesin_
+or story of Taliesin, and expressed as much of it is in a _Maerchen_
+formula, it is based on old myths about Cerridwen and Taliesin of which
+its compiler made use, following an old tradition already stereotyped in
+one of the poems in the _Maerchen_ formula of the Transformation
+Combat.[419] But the mythical fragments are also mingled with traditions
+regarding the sixth century poet Taliesin. The older saga was perhaps
+developed in a district south of the Dyfi estuary.[420] In Lake Tegid
+dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their children--the fair maiden
+Creirwy, Morvran, and the ugly Avagddu. To give Avagddu knowledge, his
+mother prepares a cauldron of inspiration from which three drops of
+inspiration will be produced. These fall on the finger of Gwion, whom
+she set to stir it. He put the finger in his mouth, and thus acquired
+the inspiration. He fled, and Cerridwen pursued, the rest of the story
+being accommodated to the Transformation Combat formula. Finally,
+Cerridwen as a hen swallows Gwion as a grain of wheat, and bears him as
+a child, whom she throws into the sea. Elphin, who rescues him, calls
+him Taliesin, and brings him up as a bard.[421]
+
+The water-world of Tegid is a submarine Elysium with the customary
+cauldron of inspiration, regeneration, and fertility, like the cauldron
+associated with a water-world in the _Mabinogion_. "Shall not my chair
+be defended from the cauldron of Cerridwen," runs a line in a Taliesin
+poem, while another speaks of her chair, which was probably in Elysium
+like that of Taliesin himself in Caer Sidi.[422] Further references to
+her connection with poetry show that she may have been worshipped by
+bards, her cauldron being the source of their inspiration.[423] Her
+anger at Gwion may point to some form of the Celtic myth of the theft of
+the elements of culture from the gods' land. But the cauldron was first
+of all associated with a fertility cult,[424] and Cerridwen must
+therefore once have been a goddess of fertility, who, like Brigit, was
+later worshipped by bards. She may also have been a corn-goddess, since
+she is called a goddess of grain, and tradition associates the pig--a
+common embodiment of the corn-spirit--with her.[425] If the tradition is
+correct, this would be an instance, like that of Demeter and the pig, of
+an animal embodiment of the corn-spirit being connected with a later
+anthropomorphic corn-goddess.
+
+Taliesin was probably an old god of poetic inspiration confused with the
+sixth century poet of the same name, perhaps because this boastful poet
+identified himself or was identified by other bards with the gods. He
+speaks of his "splendid chair, inspiration of fluent and urgent song" in
+Caer Sidi or Elysium, and, speaking in the god's name or identifying
+himself with him, describes his presence with Llew, Bran, Gwydion, and
+others, as well as his creation and his enchantment before he became
+immortal.[426] He was present with Arthur when a cauldron was stolen
+from Aunwfn, and basing his verses on the mythic transformations and
+rebirths of the gods, recounts in highly inflated language his own
+numerous forms and rebirths.[427] His claims resemble those of the
+_Shaman_ who has the entree of the spirit-world and can transform
+himself at will. Taliesin's rebirth is connected with his acquiring of
+inspiration. These incidents appear separately in the story of Fionn,
+who acquired his inspiration by an accident, and was also said to have
+been reborn as Mongan. They are myths common to various branches of the
+Celtic people, and applied in different combinations to outstanding gods
+or heroes.[428] The _Taliesin_ poems show that there may have been two
+gods or two mythic aspects of one god, later combined together. He is
+the son of the goddess and dwells in the divine land, but he is also a
+culture-hero stealing from the divine land. Perhaps the myths reflect
+the encroachment of the cult of a god on that of a goddess, his
+worshippers regarding him as her son, her worshippers reflecting their
+hostility to the new god in a myth of her enmity to him. Finally, the
+legend of the rescue of Taliesin the poet from the waves became a myth
+of the divine outcast child rescued by Elphin, and proving himself a
+bard when normal infants are merely babbling.
+
+The occasional and obscure references to the other members of this group
+throw little light on their functions, save that Morvran, "sea-crow," is
+described in _Kulhwych_ as so ugly and terrible that no one would strike
+him at the battle of Camlan. He may have been a war-god, like the
+scald-crow goddesses of Ireland, and he is also spoken of in the
+_Triads_ as an "obstructor of slaughter" or "support of battle."[429]
+
+Ingenuity and speculation have busied themselves with trying to prove
+that the personages of the Arthurian cycle are the old gods of the
+Brythons, and the incidents of the romances fragments of the old
+mythology. While some of these personages--those already present in
+genuinely old Welsh tales and poems or in Geoffrey's _History_--are
+reminiscent of the old gods, the romantic presentment of them in the
+cycle itself is so largely imaginative, that nothing certain can be
+gained from it for the understanding of the old mythology, much less the
+old religion. Incidents which are the common stock of real life as well
+as of romance are interpreted mythologically, and it is never quite
+obvious why the slaying of one hero by another should signify the
+conquest of a dark divinity by a solar hero, or why the capture of a
+heroine by one knight when she is beloved of another, should make her a
+dawn-goddess sharing her favours, now with the sun-god, now with a
+"dark" divinity. Or, even granting the truth of this method, what light
+does it throw on Celtic religion?
+
+We may postulate a local Arthur saga fusing an old Brythonic god with
+the historic sixth century Arthur. From this or from Geoffrey's handling
+of it sprang the great romantic cycle. In the ninth century Nennius
+Arthur is the historic war-chief, possibly Count of Britain, but in the
+reference to his hunting the _Porcus Troit_ (the _Twrch Trwyth_) the
+mythic Arthur momentarily appears.[430] Geoffrey's Arthur differs from
+the later Arthur of romance, and he may have partially rationalised the
+saga, which was either of recent formation or else local and obscure,
+since there is no reference to Arthur in the _Mabinogion_--a fact which
+shows that "in the legends of Gwynedd and Dyfedd he had no place
+whatever,"[431] and also that Arthur the god or mythic hero was also
+purely local. In Geoffrey Arthur is the fruit of Igerna's _amour_ with
+Uther, to whom Merlin has given her husband's shape. Arthur conquers
+many hosts as well as giants, and his court is the resort of all
+valorous persons. But he is at last wounded by his wife's seducer, and
+carried to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, and nothing
+more is ever heard of him.[432] Some of these incidents occur also in
+the stories of Fionn and Mongan, and those of the mysterious begetting
+of a wonder child and his final disappearance into fairyland are local
+forms of a tale common to all branches of the Celts.[433] This was
+fitted to the history of the local god or hero Arthur, giving rise to
+the local saga, to which was afterwards added events from the life of
+the historic Arthur. This complex saga must then have acquired a wider
+fame long before the romantic cycle took its place, as is suggested by
+the purely Welsh tales of _Kulhwych_ and the _Dream of Rhonabwy_, in the
+former of which the personages (gods) of the _Mabinogion_ figure in
+Arthur's train, though he is far from being the Arthur of the romances.
+Sporadic references to Arthur occur also in Welsh literature, and to the
+earlier saga belongs the Arthur who spoils Elysium of its cauldron in a
+_Taliesin_ poem.[434] In the _Triads_ there is a mingling of the
+historic, the saga, and the later romance Arthur, but probably as a
+result of the growing popularity of the saga Arthur he is added to many
+Triads as a more remarkable person than the three whom they
+describe.[435] Arthurian place-names over the Brythonic area are more
+probably the result of the popularity of the saga than that of the later
+romantic cycle, a parallel instance being found in the extent of
+Ossianic place-names over the Goidelic area as a result of the spread of
+the Fionn saga.
+
+The character of the romance Arthur--the flower of knighthood and a
+great warrior--and the blending of the historic war-leader Arthur with
+the mythic Arthur, suggest that the latter was the ideal hero of certain
+Brythonic groups, as Fionn and Cuchulainn of certain Goidelic groups. He
+may have been the object of a cult as these heroes perhaps were, or he
+may have been a god more and more idealised as a hero. If the earlier
+form of his name was Artor, "a ploughman," but perhaps with a wider
+significance, and having an equivalent in Artaius, a Gaulish god equated
+with Mercury,[436] he may have been a god of agriculture who became a
+war-god. But he was also regarded as a culture-hero, stealing a cauldron
+and also swine from the gods' land, the last incident euhemerised into
+the tale of an unsuccessful theft from March, son of Meirchion,[437]
+while, like other culture-heroes, he is a bard. To his story was easily
+fitted that of the wonder-child, who, having finally disappeared into
+Elysium (later located at Glastonbury), would reappear one day, like
+Fionn, as the Saviour of his people. The local Arthur finally attained a
+fame far exceeding that of any Brythonic god or hero.
+
+Merlin, or Myrddin, appears in the romances as a great magician who is
+finally overcome by the Lady of the Lake, and is in Geoffrey son of a
+mysterious invisible personage who visits a woman, and, finally taking
+human shape, begets Merlin. As a son who never had a father he is chosen
+as the foundation sacrifice for Vortigern's tower by his magicians, but
+he confutes them and shows why the tower can never be built, namely,
+because of the dragons in the pool beneath it. Then follow his
+prophecies regarding the dragons and the future of the country, and the
+story of his removal of the Giant's Dance, or Stonehenge, from Ireland
+to its present site--an aetiological myth explaining the origin of the
+great stone circle. His description of how the giants used the water
+with which they washed the stones for the cure of sickness or wounds,
+probably points to some ritual for healing in connection with these
+megaliths. Finally, we hear of his transformation of the lovelorn Uther
+and of his confidant Ulfin, as well as of himself.[438] Here he appears
+as little more than an ideal magician, possibly an old god, like the
+Irish "god of Druidism," to whose legend had been attached a story of
+supernatural conception. Professor Rh[^y]s regards him as a Celtic Zeus
+or as the sun, because late legends tell of his disappearance in a glass
+house into the sea. The glass house is the expanse of light travelling
+with the sun (Merlin), while the Lady of the Lake who comes daily to
+solace Merlin in his enchanted prison is a dawn-goddess. Stonehenge was
+probably a temple of this Celtic Zeus "whose late legendary self we have
+in Merlin."[439] Such late romantic episodes and an aetiological myth can
+hardly be regarded as affording safe basis for these views, and their
+mythological interpretation is more than doubtful. The sun is never
+prisoner of the dawn as Merlin is of Viviane. Merlin and his glass house
+disappear for ever, but the sun reappears every morning. Even the most
+poetic mythology must conform in some degree to actual phenomena, but
+this cannot be said of the systems of mythological interpretation. If
+Merlin belongs to the pagan period at all, he was probably an ideal
+magician or god of magicians, prominent, perhaps, in the Arthur saga as
+in the later romances, and credited with a mysterious origin and an
+equally mysterious ending, the latter described in many different ways.
+
+The boastful Kei of the romances appears already in _Kulhwych_, while in
+Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.[440] Nobler traits are his in later
+Welsh poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a hundred,
+though his powers as a toper are also great. Here, too, his death is
+lamented.[441] He may thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury
+may be poetically described in a curious passage referring to him in
+_Kulhwych_: "His breath lasted nine days and nine nights under water. He
+could remain without sleep for the same period. No physician could heal
+a wound inflicted by his sword. When he pleased he could make himself as
+tall as the tallest tree in the wood. And when it rained hardest,
+whatever he carried remained dry above and below his hand to the
+distance of a handbreadth, so great was his natural heat. When it was
+coldest he was as glowing fuel to his companions."[442] This almost
+exactly resembles Cuchulainn's aspect in his battle-fury. In a curious
+poem Gwenhyvar (Guinevere) extols his prowess as a warrior above that of
+Arthur, and in _Kulhwych_ and elsewhere there is enmity between the
+two.[443] This may point to Kei's having been a god of tribes hostile to
+those of whom Arthur was hero.
+
+Mabon, one of Arthur's heroes in _Kulhwych_ and the _Dream of Rhonabwy_,
+whose name, from _mab_ (_map_), means "a youth," may be one with the god
+Maponos equated with Apollo in Britain and Gaul, perhaps as a god of
+healing springs.[444] His mother's name, Modron, is a local form of
+_Matrona_, a river-goddess and probably one of the mother-goddesses as
+her name implies. In the _Triads_ Mabon is one of the three eminent
+prisoners of Prydein. To obtain his help in hunting the magic boar his
+prison must be found, and this is done by animals, in accordance with a
+_Maerchen_ formula, while the words spoken by them show the immense
+duration of his imprisonment--perhaps a hint of his immortality.[445]
+But he was also said to have died and been buried at Nantlle,[446]
+which, like Gloucester, the place of his prison, may have been a site of
+his widely extended cult.[447]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Taken as a whole the various gods and heroes of the Brythons, so far as
+they are known to us, just as they resemble the Irish divinities in
+having been later regarded as mortals, magicians, and fairies, so they
+resemble them in their functions, dimly as these are perceived. They are
+associated with Elysium, they are lords of fertility and growth, of the
+sea, of the arts of culture and of war. The prominent position of
+certain goddesses may point to what has already been discovered of them
+in Gaul and Ireland--their pre-eminence and independence. But, like the
+divinities of Gaul and Ireland, those of Wales were mainly local in
+character, and only in a few cases attained a wider popularity and cult.
+
+Certain British gods mentioned on inscriptions may be identified with
+some of those just considered--Nodons with Nudd or Lludd, Belenos with
+Belinus or Beli, Maponos with Mabon, Taranos (in continental
+inscriptions only), with a Taran mentioned in _Kulhwych_.[448] Others
+are referred to in classical writings--Andrasta, a goddess of victory,
+to whom Boudicca prayed;[449] Sul, a goddess of hot springs, equated
+with Minerva at Bath.[450] Inscriptions also mention Epona, the
+horse-goddess; Brigantia, perhaps a form of Brigit; Belisama (the Mersey
+in Ptolemy),[451] a goddess in Gaulish inscriptions. Others refer to the
+group goddesses, the _Matres_. Some gods are equated with Mars--Camulos,
+known also on the Continent and perhaps the same as Cumal, father of
+Fionn; Belatucadros, "comely in slaughter"; Cocidius, Corotiacus,
+Barrex, and Totatis (perhaps Lucan's Teutates). Others are equated with
+Apollo in his character as a god of healing--Anextiomarus, Grannos (at
+Musselburgh and in many continental inscriptions), Arvalus, Mogons, etc.
+Most of these and many others found on isolated inscriptions were
+probably local in character, though some, occurring also on the
+Continent, had attained a wider popularity.[452] But some of the
+inscriptions referring to the latter may be due to Gaulish soldiers
+quartered in Britain.
+
+COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DIVINITIES WITH SIMILAR NAMES IN IRELAND, BRITAIN,
+AND GAUL.
+
+_Italics denote names found in Inscriptions._
+
+IRELAND.      BRITAIN.            GAUL.
+              _Anextiomarus_      _Anextiomarus_
+Anu           Anna (?)            _Anoniredi_, "chariot of Anu"
+Badb                              _Bodua_
+              Beli, Belinus       _Belenos_
+              Belisama            _Belisama_
+Brigit        _Brigantia_         _Brigindu_
+Bron          Bran                Brennus (?)
+Buanann                           _Buanu_
+Cumal         _Camulos_           _Camulos_
+Danu          Don
+              _Epona_             _Epona_
+Goibniu       Govannon
+              _Grannos_           _Grannos_
+Ler           Llyr
+Lug           Llew or Lleu (?)    Lugus, _Lugores_
+              Mabon, _Maponos_    _Maponos_
+Manannan      Manawyddan
+              _Matres_            _Matres_
+Mider                             _Medros_ (?)
+              Modron              _Matrona_ (?)
+Nemon                             _Nemetona_
+Net                               _Neton_
+Nuada         _Nodons_, Nudd
+              Hael, Lludd (?)
+Ogma                              Ogmios
+              _Silvanus_          _Silvanus_
+              Taran               _Taranis_
+              _Totatis, Tutatis_  Teutates
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[328] The text of the _Mabinogion_ has been edited by Rh[^y]s and Evans,
+1887, and it has been translated into English by Lady Guest, and more
+critically, into French, by Loth. Many of the _Triads_ will be found in
+Loth's second volume. For the poetry see Skene, _Four Ancient Books of
+Wales_.
+
+[329] These incidents are found mainly in the story of Branwen, e.g.
+those of the cauldron, a frequent accessory in Irish tales; the
+regeneration of the warriors, also found in the story of Mag-tured,
+though no cauldron is used; the red-hot house, occurring also in _Mesca
+Ulad_; the description of Bran paralleled by that of MacCecht.
+
+[330] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 277, ii. 124, iii. 122.
+
+[331] Bp. of S. Davids, _Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynned_, 1851;
+Rh[^y]s, _TSC_ 1894-1895, 21.
+
+[332] Skene, i. 45; Meyer, _TSC_ 1895-1896, 55.
+
+[333] Cf. John, _The Mabinogion_, 1901, 19. Curoi appears as Kubert, and
+Conchobar as Knychur in _Kulhwych_ (Loth, i. 202). A poem of _Taliesin_
+has for subject the death of Corroi, son of Dayry (Curoi mac Daire),
+Skene, i. 254.
+
+[334] Loth, _RC_ x. 356; John, _op. cit._ 19; Nutt, _Arch. Rev._ i. 331.
+
+[335] The giant Ysppadden in _Kulhwych_ resembles Balor, but has no evil
+eye.
+
+[336] Anwyl, _ZCP_ ii. 127-128, "The merging of the two legends [of Don
+and Taliesin] may have arisen through the fusion of Penllyn with Ardudwy
+and Arvon."
+
+[337] Professor Rh[^y]s thinks that the Llyr family may be pre-Celtic,
+_TSC_ 1894-1895, 29 f.; _CFL_ 552.
+
+[338] Loth, i. 97 f.; Lady Guest, iii. 143 f.
+
+[339] See Nutt, _Folk-lore Record_, v. 1 f.
+
+[340] Loth, i. 298, ii. 243-244; Geoffrey, _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11.
+
+[341] Loth, i. 224, 265, ii. 215, 244; Geoff. ii. 11.
+
+[342] Skene, i. 81; Rh[^y]s, _Academy_, Jan. 7, 1882.
+
+[343] _Triads_, Loth, ii. 293; Nutt, _Folk-lore Record_, v. 9.
+
+[344] _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11-14.
+
+[345] _AL_ 131.
+
+[346] Skene, i. 262.
+
+[347] See Nutt-Meyer, ii. 17.
+
+[348] Skene, i. 276.
+
+[349] Loth, i. 208, 280; see also i. 197, ii. 245, 294.
+
+[350] See Skene i. 355. The raven is rather the bird of prey come to
+devour Urien than his "attribute."
+
+[351] Skene, i. 298.
+
+[352] For these theories see Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 90_f_.; _AL_ ch. 11; _CFL_
+552.
+
+[353] See Ch. XXIV.
+
+[354] See p. 242.
+
+[355] Loth, i. 65, ii. 285.
+
+[356] _Hist. Brit._ iii. 1_f_. Geoffrey says that Billingsgate was
+called after Belinus, and that his ashes were preserved in the gate, a
+tradition recalling some connection of the god with the gate.
+
+[357] An early Caradawc saga may have become mingled with the story of
+Caractacus.
+
+[358] Rees, 77.
+
+[359] So Elton, 291.
+
+[360] _Folk-lore Record_, v. 29.
+
+[361] Lady Guest, iii. 134.
+
+[362] Don is sometimes held to be male, but she is distinctly called
+sister of Math (Loth, i. 134), and as the equivalent of Danu she must be
+female.
+
+[363] Loth, ii. 209.
+
+[364] See p. 60, _supra_, and Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 90_f_.
+
+[365] Lady Guest, iii. 255; Skene, i. 297, 350.
+
+[366] For this _Mabinogi_ see Loth, i. 117f.; Guest, iii. 189f.
+
+[367] Skene, i. 286.
+
+[368] Loth, ii. 229, 257; and for other references to Math, Skene, i.
+281, 269, 299.
+
+[369] Skene, i. 296, 281.
+
+[370] Loth, ii. 297; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 276.
+
+[371] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[372] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 270. Skene, i. 430, 537, gives a different meaning
+to _seon_.
+
+[373] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[374] Loth, ii. 296.
+
+[375] Skene, i. 299, 531.
+
+[376] See p. 224, _infra_.
+
+[377] Guest, iii. 255; Morris, _Celtic Remains_, 231.
+
+[378] _HL_ 283 _f_. See also Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ i. 131.
+
+[379] Loth, i. 240.
+
+[380] Stokes, _US_ 34.
+
+[381] _Myvyrian Archaeol._ i. 168; Skene, i. 275, 278 f.; Loth, ii. 259.
+
+[382] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, 127. Llew's vulnerability does not
+depend on the discovery of his separable soul, as is usual. The earliest
+form of this _Maerchen_ is the Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, and
+that of Samson and Delilah is another old form of it.
+
+[383] Skene, i. 314, ii. 342.
+
+[384] _HL_ 408; _RC_ x. 490.
+
+[385] _HL_ 237, 319, 398, 408.
+
+[386] _HL_ 384.
+
+[387] _HL_ 474, 424.
+
+[388] Loth, ii. 231.
+
+[389] Loth, i. 240.
+
+[390] Skene, i, 286-287.
+
+[391] Loth, ii. 263.
+
+[392] Skene, ii. 159; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 157; Guest, iii. 255.
+
+[393] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 161, 566.
+
+[394] Skene, i. 282, 288, 310, 543, ii. 145; Loth, i. 135; Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+387.
+
+[395] Loth, i. 27 f.; Guest, iii. 7 f.
+
+[396] Rhiannon is daughter of Heveidd Hen or "the Ancient," probably an
+old divinity.
+
+[397] In the _Mabinogi_ and in Fionn tales a mysterious hand snatches
+away newly-born children. Cf. _ZCP_ i. 153.
+
+[398] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 288.
+
+[399] Loth, ii. 247.
+
+[400] Skene, i. 264.
+
+[401] Ibid. i. 276.
+
+[402] Ibid. i. 310.
+
+[403] Loth, i. 166.
+
+[404] _Hist. Brit._ ii. 11, iii. 1, 20, iv. 3.
+
+[405] Cf. Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 287.
+
+[406] Skene, i. 431; Loth, ii. 278. Some phrases seem to connect Beli
+with the sea--the waves are his cattle, the brine his liquor.
+
+[407] Loth, ii. 209, 249, 260, 283.
+
+[408] Geoffrey, _Brit. Hist._ iv. 3. 4.
+
+[409] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 125 f.; Loth, i. 265; MacBain, _CM_ ix. 66.
+
+[410] See Loth, i. 269; and Skene, i. 293.
+
+[411] Loth, i. 173 f.
+
+[412] Loth, ii. 256, 274.
+
+[413] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 606. Cf. the Breton fairies, the _Korr_ and
+_Korrigan_.
+
+[414] Geoffrey, iii. 20.
+
+[415] Loth, i. 253-254; Skene, i. 293.
+
+[416] Guest, iii. 323.
+
+[417] Ibid. 325.
+
+[418] Loth, i. 253, ii. 297.
+
+[419] See p. 353, _infra_.; Skene, i. 532.
+
+[420] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 293.
+
+[421] Guest, iii. 356 f.
+
+[422] Skene, i. 275, 296.
+
+[423] Ibid. i. 498, 500.
+
+[424] See p. 382, _infra_.
+
+[425] _Mon. Hist. Brit._ i. 698, ii.; Thomas, _Revue de l'hist. des
+Religions_, xxxviii. 339.
+
+[426] Skene, i. 263, 274-276, 278, 281-282, 286-287. His "chair" bestows
+immortal youth and freedom from sickness.
+
+[427] Skene, i. 264, 376 f., 309, 532. See p. 356, _infra_.
+
+[428] See pp. 350-1, _infra_. Fionn and Taliesin are examples of the
+_Maerchen_ formula of a hero expelled and brought back to honour,
+Nutt-Meyer, ii. 88.
+
+[429] Loth, i. 209, ii. 238; Skene, ii. 459.
+
+[430] Nennius, ch. 50, 79.
+
+[431] Anwyl, _ZCP_ i. 293.
+
+[432] Geoffrey, viii. 9-xi. 3.
+
+[433] Nutt-Meyer, ii. 22 f.
+
+[434] See p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[435] Loth, ii. 232, 245.
+
+[436] Rh[^y]s, _AL_, 39 f. Others derive the name from _arto-s_, "bear."
+MacBain, 357.
+
+[437] Loth. ii. 247; Skene, ii. 459.
+
+[438] Geoffrey, vi. 17-19, vii. viii. 1, 10-12, 19. In a poem (Skene, i.
+478), Myrddin is called "the man who speaks from the grave"--a
+conception familiar to the Celts, who thought of the dead as living on
+in the grave. See p. 340, _infra_.
+
+[439] Rh[^y]s, _HL_, 154 f., 158-159, 194.
+
+[440] Geoffrey, ix. 12, etc.
+
+[441] Skene, ii. 51.
+
+[442] Loth. i. 225; cf. p. 131, _infra_. From this description Elton
+supposes Kei to have been a god of fire.
+
+[443] _Myv. Arch._ i. 175; Loth, i. 269. Rh[^y]s, _AL_ 59, thinks Merlin
+may have been Guinevere's ravisher.
+
+[444] Holder, i. 414.
+
+[445] Loth i. 250, 260 f., 280, ii. 215, 244.
+
+[446] Skene, i. 363, ii. 406; _Myv. Arch._ i. 78.
+
+[447] Hu Gadarn is mentioned in the _Triads_ as a leader of the Cymry
+from the east and their teacher in ploughing. He divided them into
+clans, and invented music and song. The monster _avanc_ was drawn by him
+from the lake which had burst and caused the flood (see p. 231,
+_infra_). Perhaps Hu is an old culture-god of some tribes, but the
+_Triads_ referring to him are of late date (Loth, ii. 271, 289, 290-291,
+298-299). For the ridiculous Neo-Druidic speculations based on Hu, see
+Davies, _Celtic Researches_ and _Mythology and Rites of the Druids_.
+
+Gurgiunt, son of Belinus, in Geoffrey, iii. 11, may be the French
+legendary Gargantua, perhaps an old god. See the works of Sebillot and
+Gaidoz on _Gargantua_.
+
+[448] Loth, i. 270.
+
+[449] Dio Cassius, lxii. 6.
+
+[450] Solinus, xxii. 10. See p. 2, _supra_.
+
+[451] Ptol. ii. 3. 2.
+
+[452] For all these see Holder, _s.v._
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+THE CUCHULAINN CYCLE.
+
+
+The events of the Cuchulainn cycle are supposed to date from the
+beginning of the Christian era--King Conchobar's death synchronising
+with the crucifixion. But though some personages who are mentioned in
+the Annals figure in the tales, on the whole they deal with persons who
+never existed. They belong to a world of romance and myth, and embody
+the ideals of Celtic paganism, modified by Christian influences and
+those of classical tales and romantic sagas of other regions, mainly
+Scandinavian. The present form of the tales as they exist in the _Book
+of the Dun Cow_ and the _Book of Leinster_ must have been given them in
+the seventh or eighth century, but they embody materials of a far older
+date. At an early time the saga may have had a more or less definite
+form, but new tales were being constantly added to it, and some of the
+longer tales are composed of incidents which once had no connection with
+each other.
+
+Cuchulainn is the central figure of the cycle, and its central episode
+is that of the _Tain bo Cuailgne_, or "Cattle Spoil of Cooley." Other
+personages are Conchobar and Dechtire, Ailill and Medb, Fergus, Conall
+Cernach, Curoi, Deirdre, and the sons of Usnach. Some of these are of
+divine descent, some are perhaps euhemerised divinities; Conchobar is
+called _dia talmaide_, "a terrestrial god," and Dechtire a goddess. The
+cycle opens with the birth of Conchobar, son of Cathbad and of Nessa,
+daughter of one of the Tuatha De Danann, though in an older rescension
+of the tale he is Nessa's son by the god Lug. During Conchobar's reign
+over Ulster Cuchulainn was born. He was son of Dechtire, either by
+Sualtaim, or by her brother Conchobar, or by the god Lug, of whom he may
+also be a reincarnation.[453] Like other heroes of saga, he possesses
+great strength and skill at a tender age, and, setting out for
+Conchobar's court, overpowers the king's "boy corps," and then becomes
+their chief. His next adventure is the slaying of the watch-dog of
+Culann the smith, and his appeasing the anger of its owner by offering
+to act as his watch-dog. Cathbad now announced that his name would
+henceforth be Cu Chulainn, "Culann's hound."[454] At the mature age of
+seven he obtained Conchobar's spears, sword, shield, and chariot, and
+with these he overcame three mighty champions, returning in the
+distortion of his "battle-fury" to Emania. To prevent mischief from his
+rage, the women went forth naked to meet him. He modestly covered his
+eyes, for it was one of his _geasa_ not to look on a woman's breast.
+Thus taken unawares, he was plunged into three successive vats of cold
+water until his natural appearance was restored to him, although the
+water boiled and hissed from his heat.[455]
+
+As Cuchulainn grew up, his strength, skill, wisdom, and beauty were
+unsurpassed. All women fell in love with him, and to forestall a series
+of _bonnes fortunes_, the men of Ulster sought a wife for him. But the
+hero's heart was set on Emer, daughter of Forgall, whom he wooed in a
+strange language which none but she could understand. At last she
+consented to be his wife if he would slay a number of warriors. Forgall
+was opposed to the match, and with a view to Cuchulainn's destruction
+suggested that he should go to Donall in Alba to increase his skill, and
+to Scathach if he would excel all other warriors. He agreed, provided
+that Forgall would give him whatever he asked for on his return. Arrived
+in Alba, he refused the love of Donall's daughter, Dornolla, who swore
+to be avenged. Thence he went to Scathach, overcoming all the dangers of
+the way, leaping in safety the gulf surrounding her island, after
+essaying in vain to cross a narrow, swinging bridge. From Scathach he
+learned supreme skill in arms, and overcame her Amazonian rival Aife. He
+begat a son by Aife, and instructed her to call him Conla, to give him
+his father's ring, to send him to seek Cuchulainn, and to forbid him to
+reveal his name. In the sequel, Cuchulainn, unaware that Conla was his
+son, slew him in single combat, too late discovering his identity from
+the ring which he wore. This is the well-known saga formula of Sohrab
+and Rustum, of Theseus and Hippolytus. On his return from Scathach's
+isle Cuchulainn destroyed Forgall's _rath_ with many of its inmates,
+including Forgall, and carried off Emer. To the ten years which
+followed, during which he was the great champion of Ulster, belong many
+tales in which he figures prominently. One of these is _The Debility of
+the Ultonians_. This was caused by Macha, who, during her pregnancy, was
+forced to run a race with Conchobar's horses. She outran them, but gave
+birth immediately to twins, and, in her pangs, cursed the men of Ulster,
+with a curse that, in time of oppression, they would be overcome with
+the weakness of childbirth. From this Cuchulainn was exempt, for he was
+not of Ulster, but a son of Lug.[456] Various attempts have been made to
+explain this "debility." It may be a myth explaining a Celtic use of the
+"couvade," though no example of a simultaneous tribal couvade is known,
+unless we have here an instance of Westermarck's "human pairing season
+in primitive times," with its consequent simultaneous birth-period for
+women and couvade for men.[457] Others, with less likelihood, explain it
+as a period of tabu, with cessation from work and warfare, at a funeral
+or festival.[458] In any case Macha's curse is a myth explanatory of the
+origin of some existing custom, the duration of which is much
+exaggerated by the narrator. To this period belong also the tale of
+Cuchulainn's visit to Elysium, and others to be referred to later.
+Another story describes his attack upon Morrigan because she would
+neither yield up the cows which she was driving away nor tell her true
+name--an instance of the well-known name tabu. Morrigan took the form of
+a bird, and was then recognised by Cuchulainn, who poured scorn upon
+her, while she promised to oppose him during the fight of the _Tain_ in
+the forms of an eel, a wolf, and a cow, all of which he vowed to
+destroy.[459] Like many others in the saga, this story is introductory
+to the main episode of the _Tain_. To this we now turn.
+
+Medb had been wife of Conchobar, but, leaving him, had married in
+succession two chiefs called Ailill, the second of whom had a bull,
+Findbennach, the White-horned, which she resolved to match by one in
+every way its equal. Having been refused the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, she
+summoned all her forces to invade Ulster. The moment was inauspicious
+for Ulster, for all its men were suffering from their "debility."
+Cuchulainn, therefore, went out to encounter the host, and forced Medb
+to agree that a succession of her warriors should engage him in single
+combat. Among these was his old friend Ferdia, and nothing is so
+touching as his reluctance to fight him or so pathetic as his grief when
+Ferdia falls. The reluctance is primarily due to the tie of
+blood-brotherhood existing between them. Finally, the Ulstermen rose in
+force and defeated Medb, but not before she had already captured the
+bull and sent it into her own land. There it was fought by the
+Findbennach and slew it, rushing back to Ulster with the mangled body on
+its horns. But in its frenzy a rock seemed to be another bull, which it
+charged; its brains were dashed out, and it fell dead.
+
+The Morrigan had warned the bull of the approach of Medb's army, and she
+had also appeared in the form of a beautiful woman to Cuchulainn
+offering him her love, only to be repulsed. Hence she turned against
+him, and described how she would oppose him as an eel, a wolf, and a red
+heifer--an incident which is probably a variant of that already
+described.[460] In each of these shapes she was conquered and wounded by
+the hero, and knowing that none whom he hurt could be healed save by
+himself, she appeared to him as an old crone milking a cow. At each
+draught of the milk which he received from her he blessed her with "the
+blessing of gods and not-gods," and so her wounds were healed.[461] For
+this, at a later time, she tried to ward off his death, but
+unsuccessfully. During the progress of the _Tain_, one of Cuchulainn's
+"fairy kinsmen," namely, Lug, who announced himself as his father,
+appeared to aid him, while others of the Tuatha Dea threw "herbs of
+healing" into the streams in which his wounds were washed.[462]
+
+During the _Tain_, Cuchulainn slaughtered the wizard Calatin and his
+daughters. But Calatin's wife bore three posthumous sons and three
+daughters, and through their means the hero was at last slain.
+Everything was done to keep him back from the host which now advanced
+against Ulster, but finally one of Calatin's daughters took the form of
+Niamh and bade him go forth. As he passed to the fight, Calatin's
+daughters persuaded him to eat the flesh of a dog--a fatal deed, for it
+was one of his _geasa_ never to eat dog's flesh. So it was that in the
+fight he was slain by Lugaid,[463] and his soul appeared to the thrice
+fifty queens who had loved him, chanting a mystic song of the coming of
+Christ and the day of doom--an interesting example of a phantasm
+coincidental with death.[464] This and other Christian touches show that
+the Christian redactors of the saga felt tenderly towards the old pagan
+hero. This is even more marked in the story in which he appears to King
+Loegaire and S. Patrick, begging the former to believe in God and the
+saint, and praying Patrick to "bring me with thy faithful ones unto the
+land of the living."[465] A similar Christianising appears in the story
+of Conchobar's death, the result of his mad frenzy on hearing from his
+Druid that an earthquake is the result of the shameful crucifixion of
+Christ.[466]
+
+In the saga, Cuchulainn appears as the ideal Celtic warrior, but, like
+other ideal warriors, he is a "magnified, non-natural man," many of his
+deeds being merely exaggerations of those common among barbaric folk.
+Even his "distortion" or battle frenzy is but a magnifying of the wild
+frenzy of all wild fighters. To the person of this ideal warrior, some
+of whose traits may have been derived from traditional stories of actual
+heroes, _Maerchen_ and saga episodes attached themselves. Of every ideal
+hero, Celtic, Greek, Babylonian, or Polynesian, certain things are
+told--his phenomenal strength as a child; his victory over enormous
+forces; his visits to the Other-world; his amours with a goddess; his
+divine descent. These belong to the common stock of folk-tale episodes,
+and accumulate round every great name. Hence, save in the colouring
+given to them or the use made of them by any race, they do not afford a
+key to the mythic character of the hero. Such deeds are ascribed to
+Cuchulainn, as they doubtless were to the ideal heroes of the "undivided
+Aryans," but though parallels may be found between him and the Greek
+Heracles, they might just as easily be found in non-Aryan regions, e.g.
+in Polynesia. Thus the parallels between Cuchulainn and Heracles throw
+little light on the personality of the former, though here and there in
+such parallels we observe a peculiarly Celtic touch. Thus, while the
+Greek hero rescues Hesione from a dragon, it is from three Fomorians
+that Cuchulainn rescues Devorgilla, namely, from beings to whom actual
+human sacrifice was paid. Thus a _Maerchen_ formula of world-wide
+existence has been moulded by Celtic religious belief and ritual
+practice.[467]
+
+It was inevitable that the "mythological school" should regard
+Cuchulainn as a solar hero. Thus "he reaches his full development at an
+unusually early age," as the sun does,[468] but also as do many other
+heroes of saga and _Maerchen_ who are not solar. The three colours of
+Cuchulainn's hair, dark near the skin, red in the middle, golden near
+the top, are claimed to be a description of the sun's rays, or of the
+three parts into which the Celts divided the day.[469] Elsewhere his
+tresses are yellow, like Prince Charlie's in fact and in song, yet he
+was not a solar hero. Again, the seven pupils of his eyes perhaps
+"referred to the days of the week."[470] Blindness befell all women who
+loved him, a reference to the difficulty of gazing at the sun.[471] This
+is prosaic! The blindness was a compliment paid to Cuchulainn the blind,
+by women who made themselves blind while talking to him, just as Conall
+Cernach's mistresses squinted as he did.[472] Cuchulainn's blindness
+arose from his habit of sinking one eye into his head and protruding the
+other--a well-known solar trait! His "distortion," during which, besides
+this "blindness," blood shot upwards from his head and formed a magic
+mist, and his anger caused showers of sparks to mount above him, points
+to dawn or sunset,[473] though the setting sun would rather suggest a
+hero sinking calmly to rest than a mad giant setting out to slaughter
+friend and foe. The "distortion," as already pointed out, is the
+exaggerated description of the mad warrior rage, just as the fear which
+produced death to those who saw him brandish his weapons, was also
+produced by Maori warrior methods.[474] Lug, who may be a sun-god, has
+no such "distortion." The cooling of the hero in three vats, the waters
+of which boil over, and his emergence from them pinky red in colour,
+symbolise the sun sinking into the waters and reappearing at dawn.[475]
+Might it not describe in an exaggerated way the refreshing bath taken by
+frenzied warriors, the water being supposed to grow warm from the heat
+of their bodies?[476] One of the hero's _geasa_ was not to see
+Manannan's horses, the waves; which, being interpreted, means that the
+sun is near its death as it approaches the sea. Yet Lug, a sun-god,
+rides the steed Enbarr, a personification of the waves, while Cuchulainn
+himself often crossed the sea, and also lived with the sea-god's wife,
+Fand, without coming to grief. Again, the magic horses which he drives,
+black and grey in colour, are "symbols of day and night,"[477] though it
+is not obvious why a grey horse should symbolise day, which is not
+always grey even in the isles of the west. Unlike a solar hero, too,
+Cuchulainn is most active in winter, and rests for a brief space from
+slaughtering at midday--the time of the sun's greatest activity both in
+summer and winter.
+
+Another theory is that every visit of the hero to a strange land
+signifies a descent to Hades, suggested by the sun sinking in the west.
+Scathach's island may be Hades, but it is more probably Elysium with
+some traits borrowed from the Christian idea of hell. But Emer's land,
+also visited by Cuchulainn, suggests neither Hades nor Elysium. Emer
+calls herself _ingen rig richis garta_, translated by Professor Rh[^y]s
+as "daughter of the coal-faced king," i.e. she is daughter of darkness.
+Hence she is a dawn-maiden and becomes the sun-hero's wife.[478] There
+is nothing in the story to corroborate this theory, apart from the fact
+that it is not clear, even to the hypothetical primitive mind, why dawn
+and sun should be a divine pair. Emer's words probably mean that she is
+"daughter of a king" and "a flame of hospitality" (_richis garta_.)[479]
+Cuchulainn, in visiting her, went from west to east, contrary to the
+apparent course of the sun. The extravagance of the solar theory is
+further seen in the hypothesis that because Cuchulainn has other wives,
+the sun-god made love to as many dawn-maidens as there are days in the
+year,[480] like the king in Louys' romance with his 366 wives, one for
+each day of the year, leap-year included.
+
+Further examples of the solar theory need not be cited. It is enough to
+see in Cuchulainn the ideal warrior, whose traits are bombastic and
+obscure exaggerations of actual custom and warfare, or are borrowed from
+folk-tale _motifs_ not exclusively Celtic. Possibly he may have been a
+war-god, since he is associated with Badb[481] and also with Morrigan.
+But he has also some traits of a culture hero. He claims superiority in
+wisdom, in law, in politics, in the art of the _Filid_, and in Druidism,
+while he brings various things from the world of the gods[482]. In any
+case the Celts paid divine honours to heroes, living or dead,[483] and
+Cuchulainn, god or ideal hero, may have been the subject of a cult. This
+lends point to the theory of M. D'Arbois that Cuchulainn and Conall
+Cernach are the equivalents of Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, said by
+Diodorus to be worshipped among the Celts near the Ocean.[484]
+Cuchulainn, like Pollux, was son of a god, and was nursed, according to
+some accounts, by Findchoem, mother of Conall,[485] just as Leda was
+mother of Castor as well as of Pollux. But, on the other hand,
+Cuchulainn, unlike Pollux, was mortal. M. D'Arbois then identifies the
+two pairs of heroes with certain figures on an altar at Cluny. These are
+Castor and Pollux; Cernunnos and Smertullos. He equates Castor with
+Cernunnos, and Pollux with Smertullos. Smertullos is Cuchulainn, and the
+name is explained from an incident in the _Tain_, in which the hero,
+reproached for his youth, puts on a false beard before attacking
+Morrigan in her form as an eel. This is expressed by _smerthain_, "to
+attach", and is thus connected with and gave rise to the name
+Smertullos. On the altar Smertullos is attacking an eel or serpent.
+Hence Pollux is Smertullos-Cuchulainn.[486] Again, the name Cernunnos
+signifies "the horned one," from _cernu_, "horn," a word found in
+Conall's epithet Cernach. But this was not given him because he was
+horned, but because of the angular shape of his head, the angle (_cern_)
+being the result of a blow.[487] The epithet may mean "victorious."[488]
+On the whole, the theory is more ingenious than convincing, and we have
+no proof that the figures of Castor and Pollux on the altar were
+duplicates of the Celtic pair. Cernunnos was an underworld god, and
+Conall has no trace of such a character.
+
+M. D'Arbois also traces the saga in Gaul in the fact that on the menhir
+of Kervadel Mercury is figured with a child, Mercury, in his opinion,
+being Lug, and the child Cuchulainn.[489] On another altar are depicted
+(1) a woodman, Esus, cutting down a tree, and (2) a bull on which are
+perched three birds--Tarvos Trigaranos. The two subjects, as M. Reinach
+points out, are combined on another altar at Treves, on which a woodman
+is cutting down a tree in which are perched three birds, while a bull's
+head appears in the branches.[490] These represent, according to M.
+D'Arbois, incidents of the _Tain_--the cutting down of trees by
+Cuchulainn and placing them in the way of his enemies, and the warning
+of the bull by Morrigan in the bird form which she shared with her
+sisters Badb and Macha.[491] Why, then, is Cuchulainn called Esus?
+"Esus" comes from a root which gives words meaning "rapid motion,"
+"anger," "strength"--all shown by the hero.[492] The altars were found
+in the land of the Belgic Treveri, and some Belgic tribes may have
+passed into Britain and Ireland carrying the Esus-Cuchulainn legend
+there in the second century B.C., e.g. the Setantii, dwelling by the
+Mersey, and bearing a name similar to that of the hero in his
+childhood--Setanta (_Setantios_) as well as the Menapii and Brigantes,
+located in Ireland by Ptolemy.[493] In other words, the divine Esus,
+with his surname Smertullos, was called in Ireland Setanta, after the
+Setantii, and at a later date, Cuchulainn. The princely name Donnotaurus
+resembles _Dond tarb_, the "Brown Bull" of the saga, and also suggests
+its presence in Gaul, while the name [Greek: deiotaros], perhaps the
+equivalent of _De[^u]io-taruos_, "Divine Bull," is found in
+Galatia.[494] Thus the main elements of the saga may have been known to
+the continental Celts before it was localised in Ireland,[495] and, it
+may be added, if it was brought there by Gallo-British tribes, this
+might account for the greater popularity of the native, possibly
+pre-Celtic, Fionn saga among the folk, as well as for the finer literary
+quality of the Cuchulainn saga. But the identification of Esus with
+Cuchulainn rests on slight grounds; the names Esus and Smertullos are
+not found in Ireland, and the Gaulish Esus, worshipped with human
+sacrifice, has little affinity with the hero, unless his deeds of
+slaughter are reminiscent of such rites. It is possible, however, that
+the episode of the _Tain_ came from a myth explaining ritual acts. This
+myth may have been the subject of the bas-reliefs, carried to Ireland,
+and there worked into the saga.
+
+The folk-versions of the saga, though resembling the literary versions,
+are less elaborate and generally wilder, and perhaps represent its
+primitive form.[496] The greatest differences are found in versions of
+the _Tain_ and of Cuchulainn's death, which, separate in the saga, are
+parts of one folk-tale, the death occurring during the fighting over the
+bull. The bull is his property, and Medb sends Garbh mac Stairn to take
+it from him. He pretends to be a child, goes to bed, and tricks Garbh,
+who goes off to get the bull. Cuchulainn arrives before him and
+personates the herdsman. Each seizes a horn, and the bull is torn in
+two.[497] Does this represent the primitive form of the _Tain_, and,
+further, were the bull and Cuchulainn once one and the same--a bull, the
+incarnation of a god or vegetation spirit, being later made
+anthropomorphic--a hero-god whose property or symbol was a bull?
+Instances of this process are not unknown among the Celts.[498] In
+India, Indra was a bull and a divine youth, in Greece there was the
+bull-Dionysos, and among the Celts the name of the divine bull was borne
+by kings.[499] In the saga Morrigan is friendly to the bull, but fights
+for Medb; but she is now friendly, now hostile to Cuchulainn, finally,
+however, trying to avert his doom. If he had once been the bull, her
+friendliness would not be quite forgotten, once he became human and
+separate from the bull. When she first met Cuchulainn she had a cow on
+whom the Brown Bull was to beget a calf, and she told the hero that "So
+long as the calf which is in this cow's body is a yearling, it is up to
+that time that thou art in life; and it is this that will lead to the
+_Tain_."[500] This suggests that the hero was to die in the battle, but
+it shows that the Brown Bull's calf is bound up his life. The Bull was a
+reincarnation of a divine swineherd, and if, as in the case of
+Cuchulainn, "his rebirth could only be of himself,"[501] the calf was
+simply a duplicate of the bull, and, as it was bound up with the hero's
+life, bull and hero may well have been one. The life or soul was in the
+calf, and, as in all such cases, the owner of the soul and that in which
+it is hidden are practically identical. Cuchulainn's "distortion" might
+then be explained as representing the bull's fury in fight, and the
+folk-tales would be popular forms of an old myth explaining ritual in
+which a bull, the incarnation of a tree or vegetation spirit, was slain,
+and the sacred tree cut down and consumed, as in Celtic agricultural
+ritual. This would be the myth represented on the bas-reliefs, and in
+the ritual the bull would be slain, rent, and eaten by his worshippers.
+Why, then, should Cuchulainn rend the bull? In the later stages of such
+rites the animal was slain, not so much as a divine incarnation as a
+sacrifice to the god once incarnated in him. And when a god was thus
+separated from his animal form, myths often arose telling how he himself
+had slain the animal.[502] In the case of Cuchulainn and the bull, the
+god represented by the bull became separate from it, became
+anthropomorphic, and in that form was associated with or actually was
+the hero Cuchulainn. Bull sacrifices were common among the Celts with
+whom the bull had been a divine animal.[503] Possibly a further echo of
+this myth and ritual is to be found in the folk-belief that S. Martin
+was cut up and eaten in the form of an ox--the god incarnate in the
+animal being associated with a saint.[504] Thus the literary versions of
+the _Tain_, departing from the hypothetical primitive versions, kept the
+bull as the central figure, but introduced a rival bull, and described
+its death differently, while both bulls are said to be reincarnations of
+divine swine-herds.[505] The idea of a fight for a bull is borrowed from
+actual custom, and thus the old form of the story was further distorted.
+
+The Cuchulainn saga is more coherent than the Fionn saga, because it
+possesses one central incident. The "canon" of the saga was closed at an
+early date, while that of Fionn has practically never been closed,
+mainly because it has been more a saga of the folk than that of
+Cuchulainn. In some respects the two may have been rivals, for if the
+Cuchulainn saga was introduced by conquerors from Britain or Gaul, it
+would not be looked on with favour by the folk. Or if it is the saga of
+Ulster as opposed to that of Leinster, rivalry would again ensue. The
+Fionn saga lives more in the hearts of the people, though it sometimes
+borrows from the other. This borrowing, however, is less than some
+critics, e.g. Zimmer, maintain. Many of the likenesses are the result of
+the fact that wherever a hero exists a common stock of incidents becomes
+his. Hence there is much similarity in all sagas wherever found.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[453] _IT_ i. 134; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 38 f.; Windisch, _Tain_, 342; L.
+Duvau, "La Legende de la Conception de Cuchulainn," _RC_ ix. 1 f.
+
+[454] Windisch, _Tain_, 118 f. For a similar reason Finnchad was called
+Cu Cerca, "the hound of Cerc" (_IT_ iii. 377).
+
+[455] For the boyish exploits, see Windisch, _Tain_, 106 f.
+
+[456] _RC_ vii. 225; Windisch, _Tain_, 20. Macha is a granddaughter of
+Ler, but elsewhere she is called Mider's daughter (_RC_ xvi. 46).
+
+[457] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ ii. 654; Westermarck, _Hist. of Human Marriage_,
+ch. 2.
+
+[458] Miss Hull, _Folk-Lore_, xii. 60, citing instances from Jevons,
+_Hist. of Religion_, 65.
+
+[459] Windisch, _IT_ ii. 239.
+
+[460] Windisch, 184, 312, 330; cf. _IT_ iii. 355; Miss Hull, 164 f.;
+Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 468.
+
+[461] _LL_ 119_a_; _RC_ iii. 175.
+
+[462] Windisch, 342.
+
+[463] _RC_ iii. 175 f.
+
+[464] Ibid. 185.
+
+[465] Crowe, _Jour. Kilkenny Arch. Soc._ 1870-1871, 371 f.
+
+[466] _LL_ 79_a_; O'Curry, _MS. Mat_, 640.
+
+[467] _LL_ 125_a_. See my _Childhood of fiction_, ch. 14.
+
+[468] Miss Hull, lxxvi.
+
+[469] "Da Derga's Hostel," _RC_ xxii. 283; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 438.
+
+[470] _LL_ 68_a_; Rh[^y]s, 437; Ingcel the one-eyed has also many pupils
+(_RC_ xxii. 58).
+
+[471] Miss Hull, lxiii.
+
+[472] _RC_ viii. 49.
+
+[473] _LL_ 77_b_; Miss Hull, lxii.
+
+[474] Other Celtic heroes undergo this distortion, which resembles the
+Scandinavian warrior rage followed by languor, as in the case of
+Cuchulainn.
+
+[475] Miss Hull, p. lxvi.
+
+[476] Irish saints, standing neck deep in freezing water, made it hot.
+
+[477] _IT_ i. 268; D'Arbois, v. 103; Miss Hull, lxvi.
+
+[478] _HL_ 448.
+
+[479] See Meyer, _RC xi_. 435; Windisch, _IT_ i. 589, 740. Though
+_richis_ means "charcoal," it is also glossed "flame," hence it could
+only be glowing charcoal, without any idea of darkness.
+
+[480] _HL_ 458.
+
+[481] _IT_ i. 107.
+
+[482] _Arch. Rev._ i. 1 f.; _IT_ i. 213; see p. 381, _infra_.
+
+[483] See p. 164, _infra_.
+
+[484] Diod. Siculus, iv. 56.
+
+[485] _IT_ iii. 393.
+
+[486] _Les Celtes_, 58 f. Formerly M. D'Arbois identified Smertullos
+with Lug, ii. 217; Holder, i. 46, 262. For the incident of the beard,
+see Windisch, _Tain_, 308.
+
+[487] _IT_ iii. 395.
+
+[488] _IT_ i. 420.
+
+[489] _RC_ xxvii. 319 f.
+
+[490] _RC_ xviii. 256.
+
+[491] _Les Celtes_, 63; _RC_ xix. 246.
+
+[492] D'Arbois, _RC_ xx. 89.
+
+[493] D'Arbois, _RC_ xxvii. 321; _Les Celtes_, 65.
+
+[494] _Les Celtes_, 49; Caesar, vi. 14.
+
+[495] In contradiction to this, M. D'Arbois elsewhere thinks that Druids
+from Britain may have taught the Cuchulainn legend in Gaul (_RC_ xxvii.
+319).
+
+[496] See versions in _Book of the Dean of Lismore_; _CM_ xiii.;
+Campbell, _The Fians_, 6 f.
+
+[497] _CM_ xiii. 327, 514. The same story is told of Fionn, _ibid._ 512.
+See also ballad versions in Campbell, _LF_ 3 f.
+
+[498] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[499] A Galatian king was called Brogitaros, probably a form of
+_Brogitaruos_, "bull of the province," a title borne by Conchobar, _tarb
+in choicid_ (_IT_ i. 72). This with the epithets applied to heroes in
+the _Triads_, "bull-phantom," "prince bull of combat" (Loth, ii. 232,
+243), may be an appellative denoting great strength.
+
+[500] _IT_ ii. 241 f.; D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 168.
+
+[501] Miss Hull, 58.
+
+[502] See p. 212, _infra_.
+
+[503] See p. 208, _infra_.
+
+[504] Fitzgerald, _RC_ vi. 254.
+
+[505] See p. 243, _infra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE FIONN SAGA.
+
+
+The most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death of
+Fionn's father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson Oscar, his
+nephew Diarmaid with his _ball-seire_, or "beauty-spot," which no woman
+could resist; Fergus famed for wisdom and eloquence; Caoilte mac Ronan,
+the swift; Conan, the comic character of the saga; Goll mac Morna, the
+slayer of Cumal, but later the devoted friend of Fionn, besides a host
+of less important personages. Their doings, like those of the heroes of
+saga and epos everywhere, are mainly hunting, fighting, and love-making.
+They embody much of the Celtic character--vivacity, valour, kindness,
+tenderness, as well as boastfulness and fiery temper. Though dating from
+pagan times, the saga throws little light upon pagan beliefs, but
+reveals much concerning the manners of the period. Here, as always in
+early Celtdom, woman is more than a mere chattel, and occupies a
+comparatively high place. The various parts of the saga, like those of
+the Finnish _Kalevala_, always existed separately, never as one complete
+epos, though always bearing a certain relation to each other. Lonnrot,
+in Finland, was able, by adding a few connecting links of his own, to
+give unity to the _Kalevala_, and had MacPherson been content to do this
+for the Fionn saga, instead of inventing, transforming, and serving up
+the whole in the manner of the sentimental eighteenth century, what a
+boon would he have conferred on Celtic literature. The various parts of
+the saga belong to different centuries and come from different authors,
+all, however, imbued with the spirit of the Fionn tradition.
+
+A date cannot be given to the beginnings of the saga, and additions have
+been made to it even down to the eighteenth century, Michael Comyn's
+poem of Oisin in Tir na n-Og being as genuine a part of it as any of the
+earlier pieces. Its contents are in part written, but much more oral.
+Much of it is in prose, and there is a large poetic literature of the
+ballad kind, as well as _Maerchen_ of the universal stock made purely
+Celtic, with Fionn and the rest of the heroic band as protagonists. The
+saga embodies Celtic ideals and hopes; it was the literature of the
+Celtic folk on which was spent all the riches of the Celtic imagination;
+a world of dream and fancy into which they could enter at all times and
+disport themselves. Yet, in spite of its immense variety, the saga
+preserves a certain unity, and it is provided with a definite framework,
+recounting the origin of the heroes, the great events in which they were
+concerned, their deaths or final appearances, and the breaking up of the
+Fionn band.
+
+The historic view of the Fians is taken by the annalists, by Keating,
+O'Curry, Dr. Joyce, and Dr. Douglas Hyde.[506] According to this view,
+they were a species of militia maintained by the Irish kings for the
+support of the throne and the defence of the country. From Samhain to
+Beltane they were quartered on the people, and from Beltane to Samhain
+they lived by hunting. How far the people welcomed this billeting, we
+are not told. Their method of cooking the game which they hunted was one
+well known to all primitive peoples. Holes were dug in the ground; in
+them red-hot stones were placed, and on the stones was laid venison
+wrapped in sedge. All was then covered over, and in due time the meat
+was done to a turn. Meanwhile the heroes engaged in an elaborate
+toilette before sitting down to eat. Their beds were composed of
+alternate layers of brushwood, moss, and rushes. The Fians were divided
+into _Catha_ of three thousand men, each with its commander, and
+officers to each hundred, each fifty, and each nine, a system not unlike
+that of the ancient Peruvians. Each candidate for admission to the band
+had to undergo the most trying ordeals, rivalling in severity those of
+the American Indians, and not improbably genuine though exaggerated
+reminiscences of actual tests of endurance and agility. Once admitted he
+had to observe certain _geasa_ or "tabus," e.g. not to choose his wife
+for her dowry like other Celts, but solely for her good manners, not to
+offer violence to a woman, not to flee when attacked before less than
+nine warriors, and the like.
+
+All this may represent some genuine tradition with respect to a warrior
+band, with many exaggerations in details and numbers. Some of its
+outstanding heroes may have had names derived from or corresponding to
+those of the heroes of an existing saga. But as time went on they became
+as unhistorical as their ideal prototypes; round their names
+crystallised floating myths and tales; things which had been told of the
+saga heroes were told of them; their names were given to the personages
+of existing folk-tales. This might explain the great divergence between
+the "historical" and the romantic aspects of the saga as it now exists.
+Yet we cannot fail to see that what is claimed as historical is full of
+exaggeration, and, in spite of the pleading of Dr. Hyde and other
+patriots, little historic fact can be found in it. Even if this exists,
+it is the least important part of the saga. What is important is that
+part--nine-tenths of the whole--which "is not true because it cannot be
+true." It belongs to the region of the supernatural and the unreal. But
+personages, nine-tenths of whose actions belong to this region, must
+bear the same character themselves, and for that reason are all the more
+interesting, especially when we remember that the Celts firmly believed
+in them and in their exploits. A Fionn myth arose as all myths do,
+increasing as time went on, and the historical nucleus, if it ever
+existed, was swamped and lost. Throughout the saga the Fians are more
+than mere mortals, even in those very parts which are claimed as
+historical. They are giants; their story "bristles with the
+supernatural"; they are the ideal figures of Celtic legend throwing
+their gigantic shadows upon the dim and misty background of the past. We
+must therefore be content to assume that whether personages called
+Fionn, Oisin, Diarmaid, or Conan, ever existed, what we know of them now
+is purely mythical.
+
+Bearing in mind that they are the cherished heroes of popular fancy in
+Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, we have now to inquire whether they
+were Celtic in origin. We have seen that the Celts were a conquering
+people in Ireland, bringing with them their own religion and mythology,
+their own sagas and tales reflected now in the mythological and
+Cuchulainn cycles, which found a local habitation in Ireland. Cuchulainn
+was the hero of a saga which flourished more among the aristocratic and
+lettered classes than among the folk, and there are few popular tales
+about him. But it is among the folk that the Fionn saga has always been
+popular, and for every peasant who could tell a story of Cuchulainn a
+thousand could tell one of Fionn. Conquerors often adopt beliefs,
+traditions, and customs of the aboriginal folk, after hostilities have
+ceased, and if the pre-Celtic people had a popular hero and a saga
+concerning him, it is possible that in time it was accepted by the Celts
+or by the lower classes among them. But in the process it must have been
+completely Celticised, like the aborigines themselves; to its heroes
+were given Celtic names, or they may have been associated with existing
+Celtic personages like Cumal, and the whole saga was in time adapted to
+the conceptions and legendary history of the Celts. Thus we might
+account for the fact that it has so largely remained without admixture
+with the mythological and Cuchulainn cycles, though its heroes are
+brought into relation with the older gods. Thus also we might account
+for its popularity as compared with the Cuchulainn saga among the
+peasantry in whose veins must flow so much of the aboriginal blood both
+in Ireland and the Highlands. In other words, it was the saga of a
+non-Celtic people occupying both Ireland and Scotland. If Celts from
+Western Europe occupied the west of Scotland at an early date, they may
+have been so few in number that their own saga or sagas died out. Or if
+the Celtic occupation of the West Highlands originated first from
+Ireland, the Irish may have been unable to impose their Cuchulainn saga
+there, or if they themselves had already adopted the Fionn saga and
+found it again in the Highlands, they would but be the more attached to
+what was already localised there. This would cut the ground from the
+theory that the Fionn saga was brought to Scotland from Ireland, and it
+would account for its popularity in the Highlands, as well as for the
+fact that many Fionn stories are attached to Highland as well as to
+Irish localities, while many place-names in both countries have a Fian
+origin. Finally, the theory would explain the existence of so many
+_Maerchen_ about Fionn and his men, so few about Cuchulainn.
+
+Returning to the theory of the historic aspect of the Fians, it should
+be noted that, while, when seen through the eyes of the annalists, the
+saga belongs to a definite historical period, when viewed by itself it
+belongs to a mythic age, and though the Fians are regarded as champions
+of Ireland, their foes are usually of a supernatural kind, and they
+themselves move in a magic atmosphere. They are also brought into
+connection with the unhistoric Tuatha De Danann; they fight with them or
+for them; they have amours with or wed their women; and some of the gods
+even become members of the Fian band. Diarmaid was the darling of the
+gods Oengus and Manannan, and in his direst straits was assisted by the
+former. In all this we are in the wonderland of myth, not the _terra
+firma_ of history. There is a certain resemblance between the Cuchulainn
+and Fionn sagas, but no more than that which obtains between all sagas
+everywhere. Both contain similar incidents, but these are the stock
+episodes of universal saga belief, fitted to the personages of
+individual sagas. Hence we need not suppose with Professor Windisch that
+the mythic incidents of the Fionn saga are derived from the Cuchulainn
+cycle.
+
+The personages against whom Fionn and his men fight show the mythic
+nature of the saga. As champions of Leinster they fight the men of
+Ulster and Connaught, but they also war against oversea invaders--the
+Lochlanners. While Lochlann may mean any land beyond the sea, like the
+Welsh _Llychlyn_ it probably meant "the fabulous land beneath the lakes
+or the waves of the sea," or simply the abode of hostile, supernatural
+beings. Lochlanners would thus be counterparts of the Fomorians, and the
+conflicts of the Fians with them would reflect old myths. But with the
+Norse invasions, the Norsemen became the true Lochlanners, against whom
+Fionn and his men fight as Charlemagne fought Muhammadans--a sheer
+impossibility. Professor Zimmer, however, supposes that the Fionn saga
+took shape during the Norse occupation from the ninth century onwards.
+Fionn is half Norse, half Irish, and equivalent to Caittil Find, who
+commanded the apostate Irish in the ninth century, while Oisin and Oscar
+are the Norse Asvin and Asgeirr. But it is difficult to understand why
+one who was half a Norseman should become the chosen hero of the Celts
+in the very age in which Norsemen were their bitter enemies, and why
+Fionn, if of Norse origin, fights against Lochlanners, i.e. Norsemen. It
+may also be inquired why the borrowing should have affected the saga
+only, not the myths of the gods. No other Celtic scholar has given the
+slightest support to this brilliant but audacious theory. On the other
+hand, if the saga has Norse affinities, and if it is, in origin,
+pre-Celtic, these may be sought in an earlier connection of Ireland with
+Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age. Ireland had a flourishing
+civilisation then, and exported beautiful gold ornaments to Scandinavia,
+where they are still found in Bronze Age deposits.[507] This flourishing
+civilisation was overwhelmed by the invasion of the Celtic barbarians.
+But if the Scandinavians borrowed gold and artistic decorations from
+Ireland, and if the Fionn saga or part of it was already in existence,
+why should they not have borrowed some of its incidents, or why, on the
+other hand, should not some episodes have found their way from the north
+to Ireland? We should also consider, however, that similar incidents may
+have been evolved in both countries on similar lines and quite
+independently.
+
+The various contents of the saga can only be alluded to in the briefest
+manner. Fionn's birth-story belongs to the well-known "Expulsion and
+Return" formula, applied to so many heroes of saga and folk-tale, but
+highly elaborated in his case at the hands of the annalists. Thus his
+father Cumal, uncle of Conn the Hundred Fighter, 122-157 A.D., wished to
+wed Muirne, daughter of Conn's chief druid, Tadg. Tadg refused, knowing
+that through this marriage he would lose his ancestral seat. Cumal
+seized Muirne and married her, and the king, on Tadg's appeal, sent an
+army against him. Cumal was slain; Muirne fled to his sister, and gave
+birth to Demni, afterwards known as Fionn. Perhaps in accordance with
+old matriarchal usage, Fionn's descent through his mother is emphasised,
+while he is related to the ancient gods, Tadg being son of Nuada. This
+at once points to the mythical aspect of the saga. Cumal may be
+identical with the god Camulos. In a short time, Fionn, now a marauder
+and an outlaw, appeared at Conn's Court, and that same night slew one of
+the Tuatha Dea, who came yearly and destroyed the palace. For this he
+received his rightful heritage--the leadership of the Fians, formerly
+commanded by Cumal.[508] Another incident of Fionn's youth tells how he
+obtained his "thumb of knowledge." The eating of certain "salmon of
+knowledge" was believed to give inspiration, an idea perhaps derived
+from earlier totemistic beliefs. The bard Finneces, having caught one of
+the coveted salmon, set his pupil Fionn to cook it, forbidding him to
+taste it. But as he was turning the fish Fionn burnt his thumb and
+thrust it into his mouth, thus receiving the gift of inspiration.
