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1

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CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

AND EELIGION^

BY

ALEXANDER ^A C B A I N,

M.A., F^A. Scot.

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.

it

Snbtrnosfi :
A. & W. MACKENZIE.

1885.

^-^n^i^

FRE F A.CE.

The following work, all save from page 105 to the end, appeared
in the Celtic Magazine in 1883-4, and is here reprinted from the
Magazine type. Hence it is that it is reproduced "with all
its imperfections on its head/' and the critic must be asked,
before cdipdemning details at least, to note the list of corrections
appended to this preface.

The intention of this scries of papers was to popularise the
subject of Mythology, and to apply its principles to the elucida*
tion of Celtic beliefs, tales, and traditions. I wished to place
clearly before my Gaelic brethren the exact position which the
religious beliefs of the Celts held in the European kinship, to
clear up the misty subject of " Druidism," and to reconstruct,
from the shattered materials to hand, the Pantheon of their Gaelic
ancestors. This I undertook, knowing that in the last part of
my object — the rehabilitation of the Gaelic Olympus— ^my results
must only be tentative, for the material for reconstruction is dif-
ficult to deal with, and much of it is in MSS. unedited

Since these papers began to appear in print, events have
travelled with more than usual rapidity both in the field of
general and of Celtic Mythology. It was last year that Mr
Andiew Lang delivered his lively attack against the "orthodox*
school of mythologists, and it was also last year that M. D'Arbois
de Jubainville's important works on Celtic Literature and Myth-
ology appeared. Mr Lang's attack has certainly driven the
older school from several of their positions, but he has by no
means overthrown either the importance of language in the
development of myth, or the fact that the sun, the sky, the
powers of wind and storm, and the change of day and night were
the most prominent factors in the creation of the deities and
powers of the ancient mythologies. Despite Mr Lang, myth-
ology is, nevertheless, a dramatic view of the course of nature,

iv.

and a personification of its forces; and language has been a most
potent force in the development of myths, because it stereotyped
older epithets and expressions, which in later ages were misunder-
stood. Mr Lang has, however, shown that language is by no
means so much the cause of myth as Max Muller and Cox be-
lieve, and that many of the myths claimed as Aryan are found also
among barbarous and savage tribes all over the world. What Mr
Lang has proved in regard to the origin and growth of myth-
ology does not in the least invalidate the arguments and con-
clusions in the following papers, for the reason that, on the whole,
I followed Mr Tylor's views on Mythology, and he, like Mr
Lang, is an anthropologist But what Mr Lang has invalidated
in these papers of mine is the relation in which, following Max
Muller, I held myth and folk-tale. Mr Lang has made it clear in
his ''Custom and Myth," and better still in his introduction
to Mrs Hunt's translation of " Grimm's Fairy Tales," that the old
idea that the fairy or popular tale is a broken-down myth is so
totally wrong, that the opposite is nearer the truth. Indeed, Mr
Lang holds that the myth — the god-tale — is but a sublimated
folk-tale. That, however, is not often the case. Folk-tales have
been raised to myths ; the Jason myth is a case in point ; but
myths have often, and, indeed, with change and advance of
religion, they have generally become folk-tales. Another thing
that Mr Lang has done is to place the folk-tale on a proper way
towards explanation. The " orthodox " belief is that the hero of
the folk- tale must be the sun-god, and that many incidents, in-
cluding the beast-form he assumes, arose from " disease of lan-
guage," that is, from after ages misunderstanding the epithets
applied to the sun-god and to the incidents, by a previous age.
This view is untenable. Mr Lang shows that savages now
believe in men being transformed into animals ; in fact, that we
are kin with animals as we are with one another. Transforma-
tion of men into beasts is a fixed article of savage faith. It
may be caused by witchcraft spell, or through the Pythagorean
metempsychosis. Then he finds several incidents explained by
savage customs, more especially the prohibitions or taboos we
meet with in these tales. He instances the tale of ** Cupid and
Psyche," the parallel of the " Hoodie" tale at the beginning of
these papers ; in that tale the etiquette is that the wife must not

V.

sec the husband unclothed ; if she does, he must leave her.
Similar customs still exist among savages, and are not un*
known in modern Europe. In the tale of the " Hoodie,** there
are evidently two prohibitions : first, the inmates of the house
must not sleep during the first night of a child's existence ; and
secondly, the wife must not make mention of a " comb" to her
husband. The comb's mythic connections are attested by its
frequent appearance on sculptured monuments; and the vigil-
ance during the first hours of a child's existence was of course
necessary because of the evil powers that hovered around. The
fairies were, in the Highlands, a constant source of dread to baby
life; and the special custom of watching during the first night of
the child's life, while old shoes (" logaiscan") were kept burning
to ward off the fairies, prevailed in the Highlands within the
memory of people still living. The story was, therefore, as Mr
Lang would say, invented to account for and inculcate the obser-
vance of these prohibitions.

M. D'Arbois de Jubainvillc's work on the " Irish Mytholo-
gical Cycle and the Celtic Mythology " appeared too late to be of
any assistance to me in the reconstruction of the Gaelic Olympus.
I am glad to note that, in so tentative a matter, we agree so
far. He points out the doublets in the Mythological cycle:
Caesair — Partolan, Tuan Mac Carill — Finntan, &c. Partolan he
compares to the " Silver Age " of Hcsiod ; the Nemedians are the
** Iron Age" ; and the Tuatha-De-Danann represent the "Golden
Age." But he takes stop-gaps like C^sair, Partolan, and Nemed
too seriously ; nor is the order of the ages comprehensible. The
Fomorians who, he observes, co-exist with all the invaders, he
regards as the Titans, living far away in the Isles, and he further
regards them as the powers of death, darkness, and evil. The
Fer-bolgs are the inhabitants of Ireland previous to the Celts or
Milesians, who conquered and absorbed them. The Tuatha-De-
Danann are the gods of the Gael The Dagda ( = dago-devos,
•' bonus deus ") represents Zeus or Jove ; Luga corresponds to
Mercury ; Ogma corresponds to Lucian's Hercules Ogmius ;
Diancecht is god of Medicine ; Gobniu answers to Hephaistos
(Vulcan) ; Angus, son of the Dagda, he does not characterise.
The god Manannan he notes as living far away, king of the land
of promise, who supplies the gods with food, raiment, and plea-

vi.

sure, but he docs not say how he stands in the Pantheon. Cuchu-
lain he finds to be the counterpart of Heracles in descent and
character. A remarkable feature of the Pantheon is the number
of triads — three gods joined together — which appear. These are
the three last kings of the Tuatha, the three sons of Danann« the
three Fomorian chiefs, and so on ; while Gaul presents Lucan's
triad of gods, and Wales abounds in all sorts of triads.

The authors to whom I am most indebted are Mr Elton
(** Origins of English History ") and Professor Rhys (" Celtic
Britain" and in Acadevty,) I mention also Mr Fitzgerald's
article on the "Ancient Irish" in Fraser^s Magazine for 1875,
and his articles in the Revue Celtique. The materials — tales
and myths — are chiefly from Guest's " Mabinogion," Skene's
" Ancient Books of Wales," Joyce's " Celtic Romances," Ken-
nedy's various books, O'Curry's Lectures, the Revue Celtique^
Campbell's " Popular Tales," and editions like Wi.ndisch's
" Irische Textc."

Inverness, October 1885.

E RRATA.

Page

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MISPRINTS.

16, line 34 — For " mythoporic," read •• mythopoeic"
23 — For " push," read ** pushed."

7 — Read "Celtic-speaking."
27— Delete "S."

3_«For"it,"read"in."

2 of poetry — Read branches', and delete comma. *

20 of poetry — For •' looped," read " lopped."

8 — For •* masters," read ** master."
13 — Insert *• his" before " history."
1 1 — For " Granna," read " Granua."

1

CORRECTIONS.

17, line 33 — Delete reference to "Dagda.
I — Delete "Greek, helios."
13— Delete " Vata, the Gaelic gaoth!'
36 — Delete reference to " Aigean," and

" Aegeaa" " Aigean" is oceanus borrowed.
I — Delete "black." See Kuhn's Beitraege, vol. viii.,
p. 44.
22— After " Century," insert " b.c"
22— For " is,*" read « are."
17— For " five," read " fifteen."
22 — For " Mabinogion," read "MabinogL" So, too,

at page 83/ line 21.
2 7— Delete " Frecart"

5 from bottom — Insert " Mercury and " before
" Taranis."

CELTIC MYTHOLOGY.

The field of Mythology, strictly defined, embraces the fabulous
events believed in by a nation and the religious doctrines implied
in these. But the term is for convenience' sake extended so as
to include the kindred subject of folk-lore. Now folk-lore in-
cludes all those popular stories of which the fairy tales of our
nursery are a good illustration, and where the religious element
implied in Mythology is absent. The term Celtic Mythology, in
these papers, is understood, therefore, to include the popular
traditions and legendary tales of the Celts, the fabulous actions
and exploits of their heroes and deities, the traditions of their
early migrations, their fairy tales, and the popular beliefs in
regard to the supernatural world. The scope of the discussion
will include an introductory section or two on the general prin-
ciples of Mythology — its cause and spread, and the connection of
the Mythology of the Celts with those of the kindred nations
of Europe and Asia.

Character of Myth.

"There was once a farmer, and he had three daughters.
They were washing clothes at a river. A hoodie crow came
round, and he said to the eldest one, *' M-pos-n-ffii — Will you
marry me — farmer's daughter?' *I won't, indeed, you ugly
brute; an ugly brute is a hoodie,' said she. He came to the
second one on the morrow, and he said to her, ''M-pos-u-mi —
Wilt thou wed me?' *Not I, indeed,' said she; *an ugly brute is
a hoodie.' The third day he said to the youngest, ^' M-pos-u-mt
— Wilt thou wed me — farmer's daughter?' 'I will wed thee/
said she ; *a pretty creature is the hoodie.' And on the morrow
they married.

" The hoodie said to her, * Whether wouldst thou rather that
I should be a hoodie by day and a man at night ; or be a hoodie
at night and a man by day?* * I would rather that thou wert a
man by day and a hoodie at night,* says she. After this he was
a splendid fellow by day and a hoodie at night A few days
after he got married he took her to his own house.

" At the birth of the first child, there came at night the very
finest music that ever was heard about the house. Every one
slept, and the child was taken away. Her father came to the
door in the morning, and he was both sorrowful and wrathful that
the child was taken away.

"The same thing, despite their watching, happened at the
birth of the second child: music — sleep— and stealing of the child.
The same thing happened, too, at the birth of the third child, but
on the morning of the next day they went to another house that
they had, himself and his wife and his sisters-in-law. He said to
them by the way, * See that you have not forgotten something.'
The wife said, * I forgot my coarse comb.* The coach in which
they were fell a withered faggot, and he flew away as a hoodie!

"Her two sisters returned, and she followed after him.
When he would be on a hill-top, she would follow to try and
catch him; and when she would reach the top of a hill, he would
be in the hollow on the other side. When night came, and she
was tired, she had no place of rest or dwelling. She saw a little
house of light far from her, and though far from her, she was not
long in reaching it

"WTien she reached the house she stood deserted at the
door. She saw a little laddie about the house, and she yearned
after him exceedingly. The house-wife told her to come in, that
she knew her cheer and travel. She lay down, and no sooner
did the day come than she rose. She went out, and as she was
going from hill to hill, saw a hoodie, whom she followed as on the
day before. She came to a second house; saw a second laddie;
pursued the hoodie on a third day, and arrived at night at a third
house. Here she was told she must not sleep, but be clever and
catch the hoodie when he would visit her during night But she
slept; he came where she was, and let fall a ring on her right
hand. Now, when she woke, she tried to catch hold of him, and
she caught a feather of his wing. He left the feather with her.

and went away. In the morning she did not know what to do
till the house-wife told her that he had gone over a hill of poison,
over which she could not go without horse shoes on her hands
and feet She gave her man's clothes, and told her to learn
smithying till she could make horse shoes for herself.

" This she did, and got over the hill of poison. But on the
day of her arrival, she found that her husband was to be married
to the daughter of a great gentleman that was in the town. As
festivities were in progress, the cook of the house asked the
stranger to take his place and make the wedding meal She
watched the bridegroom, and let fall the ring and feather in the
broth intended for him. With the first spoon he took up the
ring, with the next the feather. He asked for the person who
cooked the meal, and said, 'that now .was his married wife.' The
spells went off him. They turned back over the hill of poison,
she throwing the horse shoes behind her to him, as she went a
bit forward, and he following her. They went to the three houses
where she had been. These were the houses of his three sisters ;
and they took with them their three sons, and they came home to
their own home, and they were happy." ♦

Such is a good specimen of the folk-tale, and the folkrtales
are merely the modern representatives of the old Mythology —
merely the detritus, as it were, of the old myths which dealt with
the gods and the heroes of the race. In the above tale we are in
quite a different world from the practical and scientific views of
the 19th century; we have birds speaking and acting as rational
beings, and yet exciting no wonder to the human beings they
come in contact with ; supernatural spells whereby men may be
turned into animals ; a marriage with a bird, which partially
breaks these spells, and the bird becomes a man for part of
the day ; supernatural kidnapping, ending in the disappearance
of the man-bird ; and pursuit of him by the wife through fairy
regions of charms and spells and untold hardships — a pursuit
which ends successfully. It looks all a wild maze of childish
nonsense, unworthy of a moment's serious consideration ; it would
certainly appear to be a hopeless subject for scientific research ;
for what could science, whose object is truth, have to do with a

• Abridged from Ompbell's West Hijjhland Talcs, vo\. x, v ^V

V

tissue of absurdities and falsehoods ? But this view is a super-
ficial one, though it is the one commonly held. On looking
more deeply into the matter, we shall find that after all there is
a method in the madness of Mythology, and that the incon-
gruous mass of tales and broken-dowrt myths that make up a
nation's folk-lore is susceptible of scientific treatment Science
first attacks the problem by the method of comparison ; it com-
pares the myths and tales of one nation with those of another,
with the view of discovering similarities. The outlines, for ex-
ample, of the tale already given, exist not merely in one or two
more tales in our own folk-lore, but can also be traced over all
the continent of Europe, as well as in many parts of Asia. The
outline of the tale is this — The youngest and best of three
daughters is married or given up to some unsightly being or
monster, who in reality is a most beautiful youth, but who is
under certain spells to remain in a low form of life until some
maiden is found to marry him. He then regains his natural
form, though, as a rule, only partially ; and the newly-
married pair have to work out his complete redemption
from the spells. But, just as he is about to be free from
the spells, the curiosity or disobedience of the wife ruins every-
thing; he disappears, and then follows for the wife the dark
period of wandering and toil, which can be brought to an end
only by the achievement of tasks, generally three in number,
each hopelessly beyond human powers. The husband, who
meanwhile has forgotten, owing to the nature of the spells upon
him, all about his wife, is on the eve of marrying another, when
the last task of all is accomplished by the persevering courage of •
the wife. The spells then leave him for ever, and happiness
reigns in the household ever after.

There are in our Highland folk-lore one or two versions of
this same tale. The story of the " Daughter of the Skies," in Mr
Campbell's book, is one variation. Here the hoodie crow is re-
placed by a little doggie, and the wife's disobedience is clearly
brought out, while the supernatural machinery — the magical
scissors and needle, for example — is much more elaborate. The
tale also is found in Norway; in the Norse tale, "East of the
Sun and West of the Moon," the hero ap^t^ts ^\.^\^\. "^s '^x^^xjNss.
bear, who, on his marriage wilh iVve Yvcxo\w^>\i^covwr5» "^ vcgsxv\s^

night She must not, however, sec him, for light must not fall on
his body or else he at once disappears. But the wife, instigated
by her mother, steals a sight of him by lamp-light, with the con-
sequence that he awakes and vanishes. Then follow her trials,
pursuit, and recovery of him. The beautiful Greek tale of Psyche
and Cupid is but a variation of the same myth. Psyche, the
youngest of three royal daughters, incurs the wrath of Venus,
who sends Cupid to inspire her with love for something con-
temptible; as Titania, in Shakespeare, is made to fall in love with
the transformed weaver, Bottom. But Cupid, captivated by her
beauty, falls in love with her himself, conveys her to a secret
cave, and visits her only at night, under strict charge of her not
attempting to see him by any light Her jealous sisters persuade
her that she is married to some ugly monster, and she accord-
ingly determines to disobey his injunctions, and inspect him by
lamp-light In so doing, she allows in her admiration of his
beauty, a drop of hot oil to fall on his shoulder, and he awakes,
and escapes. She suffers woes untold in her pursuit of him,
being finally a slave in the household of Venus, who treats her
very cruelly. But, of course, she recovers her lost lover at long
last And, again, in India, in the old religious books of the
Brahmins, is a somewhat similar tale — the stoiy of Urvasi and
Pururavas, the mairf features of which are the same as the Gaelic
and Greek tales already given. To the English reader, the well-
known tale of " Beauty and the Beast" will at once occur as an
exact parallel to all these. And, if we take the myths where the
heroine is the loathly monster, we shall find an equally wide
distribution. We have the Hindu tale, where the Princess is
disguised as a withered old woman ; the Loathly Lady of Teu-
tonic Mythology; and the Celtic story of Diarmad's love for the
daughter of the king of the Land under the Waves, who appears
first as a hideous monster, and becomes, on approaching Diarmad,
the most beautiful woman ever seen.

Thus, then, we have traced the same myth among nations so
widely apart as the Celts and Hindus, while, intermediate between
these, we found it among the Greeks and Teutona And some
myths are even more widely distributed than that; the tale of the
imprisoned maiden and the hero who rescues her from the dragon
or jTJunstcr apjK:ars among all the nations of Europe as well as

6

among many of the nations of Asia. Hence, from India in the
East, to Ireland in the West, we may find a great mass of mythi-
cal talcs common to the various nations. And this being the
case, it may plainly become a matter of scientific enquiry, first,
What the cause of these peculiar myths and tales can be? and,
secondly. What the significance is of their wide distribution?

Cause of Myth.

The cause and origin of these myths have puzzled philoso-
phers of all ages, and it is only a generation ago when the first
unravelling of the didicult problem really took place. In olden
times their origin was set down to the well-known faculty of
invention that man possesses; they were mere inventions and
fictions, mostly purposeless, though some were evidently in-
tended for explanations of natural phenomena or of historical
events, and others again for the conveyance of moral truth.
There were practically two schools of myth-explainers; those
who regarded myths as mere allegories or parables, and
from them extracted codes of moral obligation and hidden
knowledge of the mysteries of nature ; and, again, those
who, so to speak, " rationalised " the myths — that is to say,
those who explained myths as exaggerated real events. Some
of these explained, for example, Jupiter as king of Crete
in the pre-historic times; and, again, the giant that Jack
killed, according to such explanations, was not necessarily
far exceeding the natural limit of six or seven feet in height,
for the only point to notice was that he was a big burly
brute of little sense, overcome by the astuteness of a much lesser
man. But this theory gets into grave difficulties when it
grapples with the supernatural and the supranatural ; in fact, it
fails ignominiously. And as to the allegorical theory, while it has
no difficulty in explaining Jack the Giant Killer as merely the
personification of the truth that power of mind is superior to
power of body, that theor}' is completely wrecked in explaining
the myths of Jupiter and the gods generally. No allegory can
explain most of these myths, especially the older myths ; while
the different explanations given by different "allegorizers" of
even the simplest myths point to a fundamental error in this
theory. Now, it must not be supposed that both allegory and

real events had no share in the formation of myths ; they were
indeed, most potent factors in the later stages of Mythology, and
must have existed all along as a cause for myth. Another theory
may be noticed in passing as to the origin of myths in regard to
the deities and cosmogony of the world. It may be called the
"degradation" theory, and the principle of it is this: As all
languages were supposed by theologians to be descendants of the
original Hebrew tongue spoken in Eden, so the Mytholc^y of all
nations must be more or less a broken-down remembrance of the
Hebrew religion and philosophy, first imparted to man in the
Garden of Eden. The stoutest supporter of this view is Mr
Gladstone. He goes so far as to hold that distinct traces of the
Trinity can be found in Greek Mythology, and he consequently
resolves Zeus, Apollo, and Athena into the three persons of the
Trinity! Supposing for a moment that this theory of the
degradation of myth was true, or, indeed, that our only explana-
tion was either or both of the other theories, what a mass of
senseless wickedness and immorality much of the deservedly
admired Greek Mythology would be? Such theories would
argue equal wickedness in the race from whose fancy such inven-
tions sprung: for the Greek Olympus is very full of rapine, pari-
cide, and vice. Yet the Greeks were neither an immoral nor
degraded race, but far otherwise. It is this dark side of a
nation's Mythology that has puzzled and shocked so many
philosophers, and made shipwreck of their theories as to the
origin of myths.

With the rise of the science of language and ks marked
success, all^ within this century, a complete revolution has taken
place, not merely in the case of philology itself, but also in the
kindred subjects of Ethnology and Mythology. The methods
adopted in linguistic research have also been adopted in the case
of Mythology — first, all preconceptions and national prejudices
have been put aside ; then a careful, even painful examination
and comparison of languages have been made, to find laws of
interchange of sounds; a consequent discovery of the relationships
between languages has taken place; and lastly, a discussion as
to the origin of language is thus rendered possible. Exactly
the same methods have been employed in the elucidation of
myths, with a success that, on the whole, is gratifying. In so

8

airy and fanciful a subject, results of such strict scientific accuracy
cannot be obtained as in the kindred science of language. And
a good deal of harm has also been done, even with scientific
methods, by pressing some theories of explanation too far. Some
Mythologists, for example, are too apt to reduce every myth to a
myth about the sun, and hence the evil repute of the "solar
myth" theory. But this is merely a good theory injudiciously
used ; it does not alter the fact of the importance in Mythology
of the sun worship.

