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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.
Footnote 1:(return)

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
superscripts such as 3 were used in the book to give edition numbers to
books.]

CONTENTS
I. INTRODUCTORY

II. THE CELTIC PEOPLE

III. THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS

IV. THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE

V. THE TUATHA DÉ DANANN

VI. THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS

VII. THE CÚCHULAINN CYCLE

VIII. THE FIONN SAGA

IX. GODS AND MEN

X. THE CULT OF THE DEAD

XI. PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP

XII. RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP

XIII. TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP

XIV. ANIMAL WORSHIP

XV. COSMOGONY

XVI. SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION

XVII. TABU

XVIII. FESTIVALS

XIX. ACCESSORIES OF CULT

XX. THE DRUIDS

XXI. MAGIC

XXII. THE STATE OF THE DEAD

XXIII. REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION

XXIV. ELYSIUM

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, GB2: J.G. Frazer, Golden Bough2. 3 vols. 1900,

GUEST: Lady Guest, The Mabinogion. 3 vols. Liandovery, 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 Romances2. London, 1894.

JOYCE, PN: P.W. Joyce, History of Irish Names of Places4. 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 Scotland2.
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 Nationales4. 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, CB4: Sir John Rh[^y]s, Celtic Britain4. 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 Wörterbuch4).

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.
Footnote 2:(return)

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.

Footnote 3:(return)

Livy, v. 46; Cæsar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, Cyneg. xxxv. 1.

Footnote 4:(return)

Cæsar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained there and cultivated the
lands."

Footnote 5:(return)

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. MacBain34 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.
Footnote 6:(return)

Ripley, Races of Europe; Wilser, L'Anthropologie, xiv. 494; Collignon, ibid. 1-
20; Broca, Rev. d'Anthrop. ii. 589 ff.

Footnote 7:(return)

Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, 241 ff., 263 ff.

Footnote 8:(return)

Keane, Man, Past and Present, 511 ff., 521, 528.

Footnote 9:(return)

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.

Footnote 10:(return)

Cæsar, i. 1; Collignon, Mem. Soc. d'Anthrop. de Paris, 3me ser. i. 67.

Footnote 11:(return)

Cæsar, i. 1.

Footnote 12:(return)

Cæsar, ii. 30.

Footnote 13:(return)

Cæsar, i. 1; Strabo, iv. 1. 1.

Footnote 14:(return)

Cf. Holmes, 295; Beddoe, Scottish Review, xix. 416.

Footnote 15:(return)

D'Arbois, Les Celtes, 175.

Footnote 16:(return)

Cæsar, ii. 4; Strabo, vii. 1. 2. Germans are taller and fairer than Gauls; Tacitus,
Agric. ii. Cf. Beddoe, JAI xx. 354-355.

Footnote 17:(return)

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.

Footnote 18:(return)

D'Arbois, ii. 251.

Footnote 19:(return)

Beddoe, L'Anthropologie, v. 516. Tall, fair, and highly brachycephalic types are
still found in France, ibid. i. 213; Bortrand-Reinach, Les Celtes, 39.

Footnote 20:(return)

Beddoe, 516; L'Anthrop., v. 63; Taylor, 81; Greenwell, British Barrows, 680.

Footnote 21:(return)

Fort. Rev. xvi. 328; Mem. of London Anthr. Soc., 1865.

Footnote 22:(return)

Ripley, 309; Sergi, 243; Keane, 529; Taylor, 112.

Footnote 23:(return)

Taylor, 122, 295.

Footnote 24:(return)

The Walloons are both dark and fair.

Footnote 25:(return)

D'Arbois, PH ii. 132.

Footnote 26:(return)

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).

Footnote 27:(return)

See pp. 51, 376.

Footnote 28:(return)

Cæsar, i. 1.

Footnote 29:(return)

CB4 160.

Footnote 30:(return)

Skene, i. ch. 8; see p. 135.

Footnote 31:(return)

ZCP iii. 308; Keltic Researches.

Footnote 32:(return)

Windisch, "Kelt. Sprachen," Ersch-Gruber's Encylopädie; Stokes, Linguistic
Value of the Irish Annals.

Footnote 33:(return)

THSC 1895-1896, 55 f.

Footnote 34:(return)

CM xii. 434.

Footnote 35:(return)

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.

Footnote 36:(return)

Rh[^y]s, CB4 241.

Footnote 37:(return)

D'Arbois, Les Celtes, 22.

Footnote 38:(return)

Bede, Eccl. Hist. i. 12.

Footnote 39:(return)

Adamnan, Vita S. Col.

Footnote 40:(return)

See p. 222.

Footnote 41:(return)

Dio Cass. lxxvi. 12; Cæsar, v. 14. See p. 223.

Footnote 42:(return)

Isidore, Etymol. ix. 2, 103; Rh[^y]s, CB 242-243; Cæsar, v. 14; Nicholson, ZCP
in. 332.

Footnote 43:(return)

Tacitus, Agric. ii.

Footnote 44:(return)

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."

Footnote 45:(return)

"Galli" may be connected with "Galatæ," but D'Arbois denies this. For all these
titles see his PH ii. 396 ff.

Footnote 46:(return)

Livy, v. 31 f.; D'Arbois, PH ii. 304, 391.

Footnote 47:(return)

Strabo, iv. 10. 3; Cæsar, i. 31, vii. 4; Frag. Hist. Græc. i. 437.

Footnote 48:(return)

Cæsar, ii. 4.

Footnote 49:(return)

Strabo, xii. 5. 1.

Footnote 50:(return)

Polybius, ii. 22.

Footnote 51:(return)

Cæsar, i. 2, 1-3.

Footnote 52:(return)

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.

Footnote 53:(return)

Cæsar, de Bell. Gall. vi. 17, 18.

Footnote 54:(return)

Bloch (Lavisse), Hist, de France, i. 2, 419; Reinaoh, BF 13, 23.

Footnote 55:(return)

Trans. Gaelic Soc. of Inverness, xxvi. p. 411 f.

Footnote 56:(return)

Vallentin, Les Dieux de la cité des Allobroges, 15; Pliny, HN xxxiv. 7.

Footnote 57:(return)

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.

Footnote 58:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 6.

Footnote 59:(return)

Hübner, vii. 271; CIL iii. 5773.

Footnote 60:(return)

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.

Footnote 61:(return)

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.

Footnote 62:(return)

Pommerol, Ball. de Soc. d'ant. de Paris, ii. fasc. 4.

Footnote 63:(return)

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.

Footnote 64:(return)

See p. 102, infra.

Footnote 65:(return)

Jul. Cap. Maxim. 22; Herodian, viii. 3; Tert. Apol. xxiv. 70; Auson. Prof. xi. 24.

Footnote 66:(return)

Stokes derives belinuntia from beljo-, a tree or leaf, Irish bile, US 174.

Footnote 67:(return)

Holder, s.v.; Stokes, US 197; Rh[^y]s, HL 23; see p. 180, infra.

Footnote 68:(return)

Diod. Sic. ii. 47.

Footnote 69:(return)

Apoll. Rhod. iv. 609.

Footnote 70:(return)

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.

Footnote 71:(return)

D'Arbois, ii. 215; Rh[^y]s, HL 37.

Footnote 72:(return)

So Rh[^y]s, HL 42.

Footnote 73:(return)

Hübner, 61.

Footnote 74:(return)

Holder, s.v.; Lucan, i. 444 f. The opinions of writers who take this view are
collected by Reinach, RC xviii. 137.

Footnote 75:(return)

Holder, s.v. The Gaulish name Camulogenus, "born of Cumel," represents the
same idea as in Fionn's surname, MacCumall.

Footnote 76:(return)

Athen. iv. 36; Dioscorides, ii. 110; Joyce, SH ii. 116, 120; IT i. 437, 697.

Footnote 77:(return)

Pliny, HN xviii. 7.

Footnote 78:(return)

Gaidoz, Le Dieu Gaulois de Soleil; Reinach, CS 98, BF 35; Blanchet, i. 27.

Footnote 79:(return)

Lucan, Phar. i. 444. Another form, Tanaros, may be simply the German Donar.

Footnote 80:(return)

Loth, i. 270.

Footnote 81:(return)

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.

Footnote 82:(return)

Reinach, BF 137 f.; Courcelle-Seneuil, 115 f.

Footnote 83:(return)

Barthelemy, RC i. l f.

Footnote 84:(return)

See Flouest, Rev. Arch. v. 17.

Footnote 85:(return)

Reinach, RC xvii. 45.

Footnote 86:(return)

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.

Footnote 87:(return)

RC xviii. 254. Cernunnos may be the Juppiter Cernenos of an inscription from
Pesth, Holder, s.v.

Footnote 88:(return)

Reinach, BF 186, fig. 177.

Footnote 89:(return)

Rev. Arch. xix. 322, pl. 9.

Footnote 90:(return)

Bertrand, Rev. Arch. xv. 339, xvi. pl. 12.

Footnote 91:(return)

Ibid. xv. pl. 9, 10.

Footnote 92:(return)

Ibid. xvi. 9.

Footnote 93:(return)

Ibid. pl. 12 bis.

Footnote 94:(return)

Bertrand, Rev. Arch. xvi. 8.

Footnote 95:(return)

Ibid. xvi. 10 f.

Footnote 96:(return)

Ibid. xv., xvi.; Reinach, BF 17, 191.

Footnote 97:(return)

Bull. Epig. i. 116; Strabo, iv. 3; Diod. Sic. v. 28.

Footnote 98:(return)

Diod. Sic. v. 30; Reinach, BF 193.

Footnote 99:(return)

See p. 212, infra.

Footnote 100:(return)

See p. 166, infra.

Footnote 101:(return)

See, e.g., Mowat, Bull. Epig. i. 29; de Witte, Rev. Arch. ii. 387, xvi. 7; Bertrand,
ibid. xvi. 3.

Footnote 102:(return)

See pp. 102, 242, infra; Joyce, SH ii. 554; Curtin, 182; RC xxii. 123, xxiv. 18.

Footnote 103:(return)

Dom Martin, ii. 185; Reinach, BF 192, 199.

Footnote 104:(return)

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.

Footnote 105:(return)

See p. 229, infra.

Footnote 106:(return)

Reinach, BF 162, 184; Mowat, Bull. Epig. i. 62, Rev. Epig. 1887, 319, 1891, 84.

Footnote 107:(return)

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.

Footnote 108:(return)

Stokes, US 302; MacBain, 274; RC xxvi. 282.

Footnote 109:(return)

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."

Footnote 110:(return)

Lucan, i. 444; RC xviii. 254, 258.

Footnote 111:(return)

See p. 127, infra.

Footnote 112:(return)

For a supposed connection between this bas-relief and the myth of Geryon, see
Reinach, BF 120; RC xviii. 258 f.

Footnote 113:(return)

Coins of the Ancient Britons, 386; Holder, i. 1475, 1478.

Footnote 114:(return)

For these theories see Dom Martin, ii. 2; Bertrand, 335 f.

Footnote 115:(return)

Cf. Reinach, RC xviii. 149.

Footnote 116:(return)

Orelli, 2107, 2072; Monnier, 532; Tacitus, xxi. 38.

Footnote 117:(return)

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.

Footnote 118:(return)

For all these see Holder, s.v.

Footnote 119:(return)

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).

Footnote 120:(return)

Cæsar, vi. 17.

Footnote 121:(return)

D'Arbois, Les Celtes, 54; Rev. Arch. i. 201. See Holder, s.v.

Footnote 122:(return)

Solinus, xxii. 10; Holder, s.v.

Footnote 123:(return)

Ptolemy, ii. 2.

Footnote 124:(return)

See p. 71, infra.

Footnote 125:(return)

Dio Cass. lxii. 7; Amm. Mare, xxvii. 4. 4.

Footnote 126:(return)

Plutarch, de Vir. Mul. 20; Arrian, Cyneg. xxxiv. 1.

Footnote 127:(return)

S. Greg. Hist. viii. 15.

Footnote 128:(return)

Grimm, Teut. Myth. 283, 933; Reinach, RC xvi. 261.

Footnote 129:(return)

Reinach, BF 50.

Footnote 130:(return)

Holder, i. 1286; Robert, RC iv. 133.

Footnote 131:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 27.

Footnote 132:(return)

Anwyl, Celt. Rev. 1906, 43.

Footnote 133:(return)

Holder, s.v.; Bulliot, RC ii. 22.

Footnote 134:(return)

Holder, i. 10, 89.

Footnote 135:(return)

Holder, s.v.; see p. 213, infra.

Footnote 136:(return)

Holder, ii. 463. They are very numerous in South-East Gaul, where also three-
headed gods are found.

Footnote 137:(return)

See pp. 274-5, infra.

Footnote 138:(return)

Courcelle-Seneuil, 80-81.

Footnote 139:(return)

See my article "Calendar" in Hastings' Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics, iii. 80.

Footnote 140:(return)

CIL v. 4208, 5771, vii. 927; Holder, ii. 89.

Footnote 141:(return)

For all these titles see Holder, s.v.

Footnote 142:(return)

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.

Footnote 143:(return)

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.

Footnote 144:(return)

Anwyl, Celt. Rev. 1906, 28. Cf. Y Foel Famau, "the hill of the Mothers," in the
Clwydian range.

Footnote 145:(return)

See p. 73, infra.

Footnote 146:(return)

Vallentin, op. cit. iv. 29; Maury, Croyances du Moyen Age, 382.

Footnote 147:(return)

Holder, s.v.

Footnote 148:(return)

See pp. 69, 317, infra.

Footnote 149:(return)

For all these see Holder, s.v.; Rh[^y]s, HL 103; RC iv. 34.

Footnote 150:(return)

Florus, ii. 4.

Footnote 151:(return)

See the table of identifications, p. 125, infra.

Footnote 152:(return)

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
Galioin186—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.
Footnote 153:(return)

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).

Footnote 154:(return)

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.

Footnote 155:(return)

Keating, 105-106.

Footnote 156:(return)

Keating, 107; LL 4b. Cf. RC xvi. 155.

Footnote 157:(return)

LL 5.

Footnote 158:(return)

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.

Footnote 159:(return)

Keating, 164.

Footnote 160:(return)

LL 5a.

Footnote 161:(return)

Keating, 121; LL 6a; RC xvi. 161.

Footnote 162:(return)

Nennius, Hist. Brit. 13.

Footnote 163:(return)

LL 6, 8b.

Footnote 164:(return)

LL 6b, 127a; IT iii. 381; RC xvi. 81.

Footnote 165:(return)

LL 9b, 11a.

Footnote 166:(return)

See Cormac, s.v. "Nescoit," LU 51.

Footnote 167:(return)

Harl. MSS. 2, 17, pp. 90-99. Cf. fragment from Book of Invasions in LL 8.

Footnote 168:(return)

Harl. MS. 5280, translated in RC xii. 59 f.

Footnote 169:(return)

RC xii. 60; D'Arbois, v. 405 f.

Footnote 170:(return)

For Celtic brother-sister unions see p. 224.

Footnote 171:(return)

O'Donovan, Annals, i. 16.

Footnote 172:(return)

RC xv. 439.

Footnote 173:(return)

RC xii. 71.

Footnote 174:(return)

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").

Footnote 175:(return)

HL 591.

Footnote 176:(return)

CM ix. 130; Campbell LF 68.

Footnote 177:(return)

RC xii. 75.

Footnote 178:(return)

US 211.

Footnote 179:(return)

D'Arbois, ii. 52; RC xii. 476.

Footnote 180:(return)

RC xii. 73.

Footnote 181:(return)

RC xii. 105.

Footnote 182:(return)

RC xxii. 195.

Footnote 183:(return)

Larmime, "Kian, son of Kontje."

Footnote 184:(return)

See p. 78; LL 245b.

Footnote 185:(return)

Mannhardt, Mythol. Forsch. 310 f.

Footnote 186:(return)

"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.

Footnote 187:(return)

Cormac, s.v. "Neith"; D'Arbois, v. 400; RC xii. 61.

Footnote 188:(return)

LU 50. Tethra is glossed badb (IT i. 820).

Footnote 189:(return)

IT i. 521; Rh[^y]s, HL 274 f.

Footnote 190:(return)

RC xii. 95.

Footnote 191:(return)

RC xii. 101.

Footnote 192:(return)

See p. 374.

Footnote 193:(return)

D'Arbois, ii. 198, 375.

Footnote 194:(return)

HL 90-91.

Footnote 195:(return)

HL 274, 319, 643. For Beli, see p. 112, infra.

Footnote 196:(return)

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.

Footnote 197:(return)

O'Grady, ii. 203.

Footnote 198:(return)

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 reigned270—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 Aitherne293—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.
Footnote 199:(return)

HL 89; Stokes, RC xii. 129. D'Arbois, ii. 125, explains it as "Folk of the god
whose mother is called Danu."

Footnote 200:(return)

RC xii. 77. The usual Irish word for "god" is dia; other names are Fiadu, Art,
Dess.

Footnote 201:(return)

See Joyce, SII. i. 252, 262; PN i. 183.

Footnote 202:(return)

LL 245b.

Footnote 203:(return)

LL 11.

Footnote 204:(return)

LL 127. The mounds were the sepulchres of the euhemerised gods.

Footnote 205:(return)

Book of Fermoy, fifteenth century.

Footnote 206:(return)

LL 11b.

Footnote 207:(return)

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."

Footnote 208:(return)

Joyce, SH i. 252; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 505.

Footnote 209:(return)

"Vision of Oengus," RC iii. 344; IT i. 197 f.

Footnote 210:(return)

Windisch, Ir. Gram. 118; O'Curry, MC ii. 71; see p. 363, infra.

Footnote 211:(return)

Windisch, Ir. Gram. 118, § 6; IT iii. 407; RC xvi. 139.

Footnote 212:(return)

Shore, JAI xx. 9.

Footnote 213:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 203 f. Pennocrucium occurs in the Itinerary of Antoninus.

Footnote 214:(return)

Keating, 434.

Footnote 215:(return)

Joyce, SH i. 252.

Footnote 216:(return)

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.

Footnote 217:(return)

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.

Footnote 218:(return)

LL 10b.

Footnote 219:(return)

Cormac, 4. Stokes (US 12) derives Anu from (p)an, "to nourish"; cf. Lat. panis.

Footnote 220:(return)

Leicester County Folk-lore, 4. The Cóir Anmann says that Anu was worshipped
as a goddess of plenty (IT iii. 289).

Footnote 221:(return)

Rh[^y]s, Trans. 3rd Inter. Cong. Hist. of Rel. ii. 213. See Grimm, Teut. Myth. 251
ff., and p. 275, infra.

Footnote 222:(return)

Rh[^y]s, ibid. ii. 213. He finds her name in the place-name Bononia and its
derivatives.

Footnote 223:(return)

Cormac, 23.

Footnote 224:(return)

Cæsar, vi. 17; Holder, s.v.; Stokes, TIG 33.

Footnote 225:(return)

Girald. Cambr. Top. Hib. ii. 34 f. Vengeance followed upon rash intrusion. For
the breath tabu see Frazer, Early Hist. of the Kingship, 224.

Footnote 226:(return)

Joyce, SH i. 335.

Footnote 227:(return)

P. 41, supra.

Footnote 228:(return)

Martin, 119; Campbell, Witchcraft, 248.

Footnote 229:(return)

Frazer, op. cit. 225.

Footnote 230:(return)

Joyce, PN i. 195; O'Grady, ii. 198; Wood-Martin, i. 366; see p. 42, supra.

Footnote 231:(return)

Fitzgerald, RC iv. 190. Aine has no connection with Anu, nor is she a moon-
goddess, as is sometimes supposed.

Footnote 232:(return)

RC iv. 189.

Footnote 233:(return)

Keating, 318; IT iii. 305; RC xiii. 435.

Footnote 234:(return)

O'Grady, ii. 197.

Footnote 235:(return)

RC xii. 109, xxii. 295; Cormac, 87; Stokes, TIG xxxiii.

Footnote 236:(return)

Holder, i. 341; CIL vii. 1292; Cæsar, ii. 23.

Footnote 237:(return)

LL 11b; Cormac, s.v. Neit; RC iv. 36; Arch. Rev. i. 231; Holder, ii. 714, 738.

Footnote 238:(return)

Stokes, TIG, LL 11a.

Footnote 239:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 43; Stokes, RC xii. 128.

Footnote 240:(return)

RC xii. 91, 110.

Footnote 241:(return)

See p. 131.

Footnote 242:(return)

Petrie, Tara, 147; Stokes, US 175; Meyer, Cath Finntrága, Oxford, 1885, 76 f.;
RC xvi. 56, 163, xxi. 396.

Footnote 243:(return)

CIL vii. 507; Stokes, US 211.

Footnote 244:(return)

RC i. 41, xii. 84.

Footnote 245:(return)

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).

Footnote 246:(return)

Joyce, SH i. 261; Miss Hull, 186; Meyer, Cath Finntraga, 6, 13; IT i. 131, 871.

Footnote 247:(return)

LL 10a.

Footnote 248:(return)

LL 10a, 30b, 187c.

Footnote 249:(return)

RC xxvi. 13; LL 187c.

Footnote 250:(return)

Cf. the personification of the three strains of Dagda's harp (Leahy, ii. 205).

Footnote 251:(return)

See p. 223, infra.

Footnote 252:(return)

D'Arbois, ii. 372.

Footnote 253:(return)

RC xii. 77, 83.

Footnote 254:(return)

LL 11; Atlantis, London, 1858-70, iv. 159.

Footnote 255:(return)

O'Donovan, Grammar, Dublin, 1845, xlvii.

Footnote 256:(return)

RC xii. 77.

Footnote 257:(return)

Lucian, Herakles.

Footnote 258:(return)

RC xii. 89. The name is found in Gaulish Gobannicnos, and in Welsh
Abergavenny.

Footnote 259:(return)

IT i. 56; Zimmer, Glossæ Hibernicæ, 1881, 270.

Footnote 260:(return)

Atlantis, 1860, iii. 389.

Footnote 261:(return)

RC xii. 89.

Footnote 262:(return)

LL lla.

Footnote 263:(return)

RC xii. 93.

Footnote 264:(return)

Connac, 56, and Cóir Anmann (IT iii. 357) divide the name as día-na-cecht and
explain it as "god of the powers."

Footnote 265:(return)

RC xii. 67. For similar stories of plants springing from graves, see my Childhood
of Fiction, 115.

Footnote 266:(return)

RC xii, 89, 95.

Footnote 267:(return)

RC vi. 369; Cormac, 23.

Footnote 268:(return)

Cormac, 47, 144; IT iii. 355, 357.

Footnote 269:(return)

IT iii. 355; D'Arbois, i. 202.

Footnote 270:(return)

LL 246a.

Footnote 271:(return)

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.

Footnote 272:(return)

LL 245b.

Footnote 273:(return)

IT iii. 355.

Footnote 274:(return)

O'Donovan, Battle of Mag-Rath, Dublin, 1842, 50; LL 246a.

Footnote 275:(return)

D'Arbois, v. 427, 448.

Footnote 276:(return)

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.