+Hereafter he had only to suck his thumb in order to obtain secret
+information.[509] In another story the inspiration is already in his
+thumb, as Samson's strength was in his hair, but the power is also
+partly in his tooth, under which, after ritual preparation, he has to
+place his thumb and chew it.[510]
+
+Fionn had many wives and sweethearts, one of them, Saar, being mother of
+Oisin. Saar was turned into a fawn by a Druid, and fled from Fionn's
+house. Long after he found a beast-child in the forest and recognised
+him as his son. He nourished him until his beast nature disappeared, and
+called him Oisin, "little fawn." Round this birth legend many stories
+sprang up--a sure sign of its popularity.[511] Oisin's fame as a poet
+far excelled that of Fionn, and he became the ideal bard of the Gaels.
+
+By far the most passionate and tragic story of the saga is that of
+Diarmaid and Grainne, to whom Fionn was betrothed. Grainne put _geasa_
+upon Diarmaid to elope with her, and these he could not break. They
+fled, and for many days were pursued by Fionn, who at last overtook
+them, but was forced by the Fians to pardon the beloved hero. Meanwhile
+Fionn waited for his revenge. Knowing that it was one of Diarmaid's
+_geasa_ never to hunt a wild boar, he invited him to the chase of the
+boar of Gulban. Diarmaid slew it, and Fionn then bade him measure its
+length with his foot. A bristle pierced his heel, and he fell down in
+agony, beseeching Fionn to bring him water in his hand, for if he did
+this he would heal him. In spite of repeated appeals, Fionn, after
+bringing the water, let it drip from his hands. Diarmaid's brave soul
+passed away, and on Fionn's character this dire blot was fixed for
+ever.[512]
+
+Other tales relate how several of the Fians were spirited away to the
+Land beyond the Seas, how they were rescued, how Diarmaid went to Land
+under Waves, and how Fionn and his men were entrapped in a Fairy Palace.
+Of greater importance are those which tell the end of the Fian band.
+This, according to the annalists, was the result of their exactions and
+demands. Fionn was told by his wife, a wise woman, never to drink out of
+a horn, but coming one day thirsty to a well, he forgot this tabu, and
+so brought the end near. He encountered the sons of Uirgrenn, whom he
+had slain, and in the fight with them he fell.[513] Soon after were
+fought several battles, culminating in that of Gabhra in which all but a
+few Fians perished. Among the survivors were Oisin and Caoilte, who
+lingered on until the coming of S. Patrick. Caoilte remained on earth,
+but Oisin, whose mother was of the _sid_ folk, went to fairyland for a
+time, ultimately returning and joining S. Patrick's company.[514] But a
+different version is given in the eighteenth century poem of Michael
+Comyn, undoubtedly based on popular tales. Oisin met the Queen of Tir na
+n-Og and went with her to fairyland, where time passed as a dream until
+one day he stood on a stone against which she had warned him. He saw his
+native land and was filled with home-sickness. The queen tried to
+dissuade him, but in vain. Then she gave him a horse, warning him not to
+set foot on Irish soil. He came to Ireland; and found it all changed.
+Some puny people were trying in vain to raise a great stone, and begged
+the huge stranger to help them. He sprang from his horse and flung the
+stone from its resting-place. But when he turned, his horse was gone,
+and he had become a decrepit old man. Soon after he met S. Patrick and
+related the tale to him.
+
+Of most of the tales preserved in twelfth to fifteenth century MSS. it
+may be said that in essence they come down to us from a remote
+antiquity, like stars pulsing their clear light out of the hidden depths
+of space. Many of them exist as folk-tales, often wild and weird in
+form, while some folk-tales have no literary parallels. Some are
+_Maerchen_ with members of the Fian band as heroes, and of these there
+are many European parallels. But it is not unlikely that, as in the case
+of the Cuchulainn cycle, the folk versions may be truer to the original
+forms of the saga than the rounded and polished literary versions.
+Whatever the Fians were in origin--gods, mythic heroes, or actual
+personages--it is probable that a short _Heldensage_ was formed in early
+times. This slowly expanded, new tales were added, and existing
+_Maerchen_ formulae were freely made use of by making their heroes the
+heroes of the saga. Then came the time when many of the tales were
+written down, while later they were adapted to a scheme of Irish
+history, the heroes becoming warriors of a definite historic period, or
+perhaps connected with such warriors. But these heroes belonged to a
+timeless world, whose margins are "the shore of old romance," and it was
+as if they, who were not for an age but for all time, scorned to become
+the puppets of the page of history.
+
+The earliest evidence of the attitude of the ecclesiastical world to
+these heroes is found in the _Agallamh na Senorach_, or "Colloquy of the
+Ancients."[515] This may have been composed in the thirteenth century,
+and its author knew scores of Fionn legends. Making use of the tradition
+that Caoilte and Oisin had met S. Patrick, he makes Caoilte relate many
+of the tales, usually in connection with some place-name of Fian origin.
+The saint and his followers are amazed at the huge stature of the Fians,
+but Patrick asperges them with holy water, and hosts of demons flee from
+them. At each tale which Caoilte tells, the saint says, "Success and
+benediction, Caoilte. All this is to us a recreation of spirit and of
+mind, were it only not a destruction of devotion and a dereliction of
+prayer." But presently his guardian angel appears, and bids him not only
+listen to the tales but cause them to be written down. He and his
+attendant clerics now lend a willing ear to the recital and encourage
+the narrator with their applause. Finally, baptism is administered to
+Caoilte and his men, and by Patrick's intercessions Caoilte's relations
+and Fionn himself are brought out of hell. In this work the
+representatives of paganism are shown to be on terms of friendliness
+with the representatives of Christianity.
+
+But in Highland ballads collected in the sixteenth century by the Dean
+of Lismore, as well as in Irish ballads found in MSS. dating from the
+seventeenth century onwards, the saint is a sour and intolerant cleric,
+and the Fians are equally intolerant and blasphemous pagans. There is no
+attempt at compromise; the saint rejoices that the Fian band are in
+hell, and Oisin throws contempt on the God of the shaven priests. But
+sometimes this contempt is mingled with humour and pathos. Were the
+heroes of Oisin's band now alive, scant work would be made of the monks'
+bells, books, and psalm-singing. It is true that the saint gives the
+weary old man hospitality, but Oisin's eyes are blinded with tears as he
+thinks of the departed glories of the Fians, and his ears are tormented
+"by jangling bells, droning psalms, and howling clerics." These ballads
+probably represent one main aspect of the attitude of the Church to
+Celtic paganism. How, then, did the more generous _Colloquy_ come into
+being? We must note first that some of the ballads have a milder tone.
+Oisin is urged to accept the faith, and he prays for salvation. Probably
+these represent the beginning of a reaction in favour of the old heroes,
+dating from a time when the faith was well established. There was no
+danger of a pagan revival, and, provided the Fians were Christianised,
+it might be legitimate to represent them as heroic and noble. The
+_Colloquy_ would represent the high-water mark of this reaction among
+the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge by popular tales, the
+Fians had never been regarded in other than a favourable light. The
+_Colloquy_ re-established the dignity of the Fian band in the eyes of
+official Christianity. They are baptized or released from hell, and in
+their own nature they are virtuous and follow lofty ideals. "Who or what
+was it that maintained you in life?" asks Patrick. And Caoilte gives the
+noble reply, "Truth that was in our hearts, and strength in our arms,
+and fulfilment in our tongues." Patrick says of Fionn: "He was a king, a
+seer, a poet, a lord with a manifold and great train; our magician, our
+knowledgeable one, our soothsayer; all whatsoever he said was sweet with
+him. Excessive, perchance, as ye deem my testimony of Fionn, although ye
+hold that which I say to be overstrained, nevertheless, and by the King
+that is above me, he was three times better still." Not only so, but
+Caoilte maintains that Fionn and his men were aware of the existence of
+the true God. They possessed the _anima naturaliter Christiana_. The
+growing appreciation of a wider outlook on life, and possibly
+acquaintance with the romances of chivalry, made the composition of the
+_Colloquy_ possible, but, again, it may represent a more generous
+conception of paganism existing from the time of the first encounter of
+Christianity with it in Ireland.
+
+The strife of creeds in Ireland, the old order changing, giving place to
+new, had evidently impressed itself on the minds of Celtic poets and
+romancers. It suggested itself to them as providing an excellent
+"situation"; hence we constantly hear of the meeting of gods, demigods,
+or heroes with the saints of the new era. Frequently they bow before the
+Cross, they are baptized and receive the Christian verity, as in the
+_Colloquy_ and in some documents of the Cuchulainn cycle. Probably no
+other European folk-literature so takes advantage of just this
+situation, this meeting of creeds, one old and ready to vanish away, the
+other with all the buoyant freshness of youth.
+
+Was MacPherson's a genuine Celtic epic unearthed by him and by no one
+else? No mortal eye save his has ever seen the original, but no one who
+knows anything of the contents of the saga can deny that much of his
+work is based on materials collected by him. He knew some of the tales
+and ballads current among the folk, possibly also some of the Irish MS.
+versions. He saw that there was a certain unity among them, and he saw
+that it was possible to make it more evident still. He fitted the
+floating incidents into an epic framework, adding, inventing, altering,
+and moulding the whole into an English style of his own. Later he seems
+to have translated the whole into Gaelic. He gave his version to the
+world, and found himself famous, but he gave it as the genuine
+translation of a genuine Celtic epic. Here was his craft; here he was
+the "charlatan of genius." His genius lay in producing an epic which
+people were willing to read, and in making them believe it to be not his
+work but that of the Celtic heroic age. Any one can write an epic, but
+few can write one which thousands will read, which men like
+Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon, Byron, and Coleridge will admire and
+love, and which will, as it were, crystallise the aspirations of an age
+weary with classical formalism. MacPherson introduced his readers to a
+new world of heroic deeds, romantic adventure, deathless love, exquisite
+sentiments sentimentally expressed. He changed the rough warriors and
+beautiful but somewhat unabashed heroines of the saga into sentimental
+personages, who suited the taste of an age poised between the bewigged
+and powdered formalism of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of
+new ideals which was to follow. His _Ossian_ is a cross between Pope's
+_Homer_ and Byron's _Childe Harold_. His heroes and heroines are not on
+their native heath, and are uncertain whether to mince and strut with
+Pope or to follow nature with Rousseau's noble savages and Saint
+Pierre's Paul and Virginia. The time has gone when it was heresy to cast
+doubt upon the genuineness of MacPherson's epic, but if any one is still
+doubtful, let him read it and then turn to the existing versions,
+ballads, and tales. He will find himself in a totally different
+atmosphere, and will recognise in the latter the true epic note--the
+warrior's rage and the warrior's generosity, dire cruelty yet infinite
+tenderness, wild lust yet also true love, a world of magic
+supernaturalism, but an exact copy of things as they were in that
+far-off age. The barbarism of the time is in these old tales--deeds
+which make one shiver, customs regarding the relations of the sexes now
+found only among savages, social and domestic arrangements which are
+somewhat lurid and disgusting. And yet, withal, the note of bravery, of
+passion, of authentic life is there; we are held in the grip of genuine
+manhood and womanhood. MacPherson gives a picture of the Ossianic age as
+he conceived it, an age of Celtic history that "never was on sea or
+land." Even his ghosts are un-Celtic, misty and unsubstantial phantasms,
+unlike the embodied _revenants_ of the saga which are in agreement with
+the Celtic belief that the soul assumed a body in the other world.
+MacPherson makes Fionn invariably successful, but in the saga tales he
+is often defeated. He mingles the Cuchulainn and Ossianic cycles, but
+these, save in a few casual instances, are quite distinct in the old
+literature. Yet had not his poem been so great as it is, though so
+un-Celtic, it could not have influenced all European literature. But
+those who care for genuine Celtic literature, the product of a people
+who loved nature, romance, doughty deeds, the beauty of the world, the
+music of the sea and the birds, the mountains, valour in men, beauty in
+women, will find all these in the saga, whether in its literary or its
+popular forms. And through it all sounds the undertone of Celtic pathos
+and melancholy, the distant echo
+
+  "Of old unhappy, far-off things
+   And battles long ago."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[506] See Joyce, _OCR_ 447.
+
+[507] Montelius, _Les Temps Prehistoriques_, 57, 151; Reinach, _RC_ xxi.
+8.
+
+[508] The popular versions of this early part of the saga differ much in
+detail, but follow the main outlines in much the same way. See Curtin,
+_HTI_ 204; Campbell, _LF_ 33 f.; _WHT_ iii. 348.
+
+[509] In a widespread group of tales supernatural knowledge is obtained
+by eating part of some animal, usually a certain snake. In many of these
+tales the food is eaten by another person than he who obtained it, as in
+the case of Fionn. Cf. the Welsh story of Gwion, p. 116, and the
+Scandinavian of Sigurd, and other parallels in Miss Cox, _Cinderella_,
+496; Frazer, _Arch. Rev._ i. 172 f. The story is thus a folk-tale
+formula applied to Fionn, doubtless because it harmonised with Celtic or
+pre-Celtic totemistic ideas. But it is based on ancient ideas regarding
+the supernatural knowledge possessed by reptiles or fish, and among
+American Indians, Maoris, Solomon Islanders, and others there are
+figured representations of a man holding such an animal, its tongue
+being attached to his tongue. He is a _shaman_, and American Indians
+believe that his inspiration comes from the tongue of a mysterious river
+otter, caught by him. See Dall, _Bureau of Ethnol._ 3rd report; and Miss
+Buckland, _Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxii. 29.
+
+[510] _TOS_ iv.; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 396; Joyce, _OCR_ 194, 339.
+
+[511] For ballad versions see Campbell, _LF_ 198.
+
+[512] Numerous ballad versions are given in Campbell _LF_ 152 f. The
+tale is localised in various parts of Ireland and the Highlands, many
+dolmens in Ireland being known as Diarmaid and Grainne's beds.
+
+[513] For an account differing from this annalistic version, see _ZCP_
+i. 465.
+
+[514] O'Grady, ii. 102. This, on the whole, agrees with the Highland
+ballad version, _LF_ 198.
+
+[515] _IT_ iv.; O'Grady, _Silva Gad._ text and translation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+GODS AND MEN.
+
+
+Though man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are unlike as
+well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes
+whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been gods.
+One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature. No house could
+contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn
+had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants,
+and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have
+also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom
+they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing
+themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in
+mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can
+also transform themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The
+animal names of certain divinities show that they had once been animals
+pure and simple, but when they became anthropomorphic, myths would arise
+telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in
+part, accounts for these transformation myths. The gods are also
+immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The Tuatha De Danann
+are "unfading," their "duration is perennial."[517] This immortality is
+sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is the result of eating
+immortal food--Manannan's swine, Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal
+ale, or the apples of Elysium. The stories telling of the deaths of the
+gods in the annalists may be based on old myths in which they were said
+to die, these myths being connected with ritual acts in which the human
+representatives of gods were slain. Such rites were an inherent part of
+Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of gods like Osiris or Adonis,
+based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was connected with
+elaborate myths telling of their death and revival. Something akin to
+this may have occurred among the Celts.
+
+The divinities often united with mortals. Goddesses sought the love of
+heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the gods, and gods had
+amours with the daughters of men.[518] Frequently the heroes of the
+sagas are children of a god or goddess and a mortal,[519] and this
+divine parentage was firmly believed in by the Celts, since personal
+names formed of a divine name and _-genos_ or _-gnatos_, "born of," "son
+of," are found in inscriptions over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic
+documents--Boduogenos, Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these
+names were believed to be of divine descent on one side. Spirits of
+nature or the elements of nature personified might also be parents of
+mortals, as a name like Morgen, from _Morigenos_, "Son of the Sea," and
+many others suggest. For this and for other reasons the gods frequently
+interfere in human affairs, assisting their children or their
+favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the heroes of
+the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as when Morrigan
+besought healing from Cuchulainn.
+
+As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who bore
+divine names were probably believed to be representatives or
+incarnations of gods. Perhaps this explains why a chief of the Boii
+called himself a god and was revered after his death, and why the Gauls
+so readily accepted the divinity of Augustus. Irish kings bear divine
+names, and of these Nuada occurs frequently, one king, Irel Faith, being
+identified with Nuada Airgetlam, while in one text _nuadat_ is glossed
+_in rig_, "of the king," as if _Nuada_ had come to be a title meaning
+"king." Welsh kings bear the name Nudd (Nodons), and both the actual and
+the mythic leader Brennus took their name from the god Bran. King
+Conchobar is called _dia talmaide_, "a terrestrial god." If kings were
+thought to be god-men like the Pharaohs, this might account for the
+frequency of tales about divine fatherhood or reincarnation, while it
+would also explain the numerous _geasa_ which Irish kings must observe,
+unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with their observance,
+though this prosperity was later thought to depend on the king's
+goodness. The nature of the prosperity--mild seasons, abundant crops,
+fruit, fish, and cattle--shows that the king was associated with
+fertility, like the gods of growth.[520] Hence they had probably been
+once regarded as incarnations of such gods. Wherever divine kings are
+found, fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance of
+their tabus. To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain before
+they grow old and weak, and their vigour passes on to their successors.
+Their death benefits their people.[521] But frequently the king might
+reign as long as he could hold his own against all comers, or, again, a
+slave or criminal was for a time treated as a mock king, and slain as
+the divine king's substitute. Scattered hints in Irish literature and in
+folk survivals show that some such course as this had been pursued by
+the Celts with regard to their divine kings, as it was also
+elsewhere.[522] It is not impossible that some at least of the Druids
+stood in a similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably
+at first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually
+with three hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great national
+council.[523] This council at a consecrated place (_nemeton_), its
+likeness to the annual Druidic gathering in Gaul, and the possibility
+that _Dru_- has some connection with the name "Druid," point to a
+religious as well as political aspect of this council. The "tetrarchs"
+may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the kingly prerogative of
+acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul. The wife of one of them was
+a priestess,[524] the office being hereditary in her family, and it may
+have been necessary that her husband should also be a priest. One
+tetrarch, Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the
+priest-kingship of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the second
+century B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic
+institution.[525] Mythic Celtic kings consulted the gods without any
+priestly intervention, and Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.[526]
+Without giving these hints undue emphasis, we may suppose that the
+differentiation of the two offices would not be simultaneous over the
+Celtic area. But when it did take effect priests would probably lay
+claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as incarnate god. Kings
+were not likely to give these up, and where they retained them priests
+would be content with seeing that the tabus and ritual and the slaying
+of the mock king were duly observed. Irish kings were perhaps still
+regarded as gods, though certain Druids may have been divine priests,
+since they called themselves creators of the universe, and both
+continental and Irish Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the
+name [Greek: semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic
+priests, though its meaning is obscure, points to divine pretensions on
+their part.[527]
+
+The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of
+earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic
+branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who
+used oak branches in their rites.[528] King and tree would be connected,
+the king's life being bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one
+time both perished together. But as kings were represented by a
+substitute, so the sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down,
+may also have had its _succedaneum_. The Irish _bile_ or sacred tree,
+connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand, and
+it was sacrilege to cut it down.[529] Probably before cutting down the
+tree a branch or something growing upon it, e.g. mistletoe, had to be
+cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he could be slain.
+This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or
+branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the
+divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
+down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account
+is incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were
+not known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of
+the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though
+he says nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it
+is not unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his
+time, the oxen which were slain during the rite took the place of the
+latter. Later romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some
+personage, the mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a
+branch carried by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked
+from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point to an old belief
+in tree and king as divine representatives, and to a ritual like that
+associated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic
+tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits.
+Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might
+penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded as
+romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the divine
+tree.
+
+If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her
+representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals
+by the female worshippers. This would explain the slaying of one of
+their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or
+gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place
+of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess
+became the consort of the god, a female representative would continue as
+the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of
+later folk-custom. Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female
+cults with female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the
+May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals
+from which men were excluded.[531]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[516] O'Grady, ii. 228.
+
+[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Caesar, vi. 14, "the immortal gods" of Gaul.
+
+[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.
+
+[519] Leahy, ii. 6.
+
+[520] _IT_ iii. 203; _Trip. Life_, 507; _Annals of the Four Masters_,
+A.D. 14; _RC_ xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced
+fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that
+herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle
+there, and in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato famine
+that his fairy banner should be waved.
+
+[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill,
+"If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).
+
+[522] See Frazer, _Kingship_; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, 1906, "The European
+Sky-God." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic
+incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his
+inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in his view, a
+sky-god; he was more likely to have been the representative of a god or
+spirit of growth or vegetation.
+
+[523] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.
+
+[524] Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._ 20.
+
+[525] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin,
+_Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater._
+
+[526] Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[527] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p.
+301, _infra_.
+
+[528] Pliny, xvi. 95.
+
+[529] P. 201, _infra_.
+
+[530] Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough,
+and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by
+Gramoplanz (Weston, _Legend of Sir Gawain_, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale
+of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and
+the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its
+branches (_TOS_ vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 441.
+
+[531] See Chap. XVIII.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE CULT OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or
+slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead,
+yet when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form
+of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in
+connection with the reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point
+to a worship of ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes.
+Heads of the slain were offered to the "strong shades"--the ghosts of
+tribal heroes whose praises were sung by bards.[532] When such heads
+were placed on houses, they may have been devoted to the family ghosts.
+The honour in which mythic or real heroes were held may point to an
+actual cult, the hero being worshipped when dead, while he still
+continued his guardianship of the tribe. We know also that the tomb of
+King Cottius in the Alps was a sacred place, that Irish kings were often
+inaugurated on ancestral burial cairns, and that Irish gods were
+associated with barrows of the dead.[533]
+
+The cult of the dead culminated at the family hearth, around which the
+dead were even buried, as among the Aeduii; this latter custom may have
+been general.[534] In any case the belief in the presence of ancestral
+ghosts around the hearth was widespread, as existing superstitions show.
+In Brittany the dead seek warmth at the hearth by night, and a feast is
+spread for them on All Souls' eve, or crumbs are left for them after a
+family gathering.[535] But generally the family ghost has become a
+brownie, lutin, or pooka, haunting the hearth and doing the household
+work.[536] Fairy corresponds in all respects to old ancestral ghost, and
+the one has succeeded to the place of the other, while the fairy is even
+said to be the ghost of a dead person.[537] Certain archaeological
+remains have also a connection with this ancient cult. Among Celtic
+remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with a ram's
+head. M. Dechelette sees in this "the symbol of sacrifice offered to the
+souls of ancestors on the altar of the hearth."[538] The ram was already
+associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth,
+and by an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead
+there. It is found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar
+was purified by the immolation of a ram.[539] Figurines of a ram have
+been found in Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the
+underworld.[540] The ram of the andirons was thus a permanent
+representative of the victim offered in the cult of the dead. A
+mutilated inscription on one of them may stand for _Laribus augustis_,
+and certain markings on others may represent the garlands twined round
+the victim.[541] Serpents with rams' heads occur on the monuments of the
+underworld god. The serpent was a chthonian god or the emblem of such a
+god, and it may have been thought appropriate to give it the head of an
+animal associated with the cult of the dead.
+
+The dead were also fed at the grave or in the house. Thus cups were
+placed in the recess of a well in the churchyard of Kilranelagh by those
+interring a child under five, and the ghost of the child was supposed to
+supply the other spirits with water from these cups.[542] In Ireland,
+after a death, food is placed out for the spirits, or, at a burial, nuts
+are placed in the coffin.[543] In some parts of France, milk is poured
+out on the grave, and both in Brittany and in Scotland the dead are
+supposed to partake of the funeral feast.[544] These are survivals from
+pagan times and correspond to the rites in use among those who still
+worship ancestors. In Celtic districts a cairn or a cross is placed over
+the spot where a violent or accidental death has occurred, the purpose
+being to appease the ghost, and a stone is often added to the cairn by
+all passers-by.[545]
+
+Festivals were held in Ireland on the anniversaries of the death of
+kings or chiefs, and these were also utilised for purposes of trade,
+pleasure, or politics. They sometimes occurred on the great festivals,
+e.g. Lugnasad and Samhain, and were occasionally held at the great
+burial-places.[546] Thus the gathering at Taillti on Lugnasad was said
+to have been founded by Lug in memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, and
+the Leinstermen met at Carman on the same day to commemorate King
+Garman, or in a variant account, a woman called Carman. She and her sons
+had tried to blight the corn of the Tuatha De Danann, but the sons were
+driven off and she died of grief, begging that a fair should always be
+held in her name, and promising abundance of milk, fruit, and fish for
+its observance.[547] These may be aetiological myths explaining the
+origin of these festivals on the analogy of funeral festivals, but more
+likely, since Lugnasad was a harvest festival, they are connected with
+the custom of slaying a representative of the corn-spirit. The festival
+would become a commemoration of all such victims, but when the custom
+itself had ceased it would be associated with one particular personage,
+the corn-goddess regarded as a mortal.
+
+This would be the case where the victim was a woman, but where a male
+was slain, the analogy of the slaying of the divine king or his
+_succedaneum_ would lead to the festivals being regarded as
+commemorative of a king, e.g. Garman. This agrees with the statement
+that observance of the festival produced plenty; non-observance, dearth.
+The victims were slain to obtain plenty, and the festival would also
+commemorate those who had died for this good cause, while it would also
+appease their ghosts should these be angry at their violent deaths.
+Certain of the dead were thus commemorated at Lugnasad, a festival of
+fertility. Both the corn-spirit or divinity slain in the reaping of the
+corn, and the human victims, were appeased by its observance.[548] The
+legend of Carman makes her hostile to the corn--a curious way of
+regarding a corn-goddess. But we have already seen that gods of
+fertility were sometimes thought of as causing blight, and in
+folk-belief the corn-spirit is occasionally believed to be dangerous.
+Such inversions occur wherever revolutions in religion take place.
+
+The great commemoration of the dead was held on Samhain eve, a festival
+intended to aid the dying powers of vegetation, whose life, however, was
+still manifested in evergreen shrubs, in the mistletoe, in the sheaf of
+corn from last harvest--the abode of the corn-spirit.[549] Probably,
+also, human representatives of the vegetation or corn-spirit were slain,
+and this may have suggested the belief in the presence of their ghosts
+at this festival. Or the festival being held at the time of the death of
+vegetation, the dead would naturally be commemorated then. Or, as in
+Scandinavia, they may have been held to have an influence on fertility,
+as an extension of the belief that certain slain persons represented
+spirits of fertility, or because trees and plants growing on the barrows
+of the dead were thought to be tenanted by their spirits.[550] In
+Scandinavia, the dead were associated with female spirits or _fylgjur_,
+identified with the _disir_, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in hollow
+hills.[551] The nearest Celtic analogy to these is the _Matres_,
+goddesses of fertility. Bede says that Christmas eve was called
+_Modranicht_, "Mothers' Night,"[552] and as many of the rites of Samhain
+were transferred to Yule, the former date of _Modranicht_ may have been
+Samhain, just as the Scandinavian _Disablot_, held in November, was a
+festival of the _disir_ and of the dead.[553] It has been seen that the
+Celtic Earth-god was lord of the dead, and that he probably took the
+place of an Earth-goddess or goddesses, to whom the _Matres_ certainly
+correspond. Hence the connection of the dead with female Earth-spirits
+would be explained. Mother Earth had received the dead before her place
+was taken by the Celtic Dispater. Hence the time of Earth's decay was
+the season when the dead, her children, would be commemorated. Whatever
+be the reason, Celts, Teutons, and others have commemorated the dead at
+the beginning of winter, which was the beginning of a new year, while a
+similar festival of the dead at New Year is held in many other lands.
+
+Both in Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid out for
+the dead who come to visit the houses and to warm themselves at the fire
+in the stillness of the night, and in Brittany a huge log burns on the
+hearth. We have here returned to the cult of the dead at the
+hearth.[554] Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the
+hearth--the place of the family ghosts--at Samhain, when new fire was
+kindled in each house. On it libations were poured, which would then
+have been meant for the dead. The Yule log and the log of the Breton
+peasants would thus be the domestic aspect of the fire ritual, which had
+its public aspect in the Samhain bonfires.
+
+All this has been in part affected by the Christian feast of All Souls.
+Dr. Frazer thinks that the feast of All Saints (November 1st) was
+intended to take the place of the pagan cult of the dead. As it failed
+to do this, All Souls, a festival of all the dead, was added on November
+2nd.[555] To some extent, but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan
+rites, for the old ideas connected with Samhain still survive here and
+there. It is also to be noted that in some cases the friendly aspect of
+the dead has been lost sight of, and, like the _sid_-folk, they are
+popularly connected with evil powers which are in the ascendant on
+Samhain eve.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[532] Silius Italicus, v. 652; Lucan, i. 447. Cf. p. 241, _infra_.
+
+[533] Ammian. Marcell. xv. 10. 7; Joyce, _SH_ i. 45.
+
+[534] Bulliot, _Fouilles du Mont Beuvray_, Autun, 1899, i. 76, 396.
+
+[535] Le Braz, ii. 67; Sauve, _Folk-lore des Hautes Vosges_, 295;
+Berenger-Feraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_, i. 11.
+
+[536] Hearn, _Aryan Household_, 43 f.; Berenger-Feraud, i. 33; _Rev. des
+Trad._ i. 142; Carmichael, ii. 329; Cosquin, _Trad. Pop. de la
+Lorraine_, i. 82.
+
+[537] Kennedy, 126. The mischievous brownie who overturns furniture and
+smashes crockery is an exact reproduction of the Poltergeist.
+
+[538] Dechelette, _Rev. Arch._ xxxiii, (1898), 63, 245, 252.
+
+[539] Cicero, _De Leg._ ii. 22.
+
+[540] Dechelette, 256; Reinach, _BF_ 189.
+
+[541] Dechelette, 257-258. In another instance the ram is marked with
+crosses like those engraved on images of the underworld god with the
+hammer.
+
+[542] Kennedy, 187.
+
+[543] Lady Wilde, 118; Curtin, _Tales_, 54.
+
+[544] Le Braz, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, _Voyage dans le Finistere_,
+i. 229.
+
+[545] Le Braz, ii. 47; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 357; MacCulloch, _Misty Isle of
+Skye_, 254; Sebillot, i. 235-236.
+
+[546] Names of places associated with the great festivals are also those
+of the chief pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc. (O'Curry,
+_MC_ ii. 523).
+
+[547] _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 313-314.
+
+[548] Cf. Frazer, _Adonis_, 134.
+
+[549] Cf. Chambers, _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 250, 253.
+
+[550] See Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 405, 419. Perhaps
+for a similar reason a cult of the dead may have occurred at the
+Midsummer festival.
+
+[551] Miss Faraday, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 398 f.
+
+[552] Bede, _de Temp. Rat._ c. xv.
+
+[553] Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.
+
+[554] Curtin, _Tales_, 157; Haddon, _Folk-Lore_, iv. 359; Le Braz, ii.
+115 _et passim._
+
+[555] Frazer, _Adonis_, 253 f.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.
+
+
+In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then
+possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped--
+earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete
+personification, and the sun or earth divinity or spirit was more or
+less separated from the sun or earth themselves. Some Celtic divinities
+were thus evolved, but there still continued a veneration of the objects
+of nature in themselves, as well as a cult of nature spirits or
+secondary divinities who peopled every part of nature. "Nor will I call
+out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which
+are now subservient to the use of man, but once were an abomination and
+destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honours,"
+cries Gildas.[556] This was the true cult of the folk, the "blind
+people," even when the greater gods were organised, and it has survived
+with modifications in out-of-the-way places, in spite of the coming of
+Christianity.
+
+S. Kentigern rebuked the Cambrians for worshipping the elements, which
+God made for man's use.[557] The question of the daughters of Loegaire
+also throws much light on Celtic nature worship. "Has your god sons or
+daughters?... Have many fostered his sons? Are his daughters dear and
+beautiful to men? Is he in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in the
+rivers, in the mountains, in the valleys?"[558] The words suggest a
+belief in divine beings filling heaven, earth, sea, air, hills, glens,
+lochs, and rivers, and following human customs. A naive faith, full of
+beauty and poetry, even if it had its dark and grim aspects! These
+powers or personalities had been invoked from time immemorial, but the
+invocations were soon stereotyped into definite formulas. Such a formula
+is put into the mouth of Amairgen, the poet of the Milesians, when they
+were about to invade Erin, and it may have been a magical invocation of
+the powers of nature at the beginning of an undertaking or in times of
+danger:
+
+  "I invoke the land of Ireland!
+   Shining, shining sea!
+   Fertile, fertile mountain!
+   Wooded vale!
+   Abundant river, abundant in waters!
+   Fish abounding lake!
+   Fish abounding sea!
+   Fertile earth!
+   Irruption of fish! Fish there!
+   Bird under wave! Great fish!
+   Crab hole! Irruption of fish!
+   Fish abounding sea!"[559]
+
+A similar formula was spoken after the destruction of Da Derga's Hostel
+by MacCecht on his finding water. He bathed in it and sang--
+
+  "Cold fountain! Surface of strand ...
+   Sea of lake, water of Gara, stream of river;
+   High spring well; cold fountain!"[560]
+
+The goddess Morrigan, after the defeat of the Fomorians, invokes the
+powers of nature and proclaims the victory to "the royal mountains of
+Ireland, to its chief waters, and its river mouths."[561] It was also
+customary to take oaths by the elements--heaven, earth, sun, fire, moon,
+sea, land, day, night, etc., and these punished the breaker of the
+oath.[562] Even the gods exacted such an oath of each other. Bres swore
+by sun, moon, sea, and land, to fulfil the engagement imposed on him by
+Lug.[563] The formulae survived into Christian times, and the faithful
+were forbidden to call the sun and moon gods or to swear by them, while
+in Breton folk-custom at the present day oaths by sun, moon, or earth,
+followed by punishment of the oath-breaker by the moon, are still in
+use.[564] These oaths had originated in a time when the elements
+themselves were thought to be divine, and similar adjurations were used
+by Greeks and Scandinavians.
+
+While the greater objects of nature were worshipped for themselves
+alone, the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits, benevolent or
+malevolent, of rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes, and streams,[565]
+and while greater divinities of growth had been evolved, they still
+believed in lesser spirits of vegetation, of the corn, and of fertility,
+connected, however, with these gods. Some of these still survive as
+fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or streams, or as demoniac beings
+haunting lonely places. And even now, in French folk-belief, sun, moon,
+winds, etc., are regarded as actual personages. Sun and moon are husband
+and wife; the winds have wives; they are addressed by personal names and
+reverenced.[566] Some spirits may already have had a demoniac aspect in
+pagan times. The Tuatha Dea conjured up _meisi_, "spectral bodies that
+rise from the ground," against the Milesians, and at their service were
+malignant sprites--_urtrochta_, and "forms, spectres, and great queens"
+called _guidemain_ (false demons). The Druids also sent forth
+mischievous spirits called _siabra_. In the _Tain_ there are references
+to _bocanachs_, _bananaichs_, and _geniti-glinni_, "goblins, eldritch
+beings, and glen-folk."[567] These are twice called Tuatha De Danann,
+and this suggests that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater
+gods.[568] The _geniti-glinni_ would be spirits haunting glen and
+valley. They are friendly to Cuchulainn in the _Tain_, but in the _Feast
+of Bricriu_ he and other heroes fight and destroy them.[569] In modern
+Irish belief they are demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.[570]
+
+Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it held its
+ground because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They upheld the
+aboriginal cults resembling those which, in the lands whence they came,
+had been native and local with themselves. Such cults are as old as the
+world, and when Christianity expelled the worship of the greater gods,
+younger in growth, the ancient nature worship, dowered with immortal
+youth,
+
+      "bowed low before the blast
+  In patient deep disdain,"
+
+to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed against
+it. The old rites continued to be practised, or survived under a
+Christian dress and colouring. They are found in Breton villages, in
+Highland glens, in Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish townships, and
+only the spread of school-board education, with its materialism and
+uninviting common sense, is forcing them at last to yield.
+
+The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them. Offerings
+at trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the lighting of fires or
+candles there, and vows or incantations addressed to them, are
+forbidden, as is also the worship of trees, groves, stones, rivers, and
+wells. The sun and moon are not to be called lords. Wizardry, and
+divination, and the leapings and dancings, songs and choruses of the
+pagans, i.e. their orgiastic cults, are not to be practised.
+Tempest-raisers are not to ply their diabolical craft.[571] These
+denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and legend told
+how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the power of the
+Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in wooded hollows,
+secluded valleys, and shores of lake and river.[572] Their power, though
+limited, was not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults
+often continued to be practised gave them a darker colour. They were
+identified with the works of the devil, and the spirits of paganism with
+dark and grisly demons.[573] This culminated in the mediaeval witch
+persecutions, for witchcraft was in part the old paganism in a new
+guise. Yet even that did not annihilate superstition, which still lives
+and flourishes among the folk, though the actual worship of
+nature-spirits has now disappeared.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Perhaps the most important object in nature to the early Celts as to
+most primitive folk was the moon. The phases of the moon were apparent
+before men observed the solstices and equinoxes, and they formed an easy
+method of measuring time. The Celtic year was at first lunar--Pliny
+speaks of the Celtic method of counting the beginning of months and
+years by the moon--and night was supposed to precede day.[574] The
+festivals of growth began, not at sunrise, but on the previous evening
+with the rising of the moon, and the name _La Lunade_ is still given to
+the Midsummer festival in parts of France.[575] At Vallon de la Suille a
+wood on the slope where the festival is held is called _Bois de la
+Lune_; and in Ireland, where the festival begins on the previous
+evening, in the district where an ascent of Cnoc Aine is made, the
+position of the moon must be observed. A similar combination of sun and
+moon cults is found in an inscription at Lausanne--_To the genius of the
+sun and moon._[576]
+
+Possibly sun festivals took the place of those of the moon. Traces of
+the connection of the moon with agriculture occur in different regions,
+the connection being established through the primitive law of
+sympathetic magic. The moon waxes and wanes, therefore it must affect
+all processes of growth or decay. Dr. Frazer has cited many instances of
+this belief, and has shown that the moon had a priority to the sun in
+worship, e.g. in Egypt and Babylon.[577] Sowing is done with a waxing
+moon, so that, through sympathy, there may be a large increase. But
+harvesting, cutting timber, etc., should be done with a waning moon,
+because moisture being caused by a waxing moon, it was necessary to
+avoid cutting such things as would spoil by moisture at that time.
+Similar beliefs are found among the Celts. Mistletoe and other magical
+plants were culled with a waxing moon, probably because their power
+would thus be greater. Dr. Johnson noted the fact that the Highlanders
+sowed their seed with a waxing moon, in the expectation of a better
+harvest. For similar occult reasons, it is thought in Brittany that
+conception during a waxing moon produces a male child, during a waning
+moon a female, while _accouchements_ at the latter time are dangerous.
+Sheep and cows should be killed at the new moon, else their flesh will
+shrink, but peats should be cut in the last quarter, otherwise they will
+remain moist and give out "a power of smoke."[578]
+
+These ideas take us back to a time when it was held that the moon was
+not merely the measurer of time, but had powerful effects on the
+processes of growth and decay. Artemis and Diana, moon-goddesses, had
+power over all growing things, and as some Celtic goddesses were equated
+with Diana, they may have been connected with the moon, more especially
+as Gallo-Roman images of Diana have the head adorned with a crescent
+moon. In some cases festivals of the moon remained intact, as among the
+Celtiberians and other peoples to the north of them, who at the time of
+full moon celebrated the festival of a nameless god, dancing all night
+before the doors of their houses.[579] The nameless god may have been
+the moon, worshipped at the time of her intensest light. Moonlight
+dances round a great stone, with singing, on the first day of the year,
+occurred in the Highlands in the eighteenth century.[580] Other
+survivals of cult are seen in the practices of bowing or baring the head
+at new moon, or addressing it with words of adoration or supplication.
+In Ireland, Camden found the custom at new moon of saying the Lord's
+Prayer with the addition of the words, "Leave us whole and sound as Thou
+hast found us." Similar customs exist in Brittany, where girls pray to
+the moon to grant them dreams of their future husbands.[581] Like other
+races, the Celts thought that eclipses were caused by a monster
+attacking the moon, while it could be driven off with cries and shouts.
+In 218 B.C. the Celtic allies of Attalus were frightened by an eclipse,
+and much later Christian legislation forbade the people to assemble at
+an eclipse and shout, _Vince, Luna!_[582] Such a practice was observed
+in Ireland in the seventeenth century. At an earlier time, Irish poets
+addressed sun and moon as divinities, and they were represented on
+altars even in Christian times.[583]
+
+While the Celts believed in sea-gods--Manannan, Morgen, Dylan--the sea
+itself was still personified and regarded as divine. It was thought to
+be a hostile being, and high tides were met by Celtic warriors, who
+advanced against them with sword and spear, often perishing in the
+rushing waters rather than retreat. The ancients regarded this as
+bravado. M. Jullian sees in it a sacrifice by voluntary suicide; M.
+D'Arbois, a tranquil waiting for death and the introduction to another
+life.[584] But the passages give the sense of an actual attack on the
+waves--living things which men might terrify, and perhaps with this was
+combined the belief that no one could die during a rising tide.
+Similarly French fishermen threaten to cut a fog in two with a knife,
+while the legend of S. Lunaire tells how he threw a knife at a fog, thus
+causing its disappearance.[585] Fighting the waves is also referred to
+in Irish texts. Thus Tuirbe Tragmar would "hurl a cast of his axe in the
+face of the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not
+come over the axe." Cuchulainn, in one of his fits of anger, fought the
+waves for seven days, and Fionn fought and conquered the Muireartach, a
+personification of the wild western sea.[586] On the French coast
+fishermen throw harpoons at certain harmful waves called the Three Witch
+Waves, thus drawing their blood and causing them to subside.[587] In
+some cases human victims may have been offered to the rising waters,
+since certain tales speak of a child set floating on the waves, and
+this, repeated every seven years, kept them in their place.[588]
+
+The sea had also its beneficent aspects. The shore was "a place of
+revelation of science," and the sea sympathised with human griefs. At
+the Battle of Ventry "the sea chattered, telling the losses, and the
+waves raised a heavy, woeful great moan in wailing them."[589] In other
+cases in Ireland, by a spell put on the waves, or by the intuitive
+knowledge of the listener, it was revealed that they were wailing for a
+death or describing some distant event.[590] In the beautiful song sung
+by the wife of Cael, "the wave wails against the shore for his death,"
+and in Welsh myth the waves bewailed the death of Dylan, "son of the
+wave," and were eager to avenge it. The noise of the waves rushing into
+the vale of Conwy were his dying groans.[591] In Ireland the roaring of
+the sea was thought to be prophetic of a king's death or the coming of
+important news; and there, too, certain great waves were celebrated in
+story--Clidna's, Tuaithe's, and Rudhraidhe's.[592] Nine waves, or the
+ninth wave, partly because of the sacred nature of the number nine,
+partly because of the beneficent character of the waves, had a great
+importance. They formed a barrier against invasion, danger, or
+pestilence, or they had a healing effect.[593]
+
+The wind was also regarded as a living being whose power was to be
+dreaded. It punished King Loegaire for breaking his oath. But it was
+also personified as a god Vintius, equated with Pollux and worshipped by
+Celtic sailors, or with Mars, the war-god who, in his destructive
+aspect, was perhaps regarded as the nearest analogue to a god of stormy
+winds.[594] Druids and Celtic priestesses claimed the power of
+controlling the winds, as did wizards and witches in later days. This
+they did, according to Christian writers, by the aid of demons, perhaps
+the old divinities of the air. Bishop Agobard describes how the
+_tempestarii_ raised tempests which destroyed the fruits of the earth,
+and drew "aerial ships" from Magonia, whither the ships carried these
+fruits.[595] Magonia may be the upper air ruled over by a sky god
+Magounos or Mogounos, equated with Apollo.[596] The winds may have been
+his servants, ruled also by earthly magicians. Like Yahweh, as conceived
+by Hebrew poets, he "bringeth the winds out of his treasures," and
+"maketh lightnings with rain."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[556] Gildas ii. 4.
+
+[557] Jocelyn, _Vila Kentig._ c. xxxii.
+
+[558] _Trip. Life_, 315.
+
+[559] _LL_ 12_b_. The translation is from D'Arbois, ii. 250 f; cf.
+O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 190.
+
+[560] _RC_ xxii. 400.
+
+[561] _RC_ xii. 109.
+
+[562] Petrie, _Tara_, 34; _RC_ vi. 168; _LU_ 118.
+
+[563] Joyce, _OCR_ 50.
+
+[564] D'Achery, _Spicelegium_, v. 216; Sebillot, i. 16 f., 56, 211.
+
+[565] Gregory of Tours, _Hist._ ii. 10, speaks of the current belief in
+the divinity of waters, birds, and beasts.
+
+[566] Sebillot, i. 9, 35, 75, 247, etc.
+
+[567] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 273; Cormac, 87; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxiii., _RC_ xv.
+307.
+
+[568] Miss Hull, 170, 187, 193; _IT_ i. 214; Leahy, i. 126.
+
+[569] _IT_ i. 287.
+
+[570] Henderson, _Irish Texts_, ii. 210.
+
+[571] _Capit. Karoli Magni_, i. 62; _Leges Luitprand._ ii. 38; Canon 23,
+2nd Coun. of Arles, Hefele, _Councils_, iii. 471; D'Achery, v. 215. Some
+of these attacks were made against Teutonic superstitions, but similar
+superstitions existed among the Celts.
+
+[572] See Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ ii. 498.
+
+[573] A more tolerant note is heard, e.g., in an Irish text which says
+that the spirits which appeared of old were divine ministrants not
+demoniacal, while angels helped the ancients because they followed
+natural truth. "Cormac's Sword," _IT_ iii. 220-221. Cf. p. 152, _supra_.
+
+[574] Caesar, vi. 18; Pliny xxii. 14. Pliny speaks of culling mistletoe
+on the sixth day of the moon, which is to them the beginning of months
+and years (_sexta luna, quae principia_, etc.). This seems to make the
+sixth, not the first, day of the moon that from which the calculation
+was made. But the meaning is that mistletoe was culled on the sixth day
+of the moon, and that the moon was that by which months and years were
+measured. _Luna_, not _sexta luna_, is in apposition with _quae_. Traces
+of the method of counting by nights or by the moon survive locally in
+France, and the usage is frequent in Irish and Welsh literature. See my
+article "Calendar" (Celtic) in Hastings' _Encyclop. of Religion and
+Ethics_, iii. 78 f.
+
+[575] Delocke, "La Procession dite La Lunade," _RC_ ix. 425.
+
+[576] Monnier, 174, 222; Fitzgerald, _RC_ iv. 189.
+
+[577] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 154 f.
+
+[578] Pliny, xvi. 45; Johnson, _Journey_, 183; Ramsay, _Scotland in the
+Eighteenth Century_, ii. 449; Sebillot, i. 41 f.; MacCulloch, _Misty
+Isle of Skye_, 236. In Brittany it is thought that girls may conceive by
+the moon's power (_RC_ iii. 452).
+
+[579] Strabo, iii. 4. 16.
+
+[580] Brand, _s.v._ "New Year's Day."
+
+[581] Chambers, _Popular Rhymes_, 35; Sebillot, i. 46, 57 f.
+
+[582] Polybius, v. 78; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 15.
+
+[583] Osborne, _Advice to his Son_ (1656), 79; _RC_ xx. 419, 428.
+
+[584] Aristotle, _Nic. Eth._ iii. 77; _Eud. Eth._ iii. 1. 25; Stobaeus,
+vii. 40; AElian, xii. 22; Jullian, 54; D'Arbois, vi. 218.
+
+[585] Sebillot, i. 119. The custom of throwing something at a "fairy
+eddy," i.e. a dust storm, is well known on Celtic ground and elsewhere.
+
+[586] _Folk-Lore,_ iv. 488; Curtin, _HTI_ 324; Campbell, _The Fians_,
+158. Fian warriors attacked the sea when told it was laughing at them.
+
+[587] _Melusine_, ii. 200.
+
+[588] Sebillot, ii. 170.
+
+[589] Meyer, _Cath. Finntraga_, 40.
+
+[590] _RC_ xvi. 9; _LB_ 32_b_, 55.
+
+[591] Meyer, _op. cit._ 55; Skene, i. 282, 288, 543; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 387.
+
+[592] Meyer, 51; Joyce, _PN_ i. 195, ii. 257; _RC_ xv. 438.
+
+[593] See p. 55, _supra_; _IT_ i. 838, iii. 207; _RC_ ii. 201, ix. 118.
+
+[594] Holder, _s.v._ "Vintius."
+
+[595] Agobard, i. 146.
+
+[596] See Stokes, _RC_ vi. 267.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP.
+
+
+Among the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses, inscriptions,
+votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance of the cult of
+waters and of water divinities. Mr. Gomme argues that Celtic
+water-worship was derived from the pre-Celtic aborigines,[597] but if
+so, the Celts must have had a peculiar aptitude for it, since they were
+so enthusiastic in its observance. What probably happened was that the
+Celts, already worshippers of the waters, freely adopted local cults of
+water wherever they came. Some rivers or river-goddesses in Celtic
+regions seem to posses pre-Celtic names.[598]
+
+Treasures were flung into a sacred lake near Toulouse to cause a
+pestilence to cease. Caepion, who afterwards fished up this treasure,
+fell soon after in battle--a punishment for cupidity, and _aurum
+Tolosanum_ now became an expression for goods dishonestly acquired.[599]
+A yearly festival, lasting three days, took place at Lake Gevaudan.
+Garments, food, and wax were thrown into the waters, and animals were
+sacrificed. On the fourth day, it is said, there never failed to spring
+up a tempest of rain, thunder, and lightning--a strange reward for this
+worship of the lake.[600] S. Columba routed the spirits of a Scottish
+fountain which was worshipped as a god, and the well now became sacred,
+perhaps to the saint himself, who washed in it and blessed it so that it
+cured diseases.[601]
+
+On inscriptions a river name is prefixed by some divine epithet--_dea_,
+_augusta_, and the worshipper records his gratitude for benefits
+received from the divinity or the river itself. Bormanus, Bormo or
+Borvo, Danuvius (the Danube), and Luxovius are found on inscriptions as
+names of river or fountain gods, but goddesses are more
+numerous--Acionna, Aventia, Bormana, Brixia, Carpundia, Clutoida,
+Divona, Sirona, Ura--well-nymphs; and Icauna (the Yonne), Matrona, and
+Sequana (the Seine)--river-goddesses.[602] No inscription to the goddess
+of a lake has yet been found. Some personal names like Dubrogenos (son
+of the Dubron), Enigenus (son of the Aenus), and the belief of
+Virdumarus that one of his ancestors was the Rhine,[603] point to the
+idea that river-divinities might have amours with mortals and beget
+progeny called by their names. In Ireland, Conchobar was so named from
+the river whence his mother Nessa drew water, perhaps because he was a
+child of the river-god.[604]
+
+The name of the water-divinity was sometimes given to the place of his
+or her cult, or to the towns which sprang up on the banks of rivers--the
+divinity thus becoming a tutelary god. Many towns (e.g. Divonne or
+Dyonne, etc.) have names derived from a common Celtic river name Deuona,
+"divine." This name in various forms is found all over the Celtic
+area,[605] and there is little doubt that the Celts, in their onward
+progress, named river after river by the name of the same divinity,
+believing that each new river was a part of his or her kingdom. The name
+was probably first an appellative, then a personal name, the divine
+river becoming a divinity. Deus Nemausus occurs on votive tablets at
+Nimes, the name Nemausus being that of the clear and abundant spring
+there whence flowed the river of the same name. A similar name occurs in
+other regions--Nemesa, a tributary of the Moselle; Nemh, the source of
+the Tara and the former name of the Blackwater; and Nimis, a Spanish
+river mentioned by Appian. Another group includes the Matrona (Marne),
+the Moder, the Madder, the Maronne and Maronna, and others, probably
+derived from a word signifying "mother."[606] The mother-river was that
+which watered a whole region, just as in the Hindu sacred books the
+waters are mothers, sources of fertility. The Celtic mother-rivers were
+probably goddesses, akin to the _Matres_, givers of plenty and
+fertility. In Gaul, Sirona, a river-goddess, is represented like the
+_Matres_. She was associated with Grannos, perhaps as his mother, and
+Professor Rh[^y]s equates the pair with the Welsh Modron and Mabon;
+Modron is probably connected with Matrona.[607] In any case the Celts
+regarded rivers as bestowers of life, health, and plenty, and offered
+them rich gifts and sacrifices.[608]
+
+Gods like Grannos, Borvo, and others, equated with Apollo, presided over
+healing springs, and they are usually associated with goddesses, as
+their husbands or sons. But as the goddesses are more numerous, and as
+most Celtic river names are feminine, female divinities of rivers and
+springs doubtless had the earlier and foremost place, especially as
+their cult was connected with fertility. The gods, fewer in number, were
+all equated with Apollo, but the goddesses were not merged by the Romans
+into the personality of one goddess, since they themselves had their
+groups of river-goddesses, Nymphs and Naiads. Before the Roman conquest
+the cult of water-divinities, friends of mankind, must have formed a
+large part of the popular religion of Gaul, and their names may be
+counted by hundreds. Thermal springs had also their genii, and they were
+appropriated by the Romans, so that the local gods now shared their
+healing powers with Apollo, AEsculapius, and the Nymphs. Thus every
+spring, every woodland brook, every river in glen or valley, the roaring
+cataract, and the lake were haunted by divine beings, mainly thought of
+as beautiful females with whom the _Matres_ were undoubtedly associated.
+There they revealed themselves to their worshippers, and when paganism
+had passed away, they remained as _fees_ or fairies haunting spring, or
+well, or river.[609] Scores of fairy wells still exist, and by them
+mediaeval knights had many a fabled amour with those beautiful beings
+still seen by the "ignorant" but romantic peasant.
+
+Sanctuaries were erected at these springs by grateful worshippers, and
+at some of them festivals were held, or they were the resort of
+pilgrims. As sources of fertility they had a place in the ritual of the
+great festivals, and sacred wells were visited on Midsummer day, when
+also the river-gods claimed their human victims. Some of the goddesses
+were represented by statues or busts in Gallo-Roman times, if not
+earlier, and other images of them which have been found were of the
+nature of _ex votos_, presented by worshippers in gratitude for the
+goddess's healing gifts. Money, ingots of gold or silver, and models of
+limbs or other parts of the body which had been or were desired to be
+healed, were also presented. Gregory of Tours says of the Gauls that
+they "represent in wood or bronze the members in which they suffer, and
+whose healing they desire, and place them in a temple."[610] Contact of
+the model with the divinity brought healing to the actual limbs on the
+principle of sympathetic magic. Many such models have been discovered.
+Thus in the shrine of Dea Sequana was found a vase with over a hundred;
+another contained over eight hundred. Inscriptions were engraved on
+plaques which were fastened to the walls of temples, or placed in
+springs.[611] Leaden tablets with inscriptions were placed in springs by
+those who desired healing or when the waters were low, and on some the
+actual waters are hardly discriminated from the divinities. The latter
+are asked to heal or flow or swell--words which apply more to the waters
+than to them, while the tablets, with their frank animism, also show
+that, in some cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well, only
+some of whom were rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called
+collectively _Niskas_--the Nixies of later tradition, but some have
+personal names--Lerano, Dibona, Dea--showing that they were tending to
+become separate divine personalities. The Peisgi are also appealed to,
+perhaps the later Piskies, unless the word is a corrupt form of a Celtic
+_peiskos_, or the Latin _piscus_, "fish."[612] This is unlikely, as fish
+could not exist in a warm sulphurous spring, though the Celts believed
+in the sacred fish of wells or streams. The fairies now associated with
+wells or with a water-world beneath them, are usually nameless, and only
+in a few cases have a definite name. They, like the older spirits of the
+wells, have generally a beneficent character.[613] Thus in the fountains
+of Logres dwelt damsels who fed the wayfarer with meat and bread, until
+grievous wrong was done them, when they disappeared and the land became
+waste.[614] Occasionally, however, they have a more malevolent
+character.[615]
+
+The spirit of the waters was often embodied in an animal, usually a
+fish. Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring has the form of
+an eel, while in the seventeenth century Highland wells contained fish
+so sacred that no one dared to catch them.[616] In Wales S. Cybi's well
+contained a huge eel in whose virtues the villagers believed, and terror
+prevailed when any one dared to take it from the water. Two sacred fish
+still exist in a holy well at Nant Peris, and are replaced by others
+when they die, the dead fish being buried.[617] This latter act,
+solemnly performed, is a true sign of the divine or sacred character of
+the animal. Many wells with sacred fish exist in Ireland, and the fish
+have usually some supernatural quality--they never alter in size, they
+become invisible, or they take the form of beautiful women.[618] Any one
+destroying such fish was regarded as a sacrilegious person, and
+sometimes a hostile tribe killed and ate the sacred fish of a district
+invaded by them, just as Egyptians of one nome insulted those of another
+by killing their sacred animals.[619] In old Irish beliefs the salmon
+was the fish of knowledge. Thus whoever ate the salmon of Connla's well
+was dowered with the wisdom which had come to them through eating nuts
+from the hazels of knowledge around the well. In this case the sacred
+fish was eaten, but probably by certain persons only--those who had the
+right to do so. Sinend, who went to seek inspiration from the well,
+probably by eating one of its salmon, was overwhelmed by its waters. The
+legend of the salmon is perhaps based on old ritual practices of the
+occasional eating of a divine animal. In other cases, legends of a
+miraculous supply of fish from sacred wells are perhaps later Christian
+traditions of former pagan beliefs or customs concerning magical methods
+of increasing a sacred or totem animal species, like those used in
+Central Australia and New Guinea.[620] The frog is sometimes the sacred
+animal, and this recalls the _Maerchen_ of the Frog Bridegroom living in
+a well, who insisted on marrying the girl who drew its waters. Though
+this tale is not peculiar to the Celts, it is not improbable that the
+divine animal guardian of a well may have become the hero of a
+folk-tale, especially as such wells were sometimes tabu to women.[621] A
+fly was the guardian spirit of S. Michael's well in Banffshire. Auguries
+regarding health were drawn from its movements, and it was believed that
+the fly, when it grew old, transmigrated into another.[622]
+
+Such beliefs were not peculiarly Celtic. They are found in all European
+folk-lore, and they are still alive among savages--the animal being
+itself divine or the personification of a divinity. A huge sacred eel
+was worshipped by the Fijians; in North America and elsewhere there were
+serpent guardians of the waters; and the Semites worshipped the fish of
+sacred wells as incarnations or symbols of a god.
+
+Later Celtic folk-belief associated monstrous and malevolent beings with
+rivers and lakes. These may be the older divinities to whom a demoniac
+form has been given, but even in pagan times such monstrous beings may
+have been believed in, or they may be survivals of the more primitive
+monstrous guardians of the waters. The last were dragons or serpents,
+conventional forms of the reptiles which once dwelt in watery places,
+attacking all who came near. This old idea certainly survived in Irish
+and Highland belief, for the Fians conquered huge dragons or serpents in
+lochs, or saints chained them to the bottom of the waters. Hence the
+common place-name of Loch na piast, "Loch of the Monster." In other
+tales they emerge and devour the impious or feast on the dead.[623] The
+_Dracs_ of French superstition--river monsters who assume human form and
+drag down victims to the depths, where they devour them--resemble these.
+
+The _Each Uisge_, or "Water-horse," a horse with staring eyes, webbed
+feet, and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and
+lures the unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to
+women, some of whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of
+water-weed in his hair, and only escape with difficulty. Such a
+water-horse was forced to drag the chariot of S. Fechin of Fore, and
+under his influence became "gentler than any other horse."[624] Many
+Highland lochs are still haunted by this dreaded being, and he is also
+known in Ireland and France, where, however, he has more of a tricky and
+less of a demoniac nature.[625] His horse form is perhaps connected with
+the similar form ascribed to Celtic water-divinities. Manannan's horses
+were the waves, and he was invariably associated with a horse. Epona,
+the horse-goddess, was perhaps originally goddess of a spring, and, like
+the _Matres_, she is sometimes connected with the waters.[626] Horses
+were also sacrificed to river-divinities.[627] But the beneficent
+water-divinities in their horse form have undergone a curious
+distortion, perhaps as the result of later Christian influences. The
+name of one branch of the Fomorians, the Goborchinn, means the
+"Horse-headed," and one of their kings was Eochaid Echchenn, or
+"Horse-head."[628] Whether these have any connection with the
+water-horse is uncertain.
+
+The foaming waters may have suggested another animal personification,
+since the name of the Boyne in Ptolemy, [Greek: bououinda], is derived
+from a primitive _bou-s_, "ox," and _vindo-s_, "white," in Irish _bo
+find_, "white cow."[629] But it is not certain that this or the Celtic
+cult of the bull was connected with the belief in the _Tarbh Uisge_, or
+"Water-bull," which had no ears and could assume other shapes. It dwells
+in lochs and is generally friendly to man, occasionally emerging to mate
+with ordinary cows. In the Isle of Man the _Tarroo Ushtey_, however,
+begets monsters.[630] These Celtic water-monsters have a curious
+resemblance to the Australian _Bunyip_.
+
+The _Uruisg_, often confused with the brownie, haunts lonely places and
+waterfalls, and, according to his mood, helps or harms the wayfarer. His
+appearance is that of a man with shaggy hair and beard.[631] In Wales
+the _afanc_ is a water-monster, though the word first meant "dwarf,"
+then "water-dwarf," of whom many kinds existed. They correspond to the
+Irish water-dwarfs, the _Luchorpain_, descended with the Fomorians and
+Goborchinn from Ham.[632]
+
+In other cases the old water beings have a more pleasing form, like the
+syrens and other fairy beings who haunt French rivers, or the mermaids
+of Irish estuaries.[633] In Celtic France and Britain lake fairies are
+connected with a water-world like that of Elysium tales, the region of
+earlier divinities.[634] They unite with mortals, who, as in the
+Swan-maiden tales, lose their fairy brides through breaking a tabu. In
+many Welsh tales the bride is obtained by throwing bread and cheese on
+the waters, when she appears with an old man who has all the strength of
+youth. He presents his daughter and a number of fairy animals to the
+mortal. When she disappears into the waters after the breaking of the
+tabu, the lake is sometimes drained in order to recover her; the father
+then appears and threatens to submerge the whole district. Father and
+daughters are earlier lake divinities, and in the bread and cheese we
+may see a relic of the offerings to these.[635]
+
+Human sacrifice to water-divinities is suggested by the belief that
+water-monsters devour human beings, and by the tradition that a river
+claims its toll of victims every year. In popular rhymes the annual
+character of the sacrifice is hinted at, and Welsh legend tells of a
+voice heard once a year from rivers or lakes, crying, "The hour is come,
+but the man is not."[636] Here there is the trace of an abandoned custom
+of sacrifice and of the traditional idea of the anger of the divinity at
+being neglected. Such spirits or gods, like the water-monsters, would be
+ever on the watch to capture those who trespassed on their domain. In
+some cases the victim is supposed to be claimed on Midsummer eve, the
+time of the sacrifice in the pagan period.[637] The spirits of wells had
+also a harmful aspect to those, at least, who showed irreverence in
+approaching them. This is seen in legends about the danger of looking
+rashly into a well or neglecting to cover it, or in the belief that one
+must not look back after visiting the well. Spirits of wells were also
+besought to do harm to enemies.
+
+Legends telling of the danger of removing or altering a well, or of the
+well moving elsewhere because a woman washed her hands in it, point to
+old tabus concerning wells. Boand, wife of Nechtain, went to the fairy
+well which he and his cup-bearers alone might visit, and when she showed
+her contempt for it, the waters rose and destroyed her. They now flow as
+the river Boyne. Sinend met with a similar fate for intruding on
+Connla's well, in this case the pursuing waters became the Shannon.[638]
+These are variants of a story which might be used to explain the origin
+of any river, but the legends suggest that certain wells were tabu to
+women because certain branches of knowledge, taught by the well, must be
+reserved for men.[639] The legends said in effect, "See what came of
+women obtruding beyond their proper sphere." Savage "mysteries" are
+usually tabu to women, who also exclude men from their sacred rites. On
+the other hand, as all tribal lore was once in the hands of the wise
+woman, such tabus and legends may have arisen when men began to claim
+such lore. In other legends women are connected with wells, as the
+guardians who must keep them locked up save when water was drawn. When
+the woman neglected to replace the cover, the waters burst forth,
+overwhelming her, and formed a loch.[640] The woman is the priestess of
+the well who, neglecting part of its ritual, is punished. Even in recent
+times we find sacred wells in charge of a woman who instructs the
+visitors in the due ritual to be performed.[641] If such legends and
+survivals thus point to former Celtic priestesses of wells, these are
+paralleled by the Norse Horgabrudar, guardians of wells, now elves
+living in the waters.[642] That such legends are based on the ritual of
+well-worship is suggested by Boand's walking three times _widdershins_
+round the well, instead of the customary _deiseil_. The due ritual must
+be observed, and the stories are a warning against its neglect.
