The Religion of the Ancient Celts
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Title: The Religion of the Ancient Celts
Author: J. A. MacCulloch
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS ***
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' _Encyclopædia 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'après
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 à 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; Cæsar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, _Cyneg_.
xxxv. 1.
[4] Cæsar, 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 Cæsar's "Celtæ," among the Auvergnats,
the Bretons, and in Lozère 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 Belgæ, Aryans, who
acquired the Celtic speech of the people they conquered.[8]
Broca assumed that the dark, brachycephalic people whom he identified
with Cæsar's "Celtæ," differed from the Belgæ, were conquered by them,
and acquired the language of their conquerors, hence wrongly called
Celtic by philologists. The Belgæ were tall and fair, and overran Gaul,
except Aquitaine, mixing generally with the Celtæ, who in Cæsar's time
had thus an infusion of Belgic blood.[9] But before this conquest, the
Celtæ 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 Cæsar.[10]
But were the short, brachycephalic folk Celts? Cæsar says the people who
call themselves "Celtæ" were called Gauls by the Romans, and Gauls,
according to classical writers, were tall and fair.[11] Hence the Celtæ
were not a short, dark race, and Cæsar himself says that Gauls
(including Celtæ) looked with contempt on the short Romans.[12] Strabo
also says that Celtæ and Belgæ had the same Gaulish appearance, i.e.
tall and fair. Cæsar's statement that Aquitani, Galli, and Belgæ 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, Celtæ and Belgæ
"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 Cæsar'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.
Cæsar'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 Belgæ 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 Belgæ 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 Belgæ, 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
Belgæ on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow
folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belgæ
(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 Belgæ 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 palæolithic 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. _præ_) 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 Cæsar's Celtæ, 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
archæological data confirm this.[27] But whether their descendants were
represented by Cæsar's "Celtæ" must be uncertain. Celtæ and Galli,
according to Cæsar, 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 Nêsoi] 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 Belgæ, 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 Hecatæus 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 "Celtæ,"
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.
Archæological 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, _Cæsar's Conquest of Gaul_, 311-312.
[10] Cæsar, i. 1; Collignon, _Mem. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris_, 3{me} ser.
i. 67.
[11] Cæsar, i. 1.
[12] Cæsar, ii. 30.
[13] Cæsar, i. 1; Strabo, iv. 1. 1.
[14] Cf. Holmes, 295; Beddoe, _Scottish Review_, xix. 416.
[15] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 175.
[16] Cæsar, 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; "Celtæ 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] Cæsar, 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; Cæsar, v. 14. See p. 223.
[42] Isidore, _Etymol._ ix. 2, 103; Rh[^y]s, _CB_ 242-243; Cæsar, v. 14;
Nicholson, _ZCP_ in. 332.
[43] Tacitus, _Agric._ ii.
[44] If _Celtæ_ 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. _Galatæ_ is from _gala_
(Irish _gal_), "bravery." Hence perhaps "warriors."
[45] "Galli" may be connected with "Galatæ," 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; Cæsar, i. 31, vii. 4; _Frag. Hist. Græc._ i.
437.
[48] Cæsar, ii. 4.
[49] Strabo, xii. 5. 1.
[50] Polybius, ii. 22.
[51] Cæsar, 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 Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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. Cæsar'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
Cæsar'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.
Cæsar 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 Cæsar 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 Mycenæans, 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 Trèves, 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 Trèves; a
coin with the name Æsus 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 Trèves.[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 Cæsarius 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 Nymphæ, 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 Graiæ of Greece, the Roman Fates, and
the Norse Nornæ, and it is noticeable that the _Matres_ were sometimes
equated with the Parcæ 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 Domesticæ_ are household
goddesses; the _Matres Treveræ_, or _Gallaicæ_, or _Vediantæ_, are the
mothers of Trèves, of the Gallaecæ, of the Vediantii; the _Matres
Nemetiales_ are guardians of groves. Besides presiding over the fields
as _Matres Campestræ_ 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 _Matronæ_ 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 _Suleviæ_, guardian goddesses called
_Matres_ in a few inscriptions; the _Comedovæ_, whose name perhaps
denotes guardianship or power; the _Dominæ_, who watched over the home,
perhaps the _Dames_ of mediæval 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 _Proxumæ_ were
worshipped in Southern Gaul, and the _Quadriviæ_, 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 Cæsar, 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 Pyrenæan 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] Cæsar, _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] Cæsar, 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 Mæder Gottinem_; Vallentin, _Le Culte des Matræ_; 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 Achæan 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_ formulæ 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 Cæsar, 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 ætiological 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_ formulæ 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_ formulæ 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 _Mãrchen_ formulæ 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 Llûd 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
Cæsar 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 _sêdos_, from _sêd_, "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] Cæsar, 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; Cæsar, 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, _Glossæ Hibernicæ_, 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_ formulæ. 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 ar
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