Footnote 277:(return)

Vallancey, in Coll. de Rebus Hib. 1786, iv. 495.

Footnote 278:(return)

LL 213b. 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.

Footnote 279:(return)

RC xvi. 35, 163.

Footnote 280:(return)

Fitzgerald, RL iv. 175.

Footnote 281:(return)

RC xxvi. 19.

Footnote 282:(return)

Annals of the Four Masters, A.M. 3450.

Footnote 283:(return)

RC xii. 83, 85; Hyde, op. cit. 288.

Footnote 284:(return)

LU 94.

Footnote 285:(return)

RC xii. 65. Elsewhere three supreme "ignorances" are ascribed to Oengus (RL
xxvi. 31).

Footnote 286:(return)

RC iii. 342.

Footnote 287:(return)

LL 11c; 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.).

Footnote 288:(return)

HL 146.

Footnote 289:(return)

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.

Footnote 290:(return)

O'Grady, TOS iii.

Footnote 291:(return)

RC i. 41.

Footnote 292:(return)

O'Curry, MC i. 71.

Footnote 293:(return)

LL 117a. See p. 381, infra.

Footnote 294:(return)

Cumont, RC xxvi. 47; D'Arbois, RC xxvii. 127, notes the difficulty of explaining
the change of e to i in the names.

Footnote 295:(return)

HL 121.

Footnote 296:(return)

See Crooke, Folk-Lore, viii. 341. Cf. Herod, ii. 131.

Footnote 297:(return)

Loth, i. 269.

Footnote 298:(return)

HL 563.

Footnote 299:(return)

Train, Isle of Man, Douglas, 1845, ii. 118; Grimm, Teut. Myth. ii. ch. 24; Frazer,
GB2 ii. 99 f.

Footnote 300:(return)

Bathurst, Roman Antiquities at Lydney Park, 1879; Holder, s.v. "Nodons."

Footnote 301:(return)

See Rh[^y]s, HL 122; Cook, Folk-Lore, xvii. 30.

Footnote 302:(return)

Stokes, US 194-195; Rh[^y]s, HL, 128, IT i. 712.

Footnote 303:(return)

Loth, ii. 235, 296. See p. 160, infra.

Footnote 304:(return)

Joyce, OCR.

Footnote 305:(return)

For these four Manannans see Cormac 114, RC xxiv. 270, IT iii. 357.

Footnote 306:(return)

O'Grady, ii.

Footnote 307:(return)

Bodley Dindsenchas, No. 10, RC xii. 105; Joyce, SH i. 259; Otia Merseiana, ii.
"Song of the Sea."

Footnote 308:(return)

LU 133.

Footnote 309:(return)

Moore, 6.

Footnote 310:(return)

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).

Footnote 311:(return)

RC xii. 59.

Footnote 312:(return)

Folk-Lore Journal, v. 66; Rh[^y]s, HL 314.

Footnote 313:(return)

Larminie, "Kian, son of Kontje."

Footnote 314:(return)

Joyce, OCR 37.

Footnote 315:(return)

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.

Footnote 316:(return)

Holder, s.v.; D'Arbois, Les Celtes, 44, RC vii. 400.

Footnote 317:(return)

Holder, s.v. "Lugus."

Footnote 318:(return)

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).

Footnote 319:(return)

HL 425.

Footnote 320:(return)

See p. 349, infra.

Footnote 321:(return)

See p. 272, infra.

Footnote 322:(return)

HL 409.

Footnote 323:(return)

See Loth, RC x. 490.

Footnote 324:(return)

Leahy, i. 138, ii. 50, 52, LU 124b.

Footnote 325:(return)

LL 215a; see p. 78, supra.

Footnote 326:(return)

See, further, p. 385, infra.

Footnote 327:(return)

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 are forced to abandon this craft on account of the envy of
the craftsmen. Finally, we learn how Manawyddan overcame the enchanter
Llwyt, who, because of an insult offered by Pryderi's father to his friend
Gwawl, had made Rhiannon and Pryderi disappear. They are now restored,
and Llwyt seeks no further revenge.

The story of Branwen is similar to a tale of which there are variants in
Teutonic and Scandinavian sagas, but the resemblance is closer to the
latter.339 Possibly a similar story with their respective divinities or heroes
for its characters existed among Celts, Teutons, and Norsemen, but more
likely it was borrowed from Norsemen who occupied both sides of the Irish
Sea in the ninth and tenth century, and then naturalised by furnishing it with
Celtic characters. But into this framework many native elements were set,
and we may therefore scrutinise the story for Celtic mythical elements
utilised by its redactor, who probably did not strip its Celtic personages of
their earlier divine attributes. In the two Mabinogi these personages are
Llyr, his sons Bran and Manawyddan, his daughter Branwen, their half-

brothers Nissyen and Evnissyen, sons of Llyr's wife Penardim, daughter of
Beli, by a previous marriage with Eurosswyd.

Llyr is the equivalent of the Irish Ler, the sea-god, but two other Llyrs,
probably duplicates of himself, are known to Welsh story—Llyr Marini, and
the Llyr, father of Cordelia, of the chroniclers.340 He is constantly confused
with Lludd Llawereint, e.g. both are described as one of three notable
prisoners of Britain, and both are called fathers of Cordelia or
Creiddylad.341 Perhaps the two were once identical, for Manannan is
sometimes called son of Alloid (= Lludd), in Irish texts, as well as son of
Ler.342 But the confusion may be accidental, nor is it certain that Nodons or
Lludd was a sea-god. Llyr's prison was that of Eurosswyd,343 whose wife he
may have abducted and hence suffered imprisonment. In the Black Book of
Caermarthen Bran is called son of Y Werydd or "Ocean," according to M.
Loth's interpretation of the name, which would thus point to Llyr's position
as a sea-god. But this is contested by Professor Rh[^y]s who makes Ywerit
wife of Llyr, the name being in his view a form of the Welsh word for
Ireland. In Geoffrey and the chroniclers Llyr becomes a king of Britain
whose history and that of his daughters was immortalised by Shakespeare.
Geoffrey also refers to Llyr's burial in a vault built in honour of Janus.344
On this Professor Rh[^y]s builds a theory that Llyr was a form of the Celtic
Dis with two faces and ruler of a world of darkness.345 But there is no
evidence that the Celtic Dispater was lord of a gloomy underworld, and it is
best to regard Llyr as a sea-divinity.

Manawyddan is not god-like in these tales in the sense in which the
majestic Manannan of Irish story is, though elsewhere we learn that "deep
was his counsel."346 Though not a magician, he baffles one of the great
wizards of Welsh story, and he is also a master craftsman, who instructs
Pryderi in the arts of shoe-making, shield-making, and saddlery. In this he is
akin to Manannan, the teacher of Diarmaid. Incidents of his career are
reflected in the Triads, and his union with Rhiannon may point to an old
myth in which they were from the first a divine pair, parents of Pryderi.
This would give point to his deliverance of Pryderi and Rhiannon from the
hostile magician.347 Rhiannon resembles the Irish Elysium goddesses, and
Manawyddan, like Manannan, is lord of Elysium in a Taliesin poem.348 He

is a craftsman and follows agriculture, perhaps a reminiscence of the old
belief that fertility and culture come from the god's land. Manawyddan, like
other divinities, was drawn into the Arthurian cycle, and is one of those who
capture the famous boar, the Twrch Trwyth.349

Bran, or Bendigeit Vran ("Bran the Blessed"), probably an old pagan title
which appropriately enough denotes one who figured later in Christian
hagiology, is so huge that no house or ship can hold him. Hence he wades
over to Ireland, and as he draws near is thought to be a mountain. This may
be an archaic method of expressing his divinity—a gigantic non-natural
man like some of the Tuatha Déa and Ossianic heroes. But Bran also
appears as the Urdawl Ben, or "Noble Head," which makes time pass to its
bearers like a dream, and when buried protects the land from invasion. Both
as a giant squatting on a rock and as a head, Bran is equated by Professor
Rh[^y]s with Cernunnos, the squatting god, represented also as a head, and
also with the Welsh Urien whose attribute was a raven, the supposed
meaning of Bran's name.350 He further equates him with Uthr Ben,
"Wonderful Head," the superior bard, harper and piper of a Taliesin
poem.351 Urien, Bran, and Uthr are three forms of a god worshipped by
bards, and a "dark" divinity, whose wading over to Ireland signifies
crossing to Hades, of which he, like Yama, who first crossed the rapid
waters to the land of death, is the ruler.352 But Bran is not a "dark" god in
the sense implied here. Cernunnos is god of a happy underworld, and there
is nothing dark or evil in him or in Bran and his congeners. Professor
Rh[^y]s's "dark" divinities are sometimes, in his view, "light" gods, but they
cannot be both. The Celtic lords of the dead had no "dark" character, and as
gods of fertility they were, so to speak, in league with the sun-god, the
slayer of Bran, according to Professor Rh[^y]s's ingenious theory. And
although to distracted Irish secretaries Ireland may be Hades, its
introduction into this Mabinogi merely points to the interpretation of a
mythico-historic connection between Wales and Ireland. Thus if Bran is
Cernunnos, this is because he is a lord of the underworld of fertility, the
counterpart of which is the distant Elysium, to which Bran seems rather to
belong. Thus, in presence of his head, time passes as a dream in feasting
and joy. This is a true Elysian note, and the tabued door of the story is also
suggestive of the tabus of Elysium, which when broken rob men of
happiness.353 As to the power of the head in protecting the land, this points

to actual custom and belief regarding the relics of the dead and the power of
divine images or sculptured heads.354 The god Bran has become a king and
law-giver in the Mabinogion and the Triads,355 while Geoffrey of
Monmouth describes how Belinus and Brennus, in the Welsh version Beli
and Bran, dispute the crown of Britain, are reconciled, and finally conquer
Gaul and Rome.356 The mythic Bran is confused with Brennus, leader of
the Gauls against Rome in 390 B.C., and Belinus may be the god Belenos,
as well as Beli, father of Lludd and Caswallawn. But Bran also figures as a
Christian missionary. He is described as hostage at Rome for his son
Caradawc, returning thence as preacher of Christianity to the Cymry—a
legend arising out of a misunderstanding of his epithet "Blessed" and a
confusing of his son with the historic Caractacus.357 Hence Bran's family is
spoken of as one of the three saintly families of Prydein, and he is ancestor
of many saints.358

Branwen, "White Bosom," daughter of a sea-god, may be a sea-goddess,
"Venus of the northern sea,"359 unless with Mr. Nutt we connect her with
the cauldron described in her legend,360 symbol of an orgiastic cult, and
regard her as a goddess of fertility. But the connection is not clear in the
story, though in some earlier myth the cauldron may have been her property.
As Brangwaine, she reappears in romance, giving a love-potion to Tristram
—perhaps a reminiscence of her former functions as a goddess of love, or
earlier of fertility. In the Mabinogion she is buried in Anglesey at Ynys
Bronwen, where a cairn with bones discovered in 1813 was held to be the
grave and remains of Branwen.361

The children of Dôn, the equivalent of Danu, and probably like her, a
goddess of fertility, are Gwydion, Gilvæthwy, Amæthon, Govannon, and
Arianrhod, with her sons, Dylan and Llew.362 These correspond, therefore,
in part to the Tuatha Déa, though the only members of the group who bear
names similar to the Irish gods are Govannon (= Goibniu) and possibly
Llew (= Lug). Gwydion as a culture-god corresponds to Ogma. In the
Triads Beli is called father of Arianrhod,363 and assuming that this
Arianrhod is identical with the daughter of Dôn, Professor Rh[^y]s regards
Beli as husband of Dôn. But the identification is far from certain, and the
theory built upon it that Beli is one with the Irish Bile, and that both are

lords of a dark underworld, has already been found precarious.364 In later
belief Dôn was associated with the stars, the constellation Cassiopeia being
called her court. She is described as "wise" in a Taliesin poem.365

This group of divinities is met with mainly in the Mabinogi of Math, which
turns upon Gilvæthwy's illicit love of Math's "foot-holder" Goewin. To
assist him in his amour, Gwydion, by a magical trick, procures for Math
from the court of Pryderi certain swine sent him by Arawn, king of Annwfn.
In the battle which follows when the trick is discovered, Gwydion slays
Pryderi by enchantment. Math now discovers that Gilvæthwy has seduced
Goewin, and transforms him and Gwydion successively into deer, swine,
and wolves. Restored to human form, Gwydion proposes that Arianrhod
should be Math's foot-holder, but Math by a magic test discovers that she is
not a virgin. She bears two sons, Dylan, fostered by Math, and another
whom Gwydion nurtures and for whom he afterwards by a trick obtains a
name from Arianrhod, who had sworn never to name him. The name is
Llew Llaw Gyffes, "Lion of the Sure Hand." By magic, Math and Gwydion
form a wife for Llew out of flowers. She is called Blodeuwedd, and later, at
the instigation of a lover, Gronw, she discovers how Llew can be killed.
Gronw attacks and wounds him, and he flies off as an eagle. Gwydion seeks
for Llew, discovers him, and retransforms him to human shape. Then he
changes Blodeuwedd into an owl, and slays Gronw.366 Several independent
tales have gone to the formation of this Mabinogi, but we are concerned
here merely with the light it may throw on the divine characters who figure
in it.

Math or Math Hen, "the Ancient,"367 is probably an old divinity of Gwyned,
of which he is called lord. He is a king and a magician, pre-eminent in
wizardry, which he teaches to Gwydion, and in a Triad he is called one of
the great men of magic and metamorphosis of Britain.368 More important
are his traits of goodness to the suffering, and justice with no trace of
vengeance to the wrong-doer. Whether these are derived from his character
as a god or from the Celtic kingly ideal, it is impossible to say, though the
former is by no means unlikely. Possibly his supreme magical powers make
him the equivalent of the Irish "god of Druidism," but this is uncertain,
since all gods were more or less dowered with these.

Gwydion's magical powers are abundantly illustrated in the tale. At
Pryderi's court he changes fungus into horses and dogs, and afterwards
slays Pryderi by power of enchantments; he produces a fleet by magic
before Arianrhod's castle; with Math's help he forms Blodeuwedd out of
flowers; he gives Llew his natural shape when he finds him as a wasted
eagle on a tree, his flesh and the worms breeding in it dropping from him;
he transforms the faithless Blodeuwedd into an owl. Some of these and
other deeds are referred to in the Taliesin poems, while Taliesin describes
himself as enchanted by Gwydion.369 In the Triads he is one of the three
great astrologers of Prydein, and this emphasis laid on his powers of
divination is significant when it is considered that his name may be derived
from a root vet, giving words meaning "saying" or "poetry," while cognate
words are Irish fáith, "a prophet" or "poet," German wuth, "rage," and the
name of Odinn.370 The name is suggestive of the ecstasy of inspiration
producing prophetic and poetic utterance. In the Mabinogion he is a mighty
bard, and in a poem, he, under the name of Gweir, is imprisoned in the
Other-world, and there becomes a bard, thus receiving inspiration from the
gods' land.371 He is the ideal fáith—diviner, prophet, and poet, and thus the
god of those professing these arts. Strabo describes how the Celtic vates
(fáith) was also a philosopher, and this character is given in a poem to Seon
(probably = Gwydion), whose artists are poets and magicians.372 But he is
also a culture-god, bringing swine to men from the gods' land. For though
Pryderi is described as a mortal who has himself received the swine from
Annwfn (Elysium), there is no doubt that he himself was a lord of Annwfn,
and it was probably on account of Gwydion's theft from Annwfn that he, as
Gweir, was imprisoned there "through the messenger of Pwyll and
Pryderi."373 A raid is here made directly on the god's land for the benefit of
men, and it is unsuccessful, but in the Mabinogi a different version of the
raid is told. Perhaps Gwydion also brought kine from Annwfn, since he is
called one of the three herds of Britain,374 while he himself may once have
been an animal god, then an anthropomorphic deity associated with
animals. Thus in the Mabinogi, when Gwydion flees with the swine, he
rests each night at a place one of the syllables of which is Moch, "swine"—
an ætiological myth explaining why places which were once sites of the cult
of a swine-god, afterwards worshipped as Gwydion, were so called.

Gwydion has also a tricky, fraudulent character in the Mabinogi, and
although "in his life there was counsel," yet he had a "vicious muse."375 It is
also implied that he is lover of his sister Arianrhod and father of Dylan and
Llew—the mythic reflections of a time when such unions, perhaps only in
royal houses, were permissible. Instances occur in Irish tales, and Arthur
was also his sister's lover.376 In later belief Gwydion was associated with
the stars; and the Milky Way was called Caer Gwydion. Across it he had
chased the faithless Blodeuwedd.377 Professor Rh[^y]s equates him with
Odinn, and regards both as representing an older Celto-Teutonic hero,
though many of the alleged similarities in their respective mythologies are
not too obvious.378

Amæthon the good is described in Kulhwych as the only husbandman who
could till or dress a certain piece of land, though Kulhwych will not be able
to force him or to make him follow him.379 This, together with the name
Amæthon, from Cymric amæth, "labourer" or "ploughman," throws some
light on his functions.380 He was a god associated with agriculture, either as
one who made waste places fruitful, or possibly as an anthropomorphic
corn divinity. But elsewhere his taking a roebuck and a whelp, and in a
Triad, a lapwing from Arawn, king of Annwfn, led to the battle of Godeu, in
which he fought Arawn, aided by Gwydion, who vanquished one of
Arawn's warriors, Bran, by discovering his name.381 Amæthon, who brings
useful animals from the gods' land, plays the same part as Gwydion, bringer
of the swine. The dog and deer are frequent representatives of the corn-
spirit, of which Amæthon may have been an anthropomorphic form, or they,
with the lapwing, may have been earlier worshipful animals, associated
with Amæthon as his symbols, while later myth told how he had procured
them from Annwfn.

The divine functions of Llew Llaw Gyffes are hardly apparent in the
Mabinogi. The incident of Blodeuwedd's unfaithfulness is simply that of the
Märchen formula of the treacherous wife who discovers the secret of her
husband's life, and thus puts him at her lover's mercy.382 But since Llew is
not slain, but changes to eagle form, this unusual ending may mean that he
was once a bird divinity, the eagle later becoming his symbol. Some myth
must have told of his death, or he was afterwards regarded as a mortal who

died, for a poem mentions his tomb, and adds, "he was a man who never
gave justice to any one." Dr. Skene suggests that truth, not justice, is here
meant, and finds in this a reference to Llew's disguises.383 Professor
Rh[^y]s, for reasons not held convincing by M. Loth, holds that Llew,
"lion," was a misapprehension for his true name Lleu, interpreted by him
"light."384 This meaning he also gives to Lug, equating Lug and Llew, and
regarding both as sun-gods. He also equates Llaw Gyffes, "steady or strong
hand," with Lug's epithet Lám fada, "long hand," suggesting that gyffes may
have meant "long," although it was Llew's steadiness of hand in shooting
which earned him the title.385 Again, Llew's rapid growth need not make
him the sun, for this was a privilege of many heroes who had no connection
with the sun. Llew's unfortunate matrimonial affairs are also regarded as a
sun myth. Blodeuwedd is a dawn goddess dividing her love between the
sun-god and the prince of darkness. Llew as the sun is overcome by the
latter, but is restored by the culture-hero Gwydion, who slays the dark rival.
The transformation of Blodeuwedd into an owl means that the Dawn has
become the Dusk.386 As we have seen, all this is a Märchen formula with no
mythical significance. Evidence of the precariousness of such an
interpretation is furnished from the similar interpretation of the story of
Curoi's wife, Blathnat, whose lover Cúchulainn slew Curoi.387 Here a
supposed sun-god is the treacherous villain who kills a dark divinity,
husband of a dawn goddess.

If Llew is a sun-god, the equivalent of Lug, it is curious that he is never
connected with the August festival in Wales which corresponds to Lugnasad
in Ireland. There may be some support to the theory which makes him a
sun-god in a Triad where he is one of the three ruddroawc who cause a
year's sterility wherever they set their feet, though in this Arthur excels
them, for he causes seven years' sterility!388 Does this point to the scorching
of vegetation by the summer sun? The mythologists have not made use of
this incident. On the whole the evidence for Llew as a sun-god is not
convincing. The strongest reason for identifying him with Lug rests on the
fact that both have uncles who are smiths and have similar names—
Govannon and Gavida (Goibniu). Like Amæthon, Govannon, the artificer
or smith (gôf, "smith"), is mentioned in Kulhwych as one whose help must
be gained to wait at the end of the furrows to cleanse the iron of the

plough.389 Here he is brought into connection with the plough, but the myth
to which the words refer is lost. A Taliesin poem associates him with Math
—"I have been with artificers, with the old Math and with Govannon," and
refers to his Caer or castle.390

Arianrhod, "silver wheel," has a twofold character. She pretends to be a
virgin, and disclaims all knowledge of her son Llew, yet she is mistress of
Gwydion. In the Triads she appears as one of the three blessed (or white)
ladies of Britain.391 Perhaps these two aspects of her character may point to
a divergence between religion and mythology, the cult of a virgin goddess
of whom myth told discreditable things. More likely she was an old Earth-
goddess, at once a virgin and a fruitful mother, like Artemis, the virgin
goddess, yet neither chaste nor fair, or like a Babylonian goddess addressed
as at once "mother, wife, and maid." Arianrhod, "beauty famed beyond
summer's dawn," is mentioned in a Taliesin poem, and she was later
associated with the constellation Corona Borealis.392 Possibly her real name
was forgotten, and that of Arianrhod derived from a place-name, "Caer
Arianrhod," associated with her. The interpretation which makes her a dawn
goddess, mother of light, Lleu, and darkness, Dylan, is far from obvious.393
Dylan, after his baptism, rushed into the sea, the nature of which became
his. No wave ever broke under him; he swam like a fish; and hence was
called Dylan Eil Ton or "son of the wave." Govannon, his uncle, slew him,
an incident interpreted as the defeat of darkness, which "hies away to lurk
in the sea." Dylan, however, has no dark traits and is described as a blonde.
The waves lament his death, and, as they dash against the shore, seek to
avenge it. His grave is "where the wave makes a sullen sound," but popular
belief identifies him with the waves, and their noise as they press into the
Conway is his dying groan. Not only is he Eil Ton, "son of the wave," but
also Eil Mor, "son of the sea."394 He is thus a local sea-god, and like
Manannan identified with the waves, and yet separate from them, since they
mourn his death. The Mabinogi gives us the débris of myths explaining
how an anthropomorphic sea-god was connected with the goddess
Arianrhod and slain by a god Govannon.