The theory of the cause of myth that finds most favour at
the present time is that which explains myth in connection with,
and dependence on, language ; while at the same time due regard
is had to the other possible sources of it in allegory, analogy, and
real, though exaggerated, events. The way in which language
gives rise to myth can, however, be understood only after a con-
sideration of the mental powers, state of culture, and consequent
interpretation of nature which existed among primitive and myth-
making men. Language is but the physical side, as it were, of
mythology, and the mental side of it must be considered before
the action of language can be appreciated properly. The origin
of myth springs from the same cause as the origin of science ;
they are both man's attempt to interpret his surroundings. Myth
is but the badly remembered interpretation of nature given in
the youth and inexperience of the world when the feelings were
predominant ; science is the same interpretation in the old age
of the world, given under the influence of the ** freezing reason's
colder part." Man in the myth-making stage was ignorant of
the cause and real character of the mighty natural forces around
him — ignorant even of the unaltering uniformity of nature —
indeed the only thing the Celts said they were afraid of was that
the heavens should fall ! The relations of cause and effect they
interpreted by their own feelings and will-power ; every moving
thing, animate or inanimate, was regarded as impelled by a force
akin to that which impelled man; that is, by a will-force. Even
•stationary nature — the everlasting hills and the solid earth — was
endowed with feeling, will, and thought. All the mental powers
that man found controlling his own actions were unconsciously
transferred to nature. A personal life was accordingly attributed
to sun, moon, clouds, winds, and the other natural powers ; they

were looked upon as performing their special functions by means
of faculties of mind and body analogous to those of man or beast
The varying phenomena of the sky, mom and eve, noon and
black-clouded night, were the product of the life that dwelt in
each. The eclipse of the sun, for example — a most dreaded event
in ancient times — ^was supposed to be caused by a wild beast
attempting to swallow the lord of day ; and men poured forth, as
some savages do yet, with timbrels and drums, to frighten away
the monster. The clouds were cows with swelling udders, milked
by the sun and wind of heaven — the cattle of the sun under the
care of the wind. The thunder was the roar of a mighty beast ;
the lightning, a serpent darting at its prey. Modern savages are
in much this state of culture, and their beliefs have helped greatly
in unravelling the problem of mythology. The ideas which
children form of outward nature exemplifies in some degree the
mythic age through which the race in its childhood passed ** To
a little child not only are all living creatures endowed with
human intelligence, but everything is alive. In his world, pussy
takes rank with * Pa* and * Ma' in point of intelligence. He beats
the chairs against which he has knocked his head ; the fire that
burns his finger is * naughty fire' ; and the stars that shine through
his bedroom window are eyes like mamma's, or pussy's, only
brighter."

It was on these wrong impressions — this anthropomorphic
view of nature — that language was founded. Language, in
man's passing to a higher state of culture, still kept, stereotyped
and fixed, the old personal explanations and statements about
nature ; the language did not change, but man's views of natural
causes and events changed very much as he got more civilised —
more free from the influence of his feelings, and more under the
sway of his reasoning powers. The knowledge and ideas of
earlier men were thus, as it were, fossilised in language, and when
the feeling and personification impressed on language had passed
into a more intellectual age, the result was misinterpretation and
a too literal acceptance of many of the warm and vivid epithets
employed of old. The personal explanation of the sun's motion,
for instance, and the attributes and epithets given to it, all
charged with life and feeling, were in the course of time and
language taken in a more literal way, and, since slightly more

B

10

scientific views were held as to the real nature of the sun, the old
explanations were fastened to a separate sun-god, and thus a
divorce was made between the sun and the personality given to
it in the old epithets and explanations. The result was that
there came to be a sun and a sun-god, Apollo, quite separate ; and
the life-history given to this sun-god was taken from the explana-
tions formerly given, in personal and anthropomorphic language,
of the sun's daily and yearly course, his " rising" and " setting,"
for example, expressions which, though anthropomorphic, are
still in use. A myth cannot, therefore, well arise unless the true
meaning of a word or phrase has been forgotten, and a false
meaning or explanation fastened on it We may take an ex-
ample from Greek mythology to illustrate this. Prometheus, the
fire-bringcr, is merely the personification of the wooden fire-drill;
for the word is derived from the same source as the Sanscrit
pramanthas, the " fire machine." Transplanted to Greek soil, the
word lost its original signification with the loss of the thing sig-
nified, and became a mythological name, for which a new etymo-
logy had to be coined. Now, "promethes," in Greek, means
"provident," and so Prometheus, the fire-bringer, was transformed
into the wise representative of forethought, who stole the fire from
heaven for suffering humanity; and a brother was supplied him
in the foolish Epimetheus or "afterthought" And thereby
hangs one of the most famous and noble myths of antiquity.

Gaelic, in its modern shape even, presents some very start-
ling personifications of natural objects. The regular expression
for " The sun is setting" is " Tha a' ghrian 'dol a laidhe" — " going
to bed." Mr Campbell, in his very literal and picturesque trans-
lation of the West Highland tales, does not hesitate to follow the
Gaelic even in its most personal metaphors. " Beul na h-oidhche,"
"nightfall," is given literally as "the mouth of night" Gaelic
poetry, too, is as a rule much more instinct with life and feeling
in dealing with natural objects than English poetry. Ossian's
address to the setting sun may be quoted to show what a mine
of metaphor, and consequent mythology, exists in our poetic and
elevated language —

" An d* fhag thu gorm astar nan speur,
A mhic gun bhcud, a*s 5r-bhuidh* ciabh ?
Tha dorsan na h-oidhche dhuit reidh,
Agus philliun do chlos san iar.

n

Thig na stuaidh mu'n cuairt gu mall,

A choimhcad fir a's glaine gruaidh,

A' togail fo eagal an ceann

Ri d* fhaicinn cho Mllidh 'n ad shoain.

Gabhsa cadal ann ad ch5s,

A ghriaiii a*s till o d' chlos le aoibhneas.**

These lines bring us back to the anthropomorphism of the Vedic
hymns of India, to which alone, in their richness of personification
and mythic power, they can be compared.

Allied to the linguistic theory of myth is also the simpler
case of those myths consciously started to ^explain the names of
nations, countries, and places. A common method of accounting
for a national name was to invent an ancestor or patriarch who
bore that name in an individual form. Britain, so say the myths,
is so named from Brutus, grandson of iEneas, the Trojan hero,
who first ruled here. Scotland gets its name from Scota, the
daughter of Pharaoh. The names of places are dealt with in the
same way, and, if the name is anyways significant, the myth takes
the lines indicated by the popular etymology of the name. This
is the origin of the name of Loch-Ncss : " Where Loch-Ness now
is there was once a fine glen. A woman went one day to the well
to fetch water, and the spring flowed so much that she got
frightened, left her pitcher, and ran for her life. Getting to the
top of a hill, she turned about and saw the glen filled with water.
"Aha!' said she, 'tha loch ann a nis;* and hence the lake was
called Loch-Ness." A somewhat similar account is given of the
origin and name of Loch-Neagh, in Ireland, and Loch-Awe, in
Argyleshire.

From such myths as the last we gradually pass to myths
that do not depend in the least on the quibbling and changes of
language, but are, consciously or unconsciously, forged explana-
tions of national customs, historical events, or natural phenomena.
Thus the custom among the Picts whereby the succession was in
the female line, was mythically explained by Bcde, thus: The
Picts, having invaded Scotland, came to terms with the indigen-
ous Gaels, and, as they brought no women with them, the compact
was that, if the Gaels gave them their daughters as wives, the
succession would be in the female line. Again, has the reader
ever thought why the sea is salt? Well, this is the reason why.

12

A man once got possession, it is needless to detail how, of a
fairy quern which was " good to grind anything," only requiring
certain cabalistic words to set it going or to stop it A ship
captain bought it to grind salt for him on his voyage. In mid-
ocean the captain gave the quern the necessary order to grind
salt, and it did ; but unfortunately he forgot the incantation for
stopping it The quern ground on and filled the ship with salt
till it sank to the bottom of the sea, where the quern is still
grinding salt And that is the reason why the sea is salt If
any one is sceptical, just let him taste the sea water and he will
know its truth !

Spread of Myth.

Closely akin to the consideration of the cause of myth is the
question why myths and tales, evidently of the same origin, exist
among nations differing widely both in language and locality.
We found that tales of transformed lovers, descending even to
similarities in minute details, and hence showing evidences of a
common source, existed among all the chief nations of Europe,
Western Asia, and India. Besides, other myths of a more
general character are found all over the world. Now, what is the
cause of this wide distribution of the same myths ? Two or three
explanations are offered for this, each of which can correctly ex-
plain why some particular myths or tales, but none of which can
explain why the whole body of mythology and folk-lore, is so
widely distributed. Some hold that the stories and myths have
been borrowed or transmitted from one nation to another ; travel-
lers and translators, they think, will account for nearly the whole
of them. While it cannot be denied that many tales have permeated
from one nation to another, this will by no means account for the
similarities of myths among two nations or more, in whose langu-
age and customs these myths are so deeply embedded and in-
grooved that we should have to say the language too was bor-
rowed. If a myth, and, to a less degree, a tale, depend on a
nation's language — its modes of thought and expression, if the
roots of the proper names be embedded in the language, and
consequently obscured, that myth and that tale must belong to
that nation. They belong to that s.uopcu inheritance as much as
its language. Of course, care must be exercised in deciding

I

I

what is really the peculiar property of a nation, and distinction
made between the various classes into which the materials of
I mythology and folk-lore fall "That certain -deities occur in
India, Greece, and Germany, having the same names and the
same character, is a fact that can no longer be denied. That
certain heroes, too, known to Indians, Greeks, and Romans, point
to one and the same origin for these nations, both by their name
and by their history, is a fact by this time admitted by all whose
admission is of real value. As heroes are in most cases gods
in disguise, there is nothing startling in the fact that nations who
had worshipped the same gods should also have preserved some
common legends of demigods or heroes, nay, even in a later
phase of thought, of fairies and ghosts. The case, however, be-
comes much more problematical when we ask whether stories
also, fables told with a decided moral purpose, formed part of
that earliest Aryan inheritance?" Here Max Miiller draws a dis-
tinct line between fables with a moral or educative purpose and
the rest of the materials of mythology, and he has clearly demon-
strated that many such are borrowed. The fables of JEsop have
been adopted into every language in Europe, and the mora!
talcs of the Indians, after many vicissitudes, found a "local
habitation" in the pages of La Fontaine and others. Another
explanation for the distribution of myths is that primitive men
worked in similar grooves wherever they lived; man's circum-
stances being the same, his ideas and the expression of them will
present strong resemblances everywhere. This view will account
for the myths that are most widely distributed over the earth's
surface. Jack the Giant-Killer, for instance, appears in the Zulu
story of Uhlakanyana, who cheats the cannibal g^ant and his
mother, to the latter of whom he had been delivered to be
boiled, and whom he cunningly succeeds in substituting for him-
self But the theory can apply only in a general way; to the
great body of m>^hs common to certain nations it cannot apply
at all; it does not touch their deep and often detailed resem-
blances. What harmonises best with the facts of mythologic
distribution is the grouping of nations into families proved to be
genealogically allied from possessing a common body of myths
and talcs that must be descended from a parent stock. Although
the facts of comparative mythology are sufficiently strong of

14

themselves to prove the common origin of the nations from India
to Ireland, yet it is satisfactory that the science of language has
already proved the common descent of these nations, as far at
least as language is concerned. Linguists have called the parent
nation, from which they have sprung, the Aryan nation, a name
which shall be adopted in this discussion. The only other group
of nations that can satisfactorily be shown by their language and
mythology to possess a common descent is the Semitic, which
includes the Hebrews, Chaldeans, and Arabians. The Aryan
and Semitic races have nothing in common, except what is bor-
rowed, either in the matter of language or myth. When we are
told that the Celtic god Bel is the same as the Semitic Baal, we
may conclude that the assertion is, more than likely, both un-
scientific and untrue.

The Aryan Nation.

From the comparison of roots in the various present and
past descendants of the original Aryan tongue, and, in a less
degree, from a comparison of their myths, we arc enabled to form
a fair idea of the culture and religion of the Aryans. Not only
can radical elements expressing such objects and relations as
father, mother, brother, daughter, husband, brother-in-law, cow,
dog, horse, cattle, ox, corn, mill, earth, sky, water, star, and hun-
dreds more, be found identically the same, in the various branches
of the Aryan tongue, now or sometime spoken, but they can also
be proved to possess the elements of a mythological phraseology
clearly descended from a common source. In the matter of cul-
ture, the Aryans were organised in communities framed on the
model of the patriarchal household. They had adopted a system
of regular marriage with an elaborate grading of kinships and
marriage affinities. In the household the father was king and
priest, for there was also a family religion ; the wife and the rest
of the family, though subservient to the patria potestaSy were far
from being slaves ; while, outside the household, grades and ranks
of nobility or kinship were strictly marked. Comfortable houses
and clustered villages, clearings and stations, with paths and
roads, wercj in existence ; the precious metals, together with
copper, tin, and bronze, were in use, but iron was probably un-
known. The domestic animals had long been tamed and named.

15

•

for cattle and flocks composed their chief wealth, though the
plough tilled the field and corn was grown and crushed in the
mills and querns. They could count to one hundred at the very
least, for the root of ceud^ ** htittd-rcA^* is common to all the
descendant tongues, and they had divided the year into seasons
and months — a fact which is especially proved by the root for
month being taken from the name given to the moon, " the
measurer." They spoke a language that was highly inflected and
complex ; that is to say, the relation between words and the
relations of time (or tense) and mood were expressed by changes
in the terminations of words. On the whole, the Aryans were
high in the barbaric state of culture, as opposed, on the one hand
to the savage, and, on the other, to the civilised state of progress.
In regard to religion and Mythology, the Aryans were in
much the same stage of advancement as in their culture generally.
As their culture and language had required long ages to reach up
to the state of comparative excellence at which they had arrived,
so, too, their religion must have passed through lower phases
until it reached the well-developed cosmos of Aryan times. And
as there are not wanting many signs of those earlier stages of
belief both in Aryan Mythology and in the Mythologies of the
descendant nations, it is necessary to glance briefly at what these
stages may have been. Belief in the supernatural exists, and has
existed, in all races of men whose beliefs we have any knowledge
of. The lowest phase of this belief is known as "Animism," and
consists in believing that what is presented to us in our dreams
and visions has a real existence. Savage man makes no distinc-
tion between his dreaming and waking existence. He sees the
"shadows" of the dead in his sleep, and firmly believes in their
objective reality. But not merely the dead alone have shadows
or spirits ; the living, too, have spirits or duplicates of self.
Animals, also, and material objects, have souls, for is not the
dead hero seen in dreams wearing the ghosts of arms — sword
and hatchet, and such like — that he possessed in life? The
worship of ancestors would appear to have been the first form in
which these beliefs took the shape of an active religion or worship
of higher beings. Ancestor worship, though first, is by no means
lost in subsequent stages, for of all forms it is the most persistent
in its survival. Modern China and ancient Rome are prominent

16

proofs of this fact. From ancestors, it is an easy stop to worship
the ghosts of other persons ; sometimes these were looked on as
beneficent, and at other times a§ maleficent, beings, whose help
was to be invoked or whose wrath was to be deprecated.
Ghosts, ancestral and other, might inhabit natural objects —
trees, rivers, wells, and animals ; and this, combined with the
worship of the actual ghosts of these objects, sometimes gave
rise to " fetishism," so well called the worship of " stocks and
stones." Totemism, again, consists in the worship of a tribal
badge; some clan or nation worship a particular object, gene-
rally an animal, a form of worship which may easily have
sprung from ancestor worship, since the ancestral ghost may
have taken that particular form. Some go so far as to assert
that the names of some of the I^ighland and Irish clans and
their badges are remnants or remembrances of this worship, and
appeal in proof is especially made to the clan **Chattan," with
its animal crest, the cat. The next stage is the worship of the
nature-spirits, or the natural powers as seen in objects of outward
nature — clouds, lightning, and sky. This gives rise to polytheism
proper, and, perhaps, prior to that, to henotheism, as Max Muller
has so well named that " totemic" worship of one especial element
of nature, making it for the moment the supreme deity with all
the attributes that are applicable to it embellished and exhausted.
In polytheism the plurality of deities is expressed ; in henotheism
it is implied. Polytheism generally presents a dynastic system of
gods under the rule of one supreme king or father, while heno-
theism implies a co-ordination of deities. "These deities," says Mr
Sayce, "are necessarily suggested by nature; the variety of nature
overpowers in an infantile state of society the unity for which the
mind of man is ever yearning. Gradually, however, the attributes
applied to the objects and powers of nature take the place of the
latter; the sun becomes Apollo, the storm Ares. Deities are
multiplied with the multiplication of the epithets which the
mythoporic age changes into divinities and dcmi-gods, and side
by side with a developed Mythology goes a developed pantheon.
The polytheism, which the infinite variety of nature made inevit-
able, continues long after the nature worship that underlay it has
grown faint and forgotten. A time at last comes when even
abstract names have to submit to the common process ; temples

17

arc raised to Terror and Fear, to Love and Reverence ; and the
doom of the old polytheism of nature is at hand When once the
spirit of divinity has been breathed into abstractions of the
human mind, it cannot be long before their essential unity is
recognised, and they are all summed up under the one higher
abstraction of monotheisntL"

But this quotation anticipates the history of Aryan Myth-
ology in the descendant nations. Aryan religion itself was a fully
developed hcnotheism, or rather a polytheism, where the Supreme
Deity was different at different times in the eyes of the same
worshipper. At one time, to take the Vedic hymns as represen-
tative of the oldest and nearest stratum of religious thought to
the Aryan religion, Indra is the only god whom the singer recog-
nises, and he exhausts his religious vocabulary on his praise
alone ; and at another time Varuna receives all worship, at
another it is AgnL Indra represents the heaven-god, more
especially in the view of a rain-giving deity, for the root is
the same as the English water, and is seen also in the sacred
River Indus. Agni is the god of fire ; Varuna, of the canopy of
heaven — the Greek Uranus. Comparing and analysing the ele-
ments of Teutonic, Greek, and Hindu Mythology, for example,
we may arrive at a tolerably clear conception of the Aryan pan-
theon and religious cultus. It would seem the chief deity was
connected with the worship of light; the shining canopy of
heaven was the head of the Aryan Olympus. The Gaelic word
dia (and rf/;/day); Sanscrit, Dyaus; Greek, Zeus; Latin, deus and
5^;/-piter ; and English, Tiw (as seen in T/z^^day), are from the
primitive name of this god, their common root being ^/V, shining.
Hence dia originally meant the bright sky, and Jupiter, the " sky-
father," is the Roman version of " Father in Heaven." Fire, in
all its manilcstations, was an especial object of worship ; Agni is
the Vedic name of this diety, which appears in Latin ignis^ and
Gaelic ain (heat), but the Gaelic equivalent deity would appear
to have been the ** Dagda," or the Great Good Fire. The sun
and moon were prominent among the deities, the sun being the
most in favour, perhaps, of all the gods. The epithets applied to
him are innumerable, and, as a consequence, scarcely two nations
have the same name for the sun-god, and nearly all have one or

two deities that are phases of solar worship. The Sanscrit, surya;

^ C

^»

18

Latin, sol; Greek, Julias; English, sun; and Gaelic, sdus^ present
the chief root, the first four actually meaning the " sun," and being
used as the name of the sun-deity often.

And there were other gods hardly inferior to these gods;
such were what we may call the " meteorological" deities — the
regulators of weather and seasons. Prominent among these was
the thunder god, who brings thunder and rain ; in the Vedic
hymns his place is filled by the chief god Indra ; in Latin he is
the Jupiter Tonans ; in the Norse M>lhology, he appears as
Thor who is next in importance to Odin himself; and in the
Celtic Mythology, he is known as Taranis. The storm god was
worshipped under the title of Maruts, the Latin Mars, and
Greek Ares. The wind, Vata, the Gaelic gaoth^ had a high posi-
tion among the deities, but among the descendant nations its
position is not quite so high, unless we connect with it the god
Hermes, who in Greek Mythology is clearly a wind god both in
his connection with music and as messenger to the gods.

The gods we have hitherto discussed belong to the intangi-
ble objects of nature — ^thc sky, stars, sun, dawn, and, perhaps, so
too the " weather" gods. Max Muller gives two other possible
classes of deified objects: semi-tangible objects such as trees,
mountains, the sea, the earth. These objects supply the material
for what he calls the semi-deities. And thirdly, lowest of all, are
tangible objects, such as " stocks and stones" and other elements
of fetishism. The worship of semi-tangible objects shows clearly
a remnant of the old animism, for these objects are endowed in
savage culture with spirits of a personal type. "The lowest
races," says Mr Tylor, ** not only talk of such nature-spirits, but
deal with them in a thoroughly personal way, which shows how
they are modelled on human souls. Modem travellers have seen
North Americans paddling their canoes past a dangerous place
on the river, and throwing in a bit of tobacco with a prayer to
the river-spirit to let them pass. An African wood cutter who
has made the first cut at a great tree has been known to take the
precaution of pouring some palm-oil on the ground, that the
angry tree-spirit coming out may stop to lick it up, while the
man runs for his life. The state of mind to which these nature-
spirits belong must have been almost as clearly remembered by
the Greeks, when they could 3till fancy the nymphs of the lovely

19

groves and springs and grassy meadows coming up to the council
of the Olympian gods, or the dryads growing with the leafy
pines and oaks, and uttering screams of pain when the wood-
man's axe strikes the trunk." These nature spirits play a most
important part in folk-lore, appearing in the tales of the river
demon, the water kelpie, who drowns his victim in the whirl-
pool ; and in the giants, trolls, and dwarfs, who represent moun-
tain and earth spirits; the healing waters of sacred wells have
only adopted saints' names in place of the old pagan deity; while
the little elves and fairies of the woods are but dim recollections
of the old forest spirits.

Of magic, a word or two may be said. It must be remem-
bered that the gods could change their shape at pleasure ; their
normal shape among Aryan nations was the human, but they
could assume the shape of particular men or beasts, or even of
inanimate objects, for Jupiter came into Danae's prison in a
shower of gold. Perseus* magical hat of darkness and shoes of
swiftness belong to the same cloud-changing character. Spells
and enchantments form an important feature of magical powers,
and have their origin in spirit-explanations of the numbing power
of frost, the relaxing power of heat, the power of drugs, as of the
Indian Soma, and doubtless in the magnetic influence exerted by
some men and animals, notably the serpent And if we descend
still lower, we And magic as a rule depend on a false use of
analogies. The Zulu who has to buy cattle may be seen chew-
ing a bit of wood, in order to soften the breast of the seller he is
dealing with, for as the wood gets softer in his mouth, the seller's
heart is supposed also to soften. Such superstitions exist even
in our own country to the present day. The writer of this has
known of a case where a clay body "corpan creadha," was
actually made and stuck over with nails and pins, and placed
in a stream channel to waste away. As the clay wasted, so with
sharp pangs would waste away the person for whom it was
intended.

The ethical side of the Aryan religion presented some in-
teresting features. The contest between the powers of light and
darkness — Dyaus and Indra on one side against Ahriman or
Vritra, the bright sun-god against the snake-god of darknes.s,
ApoWo strangling the Python, represents a real ethical idea—

20

good overcoming evil. Sacrifice and prayer, temple and altar,
were known ; and sin and sin-oflTering were familiar ideas to the
Aryans. A shadowy spirit existence after death was believed
in ; heroes were taken to the halls of the gods, but the kingdom
of Hades was the general abode of spirits, where the good and
the evil got their deserts.

Aryan Myths.