+
+In spite of twenty centuries of Christianity and the anathemas of saints
+and councils, the old pagan practices at healing wells have survived--a
+striking instance of human conservatism. S. Patrick found the pagans of
+his day worshipping a well called _Slan_, "health-giving," and offering
+sacrifices to it,[643] and the Irish peasant to-day has no doubt that
+there is something divine about his holy wells. The Celts brought the
+belief in the divinity of springs and wells with them, but would
+naturally adopt local cults wherever they found them. Afterwards the
+Church placed the old pagan wells under the protection of saints, but
+part of the ritual often remained unchanged. Hence many wells have been
+venerated for ages by different races and through changes in religion
+and polity. Thus at the thermal springs of Vicarello offerings have been
+found which show that their cult has continued from the Stone Age,
+through the Bronze Age, to the days of Roman civilisation, and so into
+modern times; nor is this a solitary instance.[644] But it serves to
+show that all races, high and low, preserve the great outlines of
+primitive nature religion unchanged. In all probability the ritual of
+the healing wells has also remained in great part unaltered, and
+wherever it is found it follows the same general type. The patient
+perambulated the well three times _deiseil_ or sun-wise, taking care not
+to utter a word. Then he knelt at the well and prayed to the divinity
+for his healing. In modern times the saint, but occasionally the well
+itself, is prayed to.[645] Then he drank of the waters, bathed in them,
+or laved his limbs or sores, probably attended by the priestess of the
+well. Having paid her dues, he made an offering to the divinity of the
+well, and affixed the bandage or part of his clothing to the well or a
+tree near by, that through it he might be in continuous _rapport_ with
+the healing influences. Ritual formulae probably accompanied these acts,
+but otherwise no word was spoken, and the patient must not look back on
+leaving the well. Special times, Beltane, Midsummer, or August 1st, were
+favourable for such visits,[646] and where a patient was too ill to
+present himself at the well, another might perform the ritual for
+him.[647]
+
+The rag or clothing hung on the tree seems to connect the spirit of the
+tree with that of the well, and tree and well are often found together.
+But sometimes it is thrown into the well, just as the Gaulish villagers
+of S. Gregory's day threw offerings of cloth and wool into a sacred
+lake.[648] The rag is even now regarded in the light of an offering, and
+such offerings, varying from valuable articles of clothing to mere rags,
+are still hung on sacred trees by the folk. It thus probably has always
+had a sacrificial aspect in the ritual of the well, but as magic and
+religion constantly blend, it had also its magical aspect. The rag, once
+in contact with the patient, transferred his disease to the tree, or,
+being still subtly connected with him, through it the healing properties
+passed over to him.
+
+The offering thrown into the well--a pin, coin, etc., may also have this
+double aspect. The sore is often pricked or rubbed with the pin as if to
+transfer the disease to the well, and if picked up by another person,
+the disease may pass to him. This is also true of the coin.[649] But
+other examples show the sacrificial nature of the pin or other trifle,
+which is probably symbolic or a survival of a more costly offering. In
+some cases it is thought that those who do not leave it at the well from
+which they have drunk will die of thirst, and where a coin is offered it
+is often supposed to disappear, being taken by the spirit of the
+well.[650] The coin has clearly the nature of an offering, and sometimes
+it must be of gold or silver, while the antiquity of the custom on
+Celtic ground is seen by the classical descriptions of the coins
+glittering in the pool of Clitumnus and of the "gold of Toulouse" hid in
+sacred tanks.[651] It is also an old and widespread belief that all
+water belongs to some divine or monstrous guardian, who will not part
+with any of it without a _quid pro quo_. In many cases the two rites of
+rag and pin are not both used, and this may show that originally they
+had the same purpose--magical or sacrificial, or perhaps both. Other
+sacrifices were also made--an animal, food, or an _ex voto_, the last
+occurring even in late survivals as at S. Thenew's Well, Glasgow, where
+even in the eighteenth century tin cut to represent the diseased member
+was placed on the tree, or at S. Winifred's Well in Wales, where
+crutches were left.
+
+Certain waters had the power of ejecting the demon of madness. Besides
+drinking, the patient was thrown into the waters, the shock being
+intended to drive the demon away, as elsewhere demons are exorcised by
+flagellation or beating. The divinity of the waters aided the process,
+and an offering was usually made to him. In other cases the sacred
+waters were supposed to ward off disease from the district or from those
+who drank of them. Or, again, they had the power of conferring
+fertility. Women made pilgrimages to wells, drank or bathed in the
+waters, implored the spirit or saint to grant them offspring, and made a
+due offering.[652] Spirit or saint, by a transfer of his power, produced
+fruitfulness, but the idea was in harmony with the recognised power of
+water to purify, strengthen, and heal. Women, for a similar reason,
+drank or washed in the waters or wore some articles dipped in them, in
+order to have an easy delivery or abundance of milk.[653]
+
+The waters also gave oracles, their method of flowing, the amount of
+water in the well, the appearance or non-appearance of bubbles at the
+surface when an offering was thrown in, the sinking or floating of
+various articles, all indicating whether a cure was likely to occur,
+whether fortune or misfortune awaited the inquirer, or, in the case of
+girls, whether their lovers would be faithful. The movements of the
+animal guardian of the well were also ominous to the visitor.[654]
+Rivers or river divinities were also appealed to. In cases of suspected
+fidelity the Celts dwelling by the Rhine placed the newly-born child in
+a shield on the waters. If it floated the mother was innocent; if it
+sank it was allowed to drown, and she was put to death.[655] Girls whose
+purity was suspected were similarly tested, and S. Gregory of Tours
+tells how a woman accused of adultery was proved by being thrown into
+the Saone.[656] The mediaeval witch ordeal by water is connected with
+this custom, which is, however, widespread.[657]
+
+The malevolent aspect of the spirit of the well is seen in the "cursing
+wells" of which it was thought that when some article inscribed with an
+enemy's name was thrown into them with the accompaniment of a curse, the
+spirit of the well would cause his death. In some cases the curse was
+inscribed on a leaden tablet thrown into the waters, just as, in other
+cases, a prayer for the offerer's benefit was engraved on it. Or, again,
+objects over which a charm had been said were placed in a well that the
+victim who drew water might be injured. An excellent instance of a
+cursing-well is that of Fynnon Elian in Denbigh, which must once have
+had a guardian priestess, for in 1815 an old woman who had charge of it
+presided at the ceremony. She wrote the name of the victim in a book,
+receiving a gift at the same time. A pin was dropped into the well in
+the name of the victim, and through it and through knowledge of his
+name, the spirit of the well acted upon him to his hurt.[658] Obviously
+rites like these, in which magic and religion mingle, are not purely
+Celtic, but it is of interest to note their existence in Celtic lands
+and among Celtic folk.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[597] _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 104 f.
+
+[598] D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 132, 169; Dottin, 240.
+
+[599] Justin, xxxii. 3; Strabo, iv. 1. 13.
+
+[600] S. Gregory, _In Glor. Conf._ ch. 2. Perhaps the feast and
+offerings were intended to cause rain in time of drought. See p. 321,
+_infra_.
+
+[601] Adamman, _Vita Colum._ ii. 10.
+
+[602] See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[603] D'Arbois, _RC_ x. 168, xiv. 377; _CIL_ xii. 33; Propertius, iv.
+10. 41.
+
+[604] See p. 349, _infra_.
+
+[605] Cf. Ptolemy's [Greek: Deouana] and [Greek: Deouna] (ii. 3. 19, 11.
+29); the Scots and English Dee; the Divy in Wales; Deve, Dive, and
+Divette in France; Devon in England; Deva in Spain (Ptolemy's [Greek:
+Deoua], ii. 6. 8). The Shannon is surnamed even in the seventh century
+"the goddess" (_Trip. Life_, 313).
+
+[606] Holder, _s.v._; D'Arbois, _PH_ ii. 119, thinks _Matrona_ is
+Ligurian. But it seems to have strong Celtic affinities.
+
+[607] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 27-29, _RC_ iv. 137.
+
+[608] On the whole subject see Pictet, "Quelques noms celtiques de
+rivieres," _RC_ ii. 1 f. Orosius, v. 15. 6, describes the sacrifices of
+gold, silver, and horses, made to the Rhone.
+
+[609] Maury, 18. By extension of this belief any divinity might appear
+by the haunted spring. S. Patrick and his synod of bishops at an Irish
+well were supposed to be _sid_ or gods (p. 64, _supra_.) By a fairy well
+Jeanne d'Arc had her first vision.
+
+[610] Greg. Tours, _Vita Patr._ c. 6.
+
+[611] See Reinach, _Catal. Sommaire_, 23, 115; Baudot, _Rapport sur les
+fouilles faits aux sources de la Seine_, ii. 120; _RC_ ii. 26.
+
+[612] For these tablets see Nicolson, _Keltic Studies_, 131 f.; Jullian,
+_RC_ 1898.
+
+[613] Sebillot, ii. 195.
+
+[614] Prologue to Chrestien's _Conte du Graal_.
+
+[615] Sebillot, ii. 202 f.
+
+[616] Ibid. 196-197; Martin, 140-141; Dalyell, 411.
+
+[617] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 366; _Folk-Lore_, viii. 281. If the fish
+appeared when an invalid drank of the well, this was a good omen. For
+the custom of burying sacred animals, see Herod, ii. 74; AElian, xiii.
+26.
+
+[618] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 92.
+
+[619] _Trip. Life_, 113; Tigernach, _Annals_, A.D. 1061.
+
+[620] Mackinley, 184.
+
+[621] Burne, _Shropshire Folk-Lore_, 416; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 145.
+
+[622] _Old Stat. Account_, xii. 465.
+
+[623] S. Patrick, when he cleared Ireland of serpents, dealt in this way
+with the worst specimens. S. Columba quelled a monster which terrified
+the dwellers by the Ness. Joyce, _PN_ i. 197; Adamnan, _Vita Columb._
+ii. 28; Kennedy, 12, 82, 246; _RC_ iv. 172, 186.
+
+[624] _RC_ xii. 347.
+
+[625] For the water-horse, see Campbell, _WHT_ iv. 307; Macdongall, 294;
+Campbell, _Superstitions_, 203; and for the Manx _Glashtyn_, a kind of
+water-horse, see Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 285. For French cognates, see
+Berenger-Feraud, _Superstitions et Survivances_, i. 349 f.
+
+[626] Reinach, _CMR_ i. 63.
+
+[627] Orosius, v. 15. 6.
+
+[628] _LU_ 2_a_. Of Eochaid is told a variant of the Midas story--the
+discovery of his horse's ears. This is also told of Labraid Lore (_RC_
+ii. 98; Kennedy, 256) and of King Marc'h in Brittany and in Wales (Le
+Braz, ii. 96; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ 233). Other variants are found in
+non-Celtic regions, so the story has no mythological significance on
+Celtic ground.
+
+[629] Ptol. ii. 2. 7.
+
+[630] Campbell, _WHT_ iv. 300 f.; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 284; Waldron, _Isle
+of Man_, 147.
+
+[631] Macdougall, 296; Campbell, _Superstitions_, 195. For the Uruisg as
+Brownie, see _WHT_ ii. 9; Graham, _Scenery of Perthshire_, 19.
+
+[632] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ ii. 431, 469, _HL_, 592; _Book of Taliesin_, vii.
+135.
+
+[633] Sebillot, ii. 340; _LL_ 165; _IT_ i. 699.
+
+[634] Sebillot, ii. 409.
+
+[635] See Pughe, _The Physicians of Myddfai_, 1861 (these were
+descendants of a water-fairy); Rh[^y]s, _Y Cymmrodor_, iv. 164;
+Hartland, _Arch. Rev._ i. 202. Such water-gods with lovely daughters are
+known in most mythologies--the Greek Nereus and the Nereids, the
+Slavonic Water-king, and the Japanese god Ocean-Possessor (Ralston,
+_Songs of the Russian People_, 148; Chamberlain, _Ko-ji-ki_, 120).
+Manannan had nine daughters (Wood-Martin, i. 135).
+
+[636] Sebillot, ii. 338, 344; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 243; Henderson,
+_Folk-Lore of the N. Counties_, 262. Cf. the rhymes, "L'Arguenon veut
+chaque annee son poisson," the "fish" being a human victim, and
+
+  "Blood-thirsty Dee
+   Each year needs three,
+   But bonny Don,
+   She needs none."
+
+[637] Sebillot, ii. 339.
+
+[638] _Rendes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 315, 457. Other instances of
+punishment following misuse of a well are given in Sebillot, ii. 192;
+Rees, 520, 523. An Irish lake no longer healed after a hunter swam his
+mangy hounds through it (Joyce, _PN_ ii. 90). A similar legend occurs
+with the Votiaks, one of whose sacred lakes was removed to its present
+position because a woman washed dirty clothes in it (_L'Anthropologie_,
+xv. 107).
+
+[639] Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 392.
+
+[640] Girald. Cambr. _Itin. Hib._ ii. 9; Joyce, _OCR_ 97; Kennedy, 281;
+O'Grady, i. 233; Skene, ii. 59; Campbell, _WHT_ ii. 147. The waters
+often submerge a town, now seen below the waves--the town of Is in
+Armorica (Le Braz, i. p. xxxix), or the towers under Lough Neagh. In
+some Welsh instances a man is the culprit (Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 379). In
+the case of Lough Neagh the keeper of the well was Liban, who lived on
+in the waters as a mermaid. Later she was caught and received the
+baptismal name of Muirghenn, "sea-birth." Here the myth of a
+water-goddess, said to have been baptized, is attached to the legend of
+the careless guardian of a spring, with whom she is identified (O'Grady,
+ii. 184, 265).
+
+[641] Roberts, _Cambrian Pop. Antiq._ 246; Hunt, _Popular Romances_,
+291; _New Stat. Account_, x. 313.
+
+[642] Thorpe, _Northern Myth._ ii. 78.
+
+[643] Joyce, _PN_ ii. 84. _Slan_ occurs in many names of wells.
+Well-worship is denounced in the canons of the Fourth Council of Arles.
+
+[644] Cartailhac, _L'Age de Pierre_, 74; Bulliot et Thiollier, _Mission
+de S. Martin_, 60.
+
+[645] Sebillot, ii. 284.
+
+[646] Dalyell, 79-80; Sebillot, ii. 282, 374; see p. 266, _infra_.
+
+[647] I have compiled this account of the ritual from notices of the
+modern usages in various works. See, e.g., Moore, _Folk-Lore_, v. 212;
+Mackinley, _passim_; Hope, _Holy Wells_; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_; Sebillot, 175
+f.; Dixon, _Gairloch_, 150 f.
+
+[648] Brand, ii. 68; Greg. _In Glor. Conf._ c. 2.
+
+[649] Sebillot, ii. 293, 296; _Folk-Lore_, iv. 55.
+
+[650] Mackinley, 194; Sebillot, ii. 296.
+
+[651] _Folk-Lore_, iii. 67; _Athenaeum_, 1893, 415; Pliny, _Ep._ viii. 8;
+Strabo, iv. 287; Diod. Sic. v. 9.
+
+[652] Walker, _Proc. Soc. Ant. Scot._ vol. v.; Sebillot, ii. 232. In
+some early Irish instances a worm swallowed with the waters by a woman
+causes pregnancy. See p. 352, _infra_.
+
+[653] Sebillot, ii. 235-236.
+
+[654] See Le Braz, i. 61; _Folk-Lore_, v. 214; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 364;
+Dalyell, 506-507; Scott, _Minstrelsy_, Introd. xliii; Martin, 7;
+Sebillot, ii. 242 f.; _RC_ ii. 486.
+
+[655] Jullian, _Ep. to Maximin_, 16. The practice may have been
+connected with that noted by Aristotle, of plunging the newly-born into
+a river, to strengthen it, as he says (_Pol._ vii. 15. 2), but more
+probably as a baptismal or purificatory rite. See p. 309, _infra_.
+
+[656] Lefevre, _Les Gaulois_, 109; Michelet, _Origines du droit
+francais_, 268.
+
+[657] See examples of its use in Post, _Grundriss der Ethnol.
+Jurisprudenz_, ii. 459 f.
+
+[658] Roberts, _Cambrian Popular Antiquities_, 246.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP.
+
+
+The Celts had their own cult of trees, but they adopted local
+cults--Ligurian, Iberian, and others. The _Fagus Deus_ (the divine
+beech), the _Sex arbor_ or _Sex arbores_ of Pyrenean inscriptions, and
+an anonymous god represented by a conifer on an altar at Toulouse,
+probably point to local Ligurian tree cults continued by the Celts into
+Roman times.[659] Forests were also personified or ruled by a single
+goddess, like _Dea Arduinna_ of the Ardennes and _Dea Abnoba_ of the
+Black Forest.[660] But more primitive ideas prevailed, like that which
+assigned a whole class of tree-divinities to a forest, e.g. the _Fatae
+Dervones_, spirits of the oak-woods of Northern Italy.[661] Groups of
+trees like _Sex arbores_ were venerated, perhaps for their height,
+isolation, or some other peculiarity.
+
+The Celts made their sacred places in dark groves, the trees being hung
+with offerings or with the heads of victims. Human sacrifices were hung
+or impaled on trees, e.g. by the warriors of Boudicca.[662] These, like
+the offerings still placed by the folk on sacred trees, were attached to
+them because the trees were the abode of spirits or divinities who in
+many cases had power over vegetation.
+
+Pliny said of the Celts: "They esteem nothing more sacred than the
+mistletoe and the tree on which it grows. But apart from this they
+choose oak-woods for their sacred groves, and perform no sacred rite
+without using oak branches."[663] Maximus of Tyre also speaks of the
+Celtic (? German) image of Zeus as a lofty oak, and an old Irish
+glossary gives _daur_, "oak," as an early Irish name for "god," and
+glosses it by _dia_, "god."[664] The sacred need-fire may have been
+obtained by friction from oak-wood, and it is because of the old
+sacredness of the oak that a piece of its wood is still used as a
+talisman in Brittany.[665] Other Aryan folk besides the Celts regarded
+the oak as the symbol of a high god, of the sun or the sky,[666] but
+probably this was not its earliest significance. Oak forests were once
+more extensive over Europe than they are now, and the old tradition that
+men once lived on acorns has been shown to be well-founded by the
+witness of archaeological finds, e.g. in Northern Italy.[667] A people
+living in an oak region and subsisting in part on acorns might easily
+take the oak as a representative of the spirit of vegetation or growth.
+It was long-lived, its foliage was a protection, it supplied food, its
+wood was used as fuel, and it was thus clearly the friend of man. For
+these reasons, and because it was the most abiding and living thing men
+knew, it became the embodiment of the spirits of life and growth.
+Folk-lore survivals show that the spirit of vegetation in the shape of
+his representative was annually slain while yet in full vigour, that his
+life might benefit all things and be passed on undiminished to his
+successor.[668] Hence the oak or a human being representing the spirit
+of vegetation, or both together, were burned in the Midsummer fires.
+How, then, did the oak come to symbolise a god equated with Zeus. Though
+the equation may be worthless, it is possible that the connection lay in
+the fact that Zeus and Juppiter had agricultural functions, or that,
+when the equation was made, the earlier spirit of vegetation had become
+a divinity with functions resembling those of Zeus. The fires were
+kindled to recruit the sun's life; they were fed with oak-wood, and in
+them an oak or a human victim representing the spirit embodied in the
+oak was burned. Hence it may have been thought that the sun was
+strengthened by the fire residing in the sacred oak; it was thus "the
+original storehouse or reservoir of the fire which was from time to time
+drawn out to feed the sun."[669] The oak thus became the symbol of a
+bright god also connected with growth. But, to judge by folk survivals,
+the older conception still remained potent, and tree or human victim
+affected for good all vegetable growth as well as man's life, while at
+the same time the fire strengthened the sun.
+
+Dr. Evans argues that "the original holy object within the central
+triliths of Stonehenge was a sacred tree," an oak, image of the Celtic
+Zeus. The tree and the stones, once associated with ancestor worship,
+had become symbols of "a more celestial Spirit or Spirits than those of
+departed human beings."[670] But Stonehenge has now been proved to have
+been in existence before the arrival of the Celts, hence such a cult
+must have been pre-Celtic, though it may quite well have been adopted by
+the Celts. Whether this hypothetical cult was practised by a tribe, a
+group of tribes, or by the whole people, must remain obscure, and,
+indeed, it may well be questioned whether Stonehenge was ever more than
+the scene of some ancestral rites.
+
+Other trees--the yew, the cypress, the alder, and the ash, were
+venerated, to judge by what Lucan relates of the sacred grove at
+Marseilles. The Irish Druids attributed special virtues to the hazel,
+rowan, and yew, the wood of which was used in magical ceremonies
+described in Irish texts.[671] Fires of rowan were lit by the Druids of
+rival armies, and incantations said over them in order to discomfit the
+opposing host,[672] and the wood of all these trees is still believed to
+be efficacious against fairies and witches.
+
+The Irish _bile_ was a sacred tree, of great age, growing over a holy
+well or fort. Five of them are described in the _Dindsenchas_, and one
+was an oak, which not only yielded acorns, but nuts and apples.[673] The
+mythic trees of Elysium had the same varied fruitage, and the reason in
+both cases is perhaps the fact that when the cultivated apple took the
+place of acorns and nuts as a food staple, words signifying "nut" or
+"acorn" were transferred to the apple. A myth of trees on which all
+these fruits grew might then easily arise. Another Irish _bile_ was a
+yew described in a poem as "a firm strong god," while such phrases in
+this poem as "word-pure man," "judgment of origin," "spell of
+knowledge," may have some reference to the custom of writing divinations
+in ogham on rods of yew. The other _bile_ were ash-trees, and from one
+of them the _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree," were named--perhaps a
+totem-clan.[674] The lives of kings and chiefs appear to have been
+connected with these trees, probably as representatives of the spirit of
+vegetation embodied in the tree, and under their shadow they were
+inaugurated. But as a substitute for the king was slain, so doubtless
+these pre-eminent sacred trees were too sacred, too much charged with
+supernatural force, to be cut down and burned, and the yearly ritual
+would be performed with another tree. But in time of feud one tribe
+gloried in destroying the _bile_ of another; and even in the tenth
+century, when the _bile maighe Adair_ was destroyed by Maelocohlen the
+act was regarded with horror. "But, O reader, this deed did not pass
+unpunished."[675] Of another _bile_, that of Borrisokane, it was said
+that any house in which a fragment of it was burned would itself be
+destroyed by fire.[676]
+
+Tribal and personal names point to belief in descent from tree gods or
+spirits and perhaps to totemism. The Eburones were the yew-tree tribe
+(_eburos_); the Bituriges perhaps had the mistletoe for their symbol,
+and their surname Vivisci implies that they were called "Mistletoe
+men."[677] If _bile_ (tree) is connected with the name Bile, that of the
+ancestor of the Milesians, this may point to some myth of descent from a
+sacred tree, as in the case of the _Fir Bile_, or "men of the
+tree."[678] Other names like Guidgen (_Viduo-genos_, "son of the tree"),
+Dergen (_Dervo-genos_, "son of the oak"), Guerngen (_Verno-genos_, "son
+of the alder"), imply filiation to a tree. Though these names became
+conventional, they express what had once been a living belief. Names
+borrowed directly from trees are also found---Eburos or Ebur, "yew,"
+Derua or Deruacus, "oak," etc.
+
+The veneration of trees growing beside burial mounds or megalithic
+monuments was probably a pre-Celtic cult continued by the Celts. The
+tree embodied the ghost of the person buried under it, but such a ghost
+could then hardly be differentiated from a tree spirit or divinity. Even
+now in Celtic districts extreme veneration exists for trees growing in
+cemeteries and in other places. It is dangerous to cut them down or to
+pluck a leaf or branch from them, while in Breton churchyards the yew is
+thought to spread a root to the mouth of each corpse.[679] The story of
+the grave of Cyperissa, daughter of a Celtic king in the Danube region,
+from which first sprang the "mournful cypress,"[680] is connected with
+universal legends of trees growing from the graves of lovers until their
+branches intertwine. These embody the belief that the spirit of the dead
+is in the tree, which was thus in all likelihood the object of a cult.
+Instances of these legends occur in Celtic story. Yew-stakes driven
+through the bodies of Naisi and Deirdre to keep them apart, became
+yew-trees the tops of which embraced over Armagh Cathedral. A yew sprang
+from the grave of Baile Mac Buain, and an apple-tree from that of his
+lover Aillinn, and the top of each had the form of their heads.[681] The
+identification of tree and ghost is here complete.
+
+The elder, rowan, and thorn are still planted round houses to keep off
+witches, or sprigs of rowan are placed over doorways--a survival from
+the time when they were believed to be tenanted by a beneficent spirit
+hostile to evil influences. In Ireland and the Isle of Man the thorn is
+thought to be the resort of fairies, and they, like the woodland fairies
+or "wood men" are probably representatives of the older tree spirits and
+gods of groves and forests.[682]
+
+Tree-worship was rooted in the oldest nature worship, and the Church had
+the utmost difficulty in suppressing it. Councils fulminated against the
+cult of trees, against offerings to them or the placing of lights before
+them and before wells or stones, and against the belief that certain
+trees were too sacred to be cut down or burned. Heavy fines were levied
+against those who practised these rites, yet still they continued.[683]
+Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, tried to stop the worship of a large
+pear-tree standing in the centre of the town and on which the
+semi-Christian inhabitants hung animals' heads with much ribaldry. At
+last S. Germanus destroyed it, but at the risk of his life. S. Martin of
+Tours was allowed to destroy a temple, but the people would not permit
+him to attack a much venerated pine-tree which stood beside it--an
+excellent example of the way in which the more official paganism fell
+before Christianity, while the older religion of the soil, from which it
+sprang, could not be entirely eradicated.[684] The Church often effected
+a compromise. Images of the gods affixed to trees were replaced by those
+of the Virgin, but with curious results. Legends arose telling how the
+faithful had been led to such trees and there discovered the image of
+the Madonna miraculously placed among the branches.[685] These are
+analogous to the legends of the discovery of images of the Virgin in the
+earth, such images being really those of the _Matres_.
+
+Representations of sacred trees are occasionally met with on coins,
+altars, and _ex votos_.[686] If the interpretation be correct which sees
+a representation of part of the Cuchulainn legend on the Paris and
+Treves altars, the trees figured there would not necessarily be sacred.
+But otherwise they may depict sacred trees.
+
+We now turn to Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The Druids held
+nothing more sacred than this plant and the tree on which it grew,
+probably an oak. Of it groves were formed, while branches of the oak
+were used in all religious rites. Everything growing on the oak had been
+sent from heaven, and the presence of the mistletoe showed that God had
+selected the tree for especial favour. Rare as it was, when found the
+mistletoe was the object of a careful ritual. On the sixth day of the
+moon it was culled. Preparations for a sacrifice and feast were made
+beneath the tree, and two white bulls whose horns had never been bound
+were brought there. A Druid, clad in white, ascended the tree and cut
+the mistletoe with a golden sickle. As it fell it was caught in a white
+cloth; the bulls were then sacrificed, and prayer was made that God
+would make His gift prosperous to those on whom He had bestowed it. The
+mistletoe was called "the universal healer," and a potion made from it
+caused barren animals to be fruitful. It was also a remedy against all
+poisons.[687] We can hardly believe that such an elaborate ritual merely
+led up to the medico-magical use of the mistletoe. Possibly, of course,
+the rite was an attenuated survival of something which had once been
+more important, but it is more likely that Pliny gives only a few
+picturesque details and passes by the _rationale_ of the ritual. He does
+not tell us who the "God" of whom he speaks was, perhaps the sun-god or
+the god of vegetation. As to the "gift," it was probably in his mind the
+mistletoe, but it may quite well have meant the gift of growth in field
+and fold. The tree was perhaps cut down and burned; the oxen may have
+been incarnations of a god of vegetation, as the tree also may have
+been. We need not here repeat the meaning which has been given to the
+ritual,[688] but it may be added that if this meaning is correct, the
+rite probably took place at the time of the Midsummer festival, a
+festival of growth and fertility. Mistletoe is still gathered on
+Midsummer eve and used as an antidote to poisons or for the cure of
+wounds. Its Druidic name is still preserved in Celtic speech in words
+signifying "all-healer," while it is also called _sugh an daraich_, "sap
+of the oak," and _Druidh lus_, "Druid's weed."[689]
+
+Pliny describes other Celtic herbs of grace. _Selago_ was culled without
+use of iron after a sacrifice of bread and wine--probably to the spirit
+of the plant. The person gathering it wore a white robe, and went with
+unshod feet after washing them. According to the Druids, _Selago_
+preserved one from accident, and its smoke when burned healed maladies
+of the eye.[690] _Samolus_ was placed in drinking troughs as a remedy
+against disease in cattle. It was culled by a person fasting, with the
+left hand; it must be wholly uprooted, and the gatherer must not look
+behind him.[691] _Vervain_ was gathered at sunrise after a sacrifice to
+the earth as an expiation--perhaps because its surface was about to be
+disturbed. When it was rubbed on the body all wishes were gratified; it
+dispelled fevers and other maladies; it was an antidote against
+serpents; and it conciliated hearts. A branch of the dried herb used to
+asperge a banquet-hall made the guests more convivial[692]
+
+The ritual used in gathering these plants--silence, various tabus,
+ritual purity, sacrifice--is found wherever plants are culled whose
+virtue lies in this that they are possessed by a spirit. Other plants
+are still used as charms by modern Celtic peasants, and, in some cases,
+the ritual of gathering them resembles that described by Pliny.[693] In
+Irish sagas plants have magical powers. "Fairy herbs" placed in a bath
+restored beauty to women bathing therein.[694] During the _Tain_
+Cuchulainn's wounds were healed with "balsams and healing herbs of fairy
+potency," and Diancecht used similar herbs to restore the dead at the
+battle of Mag-tured.[695]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[659] Sacaze, _Inscr. des Pyren._ 255; Hirschfeld, _Sitzungsberichte_
+(Berlin, 1896), 448.
+
+[660] _CIL_ vi. 46; _CIR_ 1654, 1683.
+
+[661] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 52.
+
+[662] Lucan, _Phar._ Usener's ed., 32; Orosius, v. 16. 6; Dio Cass.
+lxii. 6.
+
+[663] Pliny, xvi. 44. The Scholiast on Lucan says that the Druids
+divined with acorns (Usener, 33).
+
+[664] Max. Tyr. _Diss._ viii. 8; Stokes, _RC_ i. 259.
+
+[665] Le Braz, ii. 18.
+
+[666] Mr. Chadwick (_Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxx. 26) connects this high god
+with thunder, and regards the Celtic Zeus (Taranis, in his opinion) as a
+thunder-god. The oak was associated with this god because his
+worshippers dwelt under oaks.
+
+[667] Helbig, _Die Italiker in der Poebene_, 16 f.
+
+[668] Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2} iii. 198.
+
+[669] Frazer, _loc. cit._
+
+[670] Evans, _Arch. Rev._ i. 327 f.
+
+[671] Joyce, _SH_ i. 236.
+
+[672] O'Curry, _MC_ i. 213.
+
+[673] _LL_ 199_b_; _Rennes Dindsenchas_, _RC_ xv. 420.
+
+[674] _RC_ xv. 455, xvi. 279; Hennessey, _Chron. Scot._ 76.
+
+[675] Keating, 556; Joyce, _PN_ i. 499.
+
+[676] Wood-Martin, ii. 159.
+
+[677] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 51; Jullian, 41.
+
+[678] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 60.
+
+[679] See Sebillot, i. 293; Le Braz, i. 259; _Folk-Lore Journal_, v.
+218; _Folk-Lore Record_, 1882.
+
+[680] Val. Probus, _Comm. in Georgica_, ii. 84.
+
+[681] Miss Hull, 53; O'Ourry, _MS. Mat._ 465. Writing tablets, made from
+each of the trees when they were cut down, sprang together and could not
+be separated.
+
+[682] _Stat. Account_, iii. 27; Moore, 151; Sebillot, i. 262, 270.
+
+[683] Dom Martin, i. 124; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 16.
+
+[684] _Acta Sanct._ (Bolland.), July 31; Sulp. Sever. _Vita S. Mart._
+457.
+
+[685] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 76; Maury, 13, 299. The story of beautiful
+women found in trees may be connected with the custom of placing images
+in trees, or with the belief that a goddess might be seen emerging from
+the tree in which she dwelt.
+
+[686] De la Tour, _Atlas des Monnaies Gaul_, 260, 286; Reinach, _Catal.
+Sommaire_, 29.
+
+[687] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 44.
+
+[688] See p. 162, _supra_.
+
+[689] See Cameron, _Gaelic Names of Plants_, 45. In Gregoire de Rostren,
+_Dict. francois-celt._ 1732, mistletoe is translated by _dour-dero_,
+"oak-water," and is said to be good for several evils.
+
+[690] Pliny, xxiv. 11.
+
+[691] Ibid.
+
+[692] Ibid. xxv. 9.
+
+[693] See Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_; De Nore, _Coutumes ... des
+Provinces de France_, 150 f.; Sauve, _RC_ vi. 67, _CM_ ix. 331.
+
+[694] O'Grady, ii. 126.
+
+[695] Miss Hull, 172; see p. 77, _supra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+ANIMAL WORSHIP.
+
+
+Animal worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of historic
+times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or attributes of
+divinities. The older cult had been connected with the pastoral stage in
+which the animals were divine, or with the agricultural stage in which
+they represented the corn-spirit, and perhaps with totemism. We shall
+study here (1) traces of the older animal cults; (2) the transformation
+of animal gods into symbols; and (3) traces of totemism.
+
+
+1.
+
+
+The presence of a bull with three cranes (_Tarvos Trigaranos_) on the
+Paris altar, along with the gods Esus, Juppiter, and Vulcan, suggests
+that it was a divine animal, or the subject of a divine myth. As has
+been seen, this bull may be the bull of the _Tain bo Cuailgne_. Both it
+and its opponent were reincarnations of the swine-herds of two gods. In
+the Irish sagas reincarnation is only attributed to gods or heroes, and
+this may point to the divinity of the bulls. We have seen that this and
+another altar may depict some myth in which the bull was the incarnation
+of a tree or vegetation spirit. The divine nature of the bull is
+attested by its presence on Gaulish coins as a religious symbol, and by
+images of the animal with three horns--an obvious symbol of
+divinity.[696] On such an image in bronze the Cimbri, Celticised
+Germans, swore. The images are pre-Roman, since they are found at
+Hallstadt and La Tene. Personal names like Donnotaurus (the equivalent
+of the _Donn Taruos_ of the _Tain_) or Deiotaros ("divine bull"), show
+that men were called after the divine animal.[697] Similarly many
+place-names in which the word _taruos_ occurs, in Northern Italy, the
+Pyrenees, Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere, suggest that the places
+bearing these names were sites of a bull cult or that some myth, like
+that elaborated in the _Tain_, had been there localised.[698] But, as
+possibly in the case of Cuchulainn and the bull, the animal tended to
+become the symbol of a god, a tendency perhaps aided by the spread of
+Mithraism with its symbolic bull. A god Medros leaning on a bull is
+represented at Haguenau, possibly a form of Mider or of Meduris, a
+surname of Toutatis, unless Medros is simply Mithras.[699] Echoes of the
+cult of the bull or cow are heard in Irish tales of these animals
+brought from the _sid_, or of magic bulls or of cows which produced
+enormous supplies of milk, or in saintly legends of oxen leading a saint
+to the site of his future church.[700] These legends are also told of
+the swine,[701] and they perhaps arose when a Christian church took the
+place of the site of a local animal cult, legend fusing the old and the
+new cult by making the once divine animal point out the site of the
+church. A late relic of a bull cult may be found in the carnival
+procession of the _Boeuf Gras_ at Paris.
+
+A cult of a swine-god Moccus has been referred to. The boar was a divine
+symbol on standards, coins, and altars, and many bronze images of the
+animal have been found. These were temple treasures, and in one case the
+boar is three-horned.[702] But it was becoming the symbol of a goddess,
+as is seen by the altars on which it accompanies a goddess, perhaps of
+fertility, and by a bronze image of a goddess seated on a boar. The
+altars occur in Britain, of which the animal may be the emblem--the
+"Caledonian monster" of Claudian's poem.[703] The Galatian Celts
+abstained from eating the swine, and there has always been a prejudice
+against its flesh in the Highlands. This has a totemic appearance.[704]
+But the swine is esteemed in Ireland, and in the texts monstrous swine
+are the staple article of famous feasts.[705] These may have been
+legendary forms of old swine-gods, the feasts recalling sacrificial
+feasts on their flesh. Magic swine were also the immortal food of the
+gods. But the boar was tabu to certain persons, e.g. Diarmaid, though
+whether this is the attenuated memory of a clan totem restriction is
+uncertain. In Welsh story the swine comes from Elysium--a myth
+explaining the origin of its domestication, while domestication
+certainly implies an earlier cult of the animal. When animals come to be
+domesticated, the old cult restrictions, e.g. against eating them,
+usually pass away. For this reason, perhaps, the Gauls, who worshipped
+an anthropomorphic swine-god, trafficked in the animal and may have
+eaten it.[706] Welsh story also tells of the magic boar, the _Twrch
+Trwyth_, hunted by Arthur, possibly a folk-tale reminiscence of a boar
+divinity.[707] Place-names also point to a cult of the swine, and a
+recollection of its divinity may underlie the numerous Irish tales of
+magical swine.[708] The magic swine which issued from the cave of
+Cruachan and destroyed the young crops are suggestive of the
+theriomorphic corn-spirit in its occasional destructive aspect.[709]
+Bones of the swine, sometimes cremated, have been found in Celtic graves
+in Britain and at Hallstadt, and in one case the animal was buried alone
+in a tumulus at Hallstadt, just as sacred animals were buried in Egypt,
+Greece, and elsewhere.[710] When the animal was buried with the dead, it
+may have been as a sacrifice to the ghost or to the god of the
+underworld.
+
+The divinity of the serpent is proved by the occurrence of a horned
+serpent with twelve Roman gods on a Gallo-Roman altar.[711] In other
+cases a horned or ram's-headed serpent appears as the attribute of a
+god, and we have seen that the ram's-headed serpent may be a fusion of
+the serpent as a chthonian animal with the ram, sacrificed to the dead.
+In Greece Dionysus had the form both of a bull and a horned serpent, the
+horn being perhaps derived from the bull symbol. M. Reinach claims that
+the primitive elements of the Orphic myth of the Thracian
+Dionysos-Zagreus--divine serpents producing an egg whence came the
+horned snake Zagreus, occur in dislocated form in Gaul. There enlacing
+serpents were believed to produce a magic egg, and there a horned
+serpent was worshipped, but was not connected with the egg. But they may
+once have been connected, and if so, there may be a common foundation
+both for the Greek and the Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in
+Thrace.[712] The resemblances, however, may be mere coincidences, and
+horned serpents are known in other mythologies--the horn being perhaps a
+symbol of divinity. The horned serpent sometimes accompanies a god who
+has horns, possibly Cernunnos, the underworld god, in accordance with
+the chthonian character of the serpent.[713] In the Cuchulainn cycle
+Loeg on his visit to the Other-world saw two-headed serpents--perhaps a
+further hint of this aspect of the animal.[714]
+
+In all these instances of animal cults examples of the tendency to make
+the divine animal anthropomorphic have been seen. We have now to
+consider some instances of the complete anthropomorphic process.
+
+
+2.
+
+
+An old bear cult gave place to the cult of a bear goddess and probably
+of a god. At Berne--an old Celtic place-name meaning "bear"--was found a
+bronze group of a goddess holding a patera with fruit, and a bear
+approaching her as if to be fed. The inscription runs, _Deae Artioni
+Licinia Sabinilla_.[715] A local bear-cult had once existed at Berne,
+and is still recalled in the presence of the famous bears there, but the
+divine bear had given place to a goddess whose name and symbol were
+ursine. From an old Celtic _Artos_, fem. _Arta_, "bear," were derived
+various divine names. Of these _Dea Artio(n)_ means "bear goddess," and
+_Artaios_, equated with Mercury, is perhaps a bear god.[716] Another
+bear goddess, Andarta, was honoured at Die (Drome), the word perhaps
+meaning "strong bear"--_And_- being an augmentive.[717] Numerous
+place-names derived from _Artos_ perhaps witness to a widespread cult of
+the bear, and the word also occurs in Welsh, and Irish personal
+names--Arthmael, Arthbiu, and possibly Arthur, and the numerous Arts of
+Irish texts. Descent from the divine bear is also signified in names
+like Welsh _Arthgen_, Irish _Artigan_, from _Artigenos_, "son of the
+bear." Another Celtic name for "bear" was the Gaulish _matu_, Irish
+_math_, found in _Matugenos_, "son of the bear," and in MacMahon, which
+is a corrupt form of _Mac-math-ghamhain_, "son of the bear's son," or
+"of the bear."[718]
+
+Similarly a cult of the stag seems to have given place to that of a god
+with stag's horns, represented on many bas-reliefs, and probably
+connected with the underworld.[719] The stag, as a grain-eater, may have
+been regarded as the embodiment of the corn-spirit, and then associated
+with the under-earth region whence the corn sprang, by one of those
+inversions of thought so common in the stage of transition from animal
+gods to gods with animal symbols. The elk may have been worshipped in
+Ireland, and a three antlered stag is the subject of a story in the
+Fionn saga.[720] Its third antler, like the third horn of bull or boar,
+may be a sign of divinity.
+
+The horse had also been worshipped, but a goddess Epona (Gaul. _epo-s_,
+"horse"), protectress of horses and asses, took its place, and had a
+far-spread cult. She rides a horse or mare with its foal, or is seated
+among horses, or feeds horses. A representation of a mare suckling a
+foal--a design analogous to those in which Epona feeds foals--shows that
+her primitive equine nature had not been forgotten.[721] The Gauls were
+horse-rearers, and Epona was the goddess of the craft; but, as in other
+cases, a cult of the horse must have preceded its domestication, and its
+flesh may not have been eaten, or, if so, only sacramentally.[722]
+Finally, the divine horse became the anthropomorphic horse-goddess. Her
+images were placed in stables, and several inscriptions and statuettes
+have been found in such buildings or in cavalry barracks.[723] The
+remains of the cult have been found in the Danube and Rhine valleys, in
+Eastern Gaul, and in Northern Italy, all Celtic regions, but it was
+carried everywhere by Roman cavalry recruited from the Celtic
+tribes.[724] Epona is associated with, and often has, the symbols of the
+_Matres_, and one inscription reads _Eponabus_, as if there were a group
+of goddesses called Epona.[725] A goddess who promoted the fertility of
+mares would easily be associated with goddesses of fertility. Epona may
+also have been confused with a river-goddess conceived of as a spirited
+steed. Water-spirits took that shape, and the _Matres_ were also
+river-goddesses.
+
+A statuette of a horse, with a dedication to a god Rudiobus, otherwise
+unknown, may have been carried processionally, while a mule has a
+dedication to Segomo, equated elsewhere with Mars. A mule god Mullo,
+also equated with Mars, is mentioned on several inscriptions.[726] The
+connection with Mars may have been found in the fact that the October
+horse was sacrificed to him for fertility, while the horse was probably
+associated with fertility among the Celts. The horse was sacrificed both
+by Celts and Teutons at the Midsummer festival, undoubtedly as a divine
+animal. Traces of the Celtic custom survive in local legends, and may be
+interpreted in the fuller light of the Teutonic accounts. In Ireland a
+man wearing a horse's head rushed through the fire, and was supposed to
+represent all cattle; in other words, he was a surrogate for them. The
+legend of Each Labra, a horse which lived in a mound and issued from it
+every Midsummer eve to give oracles for the coming year, is probably
+connected with the Midsummer sacrifice of the horse.[727] Among the
+Teutons the horse was a divine sacrificial animal, and was also sacred
+to Freyr, the god of fertility, while in Teutonic survivals a horse's
+head was placed in the Midsummer fire.[728] The horse was sporadically
+the representative of the corn-spirit, and at Rome the October horse was
+sacrificed in that capacity and for fertility.[729] Among the Celts, the
+horse sacrificed at Midsummer may have represented the vegetation-spirit
+and benefited all domestic animals--the old rite surviving in an
+attenuated form, as described above.
+
+Perhaps the goddess Damona was an animal divinity, if her name is
+derived from _damatos_, "sheep," cognate to Welsh _dafad_, "sheep," and
+Gaelic _damh_, "ox." Other divine animals, as has been seen, were
+associated with the waters, and the use of beasts and birds in
+divination doubtless points to their divine character. A cult of
+bird-gods may lurk behind the divine name Bran, "raven," and the
+reference to the magic birds of Rhiannon in the _Triads_.
+
+
+3.
+
+
+Animal worship is connected with totemism, and certain things point to
+its existence among the Celts, or to the existence of conditions out of
+which totemism was elsewhere developed. These are descent from animals,
+animal tabus, the sacramental eating of an animal, and exogamy.
+
+(1) _Descent from animals._--Celtic names implying descent from animals
+or plants are of two classes, clan and personal names. If the latter are
+totemistic, they must be derived from the former, since totemism is an
+affair of the clan, while the so-called "personal totem," exemplified by
+the American Indian _manitou_, is the guardian but never the ancestor of
+a man. Some clan names have already been referred to. Others are the
+Bibroci of south-east Britain, probably a beaver clan (_bebros_), and
+the Eburones, a yew-tree clan (_eburos_).[730] Irish clans bore animal
+names: some groups were called "calves," others "griffins," others "red
+deer," and a plant name is seen in _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree."[731]
+Such clan totemism perhaps underlies the stories of the "descendants of
+the wolf" at Ossory, who became wolves for a time as the result of a
+saintly curse. Other instances of lycanthropy were associated with
+certain families.[732] The belief in lycanthropy might easily attach
+itself to existing wolf-clans, the transformation being then explained
+as the result of a curse. The stories of Cormac mac Art, suckled by a
+she-wolf, of Lughaid mac Con, "son of a wolf-dog," suckled by that
+animal, and of Oisin, whose mother was a fawn, and who would not eat
+venison, are perhaps totemistic, while to totemism or to a cult of
+animals may be ascribed what early travellers in Ireland say of the
+people taking wolves as god-fathers and praying to them to do them no
+ill.[733] In Wales bands of warriors at the battle of Cattraeth are
+described in Oneurin's _Gododin_ as dogs, wolves, bears, and ravens,
+while Owein's band of ravens which fought against Arthur, may have been
+a raven clan, later misunderstood as actual ravens.[734] Certain groups
+of Dalriad Scots bore animal names--Cinel Gabran, "Little goat clan,"
+and Cinel Loarn, "Fox clan." Possibly the custom of denoting Highland
+clans by animal or plant badges may be connected with a belief in
+descent from plants or animals. On many coins an animal is represented
+on horseback, perhaps leading a clan, as birds led the Celts to the
+Danube area, and these may depict myths telling how the clan totem
+animal led the clan to its present territory.[735] Such myths may
+survive in legends relating how an animal led a saint to the site of his
+church.[736] Celtic warriors wore helmets with horns, and Irish story
+speaks of men with cat, dog, or goat heads.[737] These may have been men
+wearing a head-gear formed of the skin or head of the clan totem, hence
+remembered at a later time as monstrous beings, while the horned helmets
+would be related to the same custom. Solinus describes the Britons as
+wearing animal skins before going into battle.[738] Were these skins of
+totem animals under whose protection they thus placed themselves? The
+"forms of beasts, birds, and fishes" which the Cruithne or Picts
+tattooed on their bodies may have been totem marks, while the painting
+of their bodies with woad among the southern Britons may have been of
+the same character, though Caesar's words hardly denote this. Certain
+marks on faces figured on Gaulish coins seem to be tattoo marks.[739]
+
+It is not impossible that an early wolf-totem may have been associated,
+because of the animal's nocturnal wanderings in forests, with the
+underworld whence, according to Celtic belief, men sprang and whither
+they returned, and whence all vegetation came forth. The Gallo-Roman
+Silvanus, probably an underworld god, wears a wolf-skin, and may thus be
+a wolf-god. There were various types of underworld gods, and this
+wolf-type--perhaps a local wolf-totem ancestor assimilated to a local
+"Dispater"--may have been the god of a clan who imposed its mythic wolf
+origin on other clans. Some Celtic bronzes show a wolf swallowing a man
+who offers no resistance, probably because he is dead. The wolf is much
+bigger than the man, and hence may be a god.[740] These bronzes would
+thus represent a belief setting forth the return of men to their totem
+ancestor after death, or to the underworld god connected with the totem
+ancestor, by saying that he devoured the dead, like certain Polynesian
+divinities and the Greek Eurynomos.
+
+In many individual names the first part is the name of an animal or
+plant, the second is usually _genos_, "born from," or "son of," e.g.
+Artigenos, Matugenos, "son of the bear" (_artos_, _matu_-); Urogenos,
+occurring as Urogenertos, "he who has the strength of the son of the
+urus"; Brannogenos, "son of the raven"; Cunogenos, "son of the
+dog."[741] These names may be derived from clan totem names, but they
+date back to a time when animals, trees, and men were on a common
+footing, and the possibility of human descent from a tree or an animal
+was believed in. Professor Rh[^y]s has argued from the frequency of
+personal names in Ireland, like Curoi, "Hound of Roi," Cu Corb, "Corb's
+Hound," Mac Con, "Hound's Son," and Maelchon, "Hound's Slave," that
+there existed a dog totem or god, not of the Celts, but of a pre-Celtic
+race.[742] This assumes that totemism was non-Celtic, an assumption
+based on preconceived notions of what Celtic institutions ought to have
+been. The names, it should be observed, are personal, not clan names.
+
+(2) _Animal tabus._--Besides the dislike of swine's flesh already noted
+among certain Celtic groups, the killing and eating of the hare, hen,
+and goose were forbidden among the Britons. Caesar says they bred these
+animals for amusement, but this reason assigned by him is drawn from his
+knowledge of the breeding of rare animals by rich Romans as a pastime,
+since he had no knowledge of the breeding of sacred animals which were
+not eaten--a common totemic or animal cult custom.[743] The hare was
+used for divination by Boudicca,[744] doubtless as a sacred animal, and
+it has been found that a sacred character still attaches to these
+animals in Wales. A cock or hen was ceremonially killed and eaten on
+Shrove Tuesday, either as a former totemic animal, or, less likely, as a
+representative of the corn-spirit. The hare is not killed in certain
+districts, but occasionally it is ceremonially hunted and slain
+annually, while at yearly fairs the goose is sold exclusively and
+eaten.[745] Elsewhere, e.g. in Devon, a ram or lamb is ceremonially
+slain and eaten, the eating being believed to confer luck.[746] The
+ill-luck supposed to follow the killing of certain animals may also be
+reminiscent of totemic tabus. Fish were not eaten by the Pictish Meatae
+and Caledonii, and a dislike of eating certain fresh-water fish was
+observed among certain eighteenth century Highlanders.[747] It has been
+already seen that certain fish living in sacred wells were tabu, and
+were believed to give oracles. Heron's flesh was disliked in Ireland,
+and it was considered unlucky to kill a swan in the Hebrides.[748] Fatal
+results following upon the killing or eating of an animal with which the
+eater was connected by name or descent are found in the Irish sagas.
+Conaire was son of a woman and a bird which could take human shape, and
+it was forbidden to him to hunt birds. On one occasion he did so, and
+for this as well as the breaking of other tabus, he lost his life.[749]
+It was tabu to Cuchulainn, "the hound of Culann," to eat dog's flesh,
+and, having been persuaded to do this, his strength went from him, and
+he perished. Diarmaid, having been forbidden to hunt a boar with which
+his life was connected, was induced by Fionn to break this tabu, and in
+consequence he lost his life by one of the boar's bristles entering his
+foot, or (in a variant) by the boar's killing him. Another instance is
+found in a tale of certain men transformed to badgers. They were slain
+by Cormac, and brought to his father Tadg to eat. Tadg unaccountably
+loathed them, because they were transformed men and his cousins.[750] In
+this tale, which may contain the _debris_ of totemic usage, the loathing
+arises from the fact that the badgers are men--a common form of myths
+explanatory of misunderstood totemic customs, but the old idea of the
+relation between a man and his totem is not lost sight of. The other
+tales may also be reminiscent of a clan totem tabu, later centred in a
+mythic hero. Perhaps the belief in lucky or unlucky animals, or in omens
+drawn from their appearance, may be based on old totem beliefs or in
+beliefs in the divinity of the animals.
+
+(3) _Sacramental eating of an animal._--The custom of "hunting the
+wren," found over the whole Celtic area, is connected with animal
+worship and may be totemistic in origin. In spite of its small size, the
+wren was known as the king of birds, and in the Isle of Man it was
+hunted and killed on Christmas or S. Stephen's day. The bird was carried
+in procession from door to door, to the accompaniment of a chant, and
+was then solemnly buried, dirges being sung. In some cases a feather was
+left at each house and carefully treasured, and there are traces of a
+custom of boiling and eating the bird.[751] In Ireland, the hunt and
+procession were followed by a feast, the materials of which were
+collected from house to house, and a similar usage obtained in France,
+where the youth who killed the bird was called "king."[752] In most of
+these districts it was considered unlucky or dangerous to kill the bird
+at any other time, yet it might be ceremonially killed once a year, the
+dead animal conferred luck, and was solemnly eaten or buried with signs
+of mourning. Similar customs with animals which are actually worshipped
+are found elsewhere,[753] and they lend support to the idea that the
+Celts regarded the wren as a divine animal, or perhaps a totem animal,
+that it was necessary to slay it ritually, and to carry it round the
+houses of the community to obtain its divine influence, to eat it
+sacramentally or to bury it. Probably like customs were followed in the
+case of other animals,[754] and these may have given rise to such
+stories as that of the eating of MacDatho's wonderful boar, as well as
+to myths which regarded certain animals, e.g. the swine, as the immortal
+food of the gods. Other examples of ritual survivals of such sacramental
+eating have already been noted, and it is not improbable that the eating
+of a sacred pastoral animal occurred at Samhain.
+
+(4) _Exogamy._--Exogamy and the counting of descent through the mother
+are closely connected with totemism, and some traces of both are found
+among the Celts. Among the Picts, who were, perhaps, a Celtic group of
+the Brythonic stock, these customs survived in the royal house. The
+kingship passed to a brother of the king by the same mother, or to a
+sister's son, while the king's father was never king and was frequently
+a "foreigner." Similar rules of succession prevailed in early Aryan
+royal houses--Greek and Roman,--and may, as Dr. Stokes thought, have
+existed at Tara in Ireland, while in a Fian tale of Oisin he marries the
+daughter of the king of Tir na n-Og, and succeeds him as king partly for
+that reason, and partly because he had beaten him in the annual race for
+the kingship.[755] Such an athletic contest for the kingship was known
+in early Greece, and this tale may support the theory of the Celtic
+priest-kingship, the holder of the office retaining it as long as he was
+not defeated or slain. Traces of succession through a sister's son are
+found in the _Mabinogion_, and Livy describes how the mythic Celtic king
+Ambicatus sent not his own but his sister's sons to found new
+kingdoms.[756] Irish and Welsh divine and heroic groups are named after
+the mother, not the father--the children of Danu and of Don, and the men
+of Domnu. Anu is mother of the gods, Buanann of heroes. The eponymous
+ancestor of the Scots is a woman, Scota, and the earliest colonisers of
+Ireland are women, not men. In the sagas gods and heroes have frequently
+a matronymic, and the father's name is omitted--Lug mac Ethnend,
+Conchobar mac Nessa, Indech, son of De Domnann, Corpre, son of Etain,
+and others. Perhaps parallel to this is the custom of calling men after
+their wives--e.g. the son of Fergus is Fer Tlachtga, Tlachtga's
+husband.[757] In the sagas, females (goddesses and heroines) have a high
+place accorded to them, and frequently choose their own lovers or
+husbands--customs suggestive of the matriarchate. Thus what was once a
+general practice was later confined to the royal house or told of divine
+or heroic personages. Possibly certain cases of incest may really be
+exaggerated accounts of misunderstood unions once permissible by totemic
+law. Caesar speaks of British polyandry, brothers, sons, and fathers
+sharing a wife in common.[758] Strabo speaks of Irish unions with
+mothers and sisters, perhaps referring not to actual practice but to
+reports of saga tales of incest.[759] Dio Cassius speaks of community of
+wives among the Caledonians and Meatae, and Jerome says much the same of
+the Scoti and Atecotti.[760] These notices, with the exception of
+Caesar's, are vague, yet they refer to marriage customs different from
+those known to their reporters. In Irish sagas incest legends circle
+round the descendants of Etain--fathers unite with daughters, a son with
+his mother, a woman has a son by her three brothers (just as Ecne was
+son of Brian, Iuchar, and Iucharba), and is also mother of Crimthan by
+that son.[761] Brother and sister unions occur both in Irish and Welsh
+story.[762]
+
+In these cases incest with a mother cannot be explained by totemic
+usage, but the cases may be distorted reminiscences of what might occur
+under totemism, namely, a son taking the wives of his father other than
+his own mother, when those were of a different totem from his own. Under
+totemism, brothers and sisters by different mothers having different
+totems, might possibly unite, and such unions are found in many
+mythologies. Later, when totemism passed away, the unions, regarded with
+horror, would be supposed to take place between children by the same
+mother. According to totem law, a father might unite with his daughter,
+since she was of her mother's totem, but in practice this was frowned
+upon. Polygamy also may co-exist with totemism, and of course involves
+the counting of descent through the mother as a rule. If, as is
+suggested by the "debility" of the Ultonians, and by other evidence, the
+couvade was a Celtic institution, this would also point to the existence
+of the matriarchate with the Celts. To explain all this as pre-Aryan, or
+to say that the classical notices refer to non-Aryan tribes and that the
+evidence in the Irish sagas only shows that the Celts had been
+influenced by the customs of aboriginal tribes among whom they
+lived,[763] is to neglect the fact that the customs are closely bound up
+with Celtic life, while it leaves unexplained the influence of such
+customs upon a people whose own customs, according to this theory, were
+so totally different. The evidence, taken as a whole, points to the
+existence of totemism among the early Celts, or, at all events, of the
+elements which elsewhere compose it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Celtic animal worship dates back to the primitive hunting and pastoral
+period, when men worshipped the animals which they hunted or reared.
+They may have apologised to the animal hunted and slain--a form of
+worship, or, where animals were not hunted or were reared and
+worshipped, one of them may have been slain annually and eaten to obtain
+its divine power. Care was taken to preserve certain sacred animals
+which were not hunted, and this led to domestication, the abstinence of
+earlier generations leading to an increased food supply at a later time,
+when domesticated animals were freely slain. But the earlier sacramental
+slaying of such animals survived in the religious aspect of their
+slaughter at the beginning of winter.[764] The cult of animals was also
+connected with totemic usage, though at a later stage this cult was
+replaced by that of anthropomorphic divinities, with the older divine
+animals as their symbols, sacrificial victims, and the like. This
+evolution now led to the removal of restrictions upon slaying and eating
+the animals. On the other hand, the more primitive animal cults may have
+remained here and there. Animal cults were, perhaps, largely confined to
+men. With the rise of agriculture mainly as an art in the hands of
+women, and the consequent cult of the Earth-mother, of fertility and
+corn-spirits probably regarded as female, the sacramental eating of the
+divine animal may have led to the slaying and eating of a human or
+animal victim supposed to embody such a spirit. Later the two cults were
+bound to coalesce, and the divine animal and the animal embodiment of
+the vegetation spirit would not be differentiated. On the other hand,
+when men began to take part in women's fertility cults, the fact that
+such spirits were female or were perhaps coming to be regarded as
+goddesses, may have led men to envisage certain of the anthropomorphic
+animal divinities as goddesses, since some of these, e.g. Epona and
+Damona, are female. But with the increasing participation of men in
+agriculture, the spirits or goddesses of fertility would tend to become
+male, or the consorts or mothers of gods of fertility, though the
+earlier aspect was never lost sight of, witness the Corn-Mother. The
+evolution of divine priest-kings would cause them to take the place of
+the earlier priestesses of these cults, one of whom may have been the
+divine victim. Yet in local survivals certain cults were still confined
+to women, and still had their priestesses.[765]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[696] Reinach, _BF_ 66, 244. The bull and three cranes may be a rebus on
+the name of the bull, _Tarvos Trikarenos_, "the three-headed," or
+perhaps _Trikeras_, "three-horned."
+
+[697] Plutarch, _Marius_, 23; Caesar, vii. 65; D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_,
+49.
+
+[698] Holder, _s.v._ _Tarba_, _Tarouanna_, _Tarvisium_, etc.; D'Arbois,
+_Les Druides_, 155; S. Greg. _In Glor. Conf._ 48.
+
+[699] _CIL_ xiii. 6017; _RC_ xxv. 47; Holder, ii. 528.
+
+[700] Leahy, ii. 105 f.; Curtin, _MFI_ 264, 318; Joyce, _PN_ i. 174;
+Rees, 453. Cf. Ailred, _Life of S. Ninian_, c. 8.
+
+[701] Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kentig._ c. 24; Rees, 293, 323.
+
+[702] Tacitus, _Germ._ xlv.; Blanchet, i. 162, 165; Reinach, _BF_ 255
+f., _CMR_ i. 168; Bertrand, _Arch. Celt._ 419.
+
+[703] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, 268; Reinach, _RC_ xxii. 158, _CMR_
+i. 67.
+
+[704] Pausan, vii. 17, 18; Johnson, _Journey_, 136.
+
+[705] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 127; _IT_ i. 99, 256 (Bricriu's feast and the tale
+of Macdatho's swine).
+
+[706] Strabo, iv. 4. 3, says these swine attacked strangers. Varro, _de
+Re Rustica_, ii. 4, admires their vast size. Cf. Polyb. ii. 4.
+
+[707] The hunt is first mentioned in Nennius, c. 79, and then appears as
+a full-blown folk-tale in _Kulhwych_, Loth, i. 185 f. Here the boar is a
+transformed prince.
+
+[708] I have already suggested, p. 106, _supra_, that the places where
+Gwydion halted with the swine of Elysium were sites of a swine-cult.
+
+[709] _RC_ xiii. 451. Cf. also _TOS_ vi. "The Enchanted Pigs of Oengus,"
+and Campbell, _LF_ 53.
+
+[710] _L'Anthropologie_, vi. 584; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 274,
+283, 454; _Arch. Rev._ ii. 120.
+
+[711] _Rev. Arch._ 1897, 313.
+
+[712] Reinach, "Zagreus le serpent cornu," _Rev. Arch_. xxxv. 210.
+
+[713] Reinach, _BF_ 185; Bertrand, 316.
+
+[714] "Cuchulainn's Sick-bed," D'Arbois, v. 202.
+
+[715] See Reinach, _CMR_ i. 57.
+
+[716] _CIL_ xiii. 5160, xii. 2199. Rh[^y]s, however, derives Artaios
+from _ar_, "ploughed land," and equates the god with Mercurius Cultor.
+
+[717] _CIL_ xii. 1556-1558; D'Arbois, _RC_ x. 165.
+
+[718] For all these place and personal names, see Holder and D'Arbois,
+_op. cit. Les Celtes_, 47 f., _Les Druides_, 157 f.
+
+[719] See p. 32, _supra_; Reinach, _CMR_ i. 72, _Rev. Arch._ ii. 123.
+
+[720] O'Grady, ii. 123.
+
+[721] Epona is fully discussed by Reinach in his _Epona_, 1895, and in
+articles (illustrated) in _Rev. Arch._ vols. 26, 33, 35, 40, etc. See
+also ii. [1898], 190.
+
+[722] Reinach suggests that this may explain why Vercingetorix, in view
+of siege by the Romans, sent away his horses. They were too sacred to be
+eaten. Caesar, vii. 71; Reinach, _RC_ xxvii. 1 f.
+
+[723] Juvenal, viii. 154; Apul. _Metam._ iii. 27; Min. Felix, _Octav._
+xxvii. 7.
+
+[724] For the inscriptions, see Holder, _s.v._ "Epona."
+
+[725] _CIL_ iii. 7904.
+
+[726] _CIL_ xiii. 3071; Reinach, _BF_ 253, _CMR_ i. 64, _Repert. de la
+Stat._ ii. 745; Holder, ii. 651-652.
+
+[727] Granger, _Worship of the Romans_, 113; Kennedy, 135.
+
+[728] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 49, 619, 657, 661-664.
+
+[729] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 281, 315.
+
+[730] Caesar, v. 21, 27. Possibly the Dea Bibracte of the Aeduans was a
+beaver goddess.
+
+[731] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 207; Elton, 298.
+
+[732] Girald. Cambr. _Top. Hib._ ii. 19, _RC_ ii. 202; _Folk-Lore_, v.
+310; _IT_ iii. 376.
+
+[733] O'Grady, ii. 286, 538; Campbell, _The Fians_, 78; Thiers, _Traite
+des Superstitions_, ii. 86.
+
+[734] Lady Guest, ii. 409 f.
+
+[735] Blanchet, i. 166, 295, 326, 390.
+
+[736] See p. 209, _supra_.
+
+[737] Diod. Sic. v. 30; _IT_ iii. 385; _RC_ xxvi. 139; Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+593.
+
+[738] _Man. Hist. Brit._ p. x.
+
+[739] Herodian, iii. 14, 8; Duald MacFirbis in Irish _Nennius_, p. vii;
+Caesar, v. 10; _ZCP_ iii. 331.
+
+[740] See Reinach, "Les Carnassiers androphages dans l'art
+gallo-romain," _CMR_ i. 279.
+
+[741] See Holder, _s.v._
+
+[742] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 267.
+
+[743] Caesar, v. 12.
+
+[744] Dio Cassius, lxii. 2.
+
+[745] See a valuable paper by N.W. Thomas, "Survivance du Culte des
+Animaux dans le Pays de Galles," in _Rev. de l'Hist. des Religions_,
+xxxviii. 295 f., and a similar paper by Gomme, _Arch. Rev._ 1889, 217 f.
+Both writers seem to regard these cults as pre-Celtic.
+
+[746] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folklore_, 30, _Village Community_, 113.
+
+[747] Dio Cass. lxxii. 21; Logan, _Scottish Gael_, ii. 12.
+
+[748] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 529; Martin, 71.
+
+[749] _RC_ xxii. 20, 24, 390-1.
+
+[750] _IT_ iii. 385.