Another Mabinogion group is that of Pwyll, prince of Dyved, his wife
Rhiannon, and their son Pryderi.395 Pwyll agrees with Arawn, king of
Annwfn (Elysium), to reign over his kingdom for a year. At the end of that

time he slays Arawn's rival Havgan. Arawn sends him gifts, and Pwyll is
now known as Pen or Head of Annwfn, a title showing that he was once a
god, belonging to the gods' land, later identified with the Christian Hades.
Pwyll now agrees with Rhiannon,396 who appears mysteriously on a magic
hillock, and whom he captures, to rid her of an unwelcome suitor Gwawl.
He imprisons him in a magical bag, and Rhiannon weds Pwyll. The story
thus resolves itself into the formula of the Fairy Bride, but it paves the way
for the vengeance taken on Pryderi and Rhiannon by Gwawl's friend Llwyt.
Rhiannon has a son who is stolen as soon as born. She is accused of slaying
him and is degraded, but Teyrnon recovers the child from its super-human
robber and calls him Gwri. As he grows up, Teyrnon notices his
resemblance to Pwyll, and takes him to his court. Rhiannon is reinstated,
and because she cries that her anguish (pryderi) is gone, the boy is now
called Pryderi. Here, again, we have Märchen incidents, which also appear
in the Fionn saga.397

Though there is little that is mythological here, it is evident that Pwyll is a
god and Rhiannon a goddess, whose early importance, like that of other
Celtic goddesses, appears from her name, a corruption of Rigantona, "great
queen." Elsewhere we hear of her magic birds whose song charmed Bran's
companions for seven years, and of her marriage to Manawyddan—an old
myth in which Manawyddan may have been Pryderi's father, while possibly
in some other myth Pryderi may have been child of Rigantona and Teyrnon
(=Tigernonos, "king").398 We may postulate an old Rhiannon saga,
fragments of which are to be found in the Mabinogi, and there may have
been more than one goddess called Rigantona, later fused into one. But in
the tales she is merely a queen of old romance.

Pryderi, as has been seen, was despoiled of his swine by Gwydion. They
were the gift of Arawn, but in the Triads they seem to have been brought
from Annwfn by Pwyll, while Pryderi acted as swineherd.399 Both Pwyll
and Pryderi are thus connected with those myths which told of the bringing
of domestic animals from the gods' land. But since they are certainly gods,
associated with the gods' land, this is perhaps the result of
misunderstanding. A poem speaks of the magic cauldron of Pen Annwfn,
i.e. Pwyll, and this points to a myth explaining his connection with Annwfn
in a different way from the account in the Mabinogi. The poem also tells

how Gweir was imprisoned in Caer Sidi (=Annwfn) "through the messenger
of Pwyll and Pryderi."400 They are thus lords of Annwfn, whose swine
Gweir (Gwydion) tries to steal. Elsewhere Caer Sidi is associated with
Manawyddan and Pryderi, perhaps a reference to their connection as father
and son.401 Thus Pryderi and Pwyll belong to the bright Elysium, and may
once have been gods of fertility associated with the under-earth region,
which was by no means a world of darkness. Whatever be the meaning of
the death of Pryderi at the hands of Gwydion, it is connected with later
references to his grave.402

A fourth group is that of Beli and his sons, referred to in the Mabinogi of
Branwen, where one of them, Caswallawn, usurps the throne, and thus
makes Manawyddan, like MacGregor, landless. In the Dream of Maxen, the
sons of Beli are Lludd, Caswallawn, Nynnyaw, and Llevelys.403 Geoffrey
calls Beli Heli, and speaks of an earlier king Belinus, at enmity with his
brother Brennius.404 But probably Beli or Heli and Belinus are one and the
same, and both represent the earlier god Belenos. Caswellawn becomes
Cassivellaunus, opponent of Cæsar, but in the Mabinogi he is hostile to the
race of Llyr, and this may be connected with whatever underlies Geoffrey's
account of the hostility of Belinus and Brennius (=Bran, son of Llyr),
perhaps, like the enmity of the race of D[^o]n to Pryderi, a reminiscence of
the strife of rival tribes or of Goidel and Brython.405 As has been seen, the
evidence for regarding Beli as D[^o]n's consort or the equivalent of Bile is
slender. Nor, if he is Belenos, the equivalent of Apollo, is he in any sense a
"dark" god. He is regarded as a victorious champion, preserver of his
"honey isle" and of the stability of his kingdom, in a Taliesin poem and in
the Triads.406

The personality of Casswallawn is lost in that of the historic
Cassivellaunus, but in a reference to him in the Triads where, with
Caradawc and Gweirydd, he bears the title "war king," we may see a
glimpse of his divine character, that of a god of war, invisibly leading on
armies to battle, and as such embodied in great chiefs who bore his
name.407 Nynnyaw appears in Geoffrey's pages as Nennius, who dies of
wounds inflicted by Cæsar, to the great grief of Cassivellaunus.408

The theory that Lludd Llaw Ereint or Lodens Lamargentios represents
Nodens (Nuada) L[=a]margentios, the change being the result of
alliteration, has been contested,409 while if the Welsh Lludd and Nudd were
identical it is strange that they should have become distinct personalities,
Gwyn, son of Nudd, being the lover of Creiddylad, daughter of Lludd,410
unless in some earlier myth their love was that of brother and sister. Lludd
is also confused or is identical with Llyr, just as the Irish Ler is with Alloid.
He is probably the son of Beli who, in the tale of Lludd and Llevelys, by the
advice of Llevelys rids his country of three plagues.411 These are, first, the
Coranians who hear every whisper, and whom he destroys by throwing over
them water in which certain insects given him by Levelys have been
bruised. The second is a shriek on May-eve which makes land and water
barren, and is caused by a dragon which attacks the dragon of the land.
These Lludd captures and imprisons at Dinas Emreis, where they afterwards
cause trouble to Vortigern at the building of his castle. The third is that of
the disappearance of a year's supply of food by a magician, who lulls every
one to sleep and who is captured by Lludd. Though the Coranians appear in
the Triads as a hostile tribe,412 they may have been a supernatural folk,
since their name is perhaps derived from còr, "dwarf," and they are now
regarded as mischievous fairies.413 They may thus be analogous to the
Fomorians, and their story, like that of the dragon and the magician who
produce blight and loss of food, may be based on older myth or ritual
embodying the belief in powers hostile to fertility, though it is not clear why
those powers should be most active on May-day. But this may be a
misunderstanding, and the dragons are overcome on May-eve. The
references in the tale to Lludd's generosity and liberality in giving food may
reflect his function as a god of growth, but, like other euhemerised gods, he
is also called a mighty warrior, and is said to have rebuilt the walls of Caer
Ludd (London), his name still surviving in "Ludgate Hill," where he was
buried.414 This legend doubtless points to some ancient cult of Lludd at this
spot.

Nudd already discussed under his title Nodons, is less prominent than his
son Gwyn, whose fight with Gwthur we have explained as a mythic
explanation of ritual combats for the increase of fertility. He also appears as
a hunter and as a great warrior,415 "the hope of armies," and thus he may be

a god of fertility who became a god of war and the chase. But legend
associated him with Annwfn, and regarded him, like the Tuatha Déa, as a
king of fairyland.416 In the legend of S. Collen, the saint tells two men,
whom he overhears speaking of Gwyn and the fairies, that these are
demons. "Thou shalt receive a reproof from Gwyn," said one of them, and
soon after Collen was summoned to meet the king of Annwfn on
Glastonbury Tor. He climbed the hill with a flask of holy water, and saw on
its top a splendid castle, with crowds of beautiful and youthful folk, while
the air resounded with music. He was brought to Gwyn, who politely
offered him food, but "I will not eat of the leaves of the tree," cried the
saint; and when he was asked to admire the dresses of the crowd, all he
would say was that the red signified burning, the blue coldness. Then he
threw the holy water over them, and nothing was left but the bare
hillside.417 Though Gwyn's court on Glastonbury is a local Celtic Elysium,
which was actually located there, the story marks the hostility of the Church
to the cult of Gwyn, perhaps practised on hilltops, and this is further seen in
the belief that he hunts souls of the wicked and is connected with Annwfn
in its later sense of hell. But a mediant view is found in Kulhwych, where it
is said of him that he restrains the demons of hell lest they should destroy
the people of this world. In the Triads he is, like other gods, a great
magician and astrologer.418

Another group, unknown to the Mabinogion, save that Taliesin is one of the
bearers of Bran's head, is found in the Book of Taliesin and in the late story
of Taliesin. These, like the Arthur cycle, often refer to personages of the
Mabinogion; hence we gather that local groups of gods, originally distinct,
were later mingled in story, the references in the poems reflecting this
mingling. Late as is the Hanes Taliesin or story of Taliesin, and expressed
as much of it is in a Märchen formula, it is based on old myths about
Cerridwen and Taliesin of which its compiler made use, following an old
tradition already stereotyped in one of the poems in the Märchen formula of
the Transformation Combat.419 But the mythical fragments are also mingled
with traditions regarding the sixth century poet Taliesin. The older saga was
perhaps developed in a district south of the Dyfi estuary.420 In Lake Tegid
dwell Tegid Voel, Cerridwen, and their children—the fair maiden Creirwy,
Morvran, and the ugly Avagddu. To give Avagddu knowledge, his mother
prepares a cauldron of inspiration from which three drops of inspiration will

be produced. These fall on the finger of Gwion, whom she set to stir it. He
put the finger in his mouth, and thus acquired the inspiration. He fled, and
Cerridwen pursued, the rest of the story being accommodated to the
Transformation Combat formula. Finally, Cerridwen as a hen swallows
Gwion as a grain of wheat, and bears him as a child, whom she throws into
the sea. Elphin, who rescues him, calls him Taliesin, and brings him up as a
bard.421

The water-world of Tegid is a submarine Elysium with the customary
cauldron of inspiration, regeneration, and fertility, like the cauldron
associated with a water-world in the Mabinogion. "Shall not my chair be
defended from the cauldron of Cerridwen," runs a line in a Taliesin poem,
while another speaks of her chair, which was probably in Elysium like that
of Taliesin himself in Caer Sidi.422 Further references to her connection
with poetry show that she may have been worshipped by bards, her
cauldron being the source of their inspiration.423 Her anger at Gwion may
point to some form of the Celtic myth of the theft of the elements of culture
from the gods' land. But the cauldron was first of all associated with a
fertility cult,424 and Cerridwen must therefore once have been a goddess of
fertility, who, like Brigit, was later worshipped by bards. She may also have
been a corn-goddess, since she is called a goddess of grain, and tradition
associates the pig—a common embodiment of the corn-spirit—with her.425
If the tradition is correct, this would be an instance, like that of Demeter
and the pig, of an animal embodiment of the corn-spirit being connected
with a later anthropomorphic corn-goddess.

Taliesin was probably an old god of poetic inspiration confused with the
sixth century poet of the same name, perhaps because this boastful poet
identified himself or was identified by other bards with the gods. He speaks
of his "splendid chair, inspiration of fluent and urgent song" in Caer Sidi or
Elysium, and, speaking in the god's name or identifying himself with him,
describes his presence with Llew, Bran, Gwydion, and others, as well as his
creation and his enchantment before he became immortal.426 He was
present with Arthur when a cauldron was stolen from Aunwfn, and basing
his verses on the mythic transformations and rebirths of the gods, recounts
in highly inflated language his own numerous forms and rebirths.427 His
claims resemble those of the Shaman who has the entree of the spirit-world

and can transform himself at will. Taliesin's rebirth is connected with his
acquiring of inspiration. These incidents appear separately in the story of
Fionn, who acquired his inspiration by an accident, and was also said to
have been reborn as Mongan. They are myths common to various branches
of the Celtic people, and applied in different combinations to outstanding
gods or heroes.428 The Taliesin poems show that there may have been two
gods or two mythic aspects of one god, later combined together. He is the
son of the goddess and dwells in the divine land, but he is also a culture-
hero stealing from the divine land. Perhaps the myths reflect the
encroachment of the cult of a god on that of a goddess, his worshippers
regarding him as her son, her worshippers reflecting their hostility to the
new god in a myth of her enmity to him. Finally, the legend of the rescue of
Taliesin the poet from the waves became a myth of the divine outcast child
rescued by Elphin, and proving himself a bard when normal infants are
merely babbling.

The occasional and obscure references to the other members of this group
throw little light on their functions, save that Morvran, "sea-crow," is
described in Kulhwych as so ugly and terrible that no one would strike him
at the battle of Camlan. He may have been a war-god, like the scald-crow
goddesses of Ireland, and he is also spoken of in the Triads as an
"obstructor of slaughter" or "support of battle."429

Ingenuity and speculation have busied themselves with trying to prove that
the personages of the Arthurian cycle are the old gods of the Brythons, and
the incidents of the romances fragments of the old mythology. While some
of these personages—those already present in genuinely old Welsh tales and
poems or in Geoffrey's History—are reminiscent of the old gods, the
romantic presentment of them in the cycle itself is so largely imaginative,
that nothing certain can be gained from it for the understanding of the old
mythology, much less the old religion. Incidents which are the common
stock of real life as well as of romance are interpreted mythologically, and it
is never quite obvious why the slaying of one hero by another should
signify the conquest of a dark divinity by a solar hero, or why the capture of
a heroine by one knight when she is beloved of another, should make her a
dawn-goddess sharing her favours, now with the sun-god, now with a

"dark" divinity. Or, even granting the truth of this method, what light does it
throw on Celtic religion?

We may postulate a local Arthur saga fusing an old Brythonic god with the
historic sixth century Arthur. From this or from Geoffrey's handling of it
sprang the great romantic cycle. In the ninth century Nennius Arthur is the
historic war-chief, possibly Count of Britain, but in the reference to his
hunting the Porcus Troit (the Twrch Trwyth) the mythic Arthur momentarily
appears.430 Geoffrey's Arthur differs from the later Arthur of romance, and
he may have partially rationalised the saga, which was either of recent
formation or else local and obscure, since there is no reference to Arthur in
the Mabinogion—a fact which shows that "in the legends of Gwynedd and
Dyfedd he had no place whatever,"431 and also that Arthur the god or
mythic hero was also purely local. In Geoffrey Arthur is the fruit of Igerna's
amour with Uther, to whom Merlin has given her husband's shape. Arthur
conquers many hosts as well as giants, and his court is the resort of all
valorous persons. But he is at last wounded by his wife's seducer, and
carried to the Isle of Avallon to be cured of his wounds, and nothing more is
ever heard of him.432 Some of these incidents occur also in the stories of
Fionn and Mongan, and those of the mysterious begetting of a wonder child
and his final disappearance into fairyland are local forms of a tale common
to all branches of the Celts.433 This was fitted to the history of the local god
or hero Arthur, giving rise to the local saga, to which was afterwards added
events from the life of the historic Arthur. This complex saga must then
have acquired a wider fame long before the romantic cycle took its place, as
is suggested by the purely Welsh tales of Kulhwych and the Dream of
Rhonabwy, in the former of which the personages (gods) of the Mabinogion
figure in Arthur's train, though he is far from being the Arthur of the
romances. Sporadic references to Arthur occur also in Welsh literature, and
to the earlier saga belongs the Arthur who spoils Elysium of its cauldron in
a Taliesin poem.434 In the Triads there is a mingling of the historic, the
saga, and the later romance Arthur, but probably as a result of the growing
popularity of the saga Arthur he is added to many Triads as a more
remarkable person than the three whom they describe.435 Arthurian place-
names over the Brythonic area are more probably the result of the
popularity of the saga than that of the later romantic cycle, a parallel

instance being found in the extent of Ossianic place-names over the
Goidelic area as a result of the spread of the Fionn saga.

The character of the romance Arthur—the flower of knighthood and a great
warrior—and the blending of the historic war-leader Arthur with the mythic
Arthur, suggest that the latter was the ideal hero of certain Brythonic
groups, as Fionn and Cúchulainn of certain Goidelic groups. He may have
been the object of a cult as these heroes perhaps were, or he may have been
a god more and more idealised as a hero. If the earlier form of his name was
Artor, "a ploughman," but perhaps with a wider significance, and having an
equivalent in Artaius, a Gaulish god equated with Mercury,436 he may have
been a god of agriculture who became a war-god. But he was also regarded
as a culture-hero, stealing a cauldron and also swine from the gods' land, the
last incident euhemerised into the tale of an unsuccessful theft from March,
son of Meirchion,437 while, like other culture-heroes, he is a bard. To his
story was easily fitted that of the wonder-child, who, having finally
disappeared into Elysium (later located at Glastonbury), would reappear
one day, like Fionn, as the Saviour of his people. The local Arthur finally
attained a fame far exceeding that of any Brythonic god or hero.

Merlin, or Myrddin, appears in the romances as a great magician who is
finally overcome by the Lady of the Lake, and is in Geoffrey son of a
mysterious invisible personage who visits a woman, and, finally taking
human shape, begets Merlin. As a son who never had a father he is chosen
as the foundation sacrifice for Vortigern's tower by his magicians, but he
confutes them and shows why the tower can never be built, namely, because
of the dragons in the pool beneath it. Then follow his prophecies regarding
the dragons and the future of the country, and the story of his removal of the
Giant's Dance, or Stonehenge, from Ireland to its present site—an
ætiological myth explaining the origin of the great stone circle. His
description of how the giants used the water with which they washed the
stones for the cure of sickness or wounds, probably points to some ritual for
healing in connection with these megaliths. Finally, we hear of his
transformation of the lovelorn Uther and of his confidant Ulfin, as well as
of himself.438 Here he appears as little more than an ideal magician,
possibly an old god, like the Irish "god of Druidism," to whose legend had
been attached a story of supernatural conception. Professor Rh[^y]s regards

him as a Celtic Zeus or as the sun, because late legends tell of his
disappearance in a glass house into the sea. The glass house is the expanse
of light travelling with the sun (Merlin), while the Lady of the Lake who
comes daily to solace Merlin in his enchanted prison is a dawn-goddess.
Stonehenge was probably a temple of this Celtic Zeus "whose late
legendary self we have in Merlin."439 Such late romantic episodes and an
ætiological myth can hardly be regarded as affording safe basis for these
views, and their mythological interpretation is more than doubtful. The sun
is never prisoner of the dawn as Merlin is of Viviane. Merlin and his glass
house disappear for ever, but the sun reappears every morning. Even the
most poetic mythology must conform in some degree to actual phenomena,
but this cannot be said of the systems of mythological interpretation. If
Merlin belongs to the pagan period at all, he was probably an ideal
magician or god of magicians, prominent, perhaps, in the Arthur saga as in
the later romances, and credited with a mysterious origin and an equally
mysterious ending, the latter described in many different ways.

The boastful Kei of the romances appears already in Kulhwych, while in
Geoffrey he is Arthur's seneschal.440 Nobler traits are his in later Welsh
poetry; he is a mighty warrior, fighting even against a hundred, though his
powers as a toper are also great. Here, too, his death is lamented.441 He may
thus have been a god of war, and his battle-fury may be poetically described
in a curious passage referring to him in Kulhwych: "His breath lasted nine
days and nine nights under water. He could remain without sleep for the
same period. No physician could heal a wound inflicted by his sword. When
he pleased he could make himself as tall as the tallest tree in the wood. And
when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry above and below
his hand to the distance of a handbreadth, so great was his natural heat.
When it was coldest he was as glowing fuel to his companions."442 This
almost exactly resembles Cúchulainn's aspect in his battle-fury. In a curious
poem Gwenhyvar (Guinevere) extols his prowess as a warrior above that of
Arthur, and in Kulhwych and elsewhere there is enmity between the two.443
This may point to Kei's having been a god of tribes hostile to those of
whom Arthur was hero.

Mabon, one of Arthur's heroes in Kulhwych and the Dream of Rhonabwy,
whose name, from mab (map), means "a youth," may be one with the god

Maponos equated with Apollo in Britain and Gaul, perhaps as a god of
healing springs.444 His mother's name, Modron, is a local form of Matrona,
a river-goddess and probably one of the mother-goddesses as her name
implies. In the Triads Mabon is one of the three eminent prisoners of
Prydein. To obtain his help in hunting the magic boar his prison must be
found, and this is done by animals, in accordance with a Märchen formula,
while the words spoken by them show the immense duration of his
imprisonment—perhaps a hint of his immortality.445 But he was also said to
have died and been buried at Nantlle,446 which, like Gloucester, the place of
his prison, may have been a site of his widely extended cult.447

Taken as a whole the various gods and heroes of the Brythons, so far as they
are known to us, just as they resemble the Irish divinities in having been
later regarded as mortals, magicians, and fairies, so they resemble them in
their functions, dimly as these are perceived. They are associated with
Elysium, they are lords of fertility and growth, of the sea, of the arts of
culture and of war. The prominent position of certain goddesses may point
to what has already been discovered of them in Gaul and Ireland—their pre-
eminence and independence. But, like the divinities of Gaul and Ireland,
those of Wales were mainly local in character, and only in a few cases
attained a wider popularity and cult.

Certain British gods mentioned on inscriptions may be identified with some
of those just considered—Nodons with Nudd or Lludd, Belenos with
Belinus or Beli, Maponos with Mabon, Taranos (in continental inscriptions
only), with a Taran mentioned in Kulhwych.448 Others are referred to in
classical writings—Andrasta, a goddess of victory, to whom Boudicca
prayed;449 Sul, a goddess of hot springs, equated with Minerva at Bath.450
Inscriptions also mention Epona, the horse-goddess; Brigantia, perhaps a
form of Brigit; Belisama (the Mersey in Ptolemy),451 a goddess in Gaulish
inscriptions. Others refer to the group goddesses, the Matres. Some gods are
equated with Mars—Camulos, known also on the Continent and perhaps the
same as Cumal, father of Fionn; Belatucadros, "comely in slaughter";
Cocidius, Corotiacus, Barrex, and Totatis (perhaps Lucan's Teutates).
Others are equated with Apollo in his character as a god of healing—

Anextiomarus, Grannos (at Musselburgh and in many continental
inscriptions), Arvalus, Mogons, etc. Most of these and many others found
on isolated inscriptions were probably local in character, though some,
occurring also on the Continent, had attained a wider popularity.452 But
some of the inscriptions referring to the latter may be due to Gaulish
soldiers quartered in Britain.

COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DIVINITIES WITH SIMILAR
NAMES IN IRELAND, BRITAIN, AND GAUL.

Italics denote names found in Inscriptions.

IRELAND. BRITAIN. GAUL.
Anextiomarus Anextiomarus
Anu Anna (?) Anoniredi, "chariot of Anu"
Badb Bodua
Beli, Belinus Belenos
Belisama Belisama
Brigit Brigantia Brigindu
Bron Bran Brennus (?)
Buanann Buanu
Cumal Camulos Camulos
Danu Dôn
Epona Epona
Goibniu Govannon
Grannos Grannos
Ler Llyr
Lug Llew or Lleu (?) Lugus, Lugores
Mabon, Maponos Maponos
Manannan Manawyddan
Matres Matres
Mider Medros (?)
Modron Matrona (?)

Nemon Nemetona
Nét Neton
Nuada Nodons, Nudd
Hael, Llûdd (?)
Ogma Ogmíos
Silvanus Silvanus
Taran Taranis
Totatis, Tutatis Teutates
Footnote 328:(return)

The text of the Mabinogion has been edited by Rh[^y]s and Evans, 1887, and it
has been translated into English by Lady Guest, and more critically, into French,
by Loth. Many of the Triads will be found in Loth's second volume. For the
poetry see Skene, Four Ancient Books of Wales.