We shall now see how the Aryans dealt in one or two cases
with the actions of their gods, and how this gave rise to a mythi-
cal life history of them in later times. It was around the sun-
god that most of these myths were gathering. Off-spring of
night, whom he slays, he loves the dawn maiden. Daphne —
" rosy-fingered morn," who flies from his embrace over the azure
plains of Heaven, but, Cinderella-like, leaves a golden streak of
light behind her whereby she may be followed and found. The
sun has his toils, too, in the pursuit ; storm-clouds intercept his
path ; at times even the eclipse monster swallows him ; and he
has to toil for mean creatures like men to give them light and
heat, owing to the spells put upon him. But at length he over-
takes, in the evening, his morning love, the dawn, now the even-
ing dawn, who consoles him as he descends beneath the wave. In
some such strains must the old Aryans have spoken of the sun's
career and actions, and sung the praises of the Being who guided
his flying coursers over the plains of Heaven. Later ages rational-
ised the myth into the loves and actions of Apollo and Daphne,
Hercules and Dejanira, and others innumerable. The myth is
broken down to a folk-tale, which appears in a variety of modern
forms, of which the fairy talc of Cinderella is the best example.
Cinderella is the youngest, as usual, of three sisters — the night-
watches ; she is in fact the dawn maiden ; she is pursued by the
young prince, and leaves her glass slipper — her streak of light —
behind her, by means of which she is identified at last This tale
appears also in the Gaelic popular stories. A king's daughter
has to fly with her fairy treasures — the peculiar thing is that these
maidens have always treasures, and there generally is as much
dispute about them as about the maidens themselves; these
treasures appear to be connected with the rain clouds, the cows
and cattle of the sun. The king's daughter takes service in the

new land she arrives in ; goes to a ball, unknown to her employ-
ers, in her fairy dress ; creates a sensation, so to speak ; but
having to leave in haste, she loses her glass slipper, whereby the
enamoured prince is enabled to find her. The talc of the
" Hoodie Crow," with which our discussion commenced, would
appear to be a broken down myth of the solar class ; and it is
accordingly connected with the nocturnal life of the sun-god, who
then is under the spell of the dark powers. The dawn maiden
pursues him through toils and difficulties, and at last frees him
from the spells.

Another fruitful source of myth and worship is the change
of summer into winter, when the earth has to pass from the
genial rule of the " fire " powers to that of the " frost " king. The
earth is spell-bound during winter, by the machinations of the
frost-king ; the lovely goddess of summer has been carried away,
leaving her mother Earth disconsolate ; " Proserpina gathering
flowers, herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis is gathered." She
! becomes the wife of Pluto, god of the lower world, but is allowed

I to return to her mother for half of the year. Connected with this

myth is the widespread tale of the imprisoned maiden. There are
always three characters in the myth ; the nionster or giant, who
performs the abduction ; the maiden who is rich in treasures as
well as beautiful ; and the youthful hero, the young Apollo, who
is destined to overcome the monster and his spells.

Some minor points may briefly be noticed. Among the
many names of the sun in the Veda, he is called the "golden-
handed," a very natural simile for the golden rays shooting finger-
like from him. The Hindus accordingly rationalise this, and tell
how Savitri cut ofl* his hand in a strait, and that the priests made
a golden hand for him. The Norse god Tys (Zeus) had also his
hand bitten off" by the Fcnris-wolf, and the Irish king of the De
Dannans, Nuada of the Silver Hand, lost his hand in fight with
the Firbolg giant, and the physician Diancet made him a silver
one. Another wide-spread myth is to be referred to the same
source ; the sun-god Apollo is the best of archers — the " Far-
darter," of Homeric poetry. In nearly every Aryan nation there
is a historical legend telling the doughty deecj of some great
archer ; such is the story of Tell, in Switzerland, which is typical
of the rest The legend appears in the German tale of Eigel,

i

22

brother of Wayland, the smith-god ; while in Braemar it is circum-
stantially told regarding the ancestor of the Machardies, also a
" smith" family. Of myths arising from the wind, storm, thunder,
earth, and sea, it is unnecessary to speak as yet; they will appear
in their proper place among the folk-tales, and some — as the sea-
deities, Lir and his children — among the myths of the heroes.

Results of the General Principles.

The peculiar characteristics of Mythology have now been
indicated ; the cause of myth, and the wide diflusion of the same
myths among different nations have been discovered respectively
in the philosophy of primitive man, and the common descent of
the chief European and Asiatic nations. It has been shown that
the Aryan nation possessed what may be dignified with the name
of a civilisation ; its culture and religion were of a very high type,
though there were not wanting numerous traces of the culture of
more primitive and ruder times. It now becomes our duty to
follow the fortunes of the Mythology of one of the nations de-
scended from this Aryan parent nation, and see how it shaped
the common heritage.

It may be set down as a general principle that the Celts
ought not to have in their language, mythology, or customs, any
features inconsistent with their Aryan descent ; they may have
developed the outward and inward features of Aryan civilisation,
according to the idiosyncracies of the Celtic race, but the essential
Aryan characteristics ought still to be recognisable in the descen-
dant Celtic languages and myths. Whatever we find in these
must conform, regard being had to the development of Celtic
peculiarities, to what we know to have been true of the myths
and language of the parent Aryan tongue, or of those of one or
two of the other Aryan nations. Anything in Celtic myth,
language, or customs, inconsistent with an Aryan descent, or of
a plainly non-Aryan character, must first of all be distrusted
until its existence among the Celts, and them alone, has been es-
tablished on indubitable grounds. Nor must explanations of
Celtic phenomena be accepted which would imply relationship
with races outside the Aryan stock — such as with the Semitic or
Hebrew race, until clear historical or other proof is adduced.
The a priori argument against such a connection is so strong that

23

special care must be exercised in allowing non-Aryan explana-
tions to appear. It is needless to remark that until lately the
Celts suffered much from the injudicious and unscientific theories
of Celtic enthusiasts, and it has been only by the patient industry
of the Germans that full recognition has been given to the proper
position of the Celts among the other Indo-European nations.
Even yet, in Scotland, too little attention is paid to the scientific
facts established in Celtic ethnology and philology. For this
state of matters there is now little excuse, moro especially as
within the last year or two the results of Continental and British
learning have been put before the public in the works of Mr Elton
and Professor Rhys, to both of whom the present writer must
express his great obligations.

Sources of Information.

Of the old Celtic nations — their culture and their religion —
we have no native account No Celtic language has got any
literary remains earlier than the seventh century at farthest, and
even these are but glosses or marginal Gaelic equivalents of
Latin words in manuscripts. The oldest manuscripts of connected
works cannot be traced farther back than the eleventh century.
By this period Christianity had asserted its sway, at least in
name, and the old paganism remained only in the customs and
the heroic and folk tales of the nation. What religion existed in
Ireland and Britain a thousand years before this period of the
oldest manuscripts must be discovered, if it can at aU, from some
other source than contemporary native evidence. Yet we are
not without a fair idea of what the old Celtic religion was. The
sources of our information in deciphering what Professor Rhys
has called "the weather worn history" of the Celts are these:
Roman and Greek writers have left contemporary accounts of
Celtic history, religion, and customs, though in the case of
religion and customs, such accounts are scrappy indeed, and
the history is generally a statement of contemporary actions
and the relations of the Celts to the favoured races of Rome
and Greece. Next to these come the monuments and in-
scriptions of ancient Gaul and Britain. These comprise mostly
the votive inscriptions to the deities, the statues, and the coin-
age of th2 period. The names of places, especially of rivers,

; (

'

24

have indicated Celtic localities, migrations, and religious beliefs;
for how numerous are, for instance, the rivers with. the name
Dee (goddess), showing the wide-spread worship of water
and rivers among the Celts? Examination also of the rude
stone monuments and the barrows of prc-historic times has
elucidated much that is dark in Celtic history, while the ex-
amination of physical characteristics in the race has helped even
more to clear up difficulties of ethnology. A judicious use of
the oldest heroic and folk talcs must divulge some secrets in re-
gard to Mythology, if not to History; while modem folk-talcs
and customs lend special aid in reflecting light on the past An
intelligent scrutiny of the Roman calendar of saints will disclose
a few more Celtic divinities in the realms of saintdom; for where
the Church did not make demons or heroes of the ancient gods,
it did the next best thing — it made saints of them. In the same
way we can recognise Pagan festivals and customs in a Christian
guise; the Church festivals are nearly all the result of assimilat-
ing the existing religious customs. And, lastly, to steady our
whole results, we have to remember that the Celts are an Aryan
people, and that explanations of their customs and religions must
follow the ordinary lines of the other Aryan nations. Where
there are diflerences — and there are many such — these must be
caused by the fact that the Celts assimilated with themselves an
earlier population. Notice has already been taken of the Pictish
law of succession, where descent is traced through the mother.
This implies clearly a low view of the state of matrimony, and
one clearly opposed to an Aryan source. We are therefore fairly
justified in regarding the Picts as strongly admixed with a non-
Aryan race.

In thus reconstructing the past history of the Celts, at least
three classes of savants are pressed into our service. First and
foremost is the philologist, who has within the last generation or
two completely revolutionised the science of ethnology. He has
shown in the clearest manner possible the common descent of
most of the European nations, at least as far as language is con-
cerned, and that means a vast amount, for language is followed
by a common mythology, and, in a less degree, by common cus-
toms. The next savant we draw upon is the anthropologist, or,
rather, the physiologist; he examines the remains of ancient man

25

and the characteristics of modern man, and classifies accordingly.
And, thirdly, wc have the archaeologist, who examines prehistoric
remains and implements. These three classes of workers do not
well agree; Professor Huxley despises the ethnological results of
linguistic science, while Professor Rhys does not conceal his con-
tempt for those who decide on national descent by "skin and
skull;" and Mr Ferguson will not leave his "rude stone monu-
ments" to consider what either of them may say. Two such
men as Mr Tylor and Mr Elton are, therefore, to the ordinary
student, simply invaluable guides, from the fact that they attempt
to combine the researches of all three. From the materials
collected from these three sources, we shall proceed to give a
short account of the Celts and their religion.

The Celts.

When or where the people lived who spoke the original
Aryan tongue is not known with any certainty. " It seems pro-
bable," says one writer, "that their home was somewhere in
South-western Asia, and the time of their dispersion not less than
three thousand years before Christ" Fick holds that they split
up first into two parts, answering to the modem Asiatic and
European Aryans. The European branch again broke up into
two — the South-western European division and the Northern
European division. The latter included the Slavonic (Russians
and old Prussians), and the Teutonic (English, Germans, Norse,
&c.) races ; while the Southern branch comprised the Greek,
Latin, and Celtic races. The order in which they are enumer-
ated above shows the order of their arrival in Europe ; first came
the Celts leading the van of the Southern division, while the
Sclavs brought up the rear of all. It has been remarked that
for the purpose of attaining political greatness the Celts came
too soon, the Sclavs too late. The line of Celtic migration across
Europe has been traced in the names of places, especially the
river names. The Don and the Dnieper would appear to prove
that they crossed the Russian steppes. Yet there are evident
traces of the Celts on the iEgean sea, which itself may be from
the root of the Gaelic aigcan ; and we have the River Strumon on
the Thracian coast, which is clearly Celtic from the existence of

the X, which was lost in Greek itself; and we may add the famous

D

26

Mount Pindus — the black mount (?)9 in Greece. In any case,
however, be their route whatever we please, we find the Celts in
the earliest records we have of them in possession of the greatest
portion of Western Europe. At the time of their taking Rome
in 390 B.C, the Celts would appear to have possessed, as they
certainly did two centuries later, Northern Italy, France, Belgium,
and part of Germany, most of Spain, Britain, and Ireland. How
much of the middle of Europe they then held is unknown, but
that they did possess part of what now is Germany is clear from
the names of places, and also from the fact that the Germans have,
in common with the Celts, many myths which must have then
been absorbed by the Germans in absorbing the Celtic population.
About 220 B.C the Romans conquered Northern Italy, a hundred
years later they conquered the Mediterranean coast of France,
and seventy years afterwards Csesar conquered the whole of
France and completely crushed the Gallic power.

That is briefly the political side of their history. But there
are two points to notice in their internal history of special im-
portance in the present inquiry. The Celts, in entering Europe,
found the country inhabited, and this previous population, a non-
Aryan one of course, they either exterminated or absorbed. It
is, therefore, of vital importance to know as much as possible
about this previous population, for, naturally, its customs, beliefs,
and, in a much less degree, its language, were absorbed by the
conquering Celt From the evidence of language and customs
alone. Professor Rhys has, in his work on ** Celtic Britain," been
able to prove the existence of a previous non-Celtic and non-
Aryan population in Britain. The Pictish custom of succession
already mentioned, and the continual reference in classical writers
to some British nations who had community of wives — Caesar
erroneously attributes this to all Britain alike, Celt and non-Celt
— point to a low idea of matrimony that must have belonged to
the previous population. Again, in the list of Kings given for
the Picts, the names are not of an Aryan or Celtic type; Aryan
names were always compounds, however much denuded by time,
but these Pictish names are monosyllabic and unmeaning. The
frequency of animal names in Pictish "districts has also been ad-
duced as a proof in the same direction, though not a convincing
argument, for most nations have animal names among their per-

it

sonal names. Mr Elton has pointed out some peculiar legal
customs with regard to the right of the youngest son to succeed
to the father's property, and these, he thinks, indicate a non-
Aryan source. But the matter is rendered practically a certainty,
if we summon to our aid the physiologist He finds the British
nation divided into two or more races. These are, at the least,
the small dark-skinned race and the fair-skinned race. ''All the
Celts," says Mr Elton, "according to a remarkable consensus of
authorities, were tall, pale, and light-haired." The dark-skinned
race evidently belong to a different race from the Celts, and when
we consider that Europe has been inhabited for several thousand
years, and that men have existed here who used stone weapons,
and thereafter bronze, before iron came into vogue, which it pro-
bably did along with the Celts, we must believe that there was a
race before the Celts in Europe, who used stone and bronze

weapons. But the evidence does not stop here. From the con-
tents of the barrows and tombs of the stone and bronze ages, it
has been proved by the skeletons and skulls that there were two
races at least previous to the Celts; one race being the dark-
skinned and small one already mentioned, with long skulls; the
other with fair skin and hair and broad skulls, a tall race, rough-
featured, beetle-browed, with the nose overhung at its root,
heavy cheek-bones, and prominent chin; these last differing
much from the straight-faced, oval-headed men who are recog-
nised as Celts and Aryans. The dark-skinned race of Britain is
called the "Silurian," from the ancient tribe so named by Tacitus
in the Vale of the Severn, and described by him 4s " Iberian" in
appearance. The fair race Mr Elton designates the " Finnish,"
from its apparent Finnish or Ugrian affinities. The Picts would
appear to be for the most part of this race, doubtless, with a
strong admixture in after times of the pure Celtic stock. The
archaeologist, unfortunately, cannot help us much, but it is be-
lieved that this Finnish race were the builders of the huge stone
monuments scattered all over Europe — dolmens, cromlechs, and
Druid circles, while the barrows of both the ante-Celtic races exist
The influence exerted by these previous races on Celtic
customs and religion must doubtless have been considerable.
" The strangeness of the * lower mythology* prevailing in Wales
and Britanny might afford some evidence in favour of its pre«

28

Celtic origin. But no country in Europe is free from those gross
superstitions which seem to indicate an underworld of barbarism
and remnants of forgotten nations not wholly permeated by the
culture of the dominant races." Professor Rhys goes so far as to
refer Druidism to the Silurian race, because Caisar mentions
Britain as the birthplace of that cultus, and it is of a character
which he considers non-Aryan. It is almost certain that second-
sight and other ecstatic moods must be referred to the pre-Celtic
races.

Welsh and Gaels.

The second point in the internal history of the Celts is the
fact that the race is divided into two great divisions, caused by
the languages used by each. The difference between Welsh and
Gaelic is very great, yet not so great as to preclude their being
classed as one race, making up one of the Aryan branches. The
difference between the two languages can be traced as far back
as history goes, and, by monuments and inscriptions can be fol-
lowed back for two thousand years, when still the Gaelic race was
very different in language from the Welsh or British. It would
appear that the Celts overran Europe in two successive waves of
conquest The first wave was the Gaelic one ; it was followed
by the Welsh — we may rather call it the Gaulish wave. The
Gauls push the Gaels from France into Britain and Ireland, and
then followed them into Britain. When British history begins
with the Christian era, France and Belgium were Gaulish or
Welsh-speaking, and so also was the Eastern part of England,
and the Scotch Lowlands ; while Cornwall and Devon, most of
Wales, Cumberland, Galloway, and the surrounding counties,
north of the Forth, and all Ireland belonged to the Gaels. It
must be remembered that a good portion of the population north
of the Grampians were probably non-Celtic. By the end of the
seventh century of this era no Gael lived in England ; the British
tribes had been driven back to the corners of the country by the
Saxons, and they absorbed the old Gaelic population. Ireland
was still altogether Celtic, and so remained practically till the
13th century and later.

The last wave of the Celts was in its turn pressed on from
two sides. First the Romans overran and garrisoned Gaul, and
then England, which they kept for four hundred years, much as

s

29

1 I wc keep India at present Then the Teutonic nations pressed
J on France from the north, conquered it and were absorbed ;

while in England they conquered and absorbed the old popula-
J I tion, leaving the old Welsh population to the western shores

I ; The eastern portion of Ireland was conquered and settled in, and

the rest has been gradually falling under the sway of the English
tongue. The Celtic speaking peoples at present are the Bretons
of Britanny, the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highlanders. The
total number who can understand a Celtic tongue is, according
to M. Scbillot, three millions and a-half (R€i\ Celt^ /V., ^jS).

Celtic Characteristics.

Of the physical characteristics of the Celts, except to show
unity or diversity of descent, it would be needless to speak in dis-
cussing their Mythology ; but there are so many Irish legends
bearing upon the early ethnology of these islands, with continual
reference to small dark men,tall brown-haired and fair-haired races^
that it is necessary to at least glance at the question. The unan-
imity of ancient opinion in making the Celts tall and fair-hsured
has already been noticed, and in the myths the ideal of beauty is, as
a rule, what is told of the summer isles of the West, where dwelt
a divine race of the pure Celtic type, " long-faced, yellow-haired
hunters" and goddesses with hair like gold or the flower of the
broom. Another type of beauty was recognised : Pcredur
or Percival of Wales, as well as the lady Deirdre of Irish
story, would have no consort unless the hair was black as the
raven's wing, the skin as white as snow, and the two red spots in
the checks as red as the blood of the bird which the raven was
eating in the snow. But, " if you look at the Celtic countries,"
says the author of " Loch-Etive and the Sons of Uisnach,** " that
is, countries in which Celtic was spoken in old time, or is spoken
now, you find a predominance of dark hair." There would seem,
therefore, to have been a decided change in the colour of the
hair among the Celts since the times of Caesar and Tacitus ; but
whether this is due to mingling of races or is connected with a
higher nervous activity, for fair-haired children become dark-
' haired as the nervous system becomes more active by years, is a

i question which, though important for the mythologist to know

in its bearing on the migration and borrowing of myths and

i

30

manners, yet cannot be decided in the present state of knowledge.
We have still among us the remnants of the small dark people,
and, if Professor Rhys is right, the Highlands must mostly in race
be of the fair Finnish type that anteceded the Celts, with just
sufficient of the Celtic conqueror among them as to take his
language and general manners.

There is, however, a more wonderful agreement in the mental
characteristics formerly attributed to the Celts with what we now
regard as the Celtic character. Roman writers have noticed their
wonderful quickness of apprehension, their impressibility and
great craving for knowledge, qualities which have rendered the
Celt a very assimilable being in the fusion of races. They were
generous to a degree ; prompt in action, but not very capable of
sustained effort Caesar is never tired speaking of the " mobilitas''
— changeablcncss — of the Gauls, and also of their "celerity," both
mental and physical. Another feature noticed from tiie very
first, and still noticeable in the Celts, is their fondness for colour ;
" loudness," we might say, both in colour and sound, musical or
other, has been especially attractive to them. They appear in
flaming tartan dresses before the walls of Rome in 390 RC, as we
see from both Livy and Virgil. "They wear," says Diodorus
Siculus, a writer of the ist century, "bracelets and armlets, and
round their necks thick rings, all of gold, and costly finger rings,
and even golden corselets ; they have dyed tunics, flowered with
colours of every kind, and striped cloaks fastened with a brooch,
and divided into numerous many-coloured squares." In this
description we have the tartan, but unfortunately the kilt had
not yet made its appearance; the Gauls and ancient Britons
actually wore tartan trousers ! Their love of ornament and colour
appears strongly in the mythic tales equally of Wales, Ireland,
and the Highlands ; indeed, so rich is the description in one
Welsh tale that at the end of it we are told that " no one knows
the 'Dream of Rhonabwy' without a book, neither bard nor
gifted seer; because of the various colours that were on the'
horses, and the many wondrous colours of the arms, and of the
panoply and of the precious scarfs, and of the virtue-bearing
stones."

We can trace among the Celts the same succession of politi«
cal life that we find in some of the other Aryan nations, notably

SI

the Greeks and the Romans. The patriarchal system of Aryan
times had given place on European soil to kings, who were
merely larger editions of the patriarch of old. They were kings
of the Homeric type ; for the Irish kings are not accurately
represented in the lives of the saints as Pharaohs surrounded with
Druids and magicians. The king consulted the chiefs beneath
him, and the people, after this consultation, were told <^ his
pleasure, but could only, apparently, murmur approval or dis-
approval. In the course of time, the chiefs abolished the kingly
power, and conducted matters themselves as an oligarchy, often
cruelly oppressing the common people. In Greece, the oligarchy
was overthrown by some clever man who sided with the common
people and, through them, made himself " tyrant," as they called
it The last step was the abolition of tyranny and the setting up
of a democracy. Rome shows much the same historical sequence,
only the tyrant does not appear; the oligarchy extended some
privileges to the commons, and a sort of union was established,
which, however, in the end, failed, and gave place to an Imperial
sway. Among the Gauls we have distinct traces of all these phen-
omena, " though," as Professor Rhys says, " no Gaulish Herodotus
or Livy was found to commit them to the pages of histoiy.**
Gaul would appear to have just passed through the stage when
tyrants and oligarchs were struggling with the people; for Caesar
found everywhere "the sulking and plotting representatives of
the fallen dynasties, and readily turned them into use, either in
bringing information about what was going on in the senates of
the peoples who had expelled their ancestors from the office of
king, or in keeping their states in subjection by appointing them
kings in the room of their fathers and under Roman protectipn.**
No wonder then that Caesar tells us that Gaul was torn asunder
by factions. Britain had yet retained its kings, and appears to
have lost them only when the Island was conquered by the
Romans. Ireland had its five kings even within historic times;
and the history of Scotland during the Stuart period shows how
nearly an oligarchy came to rule this country.