+
+[751] Waldron, _Isle of Man_, 49; Train, _Account of the Isle of Man_,
+ii. 124.
+
+[752] Vallancey, _Coll. de Reb. Hib._ iv. No. 13; Clement, _Fetes_, 466.
+For English customs, see Henderson, _Folklore of the Northern Counties_,
+125.
+
+[753] Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 380, 441, 446.
+
+[754] For other Welsh instances of the danger of killing certain birds,
+see Thomas, _op. cit._ xxxviii. 306.
+
+[755] Frazer, _Kingship_, 261; Stokes, _RC_ xvi. 418; Larminie, _Myths
+and Folk-tales_, 327.
+
+[756] See Rh[^y]s, _Welsh People_, 44; Livy, v. 34.
+
+[757] Cf. _IT_ iii. 407, 409.
+
+[758] Caesar, v. 14.
+
+[759] Strabo, iv. 5. 4.
+
+[760] Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Jerome, _Adv. Jovin._ ii. 7. Giraldus has
+much to say of incest in Wales, probably actual breaches of moral law
+among a barbarous people (_Descr. Wales_, ii. 6).
+
+[761] _RC_ xii. 235, 238, xv. 291, xvi. 149; _LL_ 23_a_, 124_b_. In
+various Irish texts a child is said to have three fathers--probably a
+reminiscence of polyandry. See p. 74, _supra_, and _RC_ xxiii. 333.
+
+[762] _IT_ i. 136; Loth, i. 134 f.; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 308.
+
+[763] Zimmer, "Matriarchy among the Picts," in Henderson, _Leabhar nan
+Gleann_.
+
+[764] See p. 259, _infra_.
+
+[765] See p. 274, _infra_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+COSMOGONY.
+
+
+Whether the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and wife is
+uncertain. Such a conception is world-wide, and myth frequently explains
+in different ways the reason of the separation of the two. Among the
+Polynesians the children of heaven and earth--the winds, forests, and
+seas personified--angry at being crushed between their parents in
+darkness, rose up and separated them. This is in effect the Greek myth
+of Uranus, or Heaven, and Gaea, or Earth, divorced by their son Kronos,
+just as in Hindu myth Dyaus, or Sky, and Prithivi, or Earth, were
+separated by Indra. Uranus in Greece gave place to Zeus, and, in India,
+Dyaus became subordinate to Indra. Thus the primitive Heaven personified
+recedes, and his place is taken by a more individualised god. But
+generally Mother Earth remains a constant quantity. Earth was nearer man
+and was more unchanging than the inconstant sky, while as the producer
+of the fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the source of all
+things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of
+other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of
+agricultural peoples, who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her
+with orgiastic rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing
+civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of man,
+and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and rejoicing like
+man himself. Or where a higher religion ousts the older one, the ritual
+is still retained among the folk, though its meaning may be forgotten.
+
+The Celts may thus have possessed the Heaven and Earth myth, but all
+trace of it has perished. There are, however, remnants of myths showing
+how the sky is supported by trees, a mountain, or by pillars. A high
+mountain near the sources of the Rhone was called "the column of the
+sun," and was so lofty as to hide the sun from the people of the
+south.[766] It may have been regarded as supporting the sky, while the
+sun moved round it. In an old Irish hymn and its gloss, Brigit and
+Patrick are compared to the two pillars of the world, probably alluding
+to some old myth of sky or earth resting on pillars.[767] Traces of this
+also exist in folk-belief, as in the accounts of islands resting on four
+pillars, or as in the legend of the church of Kernitou which rests on
+four pillars on a congealed sea and which will be submerged when the sea
+liquefies--a combination of the cosmogonic myth with that of a great
+inundation.[768] In some mythologies a bridge or ladder connects heaven
+and earth. There may be a survival of some such myth in an Irish poem
+which speaks of the _drochet bethad_, or "bridge of life," or in the
+_drochaid na flaitheanas_, or "bridge of heaven," of Hebridean
+folk-lore.[769]
+
+Those gods who were connected with the sky may have been held to dwell
+there or on the mountain supporting it. Others, like the Celtic
+Dispater, dwelt underground. Some were connected with mounds and hills,
+or were supposed to have taken up their abode in them. Others, again,
+dwelt in a distant region, the Celtic Elysium, which, once the Celts
+reached the sea, became a far-off island. Those divinities worshipped in
+groves were believed to dwell there and to manifest themselves at midday
+or midnight, while such objects of nature as rivers, wells, and trees
+were held to be the abode of gods or spirits. Thus it is doubtful
+whether the Celts ever thought of their gods as dwelling in one Olympus.
+The Tuatha De Danann are said to have come from heaven, but this may be
+the mere assertion of some scribe who knew not what to make of this
+group of beings.
+
+In Celtic belief men were not so much created by gods as descended from
+them. "All the Gauls assert that they are descended from Dispater, and
+this, they say, has been handed down to them by the Druids."[770]
+Dispater was a Celtic underworld god of fertility, and the statement
+probably presupposes a myth, like that found among many primitive
+peoples, telling how men once lived underground and thence came to the
+surface of the earth. But it also points to their descent from the god
+of the underworld. Thither the dead returned to him who was ancestor of
+the living as well as lord of the dead.[771] On the other hand, if the
+earth had originally been thought of as a female, she as Earth-mother
+would be ancestress of men. But her place in the myth would easily be
+taken by the Earth or Under-earth god, perhaps regarded as her son or
+her consort. In other cases, clans, families, or individuals often
+traced their descent to gods or divine animals or plants. Classical
+writers occasionally speak of the origin of branches of the Celtic race
+from eponymous founders, perhaps from their knowledge of existing Celtic
+myths.[772] Ammianus Marcellinus also reports a Druidic tradition to the
+effect that some Gauls were indigenous, some had come from distant
+islands, and others from beyond the Rhine.[773] But this is not so much
+a myth of origins, as an explanation of the presence of different
+peoples in Gaul--the aborigines, the Celtae, and the Belgic Gauls. M.
+D'Arbois assumes that "distant islands" means the Celtic Elysium, which
+he regards as the land of the dead,[774] but the phrase is probably no
+more than a distorted reminiscence of the far-off lands whence early
+groups of Celts had reached Gaul.
+
+Of the creation of the world no complete myth has survived, though from
+a gloss to the _Senchus Mor_ we learn that the Druids, like the
+Br[=a]hmans, boasted that they had made sun, moon, earth, and sea--a
+boast in keeping with their supposed powers over the elements.[775]
+Certain folk-beliefs, regarding the origin of different parts of nature,
+bear a close resemblance to primitive cosmogonic myths, and they may be
+taken as _disjecta membra_ of similar myths held by the Celts and
+perhaps taught by the Druids. Thus sea, rivers, or springs arose from
+the micturition of a giant, fairy, or saint, or from their sweat or
+blood. Islands are rocks cast by giants, and mountains are the material
+thrown up by them as they were working on the earth. Wells sprang up
+from the blood of a martyr or from the touch of a saint's or a fairy's
+staff.[776] The sea originated from a magic cask given by God to a
+woman. The spigot, when opened, could not be closed again, and the cask
+never ceased running until the waters covered the earth--a tale with
+savage parallels.[777] In all these cases, giant, saint, or fairy has
+doubtless taken the place of a god, since the stories have a very
+primitive _facies_. The giant is frequently Gargantua, probably himself
+once a divinity. Other references in Irish texts point to the common
+cosmogonic myth of the earth having gradually assumed its present form.
+Thus many new lakes and plains are said to have been formed in Ireland
+during the time of Partholan and Nemed, the plains being apparently
+built up out of existing materials.[778] In some cases the formation of
+a lake was the result of digging the grave of some personage after whom
+the lake was then named.[779] Here we come upon the familiar idea of the
+danger of encroaching on the domain of a deity, e.g. that of the
+Earth-god, by digging the earth, with the consequent punishment by a
+flood. The same conception is found in Celtic stories of a lake or river
+formed from the overflowing of a sacred well through human carelessness
+or curiosity, which led to the anger of the divinity of the well.[780]
+Or, again, a town or castle is submerged on account of the wickedness of
+its inhabitants, the waters being produced by the curse of God or a
+saint (replacing a pagan god) and forming a lake.[781] These may be
+regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in one case, that of
+the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved Dwyvan and Dwyfach and
+a pair of all kinds of animals when Lake Llion overflowed, has
+apparently borrowed from the Biblical story.[782] In other cases lakes
+are formed from the tears of a god, e.g. Manannan, whose tears at the
+death of his son formed three lochs in Erin.[783] Apollonius reports
+that the waters of Eridanus originated from the tears of Apollo when
+driven from heaven by his father.[784] This story, which he says is
+Celtic, has been clothed by him in a Greek form, and the god in question
+may have been Belenos, equated with Apollo. Sometimes the formation of
+streams was ascribed to great hail-storms--an evident mythic rendering
+of the damage done by actual spates, while the Irish myths of
+"illimitable sea-bursts," of which three particular instances are often
+mentioned, were doubtless the result of the experience of tidal waves.
+
+Although no complete account of the end of all things, like that of the
+Scandinavian Ragnarok, has survived, scattered hints tell of its former
+existence. Strabo says that the Druids taught that "fire and water must
+one day prevail"--an evident belief in some final cataclysm.[785] This
+is also hinted at in the words of certain Gauls to Alexander, telling
+him that what they feared most of all was the fall of the heavens upon
+their heads.[786] In other words, they feared what would be the signal
+of the end of all things. On Irish ground the words of Conchobar may
+refer to this. He announced that he would rescue the captives and spoil
+taken by Medb, unless the heavens fell, and the earth burst open, and
+the sea engulphed all things.[787] Such a myth mingled with Christian
+beliefs may underlie the prophecy of Badb after Mag-tured regarding the
+evils to come and the end of the world, and that of Fercertne in the
+_Colloquy of the Two Sages_.[788] Both have a curious resemblance to the
+Sybil's prophecy of doom in the Voluspa. If the gods themselves were
+involved in such a catastrophe, it would not be surprising, since in
+some aspects their immortality depended on their eating and drinking
+immortal food and drink.[789]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[766] Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 644 f.
+
+[767] _IT_ i. 25; Gaidoz, _ZCP_ i. 27.
+
+[768] _Annales de Bretagne_, x. 414.
+
+[769] _IT_ i. 50, cf. 184; _Folk-Lore_, vi. 170.
+
+[770] Caesar, vi. 18.
+
+[771] See p. 341, _infra_.
+
+[772] Diod. Sic. v. 24; Appian, _Illyrica_, 2.
+
+[773] Amm. Marcel, xv. 9.
+
+[774] D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.
+
+[775] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is said to have
+been created thus--his body of earth, his blood of the sea, his face of
+the sun, his breath of the wind, etc. This is also found in a Frisian
+tale (Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Bor._ i. 479), and both stories
+present an inversion of well-known myths about the creation of the
+universe from the members of a giant.
+
+[776] Sebillot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf. _RC_ xv.
+482, xvi. 152.
+
+[777] Sebillot, ii. 6.
+
+[778] _LL_ 56; Keating, 117, 123.
+
+[779] _RC_ xv. 429, xvi. 277.
+
+[780] See p. 191, _supra_.
+
+[781] Sebillot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. 372, _infra_.
+
+[782] _Triads_ in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 583, 663.
+
+[783] _RC_ xvi. 50, 146.
+
+[784] Apoll. iv. 609 f.
+
+[785] Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[786] Arrian, _Anab._ i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian, 85.
+
+[787] _LL_ 94; Miss Hull, 205.
+
+[788] _RC_ xii. 111, xxvi. 33.
+
+[789] A possible survival of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da
+Derga's Hostel" (_RC_ xxii. 54), where we hear of Leviathan that
+surrounds the globe and strikes with his tail to overwhelm the world.
+But this may be a reflection of Norse myths of the Midgard serpent,
+sometimes equated with Leviathan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION.
+
+
+The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of
+human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were
+closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the
+principle of a life for a life, or to propitiate the gods, or in order
+to divine the future from the entrails of the victim. We shall examine
+the Celtic custom of human sacrifice from these points of view first.
+
+Caesar says that those afflicted with disease or engaged in battle or
+danger offer human victims or vow to do so, because unless man's life be
+given for man's life, the divinity of the gods cannot be appeased.[790]
+The theory appears to have been that the gods sent disease or ills when
+they desired a human life, but that any life would do; hence one in
+danger might escape by offering another in his stead. In some cases the
+victims may have been offered to disease demons or diseases personified,
+such as Celtic imagination still believes in,[791] rather than to gods,
+or, again, they may have been offered to native gods of healing. Coming
+danger could also be averted on the same principle, and though the
+victims were usually slaves, in times of great peril wives and children
+were sacrificed.[792] After a defeat, which showed that the gods were
+still implacable, the wounded and feeble were slain, or a great leader
+would offer himself.[793] Or in such a case the Celts would turn their
+weapons against themselves, making of suicide a kind of sacrifice,
+hoping to bring victory to the survivors.[794]
+
+The idea of the victim being offered on the principle of a life for a
+life is illustrated by a custom at Marseilles in time of pestilence. One
+of the poorer classes offered himself to be kept at the public expense
+for some time. He was then led in procession, clad in sacred boughs, and
+solemnly cursed, and prayer was made that on him might fall the evils of
+the community. Then he was cast headlong down. Here the victim stood for
+the lives of the city and was a kind of scape-victim, like those at the
+Thargelia.[795]
+
+Human victims were also offered by way of thanksgiving after victory,
+and vows were often made before a battle, promising these as well as
+part of the spoil. For this reason the Celts would never ransom their
+captives, but offered them in sacrifice, animals captured being
+immolated along with them.[796] The method of sacrifice was slaughter by
+sword or spear, hanging, impaling, dismembering, and drowning. Some gods
+were propitiated by one particular mode of sacrifice--Taranis by
+burning, Teutates by suffocation, Esus (perhaps a tree-god) by hanging
+on a tree. Drowning meant devoting the victim to water-divinities.[797]
+
+Other propitiatory sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a general
+or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves or even
+members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude outline of a
+human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as well as some animal
+victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says that the victims were
+malefactors who had been kept in prison for five years, and that some of
+them were impaled.[798] This need not mean that the holocausts were
+quinquennial, for they may have been offered yearly, at Midsummer, to
+judge by the ritual of modern survivals.[799] The victims perished in
+that element by which the sun-god chiefly manifested himself, and by the
+sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility were
+promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an earlier
+slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation, though their
+value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence. This is suggested
+by Strabo's words that the greater the number of murders the greater
+would be the fertility of the land, probably meaning that there would
+then be more criminals as sacrificial victims.[800] Varro also speaks of
+human sacrifice to a god equated with Saturn, offered because of all
+seeds the human race is the best, i.e. human victims are most productive
+of fertility.[801] Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a
+propitiatory sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious
+ritual springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both
+points of view the intention was the same--the promotion of fertility in
+field and fold.
+
+Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by Tacitus, who
+says that "the Druids consult the gods in the palpitating entrails of
+men," and by Strabo, who describes the striking down of the victim by
+the sword and the predicting of the future from his convulsive
+movements.[802] To this we shall return.
+
+Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were amazed at
+its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole religion in a
+phrase--_druidarum religionem dirae immanitatis_.[803] By the year 40
+A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered symbolically, the Druids
+pretending to strike them and drawing a little blood from them.[804]
+Only the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called
+philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the Celts
+of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D.[805] Dio Cassius
+describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims
+(prisoners of war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta--their breasts cut
+off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their
+bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.[806] Tacitus speaks of
+the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish
+Celts, patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such
+practices,[807] but there is no _a priori_ reason which need set them
+apart from other races on the same level of civilisation in this custom.
+The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate the number of the victims, but they
+certainly attest the existence of the practice. From the _Dindsenchas_,
+which describes many archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of
+every issue and the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm
+Cruaich--a sacrifice of the first-born,--and that at one festival the
+prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that three-fourths of
+them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic
+rites.[808] Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the
+mythic tales in the _Dindsenchas_. Yet the tales were doubtless quite
+credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly
+founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices
+in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not
+have been offered on other occasions also.
+
+The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in the
+poetical version of the cult of Cromm--
+
+  "Milk and corn
+   They would ask from him speedily,
+   In return for one-third of their healthy issue."[809]
+
+The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been two-thirds
+of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk[810]--an
+obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain
+corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,[811] but there can be no
+doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice--the offering of an agricultural
+folk to the divinities who helped or retarded growth. Possibly part of
+the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the god, was
+buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote
+fertility. The blood was sprinkled on the image of the god. Such
+practices were as obnoxious to Christian missionaries as they had been
+to the Roman Government, and we learn that S. Patrick preached against
+"the slaying of yoke oxen and milch cows and the burning of the
+first-born progeny" at the Fair of Taillte.[812] As has been seen, the
+Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda story, in which the victim is
+offered not to a dragon, but to the Fomorians, may have received this
+form from actual ritual in which human victims were sacrificed to the
+Fomorians.[813] In a Japanese version of the same story the maiden is
+offered to the sea-gods. Another tale suggests the offering of human
+victims to remove blight. In this case the land suffers from blight
+because the adulteress Becuma, married to the king of Erin, has
+pretended to be a virgin. The Druids announced that the remedy was to
+slay the son of an undefiled couple and sprinkle the doorposts and the
+land with his blood. Such a youth was found, but at his mother's request
+a two-bellied cow, in which two birds were found, was offered in his
+stead.[814] In another instance in the _Dindsenchas_, hostages,
+including the son of a captive prince, are offered to remove plagues--an
+equivalent to the custom of the Gauls.[815]
+
+Human sacrifices were also offered when the foundation of a new building
+was laid. Such sacrifices are universal, and are offered to propitiate
+the Earth spirits or to provide a ghostly guardian for the building. A
+Celtic legend attaches such a sacrifice to the founding of the monastery
+at Iona. S. Oran agrees to adopt S. Columba's advice "to go under the
+clay of this island to hallow it," and as a reward he goes straight to
+heaven.[816] The legend is a semi-Christian form of the memory of an old
+pagan custom, and it is attached to Oran probably because he was the
+first to be buried in the island. In another version, nothing is said of
+the sacrifice. The two saints are disputing about the other world, and
+Oran agrees to go for three days into the grave to settle the point at
+issue. At the end of that time the grave is opened, and the triumphant
+Oran announces that heaven and hell are not such as they are alleged to
+be. Shocked at his latitudinarian sentiments, Columba ordered earth to
+be piled over him, lest he cause a scandal to the faith, and Oran was
+accordingly buried alive.[817] In a Welsh instance, Vortigern's castle
+cannot be built, for the stones disappear as soon as they are laid. Wise
+men, probably Druids, order the sacrifice of a child born without a
+father, and the sprinkling of the site with his blood.[818] "Groaning
+hostages" were placed under a fort in Ireland, and the foundation of the
+palace of Emain Macha was also laid with a human victim.[819] Many
+similar legends are connected with buildings all over the Celtic area,
+and prove the popularity of the pagan custom. The sacrifice of human
+victims on the funeral pile will be discussed in a later chapter.
+
+Of all these varieties of human sacrifice, those offered for fertility,
+probably at Beltane or Midsummer, were the most important. Their
+propitiatory nature is of later origin, and their real intention was to
+strengthen the divinity by whom the processes of growth were directed.
+Still earlier, one victim represented the divinity, slain that his life
+might be revived in vigour. The earth was sprinkled with his blood and
+fed with his flesh in order to fertilise it, and possibly the
+worshippers partook sacramentally of the flesh. Propitiatory holocausts
+of human victims had taken the place of the slain representative of a
+god, but their value in promoting fertility was not forgotten. The
+sacramental aspect of the rite is perhaps to be found in Pliny's words
+regarding "the slaying of a human being as a most religious act and
+eating the flesh as a wholesome remedy" among the Britons.[820] This may
+merely refer to "medicinal cannibalism," such as still survives in
+Italy, but the passage rather suggests sacramental cannibalism, the
+eating of part of a divine victim, such as existed in Mexico and
+elsewhere. Other acts of cannibalism are referred to by classical
+writers. Diodorus says the Irish ate their enemies, and Pausanias
+describes the eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children among
+the Galatian Celts. Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain
+(sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and Livy, and Solinus
+describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain
+and drinking it.[821] In some of these cases the intention may simply
+have been to obtain the dead enemy's strength, but where a sacrificial
+victim was concerned, the intention probably went further than this. The
+blood of dead relatives was also drunk in order to obtain their virtues,
+or to be brought into closer _rapport_ with them.[822] This is analogous
+to the custom of blood brotherhood, which also existed among the Celts
+and continued as a survival in the Western Isles until a late date.[823]
+
+One group of Celtic human sacrifices was thus connected with primitive
+agricultural ritual, but the warlike energies of the Celts extended the
+practice. Victims were easily obtained, and offered to the gods of war.
+Yet even these sacrifices preserved some trace of the older rite, in
+which the victim represented a divinity or spirit.
+
+Head-hunting, described in classical writings and in Irish texts, had
+also a sacrificial aspect. The heads of enemies were hung at the
+saddle-bow or fixed on spears, as the conquerors returned home with
+songs of victory.[824] This gruesome picture often recurs in the texts.
+Thus, after the death of Cuchulainn, Conall Cernach returned to Emer
+with the heads of his slayers strung on a withy. He placed each on a
+stake and told Emer the name of the owner. A Celtic _oppidum_ or a
+king's palace must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island
+village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of
+houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such
+a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it.[825] A room in the
+palace was sometimes a store for such heads, or they were preserved in
+cedar-wood oil or in coffers. They were proudly shown to strangers as a
+record of conquest, but they could not be sold for their weight in
+gold.[826] After a battle a pile of heads was made and the number of the
+slain was counted, and at annual festivals warriors produced the tongues
+of enemies as a record of their prowess.[827]
+
+These customs had a religious aspect. In cutting off a head the Celt
+saluted the gods, and the head was offered to them or to ancestral
+spirits, and sometimes kept in grove or temple.[828] The name given to
+the heads of the slain in Ireland, the "mast of Macha," shows that they
+were dedicated to her, just as skulls found under an altar had been
+devoted to the Celtic Mars.[829] Probably, as among Dayaks, American
+Indians, and others, possession of a head was a guarantee that the ghost
+of its owner would be subservient to its Celtic possessor, either in
+this world or in the next, since they are sometimes found buried in
+graves along with the dead.[830] Or, suspended in temples, they became
+an actual and symbolical offering of the life of their owners, if, as is
+probable, the life or soul was thought to be in the head. Hence, too,
+the custom of drinking from the skull of the slain had the intention of
+transferring his powers directly to the drinker.[831] Milk drunk from
+the skull of Conall Cernach restored to enfeebled warriors their
+pristine strength,[832] and a folk-survival in the Highlands--that of
+drinking from the skull of a suicide (here taking the place of the slain
+enemy) in order to restore health--shows the same idea at work. All
+these practices had thus one end, that of the transference of spirit
+force--to the gods, to the victor who suspended the head from his house,
+and to all who drank from the skull. Represented in bas-relief on houses
+or carved on dagger-handles, the head may still have been thought to
+possess talismanic properties, giving power to house or weapon. Possibly
+this cult of human heads may have given rise to the idea of a divine
+head like those figured on Gaulish images, or described, e.g., in the
+story of Bran. His head preserved the land from invasion, until Arthur
+disinterred it,[833] the story being based on the belief that heads or
+bodies of great warriors still had a powerful influence.[834] The
+representation of the head of a god, like his whole image, would be
+thought to possess the same preservative power.
+
+A possible survival of the sacrifice of the aged may be found in a
+Breton custom of applying a heavy club to the head of old persons to
+lighten their death agonies, the clubs having been formerly used to kill
+them. They are kept in chapels, and are regarded with awe.[835]
+
+Animal victims were also frequently offered. The Galatian Celts made a
+yearly sacrifice to their Artemis of a sheep, goat, or calf, purchased
+with money laid by for each animal caught in the chase. Their dogs were
+feasted and crowned with flowers.[836] Further details of this ritual
+are unfortunately lacking. Animals captured in war were sacrificed to
+the war-gods by the Gauls, or to a river-god, as when the horses of the
+defeated host were thrown into the Rhine by the Gaulish conquerors of
+Mallius.[837] We have seen that the white oxen sacrificed at the
+mistletoe ritual may once have been representatives of the
+vegetation-spirit, which also animated the oak and the mistletoe. Among
+the insular Celts animal sacrifices are scarcely mentioned in the texts,
+probably through suppression by later scribes, but the lives of Irish
+saints contain a few notices of the custom, e.g. that of S. Patrick,
+which describes the gathering of princes, chiefs, and Druids at Tara to
+sacrifice victims to idols.[838] In Ireland the peasantry still kill a
+sheep or heifer for S. Martin on his festival, and ill-luck is thought
+to follow the non-observance of the rite.[839] Similar sacrifices on
+saints' days in Scotland and Wales occurred in Christian times.[840] An
+excellent instance is that of the sacrifice of bulls at Gairloch for the
+cure of lunatics on S. Maelrubha's day (August 25th). Libations of milk
+were also poured out on the hills, ruined chapels were perambulated,
+wells and stones worshipped, and divination practised. These rites,
+occurring in the seventeenth century, were condemned by the Presbytery
+of Dingwall, but with little effect, and some of them still
+survive.[841] In all these cases the saint has succeeded to the ritual
+of an earlier god. Mr. Cook surmises that S. Maelrubha was the successor
+of a divine king connected with an oak and sacred well, the god or
+spirit of which was incarnate in him. These divine kings may at one time
+have been slain, or a bull, similarly incarnating the god or spirit, may
+have been killed as a surrogate. This slaying was at a later time
+regarded as a sacrifice and connected with the cure of madness.[842] The
+rite would thus be on a parallel with the slaying of the oxen at the
+mistletoe gathering, as already interpreted. Eilean Maree (Maelrubha),
+where the tree and well still exist, was once known as Eilean mo righ
+("the island of my king"), or Eilean a Mhor Righ ("of the great king"),
+the king having been worshipped as a god. This piece of corroborative
+evidence was given by the oldest inhabitant to Sir Arthur Mitchell.[843]
+The people also spoke of the god Mourie.
+
+Other survivals of animal sacrifice are found in cases of cattle-plague,
+as in Morayshire sixty years ago, in Wales, Devon, and the Isle of Man.
+The victim was burned and its ashes sprinkled on the herd, or it was
+thrown into the sea or over a precipice.[844] Perhaps it was both a
+propitiatory sacrifice and a scape-animal, carrying away the disease,
+though the rite may be connected with the former slaying of a divine
+animal whose death benefited all the cattle of the district. In the
+Hebrides the spirits of earth and air were propitiated every quarter by
+throwing outside the door a cock, hen, duck, or cat, which was supposed
+to be seized by them. If the rite was neglected, misfortune was sure to
+follow. The animal carried away evils from the house, and was also a
+propitiatory sacrifice.
+
+The blood of victims was sprinkled on altars, images, and trees, or, as
+among the Boii, it was placed in a skull adorned with gold.[845] Other
+libations are known mainly from folk-survivals. Thus Breton fishermen
+salute reefs and jutting promontories, say prayers, and pour a glass of
+wine or throw a biscuit or an old garment into the sea.[846] In the
+Hebrides a curious rite was performed on Maundy Thursday. After midnight
+a man walked into the sea, and poured ale or gruel on the waters, at the
+same time singing:
+
+  "O God of the sea,
+   Put weed in the drawing wave,
+   To enrich the ground,
+   To shower on us food."
+
+Those on shore took up the strain in chorus.[847] Thus the rite was
+described by one who took part in it a century ago, but Martin, writing
+in the seventeenth century, gives other details. The cup of ale was
+offered with the words, "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that
+you will be so kind as to send plenty of seaweed for enriching our
+ground for the ensuing year." All then went in silence to the church and
+remained there for a time, after which they indulged in an orgy
+out-of-doors. This orgiastic rite may once have included the intercourse
+of the sexes--a powerful charm for fertility. "Shony" was some old
+sea-god, and another divinity of the sea, Brianniul, was sometimes
+invoked for the same purpose.[848] Until recently milk was poured on
+"Gruagach stones" in the Hebrides, as an offering to the Gruagach, a
+brownie who watched over herds, and who had taken the place of a
+god.[849]
+
+
+PRAYER.
+
+
+Prayer accompanied most rites, and probably consisted of traditional
+formulae, on the exact recital of which depended their value. The Druids
+invoked a god during the mistletoe rite, and at a Galatian sacrifice,
+offered to bring birds to destroy grasshoppers, prayer was made to the
+birds themselves.[850] In Mona, at the Roman invasion, the Druids raised
+their arms and uttered prayers for deliverance, at the same time cursing
+the invaders, and Boudicca invoked the protection of the goddess
+Andrasta in a similar manner.[851] Chants were sung by the "priestesses"
+of Sena to raise storms, and they were also sung by warriors both before
+and after a battle, to the accompaniment of a measured dance and the
+clashing of arms.[852] These warrior chants were composed by bards, and
+probably included invocations of the war-gods and the recital of famous
+deeds. They may also have been of the nature of spells ensuring the help
+of the gods, like the war-cries uttered by a whole army to the sound of
+trumpets.[853] These consisted of the name of a god, of a tribe or clan,
+or of some well-known phrase. As the recital of a divine name is often
+supposed to force the god to help, these cries had thus a magical
+aspect, while they also struck terror into the foe.[854] Warriors also
+advanced dancing to the fray, and they are depicted on coins dancing on
+horseback or before a sword, which was worshipped by the Celts.[855] The
+Celtiberian festival at the full moon consisted entirely of dancing. The
+dance is a primitive method of expressing religious emotion, and where
+it imitates certain actions, it is intended by magical influence to
+crown the actions themselves with success. It is thus a kind of acted
+prayer with magical results.
+
+
+DIVINATION.
+
+
+A special class of diviners existed among the Celts, but the Druids
+practised divination, as did also the unofficial layman. Classical
+writers speak of the Celts as of all nations the most devoted to, and
+the most experienced in, the science of divination. Divination with a
+human victim is described by Diodorus. Libations were poured over him,
+and he was then slain, auguries being drawn from the method of his fall,
+the movements of his limbs, and the flowing of his blood. Divination
+with the entrails was used in Galatia, Gaul, and Britain.[856] Beasts
+and birds also provided omens. The course taken by a hare let loose gave
+an omen of success to the Britons, and in Ireland divination was used
+with a sacrificial animal.[857] Among birds the crow was pre-eminent,
+and two crows are represented speaking into the ears of a man on a
+bas-relief at Compiegne. The Celts believed that the crow had shown
+where towns should be founded, or had furnished a remedy against poison,
+and it was also an arbiter of disputes.[858] Artemidorus describes how,
+at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set
+out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped
+down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had
+been scattered won the case.[859] Birds were believed to have guided the
+migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as
+Deiotaurus gravely said, birds never lie. Divination by the voices of
+birds was used by the Irish Druids.[860]
+
+Omens were drawn from the direction of the smoke and flames of sacred
+fires and from the condition of the clouds.[861] Wands of yew were
+carried by Druids--"the wand of Druidism" of many folk-tales--and were
+used perhaps as divining-rods. Ogams were also engraved on rods of yews,
+and from these Druids divined hidden things. By this means the Druid
+Dalan discovered where Etain had been hidden by the god Mider. The
+method used may have been that of drawing one of the rods by lot and
+then divining from the marks upon it. A similar method was used to
+discover the route to be taken by invaders, the result being supposed to
+depend on divine interposition.[862] The knowledge of astronomy ascribed
+by Caesar to the Druids was probably of a simple kind, and much mixed
+with astrology, and though it furnished the data for computing a simple
+calendar, its use was largely magical.[863] Irish diviners forecast the
+time to build a house by the stars, and the date at which S. Columba's
+education should begin, was similarly discovered.[864]
+
+The _Imbas Forosnai_, "illumination between the hands," was used by the
+_File_ to discover hidden things. He chewed a piece of raw flesh and
+placed it as an offering to the images of the gods whom he desired to
+help him. If enlightenment did not come by the next day, he pronounced
+incantations on his palms, which he then placed on his cheeks before
+falling asleep. The revelation followed in a dream, or sometimes after
+awaking.[865] Perhaps the animal whose flesh was eaten was a sacred one.
+Another method was that of the _Teinm Laegha_. The _File_ made a verse
+and repeated it over some person or thing regarding which he sought
+information, or he placed his staff on the person's body and so obtained
+what he sought. The rite was also preceded by sacrifice; hence S.
+Patrick prohibited both it and the _Imbas Forosnai_.[866] Another
+incantation, the _Cetnad_, was sung through the fist to discover the
+track of stolen cattle or of the thief. If this did not bring
+enlightenment, the _File_ went to sleep and obtained the knowledge
+through a dream.[867] Another _Cetnad_ for obtaining information
+regarding length of life was addressed to the seven daughters of the
+sea. Perhaps the incantation was repeated mechanically until the seer
+fell into a kind of trance. Divination by dreams was also used by the
+continental Celts.[868]
+
+Other methods resemble "trance-utterance." "A great obnubilation was
+conjured up for the bard so that he slept a heavy sleep, and things
+magic-begotten were shewn to him to enunciate," apparently in his sleep.
+This was called "illumination by rhymes," and a similar method was used
+in Wales. When consulted, the seer roared violently until he was beside
+himself, and out of his ravings the desired information was gathered.
+When aroused from this ecstatic condition, he had no remembrance of what
+he had uttered. Giraldus reports this, and thinks, with the modern
+spiritualist, that the utterance was caused by spirits.[869] The
+resemblance to modern trance-utterance and to similar methods used by
+savages is remarkable, and psychological science sees in it the
+promptings of the subliminal self in sleep.
+
+The _taghairm_ of the Highlanders was a survival from pagan times. The
+seer was usually bound in a cow's hide--the animal, it may be
+conjectured, having been sacrificed in earlier times. He was left in a
+desolate place, and while he slept spirits were supposed to inspire his
+dreams.[870] Clothing in the skin of a sacrificial animal, by which the
+person thus clothed is brought into contact with it and hence with the
+divinity to which it is offered, or with the divine animal itself where
+the victim is so regarded, is a widespread custom. Hence, in this Celtic
+usage, contact with divinity through the hide would be expected to
+produce enlightenment. For a like reason the Irish sacrificed a sheep
+for the recovery of the sick, and clothed the patient in its skin.[871]
+Binding the limbs of the seer is also a widespread custom, perhaps to
+restrain his convulsions or to concentrate the psychic force.
+
+Both among the continental and Irish Celts those who sought hidden
+knowledge slept on graves, hoping to be inspired by the spirits of the
+dead.[872] Legend told how, the full version of the _Tain_ having been
+lost, Murgan the _File_ sang an incantation over the grave of Fergus mac
+Roig. A cloud hid him for three days, and during that time the dead man
+appeared and recited the saga to him.
+
+In Ireland and the Highlands, divination by looking into the
+shoulder-blade of a sheep was used to discover future events or things
+happening at a distance, a survival from pagan times.[873] The scholiast
+on Lucan describes the Druidic method of chewing acorns and then
+prophesying, just as, in Ireland, eating nuts from the sacred hazels
+round Connla's well gave inspiration.[874] The "priestesses" of Sena and
+the "Druidesses" of the third century had the gift of prophecy, and it
+was also ascribed freely to the _Filid_, the Druids, and to Christian
+saints. Druids are said to have prophesied the coming of S. Patrick, and
+similar prophecies are put in the mouths of Fionn and others, just as
+Montezuma's priests foretold the coming of the Spaniards.[875] The word
+used for such prophecies--_baile_, means "ecstasy," and it suggests that
+the prophet worked himself into a frenzy and then fell into a trance, in
+which he uttered his forecast. Prophecies were also made at the birth of
+a child, describing its future career.[876] Careful attention was given
+to the utterances of Druidic prophets, e.g. Medb's warriors postponed
+their expedition for fifteen days, because the Druids told them they
+would not succeed if they set out sooner.[877]
+
+Mythical personages or divinities are said in the Irish texts to have
+stood on one leg, with one arm extended, and one eye closed, when
+uttering prophecies or incantations, and this was doubtless an attitude
+used by the seer.[878] A similar method is known elsewhere, and it may
+have been intended to produce greater force. From this attitude may have
+originated myths of beings with one arm, one leg, and one eye, like some
+Fomorians or the _Fachan_ whose weird picture Campbell of Islay drew
+from verbal descriptions.[879]
+
+Early Celtic saints occasionally describe lapses into heathenism in
+Ireland, not characterised by "idolatry," but by wizardry, dealing in
+charms, and _fidlanna_, perhaps a kind of divination with pieces of
+wood.[880] But it is much more likely that these had never really been
+abandoned. They belong to the primitive element of religion and magic
+which people cling to long after they have given up "idolatry."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[790] Caesar, vi. 16.
+
+[791] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 68.
+
+[792] Justin, xxvi. 2; Pomp. Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[793] Diod. Sic. xxii. 9.
+
+[794] See Jullian, 53.
+
+[795] Servius on _AEneid_, iii. 57.
+
+[796] Caesar, vi. 16; Livy, xxxviii. 47; Diod. Sic. v. 32, xxxi. 13;
+Athenaeus, iv. 51; Dio Cass., lxii. 7.
+
+[797] Diod. Sic, xxxiv. 13; Strabo, iv. 4; Orosius, v. 16; Schol. on
+Lucan, Usener's ed. 32.
+
+[798] Caesar, vi. 16; Strabo, iv. 4; Diod. Sic. v. 32; Livy, xxxviii. 47.
+
+[799] Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 529 f.
+
+[800] Strabo, _ibid._ 4. 4.
+
+[801] S. Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, vii. 19.
+
+[802] Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[803] Suet. _Claud._ 25.
+
+[804] Pomp. Mela, iii. 2. 18.
+
+[805] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 4. 13.
+
+[806] Dio. Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[807] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 222; Joyce, _SH_ i. ch. 9.
+
+[808] _RC_ xvi. 35.
+
+[809] _LL_ 213_b_.
+
+[810] See p. 52, _supra_.
+
+[811] See, however, accounts of reckless child sacrifices in Ellis,
+_Polynesian Researches_, i. 252, and Westermarck, _Moral Ideas_, i. 397.
+
+[812] O'Curry, _MC_ Intro, dcxli.
+
+[813] _LU_ 126_a_. A folk-version is given by Larminie, _West Irish
+Folk-Tales_, 139.
+
+[814] _Book of Fermoy_, 89_a_.
+
+[815] O'Curry, _MC_ Intro. dcxl, ii. 222.
+
+[816] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ Reeve's ed. 288.
+
+[817] Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_, ii. 317.
+
+[818] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ 40.
+
+[819] Stokes, _TIG_ xli.; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 9.
+
+[820] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 1. The feeding of Ethni, daughter of Crimthann,
+on human flesh that she might sooner attain maturity may be an instance
+of "medicinal cannibalism" (_IT_ iii. 363). The eating of parents among
+the Irish, described by Strabo (iv. 5), was an example of "honorific
+cannibalism." See my article "Cannibalism" in Hastings' _Encycl. of Rel.
+and Ethics_, iii, 194.
+
+[821] Diod. Sic. vi. 12; Paus. x. 22. 3; Amm. Marc. xxvii. 4; Livy,
+xxiii. 24; Solin. xxii. 3.
+
+[822] This custom continued in Ireland until Spenser's time.
+
+[823] Leahy, i. 158; Giraldus, _Top. Hib._ iii. 22; Martin, 109.
+
+[824] Sil. Ital. iv. 213; Diod. Sic. xiv. 115; Livy, x. 26; Strabo, iv.
+4. 5; Miss Hull, 92.
+
+[825] Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.
+
+[826] D'Arbois, v. 11; Diod. Sic. v. 29; Strabo, _loc. cit._
+
+[827] _Annals of the Four Masters_, 864; _IT_ i. 205.
+
+[828] Sil. Ital. iv. 215, v. 652; Lucan, _Phar._ i. 447; Livy, xxiii.
+24.
+
+[829] See p. 71, _supra_; _CIL_ xii. 1077. A dim memory of head-taking
+survived in the seventeenth century in Eigg, where headless skeletons
+were found, of which the islanders said that an enemy had cut off their
+heads (Martin, 277).
+
+[830] Belloguet, _Ethnol. Gaul._ iii. 100.
+
+[831] Sil. Ital. xiii. 482; Livy, xxiii. 24; Florus, i. 39.
+
+[832] _ZCP_ i. 106.
+
+[833] Loth, i. 90 f., ii. 218-219. Sometimes the weapons of a great
+warrior had the same effect. The bows of Gwerthevyr were hidden in
+different parts of Prydein and preserved the land from Saxon invasion,
+until Gwrtheyrn, for love of a woman, dug them up (Loth, ii. 218-219).
+
+[834] See p. 338, _infra_. In Ireland, the brain of an enemy was taken
+from the head, mixed with lime, and made into a ball. This was allowed
+to harden, and was then placed in the tribal armoury as a trophy.
+
+[835] _L'Anthropologie_, xii. 206, 711. Cf. the English tradition of the
+"Holy Mawle," said to have been used for the same purpose. Thorns,
+_Anecdotes and Traditions_, 84.
+
+[836] Arrian, _Cyneg._ xxxiii.
+
+[837] Caesar, vi. 17; Orosius, v. 16. 6.
+
+[838] D'Arbois, i. 155.
+
+[839] Curtin, _Tales of the Fairies_, 72; _Folk-Lore_, vii. 178-179.
+
+[840] Mitchell, _Past in the Present_, 275.
+
+[841] Mitchell, _op. cit._ 271 f.
+
+[842] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 332.
+
+[843] Mitchell, _loc. cit._ 147. The corruption of "Maelrubha" to
+"Maree" may have been aided by confusing the name with _mo_ or _mhor
+righ_.
+
+[844] Mitchell, _loc. cit._; Moore, 92, 145; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 305;
+Worth, _Hist. of Devonshire_, 339; Dalyell, _passim_.
+
+[845] Livy, xxiii. 24.
+
+[846] Sebillot, ii. 166-167; _L'Anthrop._ xv. 729.
+
+[847] Carmichael, _Carm. Gad._ i. 163.
+
+[848] Martin, 28. A scribe called "Sonid," which might be the equivalent
+of "Shony," is mentioned in the Stowe missal (_Folk-Lore_, 1895).
+
+[849] Campbell, _Superstitions_, 184 f; _Waifs and Strays of Celtic
+Trad._ ii. 455.
+
+[850] Aelian, xvii. 19.
+
+[851] Tacitus, _Ann._ xiv. 30; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[852] Appian, _Celtica_, 8; Livy, xxi. 28, xxxviii. 17, x. 26.
+
+[853] Livy, v. 38, vii. 23; Polybius, ii. 29. Cf. Watteville, _Le cri de
+guerre chez les differents peuples_, Paris, 1889.
+
+[854] Livy, v. 38.
+
+[855] Appian, vi. 53; Muret et Chabouillet, _Catalogue des monnaies
+gauloises_, 6033 f., 6941 f.
+
+[856] Diod. v. 31; Justin, xxvi. 2, 4; Cicero, _de Div._ ii. 36, 76;
+Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30; Strabo, iii. 3. 6.
+
+[857] Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
+
+[858] Reinach, _Catal. Sommaire_, 31; Pseudo-Plutarch, _de Fluviis_, vi.
+4; _Mirab. Auscult._ 86.
+
+[859] Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[860] Justin, xxiv, 4; Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15. 26. (Cf. the two magic
+crows which announced the coming of Cuchulainn to the other world
+(D'Arbois, v. 203); Irish _Nennius_, 145; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 224; cf. for
+a Welsh instance, Skene, i. 433.)
+
+[861] Joyce, _SH_ i. 229; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 224, _MS Mat._ 284.
+
+[862] _IT_ i. 129; Livy, v. 34; Loth, _RC_ xvi. 314. The Irish for
+consulting a lot is _crann-chur_, "the act of casting wood."
+
+[863] Caesar, vi. 14.
+
+[864] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 46, 224; Stokes, _Three Irish Homilies_, 103.
+
+[865] Cormac, 94. Fionn's divination by chewing his thumb is called
+_Imbas Forosnai_ (_RC_ xxv. 347).
+
+[866] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 45.
+
+[867] Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 241.
+
+[868] Justin, xliii. 5.
+
+[869] O'Grady, ii. 362; Giraldus, _Descr. Camb._ i. 11.
+
+[870] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, i. 311; Martin, 111.
+
+[871] Richardson, _Folly of Pilgrimages_, 70.
+
+[872] Tertullian, _de Anima_, 57; _Coll. de Reb. Hib._ iii. 334.
+
+[873] Campbell, _Superstitions_, 263; Curtin, _Tales_, 84.
+
+[874] Lucan, ed. Usener, 33.
+
+[875] See examples in O'Curry, _MS Mat._ 383 f.
+
+[876] Miss Hull, 19, 20, 23.
+
+[877] _LU_ 55.
+
+[878] _RC_ xii. 98, xxi. 156, xxii. 61.
+
+[879] _RC_ xv. 432; _Annals of the Four Masters_, A.M. 2530; Campbell,
+_WHT_ iv. 298.
+
+[880] See "Adamnan's Second Vision." _RC_ xii. 441.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+TABU.
+
+
+The Irish _geis_, pl. _geasa_, which may be rendered by Tabu, had two
+senses. It meant something which must not be done for fear of disastrous
+consequences, and also an obligation to do something commanded by
+another.
+
+As a tabu the _geis_ had a large place in Irish life, and was probably
+known to other branches of the Celts.[881] It followed the general
+course of tabu wherever found. Sometimes it was imposed before birth, or
+it was hereditary, or connected with totemism. Legends, however, often
+arose giving a different explanation to _geasa_, long after the customs
+in which they originated had been forgotten. It was one of Diarmaid's
+_geasa_ not to hunt the boar of Ben Gulban, and this was probably
+totemic in origin. But legend told how his father killed a child, the
+corpse being changed into a boar by the child's father, who said its
+span of life would be the same as Diarmaid's, and that he would be slain
+by it. Oengus put _geasa_ on Diarmaid not to hunt it, but at Fionn's
+desire he broke these, and was killed.[882] Other _geasa_--those of
+Cuchulainn not to eat dog's flesh, and of Conaire never to chase
+birds--also point to totemism.
+
+In some cases _geasa_ were based on ideas of right and wrong, honour or
+dishonour, or were intended to cause avoidance of unlucky days. Others
+are unintelligible to us. The largest number of _geasa_ concerned kings
+and chiefs, and are described, along with their corresponding
+privileges, in the _Book of Rights_. Some of the _geasa_ of the king of
+Connaught were not to go to an assembly of women at Leaghair, not to sit
+in autumn on the sepulchral mound of the wife of Maine, not to go in a
+grey-speckled garment on a grey-speckled horse to the heath of Cruachan,
+and the like.[883] The meaning of these is obscure, but other examples
+are more obvious and show that all alike corresponded to the tabus
+applying to kings in primitive societies, who are often magicians,
+priests, or even divine representatives. On them the welfare of the
+tribe and the making of rain or sunshine, and the processes of growth
+depend. They must therefore be careful of their actions, and hence they
+are hedged about with tabus which, however unmeaning, have a direct
+connection with their powers. Out of such conceptions the Irish kingly
+_geasa_ arose. Their observance made the earth fruitful, produced
+abundance and prosperity, and kept both the king and his land from
+misfortune. In later times these were supposed to be dependent on the
+"goodness" or the reverse of the king, but this was a departure from the
+older idea, which is clearly stated in the _Book of Rights_.[884] The
+kings were divinities on whom depended fruitfulness and plenty, and who
+must therefore submit to obey their _geasa_. Some of their prerogatives
+seem also to be connected with this state of things. Thus they might eat
+of certain foods or go to certain places on particular days.[885] In
+primitive societies kings and priests often prohibit ordinary mortals
+from eating things which they desire for themselves by making them
+_tabu_, and in other cases the fruits of the earth can only be eaten
+after king or priest has partaken of them ceremonially. This may have
+been the case in Ireland. The privilege relating to places may have
+meant that these were sacred and only to be entered by the king at
+certain times and in his sacred capacity.
+
+As a reflection from this state of things, the heroes of the sagas,
+Cuchulainn and Fionn, had numerous _geasa_ applicable to themselves,
+some of them religious, some magical, others based on primitive ideas of
+honour, others perhaps the invention of the narrators.[886]
+
+_Geasa_, whether in the sense of tabus or of obligations, could be
+imposed by any one, and must be obeyed, for disobedience produced
+disastrous effects. Probably the obligation was framed as an incantation
+or spell, and the power of the spell being fully believed in, obedience
+would follow as a matter of course.[887] Examples of such _geasa_ are
+numerous in Irish literature. Cuchulainn's father-in-law put _geasa_ on
+him that he should know no rest until he found out the cause of the
+exile of the sons of Doel. And Grainne put _geasa_ on Diarmaid that he
+should elope with her, and this he did, though the act was repugnant to
+him.
+
+Among savages the punishment which is supposed to follow tabu-breaking
+is often produced through auto-suggestion when a tabu has been
+unconsciously infringed and this has afterwards been discovered. Fear
+produces the result which is feared. The result is believed, however, to
+be the working of divine vengeance. In the case of Irish _geasa_,
+destruction and death usually followed their infringement, as in the
+case of Diarmaid and Cuchulainn. But the best instance is found in the
+tale of _The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel_, in which the _sid_-folk
+avenge themselves for Eochaid's action by causing the destruction of his
+descendant Conaire, who is forced to break his _geasa_. These are first
+minutely detailed; then it is shown how, almost in spite of himself,
+Conaire was led on to break them, and how, in the sequel, his tragic
+death occurred.[888] Viewed in this light as the working of divine
+vengeance to a remote descendant of the offender by forcing him to break
+his tabus, the story is one of the most terrible in the whole range of
+Irish literature.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[881] The religious interdictions mentioned by Caesar (vi. 13) may be
+regarded as tabus, while the spoils of war placed in a consecrated place
+(vi. 18), and certain animals among the Britons (v. 12), were clearly
+under tabu.
+
+[882] Joyce, _OCR_ 332 f.
+
+[883] _Book of Rights_, ed. O'Donovan, 5.
+
+[884] _Book of Rights_, 7.
+
+[885] Ibid. 3 f.
+
+[886] _LL_ 107; O'Grady, ii. 175.
+
+[887] In Highland tales _geasa_ is translated "spells."
+
+[888] _RC_ xxii. 27 f. The story of _Da Choca's Hostel_ has for its
+subject the destruction of Cormac through breaking his _geasa_ (_RC_
+xxi. 149 f.).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+FESTIVALS.
+
+
+The Celtic year was not at first regulated by the solstices and
+equinoxes, but by some method connected with agriculture or with the
+seasons. Later, the year was a lunar one, and there is some evidence of
+attempts at synchronising solar and lunar time. But time was mainly
+measured by the moon, while in all calculations night preceded day.[889]
+Thus _oidhche Samhain_ was the night preceding Samhain (November 1st),
+not the following night. The usage survives in our "sennight" and
+"fortnight." In early times the year had two, possibly three divisions,
+marking periods in pastoral or agricultural life, but it was afterwards
+divided into four periods, while the year began with the winter
+division, opening at Samhain. A twofold, subdivided into a fourfold
+division is found in Irish texts,[890] and may be tabulated as
+follows:--
+
+                       1st quarter, _Geimredh_, beginning with the
+_A_. Geimredh          festival of _Samhain_, November 1st.
+     (winter half)
+                       2nd quarter, _Earrach_, beginning February
+                       1st (sometimes called _Oimelc_).
+
+
+                       3rd quarter, _Samradh_, beginning with the
+_B_. Samhradh          festival of _Beltane_, May 1st (called also
+     (summer half)     _Cet-soman_ or _Cet-samain_, 1st day of
+                       _Samono-s_; cf. Welsh _Cyntefyn_).
+
+                       4th quarter, _Foghamhar_, beginning with
+                       the festival of _Lugnasadh_, August 1st
+                       (sometimes called _Brontroghain_).
+
+These divisions began with festivals, and clear traces of three of them
+occur over the whole Celtic area, but the fourth has now been merged in
+S. Brigit's day. Beltane and Samhain marked the beginning of the two
+great divisions, and were perhaps at first movable festivals, according
+as the signs of summer or winter appeared earlier or later. With the
+adoption of the Roman calendar some of the festivals were displaced,
+e.g. in Gaul, where the Calends of January took the place of Samhain,
+the ritual being also transferred.
+
+None of the four festivals is connected with the times of equinox and
+solstice. This points to the fact that originally the Celtic year was
+independent of these. But Midsummer day was also observed not only by
+the Celts, but by most European folk, the ritual resembling that of
+Beltane. It has been held, and an old tradition in Ireland gives some
+support to the theory, that under Christian influences the old pagan
+feast of Beltane was merged in that of S. John Baptist on Midsummer
+day.[891] But, though there are Christian elements in the Midsummer
+ritual, denoting a desire to bring it under Church influence, the pagan
+elements in folk-custom are strongly marked, and the festival is deeply
+rooted in an earlier paganism all over Europe. Without much acquaintance
+with astronomy, men must have noted the period of the sun's longest
+course from early times, and it would probably be observed ritually. The
+festivals of Beltane and Midsummer may have arisen independently, and
+entered into competition with each other. Or Beltane may have been an
+early pastoral festival marking the beginning of summer when the herds
+went out to pasture, and Midsummer a more purely agricultural festival.
+And since their ritual aspect and purpose as seen in folk-custom are
+similar, they may eventually have borrowed each from the other. Or they
+may be later separate fixed dates of an earlier movable summer festival.
+For our purpose we may here consider them as twin halves of such a
+festival. Where Midsummer was already observed, the influence of the
+Roman calendar would confirm that observance. The festivals of the
+Christian year also affected the older observances. Some of the ritual
+was transferred to saints' days within the range of the pagan festival
+days, thus the Samhain ritual is found observed on S. Martin's day. In
+other cases, holy days took the place of the old festivals--All Saints'
+and All Souls' that of Samhain, S. Brigit's day that of February 1st, S.
+John Baptist's day that of Midsummer, Lammas that of Lugnasad, and some
+attempt was made to hallow, if not to oust, the older ritual.
+
+The Celtic festivals being primarily connected with agricultural and
+pastoral life, we find in their ritual survivals traces not only of a
+religious but of a magical view of things, of acts designed to assist
+the powers of life and growth. The proof of this will be found in a
+detailed examination of the surviving customs connected with them.
+
+
+SAMHAIN.
+
+
+Samhain,[892] beginning the Celtic year, was an important social and
+religious occasion. The powers of blight were beginning their
+ascendancy, yet the future triumph of the powers of growth was not
+forgotten. Probably Samhain had gathered up into itself other feasts
+occurring earlier or later. Thus it bears traces of being a harvest
+festival, the ritual of the earlier harvest feast being transferred to
+the winter feast, as the Celts found themselves in lands where harvest
+is not gathered before late autumn. The harvest rites may, however, have
+been associated with threshing rather than ingathering. Samhain also
+contains in its ritual some of the old pastoral cults, while as a New
+Year feast its ritual is in great part that of all festivals of
+beginnings.
+
+New fire was brought into each house at Samhain from the sacred
+bonfire,[893] itself probably kindled from the need-fire by the friction
+of pieces of wood. This preserved its purity, the purity necessary to a
+festival of beginnings.[894] The putting away of the old fires was
+probably connected with various rites for the expulsion of evils, which
+usually occur among many peoples at the New Year festival. By that
+process of dislocation which scattered the Samhain ritual over a wider
+period and gave some of it to Christmas, the kindling of the Yule log
+may have been originally connected with this festival.
+
+Divination and forecasting the fate of the inquirer for the coming year
+also took place. Sometimes these were connected with the bonfire, stones
+placed in it showing by their appearance the fortune or misfortune
+awaiting their owners.[895] Others, like those described by Burns in his
+"Hallowe'en," were unconnected with the bonfire and were of an erotic
+nature.[896]
+
+The slaughter of animals for winter consumption which took place at
+Samhain, or, as now, at Martinmas, though connected with economic
+reasons, had a distinctly religious aspect, as it had among the Teutons.
+In recent times in Ireland one of the animals was offered to S. Martin,
+who may have taken the place of a god, and ill-luck followed the
+non-observance of the custom.[897] The slaughter was followed by general
+feasting. This later slaughter may be traced back to the pastoral stage,
+in which the animals were regarded as divine, and one was slain annually
+and eaten sacramentally. Or, if the slaughter was more general, the
+animals would be propitiated. But when the animals ceased to be
+worshipped, the slaughter would certainly be more general, though still
+preserving traces of its original character. The pastoral sacrament may
+also have been connected with the slaying and eating of an animal
+representing the corn-spirit at harvest time. In one legend S. Martin is
+associated with the animal slain at Martinmas, and is said to have been
+cut up and eaten in the form of an ox,[898] as if a former divine animal
+had become an anthropomorphic divinity, the latter being merged in the
+personality of a Christian saint.
+
+Other rites, connected with the Calends of January as a result of
+dislocation, point also in this direction. In Gaul and Germany riotous
+processions took place with men dressed in the heads and skins of
+animals.[899] This rite is said by Tille to have been introduced from
+Italy, but it is more likely to have been a native custom.[900] As the
+people ate the flesh of the slain animals sacramentally, so they clothed
+themselves in the skins to promote further contact with their divinity.
+Perambulating the township sunwise dressed in the skin of a cow took
+place until recently in the Hebrides at New Year, in order to keep off
+misfortune, a piece of the hide being burned and the smoke inhaled by
+each person and animal in the township.[901] Similar customs have been
+found in other Celtic districts, and these animal disguises can hardly
+be separated from the sacramental slaughter at Samhain.[902]
+
+Evils having been or being about to be cast off in the New Year ritual,
+a few more added to the number can make little difference. Hence among
+primitive peoples New Year is often characterised by orgiastic rites.
+These took place at the Calends in Gaul, and were denounced by councils
+and preachers.[903] In Ireland the merriment at Samhain is often
+mentioned in the texts,[904] and similar orgiastic rites lurk behind the
+Hallowe'en customs in Scotland and in the licence still permitted to
+youths in the quietest townships of the West Highlands at Samhain eve.
+
+Samhain, as has been seen, was also a festival of the dead, whose ghosts
+were fed at this time.[905]
+
+As the powers of growth were in danger and in eclipse in winter, men
+thought it necessary to assist them. As a magical aid the Samhain
+bonfire was chief, and it is still lit in the Highlands. Brands were
+carried round, and from it the new fire was lit in each house. In North
+Wales people jumped through the fire, and when it was extinct, rushed
+away to escape the "black sow" who would take the hindmost.[906] The
+bonfire represented the sun, and was intended to strengthen it. But
+representing the sun, it had all the sun's force, hence those who jumped
+through it were strengthened and purified. The Welsh reference to the
+hindmost and to the black sow may point to a former human sacrifice,
+perhaps of any one who stumbled in jumping through the fire. Keating
+speaks of a Druidic sacrifice in the bonfire, whether of man or beast is
+not specified.[907] Probably the victim, like the scapegoat, was laden
+with the accumulated evils of the year, as in similar New Year customs
+elsewhere. Later belief regarded the sacrifice, if sacrifice there was,
+as offered to the powers of evil--the black sow, unless this animal is a
+reminiscence of the corn-spirit in its harmful aspect. Earlier powers,
+whether of growth or of blight, came to be associated with Samhain as
+demoniac beings--the "malignant bird flocks" which blighted crops and
+killed animals, the _samhanach_ which steals children, and Mongfind the
+banshee, to whom "women and the rabble" make petitions on Samhain
+eve.[908] Witches, evil-intentioned fairies, and the dead were
+particularly active then.
+
+Though the sacrificial victim had come to be regarded as an offering to
+the powers of blight, he may once have represented a divinity of growth
+or, in earlier times, the corn-spirit. Such a victim was slain at
+harvest, and harvest is often late in northern Celtic regions, while the
+slaying was sometimes connected not with the harvest field, but with the
+later threshing. This would bring it near the Samhain festival. The
+slaying of the corn-spirit was derived from the earlier slaying of a
+tree or vegetation-spirit embodied in a tree and also in a human or
+animal victim. The corn-spirit was embodied in the last sheaf cut as
+well as in an animal or human being.[909] This human victim may have
+been regarded as a king, since in late popular custom a mock king is
+chosen at winter festivals.[910] In other cases the effigy of a saint is
+hung up and carried round the different houses, part of the dress being
+left at each. The saint has probably succeeded to the traditional ritual
+of the divine victim.[911] The primitive period in which the corn-spirit
+was regarded as female, with a woman as her human representative, is
+also recalled in folk-custom. The last sheaf is called the Maiden or the
+Mother, while, as in Northamptonshire, girls choose a queen on S.
+Catharine's day, November 26th, and in some Christmas pageants "Yule's
+wife," as well as Yule, is present, corresponding to the May queen of
+the summer festival.[912] Men also masqueraded as women at the Calends.
+The dates of these survivals may be explained by that dislocation of the
+Samhain festival already pointed out. This view of the Samhain human
+sacrifices is supported by the Irish offerings to the Fomorians--gods of
+growth, later regarded as gods of blight, and to Cromm Cruaich, in both
+cases at Samhain.[913] With the evolution of religious thought, the
+slain victim came to be regarded as an offering to evil powers.
+
+This aspect of Samhain, as a festival to promote and assist festivity,
+is further seen in the belief in the increased activity of fairies at
+that time. In Ireland, fairies are connected with the Tuatha De Danann,
+the divinities of growth, and in many folk-tales they are associated
+with agricultural processes. The use of evergreens at Christmas is
+perhaps also connected with the carrying of them round the fields in
+older times, as an evidence that the life of nature was not
+extinct.[914]
+
+Samhain may thus be regarded as, in origin, an old pastoral and
+agricultural festival, which in time came to be looked upon as affording
+assistance to the powers of growth in their conflict with the powers of
+blight. Perhaps some myth describing this combat may lurk behind the
+story of the battle of Mag-tured fought on Samhain between the Tuatha De
+Danann and the Fomorians. While the powers of blight are triumphant in
+winter, the Tuatha Dea are represented as the victors, though they
+suffer loss and death. Perhaps this enshrines the belief in the
+continual triumph of life and growth over blight and decay, or it may
+arise from the fact that Samhain was both a time of rejoicing for the
+ingathered harvest, and of wailing for the coming supremacy of winter
+and the reign of the powers of blight.
+
+
+BELTANE.
+
+
+In Cormac's _Glossary_ and other texts, "Beltane" is derived from
+_bel-tene_, "a goodly fire," or from _bel-dine_, because newly-born
+(_dine_) cattle were offered to Bel, an idol-god.[915] The latter is
+followed by those who believe in a Celtic Belus, connected with Baal. No
+such god is known, however, and the god Belenos is in no way connected
+with the Semitic divinity. M. D'Arbois assumes an unknown god of death,
+Beltene (from _beltu_, "to die"), whose festival Beltane was.[916] But
+Beltane was a festival of life, of the sun shining in his strength. Dr.
+Stokes gives a more acceptable explanation of the word. Its primitive
+form was _belo-te_[_p_]_nia_, from _belo-s_, "clear," "shining," the
+root of the names Belenos and Belisama, and _te_[_p_]_nos_, "fire." Thus
+the word would mean something like "bright fire," perhaps the sun or the
+bonfire, or both.[917]
+
+The folk-survivals of the Beltane and Midsummer festivals show that both
+were intended to promote fertility.
+
+One of the chief ritual acts at Beltane was the kindling of bonfires,
+often on hills. The house-fires in the district were often extinguished,
+the bonfire being lit by friction from a rotating wheel--the German
+"need-fire."[918] The fire kept off disease and evil, hence cattle were
+driven through it, or, according to Cormac, between two fires lit by
+Druids, in order to keep them in health during the year.[919] Sometimes
+the fire was lit beneath a sacred tree, or a pole covered with greenery
+was surrounded by the fuel, or a tree was burned in the fire.[920] These
+trees survive in the Maypole of later custom, and they represented the
+vegetation-spirit, to whom also the worshippers assimilated themselves
+by dressing in leaves. They danced sunwise round the fire or ran through
+the fields with blazing branches or wisps of straw, imitating the course
+of the sun, and thus benefiting the fields.[921] For the same reason the
+tree itself was probably borne through the fields. Houses were decked
+with boughs and thus protected by the spirit of vegetation.[922]
+
+An animal representing the spirit of vegetation may have been slain. In
+late survivals of Beltane at Dublin, a horse's skull and bones were
+thrown into the fire,[923] the attenuated form of an earlier sacrifice
+or slaying of a divine victim, by whom strength was transferred to all
+the animals which passed through the fire. In some cases a human victim
+may have been slain. This is suggested by customs surviving in
+Perthshire in the eighteenth century, when a cake was broken up and
+distributed, and the person who received a certain blackened portion was
+called the "Beltane carline" or "devoted." A pretence was made of
+throwing him into the fire, or he had to leap three times through it,
+and during the festival he was spoken of as "dead."[924] Martin says
+that malefactors were burned in the fire,[925] and though he cites no
+authority, this agrees with the Celtic use of criminals as victims.
+Perhaps the victim was at one time a human representative of the
+vegetation-spirit.
+
+Beltane cakes or bannocks, perhaps made of the grain of the sacred last
+sheaf from the previous harvest, and therefore sacramental in character,
+were also used in different ways in folk-survivals. They were rolled
+down a slope--a magical imitative act, symbolising and aiding the course
+of the sun. The cake had also a divinatory character. If it broke on
+reaching the foot of the slope this indicated the approaching death of
+its owner. In another custom in Perthshire, part of a cake was thrown
+over the shoulder with the words, "This I give to thee, preserve thou my
+horses; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep; this to thee, O fox,
+preserve thou my lambs; this to thee, O hooded crow; this to thee, O
+eagle." Here there is an appeal to beneficial and noxious powers,
+whether this was the original intention of the rite.[926] But if the
+cakes were made of the last sheaf, they were probably at one time eaten
+sacramentally, their sacrificial use emerging later.