Footnote 329:(return)

These incidents are found mainly in the story of Branwen, e.g. those of the
cauldron, a frequent accessory in Irish tales; the regeneration of the warriors,
also found in the story of Mag-tured, though no cauldron is used; the red-hot
house, occurring also in Mesca Ulad; the description of Bran paralleled by that
of MacCecht.

Footnote 330:(return)

Anwyl, ZCP i. 277, ii. 124, iii. 122.

Footnote 331:(return)

Bp. of S. Davids, Vestiges of the Gael in Gwynned, 1851; Rh[^y]s, TSC 1894-
1895, 21.

Footnote 332:(return)

Skene, i. 45; Meyer, TSC 1895-1896, 55.

Footnote 333:(return)

Cf. John, The Mabinogion, 1901, 19. Curoi appears as Kubert, and Conchobar as
Knychur in Kulhwych (Loth, i. 202). A poem of Taliesin has for subject the death
of Corroi, son of Dayry (Curoi mac Daire), Skene, i. 254.

Footnote 334:(return)

Loth, RC x. 356; John, op. cit. 19; Nutt, Arch. Rev. i. 331.

Footnote 335:(return)

The giant Ysppadden in Kulhwych resembles Balor, but has no evil eye.

Footnote 336:(return)

Anwyl, ZCP ii. 127-128, "The merging of the two legends [of Dôn and Taliesin]
may have arisen through the fusion of Penllyn with Ardudwy and Arvon."

Footnote 337:(return)

Professor Rh[^y]s thinks that the Llyr family may be pre-Celtic, TSC 1894-1895,
29 f.; CFL 552.

Footnote 338:(return)

Loth, i. 97 f.; Lady Guest, iii. 143 f.

Footnote 339:(return)

See Nutt, Folk-lore Record, v. 1 f.

Footnote 340:(return)

Loth, i. 298, ii. 243-244; Geoffrey, Hist. Brit. ii. 11.

Footnote 341:(return)

Loth, i. 224, 265, ii. 215, 244; Geoff. ii. 11.

Footnote 342:(return)

Skene, i. 81; Rh[^y]s, Academy, Jan. 7, 1882.

Footnote 343:(return)

Triads, Loth, ii. 293; Nutt, Folk-lore Record, v. 9.

Footnote 344:(return)

Hist. Brit. ii. 11-14.

Footnote 345:(return)

AL 131.

Footnote 346:(return)

Skene, i. 262.

Footnote 347:(return)

See Nutt-Meyer, ii. 17.

Footnote 348:(return)

Skene, i. 276.

Footnote 349:(return)

Loth, i. 208, 280; see also i. 197, ii. 245, 294.

Footnote 350:(return)

See Skene i. 355. The raven is rather the bird of prey come to devour Urien than
his "attribute."

Footnote 351:(return)

Skene, i. 298.

Footnote 352:(return)

For these theories see Rh[^y]s, HL 90f.; AL ch. 11; CFL 552.

Footnote 353:(return)

See Ch. XXIV.

Footnote 354:(return)

See p. 242.

Footnote 355:(return)

Loth, i. 65, ii. 285.

Footnote 356:(return)

Hist. Brit. iii. 1f. Geoffrey says that Billingsgate was called after Belinus, and
that his ashes were preserved in the gate, a tradition recalling some connection of
the god with the gate.

Footnote 357:(return)

An early Caradawc saga may have become mingled with the story of Caractacus.

Footnote 358:(return)

Rees, 77.

Footnote 359:(return)

So Elton, 291.

Footnote 360:(return)

Folk-lore Record, v. 29.

Footnote 361:(return)

Lady Guest, iii. 134.

Footnote 362:(return)

Dôn is sometimes held to be male, but she is distinctly called sister of Math
(Loth, i. 134), and as the equivalent of Danu she must be female.

Footnote 363:(return)

Loth, ii. 209.

Footnote 364:(return)

See p. 60, supra, and Rh[^y]s, HL 90f.

Footnote 365:(return)

Lady Guest, iii. 255; Skene, i. 297, 350.

Footnote 366:(return)

For this Mabinogi see Loth, i. 117f.; Guest, iii. 189f.

Footnote 367:(return)

Skene, i. 286.

Footnote 368:(return)

Loth, ii. 229, 257; and for other references to Math, Skene, i. 281, 269, 299.

Footnote 369:(return)

Skene, i. 296, 281.

Footnote 370:(return)

Loth, ii. 297; Rh[^y]s, HL 276.

Footnote 371:(return)

Skene, i. 264.

Footnote 372:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 270. Skene, i. 430, 537, gives a different meaning to seon.

Footnote 373:(return)

Skene, i. 264.

Footnote 374:(return)

Loth, ii. 296.

Footnote 375:(return)

Skene, i. 299, 531.

Footnote 376:(return)

See p. 224, infra.

Footnote 377:(return)

Guest, iii. 255; Morris, Celtic Remains, 231.

Footnote 378:(return)

HL 283 f. See also Grimm, Teut. Myth. i. 131.

Footnote 379:(return)

Loth, i. 240.

Footnote 380:(return)

Stokes, US 34.

Footnote 381:(return)

Myvyrian Archæol. i. 168; Skene, i. 275, 278 f.; Loth, ii. 259.

Footnote 382:(return)

See my Childhood of Fiction, 127. Llew's vulnerability does not depend on the
discovery of his separable soul, as is usual. The earliest form of this Märchen is
the Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, and that of Samson and Delilah is
another old form of it.

Footnote 383:(return)

Skene, i. 314, ii. 342.

Footnote 384:(return)

HL 408; RC x. 490.

Footnote 385:(return)

HL 237, 319, 398, 408.

Footnote 386:(return)

HL 384.

Footnote 387:(return)

HL 474, 424.

Footnote 388:(return)

Loth, ii. 231.

Footnote 389:(return)

Loth, i. 240.

Footnote 390:(return)

Skene, i, 286-287.

Footnote 391:(return)

Loth, ii. 263.

Footnote 392:(return)

Skene, ii. 159; Rh[^y]s, HL 157; Guest, iii. 255.

Footnote 393:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 161, 566.

Footnote 394:(return)

Skene, i. 282, 288, 310, 543, ii. 145; Loth, i. 135; Rh[^y]s, HL 387.

Footnote 395:(return)

Loth, i. 27 f.; Guest, iii. 7 f.

Footnote 396:(return)

Rhiannon is daughter of Heveidd Hen or "the Ancient," probably an old divinity.

Footnote 397:(return)

In the Mabinogi and in Fionn tales a mysterious hand snatches away newly-born
children. Cf. ZCP i. 153.

Footnote 398:(return)

Anwyl, ZCP i. 288.

Footnote 399:(return)

Loth, ii. 247.

Footnote 400:(return)

Skene, i. 264.

Footnote 401:(return)

Ibid. i. 276.

Footnote 402:(return)

Ibid. i. 310.

Footnote 403:(return)

Loth, i. 166.

Footnote 404:(return)

Hist. Brit. ii. 11, iii. 1, 20, iv. 3.

Footnote 405:(return)

Cf. Anwyl, ZCP i. 287.

Footnote 406:(return)

Skene, i. 431; Loth, ii. 278. Some phrases seem to connect Beli with the sea—
the waves are his cattle, the brine his liquor.

Footnote 407:(return)

Loth, ii. 209, 249, 260, 283.

Footnote 408:(return)

Geoffrey, Brit. Hist. iv. 3. 4.

Footnote 409:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 125 f.; Loth, i. 265; MacBain, CM ix. 66.

Footnote 410:(return)

See Loth, i. 269; and Skene, i. 293.

Footnote 411:(return)

Loth, i. 173 f.

Footnote 412:(return)

Loth, ii. 256, 274.

Footnote 413:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL 606. Cf. the Breton fairies, the Korr and Korrigan.

Footnote 414:(return)

Geoffrey, iii. 20.

Footnote 415:(return)

Loth, i. 253-254; Skene, i. 293.

Footnote 416:(return)

Guest, iii. 323.

Footnote 417:(return)

Ibid. 325.

Footnote 418:(return)

Loth, i. 253, ii. 297.

Footnote 419:(return)

See p. 353, infra.; Skene, i. 532.

Footnote 420:(return)

Anwyl, ZCP i. 293.

Footnote 421:(return)

Guest, iii. 356 f.

Footnote 422:(return)

Skene, i. 275, 296.

Footnote 423:(return)

Ibid. i. 498, 500.

Footnote 424:(return)

See p. 382, infra.

Footnote 425:(return)

Mon. Hist. Brit. i. 698, ii.; Thomas, Revue de l'hist. des Religions, xxxviii. 339.

Footnote 426:(return)

Skene, i. 263, 274-276, 278, 281-282, 286-287. His "chair" bestows immortal
youth and freedom from sickness.

Footnote 427:(return)

Skene, i. 264, 376 f., 309, 532. See p. 356, infra.

Footnote 428:(return)

See pp. 350-1, infra. Fionn and Taliesin are examples of the Märchen formula of
a hero expelled and brought back to honour, Nutt-Meyer, ii. 88.

Footnote 429:(return)

Loth, i. 209, ii. 238; Skene, ii. 459.

Footnote 430:(return)

Nennius, ch. 50, 79.

Footnote 431:(return)

Anwyl, ZCP i. 293.

Footnote 432:(return)

Geoffrey, viii. 9-xi. 3.

Footnote 433:(return)

Nutt-Meyer, ii. 22 f.

Footnote 434:(return)

See p. 381, infra.

Footnote 435:(return)

Loth, ii. 232, 245.

Footnote 436:(return)

Rh[^y]s, AL, 39 f. Others derive the name from arto-s, "bear." MacBain, 357.

Footnote 437:(return)

Loth. ii. 247; Skene, ii. 459.

Footnote 438:(return)

Geoffrey, vi. 17-19, vii. viii. 1, 10-12, 19. In a poem (Skene, i. 478), Myrddin is
called "the man who speaks from the grave"—a conception familiar to the Celts,
who thought of the dead as living on in the grave. See p. 340, infra.

Footnote 439:(return)

Rh[^y]s, HL, 154 f., 158-159, 194.

Footnote 440:(return)

Geoffrey, ix. 12, etc.

Footnote 441:(return)

Skene, ii. 51.

Footnote 442:(return)

Loth. i. 225; cf. p. 131, infra. From this description Elton supposes Kei to have
been a god of fire.

Footnote 443:(return)

Myv. Arch. i. 175; Loth, i. 269. Rh[^y]s, AL 59, thinks Merlin may have been
Guinevere's ravisher.

Footnote 444:(return)

Holder, i. 414.

Footnote 445:(return)

Loth i. 250, 260 f., 280, ii. 215, 244.

Footnote 446:(return)

Skene, i. 363, ii. 406; Myv. Arch. i. 78.

Footnote 447:(return)

Hu Gadarn is mentioned in the Triads as a leader of the Cymry from the east and
their teacher in ploughing. He divided them into clans, and invented music and
song. The monster avanc was drawn by him from the lake which had burst and
caused the flood (see p. 231, infra). Perhaps Hu is an old culture-god of some
tribes, but the Triads referring to him are of late date (Loth, ii. 271, 289, 290-
291, 298-299). For the ridiculous Neo-Druidic speculations based on Hu, see
Davies, Celtic Researches and Mythology and Rites of the Druids.

Gurgiunt, son of Belinus, in Geoffrey, iii. 11, may be the French legendary
Gargantua, perhaps an old god. See the works of Sébillot and Gaidoz on
Gargantua.

Footnote 448:(return)

Loth, i. 270.

Footnote 449:(return)

Dio Cassius, lxii. 6.

Footnote 450:(return)

Solinus, xxii. 10. See p. 2, supra.

Footnote 451:(return)

Ptol. ii. 3. 2.

Footnote 452:(return)

For all these see Holder, s.v.

CHAPTER VII.
THE CÚCHULAINN CYCLE.

The events of the Cúchulainn cycle are supposed to date from the beginning
of the Christian era—King Conchobar's death synchronising with the
crucifixion. But though some personages who are mentioned in the Annals
figure in the tales, on the whole they deal with persons who never existed.
They belong to a world of romance and myth, and embody the ideals of
Celtic paganism, modified by Christian influences and those of classical
tales and romantic sagas of other regions, mainly Scandinavian. The present
form of the tales as they exist in the Book of the Dun Cow and the Book of
Leinster must have been given them in the seventh or eighth century, but
they embody materials of a far older date. At an early time the saga may
have had a more or less definite form, but new tales were being constantly
added to it, and some of the longer tales are composed of incidents which
once had no connection with each other.

Cúchulainn is the central figure of the cycle, and its central episode is that
of the Táin bó Cuailgne, or "Cattle Spoil of Cooley." Other personages are
Conchobar and Dechtire, Ailill and Medb, Fergus, Conall Cernach, Cúroi,
Deirdre, and the sons of Usnach. Some of these are of divine descent, some
are perhaps euhemerised divinities; Conchobar is called día talmaide, "a
terrestrial god," and Dechtire a goddess. The cycle opens with the birth of
Conchobar, son of Cathbad and of Nessa, daughter of one of the Tuatha Dé
Danann, though in an older rescension of the tale he is Nessa's son by the
god Lug. During Conchobar's reign over Ulster Cúchulainn was born. He
was son of Dechtire, either by Sualtaim, or by her brother Conchobar, or by
the god Lug, of whom he may also be a reincarnation.453 Like other heroes
of saga, he possesses great strength and skill at a tender age, and, setting out
for Conchobar's court, overpowers the king's "boy corps," and then
becomes their chief. His next adventure is the slaying of the watch-dog of
Culann the smith, and his appeasing the anger of its owner by offering to
act as his watch-dog. Cathbad now announced that his name would

henceforth be Cú Chulainn, "Culann's hound."454 At the mature age of
seven he obtained Conchobar's spears, sword, shield, and chariot, and with
these he overcame three mighty champions, returning in the distortion of
his "battle-fury" to Emania. To prevent mischief from his rage, the women
went forth naked to meet him. He modestly covered his eyes, for it was one
of his geasa not to look on a woman's breast. Thus taken unawares, he was
plunged into three successive vats of cold water until his natural appearance
was restored to him, although the water boiled and hissed from his heat.455

As Cúchulainn grew up, his strength, skill, wisdom, and beauty were
unsurpassed. All women fell in love with him, and to forestall a series of
bonnes fortunes, the men of Ulster sought a wife for him. But the hero's
heart was set on Emer, daughter of Forgall, whom he wooed in a strange
language which none but she could understand. At last she consented to be
his wife if he would slay a number of warriors. Forgall was opposed to the
match, and with a view to Cúchulainn's destruction suggested that he should
go to Donall in Alba to increase his skill, and to Scathach if he would excel
all other warriors. He agreed, provided that Forgall would give him
whatever he asked for on his return. Arrived in Alba, he refused the love of
Donall's daughter, Dornolla, who swore to be avenged. Thence he went to
Scathach, overcoming all the dangers of the way, leaping in safety the gulf
surrounding her island, after essaying in vain to cross a narrow, swinging
bridge. From Scathach he learned supreme skill in arms, and overcame her
Amazonian rival Aife. He begat a son by Aife, and instructed her to call him
Conla, to give him his father's ring, to send him to seek Cúchulainn, and to
forbid him to reveal his name. In the sequel, Cúchulainn, unaware that
Conla was his son, slew him in single combat, too late discovering his
identity from the ring which he wore. This is the well-known saga formula
of Sohrab and Rustum, of Theseus and Hippolytus. On his return from
Scathach's isle Cúchulainn destroyed Forgall's rath with many of its
inmates, including Forgall, and carried off Emer. To the ten years which
followed, during which he was the great champion of Ulster, belong many
tales in which he figures prominently. One of these is The Debility of the
Ultonians. This was caused by Macha, who, during her pregnancy, was
forced to run a race with Conchobar's horses. She outran them, but gave
birth immediately to twins, and, in her pangs, cursed the men of Ulster, with
a curse that, in time of oppression, they would be overcome with the

weakness of childbirth. From this Cúchulainn was exempt, for he was not
of Ulster, but a son of Lug.456 Various attempts have been made to explain
this "debility." It may be a myth explaining a Celtic use of the "couvade,"
though no example of a simultaneous tribal couvade is known, unless we
have here an instance of Westermarck's "human pairing season in primitive
times," with its consequent simultaneous birth-period for women and
couvade for men.457 Others, with less likelihood, explain it as a period of
tabu, with cessation from work and warfare, at a funeral or festival.458 In
any case Macha's curse is a myth explanatory of the origin of some existing
custom, the duration of which is much exaggerated by the narrator. To this
period belong also the tale of Cúchulainn's visit to Elysium, and others to be
referred to later. Another story describes his attack upon Morrigan because
she would neither yield up the cows which she was driving away nor tell
her true name—an instance of the well-known name tabu. Morrigan took
the form of a bird, and was then recognised by Cúchulainn, who poured
scorn upon her, while she promised to oppose him during the fight of the
Táin in the forms of an eel, a wolf, and a cow, all of which he vowed to
destroy.459 Like many others in the saga, this story is introductory to the
main episode of the Táin. To this we now turn.

Medb had been wife of Conchobar, but, leaving him, had married in
succession two chiefs called Ailill, the second of whom had a bull,
Findbennach, the White-horned, which she resolved to match by one in
every way its equal. Having been refused the Brown Bull of Cuailgne, she
summoned all her forces to invade Ulster. The moment was inauspicious for
Ulster, for all its men were suffering from their "debility." Cúchulainn,
therefore, went out to encounter the host, and forced Medb to agree that a
succession of her warriors should engage him in single combat. Among
these was his old friend Ferdia, and nothing is so touching as his reluctance
to fight him or so pathetic as his grief when Ferdia falls. The reluctance is
primarily due to the tie of blood-brotherhood existing between them.
Finally, the Ulstermen rose in force and defeated Medb, but not before she
had already captured the bull and sent it into her own land. There it was
fought by the Findbennach and slew it, rushing back to Ulster with the
mangled body on its horns. But in its frenzy a rock seemed to be another
bull, which it charged; its brains were dashed out, and it fell dead.

The Morrigan had warned the bull of the approach of Medb's army, and she
had also appeared in the form of a beautiful woman to Cúchulainn offering
him her love, only to be repulsed. Hence she turned against him, and
described how she would oppose him as an eel, a wolf, and a red heifer—an
incident which is probably a variant of that already described.460 In each of
these shapes she was conquered and wounded by the hero, and knowing
that none whom he hurt could be healed save by himself, she appeared to
him as an old crone milking a cow. At each draught of the milk which he
received from her he blessed her with "the blessing of gods and not-gods,"
and so her wounds were healed.461 For this, at a later time, she tried to ward
off his death, but unsuccessfully. During the progress of the Táin, one of
Cúchulainn's "fairy kinsmen," namely, Lug, who announced himself as his
father, appeared to aid him, while others of the Tuatha Déa threw "herbs of
healing" into the streams in which his wounds were washed.462

During the Táin, Cúchulainn slaughtered the wizard Calatin and his
daughters. But Calatin's wife bore three posthumous sons and three
daughters, and through their means the hero was at last slain. Everything
was done to keep him back from the host which now advanced against
Ulster, but finally one of Calatin's daughters took the form of Niamh and
bade him go forth. As he passed to the fight, Calatin's daughters persuaded
him to eat the flesh of a dog—a fatal deed, for it was one of his geasa never
to eat dog's flesh. So it was that in the fight he was slain by Lugaid,463 and
his soul appeared to the thrice fifty queens who had loved him, chanting a
mystic song of the coming of Christ and the day of doom—an interesting
example of a phantasm coincidental with death.464 This and other Christian
touches show that the Christian redactors of the saga felt tenderly towards
the old pagan hero. This is even more marked in the story in which he
appears to King Loegaire and S. Patrick, begging the former to believe in
God and the saint, and praying Patrick to "bring me with thy faithful ones
unto the land of the living."465 A similar Christianising appears in the story
of Conchobar's death, the result of his mad frenzy on hearing from his
Druid that an earthquake is the result of the shameful crucifixion of
Christ.466

In the saga, Cúchulainn appears as the ideal Celtic warrior, but, like other
ideal warriors, he is a "magnified, non-natural man," many of his deeds

being merely exaggerations of those common among barbaric folk. Even
his "distortion" or battle frenzy is but a magnifying of the wild frenzy of all
wild fighters. To the person of this ideal warrior, some of whose traits may
have been derived from traditional stories of actual heroes, Märchen and
saga episodes attached themselves. Of every ideal hero, Celtic, Greek,
Babylonian, or Polynesian, certain things are told—his phenomenal
strength as a child; his victory over enormous forces; his visits to the Other-
world; his amours with a goddess; his divine descent. These belong to the
common stock of folk-tale episodes, and accumulate round every great
name. Hence, save in the colouring given to them or the use made of them
by any race, they do not afford a key to the mythic character of the hero.
Such deeds are ascribed to Cúchulainn, as they doubtless were to the ideal
heroes of the "undivided Aryans," but though parallels may be found
between him and the Greek Heracles, they might just as easily be found in
non-Aryan regions, e.g. in Polynesia. Thus the parallels between
Cúchulainn and Heracles throw little light on the personality of the former,
though here and there in such parallels we observe a peculiarly Celtic touch.
Thus, while the Greek hero rescues Hesione from a dragon, it is from three
Fomorians that Cúchulainn rescues Devorgilla, namely, from beings to
whom actual human sacrifice was paid. Thus a Märchen formula of world-
wide existence has been moulded by Celtic religious belief and ritual
practice.467

It was inevitable that the "mythological school" should regard Cúchulainn
as a solar hero. Thus "he reaches his full development at an unusually early
age," as the sun does,468 but also as do many other heroes of saga and
Märchen who are not solar. The three colours of Cúchulainn's hair, dark
near the skin, red in the middle, golden near the top, are claimed to be a
description of the sun's rays, or of the three parts into which the Celts
divided the day.469 Elsewhere his tresses are yellow, like Prince Charlie's in
fact and in song, yet he was not a solar hero. Again, the seven pupils of his
eyes perhaps "referred to the days of the week."470 Blindness befell all
women who loved him, a reference to the difficulty of gazing at the sun.471
This is prosaic! The blindness was a compliment paid to Cúchulainn the
blind, by women who made themselves blind while talking to him, just as
Conall Cernach's mistresses squinted as he did.472 Cúchulainn's blindness
arose from his habit of sinking one eye into his head and protruding the

other—a well-known solar trait! His "distortion," during which, besides this
"blindness," blood shot upwards from his head and formed a magic mist,
and his anger caused showers of sparks to mount above him, points to dawn
or sunset,473 though the setting sun would rather suggest a hero sinking
calmly to rest than a mad giant setting out to slaughter friend and foe. The
"distortion," as already pointed out, is the exaggerated description of the
mad warrior rage, just as the fear which produced death to those who saw
him brandish his weapons, was also produced by Maori warrior methods.474
Lug, who may be a sun-god, has no such "distortion." The cooling of the
hero in three vats, the waters of which boil over, and his emergence from
them pinky red in colour, symbolise the sun sinking into the waters and
reappearing at dawn.475 Might it not describe in an exaggerated way the
refreshing bath taken by frenzied warriors, the water being supposed to
grow warm from the heat of their bodies?476 One of the hero's geasa was
not to see Manannan's horses, the waves; which, being interpreted, means
that the sun is near its death as it approaches the sea. Yet Lug, a sun-god,
rides the steed Enbarr, a personification of the waves, while Cúchulainn
himself often crossed the sea, and also lived with the sea-god's wife, Fand,
without coming to grief. Again, the magic horses which he drives, black and
grey in colour, are "symbols of day and night,"477 though it is not obvious
why a grey horse should symbolise day, which is not always grey even in
the isles of the west. Unlike a solar hero, too, Cúchulainn is most active in
winter, and rests for a brief space from slaughtering at midday—the time of
the sun's greatest activity both in summer and winter.