The old Celtic population of both Gaul and Britain appears
to have been very prosperous. They were excellent farmers, but
their chief riches lay in their cattle ; and their food, especially in
Britain, was mostly flesh, milk, and cheese. Posidonius, in the

first century before Christ, has left us a description of a Gaulish
banquet which is important as reflecting light on the myths and
tales of later Irish times. He was delighted at the antique sim-
plicity of his entertainers, and amused at their Gallic frivolity
and readiness for fighting at meal times. " They were just like
the people in Homer's time." The guest was not asked his name
or the purpose of his journey until the feast was over. They sat
on a carpet of rushes or on the skins of animals in front of little
tables. There was plenty of meat, roast and boiled, which they
ate, after the fashion of lions, gnawing the joint, but they would
at times use their small bronze knives, kept in a separate sheath
by the side of the sword. Beer was their drink, which they
poured through their long moustaches like water through a sieve
or funnel " The minstrels sang and the harpers played, and, as
the company drank, they bowed to the right in honour of their
god. The guests sat in three rings — nobles, shield-bearers, and
javelin-men — all in order of their precedence." If they quarrelled
about the food, they would get up and fight it to the death; and
sometimes the guests were entertained with swordplay, and
sometimes even a man would consent to die to amuse the
rest, so careless were they of life. Their conduct and ap-
pearance in battle and in the chase is no less important for
us to notice. " We seem," says Mr Elton, " to see the Brigan-
tian soldier, with his brightly-painted shield, his pair of javelins
and his sword hilt 'as white as the whale's-bone': his matted
hair supplied the want of a helmet, and a leather jerkin
served as a cuirass. When the line of battle was formed, the
champions ran out to insult and provoke the foe ; the chiefs rode
up and down on their white chargers shining in golden breast-
plates, others drove the war chariots along the front, with soldiers
leaning out before their captain to cast their spears and hand-
stones : the ground shook with the prancing of horses, and the
noise of the chariot wheels. We are recalled to scenes of old
Irish life which so strangely reproduce the world of the Greek
heroes and the war upon the plains of Troy.* We see the hunters
following the cry of the hounds through the green plains and
sloping glens; the ladies at the feast in the woods, the game
roasting on the hazel-spits, * fish and flesh of boar and badger,*
and the great bronze cauldrons at the fireplace in the cave. The

J

t

33

hero, Cuchulain, passes in his chariot brandishing the heads of the
slain ; he speaks with his horses, the Gray and * Dewy- Red/ like
Achilles on the banks of Scamander. The horses, in Homeric
fashion, weep tears of blood and fight by their master's side ; his
sword shines redly in his hand, the * light of valour* hovers round
him, and a goddess takes an earthly form to be near him and to
help him in the fray."

The Gaulish Religion.

The religion of the Gauls is the only Celtic religion of which
we have any description, such as it is, left Now, we should be
justified in assuming that the Gaulish religion is fairly representa-
tive of what the old religion of the British and Irish Celts was,
even though we had not Tacitus' direct testimony to this being
the case. The descriptions we have of the Gaulish religion arc
sufficiently meagre. Three chapters of Caesar, a few lines from
Diodorus, Mela, and Strabo, some scattered allusions in Pliny,
five lines from Lucan, and a statement from the Greek XiS*^"
genes reproduced in Ammianus MarcelHnus, are practically all
our authorities. The statues and inscriptions preserved to our
time arc almost our only authority for the names of the deities;.
while the calendar of the Church saints, local festivities and tradi-
tions, render some little help in this and also in matters of ritual.

Cnesar's sketch of the Gaulish pantheon, though meagre, is
yet the best We owe it entirely to the fact that for practical
purposes the Gaulish religion was much the same as the Roman,
with the exception of Druidism, which he doubtless saw would be
a source of danger, unless it could be assimilated to Roman ideas
and practices. We are, therefore, prepared, from our knowledge
of the Aryan descent of the Celts, to believe what Caesar says
when he writes that the ideas of the Gauls with regard to the
gods were much the same as those of other nations, meaning
especially Romans and Greeks. . He tells us that the god most
worshipped was Mercury ; that is to say, the Gaulish god was
not named Mercury, but corresponded in his attributes to that
Roman deity. Cnesar, unfortunately, does not record the native
names for these deities. They regarded Mercury as the in-
ventor of arts, presiding over trade and commerce, and means of
communication between people. After him came the deities

K

34

answering to the Roman Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva ;
Apollo drove away diseases, Minerva taught the useful arts of
life, Jupiter held the sway of Heaven, and Mars ruled the depart-
ment of war. To Mars they would vow what they should capture
in war, and when they conquered they would sacrifice the cattle,
and heap up the other wealth in mounds, in consecrated places,
and no one would dare touch or steal these treasures, both from
fear of the gods and from the extreme cruelty of the punishment
that would follow detection. C.xsar also notices a feature of
Celtic character which is still persistent in the race. The nation,
he says, is very much given to religious matters. And on this
account, he proceeds, those who are affected with diseases of a
rather serious character, and those who are in great dangers, either
sacrifice human beings, or make a vow to that effect ; and at
these sacrifices they employ the Druids. They think, he says,
that the Deity cannot be appeased unless human life is given up
for human life, and they have even national sacrifices of this kind.
They make huge images of wickerwork, inside which they place
human beings alive ; and this they set on fire,and the victims perish.
Generally the victims are criminals, but if criminals are wanting,
they have recourse to innocent persons. These human sacrifices
seem horrible to our modern minds, and to the Romans,
though familiar with the idea of human sacrifice,' for in the time
of the Second Punic war, they, themselves, resorted in their re-
ligious terror to the sacrificing of a male and female Gaul, and it
was not until the 1st century before Christ that the Senate for-
mally forbade such sacrifices even in Rome — to the Romans even
the Gauls appeared reckless in their massacres, such occurring,
too, when there did not appear to be any special danger. Strabo
says that it was a tenet of the Druids that the harvest would be
rich in proportion to the richness of the harvest of death.

Another article of the Gaulish creed is given by Caesar.
The Gauls, he says, assert that they are all sprung from Pluto
(the god of the lower world), for so the Druids teach. Hence,
therefore, they reckon by nights instead of days. In regard to
the belief which Caesar records, it is probably only a mythical
way of recording a belief common to most nations in their bar-
barous state, that they are the aboriginal inhabitants and sprung
from the soil on which they dwell. As to the Gauls reckoning

36

blacken the heavens with clouds and wind, or drive in the temp-
est with chariot and horses of fire." The Irish Dinn-Scnchus
mentions this " thunder" god as ** Etirun, an idol of the Britons."
Two other names of deities are preserved to us in the classical
writers. Lucian speaks of a sort of Gaulish Hercules, represented
as an old man drawing a large multitude after him by cords fas-
tened to their ears and his tongue, and he was their god of letters
and eloquence, and they called him Ogmios. This name appears
afterwards as that of the Irish sacred or runic alphabet, so named
from its inventor, Ogma, the son of Elathan, evidently a degraded
deity. Again, one or two other writers mention the god Bclenus,
a name common in inscriptions and in proper names of persons.
The inscriptions also give, according to the Gallo-Romanic habit,
the Latin God as well, with whom he was identified : we have such
a combination often as Bclenus Apollo, thus making him the
equivalent to the Roman sun and healing-god. This Belenus is
the famous deity of the Druids according to the school of Neo-
Druidists, the investigators into the system of the Druids, lately
rampant among us. As a rule, Belenus, or rather Bel, as he was
called by them, was identified with the Phenician Baal, and no
end of theories were started on such suppositions. The word
Belenus may, however, be from the same root as Apollo, and
probably is from that root, as Mr Moberly has pointed out in his
notes to Caesar. That his worship was connected with solar
rites is evident from the manner in which Ausonius describes his
temple at I3ayeux ; but he was also especially connected with
health-giving waters and herbs, and was worshipped at medicinal
resorts under various local titles, the most important of which are
Borvo (I^ourbon) and Grannus. The latter title is doubtless
connected with the Gaelic grian^ sun, and it is interesting to note
that an altar was once found at Invcresk with the inscription,
•* ApoUini Granno," which clearly shows the worship of this sun-
god in ancient Scotland. It is probably in connection with the
service of Belenus that the cutting of the mistletoe took place, as
related by Pliny. The passage is given either in full or in
abstract in almost all our school books of history, and it is there
wrongly given out as a " Druidic " rite. It is merely a case of
herb worship, common to all nations. The mistletoe is far more
famous in Teutonic Mythology, and the gallant rites at modern

37

Christmascs arc merely a remembrance of its ancient efficacy as

a preserver and defender from harm. Pliny tells us that on the

sixth day of the moon, the commencement of the Gaulish month,

a Druid or priest, clothed in white, mounted the tree and cut the

plant with a golden sickle. It was received on a white cloth, and

two white bulls were sacrificed, while the people burst forth in

prayer for the favour of the god. The mistletoe was supposed \

thus to be a cure for sterility, and a safeguard against poisons.

This is just merely a form ol fetishism.

The Gaulish inscriptions give us quite a host of minor deities.

The Roman system of assimilating conquered peoples appears

extremely well in these inscriptions; in nearly every case the

Roman deity is given as the principal name to which is attached

as epithet the local Gaulish equivalent. We, therefore, meet with
combinations like these: "Marti Segomoni," "Marti Caturigi,"

"Mercurio Artaio," "lovi Bagniati," "Apollini Virotuti,"' etc
The Gaulish and British goddess, Belisama, is the most important
to notice; she answered to the Latin Minerva, goddess of arts,
who, along with " Mercury," was the most human of all the deities
of Gaul. The goddesses of the healing springs were honoured as
the companions of Apollo. " Divine beings everywhere mediated
between man and heaven." Fountains, rivers, and hills had their
deities, and the sea-nymph of the Breton shore is still revered
under the title of St Anne. Every village was protected by local
deities, with the generic title of " Matris" or " Mothers," names
which appear in great numbers on the inscriptions, and which
survive, we are told, in mediaeval legends as the White Ladies,
the " Three Fairies," the Weird Sisters, and the Wild Women of
the Woods. Some, again, of the lesser deities appear as the
giants of our folk-tales. Such has been the fate of "Gargantua,"
an old Gaulish deity of Normandy, whose festivals are not un-
known yet, and whose fame appears on the pages of Rabelais.
There were also innumerable private or family gods, answering
to the Roman Penates and Lares, of whom inscriptions and

statues testify.

Druidism.

One feature of the Gaulish religion still remains to 1x5 discus-
sed, and that, too, perhaps its most important one. We have dis-
cussed the religious beliefs of the people, but not their ecclesias-

38

tical polity. This is known as Druidism, although that term is
commonly made to include all that we know of the Gaulish
religion as well. But the Druids were rather the philosophers
and divines of the Gauls; and, as what we know of their opinions
and practices is somewhat remarkable, it is better not to confuse
their system with the ordinary Aryan religion of the Gauls.
Here, again, it must be repeated that our information is meagre ;
in fact, with regard to the Druids no less meagre, and far
more unsatisfactory than our comparatively poor information
about their general religion. Indeed, with the addition of two
chapters in Caesar, a sentence in Cicero, and nigh a dozen lines of
Lucan,^our authorities for Druidism are included in the enumera-
tion already made in regard to Gaulish religion in general. No
monuments or inscriptions can help us, nor can we trust in the
slightest degree the references made to Druidism by early Irish
or Welsh writers : the Druids of Irish history are mere conjurors
and magicians. Neither can any customs or religious survivals
be referred to Druidic belief or usage. But it may be at the start
premised that there is, perhaps, little to know, and that it is en-
tirely due to Caisar's account of them, probably itself somewhat
exaggerated in its political aspect, and certainly misread by
modern writers under the influence of their knowledge of medi-
;uval ccclesiasticism, that this exaggerated opinion of Druidism is
prevalent So little is known, and the little that is known is so
interesting, that it opened quite a new world for fancies and
speculations. " Omne ignotum pro magnifico est ;" the unknown
passes for the magnificent. Here was an unknown and un-
knowable land, where in circular temples of stone, and mid
groves of oak, in vestments of stainless white, and ornaments of
glittering gold, stalked majestically the Druids, holding high
converse with their disciples on the nature of the one God — for
such philosophers could only be monotheists! — on the immortality
of the soul, the courses of the stars, and, in fact, on all the mighty
problems of life. Dr Smith tells us that they alone kept the first
tradition of monotheism intact in the West; and Reynaud, but a
generation ago, found in their human sacrifices only the conse-
quence of the idea, dominant now as in the days of the Druids,
that the higher the victim the more complete the atonement
offered to the Deity for the sins of man. John Toland, at the

39

end of the 17th century, an Irishman of fertile imagination and
advanced opinions, possessed of no small learning, was the first
to lead the way into the undiscovered country of Druidism. The
references in Pliny were made to disclose a pomp and ritual that
could vie with the best days of the Church of Rome ; surplices of
white — incidentally worn, as may be seen from Pliny — were their
usual dress, with golden ornaments, sacrifice utensils and amulets,
all of gold. The megalithic monuments — circles, cromlechs, and
menhirs, were of course their work — their temples and their
altars, and these also showed their knowledge of the mechanical
powers. Nay, cairns and barrows were Druidic remains, and
vitrified forts ! Everything unexplained in archaeological monu-
ments, in social customs, and in proverbial language must be
Druidic. Dr Smith, of the " Seann Dana," followed Toland and
made a most unscrupulous use of his classical authorities. Welsh
and French writers took the same view of the old religion of
Gaul, and Celtomania reigned supreme in this obscure region,
until lately the light of modern criticism was allowed to shine
through the overhanging mist of nonsensical speculation.

All that can with certainty be known of the Druids will first
be briefly given, apart from any personal theories. Caesar is again
our first and best authority. In the digression in his 6th book,
on the manners and customs of the Gauls and Germans, he tells
us that all men of any consideration or position were included
among either the Druids or the nobles. The Druids conduct
public and private sacrifices, and interpret omens. Young men
flock to them for instruction ; and they are held in great honour,
for they have the decision of all controversies, public and private;
they are judges in cases of crime, murder, and disputes in regard
to succession or boundaries ; and whoever abides not by their
decision is excommunicated — a most severe punishment, for such
are reckoned sacrilegists, and men flee from their presence for fear
of disaster from contact with them. A chief Druid presides
over them, having supreme authority. He may be elected with
or without voting, and they at times resort to war to decide the
matter. They meet at an appointed time of the year in the ter-
ritories of the Carnutes, in the middle of Gaul, where there is a
consecrated place; and there all come who have disputes, and
abide by their decisions. It is thought that the system was found

40

in Britain, and thence transferred to Gaul, and those who at the
present time wish to know it thoroughly, as a rule proceed there
to learn it The Druids are wont to hold aloof from war, and
pay no taxes, being thus free from military service and civil
duties. Under the inducement of such great rewards, many come
themselves into their ranks, or are sent by their parents and friends.
With them they learn off a great number of lines of poetry, so
that some remain under training for twenty years. And they do
not regard it allowable by divine laws to commit these things to
writing, though in secular matters they use Greek letters. The
reason for this seems to be twofold, that they do not wish either
their system to be made public, or their pupils to fail to cultivate
their memory by trusting to writing, as generally happens when
books can be resorted to. Their chief doctrine is that souls do
notjgcrish^imt pass after death from one individual to another,
"and this — the removal of the fear of death — they think the greatest
incitement to viilQun They theorise largely on astronomy, on the
^e of the universe and the earth, on nature, and on the power
and might of the gods, and in these matters they instruct the
youth. Caisar further on tells that the Druids presided at the
human sacrifices, and in the 7th book he gives us to know that the
>Eduan magistrates, at least, were elected by them. Cicero, in
his treatise on " Divination," written a few years later, introduces
his brother Quintus as saying : " The principles of divination arc
not overlooked among barbarous nations even, as, for instance, in
Gaul there are the Druids, one of whom Divitiacus, the iCduan, I
knew ; he was a guest of yours and great in your praises. He
professed to know natural philosophy, which the Greeks call
'physiology,' and he used to tell partly by augury, partly by
conjecture, what was to happen in the future." Cicero's contem-
porary, Diodorus Siculus, tells us that among the Gauls were
bards, certain philosophers and divines named Druids, and sooth-
sayers, adding that " the system of Pythagoras held sway among
them," that is, the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. To
this doctrine V^alerius Maximus refers when he says: " One would
have laughed at these long-trousered philosophers [the Druids], if
we had not found their doctrine under the cloak of Pythagoras."
Strabo, his contemporary, in the first century of our era, gives us
a short account of the Druids, half of which is but a variation of

I

41

I

Caesar's sketch. ** Amongst the Gauls" he says, "there are
generally three divisions of men, especially reverenced, the Bards,
the Vates, and the Druids. The bards composed and chanted
hymns ; the Vates occupied themselves with the sacrifices and
the study of nature; while the Druids joined to the study of
nature that of moral philosophy. The belief in their justice is so
great that the decision both of public and private disputes is
referred to them, and they have before now by their decision pre-
vented battle. All cases of murder are particularly referred to
them. When there are plenty of these they imagine there will be
a plentiful harvest Both these and the others [Bards and Vates]
assert that the soul is indestructible and likewise the world, but
that fire and water will one day have the mastery.*' And
further on he says that without the Druids the Gauls never sacrifice. •

Another geographer, Pomponius Mela, refers to the Druids,
but adds nothing to our knowledge, merely echoing Caesar's de-
scription. Lucan, who died in 65, has been quoted in the former
section for the names of the Gaulish gods ; but he further pro-
ceeds to describe, after a reference to the Bards, the barbarous
rites of the Druids and their theology. The passage is mostly an \

expansion of Cncsar's reference to the transmigration of souls,
but the poet beautifully brings out how ** IMuto's gloomy reign" is
not the habitation of souls, but that —

** Forth they fly immortal in their kind.
And other bodies in new worlds they find ;
Thus life for ever runs its endless race.
And like a line death but divides the space.
Thrice happy they beneath their northern skies.
Who that worst fear — the fear of death — despise ;
Hence they no cares for this frail lieing feel.
Hut rush undaunted on the pointed steel ;
Provoke approaching fate and bravely scorn
To spare that life which must so soon return. "

The writer on the Druids, next in importance to Ca;sar, is Pliny
the Elder. He has several interesting allusions to them and their
superstitions. At the end of his 16th book he mentions the
admiration of the Gauls for the mistletoe. ** The Druids," he
says " (for so they name their viagi) hold nothing more sacred
than the mistletoe, and the tree on which it grows, provided it be
the oak. They choose groves of that tree, and conduct no sacri-

43

Ace without a garland of its leaves, so that we may possibly
suppose the Druids are so called from its Greek name [t/ms],
WTiatever grows on the oak is considered a gift from heaven."
And he proceeds to tell how it was culled from the tree, as has
already been told. Pliny mentions other plant superstitions of
the Gauls, connecting the rites naturally enough with the Druids
who presided. The next important /etis/i he mentions is the
club-moss (selago) ; it must be touched by no metal, but plucked
by the right hand passed through the tunic under the left, with a
thievish gesture ; the worshipper must be dressed in white, with feet
washed and bare ; and the plant must be carried in a new cloth.
The Druids held that it was a charm against all misfortunes, and
the smoke of its burning leaves cured diseases of the eye. In
much the same way they thought the " samolus," or water pim-
pernel, a talisman against murrain in cattle. Vervain was
another plant, "about which the Gaulish ;;/^^/ raged," which cured
everything, and had to be gathered at the rise of the dog-star,
and when neither sun nor moon was seen. But these plant
superstitions and ceremonies have nothing especially " Druidic"
about them; they are common among other nations as well.
Pliny's account of the serpent's egg — the anginnum — is more im-
portant and special. The snake's egg was said to be produced
from the frothy sweat of a number of serpents writhing in an
entangled mass, and to be tossed up into the air as soon as
formed. The Druid who was fortunate enough to catch it in his
cloak as it fell rode off at full speed, pursued by the serpents,
until stopped by a running stream. If tried, the egg would swim
in water though cased in gold. Pliny says he saw one himself,
" about the size of a moderately large apple, with a cartilaginous
rind, studded with cavities like the arms of a polypus." A Roman
knight was making use of it in court to gain an unfair verdict,
and for this was put to death by Claudius the Emperor. And,
lastly, in speaking of magic and its "vanities," he says that
"Britain celebrates them to-day with such ceremonies that it
might seem possible that she taught magic to the Persians," and
" Gaul was overrun with magic arts even up to our own time, until
Tiberius Caesar did away with the Druids and this class of
prophets and medicine-men." This passage has puzzled many
commentators, for if the Druids were done away with, how docs

43

Pliny elsewhere mention them as still existent in Gaul ? And to
add to the difficulty, Suetonius, a generation later, says that
" Claudius abolished entirely the religion of the Druids, a religion
of dreadful barbarity, and forbidden only the Roman citizens
under Augustus." Pliny and Suetonius do not agree as to which
Emperor abolished Druidism, nor can we well believe that it was
altogether abolished even then : it would appear that only the
human sacrifices and certain modes of divination were put a stop
to. Strabo, indeed, says as much; and we can see from Tacitus
that the prophecies of the Druids incurred political wrath as late
as Vespasian's time — after the abolition of Druidism, according to
Pliny. Human sacrifices and, probably, meddling in politics were
sure to bring the wrath of Rome on the system. Tacitus gives
us an insight of how at times the Romans did put a stop to these
phases of Druidism. In describing the attack of the Romans on
Mona, or Anglcsea, he represents the legions as awe-struck by
the appearance of the Druids amid their opponents' ranks, pour-
ing curses and vengeance on their heads, with hands upraised to
heaven. But they were rolled in their own fires, and the groves
sacred to grim superstitions were cut down ; " for," he adds,
" they hold it lawful to sacrifice captives at their altars and to
consult the gods from the movements of human entrails." After
the first century, writers speak of Druidism as a thing of the
past ; evidently the decrees of the Emperors had done away with
its fiercer elements of superstition, and the purer and more philo-
sophical parts had been absorbed into the usual Roman faith.
Christianity, at least, had no contest with Druidism either in
Gaul or in England. It may be mentioned that Ammianus
Marcellinus, in the fourth century, gives us a few lines on the old
and long extinct Druidism. After noticing the foundation of
Marseilles by a Phocean colony, he says that when the people in
those parts got gradually civilised, the learned studies which had
been begun by the bards, the Euhages (probably a corruption of
Vatcs) and the Druids, throve vigorously. Of these, he says, the
Druids were the intellectual superiors of the others, and were
formed into unions in accordance with the precepts of l*ythagoras,
where deep and hidden problems were discussed, and looking
from a lofty philosophic pinnacle on human aflairs, they pro-
nounced human souls immortal.