+
+The bonfire was a sun-charm, representing and assisting the sun.
+Rain-charms were also used at Beltane. Sacred wells were visited and the
+ceremony performed with their waters, these perhaps being sprinkled over
+the tree or the fields to promote a copious rainfall for the benefit of
+vegetation. The use of such rites at Beltane and at other festivals may
+have given rise to the belief that wells were especially efficacious
+then for purposes of healing. The custom of rolling in the grass to
+benefit by May dew was probably connected with magical rites in which
+moisture played an important part.[927]
+
+The idea that the powers of growth had successfully combated those of
+blight may have been ritually represented. This is suggested by the
+mimic combats of Summer and Winter at this time, to which reference has
+already been made. Again, the May king and queen represent earlier
+personages who were regarded as embodying the spirits of vegetation and
+fertility at this festival, and whose marriage or union magically
+assisted growth and fertility, as in numerous examples of this ritual
+marriage elsewhere.[928] It may be assumed that a considerable amount of
+sexual licence also took place with the same magical purpose. Sacred
+marriage and festival orgy were an appeal to the forces of nature to
+complete their beneficial work, as well as a magical aid to them in that
+work. Analogy leads to the supposition that the king of the May was
+originally a priest-king, the incarnation of the spirit of vegetation.
+He or his surrogate was slain, while his bodily force was unabated, in
+order that it might be passed on undiminished to his successor. But the
+persistent place given to the May queen rather than to the king suggests
+the earlier prominence of women and of female spirits of fertility or of
+a great Mother-goddess in such rites. It is also significant that in the
+Perthshire ritual the man chosen was still called the _Beltane carlane_
+or _cailleach_ ("old woman"). And if, as Professor Pearson maintains,
+witch orgies are survivals of old sex-festivals, then the popular belief
+in the activity of witches on Beltane eve, also shows that the festival
+had once been mainly one in which women took part. Such orgies often
+took place on hills which had been the sites of a cult in former
+times.[929]
+
+
+MIDSUMMER.
+
+
+The ritual of the Midsummer festival did not materially differ from that
+of Beltane, and as folk-survivals show, it was practised not only by the
+Celts, but by many other European peoples. It was, in fact, a primitive
+nature festival such as would readily be observed by all under similar
+psychic conditions and in like surroundings. A bonfire was again the
+central rite of this festival, the communal nature of which is seen in
+the fact that all must contribute materials to it. In local survivals,
+mayor and priest, representing the earlier local chief and priest, were
+present, while a service in church preceded the procession to the scene
+of the bonfire. Dancing sunwise round the fire to the accompaniment of
+songs which probably took the place of hymns or tunes in honour of the
+Sun-god, commonly occurred, and by imitating the sun's action, may have
+been intended to make it more powerful. The livelier the dance the
+better would be the harvest.[930] As the fire represented the sun, it
+possessed the purifying and invigorating powers of the sun; hence
+leaping through the fire preserved from disease, brought prosperity, or
+removed barrenness. Hence also cattle were driven through the fire. But
+if any one stumbled as he leaped, ill-luck was supposed to follow him.
+He was devoted to the _fadets_ or spirits,[931] and perhaps, like the
+"devoted" Beltane victim, he may formerly have been sacrificed. Animal
+sacrifices are certainly found in many survivals, the victims being
+often placed in osier baskets and thrown into the fire. In other
+districts great human effigies of osier were carried in procession and
+burned.[932]
+
+The connection of such sacrifices with the periodical slaying of a
+representative of the vegetation-spirit has been maintained by Mannhardt
+and Dr. Frazer.[933] As has been seen, periodic sacrifices for the
+fertility of the land are mentioned by Caesar, Strabo, and Diodorus,
+human victims and animals being enclosed in an osier image and
+burned.[934] These images survive in the osier effigies just referred
+to, while they may also be connected with the custom of decking the
+human representatives of the spirit of vegetation in greenery. The
+holocausts may be regarded as extensions of the earlier custom of
+slaying one victim, the incarnation of a vegetation-spirit. This slaying
+was gradually regarded as sacrificial, but as the beneficial effect of
+the sacrifice on growth was still believed in, it would naturally be
+thought that still better effects would be produced if many victims were
+offered. The victims were burned in a fire representing the sun, and
+vegetation was thus doubly benefited, by the victims and by the sun-god.
+
+The oldest conception of the vegetation-spirit was that of a tree-spirit
+which had power over rain, sunshine, and every species of fruitfulness.
+For this reason a tree had a prominent place both in the Beltane and
+Midsummer feasts. It was carried in procession, imparting its benefits
+to each house or field. Branches of it were attached to each house for
+the same purpose. It was then burned, or it was set up to procure
+benefits to vegetation during the year and burned at the next Midsummer
+festival.[935] The sacred tree was probably an oak, and, as has been
+seen, the mistletoe rite probably took place on Midsummer eve, as a
+preliminary to cutting down the sacred tree and in order to secure the
+life or soul of the tree, which must first be secured before the tree
+could be cut down. The life of the tree was in the mistletoe, still
+alive in winter when the tree itself seemed to be dead. Such beliefs as
+this concerning the detachable soul or life survive in _Maerchen_, and
+are still alive among savages.[936]
+
+Folk-survivals show that a human or an animal representative of the
+vegetation-spirit, brought into connection with the tree, was also slain
+or burned along with the tree.[937] Thus the cutting of the mistletoe
+would be regarded as a preliminary to the slaying of the human victim,
+who, like the tree, was the representative of the spirit of vegetation.
+
+The bonfire representing the sun, and the victims, like the tree,
+representing the spirit of vegetation, it is obvious why the fire had
+healing and fertilising powers, and why its ashes and the ashes or the
+flesh of the victims possessed the same powers. Brands from the fire
+were carried through the fields or villages, as the tree had been, or
+placed on the fields or in houses, where they were carefully preserved
+for a year. All this aided growth and prosperity, just as the smoke of
+the fire, drifting over the fields, produced fertility. Ashes from the
+fire, and probably the calcined bones or even the flesh of the victims,
+were scattered on the fields or preserved and mixed with the seed corn.
+Again, part of the flesh may have been eaten sacramentally, since, as
+has been seen, Pliny refers to the belief of the Celts in the eating of
+human flesh as most wholesome.
+
+In the Stone Age, as with many savages, a circle typified the sun, and
+as soon as the wheel was invented its rolling motion at once suggested
+that of the sun. In the _Edda_ the sun is "the beautiful, the shining
+wheel," and similar expressions occur in the _Vedas_. Among the Celts
+the wheel of the sun was a favourite piece of symbolism, and this is
+seen in various customs at the Midsummer festival. A burning wheel was
+rolled down a slope or trundled through the fields, or burning brands
+were whirled round so as to give the impression of a fiery wheel. The
+intention was primarily to imitate the course of the sun through the
+heavens, and so, on the principle of imitative magic, to strengthen it.
+But also, as the wheel was rolled through the fields, so it was hoped
+that the direct beneficial action of the sun upon them would follow.
+Similar rites might be performed not only at Midsummer, but at other
+times, to procure blessing or to ward off evil, e.g. carrying fire round
+houses or fields or cattle or round a child _deiseil_ or sunwise,[938]
+and, by a further extension of thought, the blazing wheel, or the
+remains of the burning brands thrown to the winds, had also the effect
+of carrying off accumulated evils.[939]
+
+Beltane and Midsummer thus appear as twin halves of a spring or early
+summer festival, the intention of which was to promote fertility and
+health. This was done by slaying the spirit of vegetation in his
+representative--tree, animal, or man. His death quickened the energies
+of earth and man. The fire also magically assisted the course of the
+sun. Survival of the ancient rites are or were recently found in all
+Celtic regions, and have been constantly combated by the Church. But
+though they were continued, their true meaning was forgotten, and they
+were mainly performed for luck or out of sheer conservatism. Sometimes a
+Christian aspect was given to them, e.g. by connecting the fires with S.
+John, or by associating the rites with the service of the Church, or by
+the clergy being present at them. But their true nature was still
+evident as acts of pagan worship and magic which no veneer of
+Christianity could ever quite conceal.[940]
+
+
+LUGNASAD.
+
+
+The 1st of August, coming midway between Beltane and Samhain, was an
+important festival among the Celts. In Christian times the day became
+Lammas, but its name still survives in Irish as Lugnasad, in Gaelic as
+Lunasdal or Lunasduinn, and in Manx as Laa Luanys, and it is still
+observed as a fair or feast in many districts. Formerly assemblies at
+convenient centres were held on this day, not only for religious
+purposes, but for commerce and pleasure, both of these being of course
+saturated with religion. "All Ireland" met at Taillti, just as "all
+Gaul" met at Lugudunum, "Lug's town," or Lyons, in honour of Augustus,
+though the feast there had formerly been in honour of the god
+Lugus.[941] The festival was here Romanised, as it was also in Britain,
+where its name appears as _Goel-aoust_, _Gul-austus_, and _Gwyl Awst_,
+now the "August feast," but formerly the "feast of Augustus," the name
+having replaced one corresponding to Lugnasad.[942]
+
+Cormac explains the name Lugnasad as a festival of Lugh mac Ethlenn,
+celebrated by him in the beginning of autumn, and the _Rennes
+Dindsenchas_ accounts for its origin by saying that Lug's foster-mother,
+Tailtiu, having died on the Calends of August, he directed an assembly
+for lamentation to be held annually on that day at her tomb.[943] Lug is
+thus the founder of his own festival, for that it was his, and not
+Tailtiu's, is clear from the fact that his name is attached to it. As
+Lammas was a Christian harvest thanksgiving, so also was Lugnasad a
+pagan harvest feast, part of the ritual of which passed over to Samhain.
+The people made glad before the sun-god--Lug perhaps having that
+character--who had assisted them in the growth of the things on which
+their lives depended. Marriages were also arranged at this feast,
+probably because men had now more leisure and more means for entering
+upon matrimony. Possibly promiscuous love-making also occurred as a
+result of the festival gladness, agricultural districts being still
+notoriously immoral. Some evidence points to the connection of the feast
+with Lug's marriage, though this has been allegorised into his wedding
+the "sovereignty of Erin." Perhaps we have here a hint of the rite of
+the sacred marriage, for the purpose of magically fertilising the fields
+against next year's sowing.
+
+Due observance of the feast produced abundance of corn, fruit, milk, and
+fish. Probably the ritual observed included the preservation of the last
+sheaf as representing the corn-spirit, giving some of it to the cattle
+to strengthen them, and mingling it with next year's corn to impart to
+it the power of the corn-spirit. It may also have included the slaying
+of an animal or human incarnation of the corn-spirit, whose flesh and
+blood quickened the soil and so produced abundance next year, or, when
+partaken of by the worshippers, brought blessings to them. To neglect
+such rites, abundant instances of which exist in folk-custom, would be
+held to result in scarcity. This would also explain, as already
+suggested, why the festival was associated with the death of Tailtiu or
+of Carman. The euhemerised queen-goddess Tailtiu and the woman Carman
+had once been corn-goddesses, evolved from more primitive corn-spirits,
+and slain at the feast in their female representatives. The story of
+their death and burial at the festival was a dim memory of this ancient
+rite, and since the festival was also connected with the sun-god Lug, it
+was easy to bring him into relationship with the earlier goddess.
+Elsewhere the festival, in its memorial aspect, was associated with a
+king, probably because male victims had come to be representatives of a
+corn-god who had taken the place of the goddess.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Some of the ritual of these festivals is illustrated by scattered
+notices in classical writers, and on the whole they support our theory
+that the festivals originated in a female cult of spirits or goddesses
+of fertility. Strabo speaks of sacrifices offered to Demeter and Kore,
+according to the ritual followed at Samothrace, in an island near
+Britain, i.e. to native goddesses equated with them. He also describes
+the ritual of the Namnite women on an island in the Loire. They are
+called Bacchantes because they conciliated Bacchus with mysteries and
+sacrifices; in other words, they observed an orgiastic cult of a god
+equated with Bacchus. No man must set foot on the island, but the women
+left it once a year for intercourse with the other sex. Once a year the
+temple of the god was unroofed, and roofed again before sunset. If any
+woman dropped her load of materials (and it was said this always
+happened), she was torn in pieces and her limbs carried round the
+temple.[944] Dionysius Periegetes says the women were crowned with ivy,
+and celebrated their mysteries by night in honour of Earth and
+Proserpine with great clamour.[945] Pliny also makes a reference to
+British rites in which nude women and girls took part, their bodies
+stained with woad.[946]
+
+At a later time, S. Gregory of Tours speaks of the image of a goddess
+Berecynthia drawn on a litter through the streets, fields, and vineyards
+of Augustodunum on the days of her festival, or when the fields were
+threatened with scarcity. The people danced and sang before it. The
+image was covered with a white veil.[947] Berecynthia has been
+conjectured by Professor Anwyl to be the goddess Brigindu, worshipped at
+Valnay.[948]
+
+These rites were all directed towards divinities of fertility. But in
+harvest customs in Celtic Scotland and elsewhere two sheaves of corn
+were called respectively the Old Woman and the Maiden, the corn-spirit
+of the past year and that of the year to come, and corresponding to
+Demeter and Kore in early Greek agricultural ritual. As in Greece, so
+among the Celts, the primitive corn-spirits had probably become more
+individualised goddesses with an elaborate cult, observed on an island
+or at other sacred spots. The cult probably varied here and there, and
+that of a god of fertility may have taken the place of the cult of
+goddesses. A god was worshipped by the Namnite women, according to
+Strabo, goddesses according to Dionysius. The mangled victim was
+probably regarded as representative of a divinity, and perhaps part of
+the flesh was mixed with the seed-corn, like the grain of the Maiden
+sheaf, or buried in the earth. This rite is common among savages, and
+its presence in old European ritual is attested by survivals. That these
+rites were tabu to men probably points to the fact that they were
+examples of an older general custom, in which all such rites were in the
+hands of women who cultivated the earth, and who were the natural
+priestesses of goddesses of growth and fertility, of vegetation and the
+growing corn. Another example is found in the legend and procession of
+Godiva at Coventry--the survival of a pagan cult from which men were
+excluded.[949]
+
+Pliny speaks of the nudity of the women engaged in the cult. Nudity is
+an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites, and painting the
+body is also a widespread ritual act. Dressing with leaves or green
+stuff, as among the Namnite women, and often with the intention of
+personating the spirit of vegetation, is also customary. By unveiling
+the body, and especially the sexual organs, women more effectually
+represented the goddess of fertility, and more effectually as her
+representatives, or through their own powers, magically conveyed
+fertility to the fields. Nakedness thus became a powerful
+magico-religious symbol, and it is found as part of the ritual for
+producing rain.[950]
+
+There is thus abundant evidence of the cult of fertility, vegetation,
+and corn-spirits, who tended to become divinities, male or female. Here
+and there, through conservatism, the cult remained in the hands of
+women, but more generally it had become a ritual in which both men and
+women took part--that of the great agricultural festivals. Where a
+divinity had taken the place of the vaguer spirits, her image, like that
+of Berecynthia, was used in the ritual, but the image was probably the
+successor of the tree which embodied the vegetation-spirit, and was
+carried through the fields to fertilise them. Similar processions of
+images, often accompanied by a ritual washing of the image in order to
+invigorate the divinity, or, as in the similar May-day custom, to
+produce rain, are found in the Teutonic cult of Nerthus, the Phrygian of
+Cybele, the Hindu of Bhavani, and the Roman ritual of the Bona Dea. The
+image of Berecynthia was thus probably washed also. Washing the images
+of saints, usually to produce rain, has sometimes taken the place of the
+washing of a divine image, and similarly the relics of a saint are
+carried through a field, as was the tree or image. The community at Iona
+perambulated a newly sown field with S. Columba's relics in time of
+drought, and shook his tunic three times in the air, and were rewarded
+by a plentiful rain, and later, by a bounteous harvest.[951]
+
+Many of these local cults were pre-Celtic, but we need not therefore
+suppose that the Celts, or the Aryans as a whole, had no such
+cults.[952] The Aryans everywhere adopted local cults, but this they
+would not have done if, as is supposed, they had themselves outgrown
+them. The cults were local, but the Celts had similar local cults, and
+easily accepted those of the people they conquered. We cannot explain
+the persistence of such primitive cults as lie behind the great Celtic
+festivals, both in classical times and over the whole area of Europe
+among the peasantry, by referring them solely to a pre-Aryan folk. They
+were as much Aryan as pre-Aryan. They belong to those unchanging strata
+of religion which have so largely supplied the soil in which its later
+and more spiritual growths have flourished. And among these they still
+emerge, unchanged and unchanging, like the gaunt outcrops of some
+ancient rock formation amid rich vegetation and fragrant flowers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[889] Pliny, xvi. 45; Caesar, vi. 18. See my article "Calendar (Celtic)"
+in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Rel. and Ethics_, iii. 78 f., for a full
+discussion of the problems involved.
+
+[890] O'Donovan, _Book of Rights_, Intro. lii f.
+
+[891] O'Donovan, li.; Bertrand, 105; Keating, 300.
+
+[892] Samhain may mean "summer-end," from _sam_, "summer," and _fuin_,
+"sunset" or "end," but Dr. Stokes (_US_ 293) makes _samani_- mean
+"assembly," i.e. the gathering of the people to keep the feast.
+
+[893] Keating, 125, 300.
+
+[894] See MacBain, _CM_ ix. 328.
+
+[895] Brand, i. 390; Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth
+Century_, ii. 437; _Stat. Account_, xi. 621.
+
+[896] Hazlitt, 297-298, 340; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 285 f.
+
+[897] Curtin, 72.
+
+[898] Fitzgerald, _RC_ vi. 254.
+
+[899] See Chambers, _Mediaeval Stage_, App. N, for the evidence from
+canons and councils regarding these.
+
+[900] Tille, _Yule and Christmas_, 96.
+
+[901] Chambers, _Popular Rhymes_, 166.
+
+[902] Hutchinson, _View of Northumberland_, ii. 45; Thomas, _Rev. de
+l'Hist. des Rel._ xxxviii. 335 f.
+
+[903] _Patrol. Lot._ xxxix. 2001.
+
+[904] _IT_ i. 205; _RC_ v. 331; Leahy, i. 57.
+
+[905] See p. 169, _supra_.
+
+[906] The writer has himself seen such bonfires in the Highlands. See
+also Hazlitt, 298; Pennant, _Tour_, ii. 47; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 515, _CFL_ i.
+225-226. In Egyptian mythology, Typhon assailed Horus in the form of a
+black swine.
+
+[907] Keating, 300.
+
+[908] Joyce, _SH_ ii. 556; _RC_ x. 214, 225, xxiv. 172; O'Grady, ii.
+374; _CM_ ix. 209.
+
+[909] See Mannhardt, _Mythol. Forschung._ 333 f.; Frazer, _Adonis_,
+_passim_; Thomas, _Rev. de l'Hist. des Rel._ xxxviii. 325 f.
+
+[910] Hazlitt, 35; Chambers, _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 261.
+
+[911] Chambers, _Book of Days_, ii. 492; Hazlitt, 131.
+
+[912] Hazlitt, 97; Davies, _Extracts from Munic. Records of York_, 270.
+
+[913] See p. 237, _supra_; _LL_ 16, 213.
+
+[914] Chambers, _Med. Stage_, i. 250 f.
+
+[915] Cormac, _s.v._ "Belltaine," "Bel"; _Arch. Rev._ i. 232.
+
+[916] D'Arbois, ii. 136.
+
+[917] Stokes, _US_ 125, 164. See his earlier derivation, dividing the
+word into _belt_, connected with Lithuan. _baltas_, "white," and _aine_,
+the termination in _sechtmaine_, "week" (_TIG_ xxxv.).
+
+[918] Need-fire (Gael. _Teinne-eiginn_, "necessity fire") was used to
+kindle fire in time of cattle plague. See Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 608 f.;
+Martin, 113; Jamieson's _Dictionary_, _s.v._ "neidfyre."
+
+[919] Cormac, _s.v._; Martin, 105, says that the Druids extinguished all
+fires until their dues were paid. This may have been a tradition in the
+Hebrides.
+
+[920] Joyce, _PN_ i. 216; Hone, _Everyday Book_, i. 849, ii. 595.
+
+[921] Pennant, _Tour in Scotland_, i. 291.
+
+[922] Hazlitt, 339, 397.
+
+[923] Hone, _Everyday Book_, ii. 595. See p. 215, _supra_.
+
+[924] Sinclair, _Stat. Account_, xi. 620.
+
+[925] Martin, 105.
+
+[926] For these usages see Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen in the
+Eighteenth Century_, ii. 439 f.; Sinclair, _Stat. Account_, v. 84, xi.
+620, xv. 517. For the sacramental and sacrificial use of similar loaves,
+see Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, i. 94, ii. 78; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ iii.
+1239 f.
+
+[927] _New Stat. Account_, Wigtownshire, 208; Hazlitt, 38, 323, 340.
+
+[928] See Miss Owen, _Folk-lore of the Musquakie Indians_, 50; Frazer,
+_Golden Bough_{2}, ii. 205.
+
+[929] For notices of Beltane survivals see Keating, 300; Campbell,
+_Journey from Edinburgh_, i. 143; Ramsay, _Scotland and Scotsmen_, ii.
+439 f.; _Old Stat. Account_, v. 84, xi. 620, xv. 517; Gregor, _Folk-lore
+of N.E. of Scotland_, 167. The paganism of the survivals is seen in the
+fact that Beltane fires were frequently prohibited by Scottish
+ecclesiastical councils.
+
+[930] Meyrac, _Traditions ... des Ardennes_, 68.
+
+[931] Bertrand, 119.
+
+[932] Ibid. 407; Gaidoz, 21; Mannhardt, _Baumkultus_, 514, 523; Brand,
+i. 8, 323.
+
+[933] Mannhardt, _op. cit._ 525 f.; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, iii. 319.
+
+[934] P. 234, _supra_.
+
+[935] Frazer, _op. cit._ i. 74; Brand, i. 222, 237, 246, 318; Hone,
+_Everyday Book_, ii. 595; Mannhardt, _op. cit._ 177; Grimm, _Teut.
+Myth._ 621, 777 f.
+
+[936] See my _Childhood of Fiction_, ch. v.
+
+[937] Frazer, i. 82, ii. 247 f., 275; Mannhardt, 315 f.
+
+[938] Martin, 117. The custom of walking _deiseil_ round an object still
+survives, and, as an imitation of the sun's course, it is supposed to
+bring good luck or ward off evil. For the same reason the right hand
+turn was of good augury. Medb's charioteer, as she departed for the war,
+made her chariot turn to the right to repel evil omens (_LU_ 55).
+Curiously enough, Pliny (xxviii. 2) says that the Gauls preferred the
+left-hand turn in their religious rites, though Athenaeus refers to the
+right-hand turn among them. _Deiseil_ is from _dekso-s_, "right," and
+_svel_, "to turn."
+
+[939] Hone, i. 846; Hazlitt, ii. 346.
+
+[940] This account of the Midsummer ritual is based on notices found in
+Hone, _Everyday Book_; Hazlitt, ii. 347 f.; Gaidoz, _Le Dieu Soleil_;
+Bertrand; Deloche, _RC_ ix. 435; _Folk-Lore_, xii. 315; Frazer, _Golden
+Bough_{2}, iii. 266 f.; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ ii. 617 f.; Monnier, 186 f.
+
+[941] _RC_ xvi. 51; Guiraud, _Les Assemblees provinciales dans l'Empire
+Romain_.
+
+[942] D'Arbois, i. 215, _Les Celtes_, 44; Loth, _Annales de Bretagne_,
+xiii. No. 2.
+
+[943] _RC_ xvi. 51.
+
+[944] Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[945] Dion. Per. v. 570.
+
+[946] Pliny, xxii. 1.
+
+[947] Greg, _de Glor. Conf._ 477; Sulp. Sev. _Vita S. Martini_, 9; Pass.
+S. Symphor. Migne, _Pat. Graec._ v. 1463, 1466. The cult of Cybele had
+been introduced into Gaul, and the ritual here described resembles it,
+but we are evidently dealing here with the cult of a native goddess.
+See, however, Frazer, _Adonis_, 176.
+
+[948] Anwyl, _Celtic Religion_, 41.
+
+[949] See Hartland, _Science of Fairy-Tales_, 84 f.
+
+[950] Professor Rh[^y]s suggests that nudity, being a frequent symbol of
+submission to a conqueror, acquired a similar significance in religious
+rites (_AL_ 180). But the magical aspect of nudity came first in time.
+
+[951] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ ii. 45.
+
+[952] See Gomme, _Ethnology in Folk-lore_, 30 f., _Village Community_,
+114.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+ACCESSORIES OF CULT.
+
+TEMPLES.
+
+
+In primitive religion the place of worship is seldom a temple made with
+hands, but rather an enclosed space in which the symbol or image of the
+god stands. The sacredness of the god makes the place of his cult
+sacred. Often an open space in the forest is the scene of the regular
+cult. There the priests perform the sacred rites; none may enter it but
+themselves; and the trembling worshipper approaches it with awe lest the
+god should slay him if he came too near.
+
+The earliest temples of the Gauls were sacred groves, one of which, near
+Massilia, is described by Lucan. No bird built in it, no animal lurked
+near, the leaves constantly shivered when no breeze stirred them. Altars
+stood in its midst, and the images of the gods were misshapen trunks of
+trees. Every tree was stained with sacrificial blood. The poet then
+describes marvels heard or seen in the grove--the earth groaning, dead
+yews reviving, trees surrounded with flame yet not consumed, and huge
+serpents twining round the oaks. The people feared to approach the
+grove, and even the priest would not walk there at midday or midnight
+lest he should then meet its divine guardian.[953] Dio speaks of human
+sacrifices offered to Andrasta in a British grove, and in 61 A.D. the
+woods of Mona, devoted to strange rites, were cut down by Roman
+soldiers.[954] The sacred _Dru-nemeton_ of the Galatian Celts may have
+been a grove.[955] Place-names also point to the widespread existence of
+such groves, since the word _nemeton_, "grove," occurs in many of them,
+showing that the places so called had been sites of a cult. In Ireland,
+_fid-nemed_ stood for "sacred grove."[956] The ancient groves were still
+the objects of veneration in Christian times, though fines were levied
+against those who still clung to the old ways.[957]
+
+Sacred groves were still used in Gallo-Roman times, and the Druids may
+have had a preference for them, a preference which may underlie the
+words of the scholiast on Lucan, that "the Druids worship the gods
+without temples in woods." But probably more elaborate temples, great
+tribal sanctuaries, existed side by side with these local groves,
+especially in Cisalpine Gaul, where the Boii had a temple in which were
+stored the spoils of war, while the Insubri had a similar temple.[958]
+These were certainly buildings. The "consecrated place" in Transalpine
+Gaul, which Caesar mentions, and where at fixed periods judgments were
+given, might be either a grove or a temple. Caesar uses the same phrase
+for sacred places where the spoils of war were heaped; these may have
+been groves, but Diodorus speaks of treasure collected in "temples and
+sacred places" ([Greek: en tois hierois chai temenesin]), and Plutarch
+speaks of the "temple" where the Arverni hung Caesar's sword.[959] The
+"temple" of the Namnite women, unroofed and re-roofed in a day, must
+have been a building. There is no evidence that the insular Celts had
+temples. In Gallo-Roman times, elaborate temples, perhaps occupying
+sites of earlier groves or temples, sprang up over the Romano-Celtic
+area. They were built on Roman models, many of them were of great size,
+and they were dedicated to Roman or Gallo-Roman divinities.[960] Smaller
+shrines were built by grateful worshippers at sacred springs to their
+presiding divinity, as many inscriptions show. In the temples stood
+images of the gods, and here were stored sacred vessels, sometimes made
+of the skulls of enemies, spoils of war dedicated to the gods, money
+collected for sacred purposes, and war standards, especially those which
+bore divine symbols.
+
+The old idea that stone circles were Druidic temples, that human
+sacrifices were offered on the "altar-stone," and libations of blood
+poured into the cup-markings, must be given up, along with much of the
+astronomical lore associated with the circles. Stonehenge dates from the
+close of the Neolithic Age, and most of the smaller circles belong to
+the early Bronze Age, and are probably pre-Celtic. In any case they were
+primarily places of sepulture. As such they would be the scene of
+ancestor worship, but yet not temples in the strict sense of the word.
+The larger circles, burial-places of great chiefs or kings, would become
+central places for the recurring rites of ghost-worship, possibly also
+rallying places of the tribe on stated occasions. But whether this
+ghost-worship was ever transmuted into the cult of a god at the circles
+is uncertain and, indeed, unlikely. The Celts would naturally regard
+these places as sacred, since the ghosts of the dead, even those of a
+vanquished people, are always dangerous, and they also took over the
+myths and legends[961] associated with them, such, e.g., as regarded the
+stones themselves, or trees growing within the circles, as embodiments
+of the dead, while they may also have used them as occasional places of
+secondary interment. Whether they were ever led to copy such circles
+themselves is uncertain, since their own methods of interment seem to
+have been different. We have seen that the gods may in some cases have
+been worshipped at tumuli, and that Lugnasad was, at some centres,
+connected with commemorative cults at burial-places (mounds, not
+circles). But the reasons for this are obscure, nor is there any hint
+that other Celtic festivals were held near burial mounds. Probably such
+commemorative rites at places of sepulture during Lugnasad were only
+part of a wider series occurring elsewhere, and we cannot assume from
+such vague notices that stone circles were Druidic temples where worship
+of an Oriental nature was carried on.
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s is disposed to accept the old idea that Stonehenge was
+the temple of Apollo in the island of the Hyperboreans, mentioned by
+Diodorus, where the sun-god was worshipped.[962] But though that temple
+was circular, it had walls adorned with votive offerings. Nor does the
+temple unroofed yearly by the Namnite women imply a stone circle, for
+there is not the slightest particle of evidence that the circles were
+ever roofed in any way.[963] Stone circles with mystic trees growing in
+them, one of them with a well by which entrance was gained to Tir fa
+Tonn, are mentioned in Irish tales. They were connected with magic
+rites, but are not spoken of as temples.[964]
+
+
+ALTARS.
+
+
+Lucan describes realistically the awful sacrifices of the Gauls on cruel
+altars not a whit milder than those of Diana, and he speaks of "altars
+piled with offerings" in the sacred grove at Marseilles.[965] Cicero
+says that human victims were sacrificed on altars, and Tacitus describes
+the altars of Mona smeared with human blood.[966] "Druids' altars" are
+mentioned in the Irish "Expedition of Dathi," and Cormac speaks of
+_indelba_, or altars adorned with emblems.[967] Probably many of these
+altars were mere heaps of stone like the Norse _horg_, or a great block
+of stone. Some sacrifices, however, were too extensive to be offered on
+an altar, but in such cases the blood would be sprinkled upon it. Under
+Roman influence, Celtic altars took the form of those of the conquerors,
+with inscriptions containing names of native or Roman gods and
+bas-reliefs depicting some of these. The old idea that dolmens were
+Celtic altars is now abandoned. They were places of sepulture of the
+Neolithic or early Bronze Age, and were originally covered with a mound
+of earth. During the era of Celtic paganism they were therefore hidden
+from sight, and it is only in later times that the earth has been
+removed and the massive stones, arranged so as to form a species of
+chamber, have been laid bare.
+
+
+IMAGES.
+
+
+The Gauls, according to Caesar, possessed _plurima simulacra_ of the
+native Mercury, but he does not refer to images of other gods. We need
+not infer from this that the Celts had a prejudice against images, for
+among the Irish Celts images are often mentioned, and in Gaul under
+Roman rule many images existed.
+
+The existence of images among the Celts as among other peoples, may owe
+something to the cult of trees and of stones set up over the dead. The
+stone, associated with the dead man's spirit, became an image of
+himself, perhaps rudely fashioned in his likeness. A rough-hewn tree
+trunk became an image of the spirit or god of trees. On the other hand,
+some anthropomorphic images, like the palaeolithic or Mycenaean figurines,
+may have been fashioned without the intermediary of tree-trunk or stone
+pillar. Maximus of Tyre says that the Celtic image of Zeus was a lofty
+oak, perhaps a rough-hewn trunk rather than a growing tree, and such
+roughly carved tree-trunks, images of gods, are referred to by Lucan in
+his description of the Massilian grove.[968] Pillar stones set up over
+the graves of the dead are often mentioned in Irish texts. These would
+certainly be associated with the dead; indeed, existing legends show
+that they were believed to be tenanted by the ghosts and to have the
+power of motion. This suggests that they had been regarded as images of
+the dead. Other stones honoured in Ireland were the _cloch labrais_, an
+oracular stone; the _lia fail_, or coronation stone, which shouted when
+a king of the Milesian race seated himself upon it; and the _lia
+adrada_, or stone of adoration, apparently a boundary stone.[969] The
+_plurima simulacra_ of the Gaulish Mercury may have been boundary stones
+like those dedicated to Mercury or Hermes among the Romans and Greeks.
+Did Caesar conclude, or was it actually the case, that the Gauls
+dedicated such stones to a god of boundaries who might be equated with
+Mercury? Many such standing stones still exist in France, and their
+number must have been greater in Caesar's time. Seeing them the objects
+of superstitious observances, he may have concluded that they were
+_simulacra_ of a god. Other Romans besides himself had been struck by
+the resemblance of these stones to their Hermai, and perhaps the Gauls,
+if they did not already regard them as symbols of a god, acquiesced in
+the resemblance. Thus, on the menhir of Kervadel are sculptured four
+figures, one being that of Mercury, dating from Gallo-Roman times.
+Beneath another, near Peronne, a bronze statuette of Mercury was
+discovered.[970] This would seem to show that the Gauls had a cult of
+pillar stones associated with a god of boundaries. Caesar probably uses
+the word _simulacrum_ in the sense of "symbol" rather than "image,"
+though he may have meant native images not fully carved in human shape,
+like the Irish _cermand_, _cerstach_, ornamented with gold and silver,
+the "chief idol" of north Ireland, or like the similarly ornamented
+"images" of Cromm Cruaich and his satellites.[971] The adoration of
+sacred stones continued into Christian times and was much opposed by the
+Church.[972] S. Samson of Dol (sixth century) found men dancing round a
+_simulacrum abominabile_, which seems to have been a kind of standing
+stone, and having besought them to desist, he carved a cross upon
+it.[973] Several _menhirion_ in France are now similarly
+ornamented.[974]
+
+The number of existing Gallo-Roman images shows that the Celts had not
+adopted a custom which was foreign to them, and they must have already
+possessed rude native images. The disappearance of these would be
+explained if they were made of perishable material. Wooden images of the
+_Matres_ have been occasionally found, and these may be pre-Roman. Some
+of the images of the three-headed and crouching gods show no sign of
+Roman influences in their modelling, and they may have been copied from
+earlier images of wood. We also find divine figures on pre-Roman
+coins.[975] Certain passages in classical writings point to the
+existence of native images. A statue of a goddess existed in a temple at
+Marseilles, according to Justin, and the Galatian Celts had images of
+the native Juppiter and Artemis, while the conquering Celts who entered
+Rome bowed to the seated senators as to statues of the gods.[976] The
+Gauls placed rich ornaments on the images of the gods, and presumably
+these were native "idols."
+
+"Idols" are frequently mentioned in Irish texts, and there is no doubt
+that these mean images.[977] Cormac mac Art refused to worship "idols,"
+and was punished by the Druids.[978] The idols of Cromm Cruaich and his
+satellites, referred to in the _Dindsenchas_, were carved to represent
+the human form; the chief one was of gold, the others of stone. These
+were miraculously overthrown by S. Patrick; but in the account of the
+miracle the chief idol was of stone adorned with gold and silver, the
+others, numbering twelve, were ornamented with bronze.[979] They stood
+in Mag Slecht, and similar sacred places with groups of images evidently
+existed elsewhere, e.g. at Rath Archaill, "where the Druid's altars and
+images are."[980] The lady Cessair, before coming to Ireland, is said to
+have taken advice of her _laimh-dhia_, or "hand gods," perhaps small
+images used for divination.[981]
+
+For the British Celts the evidence is slender, but idolatry in the sense
+of "image-worship" is frequently mentioned in the lives of early
+saints.[982] Gildas also speaks of images "mouldering away within and
+without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features."[983]
+This pathetic picture of the forsaken shrines of forgotten gods may
+refer to Romano-Celtic images, but the "stiff and deformed features"
+suggest rather native art, the art of a people unskilful at reproducing
+the human form, however artistic they may have been in other directions.
+
+If the native Celts of Ireland had images, there is no reason to
+suppose, especially considering the evidence just adduced, that the
+Gauls, or at least the Druids, were antagonistic to images. This last is
+M. Reinach's theory, part of a wider hypothesis that the Druids were
+pre-Celtic, but became the priests of the Celts, who till then had no
+priests. The Druids prohibited image-worship, and this prohibition
+existed in Gaul, _ex hypothesi_, from the end of palaeolithic times.
+Pythagoras and his school were opposed to image-worship, and the
+classical writers claimed a connection between the Pythagoreans and the
+Druids. M. Reinach thinks there must have been some analogy between
+them, and that was hostility to anthropomorphism. But the analogy is
+distinctly stated to have lain in the doctrine of immortality or
+metempsychosis. Had the Druids been opposed to image-worship, classical
+observers could not have failed to notice the fact. M. Reinach then
+argues that the Druids caused the erection of the megalithic monuments
+in Gaul, symbols not images. They are thus Druidic, though not Celtic.
+The monuments argue a powerful priesthood; the Druids were a powerful
+priesthood; therefore the Druids caused the monuments to be built. This
+is not a powerful argument![984]
+
+As has been seen, some purely Celtic images existed in Gaul. The Gauls,
+who used nothing but wood for their houses, probably knew little of the
+art of carving stone. They would therefore make most of their images of
+wood--a perishable material. The insular Celts had images, and if, as
+Caesar maintained, the Druids came from Britain to Gaul, this points at
+least to a similarity of cult in the two regions. Youthful Gauls who
+aspired to Druidic knowledge went to Britain to obtain it. Would the
+Druids of Gaul have permitted this, had they been iconoclasts? No single
+text shows that the Druids had any antipathy to images, while the Gauls
+certainly had images of worshipful animals. Further, even if the Druids
+were priests of a pre-Celtic folk, they must have permitted the making
+of images, since many "menhir-statues" exist on French soil, at Aveyron,
+Tarn, and elsewhere.[985] The Celts were in constant contact with
+image-worshipping peoples, and could hardly have failed to be influenced
+by them, even if such a priestly prohibition existed, just as Israel
+succumbed to images in spite of divine commands. That they would have
+been thus influenced is seen from the number of images of all kinds
+dating from the period after the Roman conquest.
+
+Incidental proofs of the fondness of the Celts for images are found in
+ecclesiastical writings and in late survivals. The procession of the
+image of Berecynthia has already been described, and such processions
+were common in Gaul, and imply a regular folk-custom. S. Martin of Tours
+stopped a funeral procession believing it to be such a pagan rite.[986]
+Councils and edicts prohibited these processions in Gaul, but a more
+effectual way was to Christianise them. The Rogation tide processions
+with crucifix and Madonna, and the carrying of S. John's image at the
+Midsummer festivals, were a direct continuation of the older practices.
+Images were often broken by Christian saints in Gaul, as they had been
+over-turned by S. Patrick in Ireland. "Stiff and deformed" many of them
+must have been, if one may judge from the _Groah-goard_ or "Venus of
+Quinipily," for centuries the object of superstitious rites in
+Brittany.[987] With it may be compared the fetich-stone or image of
+which an old woman in the island of Inniskea, the guardian of a sacred
+well, had charge. It was kept wrapped up to hide it from profane eyes,
+but at certain periods it was brought out for adoration.[988]
+
+The images and bas-reliefs of the Gallo-Roman period fall mainly into
+two classes. In the first class are those representing native
+divinities, like Esus, Tarvos Trigaranos, Smertullos, Cernunnos, the
+horned and crouching gods, the god with the hammer, and the god with the
+wheel. Busts and statues of some water-goddesses exist, but more
+numerous are the representations of Epona. One of these is provided with
+a box pedestal in which offerings might be placed. The _Matres_ are
+frequently figured, usually as three seated figures with baskets of
+fruit or flowers, or with one or more infants, like the Madonna. Images
+of triple-headed gods, supposed to be Cernunnos, have been found, but
+are difficult to place in any category.[989]
+
+To the images of the second class is usually attached the Roman name of
+a god, but generally the native Celtic name is added, but the images
+themselves are of the traditional Roman type. Among statues and
+statuettes of bronze, that of Mercury occurs most often. This may point
+to the fact that Caesar's _simulacra_ of the native Mercury were images,
+and that the old preference for representing this god continued in Roman
+times. Small figures of divinities in white clay have been found in
+large numbers, and may have been _ex votos_ or images of household
+_lararia_.[990]
+
+
+SYMBOLS.
+
+
+Images of the gods in Gaul can be classified by means of their
+symbols--the mallet and cup (a symbol of plenty) borne by the god with
+the hammer, the wheel of the sun-god, the cornucopia and torque carried
+by Cernunnos. Other symbols occur on images, altars, monuments, and
+coins. These are the swastika and triskele, probably symbols of the
+sun;[991] single or concentric circles, sometimes with rays;[992]
+crosses; and a curious S figure. The triskele and the circles are
+sometimes found on faces figured on coins. They may therefore have been
+tattoo markings of a symbolic character. The circle and cross are often
+incised on bronze images of Dispater. Much speculation has been aroused
+by the S figure, which occurs on coins, while nine models of this symbol
+hang from a ring carried by the god with the wheel, but the most
+probable is that which sees in it a thunderbolt.[993] But lacking any
+old text interpreting these various symbols, all explanations of them
+must be conjectural. Some of them are not purely Celtic, but are of
+world-wide occurrence.
+
+
+CULT OF WEAPONS.
+
+
+Here some reference may be made to the Celtic cult of weapons. As has
+been seen, a hammer is the symbol of one god, and it is not unlikely
+that a cult of the hammer had preceded that of the god to whom the
+hammer was given as a symbol. Esus is also represented with an axe. We
+need not repeat what has already been said regarding the primitive and
+universal cult of hammer or axe,[994] but it is interesting to notice,
+in connection with other evidence for a Celtic cult of weapons, that
+there is every reason to believe that the phrase _sub ascia dedicare_,
+which occurs in inscriptions on tombs from Gallia Lugdunensis, usually
+with the figure of an axe incised on the stone, points to the cult of
+the axe, or of a god whose symbol the axe was.[995] In Irish texts the
+power of speech is attributed to weapons, but, according to the
+Christian scribe, this was because demons spoke from them, for the
+people worshipped arms in those days.[996] Thus it may have been
+believed that spirits tenanted weapons, or that weapons had souls.
+Evidence of the cult itself is found in the fact that on Gaulish coins a
+sword is figured, stuck in the ground, or driving a chariot, or with a
+warrior dancing before it, or held in the hand of a dancing
+warrior.[997] The latter are ritual acts, and resemble that described by
+Spenser as performed by Irish warriors in his day, who said prayers or
+incantations before a sword stuck in the earth.[998] Swords were also
+addressed in songs composed by Irish bards, and traditional remains of
+such songs are found in Brittany.[999] They represent the chants of the
+ancient cult. Oaths were taken by weapons, and the weapons were believed
+to turn against those who lied.[1000] The magical power of weapons,
+especially of those over which incantations had been said, is frequently
+referred to in traditional tales and Irish texts.[1001] A reminiscence
+of the cult or of the magical power of weapons may be found in the
+wonderful "glaives of light" of Celtic folk-tales, and the similar
+mystical weapon of the Arthurian romances.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[953] Lucan, _Pharsalia_, iii. 399 f.
+
+[954] Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30.
+
+[955] Strabo, xii. 51. _Drunemeton_ may mean "great temple" (D'Arbois,
+_Les Celtes_, 203).
+
+[956] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 164.
+
+[957] Holder, ii. 712. Cf. "Indiculus" in Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 1739, "de
+sacris silvarum, quas nimidas (= nemeta) vocant."
+
+[958] Livy, xxiii. 24; Polyb. ii. 32.
+
+[959] Caesar, vi. 13, 17; Diod. Sic. v. 27; Plutarch, _Caesar_, 26.
+
+[960] See examples in Dom Martin, i. 134 f.; cf. Greg. Tours, _Hist.
+Franc._ i. 30.
+
+[961] See Reinach, "Les monuments de pierre brute dans le langage et les
+croyances populaires," _Rev. Arch._ 1893, i. 339; Evans, "The Roll-Right
+Stones," _Folk-Lore_, vi. 20 f.
+
+[962] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 194; Diod. Sic. ii. 47.
+
+[963] Rh[^y]s, 197.
+
+[964] Joyce, _OCR_ 246; Kennedy, 271.
+
+[965] Lucan, i. 443, iii. 399f.
+
+[966] Cicero, _pro Fonteio_, x. 21; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30. Cf. Pomp. Mela,
+iii. 2. 18.
+
+[967] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 284; Cormac, 94. Cf. _IT_ iii. 211, for the
+practice of circumambulating altars.
+
+[968] Max. Tyr. _Dissert._ viii. 8; Lucan, iii. 412f.
+
+[969] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, iv. 142.
+
+[970] _Rev. Arch._ i. pl. iii-v.; Reinach, _RC_ xi. 224, xiii. 190.
+
+[971] Stokes, _Martyr. of Oengus_, 186-187.
+
+[972] See the Twenty-third Canon of Council of Arles, the Twenty-third
+of the Council of Tours, 567, and ch. 65 of the _Capitularia_, 789.
+
+[973] Mabillon, _Acta_, i. 177.
+
+[974] Reinach, _Rev. Arch._ 1893, xxi. 335.
+
+[975] Blanchet, i. 152-153, 386.
+
+[976] Justin, xliii. 5; Strabo, xii. 5. 2; Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._
+xx.; Livy, v. 41.
+
+[977] Cormac, 94.
+
+[978] Keating, 356. See also Stokes, _Martyr. of Oengus_, 186; _RC_ xii.
+427, Sec. 15; Joyce, _SH_ 274 f.
+
+[979] _LL_ 213_b_; _Trip. Life_, i. 90, 93.
+
+[980] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 284.
+
+[981] Keating, 49.
+
+[982] Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kentig._ 27, 32, 34; Ailred, _Vita S. Ninian._
+6.
+
+[983] Gildas, Sec. 4.
+
+[984] For the whole argument see Reinach, _RC_ xiii. 189 f. Bertrand,
+_Rev. Arch._ xv. 345, supports a similar theory, and, according to both
+writers, Gallo-Roman art was the result of the weakening of Druidic
+power by the Romans.
+
+[985] L'Abbe Hermet, Assoc. pour l'avancement des Sciences, _Compte
+Rendu_, 1900, ii. 747; _L'Anthropologie_, v. 147.
+
+[986] _Corp. Scrip. Eccl. Lat._ i. 122.
+
+[987] Monnier, 362. The image bears part of an inscription ... LIT...
+and it has been thought that this read ILITHYIA originally. The name is
+in keeping with the rites still in use before the image. This would make
+it date from Roman times. If so, it is a poor specimen of the art of the
+period. But it may be an old native image to which later the name of the
+Roman goddess was given.
+
+[988] Roden, _Progress of the Reformation in Ireland_, 51. The image was
+still existing in 1851.
+
+[989] For figures of most of these, see _Rev. Arch._ vols. xvi., xviii.,
+xix., xxxvi.; _RC_ xvii. 45, xviii. 254, xx. 309, xxii. 159, xxiv. 221;
+Bertrand, _passim_; Courcelle-Seneuil, _Les Dieux Gaulois d'apres les
+Monuments Figures_, Paris, 1910.
+
+[990] See Courcelle-Seneuil, _op. cit._; Reinach, _BF passim_,
+_Catalogue Sommaire du Musee des Ant. nat._{4} 115-116.
+
+[991] Reinach, _Catal._ 29, 87; _Rev. Arch._ xvi. 17; Blanchet, i. 169,
+316; Huchet, _L'art gaulois_, ii. 8.
+
+[992] Blanchet, i. 158; Reinach, _BF_ 143, 150, 152.
+
+[993] Blanchet, i. 17; Flouest, _Deux Steles_ (Append.), Paris, 1885;
+Reinach, _BF_ 33.
+
+[994] P. 30, _supra_.
+
+[995] Hirschfeld in _CIL_ xiii. 256.
+
+[996] _RC_ xii. 107; Joyce, _SH_ i. 131.
+
+[997] Blanchet, i. 160 f.; Muret de la Tour, _Catalogue_, 6922, 6941,
+etc.
+
+[998] _View of the State of Ireland_, 57.
+
+[999] _RC_ xx. 7; Martin, _Etudes de la Myth. Celt._ 164.
+
+[1000] _IT_ i. 206; _RC_ ix. 144.
+
+[1001] _CM_ xiii. 168 f.; Miss Hull, 44, 221, 223.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+THE DRUIDS.
+
+
+Pliny thought that the name "Druid" was a Greek appellation derived from
+the Druidic cult of the oak ([Greek: _drus_]).[1002] The word, however,
+is purely Celtic, and its meaning probably implies that, like the
+sorcerer and medicine-man everywhere, the Druid was regarded as "the
+knowing one." It is composed of two parts--_dru_-, regarded by M.
+D'Arbois as an intensive, and _vids_, from _vid_, "to know," or
+"see."[1003] Hence the Druid was "the very knowing or wise one." It is
+possible, however, that _dru_- is connected with the root which gives
+the word "oak" in Celtic speech--Gaulish _deruo_, Irish _dair_, Welsh
+_derw_--and that the oak, occupying a place in the cult, was thus
+brought into relation with the name of the priesthood. The Gaulish form
+of the name was probably _druis_, the Old Irish was _drai_. The modern
+forms in Irish and Scots Gaelic, _drui_ and _draoi_ mean "sorcerer."
+
+M. D'Arbois and others, accepting Caesar's dictum that "the system (of
+Druidism) is thought to have been devised in Britain, and brought thence
+into Gaul," maintain that the Druids were priests of the Goidels in
+Britain, who imposed themselves upon the Gaulish conquerors of the
+Goidels, and that Druidism then passed over into Gaul about 200
+B.C.[1004] But it is hardly likely that, even if the Druids were
+accepted as priests by conquering Gauls in Britain, they should have
+affected the Gauls of Gaul who were outside the reflex influence of the
+conquered Goidels, and should have there obtained that power which they
+possessed. Goidels and Gauls were allied by race and language and
+religion, and it would be strange if they did not both possess a similar
+priesthood. Moreover, the Goidels had been a continental people, and
+Druidism was presumably flourishing among them then. Why did it not
+influence kindred Celtic tribes without Druids, _ex hypothesi_, at that
+time? Further, if we accept Professor Meyer's theory that no Goidel set
+foot in Britain until the second century A.D., the Gauls could not have
+received the Druidic priesthood from the Goidels.
+
+Caesar merely says, "it is thought (_existimatur_) that Druidism came to
+Gaul from Britain."[1005] It was a pious opinion, perhaps his own, or
+one based on the fact that those who wished to perfect themselves in
+Druidic art went to Britain. This may have been because Britain had been
+less open to foreign influences than Gaul, and its Druids, unaffected by
+these, were thought to be more powerful than those of Gaul. Pliny, on
+the other hand, seems to think that Druidism passed over into Britain
+from Gaul.[1006]
+
+Other writers--Sir John Rh[^y]s, Sir G.L. Gomme, and M. Reinach--support
+on different grounds the theory that the Druids were a pre-Celtic
+priesthood, accepted by the Celtic conquerors. Sir John Rh[^y]s thinks
+that the Druidism of the aborigines of Gaul and Britain made terms with
+the Celtic conquerors. It was accepted by the Goidels, but not by the
+Brythons. Hence in Britain there were Brythons without Druids,
+aborigines under the sway of Druidism, and Goidels who combined Aryan
+polytheism with Druidism. Druidism was also the religion of the
+aborigines from the Baltic to Gibraltar, and was accepted by the
+Gauls.[1007] But if so, it is difficult to see why the Brythons, akin to
+them, did not accept it. Our knowledge of Brythonic religion is too
+scanty for us to prove that the Druids had or had not sway over them,
+but the presumption is that they had. Nor is there any historical
+evidence to show that the Druids were originally a non-Celtic
+priesthood. Everywhere they appear as the supreme and dominant
+priesthood of the Celts, and the priests of a conquered people could
+hardly have obtained such power over the conquerors. The relation of the
+Celts to the Druids is quite different from that of conquerors, who
+occasionally resort to the medicine-men of the conquered folk because
+they have stronger magic or greater influence with the autochthonous
+gods. The Celts did not resort to the Druids occasionally; _ex
+hypothesi_ they accepted them completely, were dominated by them in
+every department of life, while their own priests, if they had any,
+accepted this order of things without a murmur. All this is incredible.
+The picture drawn by Caesar, Strabo, and others of the Druids and their
+position among the Celts as judges, choosers of tribal chiefs and kings,
+teachers, as well as ministers of religion, suggests rather that they
+were a native Celtic priesthood, long established among the people.
+
+Sir G.L. Gomme supports the theory that the Druids were a pre-Celtic
+priesthood, because, in his opinion, much of their belief in magic as
+well as their use of human sacrifice and the redemption of one life by
+another, is opposed to "Aryan sentiment." Equally opposed to this are
+their functions of settling controversies, judging, settling the
+succession to property, and arranging boundaries. These views are
+supported by a comparison of the position of the Druids relatively to
+the Celts with that of non-Aryan persons in India who render occasional
+priestly services to Hindu village communities.[1008] Whether this
+comparison of occasional Hindu custom with Celtic usage two thousand
+years ago is just, may be questioned. As already seen, it was no mere
+occasional service which the Druids rendered to the Celts, and it is
+this which makes it difficult to credit this theory. Had the Celtic
+house-father been priest and judge in his own clan, would he so readily
+have surrendered his rights to a foreign and conquered priesthood? On
+the other hand, kings and chiefs among the Celts probably retained some
+priestly functions, derived from the time when the offices of the
+priest-king had not been differentiated. Caesar's evidence certainly does
+not support the idea that "it is only among the rudest of the so-called
+Celtic tribes that we find this superimposing of an apparently official
+priesthood." According to him, the power of the Druids was universal in
+Gaul, and had their position really corresponded to that of the pariah
+priests of India, occasional priests of Hindu villages, the determined
+hostility of the Roman power to them because they wielded such an
+enormous influence over Celtic thought and life, is inexplainable. If,
+further, Aryan sentiment was so opposed to Druidic customs, why did
+Aryan Celts so readily accept the Druids? In this case the receiver is
+as bad as the thief. Sir G.L. Gomme clings to the belief that the Aryans
+were people of a comparatively high civilisation, who had discarded, if
+they ever possessed, a savage "past." But old beliefs and customs still
+survive through growing civilisation, and if the views of Professor
+Sergi and others are correct, the Aryans were even less civilised than
+the peoples whom they conquered.[1009] Shape-shifting, magic, human
+sacrifice, priestly domination, were as much Aryan as non-Aryan, and if
+the Celts had a comparatively pure religion, why did they so soon allow
+it to be defiled by the puerile superstitions of the Druids?
+
+M. Reinach, as we have seen, thinks that the Celts had no images,
+because these were prohibited by their priests. This prohibition was
+pre-Celtic in Gaul, since there are no Neolithic images, though there
+are great megalithic structures, suggesting the existence of a great
+religious aristocracy. This aristocracy imposed itself on the
+Celts.[1010] We have seen that there is no reason for believing that the
+Celts had no images, hence this argument is valueless. M. Reinach then
+argues that the Celts accepted Druidism _en bloc_, as the Romans
+accepted Oriental cults and the Greeks the native Pelasgic cults. But
+neither Romans nor Greeks abandoned their own faith. Were the Celts a
+people without priests and without religion? We know that they must have
+accepted many local cults, but that they adopted the whole aboriginal
+faith and its priests _en bloc_ is not credible. M. Reinach also holds
+that when the Celts appear in history Druidism was in its decline; the
+Celt, or at least the military caste among the Celts, was reasserting
+itself. But the Druids do not appear as a declining body in the pages of
+Caesar, and their power was still supreme, to judge by the hostility of
+the Roman Government to them. If the military caste rebelled against
+them, this does not prove that they were a foreign body. Such a strife
+is seen wherever priest and soldier form separate castes, each desiring
+to rule, as in Egypt.
+
+Other writers argue that we do not find Druids existing in the Danube
+region, in Cisalpine territory, nor in Transalpine Gaul, "outside the
+limits of the region occupied by the Celtae."[1011] This could only have
+weight if any of the classical writers had composed a formal treatise on
+the Druids, showing exactly the regions where they existed. They merely
+describe Druidism as a general Celtic institution, or as they knew it in
+Gaul or Britain, and few of them have any personal knowledge of it.
+There is no reason to believe that Druids did not exist wherever there
+were Celts. The Druids and Semnotheoi of the Celts and Galatae referred
+to _c._ 200 B.C. were apparently priests of other Celts than those of
+Gaul, and Celtic groups of Cisalpine Gaul had priests, though these are
+not formally styled Druids.[1012] The argument _ex silentio_ is here of
+little value, since the references to the Druids are so brief, and it
+tells equally against their non-Celtic origin, since we do not hear of
+Druids in Aquitania, a non-Celtic region.[1013]
+
+The theory of the non-Celtic origin of the Druids assumes that the Celts
+had no priests, or that these were effaced by the Druids. The Celts had
+priests called _gutuatri_ attached to certain temples, their name
+perhaps meaning "the speakers," those who spoke to the gods.[1014] The
+functions of the Druids were much more general, according to this
+theory, hence M. D'Arbois supposes that, before their intrusion, the
+Celts had no other priests than the _gutuatri_.[1015] But the
+probability is that they were a Druidic class, ministers of local
+sanctuaries, and related to the Druids as the Levites were to the
+priests of Israel, since the Druids were a composite priesthood with a
+variety of functions. If the priests and servants of Belenos, described
+by Ausonius and called by him _oedituus Beleni_, were _gutuatri_, then
+the latter must have been connected with the Druids, since he says they
+were of Druidic stock.[1016] Lucan's "priest of the grove" may have been
+a _gutuatros_, and the priests (_sacerdotes_) and other ministers
+(_antistites_) of the Boii may have been Druids properly so called and
+_gutuatri_.[1017] Another class of temple servants may have existed.
+Names beginning with the name of a god and ending in _gnatos_,
+"accustomed to," "beloved of," occur in inscriptions, and may denote
+persons consecrated from their youth to the service of a grove or
+temple. On the other hand, the names may mean no more than that those
+bearing them were devoted to the cult of one particular god.
+
+Our supposition that the _gutuatri_ were a class of Druids is supported
+by classical evidence, which tends to show that the Druids were a great
+inclusive priesthood with different classes possessing different
+functions--priestly, prophetic, magical, medical, legal, and poetical.
+Caesar attributes these to the Druids as a whole, but in other writers
+they are in part at least in the hands of different classes. Diodorus
+refers to the Celtic philosophers and theologians (Druids), diviners,
+and bards, as do also Strabo and Timagenes, Strabo giving the Greek form
+of the native name for the diviners, [Greek: ouateis], the Celtic form
+being probably _vatis_ (Irish, _faith_).[1018] These may have been also
+poets, since _vatis_ means both singer and poet; but in all three
+writers the bards are a fairly distinct class, who sing the deeds of
+famous men (so Timagenes). Druid and diviner were also closely
+connected, since the Druids studied nature and moral philosophy, and the
+diviners were also students of nature, according to Strabo and
+Timagenes. No sacrifice was complete without a Druid, say Diodorus and
+Strabo, but both speak of the diviners as concerned with sacrifice.
+Druids also prophesied as well as diviners, according to Cicero and
+Tacitus.[1019] Finally, Lucan mentions only Druids and bards.[1020]
+Diviners were thus probably a Druidic sub-class, standing midway between
+the Druids proper and the bards, and partaking of some of the functions
+of both. Pliny speaks of "Druids and this race of prophets and
+doctors,"[1021] and this suggests that some were priests, some diviners,
+while some practised an empiric medical science.
+
+On the whole this agrees with what is met with in Ireland, where the
+Druids, though appearing in the texts mainly as magicians, were also
+priests and teachers. Side by side with them were the _Filid_, "learned
+poets,"[1022] composing according to strict rules of art, and higher
+than the third class, the Bards. The _Filid_, who may also have been
+known as _Fathi_, "prophets,"[1023] were also diviners according to
+strict rules of augury, while some of these auguries implied a
+sacrifice. The Druids were also diviners and prophets. When the Druids
+were overthrown at the coming of Christianity, the _Filid_ remained as a
+learned class, probably because they had abandoned all pagan practices,
+while the Bards were reduced to a comparatively low status. M. D'Arbois
+supposes that there was rivalry between the Druids and the _Filid_, who
+made common cause with the Christian missionaries, but this is not
+supported by evidence. The three classes in Gaul--Druids, _Vates_, and
+Bards--thus correspond to the three classes in Ireland--Druids, _Fathi_
+or _Filid_, and Bards.[1024]
+
+We may thus conclude that the Druids were a purely Celtic priesthood,
+belonging both to the Goidelic and Gaulish branches of the Celts. The
+idea that they were not Celtic is sometimes connected with the
+supposition that Druidism was something superadded to Celtic religion
+from without, or that Celtic polytheism was not part of the creed of the
+Druids, but sanctioned by them, while they had a definite theological
+system with only a few gods.[1025] These are the ideas of writers who
+see in the Druids an occult and esoteric priesthood. The Druids had
+grown up _pari passu_ with the growth of the native religion and magic.
+Where they had become more civilised, as in the south of Gaul, they may
+have given up many magical practices, but as a class they were addicted
+to magic, and must have taken part in local cults as well as in those of
+the greater gods. That they were a philosophic priesthood advocating a
+pure religion among polytheists is a baseless theory. Druidism was not a
+formal system outside Celtic religion. It covered the whole ground of
+Celtic religion; in other words, it was that religion itself.
+
+The Druids are first referred to by pseudo-Aristotle and Sotion in the
+second century B.C., the reference being preserved by Diogenes Laertius:
+"There are among the Celtae and Galatae those called Druids and
+Semnotheoi."[1026] The two words may be synonymous, or they may describe
+two classes of priests, or, again, the Druids may have been Celtic, and
+the Semnotheoi Galatic (? Galatian) priests. Caesar's account comes next
+in time. Later writers gives the Druids a lofty place and speak vaguely
+of the Druidic philosophy and science. Caesar also refers to their
+science, but both he and Strabo speak of their human sacrifices.
+Suetonius describes their religion as cruel and savage, and Mela, who
+speaks of their learning, regards their human sacrifices as
+savagery.[1027] Pliny says nothing of the Druids as philosophers, but
+hints at their priestly functions, and connects them with magico-medical
+rites.[1028] These divergent opinions are difficult to account for. But
+as the Romans gained closer acquaintance with the Druids, they found
+less philosophy and more superstition among them. For their cruel rites
+and hostility to Rome, they sought to suppress them, but this they never
+would have done had the Druids been esoteric philosophers. It has been
+thought that Pliny's phrase, "Druids and that race of prophets and
+doctors," signifies that, through Roman persecution, the Druids were
+reduced to a kind of medicine-men.[1029] But the phrase rather describes
+the varied functions of the Druids, as has been seen, nor does it refer
+to the state to which the repressive edict reduced them, but to that in
+which it found them. Pliny's information was also limited.
+
+The vague idea that the Druids were philosophers was repeated
+parrot-like by writer after writer, who regarded barbaric races as
+Rousseau and his school looked upon the "noble savage." Roman writers,
+sceptical of a future life, were fascinated by the idea of a barbaric
+priesthood teaching the doctrine of immortality in the wilds of Gaul.
+For this teaching the poet Lucan sang their praises. The Druids probably
+first impressed Greek and Latin observers by their magic, their
+organisation, and the fact that, like many barbaric priesthoods, but
+unlike those of Greece and Rome, they taught certain doctrines. Their
+knowledge was divinely conveyed to them; "they speak the language of the
+gods;"[1030] hence it was easy to read anything into this teaching. Thus
+the Druidic legend rapidly grew. On the other hand, modern writers have
+perhaps exaggerated the force of the classical evidence. When we read of
+Druidic associations we need not regard these as higher than the
+organised priesthoods of barbarians. Their doctrine of metempsychosis,
+if it was really taught, involved no ethical content as in
+Pythagoreanism. Their astronomy was probably astrological[1031]; their
+knowledge of nature a series of cosmogonic myths and speculations. If a
+true Druidic philosophy and science had existed, it is strange that it
+is always mentioned vaguely and that it exerted no influence upon the
+thought of the time.
+
+Classical sentiment also found a connection between the Druidic and
+Pythagorean systems, the Druids being regarded as conforming to the
+doctrines and rules of the Greek philosopher.[1032] It is not improbable
+that some Pythagorean doctrines may have reached Gaul, but when we
+examine the point at which the two systems were supposed to meet,
+namely, the doctrine of metempsychosis and immortality, upon which the
+whole idea of this relationship was founded, there is no real
+resemblance. There are Celtic myths regarding the rebirth of gods and
+heroes, but the eschatological teaching was apparently this, that the
+soul was clothed with a body in the other-world. There was no doctrine
+of a series of rebirths on this earth as a punishment for sin. The
+Druidic teaching of a bodily immortality was mistakenly assumed to be
+the same as the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul reincarnated in body
+after body. Other points of resemblance were then discovered. The
+organisation of the Druids was assumed by Ammianus to be a kind of
+corporate life--_sodaliciis adstricti consortiis_--while the Druidic
+mind was always searching into lofty things,[1033] but those who wrote
+most fully of the Druids knew nothing of this.