Another theory is that every visit of the hero to a strange land signifies a
descent to Hades, suggested by the sun sinking in the west. Scathach's
island may be Hades, but it is more probably Elysium with some traits
borrowed from the Christian idea of hell. But Emer's land, also visited by
Cúchulainn, suggests neither Hades nor Elysium. Emer calls herself ingen
rig richis garta, translated by Professor Rh[^y]s as "daughter of the coal-
faced king," i.e. she is daughter of darkness. Hence she is a dawn-maiden
and becomes the sun-hero's wife.478 There is nothing in the story to
corroborate this theory, apart from the fact that it is not clear, even to the
hypothetical primitive mind, why dawn and sun should be a divine pair.
Emer's words probably mean that she is "daughter of a king" and "a flame

of hospitality" (richis garta.)479 Cúchulainn, in visiting her, went from west
to east, contrary to the apparent course of the sun. The extravagance of the
solar theory is further seen in the hypothesis that because Cúchulainn has
other wives, the sun-god made love to as many dawn-maidens as there are
days in the year,480 like the king in Louys' romance with his 366 wives, one
for each day of the year, leap-year included.

Further examples of the solar theory need not be cited. It is enough to see in
Cúchulainn the ideal warrior, whose traits are bombastic and obscure
exaggerations of actual custom and warfare, or are borrowed from folk-tale
motifs not exclusively Celtic. Possibly he may have been a war-god, since
he is associated with Badb481 and also with Morrigan. But he has also some
traits of a culture hero. He claims superiority in wisdom, in law, in politics,
in the art of the Filid, and in Druidism, while he brings various things from
the world of the gods482. In any case the Celts paid divine honours to
heroes, living or dead,483 and Cúchulainn, god or ideal hero, may have been
the subject of a cult. This lends point to the theory of M. D'Arbois that
Cúchulainn and Conall Cernach are the equivalents of Castor and Pollux,
the Dioscuri, said by Diodorus to be worshipped among the Celts near the
Ocean.484 Cúchulainn, like Pollux, was son of a god, and was nursed,
according to some accounts, by Findchoém, mother of Conall,485 just as
Leda was mother of Castor as well as of Pollux. But, on the other hand,
Cúchulainn, unlike Pollux, was mortal. M. D'Arbois then identifies the two
pairs of heroes with certain figures on an altar at Cluny. These are Castor
and Pollux; Cernunnos and Smertullos. He equates Castor with Cernunnos,
and Pollux with Smertullos. Smertullos is Cúchulainn, and the name is
explained from an incident in the Táin, in which the hero, reproached for
his youth, puts on a false beard before attacking Morrigan in her form as an
eel. This is expressed by smérthain, "to attach", and is thus connected with
and gave rise to the name Smertullos. On the altar Smertullos is attacking
an eel or serpent. Hence Pollux is Smertullos-Cúchulainn.486 Again, the
name Cernunnos signifies "the horned one," from cernu, "horn," a word
found in Conall's epithet Cernach. But this was not given him because he
was horned, but because of the angular shape of his head, the angle (cern)
being the result of a blow.487 The epithet may mean "victorious."488 On the
whole, the theory is more ingenious than convincing, and we have no proof

that the figures of Castor and Pollux on the altar were duplicates of the
Celtic pair. Cernunnos was an underworld god, and Conall has no trace of
such a character.

M. D'Arbois also traces the saga in Gaul in the fact that on the menhir of
Kervadel Mercury is figured with a child, Mercury, in his opinion, being
Lug, and the child Cúchulainn.489 On another altar are depicted (1) a
woodman, Esus, cutting down a tree, and (2) a bull on which are perched
three birds—Tarvos Trigaranos. The two subjects, as M. Reinach points out,
are combined on another altar at Trèves, on which a woodman is cutting
down a tree in which are perched three birds, while a bull's head appears in
the branches.490 These represent, according to M. D'Arbois, incidents of the
Táin—the cutting down of trees by Cúchulainn and placing them in the way
of his enemies, and the warning of the bull by Morrigan in the bird form
which she shared with her sisters Badb and Macha.491 Why, then, is
Cúchulainn called Esus? "Esus" comes from a root which gives words
meaning "rapid motion," "anger," "strength"—all shown by the hero.492 The
altars were found in the land of the Belgic Treveri, and some Belgic tribes
may have passed into Britain and Ireland carrying the Esus-Cúchulainn
legend there in the second century B.C., e.g. the Setantii, dwelling by the
Mersey, and bearing a name similar to that of the hero in his childhood—
Setanta (Setantios) as well as the Menapii and Brigantes, located in Ireland
by Ptolemy.493 In other words, the divine Esus, with his surname
Smertullos, was called in Ireland Setanta, after the Setantii, and at a later
date, Cúchulainn. The princely name Donnotaurus resembles Dond tarb, the
"Brown Bull" of the saga, and also suggests its presence in Gaul, while the
name [Greek: dêiotaros], perhaps the equivalent of De[^u]io-taruos,
"Divine Bull," is found in Galatia.494 Thus the main elements of the saga
may have been known to the continental Celts before it was localised in
Ireland,495 and, it may be added, if it was brought there by Gallo-British
tribes, this might account for the greater popularity of the native, possibly
pre-Celtic, Fionn saga among the folk, as well as for the finer literary
quality of the Cúchulainn saga. But the identification of Esus with
Cúchulainn rests on slight grounds; the names Esus and Smertullos are not
found in Ireland, and the Gaulish Esus, worshipped with human sacrifice,
has little affinity with the hero, unless his deeds of slaughter are reminiscent

of such rites. It is possible, however, that the episode of the Táin came from
a myth explaining ritual acts. This myth may have been the subject of the
bas-reliefs, carried to Ireland, and there worked into the saga.

The folk-versions of the saga, though resembling the literary versions, are
less elaborate and generally wilder, and perhaps represent its primitive
form.496 The greatest differences are found in versions of the Táin and of
Cúchulainn's death, which, separate in the saga, are parts of one folk-tale,
the death occurring during the fighting over the bull. The bull is his
property, and Medb sends Garbh mac Stairn to take it from him. He
pretends to be a child, goes to bed, and tricks Garbh, who goes off to get the
bull. Cúchulainn arrives before him and personates the herdsman. Each
seizes a horn, and the bull is torn in two.497 Does this represent the
primitive form of the Táin, and, further, were the bull and Cúchulainn once
one and the same—a bull, the incarnation of a god or vegetation spirit,
being later made anthropomorphic—a hero-god whose property or symbol
was a bull? Instances of this process are not unknown among the Celts.498
In India, Indra was a bull and a divine youth, in Greece there was the bull-
Dionysos, and among the Celts the name of the divine bull was borne by
kings.499 In the saga Morrigan is friendly to the bull, but fights for Medb;
but she is now friendly, now hostile to Cúchulainn, finally, however, trying
to avert his doom. If he had once been the bull, her friendliness would not
be quite forgotten, once he became human and separate from the bull. When
she first met Cúchulainn she had a cow on whom the Brown Bull was to
beget a calf, and she told the hero that "So long as the calf which is in this
cow's body is a yearling, it is up to that time that thou art in life; and it is
this that will lead to the Táin."500 This suggests that the hero was to die in
the battle, but it shows that the Brown Bull's calf is bound up his life. The
Bull was a reincarnation of a divine swineherd, and if, as in the case of
Cúchulainn, "his rebirth could only be of himself,"501 the calf was simply a
duplicate of the bull, and, as it was bound up with the hero's life, bull and
hero may well have been one. The life or soul was in the calf, and, as in all
such cases, the owner of the soul and that in which it is hidden are
practically identical. Cúchulainn's "distortion" might then be explained as
representing the bull's fury in fight, and the folk-tales would be popular
forms of an old myth explaining ritual in which a bull, the incarnation of a
tree or vegetation spirit, was slain, and the sacred tree cut down and

consumed, as in Celtic agricultural ritual. This would be the myth
represented on the bas-reliefs, and in the ritual the bull would be slain, rent,
and eaten by his worshippers. Why, then, should Cúchulainn rend the bull?
In the later stages of such rites the animal was slain, not so much as a divine
incarnation as a sacrifice to the god once incarnated in him. And when a
god was thus separated from his animal form, myths often arose telling how
he himself had slain the animal.502 In the case of Cúchulainn and the bull,
the god represented by the bull became separate from it, became
anthropomorphic, and in that form was associated with or actually was the
hero Cúchulainn. Bull sacrifices were common among the Celts with whom
the bull had been a divine animal.503 Possibly a further echo of this myth
and ritual is to be found in the folk-belief that S. Martin was cut up and
eaten in the form of an ox—the god incarnate in the animal being associated
with a saint.504 Thus the literary versions of the Táin, departing from the
hypothetical primitive versions, kept the bull as the central figure, but
introduced a rival bull, and described its death differently, while both bulls
are said to be reincarnations of divine swine-herds.505 The idea of a fight
for a bull is borrowed from actual custom, and thus the old form of the story
was further distorted.

The Cúchulainn saga is more coherent than the Fionn saga, because it
possesses one central incident. The "canon" of the saga was closed at an
early date, while that of Fionn has practically never been closed, mainly
because it has been more a saga of the folk than that of Cúchulainn. In some
respects the two may have been rivals, for if the Cúchulainn saga was
introduced by conquerors from Britain or Gaul, it would not be looked on
with favour by the folk. Or if it is the saga of Ulster as opposed to that of
Leinster, rivalry would again ensue. The Fionn saga lives more in the hearts
of the people, though it sometimes borrows from the other. This borrowing,
however, is less than some critics, e.g. Zimmer, maintain. Many of the
likenesses are the result of the fact that wherever a hero exists a common
stock of incidents becomes his. Hence there is much similarity in all sagas
wherever found.
Footnote 453:(return)

IT i. 134; Nutt-Meyer, ii. 38 f.; Windisch, Táin, 342; L. Duvau, "La Legende de
la Conception de Cúchulainn," RC ix. 1 f.

Footnote 454:(return)

Windisch, Táin, 118 f. For a similar reason Finnchad was called Cú Cerca, "the
hound of Cerc" (IT iii. 377).

Footnote 455:(return)

For the boyish exploits, see Windisch, Táin, 106 f.

Footnote 456:(return)

RC vii. 225; Windisch, Táin, 20. Macha is a granddaughter of Ler, but elsewhere
she is called Mider's daughter (RC xvi. 46).

Footnote 457:(return)

Rh[^y]s, CFL ii. 654; Westermarck, Hist. of Human Marriage, ch. 2.

Footnote 458:(return)

Miss Hull, Folk-Lore, xii. 60, citing instances from Jevons, Hist. of Religion, 65.

Footnote 459:(return)

Windisch, IT ii. 239.

Footnote 460:(return)

Windisch, 184, 312, 330; cf. IT iii. 355; Miss Hull, 164 f.; Rh[^y]s, HL 468.

Footnote 461:(return)

LL 119a; RC iii. 175.

Footnote 462:(return)

Windisch, 342.

Footnote 463:(return)

RC iii. 175 f.

Footnote 464:(return)

Ibid. 185.

Footnote 465:(return)

Crowe, Jour. Kilkenny Arch. Soc. 1870-1871, 371 f.

Footnote 466:(return)

LL 79a; O'Curry, MS. Mat, 640.

Footnote 467:(return)

LL 125a. See my Childhood of fiction, ch. 14.

Footnote 468:(return)

Miss Hull, lxxvi.

Footnote 469:(return)

"Da Derga's Hostel," RC xxii. 283; Rh[^y]s, HL 438.

Footnote 470:(return)

LL 68a; Rh[^y]s, 437; Ingcel the one-eyed has also many pupils (RC xxii. 58).

Footnote 471:(return)

Miss Hull, lxiii.

Footnote 472:(return)

RC viii. 49.

Footnote 473:(return)

LL 77b; Miss Hull, lxii.

Footnote 474:(return)

Other Celtic heroes undergo this distortion, which resembles the Scandinavian
warrior rage followed by languor, as in the case of Cúchulainn.

Footnote 475:(return)

Miss Hull, p. lxvi.

Footnote 476:(return)

Irish saints, standing neck deep in freezing water, made it hot.

Footnote 477:(return)

IT i. 268; D'Arbois, v. 103; Miss Hull, lxvi.

Footnote 478:(return)

HL 448.

Footnote 479:(return)

See Meyer, RC xi. 435; Windisch, IT i. 589, 740. Though richis means
"charcoal," it is also glossed "flame," hence it could only be glowing charcoal,

without any idea of darkness.

Footnote 480:(return)

HL 458.

Footnote 481:(return)

IT i. 107.

Footnote 482:(return)

Arch. Rev. i. 1 f.; IT i. 213; see p. 381, infra.

Footnote 483:(return)

See p. 164, infra.

Footnote 484:(return)

Diod. Siculus, iv. 56.

Footnote 485:(return)

IT iii. 393.

Footnote 486:(return)

Les Celtes, 58 f. Formerly M. D'Arbois identified Smertullos with Lug, ii. 217;
Holder, i. 46, 262. For the incident of the beard, see Windisch, Táin, 308.

Footnote 487:(return)

IT iii. 395.

Footnote 488:(return)

IT i. 420.

Footnote 489:(return)

RC xxvii. 319 f.

Footnote 490:(return)

RC xviii. 256.

Footnote 491:(return)

Les Celtes, 63; RC xix. 246.

Footnote 492:(return)

D'Arbois, RC xx. 89.

Footnote 493:(return)

D'Arbois, RC xxvii. 321; Les Celtes, 65.

Footnote 494:(return)

Les Celtes, 49; Cæsar, vi. 14.

Footnote 495:(return)

In contradiction to this, M. D'Arbois elsewhere thinks that Druids from Britain
may have taught the Cúchulainn legend in Gaul (RC xxvii. 319).

Footnote 496:(return)

See versions in Book of the Dean of Lismore; CM xiii.; Campbell, The Fians, 6 f.

Footnote 497:(return)

CM xiii. 327, 514. The same story is told of Fionn, ibid. 512. See also ballad
versions in Campbell, LF 3 f.

Footnote 498:(return)

See p. 212, infra.

Footnote 499:(return)

A Galatian king was called Brogitaros, probably a form of Brogitaruos, "bull of
the province," a title borne by Conchobar, tarb in chóicid (IT i. 72). This with the
epithets applied to heroes in the Triads, "bull-phantom," "prince bull of combat"
(Loth, ii. 232, 243), may be an appellative denoting great strength.

Footnote 500:(return)

IT ii. 241 f.; D'Arbois, Les Druides, 168.

Footnote 501:(return)

Miss Hull, 58.

Footnote 502:(return)

See p. 212, infra.

Footnote 503:(return)

See p. 208, infra.

Footnote 504:(return)

Fitzgerald, RC vi. 254.

Footnote 505:(return)

See p. 243, infra.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE FIONN SAGA.

The most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death of Fionn's
father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson Oscar, his nephew
Diarmaid with his ball-seire, or "beauty-spot," which no woman could
resist; Fergus famed for wisdom and eloquence; Caoilte mac Ronan, the
swift; Conan, the comic character of the saga; Goll mac Morna, the slayer
of Cumal, but later the devoted friend of Fionn, besides a host of less
important personages. Their doings, like those of the heroes of saga and
epos everywhere, are mainly hunting, fighting, and love-making. They
embody much of the Celtic character—vivacity, valour, kindness,
tenderness, as well as boastfulness and fiery temper. Though dating from
pagan times, the saga throws little light upon pagan beliefs, but reveals
much concerning the manners of the period. Here, as always in early
Celtdom, woman is more than a mere chattel, and occupies a comparatively
high place. The various parts of the saga, like those of the Finnish Kalevala,
always existed separately, never as one complete epos, though always
bearing a certain relation to each other. Lonnrot, in Finland, was able, by
adding a few connecting links of his own, to give unity to the Kalevala, and
had MacPherson been content to do this for the Fionn saga, instead of
inventing, transforming, and serving up the whole in the manner of the
sentimental eighteenth century, what a boon would he have conferred on
Celtic literature. The various parts of the saga belong to different centuries
and come from different authors, all, however, imbued with the spirit of the
Fionn tradition.

A date cannot be given to the beginnings of the saga, and additions have
been made to it even down to the eighteenth century, Michael Comyn's
poem of Oisin in Tir na n-Og being as genuine a part of it as any of the
earlier pieces. Its contents are in part written, but much more oral. Much of
it is in prose, and there is a large poetic literature of the ballad kind, as well
as Märchen of the universal stock made purely Celtic, with Fionn and the

rest of the heroic band as protagonists. The saga embodies Celtic ideals and
hopes; it was the literature of the Celtic folk on which was spent all the
riches of the Celtic imagination; a world of dream and fancy into which
they could enter at all times and disport themselves. Yet, in spite of its
immense variety, the saga preserves a certain unity, and it is provided with a
definite framework, recounting the origin of the heroes, the great events in
which they were concerned, their deaths or final appearances, and the
breaking up of the Fionn band.

The historic view of the Fians is taken by the annalists, by Keating,
O'Curry, Dr. Joyce, and Dr. Douglas Hyde.506 According to this view, they
were a species of militia maintained by the Irish kings for the support of the
throne and the defence of the country. From Samhain to Beltane they were
quartered on the people, and from Beltane to Samhain they lived by
hunting. How far the people welcomed this billeting, we are not told. Their
method of cooking the game which they hunted was one well known to all
primitive peoples. Holes were dug in the ground; in them red-hot stones
were placed, and on the stones was laid venison wrapped in sedge. All was
then covered over, and in due time the meat was done to a turn. Meanwhile
the heroes engaged in an elaborate toilette before sitting down to eat. Their
beds were composed of alternate layers of brushwood, moss, and rushes.
The Fians were divided into Catha of three thousand men, each with its
commander, and officers to each hundred, each fifty, and each nine, a
system not unlike that of the ancient Peruvians. Each candidate for
admission to the band had to undergo the most trying ordeals, rivalling in
severity those of the American Indians, and not improbably genuine though
exaggerated reminiscences of actual tests of endurance and agility. Once
admitted he had to observe certain geasa or "tabus," e.g. not to choose his
wife for her dowry like other Celts, but solely for her good manners, not to
offer violence to a woman, not to flee when attacked before less than nine
warriors, and the like.

All this may represent some genuine tradition with respect to a warrior
band, with many exaggerations in details and numbers. Some of its
outstanding heroes may have had names derived from or corresponding to
those of the heroes of an existing saga. But as time went on they became as
unhistorical as their ideal prototypes; round their names crystallised floating

myths and tales; things which had been told of the saga heroes were told of
them; their names were given to the personages of existing folk-tales. This
might explain the great divergence between the "historical" and the
romantic aspects of the saga as it now exists. Yet we cannot fail to see that
what is claimed as historical is full of exaggeration, and, in spite of the
pleading of Dr. Hyde and other patriots, little historic fact can be found in it.
Even if this exists, it is the least important part of the saga. What is
important is that part—nine-tenths of the whole—which "is not true
because it cannot be true." It belongs to the region of the supernatural and
the unreal. But personages, nine-tenths of whose actions belong to this
region, must bear the same character themselves, and for that reason are all
the more interesting, especially when we remember that the Celts firmly
believed in them and in their exploits. A Fionn myth arose as all myths do,
increasing as time went on, and the historical nucleus, if it ever existed, was
swamped and lost. Throughout the saga the Fians are more than mere
mortals, even in those very parts which are claimed as historical. They are
giants; their story "bristles with the supernatural"; they are the ideal figures
of Celtic legend throwing their gigantic shadows upon the dim and misty
background of the past. We must therefore be content to assume that
whether personages called Fionn, Oisin, Diarmaid, or Conan, ever existed,
what we know of them now is purely mythical.

Bearing in mind that they are the cherished heroes of popular fancy in
Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, we have now to inquire whether they
were Celtic in origin. We have seen that the Celts were a conquering people
in Ireland, bringing with them their own religion and mythology, their own
sagas and tales reflected now in the mythological and Cúchulainn cycles,
which found a local habitation in Ireland. Cúchulainn was the hero of a saga
which flourished more among the aristocratic and lettered classes than
among the folk, and there are few popular tales about him. But it is among
the folk that the Fionn saga has always been popular, and for every peasant
who could tell a story of Cúchulainn a thousand could tell one of Fionn.
Conquerors often adopt beliefs, traditions, and customs of the aboriginal
folk, after hostilities have ceased, and if the pre-Celtic people had a popular
hero and a saga concerning him, it is possible that in time it was accepted
by the Celts or by the lower classes among them. But in the process it must
have been completely Celticised, like the aborigines themselves; to its

heroes were given Celtic names, or they may have been associated with
existing Celtic personages like Cumal, and the whole saga was in time
adapted to the conceptions and legendary history of the Celts. Thus we
might account for the fact that it has so largely remained without admixture
with the mythological and Cúchulainn cycles, though its heroes are brought
into relation with the older gods. Thus also we might account for its
popularity as compared with the Cúchulainn saga among the peasantry in
whose veins must flow so much of the aboriginal blood both in Ireland and
the Highlands. In other words, it was the saga of a non-Celtic people
occupying both Ireland and Scotland. If Celts from Western Europe
occupied the west of Scotland at an early date, they may have been so few
in number that their own saga or sagas died out. Or if the Celtic occupation
of the West Highlands originated first from Ireland, the Irish may have been
unable to impose their Cúchulainn saga there, or if they themselves had
already adopted the Fionn saga and found it again in the Highlands, they
would but be the more attached to what was already localised there. This
would cut the ground from the theory that the Fionn saga was brought to
Scotland from Ireland, and it would account for its popularity in the
Highlands, as well as for the fact that many Fionn stories are attached to
Highland as well as to Irish localities, while many place-names in both
countries have a Fian origin. Finally, the theory would explain the existence
of so many Märchen about Fionn and his men, so few about Cúchulainn.

Returning to the theory of the historic aspect of the Fians, it should be noted
that, while, when seen through the eyes of the annalists, the saga belongs to
a definite historical period, when viewed by itself it belongs to a mythic
age, and though the Fians are regarded as champions of Ireland, their foes
are usually of a supernatural kind, and they themselves move in a magic
atmosphere. They are also brought into connection with the unhistoric
Tuatha Dé Danann; they fight with them or for them; they have amours
with or wed their women; and some of the gods even become members of
the Fian band. Diarmaid was the darling of the gods Oengus and Manannan,
and in his direst straits was assisted by the former. In all this we are in the
wonderland of myth, not the terra firma of history. There is a certain
resemblance between the Cúchulainn and Fionn sagas, but no more than
that which obtains between all sagas everywhere. Both contain similar
incidents, but these are the stock episodes of universal saga belief, fitted to

the personages of individual sagas. Hence we need not suppose with
Professor Windisch that the mythic incidents of the Fionn saga are derived
from the Cúchulainn cycle.