44

Such is the history of Druidism in Gaul and early Britain :
of its course in Ireland we have no direct information. It is
only when Christianity has been long established, and Druidism a
thing of the remote past, that we have writers who speak of the
Druids ; and in their eyes the Druids were but magicians that
attended the courts of the pagan kings. The lives of the pioneer
saints, Patrick and Columba, are full of contests between them-
selves and the royal magicians, who are called in the Gaelic
Dnu'dsLtid in the Latin versions Ma^y. But in all the numerous
references to them in Irish chronicles and tales there is no hint
given of Druidism being cither a system of philosophy or re-
ligion : the Druids of Irish story are mere magicians and diviners,
sometimes only conjurors. But as such — as magicians — the
Druids play a most important part in Irish pagan history, as
chronicled by the long posterior Christian writers. From the
primaeval landing of Partholan with his three Druids, to the days
of Columba, we have themselves and the bards exercising magic
and divining powers. The second fabled settlers of Ireland, the
Nemedians, meet the invading Fomorians with magic spells ; but
the fairy host of the Tuatha De Dannan are ^ar excellence the
masters of Druidic art. Their power over the forces of Nature —
over sea, wind, and storms — shows them plainly to be only de-
graded gods, who allow the sons of Miled to land after showing
them their power and sovereignty as deities over the island. The
kings and chiefs had Druids about them to interpret omens and
to work spells ; but there is no reference to these Druids being a
priestly class, and their power was limited to the functions of
mere divination and sorcery. Two of the most famous Druids
were Cathbadh, Druid of Conchobar Mac Nessa, the instructor of
Cuchulain, who, among many other things, foretells the fate of
Deirdrc and the sons of Uisnach, even before Deirdre was bom ;
and Mogh Ruith of Munster, who single-handed opposed Cor-
mac and his Druids, and drove them by his magic fire and storm-
spells out of Munster. The Druids of King Loegaire oppose St
Patrick with their magic arts ; one of them causes snow to fall
so thickly that men soon find themselves ncck-decp in it, and at
another time he brings over the land an Egyptian darkness that
might be felt. But the saint defeats them, even on their own
ground, much as Moses defeats the Egyptian magicians. St

45

Columba, in Adamnan's life of him,' is similarly represented as
overcoming the spells of the Northern Druids. Broichan, Druid
to King Brudc, caused such a storm and darkness on Loch-Ness
that the navigation appeared impossible, until the saint gave
orders that the sails should be unfurled and a start made. Then
everything became calm and settled. We are also told in many
instances how the Druids worked these spells. A wisp of hay,
over which an incantation was made, when cast on a person,
caused idiocy and deformity. The Druidic wand plays an im-
portant part, a blow from it causing transformations and spells.
It must be remarked, too, that the wood used for wands and
Druidic rites and Hres was not the oak at all, as in Gaul : sacred
wood among the Irish Druids would appear to have been the
yew, hawthorn, and, more especially, the rowan tree. Divination
was an important feature of Druidic accomplishments, and there
were various forms of it Pure Druidic divination sometimes
consisted in watching the Druidic fire — how the smoke and flame
went. Sometimes the Druid would chew a bit of raw flesh with
incantation or " oration" and an invocation to the gods, and then
generally the future was revealed to him. Sometimes, if this
failed, he had to place his two hands upon his two cheeks and
fall into a divine sleep, a method known as " illumination by the
palms of the hands." Fionn used to chew his thumb when he
wanted any supernatural knowledge. The bards, too, were di-
viners at times, a fact that would appear to show their ancient
connection with the Druids. The bardic divination is known as
" illumination by rhymes," when the bard in an ecstatic state
pours forth a flood of poetry, at the end of which he brings out
the particular fact that is required to be known. Connected with
this is the power of poetic satire. If a man refused a gift, the
bard could satirise him in such a way that personal injury would
result, such as blisters and deformities.

Irish Druidism consists, therefore, merely of magic and
divination ; it is not a philosophy, nor a religion, nor a system.
It is quite true that we have, at least, an echo now and then of
the time when Druidism in Ireland and Scotland was something
different, and when even human sacrifices were offered. Columba,
ll^ in commencing the building of his church at lona, addressed his
\ followers in words which clearly point to human sacrifice. "It is

46

good for us," says he, " that our roots should go under the earth j
here ; it is permitted that one of you should go under the clay of y
this island to hallow it" The story goes on to say that Odran
arose readily, and spoke thus : " If thou shouldst take me, I am
ready for that" Columba readily accepted his offer, and " then
Odran went to heaven, and Columba founded the church of Hi."
It is said that a human being was slain at the foundation of
Emain, the m>'thic capital of Ulster ; and in Ncnnius we have
a remarkable story told of King Vortigern. He was trying to
build a castle on Snowdon, but somehow, though he gathered
ever so much material, every time it was " spirited" away during
the night He sought counsel from his " magi" (the Irish trans-
lation calls them Druids), and they told him that he must find a
child bom without a father, and must put him to death, and
sprinkle with his blood the ground where the castle was to stand.
Nor is tradition of the present time silent on this matter. It is
said that Tigh-a-chnuic, Kilcoy, in the Black Isle, had its founda-
tion consecrated by the slaughter of a stranger who chanced to
be passing when the house was to be built, but unfortunately his
ghost used to haunt the house until he was able to disburden his
woes to somebody, and he then disappeared.

The sum and result of our inquiry into Druidism may be
given in the words of Professor Rhys : — " At the time of Caesar's
invasions, they were a powerful class of men, monopolizing the
influence of soothsayers, magicians, and priests. But in Gaul,
under the faint rays of the civilization of Marseilles and other
Mediterranean centres, they seem to have added to their other
characters that of philosophers, discoursing to the youths, whose
education was entrusted to them, on the stars and their move-
ments, on the world and its countries, on the nature of things,
and the power of the gods." WTiether the doctrine of the trans-
migration of souls was really of native origin or borrowed from
the Greeks, must remain an open question. Some think it un-i
likely that the central doctrine of Druidism should have been
derived so late in the history of the nation, or derived at all, from
a foreign source, and they appeal to the fact that Britain was the
home of Druidism, a country which could have had little inter-
course with Marseilles. But in connection with this idea of its
British origin, it must be remembered that at a certain stage of

47

culture, nations are apt to consider their neighbours, provided they
are in a lower stage of civilization, much more religious than
themselves. The Romans always believed the Etrurians to be
more versed in religious matters than themselves. So, too, the
Gauls probably looked on British Druidism, with its "pristine
grimness" of practices, as the source of their own, while in reality
their own was doubtless an independent but more enlightened
development Professor Rhys considers Druidism to be of a
non-Aryan character, and calls it the religion of the pre-Celtic
tribes, from the Baltic to Gibraltar. Now, in what we have left
us recorded of Druidism there is absolutely nothing that can be
pointed to as non-Aryan. The strong priestly caste presented
to us in Caesar, as divided off from the nobles and the commons,
can be somewhat paralleled in the Hinduism of India with its
rigidly priestly caste of Brahmans, who monopolised all religious
rites. And Brahmanism is an Aryan religion. Among the
Gauls, from the superstitious cast of their minds, a priestly class
was sure to rise to a position of supreme power. Their human
sacrifices can be matched, in some degree, by actual instances of
such, and by rites which pointed to them as previously existent,
among other Aryan nations, including those of Greece and Rome ;
only here, as before, the impressionable and superstitious charac-
ter of the Gauls drove them to greater excesses. The doctrine
of the transmigration of the soul is a tenet of both Brahmans
and Buddhists, of Aryan India, and it found its classical develop-
ment in the views of the Greek Pythagoras. The position and
fame of the Druids as magicians is, as Pliny points out, of the
same nature as those of the Magi of Aryan Persia. Some again
think it absurd that if the Druids were such philosophers, as they
are represented to have been, they would be so superstitious as
to practise human sacrifices, and other wild rites. But there is
no incongruity in at once being philosophic and superstitious ;
the human mind is very hospitable in its entertainment of quite
opposite opinions, especially in moral and religious matters ; for
there is a wide difference between theories of the intellect and
practices prompted by the emotions.

Celtic Religion in Britain and Ireland.

In tracing the history of Celtic religion, we have established

48

that the reh'gion of the Gauls fully represents the pagan religion
of both the great branches of the Celtic race — the Biythonic
(Gauls and Welsh) and the Goidclic (Gaelic races). From
Caesar's account of the religion of the Gauls to the first native
notices of even the history of Celtic Britain and Ireland, there is
practically a period of a thousand years. During the interval,
Christianity had established its sway, nominally at least, over
the whole land, and paganism was for centuries a thing of the
past It may, however, be remarked that one or two Latin eccle-
siastical histories appeared in the eighth century — notably the
works of Adamnan and Bede, but we in vain scan the pages left
us of their works for any definite information as to the previous
religion. Gildas, a century before either of these writers, makes
only a passing reference to the old faith. " I shall not," says he,
"enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost
surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see
[circ. A.D. 560] some mouldering away within or without the
deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was cus-
tomary. Nor will I call out upon the mountains, fountains,
or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use
of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them,
and to which the blind people paid divine honour." Our know-
ledge of the local development of Celtic religion in Britain and
Ireland cannot be obtained directly from contemporary history:
we have, it is true, some British inscriptions of the Roman period,
which give, mid a host of minor and local deities, one or two
important gods. But our information must be drawn, nearly all,
from the heroic poems and tales, which do not date much earlier
than a thousand years ago ; and most are far later than this period.
For information as to the ritual of the old religion, local customs
and superstitions — Bcltaine bannocks and Samhuinn fires — form
our only guides.

It will also be necessary to discuss separately the remainsof the
religion of the early Welsh and the early Gaels. The religion of the
former we shall name " British," of the latter, " Gaelic" And it
must be remembered that the Welsh are doubtless the remnant
of the Gaulish population which, about the time of the Roman
conquest, must have occupied England (except Cornwall and
Wales) and Lowland Scotland. Gaul and England had, there-

49

fore, practically the same people and language in the first century
of this era, and there now remain of them still speaking the
language, the Bretons of France and the Welsh of Wales, from
which country they drove out or absorbed the previous Gaelic
population in the fifth century of our era, or thereabouts. The
** Gaelic Religion " will include the early religion of Ireland and
the Highlands of Scotland.

British Religion.

The gods of Britain suffered what appears to have been the
** common lot " of gods ; they were changed into the kings and
champions, the giants and enchanters, of heroic tales and folk-
lore. In the words of the poet: —

" Ye are gods, and behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon yoa at last.
In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things,
Ve shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for lungs."

The great deity, ** Belinus," appears in the pages of Geoffrey, of
Monmouth, as a mere mortal conqueror. In company with his
brother, Brennius or " Bran," he marched to the siege of Rome,
when " Gabius and Porsena " were consuls ! Gargantua appears
twice as a British King, under the title of Gurgiunt Camulus, the
war-god, who gave his name to Camulodunum, now CW-chester,
is presented as Coel Hen, ** Old King Coul " of the song, who
gave his name to the Ayrshire district of Kyle. The god,
" Nodens," is the Nudd of Welsh, and King Nuada, of Irish story;
and Lir, the sea-god, is immortalised in the pages of Shake-
speare as an old British king. Some of the gods fight under
Arthur's banner, and perish on the battlefield of Camlan, along
with him. There is, consequently, a considerable amount of con-
fusion in the Welsh talcs, which does not appear in the more
consistent tales of Ireland. Probably, there were kings of the
names of Beli, Coel, Urien, and Arthur, and there certainly were
kings and chiefs, of the names of Brcnnus, Cassibelaunus, and
Caractacus, but their history is irretrievably mixed uu with that
of deities and demigods, possessed of similar names. Thus, Bran
the Blessed, is a son of Lir, a personage of such gigantic pro-
portions that no house could hold him, and evidently a d^raded
god, possibly a war-god. He next appears as father of Caradoc,

for whom he is sent as hostage to Rome, when the latter is con-

G

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50

quercd by Claudius. In Rome he is converted to Christianity,
which he introduced into Britain, and hence his name of ** Bran
the Blessed." And again he is brother of Belinus, and the same
as the Brennus of the Roman historians, who sacked Rome in &C
390. It is, therefore, a matter of great difficulty to take either
history or myth out of the confusion in Welsh poetry and tradi-
tion, caused by a little knowledge of classical and Biblical history,
a history which is interwoven with native myths and facts.

The inscriptions of Roman times show that the religious
condition of Britain then differed in no respect from that of Gaul-
The local deities were assimilated to the corresponding deities
of Rome, and we have in Britain combinations like those met
with in Gaul : the Roman deity has the corresponding British
name attached to him on the votive inscription by way of
epithet Thus, at Bath, altars are dedicated to Sul-Minerva,
Sul being a goddess unknown elsewhere. On the Roman wall,
between the Forth and Clyde, the name of Mars-Camulus ap-
pears on the inscriptions, among many others to the "genii" of the
places, the spirits of **the mountain and the flood," and to "Sancta
Britannia" and " Brigantia," the goddesses of Britain and the land
of the Brigantcs respectively. The most interesting inscriptions
were those found in the temple of a god discovered at Lydney
Park, in Gloucestershire, One inscription bears to be to the
** great god Nodon," which proves the temple to have been dedi-
cated to the worship of Nodon, a god of the deep sea, figured on
a bronze plaque as a Triton or Neptune borne by sea-horses and
surrounded by a laughing crowd of Nereids. This deity is identi-
fied with the legendary Nudd, known in Welsh fiction only as
the father of famous sons and in Irish story as King Nuada of
the Silver Hand, who fought the two battles of Moytura, and
fell in the second before " Balor of the Evil Eye," the King of
the Fomorians.

Passing, however, to the Welsh legends and myths preserv^ed
in the " Ancient Books of Wales" and in the prose " Mabinogion,"
we can easily eliminate three principal families of deities, the
children of " Don," of " Nudd," and of " Lir." Of these the first
are purely Welsh, the second — the chi Idren of Nudd — have Irish
equivalents both in name and office, while the children of Lir
belong equally to both nations. The family of Don is evidently

51

connected with the sky and its changes. He has given his
name in Welsh to the constellation of Cassiopeia, called Llys
Don, the court of Don. The milky way is named after his son,
Gwydion, Caer Gwydion, the city of Gwydion ; and his daughter
Arianrhod, "silver-circled," inhabits the bright circle of stars
which is called the Northern Crown. With the name Don may
be compared that of the father of the Irish hero Diarmat, son of
Donn. Gwydion is the greatest of enchanters — a prince of the
powers of air. He can change the forms of trees, men, and
animals, and along with " Math, the son of Mathonwy," his master,
styled by Professor Rhys, the Cambrian Pluto, though rather
a god of air than earth, he forms a woman out of flowers. "They
took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom,
and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them
a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw.**
Amacthon, the son of Don, is a husbandman — doubtless a god
of weather and crops. He has a fight with Arawn, king of
Annwn, or Hell, for a white roebuck and a whelp, which he had
carried off from the realms of darkness. The battle is known as
the " battle of the trees," and in it Gwydion, by his divinations,
won the victory for his brother, for he guessed the name of the
person in the ranks of his opponents, which had to be guessed
before either side won.

Nudd, like Don, is eclipsed by his family. He appears to
have been god of the deep and its treasures. His son Gwynn,
known always as Gwynn ap Nudd, is the Welsh king of the
Fairies in the widest sense of the word. It would appear that
Gwynn is no less a person than the god of the next world for
human beings. He answers, therefore, to the king of " Tir-nan-
og," ** Land of Youth" of the Irish legends, and " Tir-fo-Thuinn*
of the Gaelic stories — the land below the waves. The son of the
deep-sea god is naturally enough made lord over the happy realm
under the waves of the West Christian bias, however, gave
Gwynn a more sinister position. We arc told that God placed
him over the brood of devils in Annwn, lest they should destroy
the present race. A Saint of the name of Collen one day heard
two men conversing about Gwynn ap Nudd, and saying that he
was King of Annwn and the Fairies. *' Hold your tongue
quickly," says Collen, " these are but devils." " Hold thou thy

I

52

tongue," said they, " thou shalt receive a reproof from him."
And sure enough the Saint was summoned to the palace of
Gwynn on a neighbouring hill top, where, he was kindly received,
and bid sit down to a sumptuous repast ** I will not eat the
leaves of the trees," said Collcn ; for he saw through the enchant-
ments of Gwynn, and, by the use of some holy water, caused
Gwynn and his castle to disappear in the twinkling of an eye
The story is interesting, as showing how the early missionaries
dealt with the native gods. Gwynn, according to St Collen, is
merely a demon. His connection with the lower world is brought
out by his fight with Gwythyr, the son of Greidwal, for Cordelia,
the daughter of Lir or Lud. She is represented as a splendid
maiden, daughter of the sea-god Lir, "a blossom of flowering
seas," at once a Venus and a Proserpine, goddess of the summer
flowers, for whom there is a fight between the powers of the
worlds above and below the earth respectively. Peace was made
between these two deities on these conditions : " that the maiden
should remain in her father's house, without advantage to either
of them, and that Gwynn ap Nudd, and Gwythyr, the son of
Greidwal, should fight for her every first of May, from thence-
forth till the day of doom, and that whichever of them should be
conqueror then, should have the maiden."

We have thus discovered in Don and his children the powers
of sky and air, answering to Jove and his Olympians of Classical
Mythology; in Nudd and his son Gwynn we have probably
found the powers that rule over the land of " shades," correspond-
ing to Pluto or Dis ; and we now come to consider the third
family of British deities, Lir and his children, whom we shall
find to be the British and Gaelic equivalents of Neptune, the sea-
god, and Aphrodite, "daughter of the foam." Lir, or as the
Welsh spell the name, Llyr, is the same as the Gaelic /ear^ found
in the Ossianic poems, and signifying the " sea." Lir is there-
fore the personification of the sea — the sea deified. He is a deity
common to both Britons and Gaels ; indeed, it may rather be
said that he is more properly a deity of the Gaels transferred
into the British pantheon. The epithet Llediaith^ or "half-
speech," that is, " dialect," which is attached to his name, goes to
show that he was not a deity of native British origin. We arc
therefore justified in considering Lir as the sea deity of the

53

ancient remnant of the Gaels still surviving and maintaining
their ground in Wales in the fifth century, and represented as
then expelled by Cunedda and his sons. They were, however,
more probably slowly absorbed by the Welsh, who were then
pressed westwards by the Saxons. All the legends preserved in
Welsh, connected with Lir and his family, point to a strong
Gaelic influence, if not to a Gaelic origin. Of Lir himself no-
thing is said in the Welsh legends beyond his being the father of
so many children ; in Ireland he is represented as striving for
the sovereignty of the Tuatha-De-Dannan, the Gaelic gods, with
Bove Derg, son of the Dagda, and, when defeated in hi» aspira-
tions, as retiring to Sidh-Fionnachaidh. Here he leads the life
of a provincial chief, and all else that we know of him is the
cruel transformation of his four children by their wicked aunt
and stepmother. Lir has also another name ; at least he must
have had another name, or else Mannanan, his son, and Cordelia,
his daughter, must each have had two fathers. In some tradi-
tions they are both represented as the children of Llud. The
same confusion, of course, appears in the Irish genealogy of Man-
nanan ; for the most part he is known as the son of Lir, but in
the genealogies he is set down as the son of Alloid, doubtless the
original, or, at least, the equivalent of Llud. Professor Rhys
thinks that Llud stands for Nudd, the N changing into LI, be-
cause Llud also received the title of Llaw Ereint, ** silver-
handed," just as the Irish King Nuada did ; and the principle of
alliteration required the changing of Nudd Llaw Ereint into
Llud Llaw Ereint. And Nudd, besides, was somehow a god of
the sea; what was the necessity of two chief sea-gods? We
have interpreted Nudd as a god of the ** land under the waves,**
and not as the sea-god proper ; and, again, the Irish Alloid is
distinctly against any such change of letters as Nudd into. Llud,
besides its being otherwise far from probable that such a change
should occur on any principle of alliteration. Lir, under the
name of Llud, is, in the histories and talcs, the brother of Cassi-
bclaunus, Caesar's opponent, and in his reign Britain was
troubled with three direful plagues : the Coranians, a people
" whose knowledge was such that there was no discourse upon
the face of the Island, however it might be spoken, but what, if
the wind blew it, it was known to them ; " second, a shriek that

64

occurred every May eve, that created all kinds of terrors and
horrors ; and, third, the king's winter provisions disappeared
every year when stored. From these plagues the wis dom of his
brother Llevelys freed King Llud. Lir appears in the pages of
Geoffrey of Monmouth as an old British king, who reigned long
before Llud, and who had three daughters, whose story forms
the groundwork of Shakespeare's tragedy of King Lear.

Mannanan, the son of Lir, is in the Welsh Myths one of the
seven — that mystical number, so common in the old Welsh
poems — who escaped from Ireland on the death of his brother.
Bran, the blessed, king of Britain. Returning with the head of
Bran, the seven heroes found the throne usurped by Cassibel-
aunus and retired to Harlech, where the birds of Rhiannon kept
them enchanted by their music for seven years ; and after this
they feasted for eighty years more at G wales in Pcnvro, from
which place they set out to London and buried Bran's head
with its face to France. As long as Bran's head was left there
facing France no invasion of Britain could be successful. Un-
fortunately Arthur exhumed the head, declaring that he would
maintain the country against any foe without need of super-
natural safeguard. In his subsequent career Mannanan is seen
to be a deity who presides over arts and commerce, a god who
is " deep in counsel." He and another of the mythic seven
wander about doing artificers' work ; he successively tries saddle-
making, shoemaking, and shieldmaking, trades in which he
out-distances all competitors as a matter of course. From the
Irish accounts of him, Mannanan Mac Lir, appears to be a god of
sea and wind. Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel, of the ninth
century, describes him in his glossary like a true Euhemerist, as
*' Manannan mac lir, a renowned trader who dwelt in the Is-
land of Man. He was the best pilot in the west of Europe.
Through acquaintance with the sky he knew the quarter in
which would be fair weather and foul weather, and when each of
these two seasons would change. Hence the Scots and Britons
called him a god of the sea, and hence they said he was son of
the sea, that is, mac lir^ * son of the sea.' " Mannanan is other-
wise represented as one of the Tuatha-De-Dannan chiefs. He
was the possessor of that wonderful steed mentioned in the story
of the ** Children of Tuireann." Luga of the Long Arms •* rode

/

55

the steed of Mannanan Mac Lir, namely Enbarr of the Flowing
Mane : no warrior was ever killed on the back of this steed, for
she was as swift as the cold clear wind of spring, and she
travelled with equal ease on land and on sea. He wore Man-
nanan*s coat of mail ; no one could be wounded through it, or
above it or below it He had on his breast Mannanan's breast-
plate, which no weapon could pierce. Mannanan*s sword. The
Answerer, hung at his left side ; no one ever recovered from its
wound ; and those who were opposed to it in the battle-field
were so terrified by looking at it that their strength left them
and they became weaker than women." In the curious story
called the ** Sick-bed of Cuchulainn,'* Mannanan is represented
as a fairy chief who deserts his fairy bride Fand, but Fand is
helped and loved by Cuchulainn, mortal though he was. Man-
nanan on discovering this, r^^tums to his wife and shakes his magic
cloak between her and Cuchulainn, so that they should never
meet again. This magic cloak had also the eficct of producing
forgetfulness of the past Of Mannanan, Mr Elton says: *• In
him we see personified the splendour and swiftness of the sun ;
the god rushes over the waves like a 'wheel of fire 'and his
three-legged shape recalls the giant strides of Vishnu. He was
the patron of traffic and merchandise. The best weapons and
jewels from across the sea were thought to be gifts from the god."
Branwen, " white-bosom," the daughter of Lir, is the central
figure of the most tragic of Welsh myths. She is married to
Matholwch, King of Ireland, who treats her badly. Her brother
Hran, coming to know of it, invades Ireland. The Irish yield.
and build a house big enough for Bran to enter into, a thing he
never hitherto could get, so enormous was his size. But the Irish
had decided to murder their guests at the first feast in the great
house. The cleverness of one of Bran's men foils their purpose ;
there is, however, a general slaughter, in which the Irish have at
first the best of it, for they possess a cauldron, into which, when
any one is dipped that is dead, he comes to life hale and sound.
But the cauldron is discovered by the already-mentioned one of
Bran's men, and he breaks it Bran is killed, and only seven re-
turn of his people to Wales. The story as a whole is a very
widely-spread one ; it appears in about a dozen forms in Teutonic
lands— the Volsung Saga and the Nibelung story being the most

56

famous forms of it Probably there arc in the myth the evidences
of a time when Celt and Teuton lived not too amicably together
on the banks of the Rhine, a supposition which would obviate the
necessity of supposing the Celtic version a borrowed one, inferior
though it may be in some details. Another legend represents
Branwcn or Brangwaine as helping the loves, illicit though they
be, of Tristram and Iseult It is she that hands to Tristram
the fateful love-potion which binds him irrevocably to Iseult
Hence Mr Elton considers her the Venus of the Northern Sea&
Indeed, the sea was |xx:tically named **thc fountain of Venus,"
according to the lolo MSS.; and a verse in the " Black Book of
Carmarthen " gives this stanza : —

*' Accursed be the damsel
Who, after the wailing.
Let loose the Fountain of Venus, the raging deep."