+
+The Druids, like the priests of all religions, doubtless sought after
+such knowledge as was open to them, but this does not imply that they
+possessed a recondite philosophy or a secret theology. They were
+governed by the ideas current among all barbaric communities, and they
+were at once priests, magicians, doctors, and teachers. They would not
+allow their sacred hymns to be written down, but taught them in
+secret,[1034] as is usual wherever the success of hymn or prayer depends
+upon the right use of the words and the secrecy observed in imparting
+them to others. Their ritual, as far as is known to us, differs but
+little from that of other barbarian folk, and it included human
+sacrifice and divination with the victim's body. They excluded the
+guilty from a share in the cult--the usual punishment meted out to the
+tabu-breaker in all primitive societies.
+
+The idea that the Druids taught a secret doctrine--monotheism,
+pantheism, or the like--is unsupported by evidence. Doubtless they
+communicated secrets to the initiated, as is done in barbaric mysteries
+everywhere, but these secrets consist of magic and mythic formulae, the
+exhibition of _Sacra_, and some teaching about the gods or about moral
+duties. These are kept secret, not because they are abstract doctrines,
+but because they would lose their value and because the gods would be
+angry if they were made too common. If the Druids taught religious and
+moral matters secretly, these were probably no more than an extension of
+the threefold maxim inculcated by them according to Diogenes Laertius:
+"To worship the gods, to do no evil, and to exercise courage."[1035] To
+this would be added cosmogonic myths and speculations, and magic and
+religious formulae. This will become more evident as we examine the
+position and power of the Druids.
+
+In Gaul, and to some extent in Ireland, the Druids formed a priestly
+corporation--a fact which helped classical observers to suppose that
+they lived together like the Pythagorean communities. While the words of
+Ammianus--_sodaliciis adstricti consortiis_--may imply no more than some
+kind of priestly organisation, M. Bertrand founds on them a theory that
+the Druids were a kind of monks living a community life, and that Irish
+monasticism was a transformation of this system.[1036] This is purely
+imaginative. Irish Druids had wives and children, and the Druid
+Diviciacus was a family man, while Caesar says not a word of community
+life among the Druids. The hostility of Christianity to the Druids would
+have prevented any copying of their system, and Irish monasticism was
+modelled on that of the Continent. Druidic organisation probably denoted
+no more than that the Druids were bound by certain ties, that they were
+graded in different ranks or according to their functions, and that they
+practised a series of common cults. In Gaul one chief Druid had
+authority over the others, the position being an elective one.[1037] The
+insular Druids may have been similarly organised, since we hear of a
+chief Druid, _primus magus_, while the _Filid_ had an _Ard-file_, or
+chief, elected to his office.[1038] The priesthood was not a caste, but
+was open to those who showed aptitude for it. There was a long
+novitiate, extending even to twenty years, just as, in Ireland, the
+novitiate of the _File_ lasted from seven to twelve years.[1039]
+
+The Druids of Gaul assembled annually in a central spot, and there
+settled disputes, because they were regarded as the most just of
+men.[1040] Individual Druids also decided disputes or sat as judges in
+cases of murder. How far it was obligatory to bring causes before them
+is unknown, but those who did not submit to a decision were interdicted
+from the sacrifices, and all shunned them. In other words, they were
+tabued. A magico-religious sanction thus enforced the judgments of the
+Druids. In Galatia the twelve tetrarchs had a council of three hundred
+men, and met in a place called Drunemeton to try cases of murder.[1041]
+Whether it is philologically permissible to connect _Dru_- with the
+corresponding syllable in "Druid" or not, the likeness to the Gaulish
+assembly at a "consecrated place," perhaps a grove (_nemeton_), is
+obvious. We do not know that Irish Druids were judges, but the _Filid_
+exercised judgments, and this may be a relic of their connection with
+the Druids.[1042]
+
+Diodorus describes the Druids exhorting combatants to peace, and taming
+them like wild beasts by enchantment.[1043] This suggests interference
+to prevent the devastating power of the blood-feud or of tribal wars.
+They also appear to have exercised authority in the election of rulers.
+Convictolitanis was elected to the magistracy by the priests in Gaul,
+"according to the custom of the State."[1044] In Ireland, after
+partaking of the flesh of a white bull, probably a sacrificial animal, a
+man lay down to sleep, while four Druids chanted over him "to render his
+witness truthful." He then saw in a vision the person who should be
+elected king, and what he was doing at the moment.[1045] Possibly the
+Druids used hypnotic suggestion; the medium was apparently clairvoyant.
+
+Dio Chrysostom alleges that kings were ministers of the Druids, and
+could do nothing without them.[1046] This agrees on the whole with the
+witness of Irish texts. Druids always accompany the king, and have great
+influence over him. According to a passage in the _Tain_, "the men of
+Ulster must not speak before the king, the king must not speak before
+his Druid," and even Conchobar was silent until the Druid Cathbad had
+spoken.[1047] This power, resembling that of many other priesthoods,
+must have helped to balance that of the warrior class, and it is the
+more credible when we recall the fact that the Druids claimed to have
+made the universe.[1048] The priest-kingship may have been an old Celtic
+institution, and this would explain why, once the offices were
+separated, priests had or claimed so much political power.
+
+That political power must have been enhanced by their position as
+teachers, and it is safe to say that submission to their powers was
+inculcated by them. Both in Gaul and in Ireland they taught others than
+those who intended to become Druids.[1049] As has been seen, their
+teachings were not written down, but transmitted orally. They taught
+immortality, believing that thus men would be roused to valour,
+buttressing patriotism with dogma. They also imparted "many things
+regarding the stars and their motions, the extent of the universe and
+the earth, the nature of things, and the power and might of the immortal
+gods." Strabo also speaks of their teaching in moral science.[1050] As
+has been seen, it is easy to exaggerate all this. Their astronomy was
+probably of a humble kind and mingled with astrology; their natural
+philosophy a mass of cosmogonic myths and speculations; their theology
+was rather mythology; their moral philosophy a series of maxims such as
+are found in all barbaric communities. Their medical lore, to judge from
+what Pliny says, was largely magical. Some Druids, e.g. in the south of
+Gaul, may have had access to classical learning, and Caesar speaks of the
+use of Greek characters among them. This could hardly have been general,
+and in any case must have superseded the use of a native script, to
+which the use of ogams in Ireland, and perhaps also in Gaul, was
+supplementary. The Irish Druids may have had written books, for King
+Loegaire desired that S. Patrick's books and those of the Druids should
+be submitted to the ordeal by water as a test of their owners'
+claims.[1051]
+
+In religious affairs the Druids were supreme, since they alone "knew the
+gods and divinities of heaven."[1052] They superintended and arranged
+all rites and attended to "public and private sacrifices," and "no
+sacrifice was complete without the intervention of a Druid."[1053] The
+dark and cruel rites of the Druids struck the Romans with horror, and
+they form a curious contrast to their alleged "philosophy." They used
+divination and had regular formulae of incantation as well as ritual acts
+by which they looked into the future.[1054] Before all matters of
+importance, especially before warlike expeditions, their advice was
+sought because they could scan the future.
+
+Name-giving and a species of baptism were performed by the Druids or on
+their initiative. Many examples of this occur in Irish texts, thus of
+Conall Cernach it is said, "Druids came to baptize the child into
+heathenism, and they sang the heathen baptism (_baithis geintlidhe_)
+over the little child", and of Ailill that he was "baptized in Druidic
+streams".[1055] In Welsh story we read that Gwri was "baptized with the
+baptism which was usual at that time".[1056] Similar illustrations are
+common at name-giving among many races,[1057] and it is probable that
+the custom in the Hebrides of the midwife dropping three drops of water
+on the child _in Nomine_ and giving it a temporary name, is a survival
+of this practice. The regular baptism takes place later, but this
+preliminary rite keeps off fairies and ensures burial in consecrated
+ground, just as the pagan rite was protective and admitted to the tribal
+privileges.[1058]
+
+In the burial rites, which in Ireland consisted of a lament, sacrifices,
+and raising a stone inscribed with ogams over the grave, Druids took
+part. The Druid Dergdamsa pronounced a discourse over the Ossianic hero
+Mag-neid, buried him with his arms, and chanted a rune. The ogam
+inscription would also be of Druidic composition, and as no sacrifice
+was complete without the intervention of Druids, they must also have
+assisted at the lavish sacrifices which occurred at Celtic funerals.
+
+Pliny's words, "the Druids and that race of prophets and doctors",
+suggest that the medical art may have been in the hands of a special
+class of Druids though all may have had a smattering of it. It was
+mainly concerned with the use of herbs, and was mixed up with magical
+rites, which may have been regarded as of more importance than the
+actual medicines used.[1059] In Ireland Druids also practised the
+healing art. Thus when Cuchulainn was ill, Emer said, "If it had been
+Fergus, Cuchulainn would have taken no rest till he had found a Druid
+able to discover the cause of that illness."[1060] But other persons,
+not referred to as Druids, are mentioned as healers, one of them a
+woman, perhaps a reminiscence of the time when the art was practised by
+women.[1061] These healers may, however, have been attached to the
+Druidic corporation in much the same way as were the bards.
+
+Still more important were the magical powers of the Druids--giving or
+withholding sunshine or rain, causing storms, making women and cattle
+fruitful, using spells, rhyming to death, exercising shape-shifting and
+invisibility, and producing a magic sleep, possibly hypnotic. They were
+also in request as poisoners.[1062] Since the Gauls went to Britain to
+perfect themselves in Druidic science, it is possible that the insular
+Druids were more devoted to magic than those of Gaul, but since the
+latter are said to have "tamed the people as wild beasts are tamed", it
+is obvious that this refers to their powers as magicians rather than to
+any recondite philosophy possessed by them. Yet they were clear-sighted
+enough to use every means by which they might gain political power, and
+some of them may have been open to the influence of classical learning
+even before the Roman invasion. In the next chapter the magic of the
+Druids will be described in detail.
+
+The Druids, both in Gaul (at the mistletoe rite) and in Ireland, were
+dressed in white, but Strabo speaks of their scarlet and gold
+embroidered robes, their golden necklets and bracelets.[1063] Again, the
+chief Druid of the king of Erin wore a coloured cloak and had earrings
+of gold, and in another instance a Druid wears a bull's hide and a
+white-speckled bird headpiece with fluttering wings.[1064] There was
+also some special tonsure used by the Druids,[1065] which may have
+denoted servitude to the gods, as it was customary for a warrior to vow
+his hair to a divinity if victory was granted him. Similarly the Druid's
+hair would be presented to the gods, and the tonsure would mark their
+minister.
+
+Some writers have tried to draw a distinction between the Druids of Gaul
+and of Ireland, especially in the matter of their priestly
+functions.[1066] But, while a few passages in Irish texts do suggest
+that the Irish Druids were priests taking part in sacrifices, etc.,
+nearly all passages relating to cult or ritual seem to have been
+deliberately suppressed. Hence the Druids appear rather as magicians--a
+natural result, since, once the people became Christian, the priestly
+character of the Druids would tend to be lost sight of. Like the Druids
+of Gaul, they were teachers and took part in political affairs, and this
+shows that they were more than mere magicians. In Irish texts the word
+"Druid" is somewhat loosely used and is applied to kings and poets,
+perhaps because they had been pupils of the Druids. But it is impossible
+to doubt that the Druids in Ireland fulfilled functions of a public
+priesthood. They appear in connection with all the colonies which came
+to Erin, the annalists regarding the priests or medicine-men of
+different races as Druids, through lack of historic perspective. But one
+fact shows that they were priests of the Celtic religion in Ireland. The
+euhemerised Tuatha De Danann are masters of Druidic lore. Thus both the
+gods and the priests who served them were confused by later writers. The
+opposition of Christian missionaries to the Druids shows that they were
+priests; if they were not, it remains to be discovered what body of men
+did exercise priestly functions in pagan Ireland. In Ireland their
+judicial functions may have been less important than in Gaul, and they
+may not have been so strictly organised; but here we are in the region
+of conjecture. They were exempt from military service in Gaul, and many
+joined their ranks on this account, but in Ireland they were "bonny
+fechters," just as in Gaul they occasionally fought like mediaeval
+bishops.[1067] In both countries they were present on the field of
+battle to perform the necessary religious or magical rites.
+
+Since the Druids were an organised priesthood, with powers of teaching
+and of magic implicitly believed in by the folk, possessing the key of
+the other-world, and dominating the whole field of religion, it is easy
+to see how much veneration must have been paid them. Connoting this with
+the influence of the Roman Church in Celtic regions and the power of the
+Protestant minister in the Highlands and in Wales, some have thought
+that there is an innate tendency in the Celt to be priest-ridden. If
+this be true, we can only say, "the people wish to have it so, and the
+priests--pagan, papist, or protestant--bear rule through their means!"
+
+Thus a close examination of the position and functions of the Druids
+explains away two popular misconceptions. They were not possessed of any
+recondite and esoteric wisdom. And the culling of mistletoe instead of
+being the most important, was but a subordinate part of their functions.
+
+In Gaul the Roman power broke the sway of the Druids, aided perhaps by
+the spread of Christianity, but it was Christianity alone which routed
+them in Ireland and in Britain outside the Roman pale. The Druidic
+organisation, their power in politics and in the administration of
+justice, their patriotism, and also their use of human sacrifice and
+magic, were all obnoxious to the Roman Government, which opposed them
+mainly on political grounds. Magic and human sacrifice were suppressed
+because they were contrary to Roman manners. The first attack was in the
+reign of Augustus, who prohibited Roman citizens from taking part in the
+religion of the Druids.[1068] Tiberius next interdicted the Druids, but
+this was probably aimed at their human sacrifices, for the Druids were
+not suppressed, since they existed still in the reign of Claudius, who
+is said to have abolished _Druidarum religionem dirae
+immanitatis_.[1069] The earlier legislation was ineffective; that of
+Claudius was more thorough, but it, too, was probably aimed mainly at
+human sacrifice and magic, since Aurelius Victor limits it to the
+"notorious superstitions" of the Druids.[1070] It did not abolish the
+native religion, as is proved by the numerous inscriptions to Celtic
+gods, and by the fact that, as Mela informs us, human victims were still
+offered symbolically,[1071] while the Druids were still active some
+years later. A parallel is found in the British abolition of S[=a]ti in
+India, while permitting the native religion to flourish.
+
+Probably more effective was the policy begun by Augustus. Magistrates
+were inaugurated and acted as judges, thus ousting the Druids, and
+native deities and native ritual were assimilated to those of Rome.
+Celtic religion was Romanised, and if the Druids retained priestly
+functions, it could only be by their becoming Romanised also. Perhaps
+the new State religion in Gaul simply ignored them. The annual assembly
+of deputies at Lugudunum round the altar of Rome and Augustus had a
+religious character, and was intended to rival and to supersede the
+annual gathering of the Druids.[1072] The deputies elected a flamen of
+the province who had surveillance of the cult, and there were also
+flamens for each city. Thus the power of the Druids in politics, law,
+and religion was quietly undermined, while Rome also struck a blow at
+their position as teachers by establishing schools throughout
+Gaul.[1073]
+
+M. D'Arbois maintains that, as a result of persecution, the Druids
+retired to the depths of the forests, and continued to teach there in
+secret those who despised the new learning of Rome, basing his opinion
+on passages of Lucan and Mela, both writing a little after the
+promulgation of the laws.[1074]. But neither Lucan nor Mela refer to an
+existing state of things, and do not intend their readers to suppose
+that the Druids fled to woods and caverns. Lucan speaks of them
+_dwelling_ in woods, i.e. their sacred groves, and resuming their rites
+after Caesar's conquest not after the later edicts, and he does not speak
+of the Druids teaching there.[1075] Mela seems to be echoing Caesar's
+account of the twenty years' novitiate, but adds to it that the teaching
+was given in secret, confusing it, however, with that given to others
+than candidates for the priesthood. Thus he says: "Docent multa
+nobilissimos gentis clam et diu vicenis annis aut in specu aut in
+abditis saltibus,"[1076] but there is not the slightest evidence that
+this secrecy was the result of the edicts. Moreover, the attenuated
+sacrificial rites which he describes were evidently practised quite
+openly. Probably some Druids continued their teaching in their secret
+and sacred haunts, but it is unlikely that noble Gauls would resort to
+them when Greco-Roman culture was now open to them in the schools, where
+they are found receiving instruction in 21 A.D.[1077] Most of the Druids
+probably succumbed to the new order of things. Some continued the old
+rites in a modified manner as long as they could obtain worshippers.
+Others, more fanatical, would suffer from the law when they could not
+evade its grasp. Some of these revolted against Rome after Nero's death,
+and it was perhaps to this class that those Druids belonged who
+prophesied the world-empire of the Celts in 70 A.D.[1078] The fact that
+Druids existed at this date shows that the proscription had not been
+complete. But the complete Romanising of Gaul took away their
+occupation, though even in the fourth century men still boasted of their
+Druidic descent.[1079]
+
+The insular Druids opposed the legions in Southern Britain, and in Mona
+in 62 A.D. they made a last stand with the warriors against the Romans,
+gesticulating and praying to the gods. But with the establishment of
+Roman power in Britain their fate must have resembled that of the Druids
+of Gaul. A recrudescence of Druidism is found, however, in the presence
+of _magi_ (Druids) with Vortigern after the Roman withdrawal.[1080]
+Outside the Roman pale the Druids were still rampant and practised their
+rites as before, according to Pliny.[1081] Much later, in the sixth
+century, they opposed Christian missionaries in Scotland, just as in
+Ireland they opposed S. Patrick and his monks, who combated "the
+hard-hearted Druids." Finally, Christianity was victorious and the
+powers of the Druids passed in large measure to the Christian clergy or
+remained to some extent with the _Filid_.[1082] In popular belief the
+clerics had prevailed less by the persuasive power of the gospel, than
+by successfully rivalling the magic of the Druids.
+
+Classical writers speak of _Dryades_ or "Druidesses" in the third
+century. One of them predicted his approaching death to Alexander
+Severus, another promised the empire to Diocletian, others were
+consulted by Aurelian.[1083] Thus they were divineresses, rather than
+priestesses, and their name may be the result of misconception, unless
+they assumed it when Druids no longer existed as a class. In Ireland
+there were divineresses--_ban-filid_ or _ban-fathi_, probably a distinct
+class with prophetic powers. Kings are warned against "pythonesses" as
+well as Druids, and Dr. Joyce thinks these were Druidesses.[1084] S.
+Patrick also armed himself against "the spells of women" and of
+Druids.[1085] Women in Ireland had a knowledge of futurity, according to
+Solinus, and the women who took part with the Druids like furies at
+Mona, may have been divineresses.[1086] In Ireland it is possible that
+such women were called "Druidesses," since the word _ban-drui_ is met
+with, the women so called being also styled _ban-fili_, while the fact
+that they belonged to the class of the _Filid_ brings them into
+connection with the Druids.[1087] But _ban-drui_ may have been applied
+to women with priestly functions, such as certainly existed in
+Ireland--e.g. the virgin guardians of sacred fires, to whose functions
+Christian nuns succeeded.[1088] We know also that the British queen
+Boudicca exercised priestly functions, and such priestesses, apart from
+the _Dryades_, existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at
+Arles speak of an _antistita deae_, and at Le Prugnon of a _flaminica
+sacerdos_ of the goddess Thucolis.[1089] These were servants of a
+goddess like the priestess of the Celtic Artemis in Galatia, in whose
+family the priesthood was hereditary.[1090] The virgins called
+Gallizenae, who practised divination and magic in the isle of Sena, were
+priestesses of a Gaulish god, and some of the women who were "possessed
+by Dionysus" and practised an orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire,
+were probably of the same kind.[1091] They were priestesses of some
+magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the
+sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards the
+accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the story of
+Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to be based on
+actual observation and are paralleled from other regions.[1092]
+
+The existence of such priestesses and divineresses over the Celtic area
+is to be explained by our hypothesis that many Celtic divinities were at
+first female and served by women, who were possessed of the tribal lore.
+Later, men assumed their functions, and hence arose the great
+priesthoods, but conservatism sporadically retained such female cults
+and priestesses, some goddesses being still served by women--the
+Galatian Artemis, or the goddesses of Gaul, with their female servants.
+Time also brought its revenges, for when paganism passed away, much of
+its folk-ritual and magic remained, practised by wise women or witches,
+who for generations had as much power over ignorant minds as the
+Christian priesthood. The fact that Caesar and Tacitus speak of Germanic
+but not of Celtic priestesses, can hardly, in face of these scattered
+notices, be taken as a proof that women had no priestly _role_ in Celtic
+religion. If they had not, that religion would be unique in the world's
+history.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1002] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 249.
+
+[1003] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 85, following Thurneysen.
+
+[1004] D'Arbois, _op. cit._ 12 f.; Deloche, _Revue des Deux Mondes_,
+xxxiv. 466; Desjardins, _Geog. de la Gaule Romaine_, ii. 518.
+
+[1005] Caesar, vi. 13.
+
+[1006] Pliny, _HN_ xxx. 1.
+
+[1007] Rh[^y]s, _CB_{4} 69 f.
+
+[1008] Gomme, _Ethnol. in Folk-lore_, 58, _Village Community_, 104.
+
+[1009] Sergi, _The Mediterranean Race_, 295.
+
+[1010] Reinach, "L'Art plastique en Gaule et le Druidisme," _RC_ xiii.
+189.
+
+[1011] Holmes, _Caesar's Conquest of Gaul_, 15; Dottin, 270.
+
+[1012] Diog. Laert. i. 1; Livy xxiii. 24.
+
+[1013] Desjardins, _op. cit._ ii. 519; but cf. Holmes, 535.
+
+[1014] _Gutuatros_ is perhaps from _gutu_-, "voice" (Holder, i. 2046;
+but see Loth, _RC_ xxviii. 120). The existence of the _gutuatri_ is
+known from a few inscriptions (see Holder), and from Hirtius, _de Bell.
+Gall._ viii. 38, who mentions a _gutuatros_ put to death by Caesar.
+
+[1015] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 2 f., _Les Celtes_, 32.
+
+[1016] Ausonius, _Professor._ v. 7, xi. 24.
+
+[1017] Lucan, iii. 424; Livy, xxiii. 24.
+
+[1018] Diod. Sic. v. 31; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Timagenes _apud_ Amm. Marc.
+xv. 9.
+
+[1019] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 41. 90; Tac. _Hist._ iv. 54.
+
+[1020] _Phars._ i. 449 f.
+
+[1021] _HN_ xxx. i.
+
+[1022] _Filid_, sing. _File_, is from _velo_, "I see" (Stokes, _US_
+277).
+
+[1023] _Fathi_ is cognate with _Vates_.
+
+[1024] In Wales there had been Druids as there were Bards, but all trace
+of the second class is lost. Long after the Druids had passed away, the
+fiction of the _derwydd-vardd_ or Druid-bard was created, and the later
+bards were held to be depositories of a supposititious Druidic
+theosophy, while they practised the old rites in secret. The late word
+_derwydd_ was probably invented from _derw_, "oak," by some one who knew
+Pliny's derivation. See D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 81.
+
+[1025] For these views see Dottin, 295; Holmes, 17; Bertrand, 192-193,
+268-269.
+
+[1026] Diog. Laert. i. proem. 1. For other references see Caesar, vi. 13,
+14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Diod. Sic, v. 28; Lucan, i. 460;
+Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1027] Suet. _Claud._ 25; Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1028] Pliny, xxx. 1.
+
+[1029] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 77.
+
+[1030] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 4.
+
+[1031] See Cicero, _de Div._ i. 41.
+
+[1032] Diod. Sic. v. 28; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Hippolytus, _Refut. Haer._ i.
+22.
+
+[1033] Amm. Marc. xv. 9.
+
+[1034] Caesar, vi. 14.
+
+[1035] Diog. Laert. 6. Celtic enthusiasts see in this triple maxim
+something akin to the Welsh triads, which they claim to be Druidic!
+
+[1036] Bertrand, 280.
+
+[1037] Caesar, vi. 13.
+
+[1038] _Trip. Life_, ii. 325, i. 52, ii. 402; _IT_ i. 373; _RC_ xxvi.
+33. The title _rig-file_, "king poet," sometimes occurs.
+
+[1039] Caesar, vi. 14.
+
+[1040] Caesar, vi. 13; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[1041] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.
+
+[1042] Their judicial powers were taken from them because their speech
+had become obscure. Perhaps they gave their judgments in archaic
+language.
+
+[1043] Diod. Sic. v. 31. 5.
+
+[1044] Caesar, vii. 33.
+
+[1045] _IT_ i. 213; D'Arbois, v. 186.
+
+[1046] Dio, _Orat._ xlix.
+
+[1047] _LL_ 93.
+
+[1048] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22.
+
+[1049] Caesar, vi. 13, 14; Windisch, _Tain_, line 1070 f.; _IT_ i. 325;
+_Arch. Rev._ i. 74; _Trip. Life_, 99; cf. O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 201.
+
+[1050] Caesar, vi. 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
+
+[1051] _Trip. Life_, 284.
+
+[1052] Lucan, i. 451.
+
+[1053] Diod. v. 31. 4; cf. Caesar, vi. 13, 16; Strabo, iv. 4. 5.
+
+[1054] See p. 248, _supra_.
+
+[1055] _RC_ xiv. 29; Miss Hull, 4, 23, 141; _IT_ iii. 392, 423; Stokes,
+_Felire_, Intro. 23.
+
+[1056] Loth, i. 56.
+
+[1057] See my art. "Baptism (Ethnic)" in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of
+Religion and Ethics_, ii. 367 f.
+
+[1058] Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._ i. 115.
+
+[1059] See p. 206, _supra_.
+
+[1060] _IT_ i. 215.
+
+[1061] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 221, 641.
+
+[1062] _RC_ xvi. 34.
+
+[1063] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 45; _Trip. Life_, ii. 325; Strabo, iv. 275.
+
+[1064] _RC_ xxii. 285; O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 215.
+
+[1065] Reeves' ed. of Adamnan's _Life of S. Col._ 237; Todd, _S.
+Patrick_, 455; Joyce, _SH_ i. 234. For the relation of the Druidic
+tonsure to the peculiar tonsure of the Celtic Church, see Rh[^y]s, _HL_
+213, _CB_{4} 72; Gougaud, _Les Chretientes Celtiques_, 198.
+
+[1066] See Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 88; Joyce, _SH_ i. 239.
+
+[1067] Caesar, vi. 14, ii. 10.
+
+[1068] Suetonius, _Claud._ 25.
+
+[1069] Pliny _HN_ xxx. 1; Suet. _Claud._ 25.
+
+[1070] _de Caesaribus_, 4, "famosae superstitiones"; cf. p. 328, _infra_.
+
+[1071] Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1072] Mommsen, _Rom. Gesch._ v. 94.
+
+[1073] Bloch (Lavisse), _Hist. de France_, i. 2, 176 f., 391 f.; Duruy,
+"Comment perit l'institution Druidique," _Rev. Arch._ xv. 347; de
+Coulanges, "Comment le Druidisme a disparu," _RC_ iv. 44.
+
+[1074] _Les Druides_, 73.
+
+[1075] _Phars._ i. 453, "Ye Druids, after arms were laid aside, sought
+once again your barbarous ceremonials.... In remote forests do ye
+inhabit the deep glades."
+
+[1076] Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1077] Tacit. iii. 43.
+
+[1078] Ibid. iv. 54.
+
+[1079] Ausonius, _Prof._ v. 12, xi. 17.
+
+[1080] Nennius, 40. In the Irish version they are called "Druids." See
+p. 238, _supra_.
+
+[1081] Pliny, xxx. 1.
+
+[1082] Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._, i. 37. ii. 35, etc.; Reeves' _Adamnan_,
+247 f.; Stokes, _Three Homilies_, 24 f.; _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i.
+15; _RC_ xvii. 142 f.; _IT_ i. 23.
+
+[1083] Lampridius, _Alex. Sev._ 60; Vopiscus, _Numerienus_, 14,
+_Aurelianus_, 44.
+
+[1084] Windisch, _Tain_, 31, 221; cf. Meyer, _Contributions to Irish
+Lexicog._ 176 Joyce, _SH_ i. 238.
+
+[1085] _IT_ i. 56.
+
+[1086] Solinus, 35; Tac. _Ann._ xiv. 30.
+
+[1087] _RC_ xv. 326, xvi. 34, 277; Windisch, _Tain_, 331. In _LL_ 75_b_
+we hear of "three Druids and three Druidesses."
+
+[1088] See p. 69, _supra_; Keating, 331.
+
+[1089] Jullian, 100; Holder, _s.v._ "Thucolis."
+
+[1090] Plutarch, _Vir. mul._ 20.
+
+[1091] Mela, iii. 6; Strabo, iv. 4. 6.
+
+[1092] Reinach, _RC_ xviii. 1 f. The fact that the rites were called
+Dionysiac is no reason for denying the fact that some orgiastic rites
+were practised. Classical writers usually reported all barbaric rites in
+terms of their own religion. M. D'Arbois (vi. 325) points out that Circe
+was not a virgin, and had not eight companions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+MAGIC.
+
+
+The Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical practices, many
+of which could be used by any one, though, on the whole, they were in
+the hands of the Druids, who in many aspects were little higher than the
+shamans of barbaric tribes. But similar magical rites were also
+attributed to the gods, and it is probably for this reason that the
+Tuatha De Danann and many of the divinities who appear in the
+_Mabinogion_ are described as magicians. Kings are also spoken of as
+wizards, perhaps a reminiscence of the powers of the priest king. But
+since many of the primitive cults had been in the hands of women, and as
+these cults implied a large use of magic, they may have been the
+earliest wielders of magic, though, with increasing civilisation, men
+took their place as magicians. Still side by side with the
+magic-wielding Druids, there were classes of women who also dealt in
+magic, as we have seen. Their powers were feared, even by S. Patrick,
+who classes the "spells of women" along with those of Druids, and, in a
+mythic tale, by the father of Connla, who, when the youth was fascinated
+by a goddess, feared that he would be taken by the "spells of women"
+(_brichta ban_).[1093] In other tales women perform all such magical
+actions as are elsewhere ascribed to Druids.[1094] And after the Druids
+had passed away precisely similar actions--power over the weather, the
+use of incantations and amulets, shape-shifting and invisibility,
+etc.--were, and still are in remote Celtic regions, ascribed to witches.
+Much of the Druidic art, however, was also supposed to be possessed by
+saints and clerics, both in the past and in recent times. But women
+remained as magicians when the Druids had disappeared, partly because of
+female conservatism, partly because, even in pagan times, they had
+worked more or less secretly. At last the Church proscribed them and
+persecuted them.
+
+Each clan, tribe, or kingdom had its Druids, who, in time of war,
+assisted their hosts by magic art. This is reflected back upon the
+groups of the mythological cycle, each of which has its Druids who play
+no small part in the battles fought. Though Pliny recognises the
+priestly functions of the Druids, he associates them largely with magic,
+and applies the name _magus_ to them.[1095] In Irish ecclesiastical
+literature, _drui_ is used as the translation of _magus_, e.g. in the
+case of the Egyptian magicians, while _magi_ is used in Latin lives of
+saints as the equivalent of the vernacular _druides_.[1096] In the sagas
+and in popular tales _Druidecht_, "Druidism," stands for "magic," and
+_slat an draoichta_, "rod of Druidism," is a magic wand.[1097] The
+Tuatha De Danann were said to have learned "Druidism" from the four
+great master Druids of the region whence they had come to Ireland, and
+even now, in popular tales, they are often called "Druids" or "Danann
+Druids."[1098] Thus in Ireland at least there is clear evidence of the
+great magical power claimed by Druids.
+
+That power was exercised to a great extent over the elements, some of
+which Druids claimed to have created. Thus the Druid Cathbad covered the
+plain over which Deirdre was escaping with "a great-waved sea."[1099]
+Druids also produced blinding snow-storms, or changed day into
+night--feats ascribed to them even in the Lives of Saints.[1100] Or they
+discharge "shower-clouds of fire" on the opposing hosts, as in the case
+of the Druid Mag Ruith, who made a magic fire, and flying upwards
+towards it, turned it upon the enemy, whose Druid in vain tried to
+divert it.[1101] When the Druids of Cormac dried up all the waters in
+the land, another Druid shot an arrow, and where it fell there issued a
+torrent of water.[1102] The Druid Mathgen boasted of being able to throw
+mountains on the enemy, and frequently Druids made trees or stones
+appear as armed men, dismaying the opposing host in this way. They could
+also fill the air with the clash of battle, or with the dread cries of
+eldritch things.[1103] Similar powers are ascribed to other persons. The
+daughters of Calatin raised themselves aloft on an enchanted wind, and
+discovered Cuchulainn when he was hidden away by Cathbad. Later they
+produced a magic mist to discomfit the hero.[1104] Such mists occur
+frequently in the sagas, and in one of them the Tuatha De Danann arrived
+in Ireland. The priestesses of Sena could rouse sea and wind by their
+enchantments, and, later, Celtic witches have claimed the same power.
+
+In folk-survivals the practice of rain-making is connected with sacred
+springs, and even now in rural France processions to shrines, usually
+connected with a holy well, are common in time of drought. Thus people
+and priest go to the fountain of Baranton in procession, singing hymns,
+and there pray for rain. The priest then dips his foot in the water, or
+throws some of it on the rocks.[1105] In other cases the image of a
+saint is carried to a well and asperged, as divine images formerly were,
+or the waters are beaten or thrown into the air.[1106] Another custom
+was that a virgin should clean out a sacred well, and formerly she had
+to be nude.[1107] Nudity also forms part of an old ritual used in Gaul.
+In time of drought the girls of the village followed the youngest virgin
+in a state of nudity to seek the herb _belinuntia_. This she uprooted,
+and was then led to a river and there asperged by the others. In this
+case the asperging imitated the falling rain, and was meant to produce
+it automatically. While some of these rites suggest the use of magic by
+the folk themselves, in others the presence of the Christian priest
+points to the fact that, formerly, a Druid was necessary as the rain
+producer. In some cases the priest has inherited through long ages the
+rain-making or tempest-quelling powers of the pagan priesthood, and is
+often besought to exercise them.[1108]
+
+Causing invisibility by means of a spell called _feth fiada_, which made
+a person unseen or hid him in a magic mist, was also used by the Druids
+as well as by Christian saints. S. Patrick's hymn, called _Faed Fiada_,
+was sung by him when his enemies lay in wait, and caused a glamour in
+them. The incantation itself, _fith-fath_, is still remembered in
+Highland glens.[1109] In the case of S. Patrick he and his followers
+appeared as deer, and this power of shape-shifting was wielded both by
+Druids and women. The Druid Fer Fidail carried off a maiden by taking
+the form of a woman, and another Druid deceived Cuchulainn by taking the
+form of the fair Niamh.[1110] Other Druids are said to have been able to
+take any shape that pleased them.[1111] These powers were reflected back
+upon the gods and mythical personages like Taliesin or Amairgen, who
+appear in many forms. The priestesses of Sena could assume the form of
+animals, and an Irish Circe in the _Rennes Dindsenchas_ called Dalb the
+Rough changed three men and their wives into swine by her spells.[1112]
+This power of transforming others is often described in the sagas. The
+children of Lir were changed to swans by their cruel stepmother; Saar,
+the mother of Oisin, became a fawn through the power of the Druid Fear
+Doirche when she rejected his love; and similarly Tuirrenn, mother of
+Oisin's hounds, was transformed into a stag-hound by the fairy mistress
+of her husband Iollann.[1113] In other instances in the sagas, women
+appear as birds.[1114] These transformation tales may be connected with
+totemism, for when this institution is decaying the current belief in
+shape-shifting is often made use of to explain descent from animals or
+the tabu against eating certain animals. In some of these Irish
+shape-shifting tales we find this tabu referred to. Thus, when the
+children of Lir were turned into swans, it was proclaimed that no one
+should kill a swan. The reason of an existing tabu seemed to be
+sufficiently explained when it was told that certain human beings had
+become swans. It is not impossible that the Druids made use of hypnotic
+suggestion to persuade others that they had assumed another form, as Red
+Indian shamans have been known to do, or even hallucinated others into
+the belief that their own form had been changed.
+
+By a "drink of oblivion" Druids and other persons could make one forget
+even the most dearly beloved. Thus Cuchulainn was made to forget Fand,
+and his wife Emer to forget her jealousy.[1115] This is a reminiscence
+of potent drinks brewed from herbs which caused hallucinations, e.g.
+that of the change of shape. In other cases they were of a narcotic
+nature and caused a deep sleep, an instance being the draught given by
+Grainne to Fionn and his men.[1116] Again, the "Druidic sleep" is
+suggestive of hypnotism, practised in distant ages and also by
+present-day savages. When Bodb suspected his daughter of lying he cast
+her into a "Druidic sleep," in which she revealed her wickedness.[1117]
+In other cases spells are cast upon persons so that they are
+hallucinated, or are rendered motionless, or, "by the sleight of hand of
+soothsayers," maidens lose their chastity without knowing it.[1118]
+These point to knowledge of hypnotic methods of suggestion. Or, again, a
+spectral army is opposed to an enemy's force to whom it is an
+hallucinatory appearance--perhaps an exaggeration of natural hypnotic
+powers.[1119]
+
+Druids also made a "hedge," the _airbe druad_, round an army, perhaps
+circumambulating it and saying spells so that the attacking force might
+not break through. If any one could leap this "hedge," the spell was
+broken, but he lost his life. This was done at the battle of Cul Dremne,
+at which S. Columba was present and aided the heroic leaper with his
+prayers.[1120]
+
+A primitive piece of sympathetic magic used still by savages is recorded
+in the _Rennes Dindsenchas_. In this story one man says spells over his
+spear and hurls it into his opponent's shadow, so that he falls
+dead.[1121] Equally primitive is the Druidic "sending" a wisp of straw
+over which the Druid sang spells and flung it into his victim's face, so
+that he became mad. A similar method is used by the Eskimo _angekok_.
+All madness was generally ascribed to such a "sending."
+
+Several of these instances have shown the use of spells, and the Druid
+was believed to possess powerful incantations to discomfit an enemy or
+to produce other magical results. A special posture was
+adopted--standing on one leg, with one arm outstretched and one eye
+closed, perhaps to concentrate the force of the spell,[1122] but the
+power lay mainly in the spoken words, as we have seen in discussing
+Celtic formulae of prayer. Such spells were also used by the _Filid_, or
+poets, since most primitive poetry has a magical aspect. Part of the
+training of the bard consisted in learning traditional incantations,
+which, used with due ritual, produced the magic result.[1123] Some of
+these incantations have already come before our notice, and probably
+some of the verses which Caesar says the Druids would not commit to
+writing were of the nature of spells.[1124] The virtue of the spell lay
+in the spoken formula, usually introducing the name of a god or spirit,
+later a saint, in order to procure his intervention, through the power
+inherent in the name. Other charms recount an effect already produced,
+and this, through mimetic magic, is supposed to cause its repetition.
+The earliest written documents bearing upon the paganism of the insular
+Celts contain an appeal to "the science of Goibniu" to preserve butter,
+and another, for magical healing, runs, "I admire the healing which
+Diancecht left in his family, in order to bring health to those he
+succoured." These are found in an eighth or ninth century MS., and, with
+their appeal to pagan gods, were evidently used in Christian
+times.[1125] Most Druidic magic was accompanied by a spell--
+transformation, invisibility, power over the elements, and the discovery
+of hidden persons or things. In other cases spells were used in medicine
+or for healing wounds. Thus the Tuatha De Danann told the Fomorians that
+they need not oppose them, because their Druids would restore the slain
+to life, and when Cuchulainn was wounded we hear less of medicines than
+of incantations used to stanch his blood.[1126] In other cases the Druid
+could remove barrenness by spells.
+
+The survival of the belief in spells among modern Celtic peoples is a
+convincing proof of their use in pagan times, and throws light upon
+their nature. In Brittany they are handed down in certain families, and
+are carefully guarded from the knowledge of others. The names of saints
+instead of the old gods are found in them, but in some cases diseases
+are addressed as personal beings. In the Highlands similar charms are
+found, and are often handed down from male to female, and from female to
+male. They are also in common use in Ireland. Besides healing diseases,
+such charms are supposed to cause fertility or bring good luck, or even
+to transfer the property of others to the reciter, or, in the case of
+darker magic, to cause death or disease.[1127] In Ireland, sorcerers
+could "rime either a man or beast to death," and this recalls the power
+of satire in the mouth of _File_ or Druid. It raised blotches on the
+face of the victim, or even caused his death.[1128] Among primitive
+races powerful internal emotion affects the body in curious ways, and in
+this traditional power of the satire or "rime" we have probably an
+exaggerated reference to actual fact. In other cases the "curse of
+satire" affected nature, causing seas and rivers to sink back.[1129] The
+satires made by the bards of Gaul, referred to by Diodorus, may have
+been believed to possess similar powers.[1130] Contrariwise, the
+_Filid_, on uttering an unjust judgment, found their faces covered with
+blotches.[1131]
+
+A magical sleep is often caused by music in the sagas, e.g. by the harp
+of Dagda, or by the branch carried by visitants from Elysium.[1132] Many
+"fairy" lullabies for producing sleep are even now extant in Ireland and
+the Highlands.[1133] As music forms a part of all primitive religion,
+its soothing powers would easily be magnified. In orgiastic rites it
+caused varying emotions until the singer and dancer fell into a deep
+slumber, and the tales of those who joined in a fairy dance and fell
+asleep, awaking to find that many years had passed, are mythic
+extensions of the power of music in such orgiastic cults. The music of
+the _Filid_ had similar powers to that of Dagda's harp, producing
+laughter, tears, and a delicious slumber,[1134] and Celtic folk-tales
+abound in similar instances of the magic charm of music.
+
+We now turn to the use of amulets among the Celts. Some of these were
+symbolic and intended to bring the wearer under the protection of the
+god whom they symbolised. As has been seen, a Celtic god had as his
+symbol a wheel, probably representing the sun, and numerous small wheel
+discs made of different materials have been found in Gaul and
+Britain.[1135] These were evidently worn as amulets, while in other
+cases they were offered to river divinities, since many are met with in
+river beds or fords. Their use as protective amulets is shown by a stele
+representing a person wearing a necklace to which is attached one of
+these wheels. In Irish texts a Druid is called Mag Ruith, explained as
+_magus rotarum_, because he made his Druidical observations by
+wheels.[1136] This may point to the use of such amulets in Ireland. A
+curious amulet, connected with the Druids, became famous in Roman times
+and is described by Pliny. This was the "serpents' egg," formed from the
+foam produced by serpents twining themselves together. The serpents
+threw the "egg" into the air, and he who sought it had to catch it in
+his cloak before it fell, and flee to a running stream, beyond which the
+serpents, like the witches pursuing Tam o' Shanter, could not follow
+him. This "egg" was believed to cause its owner to obtain access to
+kings or to gain lawsuits, and a Roman citizen was put to death in the
+reign of Claudius for bringing such an amulet into court. Pliny had seen
+this "egg." It was about the size of an apple, with a cartilaginous skin
+covered with discs.[1137] Probably it was a fossil echinus, such as has
+been found in Gaulish tombs.[1138] Such "eggs" were doubtless connected
+with the cult of the serpent, or some old myth of an egg produced by
+serpents may have been made use of to account for their formation. This
+is the more likely, as rings or beads of glass found in tumuli in Wales,
+Cornwall, and the Highlands are called "serpents' glass" (_glain
+naidr_), and are believed to be formed in the same way as the "egg."
+These, as well as old spindle-whorls called "adder stones" in the
+Highlands, are held to have magical virtues, e.g. against the bite of a
+serpent, and are highly prized by their owners.[1139]
+
+Pliny speaks also of the Celtic belief in the magical virtues of coral,
+either worn as an amulet or taken in powder as a medicine, while it has
+been proved that the Celts during a limited period of their history
+placed it on weapons and utensils, doubtless as an amulet.[1140] Other
+amulets--white marble balls, quartz pebbles, models of the tooth of the
+boar, or pieces of amber, have been found buried with the dead.[1141]
+Little figures of the boar, the horse, and the bull, with a ring for
+suspending them to a necklet, were worn as amulets or images of these
+divine animals, and phallic amulets were also worn, perhaps as a
+protection against the evil eye.[1142]
+
+A cult of stones was probably connected with the belief in the magical
+power of certain stones, like the _Lia Fail_, which shrieked aloud when
+Conn knocked against it. His Druids explained that the number of the
+shrieks equalled the number of his descendants who should be kings of
+Erin.[1143] This is an aetiological myth accounting for the use of this
+fetich-stone at coronations. Other stones, probably the object of a cult
+or possessing magical virtues, were used at the installation of chiefs,
+who stood on them and vowed to follow in the steps of their
+predecessors, a pair of feet being carved on the stone to represent
+those of the first chief.[1144] Other stones had more musical
+virtues--the "conspicuous stone" of Elysium from which arose a hundred
+strains, and the melodious stone of Loch Laig. Such beliefs existed into
+Christian times. S. Columba's stone altar floated on the waves, and on
+it a leper had crossed in the wake of the saint's coracle to Erin. But
+the same stone was that on which, long before, the hero Fionn had
+slipped.[1145]
+
+Connected with the cult of stones are magical observances at fixed rocks
+or boulders, regarded probably as the abode of a spirit. These
+observances are in origin pre-Celtic, but were practised by the Celts.
+Girls slide down a stone to obtain a lover, pregnant women to obtain an
+easy delivery, or contact with such stones causes barren women to have
+children or gives vitality to the feeble. A small offering is usually
+left on the stone.[1146] Similar rites are practised at megalithic
+monuments, and here again the custom is obviously pre-Celtic in origin.
+In this case the spirits of the dead must have been expected to assist
+the purposes of the rites, or even to incarnate themselves in the
+children born as a result of barren women resorting to these
+stones.[1147] Sometimes when the purpose of the stones has been
+forgotten and some other legendary origin attributed to them, the custom
+adapts itself to the legend. In Ireland many dolmens are known, not as
+places of sepulture, but as "Diarmaid and Grainne's beds"--the places
+where these eloping lovers slept. Hence they have powers of fruitfulness
+and are visited by women who desire children. The rite is thus one of
+sympathetic magic.
+
+Holed dolmens or naturally pierced blocks are used for the magical cure
+of sickness both in Brittany and Cornwall, the patient being passed
+through the hole.[1148] Similar rites are used with trees, a slit being
+often made in the trunk of a sapling, and a sickly child passed through
+it. The slit is then closed and bound, and if it joins together at the
+end of a certain time, this is a proof that the child will
+recover.[1149] In these rites the spirit in stone or tree was supposed
+to assist the process of healing, or the disease was transferred to
+them, or, again, there was the idea of a new birth with consequent
+renewed life, the act imitating the process of birth. These rites are
+not confined to Celtic regions, but belong to that universal use of
+magic in which the Celts freely participated.
+
+Since Christian writers firmly believed in the magical powers of the
+Druids, aided however by the devil, they taught that Christian saints
+had miraculously overcome them with their own weapons. S. Patrick
+dispelled snow-storms and darkness raised by Druids, or destroyed Druids
+who had brought down fire from heaven. Similar deeds are attributed to
+S. Columba and others.[1150] The moral victory of the Cross was later
+regarded also as a magical victory. Hence also lives of Celtic saints
+are full of miracles which are simply a reproduction of Druidic
+magic--controlling the elements, healing, carrying live coals without
+hurt, causing confusion by their curses, producing invisibility or
+shape-shifting, making the ice-cold waters of a river hot by standing in
+them at their devotions, or walking unscathed through the fiercest
+storms.[1151] They were soon regarded as more expert magicians than the
+Druids themselves. They may have laid claim to magical powers, or
+perhaps they used a natural shrewdness in such a way as to suggest
+magic. But all their power they ascribed to Christ. "Christ is my
+Druid"--the true miracle-worker, said S. Columba. Yet they were imbued
+with the superstitions of their own age. Thus S. Columba sent a white
+stone to King Brude at Inverness for the cure of his Druid Broichan, who
+drank the water poured over it, and was healed.[1152] Soon similar
+virtues were ascribed to the relics of the saints themselves, and at a
+later time, when most Scotsmen ceased to believe in the saints, they
+thought that the ministers of the kirk had powers like those of pagan
+Druid and Catholic saint. Ministers were levitated, or shone with a
+celestial light, or had clairvoyant gifts, or, with dire results, cursed
+the ungodly or the benighted prelatist. They prophesied, used
+trance-utterance, and exercised gifts of healing. Angels ministered to
+them, as when Samuel Rutherford, having fallen into a well when a child,
+was pulled out by an angel.[1153] The substratum of primitive belief
+survives all changes of creed, and the folk impartially attributed
+magical powers to pagan Druid, Celtic saints, old crones and witches,
+and Presbyterian ministers.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1093] _IT_ i. 56; D'Arbois, v. 387.
+
+[1094] See, e.g., "The Death of Muirchertach," _RC_ xxiii. 394.
+
+[1095] _HN_ xxx. 4, 13.
+
+[1096] Zimmer, _Gloss. Hibern._ 183; Reeves, _Adamnan_, 260.
+
+[1097] Kennedy, 175; cf. _IT_ i. 220.
+
+[1098] See _RC_ xii. 52 f.; D'Arbois, v. 403-404; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._
+505; Kennedy, 75, 196, 258.
+
+[1099] D'Arbois, v. 277.
+
+[1100] Stokes, _Three Middle Irish Homilies_, 24; _IT_ iii. 325.
+
+[1101] _RC_ xii. 83; Miss Hull, 215; D'Arbois, v. 424; O'Curry, _MC_ ii.
+215.
+
+[1102] Keating, 341; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 271.
+
+[1103] _RC_ xii. 81.
+
+[1104] Miss Hull, 240 f.
+
+[1105] Maury, 14.
+
+[1106] Sebillot, ii. 226 f., i. 101, ii. 225; Berenger-Feraud,
+_Superstitions et Survivances_, iii. 169 f.; _Stat. Account_, viii. 52.
+
+[1107] _Rev. des Trad._ 1893, 613; Sebillot, ii. 224.
+
+[1108] Berenger-Feraud, iii. 218 f.; Sebillot, i. 100, 109; _RC_ ii.
+484; Frazer, _Golden Bough_{2}, i. 67.
+
+[1109] D'Arbois, v. 387; _IT_ i. 52; Dixon, _Gairloch_, 165; Carmichael,
+_Carm. Gad._ ii. 25.
+
+[1110] _RC_ xvi. 152; Miss Hull, 243.
+
+[1111] D'Arbois, v. 133; _IT_ ii. 373.
+
+[1112] Mela, iii. 6; _RC_ xv. 471.
+
+[1113] Joyce, _OCR_ 1 f.; Kennedy, 235.
+
+[1114] Bird-women pursued by Cuchulainn; D'Arbois, v. 178; for other
+instances see O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 426; Miss Hull, 82.
+
+[1115] D'Arbois, v. 215.
+
+[1116] Joyce, _OCR_ 279.
+
+[1117] Ibid. 86.
+
+[1118] _RC_ xxiii. 394; Jocelyn, _Vita S. Kent._ c. 1.
+
+[1119] _RC_ xv. 446.
+
+[1120] O'Conor, _Rer. Hib. Scrip._ ii. 142; Stokes, _Lives of Saints_,
+xxviii.
+
+[1121] _RC_ xv. 444.
+
+[1122] See p. 251, _supra_.
+
+[1123] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 240.
+
+[1124] See pp. 248, 304, _supra_; Caesar, _vi_. 14.
+
+[1125] Zimmer, _Gloss. Hiber._ 271. Other Irish incantations, appealing
+to the saints, are found in the _Codex Regularum_ at Klosternenburg
+(_RC_ ii. 112).
+
+[1126] Leahy, i. 137; Kennedy, 301.
+
+[1127] Sauve, _RC_ vi. 67 f.; Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._, _passim_; _CM_
+xii. 38; Joyce, _SH_ i. 629 f.; Camden, _Britannia_, iv. 488; Scot,
+_Discovery of Witchcraft_, iii. 15.
+
+[1128] For examples see O'Curry, _MS. Met._ 248; D'Arbois, ii. 190; _RC_
+xii. 71, xxiv. 279; Stokes, _TIG_ xxxvi. f.
+
+[1129] Windisch, _Tain_, line 3467.
+
+[1130] Diod. Sic. v. 31.
+
+[1131] D'Arbois, i. 271.
+
+[1132] _RC_ xii. 109; Nutt-Meyer, i. 2; D'Arbois, v. 445.
+
+[1133] Petrie, _Ancient Music of Ireland_, i. 73; _The Gael_, i. 235
+(fairy lullaby of MacLeod of MacLeod).
+
+[1134] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 255.
+
+[1135] _Archaeologia_, xxxix. 509; _Proc. Soc. Ant._ iii. 92; Gaidoz, _Le
+Dieu Gaul. du Soleil_, 60 f.
+
+[1136] _IT_ iii. 409; but see Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 215.
+
+[1137] Pliny, _HN_ xxix. 3. 54.
+
+[1138] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227, xxxiii. 283.
+
+[1139] Hoare, _Modern Wiltshire_, 56; Camden, _Britannia_, 815; Hazlitt,
+194; Campbell, _Witchcraft_, 84. In the Highlands spindle-whorls are
+thought to have been perforated by the adder, which then passes through
+the hole to rid itself of its old skin.
+
+[1140] Pliny, xxxii. 2. 24; Reinach, _RC_ xx. 13 f.
+
+[1141] _Rev. Arch._ i. 227; Greenwell, _British Barrows_, 165; Elton,
+66; Renel, 95f., 194f.
+
+[1142] Reinach, _BF_ 286, 289, 362.
+
+[1143] O'Curry, _MS Mat._ 387. See a paper by Hartland, "The Voice of
+the Stone of Destiny," _Folk-lore Journal_, xiv. 1903.
+
+[1144] Petrie, _Trans. Royal Irish Acad._ xviii. pt. 2.
+
+[1145] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 393 f.
+
+[1146] Sebillot, i. 334 f.
+
+[1147] Trollope, _Brittany_, ii. 229; Berenger-Feraud, _Superstitions et
+Survivances_, i. 529 f.; Borlase, _Dolmens of Ireland_, iii. 580, 689,
+841 f.
+
+[1148] _Rev. des Trad._ 1894, 494; Berenger-Feraud, i. 529, ii. 367;
+Elworthy, _Evil Eye_, 70.
+
+[1149] Berenger-Feraud, i. 523; Elworthy, 69, 106; Reinach,
+_L'Anthropologie_, iv. 33.
+
+[1150] Kennedy, 324; Adamnan, _Vita S. Col._ ii. 35.
+
+[1151] Life of S. Fechin of Fore, _RC_ xii. 333; Life of S. Kieran,
+O'Grady, ii. 13; Amra Cholumbchille, _RC_ xx. 41; Life of S. Moling,
+_RC_ xxvii. 293; and other lives _passim_. See also Plummer, _Vitae
+Sanctorum Hiberniae_.
+
+[1152] Adamnan, ii. 34. This pebble was long preserved, but mysteriously
+disappeared when the person who sought it was doomed to die.
+
+[1153] Wodrow, _Analecta_, _passim_; Walker, _Six Saints of the
+Covenant_, ed. by Dr. Hay Fleming.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+THE STATE OF THE DEAD.
+
+
+Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so
+appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a
+farther shore, and if so, shall we reach it? Few races, if any, have
+doubted the existence of a future state, but their conceptions of it
+have differed greatly. But of all the races of antiquity, outside Egypt,
+the Celts seem to have cherished the most ardent belief in the world
+beyond the grave, and to have been preoccupied with its joys. Their
+belief, so far as we know it, was extremely vivid, and its chief
+characteristic was life in the body after death, in another
+region.[1154] This, coupled with the fact that it was taught as a
+doctrine by the Druids, made it the admiration of classical onlookers.
+But besides this belief there was another, derived from the ideas of a
+distant past, that the dead lived on in the grave--the two conceptions
+being connected. And there may also have been a certain degree of belief
+in transmigration. Although the Celts believed that the soul could exist
+apart from the body, there seems to be no evidence that they believed in
+a future existence of the soul as a shade. This belief is certainly
+found in some late Welsh poems, where the ghosts are described as
+wandering in the Caledonian forest, but these can hardly be made use of
+as evidence for the old pagan doctrine. The evidence for the latter may
+be gathered from classical observers, from archaeology and from Irish
+texts.
+
+Caesar writes: "The Druids in particular wish to impress this on them
+that souls do not perish, but pass from one to another (_ab aliis ... ad
+alios_) after death, and by this chiefly they think to incite men to
+valour, the fear of death being overlooked." Later he adds, that at
+funerals all things which had been dear to the dead man, even living
+creatures, were thrown on the funeral pyre, and shortly before his time
+slaves and beloved clients were also consumed.[1155] Diodorus says:
+"Among them the doctrine of Pythagoras prevailed that the souls of men
+were immortal, and after completing their term of existence they live
+again, the soul passing into another body. Hence at the burial of the
+dead some threw letters addressed to dead relatives on the funeral pile,
+believing that the dead would read them in the next world."[1156]
+Valerius Maximus writes: "They would fain make us believe that the souls
+of men are immortal. I would be tempted to call these breeches-wearing
+folk fools, if their doctrine were not the same as that of the
+mantle-clad Pythagoras." He also speaks of money lent which would be
+repaid in the next world, because men's souls are immortal.[1157] These
+passages are generally taken to mean that the Celts believed simply in
+transmigration of the Pythagorean type. Possibly all these writers cite
+one common original, but Caesar makes no reference to Pythagoras. A
+comparison with the Pythagorean doctrine shows that the Celtic belief
+differed materially from it. According to the former, men's souls
+entered new bodies, even those of animals, in this world, and as an
+expiation. There is nothing of this in the Celtic doctrine. The new body
+is not a prison-house of the soul in which it must expiate its former
+sins, and the soul receives it not in this world but in another. The
+real point of connection was the insistence of both upon immortality,
+the Druids teaching that it was bodily immortality. Their doctrine no
+more taught transmigration than does the Christian doctrine of the
+resurrection. Roman writers, aware that Pythagoras taught immortality
+_via_ a series of transmigrations, and that the Druids taught a doctrine
+of bodily immortality, may have thought that the receiving of a new body
+meant transmigration. Themselves sceptical of a future life or believing
+in a traditional gloomy Hades, they were bound to be struck with the
+vigour of the Celtic doctrine and its effects upon conduct. The only
+thing like it of which they knew was the Pythagorean doctrine. Looked at
+in this light, Caesar's words need not convey the idea of transmigration,
+and it is possible that he mistranslated some Greek original. Had these
+writers meant that the Druids taught transmigration, they could hardly
+have added the passages regarding debts being paid in the other world,
+or letters conveyed there by the dead, or human sacrifices to benefit
+the dead there. These also preclude the idea of a mere immortality of
+the soul. The dead Celt continued to be the person he had been, and it
+may have been that not a new body, but the old body glorified, was
+tenanted by his soul beyond the grave. This bodily immortality in a
+region where life went on as on this earth, but under happier
+conditions, would then be like the Vedic teaching that the soul, after
+the burning of the body, went to the heaven of Yama, and there received
+its body complete and glorified. The two conceptions, Hindu and Celtic,
+may have sprung from early "Aryan" belief.
+
+This Celtic doctrine appears more clearly from what Lucan says of the
+Druidic teaching. "From you we learn that the bourne of man's existence
+is not the silent halls of Erebus, in another world (or region, _in orbe
+alio_) the spirit animates the members. Death, if your lore be true, is
+but the centre of a long life." For this reason, he adds, the Celtic
+warrior had no fear of death.[1158] Thus Lucan conceived the Druidic
+doctrine to be one of bodily immortality in another region. That region
+was not a gloomy state; rather it resembled the Egyptian Aalu with its
+rich and varied existence. Classical writers, of course, may have known
+of what appears to have been a sporadic Celtic idea, derived from old
+beliefs, that the soul might take the form of an animal, but this was
+not the Druidic teaching. Again, if the Gauls, like the Irish, had myths
+telling of the rebirth of gods or semi-divine beings, these may have
+been misinterpreted by those writers and regarded as eschatological. But
+such myths do not concern mortals. Other writers, Timagenes, Strabo, and
+Mela,[1159] speak only of the immortality of the soul, but their
+testimony is probably not at variance with that of Lucan, since Mela
+appears to copy Caesar, and speaks of accounts and debts being passed on
+to the next world.
+
+This theory of a bodily immortality is supported by the Irish sagas, in
+which ghosts, in our sense of the word, do not exist. The dead who
+return are not spectres, but are fully clothed upon with a body. Thus,
+when Cuchulainn returns at the command of S. Patrick, he is described
+exactly as if he were still in the flesh. "His hair was thick and black
+... in his head his eye gleamed swift and grey.... Blacker than the side
+of a cooking spit each of his two brows, redder than ruby his lips." His
+clothes and weapons are fully described, while his chariot and horses
+are equally corporeal.[1160] Similar descriptions of the dead who return
+are not infrequent, e.g. that of Caoilte in the story of Mongan, whom
+every one believes to be a living warrior, and that of Fergus mac Roich,
+who reappeared in a beautiful form, adorned with brown hair and clad in
+his former splendour, and recited the lost story of the _Tain_.[1161]
+Thus the Irish Celts believed that in another world the spirit animated
+the members. This bodily existence is also suggested in Celtic versions
+of the "Dead Debtor" folk-tale cycle. Generally an animal in whose shape
+a dead man helps his benefactor is found in other European versions, but
+in the Celtic stories not an animal but the dead man himself appears as
+a living person in corporeal form.[1162] Equally substantial and
+corporeal, eating, drinking, lovemaking, and fighting are the divine
+folk of the _sid_ or of Elysium, or the gods as they are represented in
+the texts. To the Celts, gods, _side_, and the dead, all alike had a
+bodily form, which, however, might become invisible, and in other ways
+differed from the earthly body.
+
+The archaeological evidence of burial customs among the Celts also bears
+witness to this belief. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of
+grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots,
+utensils, ornaments, and coins.[1163] Some of the interments undoubtedly
+point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and
+female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of
+the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains
+of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly
+provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons,
+without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body,
+pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied
+behind the back.[1164] All this suggests, taken in connection with
+classical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was
+life in the body, and that it was a _replica_ of this life, with the
+same affections, needs, and energies. Certain passages in Irish texts
+also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with
+ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead
+warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies
+might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented
+their attack.[1165] Possibly this belief may account for the elevated
+position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were
+buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of
+heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead
+husbands.[1166]
+
+The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably
+linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared
+by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was
+never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of
+the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before
+burial. It appears from such practices as binding the dead with cords,
+or laying heavy stones or a mound of earth on the grave, probably to
+prevent their egress, or feeding the dead with sacrificial food at the
+grave, or from the belief that the dead come forth not as spirits, but
+in the body from the grave. This primitive conception, of which the
+belief in a subterranean world of the dead is an extension, long
+survived among various races, e.g. the Scandinavians, who believed in
+the barrow as the abiding place of the dead, while they also had their
+conception of Hel and Valhalla, or among the Slavs, side by side with
+Christian conceptions.[1167] It also survived among the Celts, though
+another belief in the _orbis alius_ had arisen. This can be shown from
+modern and ancient folk-belief and custom.
+
+In numerous Celtic folk-tales the dead rise in the body, not as ghosts,
+from the grave, which is sometimes described as a house in which they
+live. They perform their ordinary occupations in house or field; they
+eat with the living, or avenge themselves upon them; if scourged, blood
+is drawn from their bodies; and, in one curious Breton tale, a dead
+husband visits his wife in bed and she then has a child by him, because,
+as he said, "sa compte d'enfants" was not yet complete.[1168] In other
+stories a corpse becomes animated and speaks or acts in presence of the
+living, or from the tomb itself when it is disturbed.[1169] The earliest
+literary example of such a tale is the tenth century "Adventures of
+Nera," based on older sources. In this Nera goes to tie a withy to the
+foot of a man who has been hung. The corpse begs a drink, and then
+forces Nera to carry him to a house, where he kills two sleepers.[1170]
+All such stories, showing as they do that a corpse is really living,
+must in essence be of great antiquity. Another common belief, found over
+the Celtic area, is that the dead rise from the grave, not as ghosts,
+when they will, and that they appear _en masse_ on the night of All
+Saints, and join the living.[1171]
+
+As a result of such beliefs, various customs are found in use,
+apparently to permit of the corpse having freedom of movement, contrary
+to the older custom of preventing its egress from the grave. In the west
+of Ireland the feet of the corpse are left free, and the nails are drawn
+from the coffin at the grave. In the Hebrides the threads of the shroud
+are cut or the bindings of feet, hands, and face are raised when the
+body is placed in the coffin, and in Brittany the arms and feet are left
+free when the corpse is dressed.[1172] The reason is said to be that the
+spirit may have less trouble in getting to the spirit world, but it is
+obvious that a more material view preceded and still underlies this
+later gloss. Many stories are told illustrating these customs, and the
+earlier belief, Christianised, appears in the tale of a woman who
+haunted her friends because they had made her grave-clothes so short
+that the fires of Purgatory burnt her knees.[1173]
+
+Earlier customs recorded among the Celts also point to the existence of
+this primitive belief influencing actual custom. Nicander says that the
+Celts went by night to the tombs of great men to obtain oracles, so much
+did they believe that they were still living there.[1174] In Ireland,
+oracles were also sought by sleeping on funeral cairns, and it was to
+the grave of Fergus that two bards resorted in order to obtain from him
+the lost story of the _Tain_. We have also seen how, in Ireland, armed
+heroes exerted a sinister influence upon enemies from their graves,
+which may thus have been regarded as their homes--a belief also
+underlying the Welsh story of Bran's head.