The personages against whom Fionn and his men fight show the mythic
nature of the saga. As champions of Leinster they fight the men of Ulster
and Connaught, but they also war against oversea invaders—the
Lochlanners. While Lochlann may mean any land beyond the sea, like the
Welsh Llychlyn it probably meant "the fabulous land beneath the lakes or
the waves of the sea," or simply the abode of hostile, supernatural beings.
Lochlanners would thus be counterparts of the Fomorians, and the conflicts
of the Fians with them would reflect old myths. But with the Norse
invasions, the Norsemen became the true Lochlanners, against whom Fionn
and his men fight as Charlemagne fought Muhammadans—a sheer
impossibility. Professor Zimmer, however, supposes that the Fionn saga
took shape during the Norse occupation from the ninth century onwards.
Fionn is half Norse, half Irish, and equivalent to Caittil Find, who
commanded the apostate Irish in the ninth century, while Oisin and Oscar
are the Norse Asvin and Asgeirr. But it is difficult to understand why one
who was half a Norseman should become the chosen hero of the Celts in
the very age in which Norsemen were their bitter enemies, and why Fionn,
if of Norse origin, fights against Lochlanners, i.e. Norsemen. It may also be
inquired why the borrowing should have affected the saga only, not the
myths of the gods. No other Celtic scholar has given the slightest support to
this brilliant but audacious theory. On the other hand, if the saga has Norse
affinities, and if it is, in origin, pre-Celtic, these may be sought in an earlier
connection of Ireland with Scandinavia in the early Bronze Age. Ireland had
a flourishing civilisation then, and exported beautiful gold ornaments to
Scandinavia, where they are still found in Bronze Age deposits.507 This
flourishing civilisation was overwhelmed by the invasion of the Celtic
barbarians. But if the Scandinavians borrowed gold and artistic decorations
from Ireland, and if the Fionn saga or part of it was already in existence,
why should they not have borrowed some of its incidents, or why, on the
other hand, should not some episodes have found their way from the north
to Ireland? We should also consider, however, that similar incidents may
have been evolved in both countries on similar lines and quite
independently.

The various contents of the saga can only be alluded to in the briefest
manner. Fionn's birth-story belongs to the well-known "Expulsion and
Return" formula, applied to so many heroes of saga and folk-tale, but highly
elaborated in his case at the hands of the annalists. Thus his father Cumal,
uncle of Conn the Hundred Fighter, 122-157 A.D., wished to wed Muirne,
daughter of Conn's chief druid, Tadg. Tadg refused, knowing that through
this marriage he would lose his ancestral seat. Cumal seized Muirne and
married her, and the king, on Tadg's appeal, sent an army against him.
Cumal was slain; Muirne fled to his sister, and gave birth to Demni,
afterwards known as Fionn. Perhaps in accordance with old matriarchal
usage, Fionn's descent through his mother is emphasised, while he is related
to the ancient gods, Tadg being son of Nuada. This at once points to the
mythical aspect of the saga. Cumal may be identical with the god Camulos.
In a short time, Fionn, now a marauder and an outlaw, appeared at Conn's
Court, and that same night slew one of the Tuatha Déa, who came yearly
and destroyed the palace. For this he received his rightful heritage—the
leadership of the Fians, formerly commanded by Cumal.508 Another
incident of Fionn's youth tells how he obtained his "thumb of knowledge."
The eating of certain "salmon of knowledge" was believed to give
inspiration, an idea perhaps derived from earlier totemistic beliefs. The bard
Finnéces, having caught one of the coveted salmon, set his pupil Fionn to
cook it, forbidding him to taste it. But as he was turning the fish Fionn burnt
his thumb and thrust it into his mouth, thus receiving the gift of inspiration.
Hereafter he had only to suck his thumb in order to obtain secret
information.509 In another story the inspiration is already in his thumb, as
Samson's strength was in his hair, but the power is also partly in his tooth,
under which, after ritual preparation, he has to place his thumb and chew
it.510

Fionn had many wives and sweethearts, one of them, Saar, being mother of
Oisin. Saar was turned into a fawn by a Druid, and fled from Fionn's house.
Long after he found a beast-child in the forest and recognised him as his
son. He nourished him until his beast nature disappeared, and called him
Oisin, "little fawn." Round this birth legend many stories sprang up—a sure
sign of its popularity.511 Oisin's fame as a poet far excelled that of Fionn,
and he became the ideal bard of the Gaels.

By far the most passionate and tragic story of the saga is that of Diarmaid
and Grainne, to whom Fionn was betrothed. Grainne put geasa upon
Diarmaid to elope with her, and these he could not break. They fled, and for
many days were pursued by Fionn, who at last overtook them, but was
forced by the Fians to pardon the beloved hero. Meanwhile Fionn waited
for his revenge. Knowing that it was one of Diarmaid's geasa never to hunt
a wild boar, he invited him to the chase of the boar of Gulban. Diarmaid
slew it, and Fionn then bade him measure its length with his foot. A bristle
pierced his heel, and he fell down in agony, beseeching Fionn to bring him
water in his hand, for if he did this he would heal him. In spite of repeated
appeals, Fionn, after bringing the water, let it drip from his hands.
Diarmaid's brave soul passed away, and on Fionn's character this dire blot
was fixed for ever.512

Other tales relate how several of the Fians were spirited away to the Land
beyond the Seas, how they were rescued, how Diarmaid went to Land under
Waves, and how Fionn and his men were entrapped in a Fairy Palace. Of
greater importance are those which tell the end of the Fian band. This,
according to the annalists, was the result of their exactions and demands.
Fionn was told by his wife, a wise woman, never to drink out of a horn, but
coming one day thirsty to a well, he forgot this tabu, and so brought the end
near. He encountered the sons of Uirgrenn, whom he had slain, and in the
fight with them he fell.513 Soon after were fought several battles,
culminating in that of Gabhra in which all but a few Fians perished. Among
the survivors were Oisin and Caoilte, who lingered on until the coming of
S. Patrick. Caoilte remained on earth, but Oisin, whose mother was of the
síd folk, went to fairyland for a time, ultimately returning and joining S.
Patrick's company.514 But a different version is given in the eighteenth
century poem of Michael Comyn, undoubtedly based on popular tales.
Oisin met the Queen of Tir na n-Og and went with her to fairyland, where
time passed as a dream until one day he stood on a stone against which she
had warned him. He saw his native land and was filled with home-sickness.
The queen tried to dissuade him, but in vain. Then she gave him a horse,
warning him not to set foot on Irish soil. He came to Ireland; and found it
all changed. Some puny people were trying in vain to raise a great stone,
and begged the huge stranger to help them. He sprang from his horse and
flung the stone from its resting-place. But when he turned, his horse was

gone, and he had become a decrepit old man. Soon after he met S. Patrick
and related the tale to him.

Of most of the tales preserved in twelfth to fifteenth century MSS. it may be
said that in essence they come down to us from a remote antiquity, like stars
pulsing their clear light out of the hidden depths of space. Many of them
exist as folk-tales, often wild and weird in form, while some folk-tales have
no literary parallels. Some are Märchen with members of the Fian band as
heroes, and of these there are many European parallels. But it is not
unlikely that, as in the case of the Cúchulainn cycle, the folk versions may
be truer to the original forms of the saga than the rounded and polished
literary versions. Whatever the Fians were in origin—gods, mythic heroes,
or actual personages—it is probable that a short Heldensage was formed in
early times. This slowly expanded, new tales were added, and existing
Märchen formulæ were freely made use of by making their heroes the
heroes of the saga. Then came the time when many of the tales were written
down, while later they were adapted to a scheme of Irish history, the heroes
becoming warriors of a definite historic period, or perhaps connected with
such warriors. But these heroes belonged to a timeless world, whose
margins are "the shore of old romance," and it was as if they, who were not
for an age but for all time, scorned to become the puppets of the page of
history.

The earliest evidence of the attitude of the ecclesiastical world to these
heroes is found in the Agallamh na Senorach, or "Colloquy of the
Ancients."515 This may have been composed in the thirteenth century, and
its author knew scores of Fionn legends. Making use of the tradition that
Caoilte and Oisin had met S. Patrick, he makes Caoilte relate many of the
tales, usually in connection with some place-name of Fian origin. The saint
and his followers are amazed at the huge stature of the Fians, but Patrick
asperges them with holy water, and hosts of demons flee from them. At
each tale which Caoilte tells, the saint says, "Success and benediction,
Caoilte. All this is to us a recreation of spirit and of mind, were it only not a
destruction of devotion and a dereliction of prayer." But presently his
guardian angel appears, and bids him not only listen to the tales but cause
them to be written down. He and his attendant clerics now lend a willing ear
to the recital and encourage the narrator with their applause. Finally,

baptism is administered to Caoilte and his men, and by Patrick's
intercessions Caoilte's relations and Fionn himself are brought out of hell.
In this work the representatives of paganism are shown to be on terms of
friendliness with the representatives of Christianity.

But in Highland ballads collected in the sixteenth century by the Dean of
Lismore, as well as in Irish ballads found in MSS. dating from the
seventeenth century onwards, the saint is a sour and intolerant cleric, and
the Fians are equally intolerant and blasphemous pagans. There is no
attempt at compromise; the saint rejoices that the Fian band are in hell, and
Oisin throws contempt on the God of the shaven priests. But sometimes this
contempt is mingled with humour and pathos. Were the heroes of Oisin's
band now alive, scant work would be made of the monks' bells, books, and
psalm-singing. It is true that the saint gives the weary old man hospitality,
but Oisin's eyes are blinded with tears as he thinks of the departed glories of
the Fians, and his ears are tormented "by jangling bells, droning psalms,
and howling clerics." These ballads probably represent one main aspect of
the attitude of the Church to Celtic paganism. How, then, did the more
generous Colloquy come into being? We must note first that some of the
ballads have a milder tone. Oisin is urged to accept the faith, and he prays
for salvation. Probably these represent the beginning of a reaction in favour
of the old heroes, dating from a time when the faith was well established.
There was no danger of a pagan revival, and, provided the Fians were
Christianised, it might be legitimate to represent them as heroic and noble.
The Colloquy would represent the high-water mark of this reaction among
the lettered classes, for among the folk, to judge by popular tales, the Fians
had never been regarded in other than a favourable light. The Colloquy re-
established the dignity of the Fian band in the eyes of official Christianity.
They are baptized or released from hell, and in their own nature they are
virtuous and follow lofty ideals. "Who or what was it that maintained you in
life?" asks Patrick. And Caoilte gives the noble reply, "Truth that was in our
hearts, and strength in our arms, and fulfilment in our tongues." Patrick says
of Fionn: "He was a king, a seer, a poet, a lord with a manifold and great
train; our magician, our knowledgeable one, our soothsayer; all whatsoever
he said was sweet with him. Excessive, perchance, as ye deem my
testimony of Fionn, although ye hold that which I say to be overstrained,
nevertheless, and by the King that is above me, he was three times better

still." Not only so, but Caoilte maintains that Fionn and his men were aware
of the existence of the true God. They possessed the anima naturaliter
Christiana. The growing appreciation of a wider outlook on life, and
possibly acquaintance with the romances of chivalry, made the composition
of the Colloquy possible, but, again, it may represent a more generous
conception of paganism existing from the time of the first encounter of
Christianity with it in Ireland.

The strife of creeds in Ireland, the old order changing, giving place to new,
had evidently impressed itself on the minds of Celtic poets and romancers.
It suggested itself to them as providing an excellent "situation"; hence we
constantly hear of the meeting of gods, demigods, or heroes with the saints
of the new era. Frequently they bow before the Cross, they are baptized and
receive the Christian verity, as in the Colloquy and in some documents of
the Cúchulainn cycle. Probably no other European folk-literature so takes
advantage of just this situation, this meeting of creeds, one old and ready to
vanish away, the other with all the buoyant freshness of youth.

Was MacPherson's a genuine Celtic epic unearthed by him and by no one
else? No mortal eye save his has ever seen the original, but no one who
knows anything of the contents of the saga can deny that much of his work
is based on materials collected by him. He knew some of the tales and
ballads current among the folk, possibly also some of the Irish MS.
versions. He saw that there was a certain unity among them, and he saw that
it was possible to make it more evident still. He fitted the floating incidents
into an epic framework, adding, inventing, altering, and moulding the
whole into an English style of his own. Later he seems to have translated
the whole into Gaelic. He gave his version to the world, and found himself
famous, but he gave it as the genuine translation of a genuine Celtic epic.
Here was his craft; here he was the "charlatan of genius." His genius lay in
producing an epic which people were willing to read, and in making them
believe it to be not his work but that of the Celtic heroic age. Any one can
write an epic, but few can write one which thousands will read, which men
like Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon, Byron, and Coleridge will admire
and love, and which will, as it were, crystallise the aspirations of an age
weary with classical formalism. MacPherson introduced his readers to a
new world of heroic deeds, romantic adventure, deathless love, exquisite

sentiments sentimentally expressed. He changed the rough warriors and
beautiful but somewhat unabashed heroines of the saga into sentimental
personages, who suited the taste of an age poised between the bewigged and
powdered formalism of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of new
ideals which was to follow. His Ossian is a cross between Pope's Homer
and Byron's Childe Harold. His heroes and heroines are not on their native
heath, and are uncertain whether to mince and strut with Pope or to follow
nature with Rousseau's noble savages and Saint Pierre's Paul and Virginia.
The time has gone when it was heresy to cast doubt upon the genuineness
of MacPherson's epic, but if any one is still doubtful, let him read it and
then turn to the existing versions, ballads, and tales. He will find himself in
a totally different atmosphere, and will recognise in the latter the true epic
note—the warrior's rage and the warrior's generosity, dire cruelty yet
infinite tenderness, wild lust yet also true love, a world of magic
supernaturalism, but an exact copy of things as they were in that far-off age.
The barbarism of the time is in these old tales—deeds which make one
shiver, customs regarding the relations of the sexes now found only among
savages, social and domestic arrangements which are somewhat lurid and
disgusting. And yet, withal, the note of bravery, of passion, of authentic life
is there; we are held in the grip of genuine manhood and womanhood.
MacPherson gives a picture of the Ossianic age as he conceived it, an age of
Celtic history that "never was on sea or land." Even his ghosts are un-
Celtic, misty and unsubstantial phantasms, unlike the embodied revenants
of the saga which are in agreement with the Celtic belief that the soul
assumed a body in the other world. MacPherson makes Fionn invariably
successful, but in the saga tales he is often defeated. He mingles the
Cúchulainn and Ossianic cycles, but these, save in a few casual instances,
are quite distinct in the old literature. Yet had not his poem been so great as
it is, though so un-Celtic, it could not have influenced all European
literature. But those who care for genuine Celtic literature, the product of a
people who loved nature, romance, doughty deeds, the beauty of the world,
the music of the sea and the birds, the mountains, valour in men, beauty in
women, will find all these in the saga, whether in its literary or its popular
forms. And through it all sounds the undertone of Celtic pathos and
melancholy, the distant echo

"Of old unhappy, far-off things

And battles long ago."
Footnote 506:(return)

See Joyce, OCR 447.

Footnote 507:(return)

Montelius, Les Temps Préhistoriques, 57, 151; Reinach, RC xxi. 8.

Footnote 508:(return)

The popular versions of this early part of the saga differ much in detail, but
follow the main outlines in much the same way. See Curtin, HTI 204; Campbell,
LF 33 f.; WHT iii. 348.

Footnote 509:(return)

In a widespread group of tales supernatural knowledge is obtained by eating part
of some animal, usually a certain snake. In many of these tales the food is eaten
by another person than he who obtained it, as in the case of Fionn. Cf. the Welsh
story of Gwion, p. 116, and the Scandinavian of Sigurd, and other parallels in
Miss Cox, Cinderella, 496; Frazer, Arch. Rev. i. 172 f. The story is thus a folk-
tale formula applied to Fionn, doubtless because it harmonised with Celtic or
pre-Celtic totemistic ideas. But it is based on ancient ideas regarding the
supernatural knowledge possessed by reptiles or fish, and among American
Indians, Maoris, Solomon Islanders, and others there are figured representations
of a man holding such an animal, its tongue being attached to his tongue. He is a
shaman, and American Indians believe that his inspiration comes from the
tongue of a mysterious river otter, caught by him. See Dall, Bureau of Ethnol.
3rd report; and Miss Buckland, Jour. Anth. Inst. xxii. 29.

Footnote 510:(return)

TOS iv.; O'Curry, MS. Mat. 396; Joyce, OCR 194, 339.

Footnote 511:(return)

For ballad versions see Campbell, LF 198.

Footnote 512:(return)

Numerous ballad versions are given in Campbell LF 152 f. The tale is localised
in various parts of Ireland and the Highlands, many dolmens in Ireland being
known as Diarmaid and Grainne's beds.

Footnote 513:(return)

For an account differing from this annalistic version, see ZCP i. 465.

Footnote 514:(return)

O'Grady, ii. 102. This, on the whole, agrees with the Highland ballad version, LF
198.

Footnote 515:(return)

IT iv.; O'Grady, Silva Gad. text and translation.

CHAPTER IX.
GODS AND MEN.

Though man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are unlike as
well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes
whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been gods.
One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature. No house could contain
Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had
rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."516 Even the Fians are giants, and the
skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have also the
attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to
disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a
magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise,
sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can also transform
themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The animal names of
certain divinities show that they had once been animals pure and simple, but
when they became anthropomorphic, myths would arise telling how they
had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in part, accounts for
these transformation myths. The gods are also immortal, though in myth we
hear of their deaths. The Tuatha Dé Danann are "unfading," their "duration
is perennial."517 This immortality is sometimes an inherent quality;
sometimes it is the result of eating immortal food—Manannan's swine,
Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal ale, or the apples of Elysium. The
stories telling of the deaths of the gods in the annalists may be based on old
myths in which they were said to die, these myths being connected with
ritual acts in which the human representatives of gods were slain. Such rites
were an inherent part of Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of gods like
Osiris or Adonis, based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was
connected with elaborate myths telling of their death and revival.
Something akin to this may have occurred among the Celts.

The divinities often united with mortals. Goddesses sought the love of
heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the gods, and gods had

amours with the daughters of men.518 Frequently the heroes of the sagas are
children of a god or goddess and a mortal,519 and this divine parentage was
firmly believed in by the Celts, since personal names formed of a divine
name and -genos or -gnatos, "born of," "son of," are found in inscriptions
over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic documents—Boduogenos,
Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these names were believed to be of
divine descent on one side. Spirits of nature or the elements of nature
personified might also be parents of mortals, as a name like Morgen, from
Morigenos, "Son of the Sea," and many others suggest. For this and for
other reasons the gods frequently interfere in human affairs, assisting their
children or their favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the
heroes of the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as when
Morrigan besought healing from Cúchulainn.

As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who bore
divine names were probably believed to be representatives or incarnations
of gods. Perhaps this explains why a chief of the Boii called himself a god
and was revered after his death, and why the Gauls so readily accepted the
divinity of Augustus. Irish kings bear divine names, and of these Nuada
occurs frequently, one king, Irél Fáith, being identified with Nuada
Airgetlam, while in one text nuadat is glossed in ríg, "of the king," as if
Nuada had come to be a title meaning "king." Welsh kings bear the name
Nudd (Nodons), and both the actual and the mythic leader Brennus took
their name from the god Bran. King Conchobar is called día talmaide, "a
terrestrial god." If kings were thought to be god-men like the Pharaohs, this
might account for the frequency of tales about divine fatherhood or
reincarnation, while it would also explain the numerous geasa which Irish
kings must observe, unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with
their observance, though this prosperity was later thought to depend on the
king's goodness. The nature of the prosperity—mild seasons, abundant
crops, fruit, fish, and cattle—shows that the king was associated with
fertility, like the gods of growth.520 Hence they had probably been once
regarded as incarnations of such gods. Wherever divine kings are found,
fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance of their tabus.
To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain before they grow old and
weak, and their vigour passes on to their successors. Their death benefits
their people.521 But frequently the king might reign as long as he could hold

his own against all comers, or, again, a slave or criminal was for a time
treated as a mock king, and slain as the divine king's substitute. Scattered
hints in Irish literature and in folk survivals show that some such course as
this had been pursued by the Celts with regard to their divine kings, as it
was also elsewhere.522 It is not impossible that some at least of the Druids
stood in a similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably at
first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually with three
hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great national council.523 This
council at a consecrated place (nemeton), its likeness to the annual Druidic
gathering in Gaul, and the possibility that Dru- has some connection with
the name "Druid," point to a religious as well as political aspect of this
council. The "tetrarchs" may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the
kingly prerogative of acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul. The wife
of one of them was a priestess,524 the office being hereditary in her family,
and it may have been necessary that her husband should also be a priest.
One tetrarch, Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the priest-
kingship of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the second century
B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic institution.525 Mythic
Celtic kings consulted the gods without any priestly intervention, and
Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.526 Without giving these hints undue
emphasis, we may suppose that the differentiation of the two offices would
not be simultaneous over the Celtic area. But when it did take effect priests
would probably lay claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as incarnate
god. Kings were not likely to give these up, and where they retained them
priests would be content with seeing that the tabus and ritual and the slaying
of the mock king were duly observed. Irish kings were perhaps still
regarded as gods, though certain Druids may have been divine priests, since
they called themselves creators of the universe, and both continental and
Irish Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the name [Greek:
semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic priests, though
its meaning is obscure, points to divine pretensions on their part.527

The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of earth,
growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic branch of such
a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who used oak branches
in their rites.528 King and tree would be connected, the king's life being

bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one time both perished
together. But as kings were represented by a substitute, so the sacred tree,
regarded as too sacred to be cut down, may also have had its succedaneum.
The Irish bile or sacred tree, connected with the kings, must not be touched
by any impious hand, and it was sacrilege to cut it down.529 Probably
before cutting down the tree a branch or something growing upon it, e.g.
mistletoe, had to be cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he
could be slain. This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The
mistletoe or branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of
the divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account is
incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were not
known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of the
magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though he says
nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it is not
unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his time, the oxen
which were slain during the rite took the place of the latter. Later romantic
tales suggest that, before slaying some personage, the mythico-romantic
survivor of a divine priest or king, a branch carried by him had to be
captured by his assailant, or plucked from the tree which he defended.530
These may point to an old belief in tree and king as divine representatives,
and to a ritual like that associated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree
became the mystic tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and
marvellous fruits. Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people,
mortals might penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be
regarded as romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the
divine tree.

If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her representative
would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals by the female
worshippers. This would explain the slaying of one of their number at a
festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or gods superseded
goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place of the female
representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess became the consort of
the god, a female representative would continue as the divine bride in the
ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of later folk-custom.
Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female cults with female

divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the May Queen alone in
certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals from which men were
excluded.531
Footnote 516:(return)

O'Grady, ii. 228.