From this we can easily understand how Branwen may be Venus
and daughter of the sea-god as well, just as Aphrodite was sprung
from the foam of the sea. Cordelia, another daughter of Lear
or Llud, has already been mentioned as the resplendent summer
goddess for whom the powers of air and the shades fight every
May<lay till the day of doom.

In the remarkable Mabinogion entitled ** Kilhwch and Olwen,"
so full of mythologic lore, we can see the true character of at
least one of Arthur's knights. This is his seneschal Kai. From
the references in this mythic tale, it could alone be pro\'ed that
Kai was no less than the British Vulcan, the fire-god. **' Kai,**
says the tale, " had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine
nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine days
and nine nights without sleep. A wound from Kai's sword no
physician could heal. Very subtle was Kai. When it pleased
him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest
And he had another peculiarity : so great was the heat of his
nature that when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained
dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreadth below his hand;
and when his companions were coldest he was to them as fuel
with which to light their fire." Such was Arthur's steward!
Hephaestus and Vulcan do equally mean duties in the halls of
Olympus. The gods laugh heartily at the limping gait and un-
gainly appearance of Hephaestus as he hands round the cup of

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57

nectar. So is Kai often the butt of Arthur's knights. Another
of Arthur's knights may be mentioned as probably a degraded
war deity. Owain, the son of Urien Rheged, is never mentioned
in the older poems and tales without reference to his army of
ravens, " which rose as he waved his wand, and swept men into
the air and dropped them piecemeal on the ground.** We are
here reminded of the Irish war goddess who so often appears as,
and is indeed named, the "scald-crow" (Badb), Odin, too, has
his ravens to consult with, and to act as his messengers. Many
others of Arthur's heroes partake of the same mythical type ;
of Arthur himself we shall speak again in considering the Celtic
hero-tales. At present, it is sufficient to say that Arthur is, at
least, as m\'thical as any of the rest we have mentioned.

Nor must we overlook Caridwen, who is considered, even by
the Welsh themselves, their goddess of nature. She is possessed
of a cauldron of " inspiration and science," which, as Mr Nutt
points out, may be regarded as a symbol of the reproductive
power of the earth. It is doubtless this same cauldron that has
appeared in the story of Branwen the daughter of Lir : when the
dead heroes were plunged into it they were resuscitated. The
Tuatha-De-Dannan were possessed in Scythia of a similar
cauldron, similarly employed. Caridwen, the tale says, set her
cauldron to boil, and placed Gwion Bach, the dwarf, and the
blind Morda to watch it, charging them not to suffer it to cease
boiling for a year and a day. Towards the end of the year,
three drops of the boiling liquor spluttered out upon the hand of
Gwion, and suddenly putting his hand in his mouth because of
the heat, the future and present were revealed to him. The cauld-
ron burst, the fairy returned, and Gwion had to run for his life.
Pursued at once by Caridwen, he changed himself into a hare and
rted. But she changed herself into a greyhound and turned him
And he ran towards the river and became a fish ; she took the
form of an otter and gave chase. He then became a bird, and
she a hawk, and as she was swooping down upon him he fell
among a heap of wheat and became one of the grains. She,
however, became a high-crested black hen, scratched the heap,
found him, and swallowed him. He was thereafter bom as a
beautiful boy, whom Caridwen had not the h^art to kill. She
put him in a leather sack, and cast him into the sea. Being

H

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washed ashore, he was discovered, and brought to Prince Elphin,
to whom he immediately, child though he was, began to sing
most elegant poetry. This youthful poet was none else than
Taliesin, " prince of song, and the chief of the bards of the west"
The poems ascribed to Taliesin have been called the romance of
metempsychosis. " The Druidical doctrine of the transmigration
of souls is thought to be hidden in the poet's account of his
wonderful transformations." A specimen or two out of many
such may be quoted. —

'* I have been in a multitude of shapes,
Before I assumed a consistent form,
I have been a sword narrow, variegated,
I have been a tear in the air ; \

I have l)een the dullest of stars,
I have been a word among letters,
[have been a book in the origin.**

And again —

** I have been a sow, I have been a buck, ;

\ I have licen a sage, I have been a snout,

I have l)ecn a horn, I have been a wild sow,
i I have l)een a shout in battle." \

I Evidently there is in these poems of Taliesin the broken-downj

j remembrance of the old Druidic cult. True enough the poet;

I does show a wonderful and suspicious acquaintance with the.

•* Metamorphoses" of Ovid and his account of Pythagorean doc-
;■ trines, as he also does with even Irish mythology, for he speaks'

\ of his place in S. Caer Sidi^ doubtless the Irish Side, thus —

\ " Complete is my chair in Caer Sidi,

t No one will ht afllicted with disease or old age that may be in it.**

Yet for all this, for all his mingling of Greek, Roman, and
Jewish history and myth, we may believe that there is at
bottom a germ of genuine Druidic influence, and of genuine

; Welsh myth. As a matter of fact, the tale of the cauldron

appears in the history of the Gaelic counterpart of Taliesin
— in the closing scenes of Ossian's career, and not at the
beginning, as in Talicsin's case. Ossian, old and blind,
tried to recover his youth by magical means. He now lived
among little men who could not give him food enough, and
consequently he had a belt round his waist with three skewers —
dealg- -in it to tighten his .stomach. He went out one day with his

► gillie to hunt, and by some supernatural means brought down

three remarkable deer. These he took home and put in a cauld-
ron to be cooked, bidding his gillie watch them, and on no
account to taste any of the food. All went right for a time; the
deer were cooked ; Ossian ate the first and let out one skewer ;
he ate a second and let out a second skewer ; but as misfortune
would have it, while the third deer was simmering in the cauld*
ron a drop of the broth spurted out on the gillie's hand, which he
instantly put into his mouth. Ossian ate the third deer and let
out the third skewer, but no youth returned to him. The licking
of the little drop of broth had broken the spell. The super-
natural knowledge and power gained by Gwion Bach do not, of
course, appear in this tale, but it may be observed that Finn
gained his knowledge of futurity in a manner which, though dis-
similar in details, is yet the same in result. Following a strange
woman that he saw one day, he came to a hill side, where she
entered by a concealed door. Finn attempted to follow her
inside, and had his hand on the door-post, when the door suddenly
sliut on him and jammed his thumb. With difficulty extricating
his thumb, he very naturally shoved the hurt member into his
mouth, when, lo ! he found himself possessed of the gift of seeing
future events. This gift, however, he possessed only when he
bruised his thumb in his mouth.

The Gaelic Gods in History.

Material for reconstructing the Olympus of the Gaels is not
at all so scanty as we have found it to be in the case of the Welsh.
There is, it is true, no general description of the Irish Olympus,
but references to particular deities are not uncommon. The
earliest reference to any Irish gods occurs in one of the oldest
monuments we possess of the Gaelic language ; a manuscript of
the St Gall Monastery contains incantations to the powers Dian-
cecht and Goibniu. This manuscript Zeuss sets down as of the
eighth century, and it is, therefore, eleven hundred years old.
Cormac's glossary, originally composed in the ninth century,
mentions as deities Art, Ana, Buanann, Brigit, Neit, and Manan-
nan. Keating quotes from the Hook of Invasions a poem that
makes the Dagda " king of heaven," and he further enumerates
Badb, Macha, and Morrighan as the three goddesses of the
Tuatha-de-Danann. The Tuatha-de-Danann themselves appear

60

often ill the talcs as the fair}' host, the Side that dwell in the
Land of Promise ; they interfere in the affairs of mortals long
after they are represented as having been expelled from Ireland,
thus, if not actually mentioned as having been the pagan gods of
the Gael, yet, despite the rampant Euhemerism of Irish tales and
histories, implicitly considered as such. And again, by adopting
the same methpd as in the case of the Welsh myths, we shall
make the Irish myths and histories, with their imposing array of
invasions and genealogies, deliver up the deities they have con-
signed to the ranks of kings and heroes.

We must, however, first briefly indicate the leading points
of early Irish history, as set down in the sober pages of their own
annalists. Forty days before the flood the Lady Caesair, grand-
daughter of Noah, with fifty girls and three men, came to Ireland.
This is reckoned as the first " invasion" or " taking" of Ireland.
Of course she and her company all perished when the flood came
— all, with one doubtful exception. For some legends, with more
patriotism than piety, represent Fionntan, the husband of Caesair,
as actually surviving the flood. The way in which he accom-
plished this feat is unlike that of the ancestor of the Macleans,
who weathered the flood in an ark of his own. Fionntan, when
the flood began, was^ cast into a deep sleep, which continued for
a year, and when he woke he found himself in his own house at
Dun-Tulcha, in Kerry somewhere (for O'Curry has not been able
exactly to localise this important event). He lived here con-
temporaneously with the various dynasties that ruled in Ireland
down to the time of Dermot in the sixth century of our era. He
then appears for the last time, " with eighteen companies of his
descendants," in order to settle a boundary dispute, since he was
the oldest man in the world, and must know all the facts. This
story is not believed in by the more pious of the historians, for
it too flagrantly contradicts the Scriptures. It, therefore, falls
under O'Curry's category of "wild stories ;" these are stories which
contain some historic truth, but are so overloaded with the fictions
of the imagination as to be nearly valueless. The Irish historians
have as much horror of a blank in their history, as nature was
once supposed to have of a vacuum. The Lady Caesair fills the
blank before the flood ; Partholan and his colony fill the first
blank after the flood. He came from Migdonia, the middle of

61

Greece, " t\vent\'-t\vo )'ears before the birth of Abraham/' ami
was the ninth in descent from Xoah, all the intermediate names
being duly given. He was not in the island ten years when the
Fomorians, or sea-rovers, disturbed him. These Fomorians were
a constant source of trouble to all succeeding colonists, and some-
times they actually became masters of the country. Some three
hundred years after their arrival, the colony of Partholan was cut
off by a plague. Plagues, and eruptions of lakes and springs, fill
up the gaps in the annals, when genealogies and battles are not
forthcoming. For thirty years after the destruction of Partho-
lan*s colony, Ireland was waste. Then came Nemed and his
sons, with their company, from "Scythia," in the year before
Christ 235a They were not long in the island when the Fomo-
rians again appeared, and began to harass the Nemedians. Both
parties were extremely skilled in Druidism, and they opposed
each other in a fierce contest of spells as well as blows. The
Fomorians were finally routed. Nemed was the 1 2th in descent
from Noah. He had four sons — Starn, Jarbonnel, Fergus, and
Aininn. Some two hundred and sixteen years after coming to
Ireland, the Nemedians were overthrown by the Fomorians and
the plague together, and only thirty escaped under the leadership
of the three cousins, grandsons of Nemed, Simeon Breac, son of
Starn ; Beothach, son of Jarbonnel ; and Britan Mael, son of Fergus.
Simeon Breac and his party went to Greece, and after eleven
generations returned as the Firbolgs. Beothach, with his clan,
went to the northern parts of Europe, where they made them-
selves perfect in the arts of Divination, Druidism, and Philo-
sophy, and returned eleven generations later as the Tuatha-de-
Danann. Britan Mael, with his family, went to Mona, and from
there poured their descendants into the island, which is now
called Britain, after their leader, Britan Mael. The Firbolgs,
the descendants of Starn, son of Nemed, being oppressed in
Greece, much as the Israelites were in Egypt, returned to Ireland,
and took possession of it. " They were called the Firbolgs," we
are told, " from the bags of leather they used to have in Greece for
carrying soil to put on the bare rocks, that they might make
flowery plains under blossom of them." The Firbolgs held Ire-
land for thirty-six years, and then they were invaded by their
1 2th cousins, the Tuatha-de-Danahn, the descendants of Jarbon-

t;2

ncl, son of XcmicL Xcxt to the Milesian colony yet to come,
the Tuatha-dc-Danann arc the most im()ortant by far of the
colonists, for in them \vc shall by-and-bye discover the Irish gods.
What the annalists tell of them is briefly this. They came from
the north of Europe, bringing with them •* four precious jewels ;"
the first was the Lia Fail, the Stone of Virtue or Fate, for where-
over it was, there a person of the race of Scots must reign ;
the sword of Luga Lamfada ; the spear of the same ; and the
cauldron of the Dagda, from which " a company never went away
unsatisfied." The Tuatha landed in Ireland on the first of May,
cither igcx) or 1500 years before Christ, for the chronologies
differ by only a few hundred years. They burned their ships as
a sign of " no retreat," and for three days concealed themselves
in a mist of sorcer>\ They then demanded the Firbolgs to yield,
which, however, they would not do, and the great battle of Moy-
tura South was fought. The Firbolgs were routed with immense
slaughter. Nuada, leader of the Tuatha-Dc in the battle, lost
his hand in the fight, but Credne Cerd, the artificer, made a silver
one for him, and Diancecht, the physician, fitted it on, while
Miach, his son, infused feeling and motion into every joint and
vein of it For thirty years the Tuatha held undisputed posses-
sion of Erin, but the Fomorians, who were continually hovering
about the coast, now made a determined effort to conquer them.
The battle of Moytura North was fought between them. In
it Nuada of the Silver Hand fell, and so did Balor of the Evil
Eye, leader of the Fomorians. He was slain by his grandson
Luga of the Long Arms, who was practically leader of the Tuatha,
and who succeeded to the kingship on the death of Nuada. After
a reign of forty years Luga died, and was succeeded by the Dagda
Mor,the central figure of the Tuatha-de-Danann, and in the pages
of our Euhemerist annalists, an inscrutable and misty personage.
O'Curry ventures even to call him a demigod The Dagda was
the twenty-fourth in descent from Noah ; let it be observed that
Nemiid was the twelfth in descent The Firbolg chiefs also were
in the twenty-fourth generation from Noah. Among the leading
personages of the Tuatha were Manannan, the son of Alloid or
Lir ; Ogma, son of Elathan, and brother of the Dagda, surnamed
'* Sunface ;" Goibniu, the smith; Luchtine, the carpenter; Danann,
mother of their gods ; Brigit, the poetess ; Badb, Macha, and

63

Morrigan, " their three goddesses," says Keating. The Tuatha
held Erin for nigh two hundred years, but when MaeCuill, Mac-
Cecht, and MacGreine, who were so called " because Coll, Cecht,
and Grian, the hazel, the plough, and the sun, were gods of wor-
ship to them," wxre ruling over Ireland with their respective
queens Banba, Fodla, and Eire (three names of Ireland), the last
colony of all appeared on the southern coast These were the
Milesians or Gaels from Spain and the East They were in no
respect related to the previous races, except that they were equally
with them descended from Noah, Golam Miled, after whom they
were called Milesians, being the twenty-fourth from Noah in
direct descent. They were also called Gaels or Gaidels from an
ancestor Gadelus, the seventh in descent from Noah, and son of
Scota, daughter of Pharaoh. The family lived for the most part
in Egypt, but Golam Miled, who was also married to a second
Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, settled in Spain. The sons of Miled,
to avenge a relative's murder, resolved to invade Erin. Under
the leadership of Heber, Heremon, and Amergin, and accomr
panied by Scota, a vast army in many ships invaded Ireland.
No resistance was offered at first. The Milesians arrived at Tara,
and there met the three kings and queens of the Tuatha-de-
Danann. The latter complained of being taken by surprise, and
asked the Milesians to embark again on board their ships and
allow them have a chance of opposing their landing. The Mile-
sians assented, entered their ships, and retired for " nine waves "
on the sea. On facing about again no Ireland was to be seen !
The Tuatha by their sorcery had made the island as small as a pig's
back, and theMilesians could therefore not see it In addition tothis
they raised a violent storm on the sea, with clouds and darkness
that could be felt. Many Milesian ships were lost, and the
danger was brought to an end only when Amei^in, who was also
a Druid, pronounced a Druidic prayer, or oration, evidently
addressed to the Tuatha De, and the storm ceased. They then
landed peaceably; but they did not get the island without a few
battles of a very hazy sort, indeed. It probably at first was
intended to be shown that the Tuatha allowed them to land, and
themselves retired to the Land of Promise — the country of the
Side — where they still took an interest in mortal affairs, and often
afterwards appeared in Irish history and tales. The Milesians, or

64

Gadelians or Gaels, are a purely mortal race ; they were, in fact,
the dominant race of Ireland in historic times. Their history and
full genealogies from some thirteen hundred years before Christ
till the introduction of Christianity, are gravely told in the
Annals of the Four Masters and Keating's Ireland ; every king
has his pedigree given, and many are the details that are recorded
of their doings in war and in peace, in society, and in the chase,
in law, and in the care and seizure of land and of cattle.
Mythic persons constantly flit across the page ; the demigods
become mere mortal chiefs, and the " last reflections " of the
sun-god appear in the features of Cuchulainn and Finn.

There are many interpretations put upon the history that we
have just summarily given. Naturally enough, ethnological
theories form the greater part of such explanations. The leading
invasions of the Firbolgs, Fomorians, Tuatha-de-Danann and
Milesians, are made use of to refute or support some favourite
theory about the various races that go to compose the Irish nation.
Two hundred years ago an Irish genealc^st, of the name of
Dubaltach MacFirbisigh, advanced the theory, doubtless sup-
ported by tradition, that " every one who is white-skinned, brown-
haired, bountiful in the bestowal on the bards of jewels, wealth,
and rings, not afraid of battle or combat, is of the Clanna-Miled
(the Milesians) ; every one who is fair-haired, big, vindictive,
skilled in music, druidry, and magic, all these are of the Tuatha-
de-Danann ; while the black-haired, loud-tongued, mischievous,
tale-bearing, inhospitable churls, the disturbers of assemblies, who
love not music and entertainment, these are of the Feru-bolg and
the other conquered peoples." Skene, jn modem times, gives this
theory of MacFirbisigh in our modem terms : the Firbolgs be-
long to the Iberian or Neolithic and preCeltic tribes ; the Celts
themselves are divided into Gaels and Britons ; the Gaelic branch
is again subdivided into (i) a fair-skinned, large-limbed, and red-
haired race — the Picts of Caledonia and the Tuatha-de-Danann
of Ireland ; and (2), a fair-skinned, brown-haired race, ** of a less
Germanic type," represented in Ireland by the Milesians, and in
Scotland by the band of invading Scots. We have already pre-
sented the best modern scientific views on the ethnology of these
islands; there would appear to have been three races — (i), A
primitive, small, dark, long-headed race, of the Basque type in

65

language and Iberian in physique ; (2), a fair, tall, rough-featured,
round-headed, and rough-limbed race, also pre-Celtic, which wc
called the Finnish; and (3), the Celts, fair, straight-featured,
long-headed and tall, and belonging to the Aryan family. We
might equate the Firbolgs with the dark Iberian race ; the
Tuatha-de-Danann with the Finnish race ; and the Milesians
with the Celts. The legendary and traditional account can
easily be fitted into the present scientific view of the subject But,
after all, the truth of such a theory must be gravely doubted; -
even its agreement with proper scientific methods sin such case-
must be questioned. We may grant that the strong contrast
between a small dark race and a tall fair race might give rise to^
a myth like that of the Firbolgs and Tuatha-de-Dananns. But
in Wales, where the contrast is even stronger, no such myth'
exists. Again, the Milesians were really fair-haired and not
brown-haired; the heroes of Ulster are all fair or yellow-haired, ^
and so are the Feni. It is best, therefore, to adopt a purely
mythological explanation of the matter. Despite its pseudo-
historical character, the whole history of the invasions of the
Firbolg, De-Dananns, and Fomorians appears to be a Gaelic .
counterpart of what we see in Greek mythology, the war of the
rough and untamed powers of earth, sea, and fire, against the
orderly cosmos of the Olympians ; the war, in short, of the giants
and Titans against Zeus and his brothers. The Firbolgs may be,
therefore, looked upon as the earth-powers ; too much stress need
not be laid on the fact that they and their brethren, the Fir-
Domnans, were wont to dig the soil, make pits, and carry earth
in bags to make flowery plains of bare rocks ; but it should be
noticed that they always meet the Tuatha-de-Danann as natives
of the soil repelling invaders. The gods of the soil often belong
to a pre- Aryan people, while the greater gods, the Olympians
and the Tuatha-de-Danann, are intrusive, the divinities of the
new-comers into the land, the patrons of warriors and sea-faring
men. Behind these last there often stand deities of older birth,
those who had been worshipped in ancient days by the simple
and settled folk of the land. Such were Pan or Hermes of Arcadia,
Dionysus of Thrace, and Demcter and Dione. The Firbolgs
may, therefore, be looked on as either the homely gods of pre-
ceding tribes of the non-Aryan races, or as answering to the

66

giants and Titans of kindred Aryan races. " The King of the
Fcru-Bolg," says Mr Fitzgerald, " Eothaile — whom we shall find
reason to suspect to be a fire-giant — fled from the field when the
day was lost, ' in search of water to allay his burning thirst/ and
by the water of the sea he fell on Traigh-Eothaile, * Eothaile's
Strand/ in Sligo. His great cairn, still standing, on this strand
was one of the wonders of Ireland, and though not ap-
parently elevated, the water could never cover i//' If we turn
to the Fomorians, we shall find quite as easy an explanation.
The meaning of the word is " Sea-rover /' it has always been
derived from the words ** fo/* under, and " muir," sea, and the
meaning usually attached to the combination has been " those
that rove on the sea" The Fomorians are, therefore, sea-powers:
the rough, chaotic power of the Atlantic Ocean. They meet the
Tuatha-de-Dannan in the extreme West of Ireland, on the last
day of summer, that is, November eve : the fierce ocean powers
meet the orderly heaven and air gods on the Atlantic borders
when winter is coming on, and the latter do not allow the former
to overwhelm the country. Balor of the Evil Eye, whose glance
can turn his opponents into stone, and who, in some forms of the
legend, is represented as having only one eye, is very suggestive
of Polyphemus, the giant son of the Grecian ocean god. To this
we may compare the Gaelic talc of the Muireartach, where
the Atlantic Sea is represented as a "toothy carlin," with
an eye in the middle of her forehead. The Tuatha-de-Dan-
anns will, therefore, be simply the gods that beneficially
direct the powers of sky, air, sea, and earth; they will cor-
respond exactly to Zeus, Poseidon, Pluto, and the rest of the
Grecian god-world, who benignly rule over the heavens, the sea,
and the shades. The Milesians will accordingly be merely the
main body of the Gaelic people, whose gods the Tuatha-de-
Danann are. Why there is no more open acknowledgment of
the Tuatha-dc-Danann as the pagan gods of the Gael may easily
be accounted for. The accounts we have are long posterior to
the introduction of Christianity ; and it was a principle of the
early Christian Church to assimilate to itself, following the true
Roman fashion, all native religions. The native gods were made
saints (especially the female divinities, such as Brigit), fairies,
demons, and kings. Christianity Was about five hundred years

established before wc have any native record of events ; the
further back we go the nearer do the Tuatha-D^ come to be
gods. Even in the 8th century an Irish monk could still invoke
Goibniu and Diancecht, the Tuatha gods answering to Vulcan
and Arsculapius, for relief from, and protection against, pain.