+
+Where was the world of the dead situated? M. Reinach has shown, by a
+careful comparison of the different uses of the word _orbis_, that
+Lucan's words do not necessarily mean "another world," but "another
+region," i.e. of this world.[1175] If the Celts cherished so firmly the
+belief that the dead lived on in the grave, a belief in an underworld of
+the dead was bound in course of time to have been evolved as part of
+their creed. To it all graves and tumuli would give access. Classical
+observers apparently held that the Celtic future state was like their
+own in being an underworld region, since they speak of the dead Celts as
+_inferi_, or as going _ad Manes_, and Plutarch makes Camma speak of
+descending to her dead husband.[1176] What differentiated it from their
+own gloomy underworld was its exuberant life and immortality. This
+aspect of a subterranean land presented no difficulty to the Celt, who
+had many tales of an underworld or under-water region more beautiful and
+blissful than anything on earth. Such a subterranean world must have
+been that of the Celtic Dispater, a god of fertility and growth, the
+roots of things being nourished from his kingdom. From him men had
+descended,[1177] probably a myth of their coming forth from his
+subterranean kingdom, and to him they returned after death to a blissful
+life.
+
+Several writers, notably M. D'Arbois, assume that the _orbis alius_ of
+the dead was the Celtic island Elysium. But that Elysium _never_ appears
+in the tales as a land of the dead. It is a land of gods and deathless
+folk who are not those who have passed from this world by death. Mortals
+may reach it by favour, but only while still in life. It might be argued
+that Elysium was regarded in pagan times as the land of the dead, but
+after Christian eschatological views prevailed, it became a kind of
+fairyland. But the existing tales give no hint of this, and, after being
+carefully examined, they show that Elysium had always been a place
+distinct from that of the departed, though there may have arisen a
+tendency to confuse the two.
+
+If there was a genuine Celtic belief in an island of the dead, it could
+have been no more than a local one, else Caesar would not have spoken as
+he does of the Celtic Dispater. Such a local belief now exists on the
+Breton coast, but it is mainly concerned with the souls of the
+drowned.[1178] A similar local belief may explain the story told by
+Procopius, who says that Brittia (Britain), an island lying off the
+mouth of the Rhine, is divided from north to south by a wall beyond
+which is a noxious region. This is a distorted reminiscence of the Roman
+wall, which would appear to run in this direction if Ptolemy's map, in
+which Scotland lies at right angles to England, had been consulted.
+Thither fishermen from the opposite coast are compelled to ferry over at
+dead of night the shades of the dead, unseen to them, but marshalled by
+a mysterious leader.[1179] Procopius may have mingled some local belief
+with the current tradition that Ulysses' island of the shades lay in the
+north, or in the west.[1180] In any case his story makes of the gloomy
+land of the shades a very different region from the blissful Elysium of
+the Celts and from their joyous _orbis alius_, nor is it certain that he
+is referring to a Celtic people.
+
+Traces of the idea of an underworld of the dead exist in Breton
+folk-belief. The dead must travel across a subterranean ocean, and
+though there is scarcely any tradition regarding what happens on
+landing, M. Sebillot thinks that formerly "there existed in the
+subterranean world a sort of centralisation of the different states of
+the dead." If so, this must have been founded on pagan belief. The
+interior of the earth is also believed to be the abode of fabulous
+beings, of giants, and of fantastic animals, and there is also a
+subterranean fairy world. In all this we may see a survival of the older
+belief, modified by Christian teaching, since the Bretons suppose that
+purgatory and hell are beneath the earth and accessible from its
+surface.[1181]
+
+Some British folk-lore brought to Greece by Demetrius and reported by
+Plutarch might seem to suggest that certain persons--the mighty
+dead--were privileged to pass to the island Elysium. Some islands near
+Britain were called after gods and heroes, and the inhabitants of one of
+these were regarded as sacrosanct by the Britons, like the priestesses
+of Sena. They were visited by Demetrius, who was told that the storms
+which arose during his visit were caused by the passing away of some of
+the "mighty" or of the "great souls." It may have been meant that such
+mighty ones passed to the more distant islands, but this is certainly
+not stated. In another island, Kronos was imprisoned, watched over by
+Briareus, and guarded by demons.[1182] Plutarch refers to these islands
+in another work, repeating the story of Kronos, and saying that his
+island is mild and fragrant, that people live there waiting on the god
+who sometimes appears to them and prevents their departing. Meanwhile
+they are happy and know no care, spending their time in sacrificing and
+hymn-singing or in studying legends and philosophy.
+
+Plutarch has obviously mingled Celtic Elysium beliefs with the classical
+conception of the Druids.[1183] In Elysium there is no care, and
+favoured mortals who pass there are generally prevented from returning
+to earth. The reference to Kronos may also be based partly on myths of
+Celtic gods of Elysium, partly on tales of heroes who departed to
+mysterious islands or to the hollow hills where they lie asleep, but
+whence they will one day return to benefit their people. So Arthur
+passed to Avalon, but in other tales he and his warriors are asleep
+beneath Craig-y-Ddinas, just as Fionn and his men rest within this or
+that hill in the Highlands. Similar legends are told of other Celtic
+heroes, and they witness to the belief that great men who had died would
+return in the hour of their people's need. In time they were thought not
+to have died at all, but to be merely sleeping and waiting for their
+hour.[1184] The belief is based on the idea that the dead are alive in
+grave or barrow, or in a spacious land below the earth, or that dead
+warriors can menace their foes from the tomb.
+
+Thus neither in old sagas, nor in _Maerchen_, nor in popular tradition,
+is the island Elysium a world of the dead. For the most part the pagan
+eschatology has been merged in that of Christianity, while the Elysium
+belief has remained intact and still survives in a whole series of
+beautiful tales.
+
+The world of the dead was in all respects a _replica_ of this world, but
+it was happier. In existing Breton and Irish belief--a survival of the
+older conception of the bodily state of the dead--they resume their
+tools, crafts, and occupations, and they preserve their old feelings.
+Hence, when they appear on earth, it is in bodily form and in their
+customary dress. Like the pagan Gauls, the Breton remembers unpaid
+debts, and cannot rest till they are paid, and in Brittany, Ireland, and
+the Highlands the food and clothes given to the poor after a death, feed
+and clothe the dead in the other world.[1185] If the world of the dead
+was subterranean,--a theory supported by current folk-belief,[1186]--the
+Earth-goddess or the Earth-god, who had been first the earth itself,
+then a being living below its surface and causing fertility, could not
+have become the divinity of the dead until the multitude of single
+graves or barrows, in each of which the dead lived, had become a wide
+subterranean region of the dead. This divinity was the source of life
+and growth; hence he or she was regarded as the progenitor of mankind,
+who had come forth from the underworld and would return there at death.
+It is not impossible that the Breton conception of Ankou, death
+personified, is a reminiscence of the Celtic Dispater. He watches over
+all things beyond the grave, and carries off the dead to his kingdom.
+But if so he has been altered for the worse by mediaeval ideas of "Death
+the skeleton".[1187] He is a grisly god of death, whereas the Celtic Dis
+was a beneficent god of the dead who enjoyed a happy immortality. They
+were not cold phantasms, but alive and endowed with corporeal form and
+able to enjoy the things of a better existence, and clad in the
+beautiful raiment and gaudy ornaments which were loved so much on earth.
+Hence Celtic warriors did not fear death, and suicide was extremely
+common, while Spanish Celts sang hymns in praise of death, and others
+celebrated the birth of men with mourning, but their deaths with
+joy.[1188] Lucan's words are thus the truest expression of Celtic
+eschatology--"In another region the spirit animates the members; death,
+if your lore be true, is but the passage to enduring life."
+
+There is no decisive evidence pointing to any theory of moral
+retribution beyond the grave among the pagan Celts. Perhaps, since the
+hope of immortality made warriors face death without a tremor, it may
+have been held, as many other races have believed, that cowards would
+miss the bliss of the future state. Again, in some of the Irish
+Christian visions of the other-world and in existing folk-belief,
+certain characteristics of hell may not be derived from Christian
+eschatology, e.g. the sufferings of the dead from cold.[1189] This might
+point to an old belief in a cold region whither some of the dead were
+banished. In the _Adventures of S. Columba's Clerics_, hell is reached
+by a bridge over a glen of fire,[1190] and a narrow bridge leading to
+the other world is a common feature in most mythologies. But here it may
+be borrowed from Scandinavian sources, or from such Christian writings
+as the _Dialogues_ of S. Gregory the Great.[1191] It might be contended
+that the Christian doctrine of hell has absorbed an earlier pagan theory
+of retribution, but of this there is now no trace in the sagas or in
+classical references to the Celtic belief in the future life. Nor is
+there any reference to a day of judgment, for the passage in which
+Loegaire speaks of the dead buried with their weapons till "the day of
+Erdathe," though glossed "the day of judgment of the Lord," does not
+refer to such a judgment.[1192] If an ethical blindness be attributed to
+the Celts for their apparent lack of any theory of retribution, it
+should be remembered that we must not judge a people's ethics wholly by
+their views of future punishment. Scandinavians, Greeks, and Semites up
+to a certain stage were as unethical as the Celts in this respect, and
+the Christian hell, as conceived by many theologians, is far from
+suggesting an ethical Deity.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1154] Skene, i. 370.
+
+[1155] Caesar, vi. 14, 19.
+
+[1156] Diod. Sic. v, 28.
+
+[1157] Val. Max. vi. 6. 10.
+
+[1158] _Phars._ i. 455 f.
+
+[1159] Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Strabo, iv. 4; Mela, iii. 2.
+
+[1160] Miss Hull, 275.
+
+[1161] Nutt-Meyer, i. 49; Miss Hull, 293.
+
+[1162] Larminie, 155; Hyde, _Beside the Fire_, 21, 153; _CM_ xiii. 21;
+Campbell, _WHT_, ii. 21; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xii.
+
+[1163] Von Sacken, _Das Grabfeld von Hallstatt_; Greenwell, _British
+Barrows_; _RC_ x. 234; _Antiquary_, xxxvii. 125; Blanchet, ii. 528 f.;
+Anderson, _Scotland in Pagan Times_.
+
+[1164] _L'Anthropologie_, vi. 586; Greenwell, _op. cit._ 119.
+
+[1165] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52; O'Donovan, _Annals_, i. 145, 180; _RC_ xv. 28.
+In one case the enemy disinter the body of the king of Connaught, and
+rebury it face downwards, and then obtain a victory. This nearly
+coincides with the dire results following the disinterment of Bran's
+head (O'Donovan, i. 145; cf. p. 242, _supra_).
+
+[1166] _LU_ 130_a_; _RC_ xxiv. 185; O'Curry, _MC_ i. p. cccxxx;
+Campbell, _WHT_ iii. 62; Leahy, i. 105.
+
+[1167] Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Boreale_, i. 167, 417-418, 420;
+and see my _Childhood of Fiction_, 103 f.
+
+[1168] Larminie, 31; Le Braz{2}, ii. 146, 159, 161, 184, 257 (the _role_
+of the dead husband is usually taken by a _lutin_ or _follet_, Luzel,
+_Veillees Bretons_, 79); _Rev. des Trad. Pop._ ii. 267; _Ann. de
+Bretagne_, viii. 514.
+
+[1169] Le Braz{2}, i. 313. Cf. also an incident in the _Voyage of
+Maelduin_.
+
+[1170] _RC_ x. 214f. Cf. Kennedy, 162; Le Braz{2}, i. 217, for variants.
+
+[1171] Curtin, _Tales_, 156; see p. 170, _supra_.
+
+[1172] Curtin, _Tales_, 156; Campbell, _Superstitions_, 241;
+_Folk-Lore_, xiii. 60; Le Braz{2}, i. 213.
+
+[1173] _Folk-Lore_, ii. 26; Yeats, _Celtic Twilight_, 166.
+
+[1174] Tertullian, _de Anima_, 21.
+
+[1175] Reinach, _RC_ xxii. 447.
+
+[1176] Val. Max. vi. 6; Mela, iii. 2. 19; Plut. _Virt. mul_ 20.
+
+[1177] See p. 229, _supra_.
+
+[1178] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxxix. This is only one out of many local
+beliefs (cf. Sebillot, ii. 149).
+
+[1179] Procop. _De Bello Goth._ vi. 20.
+
+[1180] Claudian, _In Rufin._ i. 123.
+
+[1181] Sebillot, i. 418 f.
+
+[1182] _de Defectu Orac._ 18. An occasional name for Britain in the
+_Mabinogion_ is "the island of the Mighty" (Loth, i. 69, _et passim_).
+To the storm incident and the passing of the mighty, there is a curious
+parallel in Fijian belief. A clap of thunder was explained as "the noise
+of a spirit, we being near the place in which spirits plunge to enter
+the other world, and a chief in the neighbourhood having just died"
+(Williams, _Fiji_, i. 204).
+
+[1183] _de Facie Lun[oe]_, 26.
+
+[1184] See Hartland, _Science of Fairy Tales_, 209; Macdougall, _Folk
+and Hero Tales_, 73, 263; Le Braz{2}, i. p. xxx. Mortals sometimes
+penetrated to the presence of these heroes, who awoke. If the visitor
+had the courage to tell them that the hour had not yet come, they fell
+asleep again, and he escaped. In Brittany, rocky clefts are believed to
+be the entrance to the world of the dead, like the cave of Lough Dearg.
+Similar stories were probably told of these in pagan times, though they
+are now adapted to Christian beliefs in purgatory or hell.
+
+[1185] Le Braz{2}, i. p. xl, ii. 4; Curtin, 10; MacPhail, _Folk-Lore_,
+vi. 170.
+
+[1186] See p. 338, _supra_, and Logan, _Scottish Gael_, ii. 374;
+_Folk-Lore,_ viii. 208, 253.
+
+[1187] Le Braz{2}, i. 96, 127, 136f., and Intro, xlv.
+
+[1188] Philostratus, _Apoll. of Tyana_, v. 4; Val. Max. ii. 6. 12.
+
+[1189] Le Braz{1}, ii. 91; Curtin, _Tales_, 146. The punishment of
+suffering from ice and snow appears in the _Apocalypse of Paul_ and in
+later Christian accounts of hell.
+
+[1190] _RC_ xxvi. 153.
+
+[1191] Bk. iv. ch. 36.
+
+[1192] _Erdathe_, according to D'Arbois, means (1) "the day in which the
+dead will resume his colour," from _dath_, "colour"; (2) "the agreeable
+day," from _data_, "agreeable" (D'Arbois, i. 185; cf. _Les Druides_,
+135).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION.
+
+
+In Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or heroes, and,
+probably because this belief was obnoxious to Christian scribes, while
+some MSS. tell of it in the case of certain heroic personages, in others
+these same heroes are said to have been born naturally. There is no
+textual evidence that it was attributed to ordinary mortals, and it is
+possible that, if classical observers did not misunderstand the Celtic
+doctrine of the future life, their references to rebirth may be based on
+mythical tales regarding gods or heroes. We shall study these tales as
+they are found in Irish texts.
+
+In the mythological cycle, as has been seen, Etain, in insect form, fell
+into a cup of wine. She was swallowed by Etar, and in due time was
+reborn as a child, who was eventually married by Eochaid Airem, but
+recognized and carried off by her divine spouse Mider. Etain, however,
+had quite forgotten her former existence as a goddess.[1193]
+
+In one version of Cuchulainn's birth story Dechtire and her women fly
+away as birds, but are discovered at last by her brother Conchobar in a
+strange house, where Dechtire gives birth to a child, of whom the god
+Lug is apparently the father. In another version the birds are not
+Dechtire and her women, for she accompanies Conchobar as his charioteer.
+They arrive at the house, the mistress of which gives birth to a child,
+which Dechtire brings up. It dies, and on her return from the burial
+Dechtire swallows a small animal when drinking. Lug appears to her by
+night, and tells her that he was the child, and that now she was with
+child by him (i.e. he was the animal swallowed by her). When he was born
+he would be called Setanta, who was later named Cuchulainn. Cuchulainn,
+in this version, is thus a rebirth of Lug, as well as his father.[1194]
+
+In the _Tale of the Two Swineherds_, Friuch and Rucht are herds of the
+gods Ochall and Bodb. They quarrel, and their fighting in various animal
+shapes is fully described. Finally they become two worms, which are
+swallowed by two cows; these then give birth to the Whitehorn and to the
+Black Bull of Cuailgne, the animals which were the cause of the _Tain._
+The swineherds were probably themselves gods in the older versions of
+this tale.[1195]
+
+Other stories relate the rebirth of heroes. Conchobar is variously said
+to be son of Nessa by her husband Cathbad, or by her lover Fachtna. But
+in the latter version an incident is found which points to a third
+account. Nessa brings Cathbad a draught from a river, but in it are two
+worms which he forces her to swallow. She gives birth to a son, in each
+of whose hands is a worm, and he is called Conchobar, after the name of
+the river into which he fell soon after his birth. The incident closes
+with the words, "It was from these worms that she became pregnant, say
+some."[1196] Possibly the divinity of the river had taken the form of
+the worms and was reborn as Conchobar. We may compare the story of the
+birth of Conall Cernach. His mother was childless, until a Druid sang
+spells over a well in which she bathed, and drank of its waters. With
+the draught she swallowed a worm, "and the worm was in the hand of the
+boy as he lay in his mother's womb; and he pierced the hand and consumed
+it."[1197]
+
+The personality of Fionn is also connected with the rebirth idea. In one
+story, Mongan, a seventh-century king, had a dispute with his poet
+regarding the death of the hero Fothad. The Fian Caoilte returns from
+the dead to prove Mongan right, and he says, "We were with thee, with
+Fionn." Mongan bids him be silent, because he did not wish his identity
+with Fionn to be made known. "Mongan, however, was Fionn, though he
+would not let it be told."[1198] In another story Mongan is son of
+Manannan, who had prophesied of this event. Manannan appeared to the
+wife of Fiachna when he was fighting the Saxons, and told her that
+unless she yielded herself to him her husband would be slain. On hearing
+this she agreed, and next day the god appeared fighting with Fiachna's
+forces and routed the slain. "So that this Mongan is a son of Manannan
+mac Lir, though he is called Mongan son of Fiachna."[1199] In a third
+version Manannan makes the bargain with Fiachna, and in his form sleeps
+with the woman. Simultaneously with Mongan's birth, Fiachna's attendant
+had a son who became Mongan's servant, and a warrior's wife bears a
+daughter who became his wife. Manannan took Mongan to the Land of
+Promise and kept him there until he was sixteen.[1200] Many magical
+powers and the faculty of shape-shifting are attributed to Mongan, and
+in some stories he is brought into connection with the _sid_.[1201]
+Probably a myth told how he went to Elysium instead of dying, for he
+comes from "the Land of Living Heart" to speak with S. Columba, who took
+him to see heaven. But he would not satisfy the saints' curiosity
+regarding Elysium, and suddenly vanished, probably returning
+there.[1202]
+
+This twofold account of Mongan's birth is curious. Perhaps the idea that
+he was a rebirth of Fionn may have been suggested by the fact that his
+father was called Fiachna Finn, while it is probable that some old myth
+of a son of Manannan's called Mongan was attached to the personality of
+the historic Mongan.
+
+About the era of Mongan, King Diarmaid had two wives, one of whom was
+barren. S. Finnen gave her holy water to drink, and she brought forth a
+lamb; then, after a second draught, a trout, and finally, after a third,
+Aed Slane, who became high king of Ireland in 594. This is a
+Christianised version of the story of Conall Cernach's birth.[1203]
+
+In Welsh mythology the story of Taliesin affords an example of rebirth.
+After the transformation combat of the goddess Cerridwen and Gwion,
+resembling that of the swine-herds, Gwion becomes a grain of wheat,
+which Cerridwen in the form of a hen swallows, with the result that he
+is reborn of her as Taliesin.[1204]
+
+Most of these stories no longer exist in their primitive form, and
+various ideas are found in them--conception by magical means, divine
+descent through the _amour_ of a divinity and a mortal, and rebirth.
+
+As to the first, the help of magician or priest is often invoked in
+savage society and even in European folk-custom in case of barrenness.
+Prayers, charms, potions, or food are the means used to induce
+conception, but perhaps at one time these were thought to cause it of
+themselves. In many tales the swallowing of a seed, fruit, insect, etc.,
+results in the birth of a hero or heroine, and it is probable that these
+stories embody actual belief in such a possibility. If the stories of
+Conall Cernach and Aed Slane are not attenuated instances of rebirth,
+say, of the divinity of a well, they are examples of this belief. The
+gift of fruitfulness is bestowed by Druid and saint, but in the story of
+Conall it is rather the swallowing of the worm than the Druid's
+incantation that causes conception, and is the real _motif_ of the tale.
+
+Where the rebirth of a divinity occurs as the result of the swallowing
+of a small animal, it is evident that the god has first taken this form.
+The Celt, believing in conception by swallowing some object, and in
+shape-shifting, combined his information, and so produced a third idea,
+that a god could take the form of a small animal, which, when swallowed,
+became his rebirth.[1205] If, as the visits of barren women to dolmens
+and megalithic monuments suggest, the Celts believed in the possibility
+of the spirit of a dead man entering a woman and being born of her or at
+least aiding conception,--a belief held by other races,[1206]--this may
+have given rise to myths regarding the rebirth of gods by human mothers.
+At all events this latter Celtic belief is paralleled by the American
+Indian myths, e.g. of the Thlinkeet god Yehl who transformed himself now
+into a pebble, now into a blade of grass, and, being thus swallowed by
+women, was reborn.
+
+In the stories of Etain and of Lud, reborn as Setanta, this idea of
+divine transformation and rebirth occurs. A similar idea may underlie
+the tale of Fionn and Mongan. As to the tales of Gwion and the
+Swineherds, the latter the servants of gods, and perhaps themselves
+regarded once as divinities, who in their rebirth as bulls are certainly
+divine animals, they present some features which require further
+consideration. The previous transformations in both cases belong to the
+Transformation Combat formula of many _Maerchen_, and obviously were not
+part of the original form of the myths. In all such _Maerchen_ the
+antagonists are males, hence the rebirth incident could not form part of
+them. In the Welsh tale of Gwion and in the corresponding Taliesin poem,
+the ingenious fusion of the _Maerchen_ formula with an existing myth of
+rebirth must have taken place at an early date.[1207] This is also true
+of _The Two Swineherds_, but in this case, since the myth told how two
+gods took the form of worms and were reborn of cows, the formula had to
+be altered. Both remain alive at the end of the combat, contrary to the
+usual formula, because both were males and both were reborn. The fusion
+is skilful, because the reborn personages preserve a remembrance of
+their former transformations,[1208] just as Mongan knows of his former
+existence as Fionn. In other cases there is no such remembrance. Etain
+had forgotten her former existence, and Cuchulainn does not appear to
+know that he is a rebirth of Lug.
+
+The relation of Lug to Cuchulainn deserves further inquiry. While the
+god is reborn he is also existing as Lug, just as having been swallowed
+as a worm by Dechtire, he appears in his divine form and tells her he
+will be born of her. In the _Tain_ he appears fighting for Cuchulainn,
+whom he there calls his son. There are thus two aspects of the hero's
+relationship to Lug; in one he is a rebirth of the god, in the other he
+is his son, as indeed he seems to represent himself in _The Wooing of
+Emer_, and as he is called by Laborcham just before his death.[1209] In
+one of the birth-stories he is clearly Lug's son by Dechtire. But both
+versions may simply be different aspects of one belief, namely, that a
+god could be reborn as a mortal and yet continue his divine existence,
+because all birth is a kind of rebirth. The men of Ulster sought a wife
+for Cuchulainn, "knowing that his rebirth would be of himself," i.e. his
+son would be himself even while he continued to exist as his father.
+Examples of such a belief occur elsewhere, e.g. in the _Laws_ of Manu,
+where the husband is said to be reborn of his wife, and in ancient
+Egypt, where the gods were called "self-begotten," because each was
+father to the son who was his true image or himself. Likeness implied
+identity, in primitive belief. Thus the belief in mortal descent from
+the gods among the Celts may have involved the theory of a divine
+avatar. The god became father of a mortal by a woman, and part of
+himself passed over to the child, who was thus the god himself.
+
+Conchobar was also a rebirth of a god, but he was named from the river
+whence his mother had drawn water containing the worms which she
+swallowed. This may point to a lost version in which he was the son of a
+river-god by Nessa. This was quite in accordance with Celtic belief, as
+is shown by such names as Dubrogenos, from _dubron_, "water," and
+_genos_, "born of"; Divogenos, Divogena, "son or daughter of a god,"
+possibly a river-god, since _deivos_ is a frequent river name; and
+Rhenogenus, "son of the Rhine."[1210] The persons who first bore these
+names were believed to have been begotten by divinities. Mongan's
+descent from Manannan, god of the sea, is made perfectly clear, and the
+Welsh name Morgen = _Morigenos_, "son of the sea," probably points to a
+similar tale now lost. Other Celtic names are frequently pregnant with
+meaning, and tell of a once-existing rich mythology of divine _amours_
+with mortals. They show descent from deities--Camulogenus (son of
+Camulos), Esugenos (son of Esus), Boduogenus (son of Bodva); or from
+tree-spirits--Dergen (son of the oak), Vernogenus (son of the alder); or
+from divine animals--Arthgen (son of the bear), Urogenus (son of the
+urus).[1211] What was once an epithet describing divine filiation became
+later a personal name. So in Greece names like Apollogenes, Diogenes,
+and Hermogenes, had once been epithets of heroes born of Apollo, Zeus,
+and Hermes.
+
+Thus it was a vital Celtic belief that divinities might unite with
+mortals and beget children. Heroes enticed away to Elysium enjoyed the
+love of its goddesses--Cuchulainn that of Fand; Connla, Bran, and Oisin
+that of unnamed divinities. So, too, the goddess Morrigan offered
+herself to Cuchulainn. The Christian Celts of the fifth century retained
+this belief, though in a somewhat altered form. S. Augustine and others
+describe the shaggy demons called _dusii_ by the Gauls, who sought the
+couches of women in order to gratify their desires.[1212] The _dusii_
+are akin to the _incubi_ and _fauni_, and do not appear to represent the
+higher gods reduced to the form of demons by Christianity, but rather a
+species of lesser divinities, once the object of popular devotion.
+
+These beliefs are also connected with the Celtic notions of
+transformation and transmigration--the one signifying the assuming of
+another shape for a time, the other the passing over of the soul or the
+personality into another body, perhaps one actually existing, but more
+usually by actual rebirth. As has been seen, this power of
+transformation was claimed by the Druids and by other persons, or
+attributed to them, and they were not likely to minimise their powers,
+and would probably boast of them on all occasions. Such boasts are put
+into the mouths of the Irish Amairgen and the Welsh Taliesin. As the
+Milesians were approaching Ireland, Amairgen sang verses which were
+perhaps part of a ritual chant:
+
+  "I am the wind which blows over the sea,
+   I am the wave of the ocean,
+   I am the bull of seven battles,
+   I am the eagle on the rock...
+   I am a boar for courage,
+   I am a salmon in the water, etc."[1213]
+
+Professor Rh[^y]s points out that some of these verses need not mean
+actual transformation, but mere likeness, through "a primitive formation
+of predicate without the aid of a particle corresponding to such a word
+as 'like.'"[1214] Enough, however, remains to show the claim of the
+magician. Taliesin, in many poems, makes similar claims, and says, "I
+have been in a multitude of shapes before I assumed a consistent
+form"--that of a sword, a tear, a star, an eagle, etc. Then he was
+created, without father or mother.[1215] Similar pretensions are common
+to the medicine-man everywhere. But from another point of view they may
+be mere poetic extravagances such as are common in Celtic poetry.[1216]
+Thus Cuchulainn says: "I was a hound strong for combat ... their little
+champion ... the casket of every secret for the maidens," or, in another
+place, "I am the bark buffeted from wave to wave ... the ship after the
+losing of its rudder ... the little apple on the top of the tree that
+little thought of its falling."[1217] These are metaphoric descriptions
+of a comparatively simple kind. The full-blown bombast appears in the
+_Colloquy of the Two Sages_, where Nede and Fercertne exhaust language
+in describing themselves to each other.[1218] Other Welsh bards besides
+Taliesin make similar boasts to his, and Dr. Skene thinks that their
+claims "may have been mere bombast."[1219] Still some current belief in
+shape-shifting, or even in rebirth, underlies some of these boastings
+and gives point to them. Amairgen's "I am" this or that, suggests the
+inherent power of transformation; Taliesin's "I have been," the actual
+transformations. Such assertions do not involve "the powerful
+pantheistic doctrine which is at once the glory and error of Irish
+philosophy," as M. D'Arbois claims,[1220] else are savage medicine-men,
+boastful of their shape-shifting powers, philosophic pantheists. The
+poems are merely highly developed forms of primitive beliefs in
+shape-shifting, such as are found among all savages and barbaric folk,
+but expressed in the boastful language in which the Celt delighted.
+
+How were the successive shape-shiftings effected? To answer this we
+shall first look at the story of Tuan Mac Caraill, who survived from the
+days of Partholan to those of S. Finnen. He was a decrepit man at the
+coming of Nemed, and one night, having lain down to sleep, he awoke as a
+stag, and lived in this form to old age. In the same way he became a
+boar, a hawk, and a salmon, which was caught and eaten by Cairell's
+wife, of whom he was born as Tuan, with a perfect recollection of his
+different forms.[1221]
+
+This story, the invention of a ninth or tenth century Christian scribe
+to account for the current knowledge of the many invasions of
+Ireland,[1222] must have been based on pagan myths of a similar kind,
+involving successive transformations and a final rebirth. Such a myth
+may have been told of Taliesin, recounting his transformations and his
+final rebirth, the former being replaced at a later time by the episode
+of the Transformation Combat, involving no great lapse of time. Such a
+series of successive shapes--of every beast, a dragon, a wolf, a stag, a
+salmon, a seal, a swan--were ascribed to Mongan and foretold by
+Manannan, and Mongan refers to some of them in his colloquy with S.
+Columba--"when I was a deer ... a salmon ... a seal ... a roving wolf
+... a man."[1223] Perhaps the complete story was that of a fabulous hero
+in human form, who assumed different shapes, and was finally reborn. But
+the transformation of an old man, or an old animal, into new youthful
+and vigorous forms might be regarded as a kind of transmigration--an
+extension of the transformation idea, but involving no metempsychosis,
+no passing of the soul into another body by rebirth. Actual
+transmigration or rebirth occurs only at the end of the series, and, as
+in the case of Etain, Lug, etc., the pre-existent person is born of a
+woman after being swallowed by her. Possibly the transformation belief
+has reacted on the other, and obscured a belief in actual metempsychosis
+as a result of the soul of an ancestor passing into a woman and being
+reborn as her next child. Add to this that the soul is often thought of
+as a tiny animal, and we see how a _point d'appui_ for the more
+materialistic belief was afforded. The insect or worms of the rebirth
+stories may have been once forms of the soul. It is easy also to see
+how, a theory of conception by swallowing various objects being already
+in existence, it might be thought possible that eating a salmon--a
+transformed man--would cause his rebirth from the eater.
+
+The Celts may have had no consistent belief on this subject, the general
+idea of the future life being of a different kind. Or perhaps the
+various beliefs in transformation, transmigration, rebirth, and
+conception by unusual means, are too inextricably mingled to be
+separated. The nucleus of the tales seems to be the possibility of
+rebirth, and the belief that the soul was still clad in a bodily form
+after death and was itself a material thing. But otherwise some of them
+are not distinctively Celtic, and have been influenced by old _Maerchen_
+formulae of successive changes adopted by or forced upon some person, who
+is finally reborn. This formulae is already old in the fourteenth century
+B.C. Egyptian story of the _Two Brothers_.
+
+Such Celtic stories as these may have been known to classical authors,
+and have influenced their statements regarding eschatology. Yet it can
+hardly be said that the tales themselves bear witness to a general
+transmigration doctrine current among the Celts, since the stories
+concern divine or heroic personages. Still the belief may have had a
+certain currency among them, based on primitive theories of soul life.
+Evidence that it existed side by side with the more general doctrines of
+the future life may be found in old or existing folk-belief. In some
+cases the dead have an animal form, as in the _Voyage of Maelduin_,
+where birds on an island are said to be souls, or in the legend of S.
+Maelsuthain, whose pupils appear to him after death as birds.[1224] The
+bird form of the soul after death is still a current belief in the
+Hebrides. Butterflies in Ireland, and moths in Cornwall, and in France
+bats or butterflies, are believed to be souls of the dead.[1225] King
+Arthur is thought by Cornishmen to have died and to have been changed
+into the form of a raven, and in mediaeval Wales souls of the wicked
+appear as ravens, in Brittany as black dogs, petrels, or hares, or serve
+their term of penitence as cows or bulls, or remain as crows till the
+day of judgment.[1226] Unbaptized infants become birds; drowned sailors
+appear as beasts or birds; and the souls of girls deceived by lovers
+haunt them as hares.[1227]
+
+These show that the idea of transmigration may not have been foreign to
+the Celtic mind, and it may have arisen from the idea that men assumed
+their totem animal's shape at death. Some tales of shape-shifting are
+probably due to totemism, and it is to be noted that in Kerry peasants
+will not eat hares because they contain the souls of their
+grandmothers.[1228] On the other hand, some of these survivals may mean
+no more than that the soul itself has already an animal form, in which
+it would naturally be seen after death. In Celtic folk-belief the soul
+is seen leaving the body in sleep as a bee, butterfly, gnat, mouse, or
+mannikin.[1229] Such a belief is found among most savage races, and
+might easily be mistaken for transmigration, or also assist the
+formation of the idea of transmigration. Though the folk-survivals show
+that transmigration was not necessarily alleged of all the dead, it may
+have been a sufficiently vital belief to colour the mythology, as we see
+from the existing tales, adulterated though these may have been.
+
+The general belief has its roots in primitive ideas regarding life and
+its propagation--ideas which some hold to be un-Celtic and un-Aryan. But
+Aryans were "primitive" at some period of their history, and it would be
+curious if, while still in a barbarous condition, they had forgotten
+their old beliefs. In any case, if they adopted similar beliefs from
+non-Aryan people, this points to no great superiority on their part.
+Such beliefs originated the idea of rebirth and transmigration.[1230]
+Nevertheless this was not a characteristically Celtic eschatological
+belief; that we find in the theory that the dead lived on in the body or
+assumed a body in another region, probably underground.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1193] For textual details see Zimmer, _Zeit. fuer Vergl. Sprach._
+xxviii. 585 f. The tale is obviously archaic. For a translation see
+Leahy, i. 8 f.
+
+[1194] _IT_ i. 134 f.; D'Arbois, v. 22. There is a suggestion in one of
+the versions of another story, in which Setanta is child of Conchobar
+and his sister Dechtire.
+
+[1195] _IT_ iii. 245; _RC_ xv. 465; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 69.
+
+[1196] Stowe MS. 992, _RC_ vi. 174; _IT_ ii. 210; D'Arbois, v. 3f.
+
+[1197] _IT_ iii. 393. Cf. the story of the wife of Cormac, who was
+barren till her mother gave her pottage. Then she had a daughter (_RC_
+xxii. 18).
+
+[1198] Nutt-Meyer, i. 45 f., text and translation.
+
+[1199] Ibid. 42 f.
+
+[1200] Ibid. 58. The simultaneous birth formula occurs in many
+_Maerchen_, though that of the future wife is not common.
+
+[1201] Nutt-Meyer, i. 52, 57, 85, 87.
+
+[1202] _ZCP_ ii. 316 f. Here Mongan comes directly from Elysium, as does
+Oisin before meeting S. Patrick.
+
+[1203] _IT_ iii. 345; O'Grady, ii. 88. Cf. Rees, 331.
+
+[1204] Guest, iii. 356 f.; see p. 116, _supra_.
+
+[1205] In some of the tales the small animal still exists independently
+after the birth, but this is probably not their primitive form.
+
+[1206] See my _Religion: Its Origin and Forms_, 76-77.
+
+[1207] Skene, i. 532. After relating various shapes in which he has
+been, the poet adds that he has been a grain which a hen received, and
+that he rested in her womb as a child. The reference in this early poem
+from a fourteenth century MS. shows that the fusion of the _Maerchen_
+formula with a myth of rebirth was already well known. See also Guest,
+iii. 362, for verses in which the transformations during the combat are
+exaggerated.
+
+[1208] Skene, i. 276, 532.
+
+[1209] Miss Hull, 67; D'Arbois, v. 331.
+
+[1210] For various forms of _geno_-, see Holder, i. 2002; Stokes, _US_
+110.
+
+[1211] For all these names see Holder, _s.v._
+
+[1212] S. Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, xv. 23; Isidore, _Orat._ viii. 2. 103.
+_Dusios_ may be connected with Lithuanian _dvaese_, "spirit," and
+perhaps with [Greek: Thehos] (Holder, _s.v._). D'Arbois sees in the
+_dusii_ water-spirits, and compares river-names like Dhuys, Duseva,
+Dusius (vi. 182; _RC_ xix. 251). The word may be connected with Irish
+_duis_, glossed "noble" (Stokes, _TIG_ 76). The Bretons still believe in
+fairies called _duz_, and our word _dizzy_ may be connected with
+_dusios_, and would then have once signified the madness following on
+the _amour_, like Greek [Greek: nympholeptos], or "the inconvenience of
+their succubi," described by Kirk in his _Secret Commonwealth of the
+Elves_.
+
+[1213] _LL_ 12_b_; _TOS_ v. 234.
+
+[1214] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 549.
+
+[1215] Skene, i. 276, 309, etc.
+
+[1216] Sigerson, _Bards of the Gael_, 379.
+
+[1217] Miss Hull, 288; Hyde, _Lit. Hist. of Ireland_, 300.
+
+[1218] _RC_ xxvi. 21.
+
+[1219] Skene, ii. 506.
+
+[1220] D'Arbois, ii. 246, where he also derives Erigena's pantheism from
+Celtic beliefs, such as he supposes to be exemplified by these poems.
+
+[1221] _LU_ 15_a_; D'Arbois, ii. 47 f.; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 294 f.
+
+[1222] Another method of accounting for this knowledge was to imagine a
+long-lived personage like Fintan who survived for 5000 years. D'Arbois,
+ii. ch. 4. Here there was no transformation or rebirth.
+
+[1223] Nutt-Meyer, i. 24; _ZCP_ ii. 316.
+
+[1224] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 78.
+
+[1225] Wood-Martin, _Pagan Ireland_, 140; _Choice Notes_, 61; Monnier,
+143; Maury, 272.
+
+[1226] _Choice Notes_, 69; Rees, 92; Le Braz{2}, ii. 82, 86, 307; _Rev.
+des Trad. Pop._ xii. 394.
+
+[1227] Le Braz{2}, ii. 80; _Folk-lore Jour._ v. 189.
+
+[1228] _Folk-Lore_, iv. 352.
+
+[1229] Carmichael, _Carm. Gadel._ ii. 334; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ 602; Le
+Braz{2}, i. 179, 191, 200.
+
+[1230] Mr. Nutt, _Voyage of Bran_, derived the origin of the rebirth
+conception from orgiastic cults.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+ELYSIUM.
+
+
+The Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of religion,
+mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series of Irish and
+Welsh tales. We do not know that a similar conception existed among the
+continental Celts, but, considering the likeness of their beliefs in
+other matters to those of the insular Celts, there is a strong
+probability that it did. There are four typical presentations of the
+Elysium conception. In Ireland, while the gods were believed to have
+retired within the hills or _sid_, it is not unlikely that some of them
+had always been supposed to live in these or in a subterranean world,
+and it is therefore possible that what may be called the subterranean or
+_sid_ type of Elysium is old. But other types also appear--that of a
+western island Elysium, of a world below the waters, and of a world
+co-extensive with this and entered by a mist.
+
+The names of the Irish Elysium are sometimes of a general character--Mag
+Mor, "the Great Plain"; Mag Mell, "the Pleasant Plain"; Tir n'Aill, "the
+Other-world"; Tir na m-Beo, "the Land of the Living"; Tir na n-Og, "the
+Land of Youth"; and Tir Tairngiri, "the Land of Promise"--possibly of
+Christian origin. Local names are Tir fa Tonn, "Land under Waves";
+I-Bresail and the Land of Falga, names of the island Elysium. The last
+denotes the Isle of Man as Elysium, and it may have been so regarded by
+Goidels in Britain at an early time.[1231] To this period may belong the
+tales of Cuchulainn's raid on Falga, carried at a later time to Ireland.
+Tir Tairngiri is also identified with the Isle of Man.[1232]
+
+A brief resume of the principal Elysium tales is necessary as a
+preliminary to a discussion of the problems which they involve, though
+it can give but little idea of the beauty and romanticism of the tales
+themselves. These, if not actually composed in pagan times, are based
+upon story-germs current before the coming of Christianity to Ireland.
+
+1. _The sid Elysium._--In the story of Etain, when Mider discovered her
+in her rebirth, he described the land whither he would carry her, its
+music and its fair people, its warm streams, its choice mead and wine.
+There is eternal youth, and love is blameless. It is within Mider's
+_sid_, and Etain accompanies him there. In the sequel King Eochaid's
+Druid discovers the _sid_, which is captured by the king, who then
+regains Etain.[1233] Other tales refer to the _sid_ in similar terms,
+and describe its treasures, its food and drink better than those of
+earth. It is in most respects similar to the island Elysium, save that
+it is localised on earth.
+
+2. _The island Elysium._--The story of the voyage of Bran is found
+fragmentarily in the eleventh century _LU_, and complete in the
+fourteenth and sixteenth century MSS. It tells how Bran heard mysterious
+music when asleep. On waking he found a silver branch with blossoms, and
+next day there appeared a mysterious woman singing the glory of the land
+overseas, its music, its wonderful tree, its freedom from pain and
+death. It is one of thrice fifty islands to the west of Erin, and there
+she dwells with thousands of "motley women." Before she disappears the
+branch leaps into her hand. Bran set sail with his comrades and met
+Manannan crossing the sea in his chariot. The god told him that the sea
+was a flowery plain, Mag Mell, and that all around, unseen to Bran, were
+people playing and drinking "without sin." He bade him sail on to the
+Land of Women. Then the voyagers went on and reached the Isle of Joy,
+where one of their number remained behind. At last they came to the Land
+of Women, and we hear of their welcome, the dreamlike lapse of time, the
+food and drink which had for each the taste he desired. Finally the tale
+recounts their home-sickness, the warning they received not to set foot
+on Erin, how one of their number leaped ashore and turned to ashes, how
+Bran from his boat told of his wanderings and then disappeared for
+ever.[1234]
+
+Another story tells how Connla was visited by a goddess from Mag Mell.
+Her people dwell in a _sid_ and are called "men of the _sid_." She
+invites him to go to the immortal land, and departs, leaving him an
+apple, which supports him for a month without growing less. Then she
+reappears and tells Connla that "the Ever-Living Ones" desire him to
+join them. She bids him come with her to the Land of Joy where there are
+only women. He steps into her crystal boat and vanishes from his father
+and the Druid who has vainly tried to exercise his spells against
+her.[1235] In this tale there is a confusion between the _sid_ and the
+island Elysium.
+
+The eighteenth century poem of Oisin in Tir na n-Og is probably based on
+old legends, and describes how Niam, daughter of the king of Tir na
+n-Og, placed _geasa_ on Oisin to accompany her to that land of immortal
+youth and beauty. He mounted on her steed, which plunged forwards across
+the sea, and brought them to the land where Oisin spent three hundred
+years before returning to Ireland, and there suffering, as has been
+seen, from the breaking of the tabu not to set foot on the soil of
+Erin.[1236]
+
+In _Serglige Conculaind_, "Cuchulainn's Sickness," the goddess Fand,
+deserted by Manannan, offers herself to the hero if he will help her
+sister's husband Labraid against his enemies in Mag Mell. Labraid lives
+in an island frequented by troops of women, and possessing an
+inexhaustible vat of mead and trees with magic fruit. It is reached with
+marvellous speed in a boat of bronze. After a preliminary visit by his
+charioteer Laeg, Cuchulainn goes thither, vanquishes Labraid's foes, and
+remains a month with Fand. He returns to Ireland, and now we hear of the
+struggle for him between his wife Emer and Fand. But Manannan suddenly
+appears, reawakens Fand's love, and she departs with him. The god shakes
+his cloak between her and Cuchulainn to prevent their ever meeting
+again.[1237] In this story Labraid, Fand, and Liban, Fand's sister,
+though dwellers on an island Elysium, are called _sid_-folk. The two
+regions are partially confused, but not wholly, since Manannan is
+described as coming from his own land (Elysium) to woo Fand. Apparently
+Labraid of the Swift Hand on the Sword (who, though called "chief of the
+_side_", is certainly a war-god) is at enmity with Manannan's hosts, and
+it is these with whom Cuchulainn has to fight.[1238]
+
+In an Ossianic tale several of the Fians were carried off to the Land of
+Promise. After many adventures, Fionn, Diarmaid, and others discover
+them, and threaten to destroy the land if they are not restored. Its
+king, Avarta, agrees to the restoration, and with fifteen of his men
+carries the Fians to Erin on one horse. Having reached there, he bids
+them look at a certain field, and while they are doing so, he and his
+men disappear.[1239]
+
+3. _Land under Waves._--Fiachna, of the men of the _sid_, appeared to
+the men of Connaught, and begged their help against Goll, who had
+abducted his wife. Loegaire and his men dive with Fiachna into Loch
+Naneane, and reach a wonderful land, with marvellous music and where the
+rain is ale. They and the _sid_-folk attack the fort of Mag Mell and
+defeat Goll. Each then obtains a woman of the _side_, but at the end of
+a year they become homesick. They are warned not to descend from
+horseback in Erin. Arrived among their own people, they describe the
+marvels of Tir fa Tonn, and then return there, and are no more
+seen.[1240] Here, again, the _sid_ Elysium and Land under Waves are
+confused, and the divine tribes are at war, as in the story of
+Cuchulainn.
+
+In a section of the Ossianic tale just cited, Fionn and his men arrive
+on an island, where Diarmaid reaches a beautiful country at the bottom
+of a well. This is Tir fa Tonn, and Diarmaid fights its king who has
+usurped his nephew's inheritance, and thus recovers it for him.[1241]
+
+4. _Co-extensive with this world._--An early example of this type is
+found in the _Adventures of Cormac_. A divine visitant appeared to
+Cormac and gave him in exchange for his wife, son, and daughter, his
+branch of golden apples, which when shaken produced sweetest music,
+dispelling sorrow. After a year Cormac set out to seek his family, and
+as he journeyed encountered a mist in which he discovered a strange
+house. Its master and mistress--Manannan and his consort--offered him
+shelter. The god brought in a pig, every quarter of which was cooked in
+the telling of a true tale, the pig afterwards coming to life again.
+Cormac, in his tale, described how he had lost his family, whereupon
+Manannan made him sleep, and brought his wife and children in. Later he
+produced a cup which broke when a lie was told, but became whole again
+when a true word was spoken. The god said Cormac's wife had now a new
+husband, and the cup broke, but was restored when the goddess declared
+this to be a lie. Next morning all had disappeared, and Cormac and his
+family found themselves in his own palace, with cup and branch by their
+side.[1242] Similarly, in _The Champion's Ecstasy_, a mysterious
+horseman appears out of a mist to Conn and leads him to a palace, where
+he reveals himself as the god Lug, and where there is a woman called
+"the Sovereignty of Erin." Beside the palace is a golden tree.[1243] In
+the story of Bran, Mag Mell is said to be all around the hero, though he
+knows it not--an analogous conception to what is found in these tales,
+and another instance is that of the mysterious house entered by
+Conchobar and Dechtire.[1244] Mag Mell may thus have been regarded as a
+mysterious district of Erin. This magic mist enclosing a marvellous
+dwelling occurs in many other tales, and it was in a mist that the
+Tuatha Dea came to Ireland.
+
+A certain correspondence to these Irish beliefs is found in Brythonic
+story, but here the Elysium conception has been influenced by Christian
+ideas. Elysium is called _Annwfn_, meaning "an abyss," "the state of the
+dead," "hell," and it is also conceived of as _is elfydd_, "beneath the
+earth."[1245] But in the tales it bears no likeness to these meanings of
+the word, save in so far as it has been confused by their Christian
+redactors with hell. It is a region on the earth's surface or an over-or
+under-sea world, in which some of the characteristics of the Irish
+Elysium are found--a cauldron, a well of drink sweeter than wine, and
+animals greatly desired by mortals, while it is of great beauty and its
+people are not subject to death or disease. Hence the name _Annwfn_ has
+probably taken the place of some earlier pagan title of Elysium.
+
+In the tale of Pwyll, the earliest reference to _Annwfn_ occurs. It is
+ruled by Arawn, at war with Hafgan. Arawn obtains the help of Pwyll by
+exchanging kingdoms with him for a year, and Pwyll defeats Hafgan. It is
+a beautiful land, where merriment and feasting go on continuously, and
+its queen is of great loveliness. It has no subterranean character, and
+is conceived apparently as contiguous to Pwyll's kingdom.[1246] In other
+tales it is the land whence Gwydion and others obtain various
+animals.[1247] The later folk-conception of the demoniac dogs of Annwfn
+may be based on an old myth of dogs with which its king hunted. These
+are referred to in the story of Pwyll.[1248]
+
+_Annwfn_ is also the name of a land under waves or over sea, called also
+_Caer Sidi_, "the revolving castle," about which "are ocean's streams."
+It is "known to Manawyddan and Pryderi," just as the Irish Elysium was
+ruled by Manannan.[1249] Another "Caer of Defence" is beneath the
+waves.[1250] Perhaps the two ideas were interchangeable. The people of
+this land are free from death and disease, and in it is "an abundant
+well, sweeter than white wine the drink in it." There also is a cauldron
+belonging to the lord of Annwfn, which was stolen by Arthur and his men.
+Such a cauldron is the property of people belonging to a water world in
+the _Mabinogion_.[1251]
+
+The description of the isle of Avallon (later identified with
+Glastonbury), whither Arthur was carried, completes the likeness to the
+Irish Elysium. No tempest, excess of heat or cold, nor noxious animal
+afflicts it; it is blessed with eternal spring and with fruit and
+flowers growing without labour; it is the land of eternal youth,
+unvisited by death or disease. It has a _regia virgo_ lovelier than her
+lovely attendants; she cured Arthur of his wounds, hence she is the
+Morgen of other tales, and she and her maidens may be identified with
+the divine women of the Irish isle of women. Morgen is called a _dea
+phantastica_, and she may be compared with Liban, who cured Cuchulainn
+of his sickness.[1252]
+
+The identification of Avallon with Glastonbury is probably post-pagan,
+and the names applied to Glastonbury--Avallon, _Insula Pomonum_, _Insula
+vitrea_--may be primitive names of Elysium. William of Malmesbury
+derives _Insula Pomonum_ in its application to Glastonbury from a native
+name _Insula Avallonioe_, which he connects with the Brythonic _avalla_,
+"apples," because Glastenig found an apple tree there.[1253] The name
+may thus have been connected with marvellous apple trees, like those of
+the Irish Elysium. But he also suggests that it may be derived from the
+name of Avalloc, living there with his daughters. Avalloc is evidently
+the "Rex Avallon" (Avallach) to whose palace Arthur was carried and
+healed by the _regia virgo_.[1254] He may therefore have been a mythic
+lord of Elysium, and his daughters would correspond to the maidens of
+the isle. William also derives "Glastonbury" from the name of an
+eponymous founder Glastenig, or from its native name _Ynesuuitron_,
+"Glass Island." This name reappears in Chretien's _Eric_ in the form
+"l'isle de verre." Giraldus explains the name from the glassy waters
+around Glastonbury, but it may be an early name of Elysium.[1255] Glass
+must have appealed to the imagination of Celt, Teuton, and Slav, for we
+hear of Merlin's glass house, a glass fort discovered by Arthur, a glass
+tower attacked by the Milesians, Etain's glass _grianan_, and a boat of
+glass which conveyed Connla to Elysium. In Teutonic and Slavonic myth
+and _Maerchen_, glass mountains, on which dwell mysterious personages,
+frequently occur.
+
+The origin of the Celtic Elysium belief may be found in universal myths
+of a golden age long ago in some distant Elysian region, where men had
+lived with the gods. Into that region brave mortals might still
+penetrate, though it was lost to mankind as a whole. In some mythologies
+this Elysium is the land whither men go after death. Possibly the Celtic
+myth of man's early intercourse with the gods in a lost region took two
+forms. In one it was a joyful subterranean region whither the Celt hoped
+to go after death. In the other it was not recoverable, nor was it the
+land of the dead, but favoured mortals might reach it in life. The
+Celtic Elysium belief, as known through the tales just cited, is always
+of this second kind. We surmise, however, that the land of the dead was
+a joyous underworld ruled over by a god of fertility and of the dead,
+and from that region men had originally come forth. The later
+association of gods with the _sid_ was a continuation of this belief,
+but now the _sid_ are certainly not a land of the dead, but Elysium pure
+and simple. There must therefore have been at an early period a tendency
+to distinguish between the happy region of the dead, and the distant
+Elysium, if the two were ever really connected. The subject is obscure,
+but it is not impossible that another origin of the Elysium idea may be
+found in the phenomenon of the setting sun: it suggested to the
+continental Celts that far off there was a divine land where the sun-god
+rested. When the Celts reached the coast this divine western land would
+necessarily be located in a far-off island, seen perhaps on the horizon.
+Hence it would also be regarded as connected with the sea-god, Manannan,
+or by whatsoever name he was called. The distant Elysium, whether on
+land or across the sea, was conceived in identical terms, and hence also
+whenever the hollow hills or _sid_ were regarded as an abode of the
+gods, they also were described just as Elysium was.
+
+The idea of a world under the waters is common to many mythologies, and,
+generally speaking, it originated in the animistic belief that every
+part of nature has its indwelling spirits. Hence the spirits or gods of
+the waters were thought of as dwelling below the waters. Tales of
+supernatural beings appearing out of the waters, the custom of throwing
+offerings therein, the belief that human beings were carried below the
+surface or could live in the region beneath the waves, are all connected
+with this animistic idea. Among the Celts this water-world assumed many
+aspects of Elysium, and it has names in common with it, e.g. it is
+called Mag Mell. Hence in many popular tales it is hardly differentiated
+from the island Elysium; oversea and under-waves are often synonymous.
+Hence, too, the belief that such water-worlds as I-Bresail, or Welsh
+fairy-lands, or sunken cities off the Breton coast, rise periodically to
+the surface, and would remain there permanently, like an island Elysium,
+if some mortal would fulfil certain conditions.[1256]
+
+The Celtic belief in Tir fa Tonn is closely connected with the current
+belief in submerged towns or lands, found in greatest detail on the
+Breton coast. Here there are many such legends, but most prominent are
+those which tell how the town of Is was submerged because of the
+wickedness of its people, or of Dahut, its king's daughter, who
+sometimes still seeks the love of mortals. It is occasionally seen below
+the waves or even on their surface.[1257] Elsewhere in Celtic regions
+similar legends are found, and the submersion is the result of a curse,
+of the breaking of a tabu, or of neglect to cover a sacred well.[1258]
+Probably the tradition of actual cataclysms or inroads of the sea, such
+as the Celts encountered on the coasts of Holland, may account for some
+of these legends, which then mingled with myths of the divine
+water-world.
+
+The idea that Elysium is co-extensive with this world and hidden in a
+mist is perhaps connected with the belief in the magical powers of the
+gods. As the Druids could raise a mist at will, so too might the gods,
+who then created a temporary Elysium in it. From such a mist, usually on
+a hill, supernatural beings often emerged to meet mortals, and in
+_Maerchen_ fairyland is sometimes found within a mist.[1259] It was
+already believed that part of the gods' land was not far off; it was
+invisibly on or within the hills on whose slopes men saw the mist
+swirling mysteriously. Hence the mist may simply have concealed the
+_sid_ of the gods. But there may also have been a belief that this world
+was actually interpenetrated by the divine world, for this is believed
+of fairyland in Welsh and Irish folk-lore. Men may unwittingly interfere
+with it, or have it suddenly revealed to them, or be carried into it and
+made invisible.[1260]
+
+In most of the tales Elysium is a land without grief or death, where
+there is immortal youth and peace, and every kind of delight. But in
+some, while the sensuous delights are still the same, the inhabitants
+are at war, invite the aid of mortals to overcome their foes, and are
+even slain in fight. Still in both groups Elysium is a land of gods and
+supernatural folk whither mortals are invited by favour. It is never the
+world of the dead; its people are not mortals who have died and gone
+thither. The two conceptions of Elysium as a land of peace and
+deathlessness, and as a land where war and death may occur, may both be
+primitive. The latter may have been formed by reflecting back on the
+divine world the actions of the world of mortals, and it would also be
+on a parallel with the conception of the world of the dead where
+warriors perhaps still fought, since they were buried with their
+weapons. There were also myths of gods warring with each other. But men
+may also have felt that the gods were not as themselves, that their land
+must be one of peace and deathlessness. Hence the idea of the peaceful
+Elysium, which perhaps found most favour with the people. Mr. Nutt
+thought that the idea of a warlike Elysium may have resulted from
+Scandinavian influence acting on existing tales of a peaceful
+Elysium,[1261] but we know that old myths of divine wars already
+existed. Perhaps this conception arose among the Celts as a warlike
+people, appealing to their warrior instincts, while the peaceful Elysium
+may have been the product of the Celts as an agricultural folk, for we
+have seen that the Celt was now a fighter, now a farmer. In its peaceful
+aspect Elysium is "a familiar, cultivated land," where the fruits of the
+earth are produced without labour, and where there are no storms or
+excess of heat or cold--the fancies which would appeal to a toiling,
+agricultural people. There food is produced magically, yet naturally,
+and in agricultural ritual men sought to increase their food supply
+magically. In the tales this process is, so to speak, heightened.[1262]
+
+Some writers have maintained that Elysium is simply the land of the
+dead, although nothing in the existing tales justifies this
+interpretation. M. D'Arbois argues for this view, resting his theory
+mainly on a passage in the story of Connla, interpreted by him in a way
+which does not give its real meaning.[1263] The words are spoken by the
+goddess to Connla, and their sense is--"The Ever-Living Ones invite
+thee. Thou art a champion to Tethra's people. They see thee every day in
+the assemblies of thy fatherland, among thy familiar loved ones."[1264]
+M. D'Arbois assumes that Tethra, a Fomorian, is lord of Elysium, and
+that after his defeat by the Tuatha Dea, he, like Kronos, took refuge
+there, and now reigns as lord of the dead. By translating _ar-dot-chiat_
+("they see thee," 3rd plur., pres. ind.) as "on t'y verra," he maintains
+that Connla, by going to Elysium, will be seen among the gatherings of
+his dead kinsfolk. But the words, "Thou art a champion to Tethra's
+people," cannot be made to mean that Tethra is a god of the dead. It
+means simply that Connla is a mighty warrior, one of those whom Tethra,
+a war-god, would have approved. The phrase, "Tethra's mighty men," used
+elsewhere,[1265] is a conventional one for warriors. The rest of the
+goddess's words imply that the Immortals from afar, or perhaps "Tethra's
+mighty men," i.e. warriors in this world, see Connla in the assemblies
+of his fatherland in Erin, among his familiar friends. Dread death
+awaits _them_, she has just said, but the Immortals desire Connla to
+escape that by coming to Elysium. Her words do not imply that he will
+meet his dead ancestors there, nor is she in any sense a goddess of
+death. If the dead went to Elysium, there would be little need for
+inviting a living person to go there. Had Connla's dead ancestors or
+Tethra's people (warriors) been in Elysium, this would contradict the
+picture drawn by the goddess of the land whither she desires him to
+go--a land of women, not of men. Moreover, the rulers of Elysium are
+always members of the Tuatha De Danann or the _sid_-folk, never a
+Fomorian like Tethra.[1266]
+
+M. D'Arbois also assumes that "Spain" in Nennius' account of the Irish
+invasions and in Irish texts means the land of the dead, and that it was
+introduced in place of some such title as Mag Mor or Mag Mell by "the
+euhemerising process of the Irish Christians." But in other documents
+penned by Irish Christians these and other pagan titles of Elysium
+remain unchanged. Nor is there the slightest proof that the words used
+by Tuan MacCaraill about the invaders of Ireland, "They all died," were
+rendered in an original text, now lost according to M. D'Arbois, "They
+set sail for Mag Mor or Mag Mell," a formula in which Nennius saw
+indications of a return to Spain.[1267] Spain, in this hypothetical
+text, was the Land of the Dead or Elysium, whence the invaders came.
+This "lost original" exists in M. D'Arbois imagination, and there is not
+the slightest evidence for these alterations. Once, indeed, Tailtiu is
+called daughter of Magh Mor, King of Spain, but here a person, not a
+place, is spoken of.[1268] Sir John Rh[^y]s accepts the identification
+of Spain with Elysium as the land of the dead, and finds in every
+reference to Spain a reference to the Other-world, which he regards as a
+region ruled by "dark divinities." But neither the lords of Elysium nor
+the Celtic Dispater were dark or gloomy deities, and the land of the
+dead was certainly not a land of darkness any more than Elysium. The
+numerous references to Spain probably point to old traditions regarding
+a connection between Spain and Ireland in early times, both commercial
+and social, and it is not impossible that Goidelic invaders did reach
+Ireland from Spain.[1269] Early maps and geographers make Ireland and
+Spain contiguous; hence in an Irish tale Ireland is visible from Spain,
+and this geographical error would strengthen existing traditions.[1270]
+"Spain" was used vaguely, but it does not appear to have meant Elysium
+or the Land of the Dead. If it did, it is strange that the Tuatha De
+Danann are never brought into connection with it.
+
+One of the most marked characteristics of the Celtic Elysium is its
+deathlessness. It is "the land of the living" or of "the Ever-Living
+Ones," and of eternal youth. Most primitive races believe that death is
+an accident befalling men who are naturally immortal; hence freedom from
+such an accident naturally characterises the people of the divine land.
+But, as in other mythologies, that immortality is more or less dependent
+on the eating or drinking of some food or drink of immortality. Manannan
+had immortal swine, which, killed one day, came alive next day, and with
+their flesh he made the Tuatha De Danann immortal. Immortality was also
+conferred by the drinking of Goibniu's ale, which, either by itself or
+with the flesh of swine, formed his immortal feast. The food of Elysium
+was inexhaustible, and whoever ate it found it to possess that taste
+which he preferred. The fruit of certain trees in Elysium was also
+believed to confer immortality and other qualities. Laeg saw one hundred
+and fifty trees growing in Mag Mell; their nuts fed three hundred
+people. The apple given by the goddess to Connla was inexhaustible, and
+he was still eating it with her when Teigue, son of Cian, visited
+Elysium. "When once they had partaken of it, nor age nor dimness could
+affect them."[1271] Apples, crimson nuts, and rowan berries are
+specifically said to be the food of the gods in the tale of _Diarmaid
+and Grainne_. Through carelessness one of the berries was dropped on
+earth, and from it grew a tree, the berries of which had the effect of
+wine or mead, and three of them eaten by a man of a hundred years made
+him youthful. It was guarded by a giant.[1272] A similar tree growing on
+earth--a rowan guarded by a dragon, is found in the tale of Fraoch, who
+was bidden to bring a branch of it to Ailill. Its berries had the virtue
+of nine meals; they healed the wounded, and added a year to a man's
+life.[1273] At the wells which were the source of Irish rivers were
+supposed to grow hazel-trees with crimson nuts, which fell into the
+water and were eaten by salmon.[1274] If these were caught and eaten,
+the eater obtained wisdom and knowledge. These wells were in Erin, but
+in some instances the well with its hazels and salmon is in the
+Other-world,[1275] and it is obvious that the crimson nuts are the same
+as the food of the gods in _Diarmaid and Grainne_.
+
+Why should immortality be dependent on the eating of certain foods? Most
+of man's irrational ideas have some reason in them, and probably man's
+knowledge that without food life would come to an end, joined to his
+idea of deathlessness, led him to believe that there was a certain food
+which produced immortality just as ordinary food supported life. On it
+gods and deathless beings were fed. Similarly, as water cleansed and
+invigorated, it was thought that some special kind of water had these
+powers in a marvellous degree. Hence arose the tales of the Fountain of
+Youth and the belief in healing wells. From the knowledge of the
+nourishing power of food, sprang the idea that some food conferred the
+qualities inherent in it, e.g. the flesh of divine animals eaten
+sacramentally, and that gods obtained their immortality from eating or
+drinking. This idea is widespread. The Babylonian gods had food and
+water of Life; Egyptian myth spoke of the bread and beer of eternity
+which nourished the gods; the Hindus and Iranians knew of the divine
+_soma_ or _haoma_; and in Scandinavian myth the gods renewed their youth
+by tasting Iduna's golden apples.
+
+In Celtic Elysium tales, the fruit of a tree is most usually the food of
+immortality. The fruit never diminishes and always satisfies, and it is
+the food of the gods. When eaten by mortals it confers immortality upon
+them; in other words, it makes them of like nature to the gods, and this
+is doubtless derived from the widespread idea that the eating of food
+given by a stranger makes a man of one kin with him. Hence to eat the
+food of gods, fairies, or of the dead, binds the mortal to them and he
+cannot leave their land. This might be illustrated from a wide range of
+myth and folk-belief. When Connla ate the apple he at once desired to go
+to Elysium, and he could not leave it once he was there; he had become
+akin to its people. In the stories of Bran and Oisin, they are not said
+to have eaten such fruit, but the primitive form of the tales may have
+contained this incident, and this would explain why they could not set
+foot on earth unscathed, and why Bran and his followers, or, in the tale
+of Fiachna, Loegaire and his men who had drunk the ale of Elysium,
+returned thither. In other tales, it is true, those who eat food in
+Elysium can return to earth--Cormac and Cuchulainn; but had we the
+primitive form of these tales we should probably find that they had
+refrained from eating. The incident of the fruit given by an immortal to
+a mortal may have borrowed something from the wide folk-custom of the
+presentation of an apple as a gage of love or as a part of the marriage
+rite.[1276] Its acceptance denotes willingness to enter upon betrothal
+or marriage. But as in the Roman rite of _confarreatio_ with its savage
+parallels, the underlying idea is probably that which has just been
+considered, namely, that the giving and acceptance of food produces the
+bond of kinship.