Footnote 517:(return)

Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Cæsar, vi. 14, "the immortal gods" of Gaul.

Footnote 518:(return)

Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.

Footnote 519:(return)

Leahy, ii. 6.

Footnote 520:(return)

IT iii. 203; Trip. Life, 507; Annals of the Four Masters, A.D. 14; RC xxii. 28,
168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced fertility. A curious survival of
this is found in the belief that herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when
MacLeod arrived at his castle there, and in the desire of the people in Skye
during the potato famine that his fairy banner should be waved.

Footnote 521:(return)

An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill, "If I am slain, it
will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).

Footnote 522:(return)

See Frazer, Kingship; Cook, Folk-Lore, 1906, "The European Sky-God." Mr.
Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic incarnate gods. With his
main conclusions I agree, though some of his inferences seem far-fetched. The
divine king was, in his view, a sky-god; he was more likely to have been the
representative of a god or spirit of growth or vegetation.

Footnote 523:(return)

Strabo, xii. 5. 2.

Footnote 524:(return)

Plutarch, de Virt. Mul. 20.

Footnote 525:(return)

Cicero, de Div. i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin, Gesch. der Kleinasiat.
Galater.

Footnote 526:(return)

Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.

Footnote 527:(return)

Ancient Laws of Ireland, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p. 301, infra.

Footnote 528:(return)

Pliny, xvi. 95.

Footnote 529:(return)

P. 201, infra.

Footnote 530:(return)

Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough, and of
Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by Gramoplanz
(Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale of Diarmaid's attacking
the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and the subsequent slaughter of each
man who attacks the hero hidden in its branches (TOS vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, Folk-
Lore, xvii. 441.

Footnote 531:(return)

See Chap. XVIII.

CHAPTER X.
THE CULT OF THE DEAD.

The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or slaves
on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead, yet when such
practices survive over a long period they assume the form of a cult. These
customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in connection with the
reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point to a worship of
ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes. Heads of the slain were
offered to the "strong shades"—the ghosts of tribal heroes whose praises
were sung by bards.532 When such heads were placed on houses, they may
have been devoted to the family ghosts. The honour in which mythic or real
heroes were held may point to an actual cult, the hero being worshipped
when dead, while he still continued his guardianship of the tribe. We know
also that the tomb of King Cottius in the Alps was a sacred place, that Irish
kings were often inaugurated on ancestral burial cairns, and that Irish gods
were associated with barrows of the dead.533

The cult of the dead culminated at the family hearth, around which the dead
were even buried, as among the Aeduii; this latter custom may have been
general.534 In any case the belief in the presence of ancestral ghosts around
the hearth was widespread, as existing superstitions show. In Brittany the
dead seek warmth at the hearth by night, and a feast is spread for them on
All Souls' eve, or crumbs are left for them after a family gathering.535 But
generally the family ghost has become a brownie, lutin, or pooka, haunting
the hearth and doing the household work.536 Fairy corresponds in all
respects to old ancestral ghost, and the one has succeeded to the place of the
other, while the fairy is even said to be the ghost of a dead person.537
Certain archæological remains have also a connection with this ancient cult.
Among Celtic remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with
a ram's head. M. Dechelette sees in this "the symbol of sacrifice offered to
the souls of ancestors on the altar of the hearth."538 The ram was already

associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth, and by
an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead there. It is
found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar was purified
by the immolation of a ram.539 Figurines of a ram have been found in
Gaulish tombs, and it is associated with the god of the underworld.540 The
ram of the andirons was thus a permanent representative of the victim
offered in the cult of the dead. A mutilated inscription on one of them may
stand for Laribus augustis, and certain markings on others may represent
the garlands twined round the victim.541 Serpents with rams' heads occur on
the monuments of the underworld god. The serpent was a chthonian god or
the emblem of such a god, and it may have been thought appropriate to give
it the head of an animal associated with the cult of the dead.

The dead were also fed at the grave or in the house. Thus cups were placed
in the recess of a well in the churchyard of Kilranelagh by those interring a
child under five, and the ghost of the child was supposed to supply the other
spirits with water from these cups.542 In Ireland, after a death, food is
placed out for the spirits, or, at a burial, nuts are placed in the coffin.543 In
some parts of France, milk is poured out on the grave, and both in Brittany
and in Scotland the dead are supposed to partake of the funeral feast.544
These are survivals from pagan times and correspond to the rites in use
among those who still worship ancestors. In Celtic districts a cairn or a
cross is placed over the spot where a violent or accidental death has
occurred, the purpose being to appease the ghost, and a stone is often added
to the cairn by all passers-by.545

Festivals were held in Ireland on the anniversaries of the death of kings or
chiefs, and these were also utilised for purposes of trade, pleasure, or
politics. They sometimes occurred on the great festivals, e.g. Lugnasad and
Samhain, and were occasionally held at the great burial-places.546 Thus the
gathering at Taillti on Lugnasad was said to have been founded by Lug in
memory of his foster-mother, Tailtiu, and the Leinstermen met at Carman
on the same day to commemorate King Garman, or in a variant account, a
woman called Carman. She and her sons had tried to blight the corn of the
Tuatha Dé Danann, but the sons were driven off and she died of grief,
begging that a fair should always be held in her name, and promising

abundance of milk, fruit, and fish for its observance.547 These may be
ætiological myths explaining the origin of these festivals on the analogy of
funeral festivals, but more likely, since Lugnasad was a harvest festival,
they are connected with the custom of slaying a representative of the corn-
spirit. The festival would become a commemoration of all such victims, but
when the custom itself had ceased it would be associated with one
particular personage, the corn-goddess regarded as a mortal.

This would be the case where the victim was a woman, but where a male
was slain, the analogy of the slaying of the divine king or his succedaneum
would lead to the festivals being regarded as commemorative of a king, e.g.
Garman. This agrees with the statement that observance of the festival
produced plenty; non-observance, dearth. The victims were slain to obtain
plenty, and the festival would also commemorate those who had died for
this good cause, while it would also appease their ghosts should these be
angry at their violent deaths. Certain of the dead were thus commemorated
at Lugnasad, a festival of fertility. Both the corn-spirit or divinity slain in
the reaping of the corn, and the human victims, were appeased by its
observance.548 The legend of Carman makes her hostile to the corn—a
curious way of regarding a corn-goddess. But we have already seen that
gods of fertility were sometimes thought of as causing blight, and in folk-
belief the corn-spirit is occasionally believed to be dangerous. Such
inversions occur wherever revolutions in religion take place.

The great commemoration of the dead was held on Samhain eve, a festival
intended to aid the dying powers of vegetation, whose life, however, was
still manifested in evergreen shrubs, in the mistletoe, in the sheaf of corn
from last harvest—the abode of the corn-spirit.549 Probably, also, human
representatives of the vegetation or corn-spirit were slain, and this may
have suggested the belief in the presence of their ghosts at this festival. Or
the festival being held at the time of the death of vegetation, the dead would
naturally be commemorated then. Or, as in Scandinavia, they may have
been held to have an influence on fertility, as an extension of the belief that
certain slain persons represented spirits of fertility, or because trees and
plants growing on the barrows of the dead were thought to be tenanted by
their spirits.550 In Scandinavia, the dead were associated with female spirits
or fylgjur, identified with the disir, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in

hollow hills.551 The nearest Celtic analogy to these is the Matres, goddesses
of fertility. Bede says that Christmas eve was called Modranicht, "Mothers'
Night,"552 and as many of the rites of Samhain were transferred to Yule, the
former date of Modranicht may have been Samhain, just as the
Scandinavian Disablot, held in November, was a festival of the disir and of
the dead.553 It has been seen that the Celtic Earth-god was lord of the dead,
and that he probably took the place of an Earth-goddess or goddesses, to
whom the Matres certainly correspond. Hence the connection of the dead
with female Earth-spirits would be explained. Mother Earth had received
the dead before her place was taken by the Celtic Dispater. Hence the time
of Earth's decay was the season when the dead, her children, would be
commemorated. Whatever be the reason, Celts, Teutons, and others have
commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter, which was the
beginning of a new year, while a similar festival of the dead at New Year is
held in many other lands.

Both in Ireland and in Brittany, on November eve food is laid out for the
dead who come to visit the houses and to warm themselves at the fire in the
stillness of the night, and in Brittany a huge log burns on the hearth. We
have here returned to the cult of the dead at the hearth.554 Possibly the Yule
log was once a log burned on the hearth—the place of the family ghosts—at
Samhain, when new fire was kindled in each house. On it libations were
poured, which would then have been meant for the dead. The Yule log and
the log of the Breton peasants would thus be the domestic aspect of the fire
ritual, which had its public aspect in the Samhain bonfires.

All this has been in part affected by the Christian feast of All Souls. Dr.
Frazer thinks that the feast of All Saints (November 1st) was intended to
take the place of the pagan cult of the dead. As it failed to do this, All Souls,
a festival of all the dead, was added on November 2nd.555 To some extent,
but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan rites, for the old ideas
connected with Samhain still survive here and there. It is also to be noted
that in some cases the friendly aspect of the dead has been lost sight of, and,
like the síd-folk, they are popularly connected with evil powers which are in
the ascendant on Samhain eve.
Footnote 532:(return)

Silius Italicus, v. 652; Lucan, i. 447. Cf. p. 241, infra.

Footnote 533:(return)

Ammian. Marcell. xv. 10. 7; Joyce, SH i. 45.

Footnote 534:(return)

Bulliot, Fouilles du Mont Beuvray, Autun, 1899, i. 76, 396.

Footnote 535:(return)

Le Braz, ii. 67; Sauvé, Folk-lore des Hautes Vosges, 295; Bérenger-Féraud,
Superstitions et Survivances, i. 11.

Footnote 536:(return)

Hearn, Aryan Household, 43 f.; Bérenger-Féraud, i. 33; Rev. des Trad. i. 142;
Carmichael, ii. 329; Cosquin, Trad. Pop. de la Lorraine, i. 82.

Footnote 537:(return)

Kennedy, 126. The mischievous brownie who overturns furniture and smashes
crockery is an exact reproduction of the Poltergeist.

Footnote 538:(return)

Dechelette, Rev. Arch. xxxiii, (1898), 63, 245, 252.

Footnote 539:(return)

Cicero, De Leg. ii. 22.

Footnote 540:(return)

Dechelette, 256; Reinach, BF 189.

Footnote 541:(return)

Dechelette, 257-258. In another instance the ram is marked with crosses like
those engraved on images of the underworld god with the hammer.

Footnote 542:(return)

Kennedy, 187.

Footnote 543:(return)

Lady Wilde, 118; Curtin, Tales, 54.

Footnote 544:(return)

Le Braz, i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, Voyage dans le Finistère, i. 229.

Footnote 545:(return)

Le Braz, ii. 47; Folk-Lore, iv. 357; MacCulloch, Misty Isle of Skye, 254; Sébillot,
i. 235-236.

Footnote 546:(return)

Names of places associated with the great festivals are also those of the chief
pagan cemeteries, Tara, Carman, Taillti, etc. (O'Curry, MC ii. 523).

Footnote 547:(return)

Rennes Dindsenchas, RC xv. 313-314.

Footnote 548:(return)

Cf. Frazer, Adonis, 134.

Footnote 549:(return)

Cf. Chambers, Mediæval Stage, i. 250, 253.

Footnote 550:(return)

See Vigfusson-Powell, Corpus Poet. Boreale, i. 405, 419. Perhaps for a similar
reason a cult of the dead may have occurred at the Midsummer festival.

Footnote 551:(return)

Miss Faraday, Folk-Lore, xvii. 398 f.

Footnote 552:(return)

Bede, de Temp. Rat. c. xv.

Footnote 553:(return)

Vigfusson-Powell, i. 419.

Footnote 554:(return)

Curtin, Tales, 157; Haddon, Folk-Lore, iv. 359; Le Braz, ii. 115 et passim.

Footnote 555:(return)

Frazer, Adonis, 253 f.

CHAPTER XI.
PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.

In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then
possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped—
earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This led later to more complete
personification, and the sun or earth divinity or spirit was more or less
separated from the sun or earth themselves. Some Celtic divinities were
thus evolved, but there still continued a veneration of the objects of nature
in themselves, as well as a cult of nature spirits or secondary divinities who
peopled every part of nature. "Nor will I call out upon the mountains,
fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which are now subservient to the use
of man, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to
which the blind people paid divine honours," cries Gildas.556 This was the
true cult of the folk, the "blind people," even when the greater gods were
organised, and it has survived with modifications in out-of-the-way places,
in spite of the coming of Christianity.

S. Kentigern rebuked the Cambrians for worshipping the elements, which
God made for man's use.557 The question of the daughters of Loegaire also
throws much light on Celtic nature worship. "Has your god sons or
daughters?... Have many fostered his sons? Are his daughters dear and
beautiful to men? Is he in heaven or on earth, in the sea, in the rivers, in the
mountains, in the valleys?"558 The words suggest a belief in divine beings
filling heaven, earth, sea, air, hills, glens, lochs, and rivers, and following
human customs. A naïve faith, full of beauty and poetry, even if it had its
dark and grim aspects! These powers or personalities had been invoked
from time immemorial, but the invocations were soon stereotyped into
definite formulas. Such a formula is put into the mouth of Amairgen, the
poet of the Milesians, when they were about to invade Erin, and it may have
been a magical invocation of the powers of nature at the beginning of an
undertaking or in times of danger:

"I invoke the land of Ireland!
Shining, shining sea!
Fertile, fertile mountain!
Wooded vale!
Abundant river, abundant in waters!
Fish abounding lake!
Fish abounding sea!
Fertile earth!
Irruption of fish! Fish there!
Bird under wave! Great fish!
Crab hole! Irruption of fish!
Fish abounding sea!"559

A similar formula was spoken after the destruction of Da Derga's Hostel by
MacCecht on his finding water. He bathed in it and sang—

"Cold fountain! Surface of strand ...
Sea of lake, water of Gara, stream of river;
High spring well; cold fountain!"560

The goddess Morrigan, after the defeat of the Fomorians, invokes the
powers of nature and proclaims the victory to "the royal mountains of
Ireland, to its chief waters, and its river mouths."561 It was also customary
to take oaths by the elements—heaven, earth, sun, fire, moon, sea, land,
day, night, etc., and these punished the breaker of the oath.562 Even the gods
exacted such an oath of each other. Bres swore by sun, moon, sea, and land,
to fulfil the engagement imposed on him by Lug.563 The formulæ survived
into Christian times, and the faithful were forbidden to call the sun and
moon gods or to swear by them, while in Breton folk-custom at the present
day oaths by sun, moon, or earth, followed by punishment of the oath-
breaker by the moon, are still in use.564 These oaths had originated in a time
when the elements themselves were thought to be divine, and similar
adjurations were used by Greeks and Scandinavians.

While the greater objects of nature were worshipped for themselves alone,
the Celts also peopled the earth with spirits, benevolent or malevolent, of
rocks, hills, dales, forests, lakes, and streams,565 and while greater divinities

of growth had been evolved, they still believed in lesser spirits of
vegetation, of the corn, and of fertility, connected, however, with these
gods. Some of these still survive as fairies seen in meadows, woodlands, or
streams, or as demoniac beings haunting lonely places. And even now, in
French folk-belief, sun, moon, winds, etc., are regarded as actual
personages. Sun and moon are husband and wife; the winds have wives;
they are addressed by personal names and reverenced.566 Some spirits may
already have had a demoniac aspect in pagan times. The Tuatha Déa
conjured up meisi, "spectral bodies that rise from the ground," against the
Milesians, and at their service were malignant sprites—urtrochta, and
"forms, spectres, and great queens" called guidemain (false demons). The
Druids also sent forth mischievous spirits called siabra. In the Táin there
are references to bocânachs, banânaichs, and geniti-glinni, "goblins,
eldritch beings, and glen-folk."567 These are twice called Tuatha Dé
Danann, and this suggests that they were nature-spirits akin to the greater
gods.568 The geniti-glinni would be spirits haunting glen and valley. They
are friendly to Cúchulainn in the Táin, but in the Feast of Bricriu he and
other heroes fight and destroy them.569 In modern Irish belief they are
demons of the air, perhaps fallen angels.570

Much of this is probably pre-Celtic as well as Celtic, but it held its ground
because it was dear to the Celts themselves. They upheld the aboriginal
cults resembling those which, in the lands whence they came, had been
native and local with themselves. Such cults are as old as the world, and
when Christianity expelled the worship of the greater gods, younger in
growth, the ancient nature worship, dowered with immortal youth,

"bowed low before the blast
In patient deep disdain,"

to rise again in vigour. Preachers, councils, and laws inveighed against it.
The old rites continued to be practised, or survived under a Christian dress
and colouring. They are found in Breton villages, in Highland glens, in
Welsh and Cornish valleys, in Irish townships, and only the spread of
school-board education, with its materialism and uninviting common sense,
is forcing them at last to yield.

The denunciations of these cults throw some light upon them. Offerings at
trees, stones, fountains, and cross-roads, the lighting of fires or candles
there, and vows or incantations addressed to them, are forbidden, as is also
the worship of trees, groves, stones, rivers, and wells. The sun and moon are
not to be called lords. Wizardry, and divination, and the leapings and
dancings, songs and choruses of the pagans, i.e. their orgiastic cults, are not
to be practised. Tempest-raisers are not to ply their diabolical craft.571
These denunciations, of course, were not without their effect, and legend
told how the spirits of nature were heard bewailing the power of the
Christian saints, their mournful cries echoing in wooded hollows, secluded
valleys, and shores of lake and river.572 Their power, though limited, was
not annihilated, but the secrecy in which the old cults often continued to be
practised gave them a darker colour. They were identified with the works of
the devil, and the spirits of paganism with dark and grisly demons.573 This
culminated in the mediæval witch persecutions, for witchcraft was in part
the old paganism in a new guise. Yet even that did not annihilate
superstition, which still lives and flourishes among the folk, though the
actual worship of nature-spirits has now disappeared.

Perhaps the most important object in nature to the early Celts as to most
primitive folk was the moon. The phases of the moon were apparent before
men observed the solstices and equinoxes, and they formed an easy method
of measuring time. The Celtic year was at first lunar—Pliny speaks of the
Celtic method of counting the beginning of months and years by the moon
—and night was supposed to precede day.574 The festivals of growth began,
not at sunrise, but on the previous evening with the rising of the moon, and
the name La Lunade is still given to the Midsummer festival in parts of
France.575 At Vallon de la Suille a wood on the slope where the festival is
held is called Bois de la Lune; and in Ireland, where the festival begins on
the previous evening, in the district where an ascent of Cnoc Aine is made,
the position of the moon must be observed. A similar combination of sun
and moon cults is found in an inscription at Lausanne—To the genius of the
sun and moon.576

Possibly sun festivals took the place of those of the moon. Traces of the
connection of the moon with agriculture occur in different regions, the

connection being established through the primitive law of sympathetic
magic. The moon waxes and wanes, therefore it must affect all processes of
growth or decay. Dr. Frazer has cited many instances of this belief, and has
shown that the moon had a priority to the sun in worship, e.g. in Egypt and
Babylon.577 Sowing is done with a waxing moon, so that, through
sympathy, there may be a large increase. But harvesting, cutting timber,
etc., should be done with a waning moon, because moisture being caused by
a waxing moon, it was necessary to avoid cutting such things as would spoil
by moisture at that time. Similar beliefs are found among the Celts.
Mistletoe and other magical plants were culled with a waxing moon,
probably because their power would thus be greater. Dr. Johnson noted the
fact that the Highlanders sowed their seed with a waxing moon, in the
expectation of a better harvest. For similar occult reasons, it is thought in
Brittany that conception during a waxing moon produces a male child,
during a waning moon a female, while accouchements at the latter time are
dangerous. Sheep and cows should be killed at the new moon, else their
flesh will shrink, but peats should be cut in the last quarter, otherwise they
will remain moist and give out "a power of smoke."578

These ideas take us back to a time when it was held that the moon was not
merely the measurer of time, but had powerful effects on the processes of
growth and decay. Artemis and Diana, moon-goddesses, had power over all
growing things, and as some Celtic goddesses were equated with Diana,
they may have been connected with the moon, more especially as Gallo-
Roman images of Diana have the head adorned with a crescent moon. In
some cases festivals of the moon remained intact, as among the Celtiberians
and other peoples to the north of them, who at the time of full moon
celebrated the festival of a nameless god, dancing all night before the doors
of their houses.579 The nameless god may have been the moon, worshipped
at the time of her intensest light. Moonlight dances round a great stone, with
singing, on the first day of the year, occurred in the Highlands in the
eighteenth century.580 Other survivals of cult are seen in the practices of
bowing or baring the head at new moon, or addressing it with words of
adoration or supplication. In Ireland, Camden found the custom at new
moon of saying the Lord's Prayer with the addition of the words, "Leave us
whole and sound as Thou hast found us." Similar customs exist in Brittany,
where girls pray to the moon to grant them dreams of their future

husbands.581 Like other races, the Celts thought that eclipses were caused
by a monster attacking the moon, while it could be driven off with cries and
shouts. In 218 B.C. the Celtic allies of Attalus were frightened by an
eclipse, and much later Christian legislation forbade the people to assemble
at an eclipse and shout, Vince, Luna!582 Such a practice was observed in
Ireland in the seventeenth century. At an earlier time, Irish poets addressed
sun and moon as divinities, and they were represented on altars even in
Christian times.583

While the Celts believed in sea-gods—Manannan, Morgen, Dylan—the sea
itself was still personified and regarded as divine. It was thought to be a
hostile being, and high tides were met by Celtic warriors, who advanced
against them with sword and spear, often perishing in the rushing waters
rather than retreat. The ancients regarded this as bravado. M. Jullian sees in
it a sacrifice by voluntary suicide; M. D'Arbois, a tranquil waiting for death
and the introduction to another life.584 But the passages give the sense of an
actual attack on the waves—living things which men might terrify, and
perhaps with this was combined the belief that no one could die during a
rising tide. Similarly French fishermen threaten to cut a fog in two with a
knife, while the legend of S. Lunaire tells how he threw a knife at a fog,
thus causing its disappearance.585 Fighting the waves is also referred to in
Irish texts. Thus Tuirbe Trágmar would "hurl a cast of his axe in the face of
the flood-tide, so that he forbade the sea, which then would not come over
the axe." Cúchulainn, in one of his fits of anger, fought the waves for seven
days, and Fionn fought and conquered the Muireartach, a personification of
the wild western sea.586 On the French coast fishermen throw harpoons at
certain harmful waves called the Three Witch Waves, thus drawing their
blood and causing them to subside.587 In some cases human victims may
have been offered to the rising waters, since certain tales speak of a child
set floating on the waves, and this, repeated every seven years, kept them in
their place.588

The sea had also its beneficent aspects. The shore was "a place of revelation
of science," and the sea sympathised with human griefs. At the Battle of
Ventry "the sea chattered, telling the losses, and the waves raised a heavy,
woeful great moan in wailing them."589 In other cases in Ireland, by a spell

put on the waves, or by the intuitive knowledge of the listener, it was
revealed that they were wailing for a death or describing some distant
event.590 In the beautiful song sung by the wife of Cael, "the wave wails
against the shore for his death," and in Welsh myth the waves bewailed the
death of Dylan, "son of the wave," and were eager to avenge it. The noise of
the waves rushing into the vale of Conwy were his dying groans.591 In
Ireland the roaring of the sea was thought to be prophetic of a king's death
or the coming of important news; and there, too, certain great waves were
celebrated in story—Clidna's, Tuaithe's, and Rudhraidhe's.592 Nine waves,
or the ninth wave, partly because of the sacred nature of the number nine,
partly because of the beneficent character of the waves, had a great
importance. They formed a barrier against invasion, danger, or pestilence,
or they had a healing effect.593

The wind was also regarded as a living being whose power was to be
dreaded. It punished King Loegaire for breaking his oath. But it was also
personified as a god Vintius, equated with Pollux and worshipped by Celtic
sailors, or with Mars, the war-god who, in his destructive aspect, was
perhaps regarded as the nearest analogue to a god of stormy winds.594
Druids and Celtic priestesses claimed the power of controlling the winds, as
did wizards and witches in later days. This they did, according to Christian
writers, by the aid of demons, perhaps the old divinities of the air. Bishop
Agobard describes how the tempestarii raised tempests which destroyed the
fruits of the earth, and drew "aerial ships" from Magonia, whither the ships
carried these fruits.595 Magonia may be the upper air ruled over by a sky
god Magounos or Mogounos, equated with Apollo.596 The winds may have
been his servants, ruled also by earthly magicians. Like Yahweh, as
conceived by Hebrew poets, he "bringeth the winds out of his treasures,"
and "maketh lightnings with rain."
Footnote 556:(return)

Gildas ii. 4.