Gods of the Gaels.

Whatever interpretation we give to the Feru-bolg and the
F'omorians, there can be little question as to the fact that the
Tuatha-De-Danann are the Gaelic gods. The Irish historians,
as we saw, represent them as kings with subjects, but even they
find it difficult to hide the fact that some of these kings and
queens afterwards appear on the scene of history in a super-
natural fashion. The myths and tales, however, make no scruple
to tell us that the Tuatha-De-Danann still live in Fairyland, and
often take part in human affairs. In a very ancient tract which
records a dialogue between St Patrick and Caoilte Mac Ronain,
they are spoken of as "sprites or fairies, with corporeal and
material forms, but indued with immortality." Their skill in
magic, shown in their manipulation of storms, clouds, and dark-
ness, is insisted on in all the myths, and is a source of trouble to
the historians and annalists, who regard them as mere mortals.
" They were called gods," says Keating, " from the wonderfulness
of their deeds of sorcery." To them is first applied the term
Stdc^ which in modern Gaelic means " fairy," but which in the
case of the Tuatha-Dc-Danann has a much wider signification,
for it implies a sort of god-like existence in the "Land of
Promise." The Book of Armagh calls the Side " deos terrenos,"
earthly gods, whom, we are told in Fiacc's hymn, when Patrick
came, the peoples adored — " tuatha adortais Side,^ Sid was a
term applied to the green knolls where -some of these deified
mortals were supposed to dwell : the word appears in the modem
Gaelic sit/i and sitluan^ a mound or rather a fairy mound. The
Tuatha-Dc-Danann were also called " Aes Side," aes being here
used in the sense of " race" and not of " age." We may remark
that the Norse gods wctMkalso known as the Aes or Aesir, one of
the many remarkable coincidences in words and in actions
between the Irish gods and the deities of Asgard.

In attempting to reconstruct the Gaelic god-world from the al-

68

most hopeless ruins in which piety and time have laid it, we must
not merely remember the Aryan character of it, but also Caesar's
brief account of the Gaulish Olympus. There can be little doubt
but that the Gaelic and Gaulish Olympi were similar in outline,
and probably also in details. We shall, therefore, expect Mercury
to be the most important of the Gaelic deities, while Apollo,
Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva take rank after him. These deities
and others, as was pointed out, represent the personified powers of
nature — the wind, the sun, the storm, the sky, and the moon. Not
only are these elements personified as deities and so worshipped, but
we also find the elements in their impersonified state, as it were, in-
voked for aid and for good faith. The classical examples of this
are extremely numerous. One instance will suffice : In Virgil,
yEneas and Latinus are represented as swearing by the sun, the
earth, the sea, the stars, by the Almighty Father and his Spouse,
by Mars and Janus, by the spring and rivers, the ether and the
deities of the sea. The first instance of such an oath in Irish
history is when Breas, the Fomorian, swore by " the sun and the
moon, by the sea and the land, and by all the elements, to fulfil
the engagement" which Luga imposed on hinL Vows to the
heavens and the earth, to day and night, to the rain, the dew and
the wind, are exceedingly common, appearing even in historic
times both in Ireland and Scotland ; among the Picts and Scots
in the 4th century, in Ireland in the 5th, as when Loegaire was
made to swear by the elements that he would never again de-
mand the cow-tribute, and with M*Conglinne in the 8th century.
It is said that Loegaire forgot his oath, and thus met with an
evil end, for " it was the sun and the wind that wrought his death,
because he had violated their sanctity ; " so say the Four Mas-
ters, good Christians though they were ! The divine elements
are known in Gaelic as duli^ and one of the oldest and most
favourite epithets of the Deity is " rig na n-dul," the King of the
Elements, to which may be compared " Dia nan dul " of the
Gaelic Psalms : the word for Creator in old Gaelic is Dulem^ the
genitive of which is DuUman,

Our description of the Gaelic gods will naturally begin with
the Jupiter of the Gaels. This honour belongs most probably to
the Dagda, ** inDagda mor," "the great good one"(?) as Mr Fitz-
:.crald explains his name. Some interpret the name as the

69

" good fire.** In any case, dag signifies ** good " appearing in
modern Gaelic as deagh^ but what da means is yet undecided.
Though the Dagda is very often mentioned, yet little information
is given about him. He was one of the leaders of the Tuatha-
De-Danann from Scythia to Ireland,and he brought with him from
" Murias " a magical cauldron capable of satisfying the hunger of
everyone. He is the most renowed of all the Tuatha for his skill
in Druidism. With Luga he makes and carries out all the
arrangements of the second battle of Moytura, in which, how-
ever, he was wounded with a poisoned weapon by the amazon
queen Cethlenn. The venom of that wound caused his death
1 2p years later. For eighty years previous to his death, he ruled
the Tuatha as king. There is little in these meagre details to
help us to a true notion of the character of the Dagda. It is in
the epithets attached to his name, and the incidental references
to him, scattered through many talcs, that we can hope to under-
stand his position among the gods. He is called Eochaidh
Ollathair, that is, Chevalier All-father, and, further, Ruadrofhessa,
" the red one of all knowledge." The epithet ".Ollathair "—AH-
father — puts him on a level with Jupiter, Zeus, and Odin ; he is
the father of gods and men, king of heaven and earth. Zeus, we
know, is the sky-god, the beneficent power of light and life, who re-
gulates the atmosphere and its phenomena — notably, the thunder
— for the good of men : Odin is, however, a wind-god more than a
sky-god, answering rather to the Roman Mercury and the Greek
Hermes than to Jove and Zeus. Is the Dagda a wind-god or a
light-god or a fire-god? Mr Fitzgerald classes him with
Odin as a sky- and wind-god, and appeals to the epithet
" Eochaid " — horseman- -as confirmation ; for horseman and
huntsman are nearly allied, and seem rather to belong to
the wind deity, as in the case of Odin they do so apply.
Mr Elton makes the Dagda a spirit of heat who ruled all fires
in earth and heaven, for he interprets the name after O'Donovan
as signifying "the great good fire." The view which we will
adopt on the matter differs from both the foregoing. The
Dagda represents rather the sky-god, exactly the Roman Jove.
He is the All-father ; he is the Red-one — the sky in certain states
being so, just as at other times he is said to be "greyer than
the grey mist" — who is all-wise ; he is the Dag-da, the good-

70

father or good-one, the deus optimus maximus, the benign provi-
dence, who arranges, provides, and superintends everything. His
cauldron is interpreted by some as the canopy of heaven ; like
the thunder-god, Thor, he possessed a hand-stone which returned
of itself to the place from which it was thrown, just as Thor's
hammer — ^the thunder-bolt— did.

The most important deity in the Gaelic pantheon must have
been Mercury : which of the Tuatha-De-Danann was he ? The
honour of being the god most worshipped by the Gael must fall
to Manannan, the son of Lir, whose attributes we have already
discussed. Manannan is always a deity ; he is never a mortal
hero like the others. We represented him as god of sea and wind,
as opposed to Mr Elton's view, who made him a sun-god. There
is little doubt but Manannan is a wind-god : he possesses all the
prominent requisites of such a deity. He is the owner of the
wonderful steed, Enbarr, of the flowing mane, who is swift as the
cold clear wind of spring ; his also is the sword, Frccart, the
answerer, from whose wound there was no recovery ; and he
possessed the curious mantle that will cause people never to meet
again. The three characteristic possessions of Odin are his sword,
his mantle, and his horse Sleipnir. The sword is the lightning;
the mantle is the air and clouds, and the grey horse Sleipnir is
the rushing grey cloud driven by the wind. Odin is, as already
said, mostly a wind-god; so, too, is Manannan. Both deities,
however, usurped features belonging to more departmental
gods, in proportion as they took the first place in the worship
of the people. Manannan also possessed the wonderful canoe
which could hold any number of people, suiting its size to
them, and which obeyed the will of those it bore, and swept
over the ocean as fast as the March wind. He, too, instituted
the " Feast of Age," known as the feast of Gobnenn the smith.
Whoever was present at it, and partook of the food and drink,
was free ever after from sickness, decay, and old age. The Land
of Promise is often identified with Inis-M/ianann^ or Isle of Man,
which was ruled over by Manannan, but his connection with the
land of promise is rather more like that of Mercury with the land
of shades ; he would appear to have been the psychopomp — the
conductor of the shades of men to the happy Isles of the West.
He wasy as we saw, god of merchandise and also god of arts for

71

he is represented as teaching Diarmat in all the arts when he
was with him in Fairyland. Why the Celts and Teutons made
the wind deity their chief god is fairly clear. The atmospheric
conditions of Western and Northern Europe make the wind and
storm powers of comparatively more importance than they are
in sunnier lands, where the gods of light on the other hand are
supreme. Manannan is further very properly denominated the
" son of Lir," the son of the sea, for sure enough where else does
the wind come from in these islands of ours but from the sea ?

There is little trouble in settling the identity of the Gaelic
Apollo. This is Luga Lamfada, surnamed the Ildana ; Luga of
the Long Arms, the many-artcd one. He appears with a stately
band of warriors on white steeds, " a young champion, tall and
comely, with a countenance as bright and glorious as the setting
sun." But more definite still is the reference to his sunlike coun-
tenance; in another place the Fomorian champion, Breas, is
made to say in reference to the approach of Luga from the west:
" A wonderful thing has come to pass to-day ; for the sun, it
seems to me, has risen in the west" " It would be better that it
were so," said the Druids. " The light you see is the brightness
of the face and the flashing of the weapons of Luga of the Long
Arms, our deadly enemy." He also possessed the swiftness and
keenness of the ocean-wind -god Manannan, for we are told that
he rode Manannan's mare Enbarr of the flowing mane, that is,
the driving wind ; his coat of mail — the clouds ; and he is further
represented as having Manannan's sword, the lightning flash.
But this last is doubtful, for two of the precious jewels that the
Tuatha-De-Danann took from the east are Luga's sword and his
spear "Gae Buaifneach," tempered in the poisoned blood of
adders. These weapons are merely the flashing rays of the sun,
just as Luga's helmet, Cannbarr, glittered with dazzling bright-
ness, with two precious stones set in it, one in front and one
behind. Whenever he took off" the helmet, we are told that his
" face shone like the sun on a dry summer day." His deeds arc
also *' sunlike" in their character. He first frees the Tuatha from
the hated tribute which was imposed on them after a temporary
success on the part of the Fomorians. We are told that he put a
Druidical spell on the plundered cattle, and sent all the milch
cows home to their owners, leaving the dry cows to cumber his

72

enemies. The cows of the sun-god arc famous in all mytho-
logies ; they are the clouds of heaven that bring rain and
moisture to men, when shone upon by the rays of the sun.
Luga's greatest feat is the overthrow of the Fomorians at
Moytura For years he had been preparing for this great fight
He summoned all the artists and artificers of renown and got
arms in readiness. He himself lent his help to each tradesman,
for he was a skilled carpenter, mason, smith, harper, druid,
physician, cup-bearer, and goldsmith, " one who embodied in
himself all these arts and professions," as he described himself on
one occasion. When the sons of Turenn slew his father, he
made them procure for him as " eric" or fine, several weapons of
importance and several salves, with a view to using them in the
great struggle against the stormy ocean powers. Such were the
apples of Hisberna, which could cure any sickness and would
return to the owner even when thrown away; the pig's skin whose
touch made whole ; the spear — " the slaughterer" — whose fiery
blazing head was always kept in water ; the steeds and chariot of
Dobar — the steeds which travel with equal ease on land and sea;
the pigs of Asal — " whosoever eats a part of them shall not suffer
from ill health" — even when killed to-day they are alive to-
morrow ; and the hound-whelp Failinis, that shines like, the sun
on summer day — before him every wild beast falls to earth
powerless. In the battle of Moytura, he killed Balor of the Evil
Eye. That worthy had already turned Nuada of the Silver
Hand into stone, and many more Dc-Danann, and just as he was
opening it on Luga, the latter flung a " sling stone" at it, which
passed through it and Balor's brain. Now Bak)r was his grand-
father, and it had been foretold that he should be slain by his
grandson. In view of this he kept his only child, a daughter,
Aethlenn, secluded in a tower, where man and the idea of
" man" were to be strictly excluded. But in vain. She became
the wife of Cian, the son of Diancecht, the physician, and Luga
was the offspring. We must note his connection with the god of
healing; that god is his grandfather. In Greek mythology,
Aesculapius is the son of Apollo. The name Luga, too, is sug-
gestive; it is doubtless from the root ///r, to shine, and it is
interesting to observe that the Norse fire-god, also master of
many arts, tliough evil arts, is called LokL The epithet Lawfada,

7S

long arms, reminds us of the far-darter Apollo, and refers to the
long-shooting rays of the sun — a most appropriate epithet

Cormac informs us in his Glossary that Neith was the god cf
battle among the pagan Gael, and that Nemon was his wife, in-
formation which is repeated in other and later manuscripts with
some variations and additions. We arc vouchsafed no further
information as to Ncith's character or actions ; only he appears
in some of the inevitable pedigrees, and we are told that Neit,
son of Indu, and his two wives, Badb and Nemain, were slain at
Ailech by " Neptur (!) of the Fomorians." With Nemain may be
compared the British war goddess Nemetona, whose name appears
on an inscription along with that of Mars Lucetius. There
would appear to have been more than one war goddess; the names
Badb, Nemain, Macha, and Morrigan, constantly recur as those
of war deities and demons. Badb signifies, a scald-crow, and
may be the generic name of the war goddess rather than a proper
name. The crow and the raven are c>iVQstantly connected in the
Northern Mythologies with battle-deities. " How is it with you,
Ravens?" says the Norse " Raven-Song," "whence are you come
with gory beak at the dawning of the day. There is flesh cleav-
ing to your talons, and a scent of carrion comes from your mouth.
You lodged last night I ween near where yc knew the corses
were lying." The greedy hawks of Odin scent the slain from
afar. The ravens also protect and assist heroes, both in Irish
and Norse myth. It was a lucky sign if a raven followed a
warrior. Of Macha, the third goddess mentioned, little need be
said ; she appears afterwards as a queen of Ireland, under the
title of Macha Mongruad, or Macha Red-Mane. The goddess
Morrigan was also a war deity to all appearance. The name
signifies " great queen," and may be, like Badb, a generic name.
She is represented as first resisting and afterwards assisting the
hero Cuchulainn, appearing to him in various forms. O'Cuny
makes her the wife of the Dagda, and she is often equated with
the goddess Ana. The name is doubtless the same as that of
Morgan le P'ay, the fairy queen and Arthur's sister. It may be
remarked that Morgan le Fay is also wife of Urian Rheged, who
and his son Owen, with the army of ravens, are clearly war deities

The goddess Ana or Aine (gen. Anann) has been called the

queen of heaven, and connected with the worship of the moon.

K

74

Cormac describes her as "mater dcorum Hibcrnensium" — mother
of the Irish gods. "Well she used to nourish the gods/* he adds,
and in another place he says, "As Ana was mother of the gods, so
Buanann was mother of the Fiann (heroes)." Camden found in
his time survival of moon-worship. " When they see the moon
first after the change," he says, " commonly they bow the knee
and say the Lord's Prayer, and then, with a loud voice, they
speak to the moon, thus — * Leave us whole and sound as thou
hast found us.'" Keating gives the name of this goddess as
Danann, and explains the Tuatha-De-Danann as the worshippers
of the gods of Danann, the gods of Danann being, according to
him, Brian, lucharba, and luchar. These three gods are known
in other myths as the "children of Turenn," slain, as Keating him-
self says, by Luga Lamfada The goddess Buanann, mentioned
in connection with Ana or Anann, appears in the story of the
great Druid Mogh Ruith as his patron, to whose Sid he fares to
consult her in his difficulties.

Minerva is the fifth and last deity mentioned by Caesar as
worshipped by the Gauls — their goddess of arts and industry.
A passage in Solinus, and another in Giraldus Cambrensis, enable
us to decide, with absolute certainty, what goddess answered
among the Gaels to the position of Minerva. Solinus (first
century A.D.) says that in Britain, Minerva presides over the hot
springs, and that in her temple there flamed a perpetual fire,
which never whitened into ashes, but hardened into a strong
mass. Giraldus (i2th century A.D.) informs us that at the shrine
of St Brigit at Kildare, the fire is allowed never to go out, and
though such heaps of wood have been consumed since the time of
the Virgin, yet there has been no accumulation of ashes. " Each
of her nineteen nuns has the care of the fire for a single night in
turn, and on the evening before the twentieth night, the last nun,
having heaped wood upon the fire, says, ' Brigit, take charge of
your own fire, for this night belongs to you.' She then leaves
the fire, and in the morning it is found that the fire has not gone
out, and that the usual quantity of fuel has been used." This
sacred fire was kept burning continually for centuries, and was
finally extinguished, only with the extinction of the monasteries
by Henry VIIL Brigit, therefore, is the Gaelic Minerva. She is
goddess of the household Arc ; her position is that of the hearth

75

goddess Vesta, as much as that of Minerva, for evidently she is
primarily a fire-goddess. Her name is probably from the same
root as the English bright^ Gaelic breo. The British goddess,
Brigantia, is doubtless the same as the Irish Brigit Mr Whitley
Stokes picks out the following instances in proof of her character
as a fire-goddess; she was born at sunrise; her breath revives the
dead ; a house in which she stays flames up to heaven ; she is fed
with the milk of a white red-eared cow ; a fiery pillar rises from her
head, and she remains a virgin like the Roman goddess, Vesta,
and her virgins — Vesta, whom Ovid tells us to consider " nothing
else than the living flame, which can produce no bodies.** Cor-
mac calls her the daughter of the Dagda. "This Brigit,** he says,
" is a poetess, a goddess whom poets worshipped. Her sisters
were Brigit, woman of healing; Brigit, woman of smith work; that
is, goddesses ; these are the three daughters of the Dagda.** Doubt-
less these three daughters, thus distinguished by Cormac, are one
and the same person. Brigit, therefore, was goddess of fire, the
hearth and the home.

The rest of the Gaelic pantheon may be dismissed in a few
sentences. Angus Mac-ind-oc, " the only choice one, son of Youth
or Perfection," has been well called the Eros — the Cupid — of the
Gael. "He was represented with a harp, and attended by bright
birds, his own transformed kisses, at whose singing love arose in
the hearts of youths and maidens.'* He is the son of the Dagda,
and he lives at the Brugh of the Boyne ; in one weird tale he is
represented as the son of the Boyne. He is the patron god of
Diarmat, whom he helps in escaping from the wrath of Finn, when
Diarmat eloped with Grainne. The River Boyne is also connected
with the ocean-god Nuada ; it was called the wrist of Nuada's
wife. The literary deity was Ogma, brother of the Dagda, sur-
named "Sun-face"; he invented the alphabet known as the Ogam
alphabet, and, as was pointed out already, he is mentioned by
Lucian as the Gaulish god of eloquence. Three artisan gods arc
mentioned : Goibniu, the smith, invoked in the St Gall Incanta-
tions of the 8th century; Creidne Cerd, the goldsmith; and Luch-
tine, the carpenter. These three made the Tuatha arms ; when
the smith finished a spear-head, he threw it from his tongs to-
wards the door-post, in which it stuck by the point ; the carpenter
had the handle ready, and threw it accurately into the socket ;

76

and Creidne Cerd pitched the nails from his tongs into the holes
in the socket of the spear. Thus was the spear finished in less
time than we can describe the process. Diancecht was the
physician of the gods ; at Moytura battle he prepared a medical
bath, into which he plunged the wounded, and they instantly
came out whole again, and returned to the fight The three De-
Danann queens, Eire, Fodhla, and Banbha, gave their names to
Ireland, but the first is the one which is usually recognised. It
may be observed that these names, and those of some others of
the gods are scattered widely over the topography both of Ire-
land and Scotland. In the latter country we meet with Eire, and
its genitive Ercnn in river and district names ; Fodla forms part
of Athole, Ath-Fodhla, probably; Banba appears in Banff;
Angus the Beautiful gave his name to Angus ; Manannan's
name appears in the Isle of Man, and as the old name of the dis-
trict at the mouth of the Forth, still seen in Clack-Mannan.

The Celtic Elysium,

All the Aryan nations originally believed in the existence,
after death, of the human soul. This belief had its root in the
" animism " of a more barbaric period of their existence, and held
its place in the remnants of ancestral worship we meet with in
Rome and Greece, and in the many myths bearing on the land
of shades. Evidently, too, the pre- Aryan tribes of Europe were
strong believers in the future existence of man's second self, his
soul. Their barrows, dolmens, and stone-circles point distinctly to
their reverence for the dead, and their belief in their continued exist-
ence in another sphere of nature, from which they visited, hel[)ed
and admonished their living representatives. Ancestor worship
clearly was their main creed. Hence the vividness of the belief
of the early Northern Aryans — Celts and Teutons — in future
existence, and their clinging to ancestor worship so long, may
arise from their mingling with a people who was in that stage of
belief ; whereas, at the dawn of our era, in Greece and Rome, the
whole doctrine of a future state belonged to the region of languid
half-belief. The aristocracy and the philosophers entirely dis-
believed it. Caisar, as supreme pontiff of Rome, declared, in
his place in the senate, his utter disbelief in another life, and the
stern Cato but mildly replied that their ancestors, men, perhaps, as

77

wise as Caesar, believed that the guilty, after death, were sent to
noisome abodes, full of all horrors and terrors. But the classical
belief, even at its best — in the poems of Homer — gives but a poor,
shadowy, comfortless existence to the spirits of the dead. They
lived in Hades, a country which comprised various districts of
woe, and of bliss such as it was. The ghost of Achilles says to
Ulysses : — " Rather would I live on earth as a poor man's hire-
ling, than reign among all the dead." The gods lived on the
heights of Olympus, aloft in heaven, and far apart from the hated
abode of the dead, which lay under the earth and ocean. Mortals
were all consigned to the grisly realm of Pluto ; even the demi-
god Hercules, though living in Olympus, had his ghostly mortal
counterpart in Hades. Among the Romans, ancestor worship
had a stronger force than in Greece ; their feast of the dead was
duly celebrated in the latter half of February, when chaplets were
laid on their tombs, and fruit, salt, corn soaked in wine, and
violets, were the least costly offerings presented to them. The
deification of the Emperors was merely a further development
of this ancestor worship. The remembrance of the festival of
the dead is still kept up in the Roman calendar as the feast of
All Souls. The Celts of Brittany preserve still the remembrance
of the ancestor worship on this day ; they put cakes and sweet
meats on the graves, and at night make up the fire and leave the
fragments of the supper on the table, for the souls of the dead of
the family who will come to visit their home.