+
+As various nuts and fruits were prized in Ireland as food, and were
+perhaps used in some cases to produce an intoxicant,[1277] it is evident
+that the trees of Elysium were, primarily, a magnified form of earthly
+trees. But all such trees were doubtless objects of a cult before their
+produce was generally eaten; they were first sacred or totem-trees, and
+their food eaten only occasionally and sacramentally. If so, this would
+explain why they grew in Elysium and their fruit was the food of the
+gods. For whatever man eats or drinks is generally supposed to have been
+first eaten and drunk by the gods, like the _soma_. But, growing in
+Elysium, these trees, like the trees of most myths of Elysium, are far
+more marvellous than any known on earth. They have branches of silver
+and golden apples; they have magical supplies of fruit, they produce
+wonderful music which sometimes causes sleep or oblivion; and birds
+perch in their branches and warble melody "such that the sick would
+sleep to it." It should be noted also that, as Miss Hull points out, in
+some tales the branch of a divine tree becomes a talisman leading the
+mortal to Elysium; in this resembling the golden bough plucked by AEneas
+before visiting the underworld.[1278] This, however, is not the
+fundamental characteristic of the tree, in Irish story. Possibly, as Mr.
+A.B. Cook maintains, the branch giving entrance to Elysium is derived
+from the branch borne by early Celtic kings of the wood, while the tree
+is an imaginative form of those which incarnated a vegetation
+spirit.[1279] Be this as it may, it is rather the fruit eaten by the
+mortal which binds him to the Immortal Land.
+
+The inhabitants of Elysium are not only immortal, but also invisible at
+will. They make themselves visible to one person only out of many
+present with him. Connla alone sees the goddess, invisible to his father
+and the Druid. Mananuan is visible to Bran, but there are many near the
+hero whom he does not see; and when the same god comes to Fand, he is
+invisible to Cuchulainn and those with him. So Mider says to Etain, "We
+behold, and are not beheld."[1280] Occasionally, too, the people of
+Elysium have the power of shape-shifting--Fand and Liban appear to
+Cuchulainn as birds.
+
+The hazel of knowledge connects wisdom with the gods' world, and in
+Celtic belief generally civilisation and culture were supposed to have
+come from the gods. The things of their land were coveted by men, and
+often stolen thence by them. In Welsh and Irish tales, often with
+reference to the Other-world, a magical cauldron has a prominent place.
+Dagda possessed such a cauldron and it was inexhaustible, and a vat of
+inexhaustible mead is described in the story of _Cuchulain's Sickness_.
+Whatever was put into such cauldrons satisfied all, no matter how
+numerous they might be.[1281] Cuchulainn obtained one from the daughter
+of the king of Scath, and also carried off the king's three cows.[1282]
+In an analogous story, he stole from Curoi, by the connivance of his
+wife Blathnat, her father Mider's cauldron, three cows, and the woman
+herself. But in another version Cuchulainn and Curoi go to Mider's
+stronghold in the Isle of Falga (Elysium), and steal cauldron, cows, and
+Blathnat. These were taken from Cuchulainn by Curoi; hence his revenge
+as in the previous tale.[1283] Thus the theft was from Elysium. In the
+Welsh poem "The Spoils of Annwfn," Arthur stole a cauldron from Annwfn.
+Its rim was encrusted with pearls, voices issued from it, it was kept
+boiling by the breath of nine maidens, and it would not boil a coward's
+food.[1284]
+
+As has been seen from the story of Gwion, he was set to watch a cauldron
+which must boil until it yielded "three drops of the grace of
+inspiration." It belonged to Tegid Voel and Cerridwen, divine rulers of
+a Land under the Waters.[1285] In the _Mabinogi_ of Branwen, her brother
+Bran received a cauldron from two beings, a man and a huge woman, who
+came from a lake. This cauldron was given by him to the king of Erin,
+and it had the property of restoring to life the slain who were placed
+in it.[1286]
+
+The three properties of the cauldron--inexhaustibility, inspiration, and
+regeneration--may be summed up in one word, fertility; and it is
+significant that the god with whom such a cauldron was associated,
+Dagda, was a god of fertility. But we have just seen it associated,
+directly or indirectly, with goddesses--Cerridwen, Branwen, the woman
+from the lake--and perhaps this may point to an earlier cult of
+goddesses of fertility, later transferred to gods. In this light the
+cauldron's power of restoring to life is significant, since in early
+belief life is associated with what is feminine. Woman as the fruitful
+mother suggested that the Earth, which produced and nourished, was also
+female. Hence arose the cult of the Earth-mother who was often also a
+goddess of love as well as of fertility. Cerridwen, in all probability,
+was a goddess of fertility, and Branwen a goddess of love.[1287] The
+cult of fertility was usually associated with orgiastic and
+indiscriminate love-making, and it is not impossible that the cauldron,
+like the Hindu _yoni_, was a symbol of fertility.[1288] Again, the
+slaughter and cooking of animals was usually regarded as a sacred act in
+primitive life. The animals were cooked in enormous cauldrons, which
+were found as an invariable part of the furniture of every Celtic
+house.[1289] The quantities of meat which they contained may have
+suggested inexhaustibility to people to whom the cauldron was already a
+symbol of fertility. Thus the symbolic cauldron of a fertility cult was
+merged with the cauldron used in the religious slaughter and cooking of
+animal food. The cauldron was also used in ritual. The Cimri slaughtered
+human victims over a cauldron and filled it with their blood; victims
+sacrificed to Teutates were suffocated in a vat (_semicupium_); and in
+Ireland "a cauldron of truth" was used in the ordeal of boiling
+water.[1290] Like the food of men which was regarded as the food of the
+gods, the cauldron of this world became the marvellous cauldron of the
+Other-world, and as it then became necessary to explain the origin of
+such cauldrons on earth, myths arose, telling how they had been stolen
+from the divine land by adventurous heroes, Cuchulainn, Arthur, etc. In
+other instances, the cauldron is replaced by a magic vessel or cup
+stolen from supernatural beings by heroes of the Fionn saga or of
+_Maerchen_.[1291] Here, too, it may be noted that the Graal of Arthurian
+romance has affinities with the Celtic cauldron. In the _Conte du Graal_
+of pseudo-Chretien, a cup comes in of itself and serves all present with
+food. This is a simple conception of the Graal, but in other poems its
+magical and sacrosanct character is heightened. It supplies the food
+which the eater prefers, it gives immortal youth and immunity from
+wounds. In these respects it presents an unmistakable likeness to the
+cauldron of Celtic myth. But, again, it was the vessel in which Christ
+had instituted the Blessed Sacrament; it contained His Blood; and it had
+been given by our Lord to Joseph of Arimathea. Thus in the Graal there
+was a fusion of the magic cauldron of Celtic paganism and the Sacred
+Chalice of Christianity, with the product made mystic and glorious in a
+most wonderful manner. The story of the Graal became immensely popular,
+and, deepening in ethical, mystical, and romantic import as time went
+on, was taken up by one poet after another, who "used it as a type of
+the loftiest goal of man's effort."[1292]
+
+In other ways myth told how the gifts of civilisation came from the
+gods' world. When man came to domesticate animals, it was believed in
+course of time that the knowledge of domestication or, more usually, the
+animals themselves had come from the gods, only, in this case, the
+animals were of a magical, supernatural kind. Such a belief underlies
+the stories in which Cuchulainn steals cows from their divine owners. In
+other instances, heroes who obtain a wife from the _sid_-folk, obtain
+also cattle from the _sid_.[1293] As has been seen the swine given to
+Pryderi by Arawn, king of Annwfn, and hitherto unknown to man, are
+stolen from him by Gwydion, Pryderi being son of Pwyll, a temporary king
+of Annwfn, and in all probability both were lords of Elysium. The theft,
+in the original form of the myth, must thus have been from Elysium,
+though we have a hint in "The Spoils of Annwfn" that Gwydion (Gweir) was
+unsuccessful and was imprisoned in Annwfn, to which imprisonment the
+later blending of Annwfn with hell gave a doleful aspect.[1294] In a
+late Welsh MS., a white roebuck and a puppy (or, in the _Triads_, a
+bitch, a roebuck, and a lapwing) were stolen by Amaethon from Annwfn, and
+the story presents archaic features.[1295] In some of these tales the
+animals are transferred to earth by a divine or semi-divine being, in
+whom we may see an early Celtic culture-hero. The tales are attenuated
+forms of older myths which showed how all domestic animals were at first
+the property of the gods, and an echo of these is still heard in
+_Maerchen_ describing the theft of cattle from fairyland. In the most
+primitive form of the tales the theft was doubtless from the underworld
+of gods of fertility, the place whither the dead went. But with the rise
+of myths telling of a distant Elysium, it was inevitable that some tales
+should connect the animals and the theft with that far-off land. So far
+as the Irish and Welsh tales are concerned, the thefts seem mainly to be
+from Elysium.[1296]
+
+Love-making has a large place in the Elysium tales. Goddesses seek the
+love of mortals, and the mortal desires to visit Elysium because of
+their enticements. But the love-making of Elysium is "without sin,
+without crime," and this phrase may perhaps suggest the existence of
+ritual sex-unions at stated times for magical influence upon the
+fertility of the earth, these unions not being regarded as immoral, even
+when they trespassed on customary tribal law. In some of the stories
+Elysium is composed of many islands, one of which is the "island of
+women."[1297] These women and their queen give their favours to Bran and
+his men or to Maelduin and his company. Similar "islands of women" occur
+in _Maerchen_, still current among Celtic peoples, and actual islands
+were or still are called by that name--Eigg and Groagez off the Breton
+coast.[1298] Similar islands of women are known to Chinese, Japanese,
+and Ainu folk-lore, to Greek mythology (Circe's and Calypso's islands),
+and to ancient Egyptian conceptions of the future life.[1299] They were
+also known elsewhere,[1300] and we may therefore assume that in
+describing such an island as part of Elysium, the Celts were using
+something common to universal folk-belief. But it may also owe something
+to actual custom, to the memory of a time when women performed their
+rites in seclusion, a seclusion perhaps recalled in the references to
+the mysterious nature of the island, its inaccessibility, and its
+disappearance once the mortal leaves it. To these rites men may have
+been admitted by favour, but perhaps to their detriment, because of
+their temporary partner's extreme erotic madness. This is the case in
+the Chinese tales of the island of women, and this, rather than
+home-sickness, may explain the desire of Bran, Oisin, etc., to leave
+Elysium. Celtic women performed orgiastic rites on islands, as has been
+seen.[1301] All this may have originated the belief in an island of
+beautiful divine women as part of Elysium, while it also heightened its
+sensuous aspect.
+
+Borrowed from the delight which the Celt took in music is the recurring
+reference to the marvellous music which swelled in Elysium. There, as
+the goddess says to Bran, "there is nothing rough or harsh, but sweet
+music striking on the ear." It sounded from birds on every tree, from
+the branches of trees, from marvellous stones, and from the harps of
+divine musicians. And this is recalled in the ravishing music which the
+belated traveller hears as he passes fairy-haunted spots--"what pipes
+and timbrels, what wild ecstasy!" The romantic beauty of Elysium is
+described in these Celtic tales in a way unequalled in all other sagas
+or _Maerchen_, and it is insisted on by those who come to lure mortals
+there. The beauty of its landscapes--hills, white cliffs, valleys, sea
+and shore, lakes and rivers,--of its trees, its inhabitants, and its
+birds,--the charm of its summer haze, is obviously the product of the
+imagination of a people keenly alive to natural beauty. The opening
+lines sung by the goddess to Bran strike a note which sounds through all
+Celtic literature:
+
+  "There is a distant isle, around which sea-horses glisten,
+
+   ...
+
+   A beauty of a wondrous land, whose aspects are lovely,
+   Whose view is a fair country, incomparable in its haze.
+   It is a day of lasting weather, that showers silver on the land;
+   A pure white cliff on the range of the sea,
+   Which from the sun receives its heat."
+
+So Oisin describes it: "I saw a country all green and full of flowers,
+with beautiful smooth plains, blue hills, and lakes and waterfalls." All
+this and more than this is the reflection of nature as it is found in
+Celtic regions, and as it was seen by the eye of Celtic dreamers, and
+interpreted to a poetic race by them.
+
+In Irish accounts of the _sid_, Dagda has the supremacy, wrested later
+from him by Oengus, but generally each owner of a _sid_ is its lord. In
+Welsh tradition Arawn is lord of Annwfn, but his claims are contested by
+a rival, and other lords of Elysium are known. Manannan, a god of the
+sea, appears to be lord of the Irish island Elysium which is called "the
+land of Manannan," perhaps because it was easy to associate an oversea
+world "around which sea-horses glisten" with a god whose mythic steeds
+were the waves. But as it lay towards the sunset, and as some of its
+aspects may have been suggested by the glories of the setting sun, the
+sun-god Lug was also associated with it, though he hardly takes the
+place of Manannan.
+
+Most of the aspects of Elysium appear unchanged in later folk-belief,
+but it has now become fairyland--a place within hills, mounds, or _sid_,
+of marvellous beauty, with magic properties, and where time lapses as in
+a dream. A wonderful oversea land is also found in _Maerchen_ and
+tradition, and Tir na n-Og is still a living reality to the Celt. There
+is the fountain of youth, healing balsams, life-giving fruits, beautiful
+women or fairy folk. It is the true land of heart's desire. In the
+eleventh century MSS. from which our knowledge of Elysium is mainly
+drawn, but which imply a remote antiquity for the materials and ideas of
+the tales, the _sid_-world is still the world of divine beings, though
+these are beginning to assume the traits of fairies. Probably among the
+people themselves the change had already begun to be made, and the land
+of the gods was simply fairyland. In Wales the same change had taken
+place, as is seen by Giraldus' account of Elidurus enticed to a
+subterranean fairyland by two small people.[1302]
+
+Some of the Elysium tales have been influenced by Christian conceptions,
+and in a certain group, the _Imrama_ or "Voyages," Elysium finally
+becomes the Christian paradise or heaven. But the Elysium conception
+also reacted on Christian ideas of paradise. In the _Voyage of
+Maelduin_, which bears some resemblance to the story of Bran, the
+Christian influence is still indefinite, but it is more marked in the
+_Voyage of Snedgus and MacRiagla_. One island has become a kind of
+intermediate state, where dwell Enoch and Elijah, and many others
+waiting for the day of judgment. Another island resembles the Christian
+heaven. But in the _Voyage of Brandan_ the pagan elements have
+practically disappeared; there is an island of hell and an island of
+paradise.[1303] The island conception is the last relic of paganism, but
+now the voyage is undertaken for the purpose of revenge or penance or
+pilgrimage. Another series of tales of visionary journeys to hell or
+heaven are purely Christian, yet the joys of heaven have a sensuous
+aspect which recalls those of the pagan Elysium. In one of these, _The
+Tidings of Doomsday_,[1304] there are two hells, and besides heaven
+there is a place for the _boni non valde_, resembling the island of
+Enoch and Elijah in the _Voyage of Snedgus_. The connection of Elysium
+with the Christian paradise is seen in the title _Tir Tairngiri_, "The
+Land of Promise," which is applied to the heavenly kingdom or the land
+flowing with milk and honey in early glosses, e.g. on Heb. iv. 4, vi.
+15, where Canaan and the _regnum c[oe]lorum_ are called _Tir Tairngiri_,
+and in a gloss to 1 Cor. x. 4, where the heavenly land is called Tir
+Tairngiri Innambeo, "The Land of Promise of the Living Ones," thus
+likening it to the "Land of the Living" in the story of Connla.
+
+Sensuous as many of the aspects of Elysium are, they have yet a
+spiritual aspect which must not be overlooked. The emphasis placed on
+its beauty, its music, its rest and peace, its oblivion, is spiritual
+rather than sensual, while the dwelling of favoured mortals there with
+divine beings is suggestive of that union with the divine which is the
+essence of all religion. Though men are lured to seek it, they do not
+leave it, or they go back to it after a brief absence, and Laeg says
+that he would prefer Elysium to the kingship of all Ireland, and his
+words are echoed by others. And the lure of the goddess often emphasises
+the freedom from turmoil, grief, and the rude alarms of earthly life.
+This "sweet and blessed country" is described with all the passion of a
+poetical race who dreamed of perfect happiness, and saw in the joy of
+nature's beauty, the love of women, and the thought of unbroken peace
+and harmony, no small part of man's truest life. Favoured mortals had
+reached Elysium, and the hope that he, too, might be so favoured buoyed
+up the Celt as he dreamed over this state, which was so much more
+blissful even than the future state of the dead. Many races have
+imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with
+magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood
+on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed
+before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and
+on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a
+glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the
+setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and
+instinctive human belief. Man refuses to think that the misery and
+disappointment and strife and pain of life must always be his. He hopes
+and believes that there is reserved for him, somewhere and at some time,
+eternal happiness and eternal love.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1231] Nutt-Meyer, i. 213.
+
+[1232] Joyce, _OCR_ 431.
+
+[1233] D'Arbois, ii. 311; _IT_ i. 113 f.; O'Curry, _MC_ iii. 190.
+
+[1234] Nutt-Meyer, i. 1 f., text and translation.
+
+[1235] _LU_ 120_a_; Windisch, _Irische Gramm._ 120 f.; D'Arbois, v. 384
+f.; _Gaelic Journal_, ii. 307.
+
+[1236] _TOS_ iv. 234. See also Joyce, _OCR_ 385; Kennedy, 240.
+
+[1237] _LU_ 43 f.; _IT_ i. 205 f.; O'Curry, _Atlantis_, ii., iii.;
+D'Arbois, v. 170; Leahy, i. 60 f.
+
+[1238] "From Manannan came foes."
+
+[1239] Joyce, _OCR_ 223 f.
+
+[1240] O'Grady, ii. 290. In this story the sea is identified with
+Fiachna's wife.
+
+[1241] Joyce, _OCR_ 253 f.
+
+[1242] _IT_ iii. 211 f.; D'Arbois, ii. 185.
+
+[1243] O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 388.
+
+[1244] A similar idea occurs in many Fian tales.
+
+[1245] Evans, _Welsh Dict. s.v._ "Annwfn"; Anwyl, 60; Gaidoz, _ZCP_ i.
+29 f.
+
+[1246] Loth, i. 27 f.; see p. 111, _supra_.
+
+[1247] Pp. 106, 112, _supra_.
+
+[1248] Guest, iii. 75; Loth, i. 29 f.
+
+[1249] Skene, i. 264, 276. Cf. the _Ille tournoiont_ of the Graal
+romances and the revolving houses of _Maerchen_. A revolving rampart
+occurs in "Maelduin" (_RC_ x. 81).
+
+[1250] Skene, i. 285.
+
+[1251] Pp. 103, 116, _supra_.
+
+[1252] Chretien, _Eric_, 1933 f.; Geoffrey, _Vita Merlini_, 41; San
+Marte, _Geoffrey_, 425. Another Irish Liban is called Muirgen, which is
+the same as Morgen. See Girald. Cambr. _Spec. Eccl._ Rolls Series, iv.
+48.
+
+[1253] William of Malmesbury, _de Ant. Glaston. Eccl._
+
+[1254] San Marte, 425.
+
+[1255] _Op. cit._ iv. 49.
+
+[1256] Joyce, _OCR_ 434; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 170; Hardiman, _Irish Minst._
+i. 367; Sebillot, ii. 56 f.; Girald. Cambr. ii. 12. The underworld is
+sometimes reached through a well (cf. p. 282, _supra_; _TI_ iii. 209).
+
+[1257] _Le Braz_{2}, i. p. xxxix, ii. 37 f.; Albert le Grand, _Vies de
+Saints de Bretagne_, 63.
+
+[1258] A whole class of such Irish legends is called _Tomhadna_,
+"Inundations." A typical instance is that of the town below Lough Neagh,
+already referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis, _Top. Hib._ ii. 9; cf. a
+Welsh instance in _Itin. Cambr._ i. 2. See Rh[^y]s, _CFL, passim_;
+Kennedy, 282; _Rev. des Trad. Pop._ ix. 79.
+
+[1259] _Scott. Celt. Rev._ i. 70; Campbell, _WHT_ Nos. 38, 52; Loth, i.
+38.
+
+[1260] Curtin, _Tales_, 158; Rh[^y]s, _CFL_ i. 230.
+
+[1261] Nutt-Meyer, i. 159.
+
+[1262] In the Vedas, Elysium has also a strong agricultural aspect,
+probably for the same reasons.
+
+[1263] D'Arbois, ii. 119, 192, 385, vi. 197, 219; _RC_ xxvi. 173; _Les
+Druides_, 121.
+
+[1264] For the text see Windisch, _Ir. Gram._ 120: "Totchurethar bii
+bithbi at gerait do dainib Tethrach. ar-dot-chiat each dia i n-dalaib
+tathardai eter dugnathu inmaini." Dr. Stokes and Sir John Rh[^y]s have
+both privately confirmed the interpretation given above.
+
+[1265] "Dialogue of the Sages," _RC_ xxvi. 33 f.
+
+[1266] Tethra was husband of the war-goddess Badb, and in one text his
+name is glossed _badb_ (Cormac, _s.v._ "Tethra"). The name is also
+glossed _muir_, "sea," by O'Cleary, and the sea is called "the plain of
+Tethra" (_Arch. Rev._ i. 152). These obscure notices do not necessarily
+denote that he was ruler of an oversea Elysium.
+
+[1267] Nennius, _Hist. Brit._ Sec. 13; D'Arbois, ii. 86, 134, 231.
+
+[1268] _LL_ 8_b_; Keating, 126.
+
+[1269] Both art _motifs_ and early burial customs in the two countries
+are similar. See Reinach, _RC_ xxi. 88; _L'Anthropologie_, 1889, 397;
+Siret, _Les Premiere Ages du Metal dans le Sud. Est. de l'Espagne._
+
+[1270] Orosius, i. 2. 71; _LL_ 11_b_.
+
+[1271] D'Arbois, v. 384; O'Grady, ii. 385.
+
+[1272] _TOS_ iii. 119; Joyce, _OCR_ 314. For a folk-tale version see
+_Folk-lore_, vii. 321.
+
+[1273] Leahy, i. 36; Campbell, _LF_ 29; _CM_ xiii. 285; _Dean of
+Lismore's Book_, 54.
+
+[1274] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 143; Cormac, 35.
+
+[1275] See p. 187, _supra_; _IT_ iii. 213.
+
+[1276] See Gaidoz, "La Requisition de l'Amour et la Symbolisme de la
+Pomme," _Ann. de l'Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes_, 1902; Fraser,
+_Pausanias_, iii. 67.
+
+[1277] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 359.
+
+[1278] "The Silver Bough in Irish Legend," _Folk-Lore_, xii. 431.
+
+[1279] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 158.
+
+[1280] _IT_ i. 133.
+
+[1281] O'Donovan, _Battle of Mag Rath_, 50; D'Arbois, v. 67; _IT_ i. 96.
+Dagda's cauldron came from Murias, probably an oversea world.
+
+[1282] Miss Hull, 244. Scath is here the Other-world, conceived,
+however, as a dismal abode.
+
+[1283] O'Curry, _MC_ ii. 97, iii. 79; Keating, 284 f.; _RC_ xv. 449.
+
+[1284] Skene, i. 264; cf. _RC_ xxii. 14.
+
+[1285] P. 116, _supra_.
+
+[1286] Guest, iii. 321 f.
+
+[1287] See pp. 103, 117, _supra_.
+
+[1288] For the use of a vessel in ritual as a symbol of deity, see
+Crooke, _Folk-Lore_, viii. 351 f.
+
+[1289] Diod. Sic. v. 28; Athen. iv. 34; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 124; _Antient
+Laws of Ireland_, iv. 327. The cauldrons of Irish houses are said in the
+texts to be inexhaustible (cf. _RC_ xxiii. 397).
+
+[1290] Strabo, vii. 2. 1; Lucan, Usener's ed., p. 32; _IT_ iii. 210;
+_Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 195 f.
+
+[1291] Curtin, _HTI_ 249, 262.
+
+[1292] See Villemarque, _Contes Pop. des anciens Bretons_, Paris, 1842;
+Rh[^y]s, _AL_; and especially Nutt, _Legend of the Holy Grail_, 1888.
+
+[1293] "Adventures of Nera," _RC_ x. 226; _RC_ xvi. 62, 64.
+
+[1294] P. 106, _supra_.
+
+[1295] P. 107, _supra_.
+
+[1296] For parallel myths see _Rig-Veda_, i. 53. 2; Campbell, _Travels
+in South Africa_, i. 306; Johnston, _Uganda Protectorate_, ii. 704; Ling
+Roth, _Natives of Sarawak_, i. 307; and cf. the myth of Prometheus.
+
+[1297] This is found in the stories of Bran, Maelduin, Connla, in Fian
+tales (O'Grady, ii. 228, 238), in the "Children of Tuirenn," and in
+Gaelic _Maerchen_.
+
+[1298] Martin, 277; Sebillot, ii. 76.
+
+[1299] Burton, _Thousand Nights and a Night_, x. 239; Chamberlain, _Aino
+Folk-Tales_, 38; _L'Anthropologie_, v. 507; Maspero, _Hist. anc. des
+peuples de l'Orient_, i. 183. The lust of the women of these islands is
+fatal to their lovers.
+
+[1300] An island near New Guinea is called "the land of women." On it
+men are allowed to land temporarily, but only the female offspring of
+the women are allowed to survive (_L' Anthrop._ v. 507). The Indians of
+Florida had a tradition of an island in a lake inhabited by the fairest
+women (Chateaubriand, _Autob._ 1824, ii. 24), and Fijian mythology knows
+of an Elysian island of goddesses, near the land of the gods, to which a
+few favoured mortals are admitted (Williams, _Fiji_, i. 114).
+
+[1301] P. 274, _supra_. Islands may have been regarded as sacred because
+of such cults, as the folk-lore reported by Plutarch suggests (p. 343,
+_supra_). Celtic saints retained the veneration for islands, and loved
+to dwell on them, and the idea survives in folk-belief. Cf. the
+veneration of Lewismen for the Flannan islands.
+
+[1302] Gir. Camb. _Itin. Camb._ i. 8.
+
+[1303] Translations of some of these _Voyages_ by Stokes are given in
+_RC_, vols. ix. x. and xiv. See also Zimmer, "Brendan's Meerfahrt,"
+_Zeits. fuer Deut. Alt._ xxxiii.; cf. Nutt-Meyer, ch. 4, 8.
+
+[1304] _RC_ iv. 243.
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+Abnoba, 43.
+
+Adamnan, 72.
+
+Aed Abrat, 65.
+
+Aed Slane, 351.
+
+Aeracura, 37, 44.
+
+Afanc, 190.
+
+Agricultural rites, 3, 4, 57, 80, 107, 140, 227, 237. See Festivals.
+
+Aife, 129.
+
+Aillen, 70.
+
+Aine, 70 f.
+
+Aitherne, 84.
+
+Albiorix, 28.
+
+All Saints' Day, 170.
+
+All Souls' Day, 170.
+
+Allat, 87, 100.
+
+Alpine race, 8, 12.
+
+Altars, 282 f.
+
+Amaethon, 107, 384.
+
+Amairgen, 55, 172.
+
+Ambicatus, 19, 222.
+
+Amours with mortals, divine, 128, 159, 348, 350, 355.
+
+Amulets, 30, 327 f., 323.
+
+Ancestor worship, 165, 200.
+
+Andarta, 41.
+
+Andrasta, 41, 125.
+
+Anextiomarus, 125.
+
+Animal gods, anthropomorphic, 34, 92, 106, 139 f., 158, 210, 212, 226.
+
+Animal worship, 3, 92, 140, 186, 208 f., 260.
+
+Animals, burial of, 186, 211, 221.
+
+Animals, descent from, 213, 216 f.
+
+Animals, domestic, from the gods' land, 37, 384.
+
+Animals, dressing as, 217, 260.
+
+Animals, sacramental eating of, 221 f.
+
+Animals, slaughter of, 382.
+
+Animals, tabooed, 219.
+
+Animism, 173, 185.
+
+Ankou, 345.
+
+Annwfn, 106, 111, 115, 117, 367 f., 381.
+
+Anu, 67 f., 72, 73, 223.
+
+Anwyl, Prof., 41 note, 96.
+
+Apollo, 25, 27, 125, 180, 183, 231.
+
+Arawn, 111, 368, 384, 387.
+
+Archaeology, 2.
+
+Arduinna, 43.
+
+Arianrhod, 104, 105, 106, 109 f.
+
+Artemis, 42, 110, 177, 242.
+
+Artaios, 24, 121.
+
+Arthur, 88, 97, 109, 117, 119 f., 211, 242, 344, 369, 381.
+
+Arthurian cycle, 119, 383.
+
+Artor, 121.
+
+Arvalus, 125.
+
+Astrology, 248.
+
+Augustus, 23, 90.
+
+Auto-suggestion, 254.
+
+Avagddu, 116.
+
+Avallon, 120, 369.
+
+
+Bacchus, 274.
+
+Badb, 58, 71, 72, 136, 137, 232.
+
+Badbcatha, 41, 71.
+
+Balor, 31, 35 note, 54, 57, 89, 90.
+
+Banba, 50, 73, 74.
+
+_Banfeinnidi_, 72.
+
+_Bangaisgedaig_, 72.
+
+Baptism, 196 note, 308 f.
+
+Bards, 117, 299, 325.
+
+Barintus, 88.
+
+Barrex, 125.
+
+Barri, S., 88.
+
+Bear, cult of, 212.
+
+Beddoe, Dr., 12.
+
+Belatucadros, 28, 125.
+
+Belenos, 26, 102, 113, 124, 231, 264, 298.
+
+Belgae, 9 f.
+
+Beli, 60, 98, 103, 112 f., 124.
+
+_Belinuntia_, 26, 322.
+
+Belinus, 26, 102, 113, 124.
+
+Belisama, 41, 68-69, 125.
+
+Bellovesus, 19.
+
+Beltane, 92, 194, 239, 259, 264.
+
+Bericynthia, 44, 275.
+
+Bertrand, M., 305.
+
+_Bile_, 162, 201.
+
+Bile, 54, 60, 103.
+
+Bird gods, 108, 205, 247.
+
+Birth, 196, 345.
+
+Black Annis' Bower, 67.
+
+Blathnat, 84, 109, 381.
+
+Blodeuwedd, 104, 105 f., 108.
+
+Blood, 240, 244.
+
+Blood, Brotherhood, 131, 240.
+
+Boand, 81, 191.
+
+Boar, cult of, 42.
+
+Bodb, 83.
+
+Bodb Dearg, 64, 78, 86.
+
+Bormana, 43.
+
+Borvo, 43, 183.
+
+Boudicca, 72, 125, 161, 219.
+
+Boughs, 265, 270.
+
+Boundary stones, 284.
+
+Braciaca, 28.
+
+Bran, 34, 98, 100 f., 107, 111, 117, 160, 242, 363, 379 f.
+
+Branwen, 98, 103 f., 381 f., 385.
+
+Braziers, god of, 76.
+
+Brennius, 102, 112 f.
+
+Brennus, 160.
+
+Bres, 53, 54, 58-59.
+
+Brian, 73 f.
+
+Bride, S., 69.
+
+Bridge, 346.
+
+Bridge of Life, 228.
+
+Brigantia, 68, 125.
+
+Brigindo, 68, 275.
+
+Brigit, 41, 58, 68 f., 90, 92.
+
+Brigit, St., 68 f., 88 note, 257.
+
+Broca, 9.
+
+Bronze Age, 148.
+
+Brother-sister unions, 106, 113.
+
+Brown Bull, 130.
+
+Brownie, 166, 189, 245.
+
+_Brug_. See _Sid_.
+
+Brythons, 13.
+
+Brythons, gods of, 85, 95 f., 124.
+
+Buanann, 68, 73, 223.
+
+Bull, cult of, 38, 140, 189, 208, 243.
+
+Burial rites, 309, 337 f.
+
+
+Caer Sidi, 112, 117, 368.
+
+Caesar, 22, 29, 219, 223, 233, 283, 294, 334.
+
+Cakes, 266.
+
+Calatin, 131 f.
+
+Calendar, 175 f., 252.
+
+Camulos, 28, 125, 149.
+
+Candlemas, 69.
+
+Cannibalism, 239, 271.
+
+Caoilte, 61, 142, 152, 336.
+
+Caractacus, 103.
+
+Carman, 167.
+
+Carpenters, god of, 76.
+
+Cassiterides, 39.
+
+Cassivellaunus, 113.
+
+Castor and Pollux, 136.
+
+Caswallawn, 98, 102, 112-113.
+
+Cathbad, 127.
+
+Cathubodua, 41, 71.
+
+Caturix, 28.
+
+Cauldron, 84, 92, 112, 116, 120, 368, 381.
+
+Celtae, 8, 9, 15.
+
+Celtiberians, 176, 246.
+
+Celtic and Teutonic religion, 11.
+
+Celtic empire, 18 f.
+
+Celtic origins, 8 f.
+
+Celtic people, types of, 8.
+
+Celtic religion, evolution of, 3 f.
+
+Celtic religion, higher aspects of, 6.
+
+Celtic religion, homogeneity of, 5.
+
+Celtic religion, Roman influence on, 5.
+
+Celts, gods of, 158.
+
+Celts, religiosity of, 2.
+
+Celts, temperament of, 3, 14.
+
+Cenn Cruaich, 66, 79 note.
+
+Cera, 77.
+
+Cernunnos, 29 f., 32, 101, 136, 212, 282.
+
+Cerridwen, 116 f., 351, 358 f.
+
+Cessair, 50.
+
+Cethlenn, 59, 81.
+
+Cetnad, 249.
+
+Charms, 172, 356.
+
+Church and paganism, 6, 7, 48, 80, 115, 132, 152 f., 174 f., 203 f.,
+238, 249, 258, 272, 280, 285, 288-289, 315, 321, 331, 389.
+
+Cian, 75, 89.
+
+Clairvoyance, 307.
+
+Cleena, 70.
+
+Clota, 43, 70.
+
+Clutoida, 70.
+
+Cocidius, 125.
+
+Cock, 219.
+
+Columba, S., 17, 66, 88 note, 181, 238, 315, 324, 331-332, 358.
+
+Combats, ritual, 263, 267.
+
+Comedovae, 47.
+
+Comyn, M., 143, 151.
+
+Conaire, 84, 220, 252, 255.
+
+Conall Cernach, 134, 136, 230, 240.
+
+Conan, 142.
+
+Conception, magical, 351.
+
+Conchobar, 127, 132, 160, 182, 232, 254, 349.
+
+Conn, 367.
+
+Conncrithir, 73.
+
+Connla, 59, 65, 364, 374, 377, 379, 380.
+
+Conservatism in belief, 193.
+
+Coral, 329.
+
+Coranians, 114.
+
+Cordelia, 99.
+
+Cormac, 67, 68, 88, 366.
+
+Corn-spirit, 92, 107, 117, 168, 173, 213, 260, 262, 273 f., 275.
+
+Corotacus, 125.
+
+Cosmogony, 227 f.
+
+Couvade, 130, 224.
+
+Crafts, gods of, 93.
+
+Cranes, 38.
+
+Craniology, 8 f.
+
+Creation, 230.
+
+Creiddylad, 85, 99, 113.
+
+Creidne, 76, 77.
+
+Creirwy, 116.
+
+Crom Dubh, 80.
+
+Crom Eocha, 79.
+
+Cromm Cruaich, 57, 79, 236, 286.
+
+Cross, 290.
+
+Cross-roads, 174.
+
+Cruithne, 17.
+
+Cuchulainn, 72, 109, 121, 123, 159, 174, 179, 220, 240, 252, 254, 336,
+349, 355, 357, 365, 369, 381.
+
+Cuchulainn saga, 38, 63, 71, 87, 97, 127 f., 145, 204, 207.
+
+Culann, 128.
+
+Culture goddesses, 4, 68 f.
+
+Culture gods and heroes, 4, 58, 92-93, 106, 121, 124 note, 136.
+
+Cumal, 125, 142, 145 f., 148 f.
+
+Curoi, 109, 381.
+
+Cursing wells, 137.
+
+
+Dagda, 44, 61, 64, 65, 72, 74-75, 77 f., 327, 387.
+
+Damona, 43, 215.
+
+Dance, ritual, 246, 268, 286.
+
+Danu, 63, 67 f., 92, 103, 223.
+
+_Daoine-sidhe_, 62.
+
+D'Arbois, M., 31, 38, 56, 59, 74, 79, 90, 136, 178, 264, 293, 314, 341,
+357, 374.
+
+Day of Judgment, 347.
+
+Dead, condition and cult of, 68, 165 f., 282, 330, 333 f., 340, 344 f.,
+378.
+
+Dead Debtor, 337.
+
+Dead, land of, and Elysium, 340 f.
+
+Dead living in grave, 338-339.
+
+Debility of Ultonians, 71, 129 f., 224.
+
+Dechelette, M., 166.
+
+Dechtire, 127 f., 348, 354.
+
+_Deiseil_, 193, 237, 271.
+
+Dei Terreni, 64.
+
+Demeter, 44, 68, 117, 274.
+
+Demons, 173 f., 188.
+
+Devorgilla, 133.
+
+Diana, 42, 177.
+
+Diancecht, 77, 84, 207, 325.
+
+Diarmaid, 82, 83, 88, 100, 142, 147, 150, 210, 220, 252, 254, 351,
+365-366.
+
+_Dii Casses,_ 39.
+
+Diodorus Siculus, 334.
+
+Dionysus, 211.
+
+Dioscuri, 136.
+
+Dirona, 42, 70.
+
+Dirra, 70.
+
+Disablot, 169.
+
+Disir, 169.
+
+Dispater, 29 f., 44, 60, 100, 169, 218, 229, 341, 345, 376.
+
+Distortion, 128, 132, 134.
+
+Divination, 235, 247 f., 259, 266, 304.
+
+Divine descent, 351, 354.
+
+Divine kings, 253.
+
+Divineresses, 316.
+
+Diviners, 299.
+
+Divining rod, 248.
+
+Dolmens, 283, 330, 352.
+
+Domestication, 210, 214, 225.
+
+_Dominae_, 47.
+
+Domnu, 57 note, 59, 223.
+
+Don, 60, 63, 103, 223.
+
+Donnotaurus, 138, 209.
+
+Dragon, 114, 121, 188.
+
+Drink of oblivion, 324.
+
+Druidesses, 250, 316.
+
+Druidic Hedge, 324.
+
+Druidic sending, 325.
+
+Druids, 6, 22, 61, 76, 150, 161 f., 173, 180, 201, 205 f., 235 f., 238,
+246 f., 250, 265, 280-281, 287 f., 293 f., 312.
+
+Druids and Filid, 305 f.
+
+Druids and magic, 310, 319, 325 f.
+
+Druids and medicine, 309.
+
+Druids and monasticism, 305.
+
+Druids and Pythagoras, 303.
+
+Druids and Rome, 312 f.
+
+Druids, classical references to, 301 f.
+
+Druids, dress of, 310 f.
+
+Druids, origin of, 292 f.
+
+Druids, poems of, 2.
+
+Druids, power of, 312.
+
+Druids, teaching of, 307 f., 314, 333.
+
+Druids, varieties of, 298 f.
+
+Drunemeton, 161, 280, 306.
+
+Dualism, 57 f., 60 f.
+
+Dumias, 25.
+
+Dusii, 355.
+
+Dwelling of gods. See Gods, abode of.
+
+Dylan, 104, 110, 178.
+
+
+_Each uisge_, 188.
+
+Earth and Under-earth, 35, 37, 68.
+
+Earth cults, 3.
+
+Earth divinities, 31, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44 f., 57 note, 65, 67 f., 72, 78,
+92, 110, 162, 169, 227, 229 f., 345.
+
+Eclipses, 178.
+
+Ecne, 74, 223.
+
+Ecstasy, 251.
+
+Egg, serpent's, 211.
+
+Elatha, 53, 58, 60.
+
+Elcmar, 78, 87.
+
+Elements, cult of, 171 f.
+
+Elphin, 118.
+
+Elves, 66 note.
+
+Elysium, 59, 78 f., 84, 87, 102, 106, 115, 116, 120, 163, 201, 229 f.,
+350, 362 f.
+
+Elysium, and Paradise, 388 f.
+
+Elysium, characteristics of, 373 ff.
+
+Elysium, lords of, 387.
+
+Elysium, names of, 362.
+
+Elysium, origin of, 370 f.
+
+Elysium, varieties of, 363 f.
+
+Emer, 128, 129, 135.
+
+Enbarr, 88, 135.
+
+Eochaid, 83.
+
+Eochaid Ollathair, 78.
+
+Eochaid O'Flynn, 64.
+
+Eogabail, 70.
+
+Epona, 43, 125, 189, 213 f.
+
+Eri, 53.
+
+Eridanus, 27.
+
+Eriu, 73-74.
+
+Esus, 29, 38, 137, 208, 234, 289.
+
+Etain, 82 f., 223, 348, 363, 380.
+
+Etair, 82.
+
+Ethics, 304, 307.
+
+Ethne, 31 note, 89.
+
+Euhemerisation, 49 f., 84, 91, 95, 98, 127.
+
+Eurosswyd, 100.
+
+Evans, Dr., 200.
+
+Evil eye, 59.
+
+Evnissyen, 98.
+
+Exogamy, 222.
+
+_Ex votos_, 195.
+
+
+Fachan, 251.
+
+Fairies, 43, 45 f., 62, 64 f., 70, 73, 80, 98, 114, 115, 166, 173, 178
+note, 183, 185 f., 190, 201, 203, 262, 263, 378.
+
+Fairyland, 372, 385, 388.
+
+_Faith_, 106, 300, 309.
+
+Falga, 84, 87, 381.
+
+Fand, 65, 87, 88, 135, 365, 380.
+
+Ferdia, 131.
+
+Fergus, 142, 336.
+
+Fertility cults, 3, 56, 70, 73, 78, 83, 92, 93, 112, 114-115, 276, 330,
+352, 382 f.
+
+Festivals, 4, 181, 256 f.
+
+Festivals of dead, 167.
+
+Fetich, 289.
+
+Fiachna, 88, 350, 366, 379.
+
+Fians, 143, 365.
+
+_Filid_, 248 f., 300, 305 f., 325.
+
+_Findbennach_, 130.
+
+Finnen, S., 351.
+
+Finntain, 50.
+
+Fionn, 28, 118, 120-121, 125, 142 f., 179, 220, 254, 344, 350, 365-366.
+
+Fionn saga, 83, 97, 111, 120, 142 f.
+
+_Fir Dea_, 63.
+
+_Fir Domnann_, 52 f., 157.
+
+_Fir Side_, 64, 65.
+
+Firbolgs, 52, 57.
+
+Fires, 199 f., 259, 261 f., 265, 268, 270.
+
+Fires, sacred, 69.
+
+Fish, sacred, 186, 220.
+
+Flann Manistrech, 64.
+
+Flood, 228, 231.
+
+Fomorians, 51, 52 f., 55-56, 65, 72, 83, 89, 90, 114, 133, 189, 237,
+251.
+
+Food of immortality, 377 f.
+
+Food as bond of relationship, 379.
+
+Forest divinities, 43, 108.
+
+Fotla, 73-74.
+
+Foundation sacrifices, 238.
+
+Fountains, 171, 174, 181.
+
+Fountains of youth, 378, 388.
+
+Fraoch, 377.
+
+Friuch, 349.
+
+Frazer, Dr. J.G., 170, 176, 269.
+
+Fuamnach, 22.
+
+Funeral sacrifices, 165, 234, 337.
+
+Future life, 333 f.
+
+
+Galatae, 18.
+
+Galli, 19.
+
+Gallizenae, 317. See Priestesses.
+
+Galioin, 52, 57.
+
+Garbh mac Stairn, 139.
+
+Gargantua, 124 note, 230.
+
+Garman, 167.
+
+Gauls, 9, 20.
+
+Gavida, 89, 109.
+
+_Geasa_, 128, 132, 134, 144, 150 f., 160, 252 f. See Tabu.
+
+Geoffrey of Monmouth, 102, 112, 119.
+
+Ghosts, 66, 67, 166, 169, 262, 281, 284, 330, 336.
+
+Ghosts in trees, 202 f.
+
+Gildas, 171.
+
+Gilla Coemain, 64.
+
+Gilvaethwy, 104.
+
+Glass, 370.
+
+Glastonbury, 115, 121, 369.
+
+Goborchin, 189.
+
+God of Connaught, 92.
+
+God of Druidism, 92, 105, 122.
+
+God of Ulster, 92.
+
+Goddesses and mortals, 355.
+
+Goddesses, pre-eminence of, 93, 124, 183.
+
+Godiva, 276.
+
+Gods, abode of, 228 f., 362, 372.
+
+Gods, children of, 159.
+
+Gods, fertility and civilisation from land of, 100, 106-107, 112, 121,
+380 f., 383.
+
+Gods uniting with mortals, 159.
+
+Goibniu, 76, 103, 325.
+
+Goidels, 16, 17, 96.
+
+Goll mac Morna, 142.
+
+Gomme, Sir G.L., 181, 295.
+
+Goose, 219.
+
+Govannon, 109 f.
+
+Graal, 383.
+
+Grainne, 150, 254.
+
+Grannos, 26, 42 f., 77, 125, 183.
+
+Gregory of Tours, 194, 196, 275.
+
+Groves, 174, 198, 279 f.
+
+Growth, divinities of, 5, 44, 80, 82, 92, 182.
+
+Gruagach, 245.
+
+Guinevere, 123.
+
+Gurgiunt, 124.
+
+Gutuatri, 298 f.
+
+Gwawl, 99, 111.
+
+Gweir, 106.
+
+Gwion, 117, 351, 381.
+
+Gwydion, 104, 105 f., 117, 368, 385.
+
+Gwyn, 55, 113, 115.
+
+Gwythur, 55.
+
+
+Hades, 135.
+
+Hafgan, 111, 368.
+
+Hallowe'en, 259, 281.
+
+Hallstatt, 208, 211.
+
+Hallucinations, 323-324.
+
+Hammer as divine symbol, 30, 291.
+
+Hammer, God with, 30 f., 35, 36 f., 79.
+
+Haoma, 76.
+
+Hare, 219.
+
+Harvest, 259, 273.
+
+Head-hunting, 240.
+
+Heads, cult of, 34, 71, 102, 240 f.
+
+Healing plants, 131, 206 f.
+
+Healing ritual, 122, 193 f.
+
+Healing springs, 123, 186.
+
+Hearth as altar, 165 f.
+
+Heaven and earth, 227.
+
+Hen, 219.
+
+Hephaistos, 76.
+
+Heracles, 25, 75, 133.
+
+Heroes in hills, 344.
+
+Hills, 66.
+
+Holder, A., 23.
+
+Horned helmets, 217.
+
+Horns, gods with, 32 f.
+
+Horse, 213 f.
+
+Hu Gadarm, 124 note.
+
+Hyde, Dr., 143-144.
+
+Hyperboreans, 18, 27.
+
+Hypnotism, 307, 310, 323-324.
+
+
+Iberians, 13.
+
+Icauna, 43.
+
+Iconoclasm, 287.
+
+Igerna, 120.
+
+Images, 79, 85, 204, 277, 283 f.
+
+_Imbas Forosnai_, 248.
+
+Immortality, 158, 333, 376.
+
+Incantations, 80, 248 f., 254, 297, 325.
+
+Incest, 223 f.
+
+Indech, 54, 58.
+
+Inspiration, 116, 118.
+
+Invisibility, 322, 380.
+
+Is, 372.
+
+Iuchar, Iucharbar, 63, 73 f.
+
+
+Janus, 34, 100.
+
+Joyce, Dr., 65, 143, 236.
+
+Juno, 47.
+
+Junones, 45.
+
+Jullian, 178.
+
+Juppiter, 29.
+
+
+Kalevala, 142.
+
+Keane, 9.
+
+Keating, 51, 143.
+
+Kei, 122 f.
+
+Keres, 72.
+
+Kieva, 99.
+
+King and fertility, 4, 253.
+
+Kings, divine, 160 f., 243.
+
+Kings, election of, 306.
+
+Kore, 44, 274-275.
+
+Kronos, 59.
+
+
+La Tene, 208.
+
+Labraid, 65, 365, 369, 380.
+
+Lakes, 181, 194.
+
+Lammas, 273.
+
+Land under waves, 371.
+
+Lear, 86.
+
+Ler, Lir, 49 note, 86, 320.
+
+Lia Fail, 329.
+
+Liban, 65, 365.
+
+Libations, 244 f., 247.
+
+Ligurians, 13.
+
+Llew, 91, 104, 106.
+
+Lludd Llawereint, 85, 99, 102, 113 f., 124.
+
+Llyr, 98 f.
+
+Lochlanners, 56, 147.
+
+Lodens, 113.
+
+Loegaire, 64, 137, 379.
+
+Lonnrot, 142.
+
+Loth, M., 108.
+
+Love, 385.
+
+Lucan, 38, 125, 279, 282, 335 f., 345.
+
+Luchtine, 76.
+
+Lucian, 75, 125.
+
+Lug, 31 note, 35 note, 59, 60, 61, 74, 75, 89 f., 103, 108 f., 128, 131,
+134, 137, 167, 272, 348, 353 f.
+
+Lugaid, 132.
+
+Lugnasad, 91, 109, 167 f., 272 f.
+
+Lugoves, 91.
+
+Lugus, 90, 272.
+
+Lycanthropy, 216.
+
+
+Mabinogion, 2, 95 f.
+
+Mabon, 123, 183.
+
+MacBain, Dr., 16, 56, 78.
+
+MacCuill, MacCecht, and MacGrainne, 74.
+
+Macha, 71, 129, 137, 241.
+
+MacIneely, 89.
+
+MacPherson, 142, 155 f.
+
+Madonna, 289.
+
+Maelduin, 385.
+
+Maelrubha, S. 243.
+
+Magic, 6, 105, 194, 292, 319.
+
+Magic, agricultural, 260, 265-266, 271, 273, 276 note.
+
+Magico-medical rites, 330 f., 332.
+
+Magonia, 180.
+
+Magtured, 53 f., 84.
+
+Man, origin of, 36, 228.
+
+Manannan, 49 note, 64-65, 70, 80, 86 f., 92, 100, 134, 147, 178, 189,
+231, 350 f., 358, 364 f., 380, 387.
+
+Manawyddan, 87, 98 f., 100 f., 111, 368.
+
+Mannhardt, 269.
+
+Maponos, 27, 123.
+
+_Maerchen_ formulae, 77, 82, 83, 89, 95, 107-108, 111, 116, 124, 132, 133,
+143, 148, 152, 187, 337, 353, 384.
+
+Marriage, sacred, 163, 267, 273.
+
+Mars, 27 f., 85, 180, 214.
+
+Martin, S., 140, 243, 260.
+
+Martinmas, 259. f.
+
+Math, 104 f.
+
+Matholwych, 98.
+
+Matres, 40, 44 f., 72-73, 125, 169, 183, 214, 285, 289.
+
+Matriarchate, 17, 223.
+
+Matronae, 46, 123, 183.
+
+May-day, 114.
+
+May-queen, 163, 267.
+
+Medb, 130 f.
+
+Medicine, 309 f.
+
+Mediterranean race, 9.
+
+Medros, 84, 209.
+
+Megaliths, 202, 297, 330, 352. See Stonehenge.
+
+Men, cults of, 3.
+
+Mercury, 24 f., 34, 137, 284 f.
+
+Merlin, 120, 121 f.
+
+Mermaids, 190.
+
+Metempsychosis, 303, 348 f.
+
+Meyer, Prof., 16, 294.
+
+Miach, 27.
+
+Mider, 82 f., 209, 363, 380-381.
+
+Midsummer, 70, 92, 176, 184, 191, 194, 200, 215, 235, 239, 257, 268 f.
+
+Mile, 54.
+
+Milesians, 55, 60, 78.
+
+Minerva, 41, 68, 125.
+
+Miracles, 331, 351.
+
+Mistletoe, 162, 176, 199, 205, 243 f., 270.
+
+Mithraism, 209.
+
+Moccus, 24, 210.
+
+Modranicht, 169.
+
+Modron, 123, 183.
+
+Mogons, 27, 125, 180.
+
+Mongan, 88, 120, 350 f., 358.
+
+Moon, 175 f., 246.
+
+Morgen, 159, 178, 369.
+
+Morrigan, 71, 81, 83, 130-131, 136-137, 159, 172.
+
+Morvran, 116, 118.
+
+Mounds, 63, 66.
+
+Mountain gods, 39.
+
+Mountains, 171 f.
+
+Mowat, M., 33, 36.
+
+Muireartach, 56, 179.
+
+Muirne, 148.
+
+Mule, 214.
+
+Mullo, 214.
+
+Music, 329, 386.
+
+Mythological school, 83, 89, 108, 119, 122, 133 f.
+
+
+Name, 246.
+
+Name-giving, 308 f.
+
+Nantosvelta, 31.
+
+Nature divinities and spirits, 48, 93, 171 f.
+
+Needfire, 199.
+
+Nemaind, 58.
+
+Neman, 71.
+
+Nemedians, 51 f.
+
+_Nemeton_, 161.
+
+Nemetona, 41, 71.
+
+Nennius, 119.
+
+Neo-Druidic heresy, 2 note.
+
+Neptune, 85.
+
+Nera, 339.
+
+Nessa, 128, 349.
+
+Net, 28, 58, 71.
+
+Neton, 28.
+
+New Year, 170, 259, 261.
+
+Night, 256.
+
+Niskas, 185.
+
+Nodons, 85, 114, 124, 160.
+
+Norse influence, 99, 127.
+
+Nuada, 53 f., 61, 77, 84, 90, 160.
+
+Nuada Necht, 85 f.
+
+Nudd, 113, 115 f., 124, 160.
+
+Nudd Hael, 86.
+
+Nudity, 275-276, 322.
+
+Nutt, Mr., 103, 373.
+
+Nymphs, 43.
+
+Nynnyaw, 113.
+
+
+Oak, 199.
+
+Oaths, 172 f., 292.
+
+O'Curry, 65, 143.
+
+O'Davoren, 91.
+
+Oengus, 78, 81, 86, 146, 387.
+
+Oghams, 75.
+
+Ogma, 54, 74-75.
+
+Ogmios, 25, 75.
+
+Oilill Olom, 70.
+
+Oisin, 142, 150-151, 152 f., 222, 364, 379, 387.
+
+Omens, 247 f.
+
+Oracles, 179, 196.
+
+Oran, 238.
+
+_Orbis alius_, 340.
+
+Orbsen, 87.
+
+Ordeals, 196 f., 383.
+
+Orgiastic rites, 80, 261, 265, 386.
+
+Osiris, 66.
+
+
+Paradise, 388 f.
+
+Partholan, 51.
+
+Pastoral stage, 3, 225, 260.
+
+Patrick, S., 61. 64, 66, 70, 76, 79-80, 132, 151, 152 f., 171, 193, 237,
+242, 249, 251, 286, 315 f., 319.
+
+Peanfahel, 17.
+
+Peisgi, 185.
+
+Penn Cruc, 66.
+
+Pennocrucium, 66.
+
+Perambulation, 277.
+
+Persephone, 68, 85.
+
+Picts, 16 f., 217, 220, 222.
+
+Pillar of sky, 228.
+
+Place-names, 16 note, 17, 19, 120, 146, 209, 211.
+
+Plants, 176, 205 f.
+
+Pliny, 162, 175, 198, 205 f., 328.
+
+Plutarch, 343.
+
+Pluto, 34 f.
+
+Plutus, 35.
+
+Poeninus, 39.
+
+Poetry, divinities of, 68, 75.
+
+Pollux, 180.
+
+Polyandry, 74, 223 f.
+
+Polygamy, 17, 224.
+
+Prayer, 245 f.
+
+Pre-Celtic cults, 48, 81, 93, 174, 181, 200, 202, 219, 224, 277, 294 f.,
+361.
+
+Priesthood. See Druids.
+
+Priestesses, 69, 180, 192 f., 226, 246, 250, 316, 321.
+
+Priest-kings, 161, 226, 267, 296, 307.
+
+Procopius, 342.
+
+Prophecy, 250 f, 300 f.
+
+Pryderi, 98 f., 110 f., 112, 368, 385.
+
+Pwyll, 110 f., 112, 368, 385.
+
+Pythagoras, 303, 334.
+
+
+_Quadriviae_, 47.
+
+
+Ragnarok, 232.
+
+Rain-making, 266, 321 f.
+
+Rebirth, 88, 117, 128, 348 f.
+
+Reinach, M., 31 note, 38, 137, 211, 287, 297, 317, 340.
+
+Relics, 332.
+
+Retribution, 346.
+
+Rhiannon, 98 f., 110 f.
+
+Rh[^y]s, Sir J., 15, 16, 24, 55, 60, 68, 78, 82 f., 91, 93, 100, 101 f.,
+103, 106, 108, 122, 135, 183, 219, 282, 294, 356, 376.
+
+Rigantona, 111.
+
+Rigisama, 28.
+
+River divinities, 43, 46, 123, 182, 243, 354.
+
+Rivers, cult of, 172, 180 f.
+
+Rivers, names of, 182.
+
+Roman and Celtic gods, 22 f., 289 f.
+
+Romans and Druids, 312 f.
+
+Ruadan, 58.
+
+Ruad-rofhessa, 77.
+
+Rucht, 349.
+
+Rudiobus, 214.
+
+
+Saar, 150.
+
+Sacramental rites, 222, 260, 266, 271.
+
+Sacrifice of aged, 242.
+
+Sacrifice of animals, 140, 181, 189, 205, 242 f., 260, 265.
+
+Sacrifice, foundation, 121, 238 f.
+
+Sacrifice, human, 57, 79, 165, 190, 198, 233 f., 261, 265, 269, 304,
+308, 313, 337.
+
+Sacrifice to dead, 165 f., 234, 337.
+
+Sacrificial offerings, 6, 174, 181, 185, 190, 194, 198, 233 f., 299,
+308.
+
+Sacrificial survivals, 244 f.
+
+Saints, 115, 209, 217, 251, 285 f., 288, 331 f., 386 note.
+
+Saints and wells, 193.
+
+Saints' days and pagan festivals, 258.
+
+Salmon of knowledge, 149, 187, 377.
+
+Samhain, 56, 70, 80, 167-168, 170, 222, 256 f., 258 f.
+
+Satire, 326.
+
+Saturn, 47.
+
+Scandinavia and Ireland, 148.
+
+Scathach, 129, 135.
+
+_Scotti_, 17.
+
+Sea, 110, 178.
+
+Sebillot, 342.
+
+Segomo, 214.
+
+Segovesus, 19.
+
+Selvanus, 37.
+
+Semnotheoi, 298, 301.
+
+Sequana, 43.
+
+Sergi, Prof., 9, 296.
+
+Serpent, 35, 166, 188, 211.
+
+Serpent with ram's head, 34, 44, 166, 211.
+
+Serpent's egg, 328.
+
+Serpent's glass, 328.
+
+Setanta, 349.
+
+Shape-shifting, 104, 105, 117, 130, 131, 150, 221, 322 f., 350, 356 f.
+
+_Sid_, 63, 64 note, 65, 78.
+
+Silvanus, 29, 36, 218.
+
+Sinend, 187, 191.
+
+Sinnan, 43.
+
+Sirona, 42.
+
+Skene, Dr., 16, 108.
+
+Slain gods and human victims, 159, 168 f., 199, 226, 235, 239, 262, 269,
+272.
+
+Sleep, magic, 327.
+
+Smertullos, 35, 136, 289.
+
+Smiths, god of, 76.
+
+Smiths, magic of, 76.
+
+Solar hero, 133.
+
+Soma, 76.
+
+Soul as animal, 360.
+
+Soul, separable, 140, 162, 270.
+
+Spain, 375.
+
+Spells, 246, 254, 325 f.
+
+Squatting gods, 32 f.
+
+Sreng, 84.
+
+Stag, 213.
+
+Stanna, 42.
+
+Stokes, Dr., 16, 56, 71, 77, 222, 264.
+
+Stone circles, 281.
+
+Stonehenge, 27, 121, 200, 281-282.
+
+Stones, cult of, 174, 284, 329.
+
+Sualtaim, 128.
+
+Submerged towns, 231, 372.
+
+Sucellos, 30 f.
+
+Suicide, 234, 345.
+
+Sul, 41, 69, 125.
+
+Suleviae, 46.
+
+Sun, 178, 268.
+
+Sun myths, 83.
+
+Swan-maidens, 82.
+
+Swastika, 290.
+
+Swine, 25, 106, 117, 209 f.
+
+Swineherds, The Two, 349.
+
+Symbols, 290.
+
+
+Tabu, 69, 102, 128, 132, 144, 186, 191 f., 210, 219, 252 f., 276, 304,
+306, 323, 372. See _Geasa_.
+
+Tadg, 221.
+
+_Taghairm_, 249.
+
+Tailtiu, 167, 273, 376.
+
+_Tain bo Cuailgne_, 127, 130 f.
+
+Taliesin, 95, 97, 116, 323, 335, 356, 358.
+
+Taran, 124.
+
+Taranis, 29, 30, 234.
+
+Taranos, 124.
+
+_Tarbh Uisge_, 189.
+
+_Tarvos Trigaranos_, 38, 137, 208, 289.
+
+Tattooing, 17, 217.
+
+Tegid Voel, 116.
+
+_Teinm Laegha_, 249.
+
+_Tempestarii_, 175, 180.
+
+Temples, 85, 279 f.
+
+Tethra, 58-59, 71, 75, 374.
+
+Teutates, 28, 125, 234.
+
+Teyrnon, 111.
+
+Three-headed gods, 32 f.
+
+Thumb of knowledge, 149.
+
+Thurnam, Dr., 12.
+
+_Tir na n-Og_, 151, 362, 364.
+
+Tombs as sacred places, 165.
+
+Tonsure, 311.
+
+Torque, 34.
+
+Totatis, 125.
+
+Totemism, 149, 187, 201 f., 216, 323, 360, 379.
+
+Toutatis, 28.
+
+Transformation. See Shape-shifting.
+
+Transformation Combat, 353.
+
+Transmigration, 334 f., 348 f., 356, 359 f.
+
+Tree cults, 162, 169, 174, 194, 198 f., 208, 265, 269, 331, 379.
+
+Tree descent from, 202.
+
+Trees of Elysium, 380.
+
+Trees of Immortality, 377 f.
+
+Triads, 34 f., 39, 95 f., 109, 113-114, 115, 118, 120, 123, 124 note.
+
+Triple goddesses, 44 f.
+
+Tristram, 103.
+
+Tuan MacCairill, 57, 357, 375.
+
+Tuatha De Danann, 49 f., 60, 61, 63 f., 66, 92 f., 146, 158, 168, 173.
+
+Tutelar divinities, 40, 45, 73.
+
+Tuag, 87.
+
+_Twrch Trwyth_, 108, 119, 211.
+
+Tyr, 84.
+
+
+Underworld, 60, 102, 112, 341.
+
+Urien, 101.
+
+_Urwisg_, 189.
+
+Uthyr, 101, 120, 122.
+
+
+Valkyries, 72.
+
+Vegetation cults, 3, 215.
+
+Vegetation gods and spirits, 38, 92, 139, 159, 162 f., 199, 208, 215,
+243, 265, 269.
+
+Venus of Quinipily, 289.
+
+Vera, 70.
+
+Vesta, 69.
+
+_Vierges noires_, 46.
+
+Vintius, 180.
+
+_Virgines_, 47.
+
+Viviane, 122.
+
+Vortigern, 121, 238, 315.
+
+Vosegus, 39.
+
+Votive offerings, 185.
+
+Vulcan, 47.
+
+
+War chants, 246.
+
+War goddesses, 71, 93.
+
+War gods, 4, 27 f., 48, 71, 92, 115, 118, 123, 136.
+
+Warrior, ideal, 132, 136.
+
+Warrior, power of dead, 338.
+
+Washer at the Ford, 73.
+
+Water bull, 189.
+
+Water fairies, 70, 73 note, 190.
+
+Water, guardians of, 195.
+
+Water horse, 188.
+
+Water world, 192 note, 371.
+
+Waves, fighting the, 178.
+
+Waves, nine, 179.
+
+Weapons, 291.
+
+Wells, 77, 180 f., 184, 191, 193 f., 321, 372.
+
+Wells, origin of, 230.
+
+Wheel, god with, 29.
+
+Wheel symbol, 29, 271, 327.
+
+White women, 73.
+
+Wind, 180.
+
+Windisch, Prof., 16.
+
+Wisdom, 74.
+
+Wisdom from eating animal, 149 note.
+
+Wolf god, 36, 216, 218.
+
+Witch, 201, 203, 262, 268, 318, 321.
+
+Women and magic, 319 f.
+
+Women as first civilisers, 41, 45, 192, 317.
+
+Women as warriors, 72.
+
+Women, cults of, 3, 5, 41, 69, 163 f., 225 f., 274 f., 317.
+
+Women, islands of, 385 f.
+
+World catastrophe, 228, 232.
+
+World, origin of, 230.
+
+Wren, 221.
+
+
+Yama, 101.
+
+Year, division of, 256.
+
+Yule log, 170, 259.
+
+
+Zeus, 66, 84, 199 f.
+
+Zimmer, 56, 141, 147.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Religion of the Ancient Celts
+by J. A. MacCulloch
+
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