Footnote 557:(return)

Jocelyn, Vila Kentig. c. xxxii.

Footnote 558:(return)

Trip. Life, 315.

Footnote 559:(return)

LL 12b. The translation is from D'Arbois, ii. 250 f; cf. O'Curry, MC ii. 190.

Footnote 560:(return)

RC xxii. 400.

Footnote 561:(return)

RC xii. 109.

Footnote 562:(return)

Petrie, Tara, 34; RC vi. 168; LU 118.

Footnote 563:(return)

Joyce, OCR 50.

Footnote 564:(return)

D'Achery, Spicelegium, v. 216; Sébillot, i. 16 f., 56, 211.

Footnote 565:(return)

Gregory of Tours, Hist. ii. 10, speaks of the current belief in the divinity of
waters, birds, and beasts.

Footnote 566:(return)

Sébillot, i. 9, 35, 75, 247, etc.

Footnote 567:(return)

Joyce, SH ii. 273; Cormac, 87; Stokes, TIG xxxiii., RC xv. 307.

Footnote 568:(return)

Miss Hull, 170, 187, 193; IT i. 214; Leahy, i. 126.

Footnote 569:(return)

IT i. 287.

Footnote 570:(return)

Henderson, Irish Texts, ii. 210.

Footnote 571:(return)

Capit. Karoli Magni, i. 62; Leges Luitprand. ii. 38; Canon 23, 2nd Coun. of
Arles, Hefele, Councils, iii. 471; D'Achery, v. 215. Some of these attacks were
made against Teutonic superstitions, but similar superstitions existed among the
Celts.

Footnote 572:(return)

See Grimm, Teut. Myth. ii. 498.

Footnote 573:(return)

A more tolerant note is heard, e.g., in an Irish text which says that the spirits
which appeared of old were divine ministrants not demoniacal, while angels
helped the ancients because they followed natural truth. "Cormac's Sword," IT
iii. 220-221. Cf. p. 152, supra.

Footnote 574:(return)

Cæsar, vi. 18; Pliny xxii. 14. Pliny speaks of culling mistletoe on the sixth day of
the moon, which is to them the beginning of months and years (sexta luna, quae
principia, etc.). This seems to make the sixth, not the first, day of the moon that
from which the calculation was made. But the meaning is that mistletoe was
culled on the sixth day of the moon, and that the moon was that by which months
and years were measured. Luna, not sexta luna, is in apposition with quae.
Traces of the method of counting by nights or by the moon survive locally in
France, and the usage is frequent in Irish and Welsh literature. See my article
"Calendar" (Celtic) in Hastings' Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics, iii. 78 f.

Footnote 575:(return)

Delocke, "La Procession dite La Lunade," RC ix. 425.

Footnote 576:(return)

Monnier, 174, 222; Fitzgerald, RC iv. 189.

Footnote 577:(return)

Frazer, Golden Bough2, ii. 154 f.

Footnote 578:(return)

Pliny, xvi. 45; Johnson, Journey, 183; Ramsay, Scotland in the Eighteenth
Century, ii. 449; Sébillot, i. 41 f.; MacCulloch, Misty Isle of Skye, 236. In
Brittany it is thought that girls may conceive by the moon's power (RC iii. 452).

Footnote 579:(return)

Strabo, iii. 4. 16.

Footnote 580:(return)

Brand, s.v. "New Year's Day."

Footnote 581:(return)

Chambers, Popular Rhymes, 35; Sébillot, i. 46, 57 f.

Footnote 582:(return)

Polybius, v. 78; Vita S. Eligii, ii. 15.

Footnote 583:(return)

Osborne, Advice to his Son (1656), 79; RC xx. 419, 428.

Footnote 584:(return)

Aristotle, Nic. Eth. iii. 77; Eud. Eth. iii. 1. 25; Stobæus, vii. 40; Ælian, xii. 22;
Jullian, 54; D'Arbois, vi. 218.

Footnote 585:(return)

Sébillot, i. 119. The custom of throwing something at a "fairy eddy," i.e. a dust
storm, is well known on Celtic ground and elsewhere.

Footnote 586:(return)

Folk-Lore, iv. 488; Curtin, HTI 324; Campbell, The Fians, 158. Fian warriors
attacked the sea when told it was laughing at them.

Footnote 587:(return)

Mélusine, ii. 200.

Footnote 588:(return)

Sébillot, ii. 170.

Footnote 589:(return)

Meyer, Cath. Finntraga, 40.

Footnote 590:(return)

RC xvi. 9; LB 32b, 55.

Footnote 591:(return)

Meyer, op. cit. 55; Skene, i. 282, 288, 543; Rh[^y]s, HL 387.

Footnote 592:(return)

Meyer, 51; Joyce, PN i. 195, ii. 257; RC xv. 438.

Footnote 593:(return)

See p. 55, supra; IT i. 838, iii. 207; RC ii. 201, ix. 118.

Footnote 594:(return)

Holder, s.v. "Vintius."

Footnote 595:(return)

Agobard, i. 146.

Footnote 596:(return)

See Stokes, RC vi. 267.

CHAPTER XII.
RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP.

Among the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses, inscriptions,
votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance of the cult of waters
and of water divinities. Mr. Gomme argues that Celtic water-worship was
derived from the pre-Celtic aborigines,597 but if so, the Celts must have had
a peculiar aptitude for it, since they were so enthusiastic in its observance.
What probably happened was that the Celts, already worshippers of the
waters, freely adopted local cults of water wherever they came. Some rivers
or river-goddesses in Celtic regions seem to posses pre-Celtic names.598

Treasures were flung into a sacred lake near Toulouse to cause a pestilence
to cease. Caepion, who afterwards fished up this treasure, fell soon after in
battle—a punishment for cupidity, and aurum Tolosanum now became an
expression for goods dishonestly acquired.599 A yearly festival, lasting three
days, took place at Lake Gévaudan. Garments, food, and wax were thrown
into the waters, and animals were sacrificed. On the fourth day, it is said,
there never failed to spring up a tempest of rain, thunder, and lightning—a
strange reward for this worship of the lake.600 S. Columba routed the spirits
of a Scottish fountain which was worshipped as a god, and the well now
became sacred, perhaps to the saint himself, who washed in it and blessed it
so that it cured diseases.601

On inscriptions a river name is prefixed by some divine epithet—dea,
augusta, and the worshipper records his gratitude for benefits received from
the divinity or the river itself. Bormanus, Bormo or Borvo, Danuvius (the
Danube), and Luxovius are found on inscriptions as names of river or
fountain gods, but goddesses are more numerous—Acionna, Aventia,
Bormana, Brixia, Carpundia, Clutoida, Divona, Sirona, Ura—well-nymphs;
and Icauna (the Yonne), Matrona, and Sequana (the Seine)—river-
goddesses.602 No inscription to the goddess of a lake has yet been found.
Some personal names like Dubrogenos (son of the Dubron), Enigenus (son

of the Aenus), and the belief of Virdumarus that one of his ancestors was
the Rhine,603 point to the idea that river-divinities might have amours with
mortals and beget progeny called by their names. In Ireland, Conchobar was
so named from the river whence his mother Nessa drew water, perhaps
because he was a child of the river-god.604

The name of the water-divinity was sometimes given to the place of his or
her cult, or to the towns which sprang up on the banks of rivers—the
divinity thus becoming a tutelary god. Many towns (e.g. Divonne or
Dyonne, etc.) have names derived from a common Celtic river name
Deuona, "divine." This name in various forms is found all over the Celtic
area,605 and there is little doubt that the Celts, in their onward progress,
named river after river by the name of the same divinity, believing that each
new river was a part of his or her kingdom. The name was probably first an
appellative, then a personal name, the divine river becoming a divinity.
Deus Nemausus occurs on votive tablets at Nimes, the name Nemausus
being that of the clear and abundant spring there whence flowed the river of
the same name. A similar name occurs in other regions—Nemesa, a
tributary of the Moselle; Nemh, the source of the Tara and the former name
of the Blackwater; and Nimis, a Spanish river mentioned by Appian.
Another group includes the Matrona (Marne), the Moder, the Madder, the
Maronne and Maronna, and others, probably derived from a word
signifying "mother."606 The mother-river was that which watered a whole
region, just as in the Hindu sacred books the waters are mothers, sources of
fertility. The Celtic mother-rivers were probably goddesses, akin to the
Matres, givers of plenty and fertility. In Gaul, Sirona, a river-goddess, is
represented like the Matres. She was associated with Grannos, perhaps as
his mother, and Professor Rh[^y]s equates the pair with the Welsh Modron
and Mabon; Modron is probably connected with Matrona.607 In any case
the Celts regarded rivers as bestowers of life, health, and plenty, and offered
them rich gifts and sacrifices.608

Gods like Grannos, Borvo, and others, equated with Apollo, presided over
healing springs, and they are usually associated with goddesses, as their
husbands or sons. But as the goddesses are more numerous, and as most
Celtic river names are feminine, female divinities of rivers and springs
doubtless had the earlier and foremost place, especially as their cult was

connected with fertility. The gods, fewer in number, were all equated with
Apollo, but the goddesses were not merged by the Romans into the
personality of one goddess, since they themselves had their groups of river-
goddesses, Nymphs and Naiads. Before the Roman conquest the cult of
water-divinities, friends of mankind, must have formed a large part of the
popular religion of Gaul, and their names may be counted by hundreds.
Thermal springs had also their genii, and they were appropriated by the
Romans, so that the local gods now shared their healing powers with
Apollo, Æsculapius, and the Nymphs. Thus every spring, every woodland
brook, every river in glen or valley, the roaring cataract, and the lake were
haunted by divine beings, mainly thought of as beautiful females with
whom the Matres were undoubtedly associated. There they revealed
themselves to their worshippers, and when paganism had passed away, they
remained as fées or fairies haunting spring, or well, or river.609 Scores of
fairy wells still exist, and by them mediæval knights had many a fabled
amour with those beautiful beings still seen by the "ignorant" but romantic
peasant.

Sanctuaries were erected at these springs by grateful worshippers, and at
some of them festivals were held, or they were the resort of pilgrims. As
sources of fertility they had a place in the ritual of the great festivals, and
sacred wells were visited on Midsummer day, when also the river-gods
claimed their human victims. Some of the goddesses were represented by
statues or busts in Gallo-Roman times, if not earlier, and other images of
them which have been found were of the nature of ex votos, presented by
worshippers in gratitude for the goddess's healing gifts. Money, ingots of
gold or silver, and models of limbs or other parts of the body which had
been or were desired to be healed, were also presented. Gregory of Tours
says of the Gauls that they "represent in wood or bronze the members in
which they suffer, and whose healing they desire, and place them in a
temple."610 Contact of the model with the divinity brought healing to the
actual limbs on the principle of sympathetic magic. Many such models have
been discovered. Thus in the shrine of Dea Sequana was found a vase with
over a hundred; another contained over eight hundred. Inscriptions were
engraved on plaques which were fastened to the walls of temples, or placed
in springs.611 Leaden tablets with inscriptions were placed in springs by
those who desired healing or when the waters were low, and on some the

actual waters are hardly discriminated from the divinities. The latter are
asked to heal or flow or swell—words which apply more to the waters than
to them, while the tablets, with their frank animism, also show that, in some
cases, there were many elemental spirits of a well, only some of whom were
rising to the rank of a goddess. They are called collectively Niskas—the
Nixies of later tradition, but some have personal names—Lerano, Dibona,
Dea—showing that they were tending to become separate divine
personalities. The Peisgi are also appealed to, perhaps the later Piskies,
unless the word is a corrupt form of a Celtic peiskos, or the Latin piscus,
"fish."612 This is unlikely, as fish could not exist in a warm sulphurous
spring, though the Celts believed in the sacred fish of wells or streams. The
fairies now associated with wells or with a water-world beneath them, are
usually nameless, and only in a few cases have a definite name. They, like
the older spirits of the wells, have generally a beneficent character.613 Thus
in the fountains of Logres dwelt damsels who fed the wayfarer with meat
and bread, until grievous wrong was done them, when they disappeared and
the land became waste.614 Occasionally, however, they have a more
malevolent character.615

The spirit of the waters was often embodied in an animal, usually a fish.
Even now in Brittany the fairy dweller in a spring has the form of an eel,
while in the seventeenth century Highland wells contained fish so sacred
that no one dared to catch them.616 In Wales S. Cybi's well contained a huge
eel in whose virtues the villagers believed, and terror prevailed when any
one dared to take it from the water. Two sacred fish still exist in a holy well
at Nant Peris, and are replaced by others when they die, the dead fish being
buried.617 This latter act, solemnly performed, is a true sign of the divine or
sacred character of the animal. Many wells with sacred fish exist in Ireland,
and the fish have usually some supernatural quality—they never alter in
size, they become invisible, or they take the form of beautiful women.618
Any one destroying such fish was regarded as a sacrilegious person, and
sometimes a hostile tribe killed and ate the sacred fish of a district invaded
by them, just as Egyptians of one nome insulted those of another by killing
their sacred animals.619 In old Irish beliefs the salmon was the fish of
knowledge. Thus whoever ate the salmon of Connla's well was dowered
with the wisdom which had come to them through eating nuts from the

hazels of knowledge around the well. In this case the sacred fish was eaten,
but probably by certain persons only—those who had the right to do so.
Sinend, who went to seek inspiration from the well, probably by eating one
of its salmon, was overwhelmed by its waters. The legend of the salmon is
perhaps based on old ritual practices of the occasional eating of a divine
animal. In other cases, legends of a miraculous supply of fish from sacred
wells are perhaps later Christian traditions of former pagan beliefs or
customs concerning magical methods of increasing a sacred or totem
animal species, like those used in Central Australia and New Guinea.620 The
frog is sometimes the sacred animal, and this recalls the Märchen of the
Frog Bridegroom living in a well, who insisted on marrying the girl who
drew its waters. Though this tale is not peculiar to the Celts, it is not
improbable that the divine animal guardian of a well may have become the
hero of a folk-tale, especially as such wells were sometimes tabu to
women.621 A fly was the guardian spirit of S. Michael's well in Banffshire.
Auguries regarding health were drawn from its movements, and it was
believed that the fly, when it grew old, transmigrated into another.622

Such beliefs were not peculiarly Celtic. They are found in all European
folk-lore, and they are still alive among savages—the animal being itself
divine or the personification of a divinity. A huge sacred eel was
worshipped by the Fijians; in North America and elsewhere there were
serpent guardians of the waters; and the Semites worshipped the fish of
sacred wells as incarnations or symbols of a god.

Later Celtic folk-belief associated monstrous and malevolent beings with
rivers and lakes. These may be the older divinities to whom a demoniac
form has been given, but even in pagan times such monstrous beings may
have been believed in, or they may be survivals of the more primitive
monstrous guardians of the waters. The last were dragons or serpents,
conventional forms of the reptiles which once dwelt in watery places,
attacking all who came near. This old idea certainly survived in Irish and
Highland belief, for the Fians conquered huge dragons or serpents in lochs,
or saints chained them to the bottom of the waters. Hence the common
place-name of Loch na piast, "Loch of the Monster." In other tales they
emerge and devour the impious or feast on the dead.623 The Dracs of

French superstition—river monsters who assume human form and drag
down victims to the depths, where they devour them—resemble these.

The Each Uisge, or "Water-horse," a horse with staring eyes, webbed feet,
and a slimy coat, is still dreaded. He assumes different forms and lures the
unwary to destruction, or he makes love in human shape to women, some of
whom discover his true nature by seeing a piece of water-weed in his hair,
and only escape with difficulty. Such a water-horse was forced to drag the
chariot of S. Fechin of Fore, and under his influence became "gentler than
any other horse."624 Many Highland lochs are still haunted by this dreaded
being, and he is also known in Ireland and France, where, however, he has
more of a tricky and less of a demoniac nature.625 His horse form is perhaps
connected with the similar form ascribed to Celtic water-divinities.
Manannan's horses were the waves, and he was invariably associated with a
horse. Epona, the horse-goddess, was perhaps originally goddess of a
spring, and, like the Matres, she is sometimes connected with the waters.626
Horses were also sacrificed to river-divinities.627 But the beneficent water-
divinities in their horse form have undergone a curious distortion, perhaps
as the result of later Christian influences. The name of one branch of the
Fomorians, the Goborchinn, means the "Horse-headed," and one of their
kings was Eochaid Echchenn, or "Horse-head."628 Whether these have any
connection with the water-horse is uncertain.

The foaming waters may have suggested another animal personification,
since the name of the Boyne in Ptolemy, [Greek: bououinda], is derived
from a primitive bóu-s, "ox," and vindo-s, "white," in Irish bó find, "white
cow."629 But it is not certain that this or the Celtic cult of the bull was
connected with the belief in the Tarbh Uisge, or "Water-bull," which had no
ears and could assume other shapes. It dwells in lochs and is generally
friendly to man, occasionally emerging to mate with ordinary cows. In the
Isle of Man the Tarroo Ushtey, however, begets monsters.630 These Celtic
water-monsters have a curious resemblance to the Australian Bunyip.

The Uruisg, often confused with the brownie, haunts lonely places and
waterfalls, and, according to his mood, helps or harms the wayfarer. His
appearance is that of a man with shaggy hair and beard.631 In Wales the
afanc is a water-monster, though the word first meant "dwarf," then "water-

dwarf," of whom many kinds existed. They correspond to the Irish water-
dwarfs, the Luchorpáin, descended with the Fomorians and Goborchinn
from Ham.632

In other cases the old water beings have a more pleasing form, like the
syrens and other fairy beings who haunt French rivers, or the mermaids of
Irish estuaries.633 In Celtic France and Britain lake fairies are connected
with a water-world like that of Elysium tales, the region of earlier
divinities.634 They unite with mortals, who, as in the Swan-maiden tales,
lose their fairy brides through breaking a tabu. In many Welsh tales the
bride is obtained by throwing bread and cheese on the waters, when she
appears with an old man who has all the strength of youth. He presents his
daughter and a number of fairy animals to the mortal. When she disappears
into the waters after the breaking of the tabu, the lake is sometimes drained
in order to recover her; the father then appears and threatens to submerge
the whole district. Father and daughters are earlier lake divinities, and in the
bread and cheese we may see a relic of the offerings to these.635

Human sacrifice to water-divinities is suggested by the belief that water-
monsters devour human beings, and by the tradition that a river claims its
toll of victims every year. In popular rhymes the annual character of the
sacrifice is hinted at, and Welsh legend tells of a voice heard once a year
from rivers or lakes, crying, "The hour is come, but the man is not."636 Here
there is the trace of an abandoned custom of sacrifice and of the traditional
idea of the anger of the divinity at being neglected. Such spirits or gods,
like the water-monsters, would be ever on the watch to capture those who
trespassed on their domain. In some cases the victim is supposed to be
claimed on Midsummer eve, the time of the sacrifice in the pagan period.637
The spirits of wells had also a harmful aspect to those, at least, who showed
irreverence in approaching them. This is seen in legends about the danger of
looking rashly into a well or neglecting to cover it, or in the belief that one
must not look back after visiting the well. Spirits of wells were also
besought to do harm to enemies.

Legends telling of the danger of removing or altering a well, or of the well
moving elsewhere because a woman washed her hands in it, point to old
tabus concerning wells. Boand, wife of Nechtain, went to the fairy well

which he and his cup-bearers alone might visit, and when she showed her
contempt for it, the waters rose and destroyed her. They now flow as the
river Boyne. Sinend met with a similar fate for intruding on Connla's well,
in this case the pursuing waters became the Shannon.638 These are variants
of a story which might be used to explain the origin of any river, but the
legends suggest that certain wells were tabu to women because certain
branches of knowledge, taught by the well, must be reserved for men.639
The legends said in effect, "See what came of women obtruding beyond
their proper sphere." Savage "mysteries" are usually tabu to women, who
also exclude men from their sacred rites. On the other hand, as all tribal lore
was once in the hands of the wise woman, such tabus and legends may have
arisen when men began to claim such lore. In other legends women are
connected with wells, as the guardians who must keep them locked up save
when water was drawn. When the woman neglected to replace the cover,
the waters burst forth, overwhelming her, and formed a loch.640 The woman
is the priestess of the well who, neglecting part of its ritual, is punished.
Even in recent times we find sacred wells in charge of a woman who
instructs the visitors in the due ritual to be performed.641 If such legends
and survivals thus point to former Celtic priestesses of wells, these are
paralleled by the Norse Horgabrudar, guardians of wells, now elves living
in the waters.642 That such legends are based on the ritual of well-worship
is suggested by Boand's walking three times widdershins round the well,
instead of the customary deiseil. The due ritual must be observed, and the
stories are a warning against its neglect.

In spite of twenty centuries of Christianity and the anathemas of saints and
councils, the old pagan practices at healing wells have survived—a striking
instance of human conservatism. S. Patrick found the pagans of his day
worshipping a well called Slán, "health-giving," and offering sacrifices to
it,643 and the Irish peasant to-day has no doubt that there is something
divine about his holy wells. The Celts brought the belief in the divinity of
springs and wells with them, but would naturally adopt local cults wherever
they found them. Afterwards the Church placed the old pagan wells under
the protection of saints, but part of the ritual often remained unchanged.
Hence many wells have been venerated for ages by different races and
through changes in religion and polity. Thus at the thermal springs of
Vicarello offerings have been found which show that their cult has