The Celts would appear to have had a much more vivid
belief in future existence than either the Greeks or the Romans.
We may pass over the Druidic doctrine of transmigration ; it was
doubtless not the popular view of future life. We know as much
from some side references in one or two classical writers. So
realistic was the Celtic belief in existence after death that money
loans were granted on the understanding that they were to be
repaid beyond the grave ! Valerius Maximus laughs at the
Gauls for "lending money which should be paid the creditor in
the other world, for they believed that the soul was immortal"
Mela tells us one of the Druidic doctrines that was publicly
preached and nationally believed in, namely, that the soul was
eternal and that there was another life in the land of shades.
"Accordingly," he adds, "they burn and bury along with the dead

78

whatever was once useful to them when alive. Business accounts
and debt claims used to be transferred to the next world, and
some even willingly cast themselves on the funeral piles of their
relatives under the impression that they would live with them
hereafter." Diodorus Siculus informs us that at the funeral of
their dead some threw letters addressed to their defunct relatives
on the funeral pyre, under the belief that the dead would read them.
This intense belief in the reality of future existence must have
removed the Celtic other-world from the unreal and shadowy
Hades of Greece and Rome. What the exact character of this
other world was among the Gauls we cannot well say ; but the
later legends in France, Wales, and Ireland go to prove that it
partook of the nature of an Earthly Paradise, situated in some
happy isle of the West. The pseudo-Plutarch introduces a gram-
marian Demetrius as returned from Britain, and saying " that
there arc many desert islands scattered round Britain, some of
which have the names of being the islands of genii and heroes.
The island which lay nearest the desert isles had but few inhabi-
tants, and these were esteemed by the Britons sacred and
inviolable. Very soon after his arrival there was great turbulence
in the air and portentous storms. The islanders said when these
ceased that some one of the superior genii had departed, whose
extinction excited the winds and storms. And there was one
island where Saturn was kept by Briareus in a deep sleep,
attended by many genii as his companions." The poet Claudian
evidently records a Gaulish belief in the Island of Souls in the
lines : —

" Est locus extremum pandit quft Gallia lituv
Oceani praetentus aquis, ubi fbitur Ulixes
San^ne libato populum movisse silenten.
Illic umbrarum tenui stridore volantum
Felebilis auditur questus. Simulacra coloni
Pallida defunctasque vident ixiigrare figuras."

Beyond the westernmost point of the Gallic shore, he says, is the
place where Ulysses summoned the shades (as Homer has it)
There are heard the tearful cries of fleeting ghosts ; the natives
see their pallid forms and ghostly figures moving on to their last
abode. The traditions of Brittany, with true Celtic tenacity, still
bear traces of this belief ; at the furthest extremity of that dis-
trict, where Cape Raz juts into the Western Sea, lies the Bay of

7f

Souls, where departed spirits sail oflf across the sea in ghostly
ships to the happy isles. Procopius, in the 6th century, enables
us to understand what the peasants of Northern Gaul believed
in regard to the Happy Isles, and to Britain in particular. He
confuses Britain with a fabulous island called Brittia, one half of
which is habitable; but the other half, divided off by a wall, is set
apart to be the home of ghosts. The fishermen on the continent
opposite to Brittia performed the functions of ferrymen for the dead.
** At night they perceive the door to be shaken, and they hear a
certain indistinct voice summoning them to their work. They
proceed to the shore under compulsion of a necessity they cannot
understand. Here they perceive vessels — not their own — appar-
ently without passengers. Embarking, they take the oars, and
feel as if they had a burden on board in the shape of unseen pas-
sengers, which sometimes sinks the boat to within a finger-breadth
of the water. They see no one. After rowing for an hour, they
reach Brittia, really a mortal journey of over twenty-four hours.
Arrived at Brittia, they hear the names of their passengers and
their dignities called over and answered ; and on the ghosts all
landing, they are wafted back to the habitable world."

So far we have discovered among the early Celts an intense ..

conviction in a personal existence in another world, where they {

" married and gave in marriage," and into which business trans- , |

actions of this world might be transferred. Its locality was to

ii

rl

i;

t

i

the west — an island in the land of the setting sun, or possibly a i

country under the western waves, for the traditions of Brittany, ! i

Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland continually insist on the

existence of such a land. Buried cities are recorded as existing

to the westward of every prominent Celtic cape ; that sunken

district of Lyonesse which appears in all Brythonic traditions. I

The very earthly character of the Celtic world of the departed is

seen in the sur\ iving remembrances of it still existent, despite all

the Church's efforts, in the mythic tales ; an Earthly Paradise it

truly was. We do not find much in Welsh myth bearing on the

matter; it is in Irish and Gaelic talcs that we have the material

for judging of the character of the Celtic Elysium.

Welsh and Gaelic Elysium.
The Wclab Hades was known as Aoowa It possessed kings^

80

chiefs, and commons, somewhat h'ke those of this world, only
vastly superior — '* the comeliest and best equipped people ever
seen." Pwyll, Prince of Dyved (South-west Wales), while one
day out hunting, lost his companions in his eager pursuit of a
stag. Hearing a cry of hounds near him, he approached, and saw
the stag brought down by other dogs than his own. " Then he
looked at the colour of the dogs, staying not to look at the stag, and
of all the hounds that he had seen in the world, he had never seen
any that were like unto these. For their hair was of a brilliant
shining white, and their ears were red ; and as the whiteness of
their bodies shone, so did the redness of their ears glisten." He
drove them from the stag, and set on it his own dogs. Immedi-
ately there came upon him a man dressed all in grey and mounted
on a grey horse, and he reviled Pwyll for his discourtesy in turn-
ing off his hounds. Pwyll offered to make reparation, and his
offer was accepted. The stranger said that he was Arawn, King
of one-half of Annwn, and he was at war with Havgan, the other
King. Pwyll, if he liked, could overthrow Havgan, who was to
come exactly a year thereafter against Arawn. Would Pwyll
change places with him and meet Havgan? He would give him
his own personal appearance, and assume Pwyll's, and they could
govern each other's kingdoms for a year. This was agreed on.
Pywll took the form of Arawn, and came to Annwn. He never
saw anything like the beauty of Arawn's city and the appoint-
ments of his court, " which of all the courts on earth was the best
supplied with food and drink, and vessels of gold and royal
jewels." Suffice it to say that he ruled well during the year, and
at the end of it slew Havgan, " at the ford," in single combat,
and thus made Arawn undisputed mastfer of Hades. Arawn had,
meanwhile, conducted the kingdom of Dyved as it never had
been before ; his wisdom and justice were unsurpassable. And
these two kings made an eternal bond of friendship with each
other, and Pywll was called " Chief of Annwn " henceforward.

The dogs of Annwn, mentioned in the above tale, are a com-
mon feature in m}'thology. Ossian, on his way to Tir-nan-og,
saw a hornless fawn bounding nimbly along the wave-crests
pursued by a white hound with red ears. The Wild Huntsman
and his dogs of Teutonic myth belong to the same category; and
these dogs of Annwn were similarly said to rush through the aifi

1'

p.

81

and evil was the omen. These are, undoubtedly, the wind-dogs
of Hermes, the conductor of souls ; the Wild Huntsman is none
other than Odin, sweeping up the souls of the dead in his path.
Annwn, or the Lower Regions, possess, in the myth, the same
characteristics as this world ; only things are on a grander scale
there altogether. The other reference of importance to this
Earthly Other-world is in the story of Arthur. Dying on the
battle-field of Camlan, he is carried away to heal of his wounds to
" the vale of Avilion," which Tennyson, catching the true idea of
the Welsh mythic paradise, describes thus : Arthur, dying, speaks
to Bedivere ;

" I am going a long way—
To the island-valley of Avilion ;
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow.
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies
Deep-meadow*d, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bcwery hollows crowned with summer sea.** )'•

\'

And here Arthur still lives on, destined one day to appear and j;

set free his Cambrians from, the hateful yoke of the Saxon. • [

The myths in Ireland bearing on the existence of a happy
western land are very numerous and important The names %

given to this land vary, but they have a general reference to |

happiness, all save the name Tir-fa-tonn, the * Under-wave |^

Land." The names generally met with are Tir Tairngire, "Land
of Promise"; Mag Mell, "Plains of Happiness"; Tir-nam-beo,
" Land of the Living "; Tir-nan-og, " Land of the Young "; and
0*Brcasail, " Breasal's Isle." Whether there is any distinction
implied in these names cannot well be said. There would seem
to be something of a difference between the Under-wave Land
and the Plains of Happiness; the latter may have rather been
the abode of the gods, where Manannan lived with Fann his
wife, as the myths have it Tir-fa-tonn looks rather like the
Gaelic Hades, the abode of the dead. The Gaelic version of
Diarmat's sojourn there gives strong colour to such a supposition,
and the early Middle Age legends in regard to St Patrick's
Purgatory below Lough Dcarg — the precursors of Dante and
Milton's descriptions — lend great countenance to such a distinc-
tion between Tir-fa-tonn and Mag Mell.

The myths may be grouped in three divisions. There are,

first, the myths where a mortal is summoned, in an enchanting

L

82

song, by a fairy being who has fallen in love with the mortal, to a
land of beauty and happiness and ever-youthful life ; second,
there are myths which tell how a hero has, Ulysses-like, paid a
business visit to the other world ; and, thirdly, the accounts of
many voyages of discovery in search of the Happy Isles, and the
" Traveller's Tales " of the wonders seen. To the first class
belong three very remarkable Irish myths: the Courtship of
Etain, the Story of Condla Cam, and Ossian in Tir-nan-og
The outline of the story is as follows: — There suddenly appears
before a kingly company a fairy being who chants, for some
particular person in the company loved by the fairy, a song de-
scriptive of the glories and pleasures of the Land of the Ever-
young., The person so addressed cannot choose but love the
fairy, and go to the wonderful land. In Ossian's case alone have
we got an account of the career of the enchanted one in Tir-nan-
og. Niam of the Golden Hair suddenly presents herself before
the Feni, tells her love for Ossian, and says: " I place you under
obligations which no true heroes break through — to come with
me on my white steed to Tir-nan-og, the most delightful and
renowned country under the sun. Jewels and gold there are in
abundance, and honey and wine; the trees bear fruit and blos-
soms and green leaves all the year round. Feasting and music
and harmless pastimes are there each day. You will get a hun-
dred swords, and robes of richest loom; a hundred steeds, and
hounds of keenest scent; numberless herds, and sheep with
fleeces of gold; a hundred maidens merry and young, sweeter
of mouth than the music of birds ; a hundred suits of armour,
and a sword, gold handled, that never missed a stroke. Decline
shall not come on you, nor death, nor decay. These, and much
more that passeth all mention, shall be yours, and myself as your
wife!" Needless is it to recount how Ossian went, the wonders he
saw by the way, and the feats he did; how he found Tir-nan-og all
that it was painted by the Princess Niam; how, after three hundred
years, he returned to earth on the white steed, from whose back
he was forbidden to dismount ; how he fell from the steed when
helping the poor weakly mortals that he found then on earth to
raise a huge stone ; and how the steed rushed off and left him,
old and withered and blind, " among little men."

Visits of the nature of that undertaken by Ulysses, in

83

Homer, to the Land of Shades, were made by at least three
great champions of the Gael These are Cuchulainn, Cormac
Mac Art, and Diarmat O* Duinn. We have already referred to
Cuchulainn's helping of Fand, wife of Manannan. The story
says that, like a wise man, Cuchulainn, when invited to assist
Fand, deserted as she was by her husband, sent his charioteer
Locg to " prospect " and report as to the safety of such a journey.
Locg and his fairy guide " proceeded until they reached the side
of the island, when they saw the bronze skiff waiting for thenu
They then stepped on to the ship and landed on the island.**
There they found Fand and her father waiting them. Professor
Rhys very properly compares this passage to the well-known
boat and ferry of Charon in classical mythology. ** There can be
no mistake," he says, " as to its [the Isle of the Blest] being the
Elysium of the dead, and that going into it meant nothing less
than death to ordinary mortals ; it was only by special favour
that a mortal might enter it otherwise." Passing over Cormac
Mac Art's visit to Manannan, and rescue from death of his wife
and two children, we find a double account of Diarmat's visit to
Tir-fa-tonn — one Irish, one Gaelic. The Irish one is in its main
features the counterpart of the Welsh Mabinogion, " The Lady
of the Fountain." Diarmat fights with the Knight of the
I'ountain, and in wrestling with him they both fall into the
fountain. Diarmat, arriving at the bottom of it, finds himself in
a most beautiful territory, where he does many deeds of valour,
and helps a distressed prince to a throne. The Highland tal
represents him as sheltering a loathly creature that turns out to
be a most beautiful lady under spells. She is the danghter of
the King of the Land under the Waves. After presenting
Diarmat with a fairy castle, and living with him some time, she
left him for her own country, a slight quarrel having occurred
He followed her, crossed on the " Charon " boat, much as already
described in Locg s case, and arrived at an island, where down
went the boat to a land under the sea ! Here Diarmat found his
love, but she was deadly sick, to be cured only by a drink from
a magical cup in the possession of the King of Wonderland.
This he procured by the help of " the messenger of the other
world," who advised him to have nothing to do with the King's
silver or gold, or even with the daughter, an advice which Diarmat

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tooky for after healing her, ''he took a dislike to her." Diarmat,
therefore, was allowed to return from the realms of death.

The " Voyagers* Tales'* of Ireland can compare for sensuous
imagination very favourably with any other country's "Travellers*
Tales." Naturally enough, the tales deal altogether with sea-
voyages, generally to some western islands, and they must and
do contain many reminiscences of the Happy Isles, where the
dead live and the gods reign. Despite the monkish garb they
at times assume, for two of the most important arc undertaken
by monks, the old heathenism peeps out at cveiy turn. Some-
times we hear of a man living in a happy island with the souls of
all his descendants as birds giving music around hinL Some-
times we get a glimpse of the earthly paradise, where the travel-
lers saw, "a great number of people, beautiful and glorious-look-
ing, wearing rich garments adorned and radiant all over, feasting
joyously and drinking from embossed vessels of red gold. The
voyagers also heard their cheerful festive songs, and they mar-
velled greatly, and their hearts were full of gladness at all the
happiness they saw and heard. But they did not venture to
land." They pass occasionally into the rc^ons of spirits, and are
brought into contact with the living and the dead. The wonders
they meet with often point a moral, for there are punishments
for wickedness. On one island was found a man digging with a
spade, the handle of which was on fire, for on earth he was accus-
tomed to dig on Sunday. On another island was found a burly
miller feeding his mill with all the perishable things of which
people are '* so choice and niggardly in this world." Islands of
lamentation and islands of laughing are visited; gorgeous palaces
and towns, both above and below thfe waves, are seen, and duly
described. The principal voyagers were St Brendan, the sons of
Ua Corra and Maelduin.

No argument as to the character or the inhabitants of the
next world can be drawn from the modem names given to it
Flaithemnas or, Gaelic, Flaitheamhnas, meant "glory" in its
original sense, being derived from the word ** Flaithem," a lord,
with the abstract termination — as, " Innis," an island, forms no
part of the word, so that the old derivation and its consequent
theories — '* Island of chiefs** — fall to the ground. In the same
way do the many weird speculations upon the place of pain, faiL

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Uffcrn, in Welsh, and Ifrinn or lutharn, in Gaelic, are both
borrowed from the Latin word, Inferniim^ much to the misfortune
of those Druidic theories that make the Celtic hell an " Isle of
the Cold Waves." Both Flaitheamhnas and Ifrinn are Christian
ideas, and have no counterpart in the Pagan Mythology of the
Celts. Our Celtic myths warrant us to speak but of an earthly
Paradise, a home of sensuous ease for the departed soul. The
glimpses of places of woe in the " Voyagers* Tales" are too much
inspired by Christian thought to render speculation upon the
Celtic " prison-house" for the soul possible.

What character of body did the spirits of the dead possess,
according to the opinions of the Celts? The sensuous paradise
argues a material body capable of both physical enjoyments and
sorrows. The gods, of course, had bodies somewhat analogous to
those of men ; these bodies were celestial, but yet quite as sub-
stantial as human bodies. The difference was that they were not
subject to the trammels of gravitation and visibility, unless they
chose. Their persons were more beautiful and majestic than
those of men; a "sublimated" humanity characterised them
They appeared among mortals — sometimes all of a sudden in the
midst of an assembly; ate, drank, and acted, like mortals, in every
respect. Sometimes they were seen only by one person in the
company, though heard by all, as in the story of Condla Cam,
whom the fairy enchanted and abducted. These are, however,
the Pagan gods as seen in Christian myth. Yet we find the
ghosts of departed heroes appearing in much the same way as the
Side and Tuatha-De-Danann. The ghost of Caoilte is met with in
one or two myths representing different times — in St Patrick's
time and King Mongan's time — and on each occasion he appears
in " his habit as he lived," full of life and colour, not pale and
shadowy. Besides, these ghosts can appear in the day time, as
Caoilte used to do. The great poem of the Tain Bo Chuailgne
had been lost by the 6th century and it could be recovered only
by raising its composer, Fergus MacRoy, from the dead. And
this the Saints of Erin were able to accomplish. " Fergus him-
self," we are told, "appeared in a beautiful form, adorned
with brown hair, clad in a green cloak, and wearing a collared
gold-ribbed shirt, a gold-hilted sword, and sandals of bronze."
He was evidently a very substantial apparition! St Patrick was

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also able, though indirectly, to raise the spirit of the great
Cuchulainn himself, to meet King Locgaire. The famous cham-
pion appeared to him one morning splendidly dressed, with his
chariot, horses, and charioteer, the same as when alive. All is
minutely described : the charioteer, for instance, was a " lank,
tall, stooped, freckle-faced man. He had curling reddish hair
upon his head. He had a circlet of bronze upon his forehead
which kept his hair from his face ; and cups of gold upon his poll
behind, into which his hair coiled ; a small winged cape on him,
with its buttoning at his elbows ; a goad of red gold in his hand,
by which he urged his horses."

The substantial ghosts of dead heroes are in the myths
generally classed as Side, among whom also the gods were classed.
This, of course, arose from a confusion. The Side^ I take it, were
the ghosts of the glorious dead dwelling in their barrows or
tumuli (the sid.) At these barrows, doubtless, they were wor-
shipped in accordance with the customs of ancestor worship.
This cannot be proved with satisfaction from the Gaelic myths
alone, but if we refer to the belief and rites of the Norse peoples,
we shall see plenty evidence of the worship of the dead in their
barrows. In the Land nama-bok we read that at one place
" there was a harrow (* high place ') made there, and sacrifices
began to be performed there, for they believed that they died unto
these hills'' The editors of the lately published work " Corpus
Pocticum Boreale " bring forward quite an array of evidence in
proof of the sacredness of these " houses " and barrows, and the
belief that dead ancestors lived another life there, and took an
interest in the living. " Of the spirit life and the behaviour of
the dead," they say, " there is some evidence. In the older ac-
counts they are feasting happily, and busying themselves with
the good of their living kindred, with whom they are still united
in intense sympathy. .... Of the ritual names of the
worshipped dead, the oldest we know is * Anse,' which survived
in Iceland into the Middle Ages, in the sense of guardian spirit
or genius of a hill. * Elf* is another name used of spirits of the
dead — of divine spirits generally — as the * Anses ' and the * Elves *
of Loka-Scnna. Later, in Christian times, it sinks in Scandinavia
to mean * fairy.* .... There were evil spirits — spirits of
bad men — and even vampires and the like, such as the dreadful

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Glam and unhallowed spirits and monsters.** Wc may thus

argue that the Side or Aes-suie (compare Anse or Aesir above)

were properly the divine ancestors, and that the gods, originally

in Pagan times quite distinct from them, were afterwards confused

with the " sid^," as we have them in the myths. But a still

greater confusion overtook these names and ideas as time and

Christianity advanced. The "side" got mixed up with the

" elves," the earth and wood powers, just as they did among the

Norse ; and the modern " sith " is a mixture of tumulus-dweller

and wood-nymph. The gods have almost entirely left the

scene ; only the Lares — the Gruagachs and Brownies are left Of [i

old, among the Pagan-Gael, there were, doubtless, ghosts some- l{

what analagous to those of present superstitions, but they were Ij

clearly those of unhallowed men, as we have seen in the case of

the Norse beliefs. The modern ghosts follow the analogy of the

dwellers in the Greek Hades, and not of the inhabitants of the

Earthly Paradise of the Gaels, that " Land of the Leal " where

the sun sinks in the west They grew up during the Middle Ages

under the shadow of the Roman Church.

Celtic Worship and Rites.

A brief glance at the places and rites of worship and burial
among the ancient Celts will conclude the religious aspect of their .
Mythology. The Celts worshipped in temples and in groves ;
both are frequently referred to in the classical writers. Unfor-
tunately no description of any Celtic temple is vouchsafed us ;
the natural conclusion we must come to is that they must have
been similar, however rude, to the temples of the kindred races
of Greece and Rome. Celtic houses were constructed of wood :
" great houses," says Strabo, " arched, constructed of planks and
wicker, and covered with a heavy thatched roof." They were
circular, high, and with either a conical or domed roof. This de-
scription applies to the very earliest Celtic buildings, those of
Britain and rural Gaul, for the Gauls of Caesar's time had towns
with walls, streets and market places, as opposed to the ** dunum,"
the stockaded hill-top or fortified forest-clearing, of their insular
brethren. The Gaulish temples must, therefore, have been of
stone, but the British temples were most likely constructed, like
the houses, of wood. The earliest Christian churches were also

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made of wood, and, for the most part, clearly consisted of the old
heathen temples consecrated to Christian use. " The temples of
the Idols in Britain," says Pope Gregory (A.D. 6oi), ** ought not to
be destroyed ; but let the idols that are in them be destroyed ;
let holy water be made and sprinkled in the said temples ; let
altars be erected and relics placed." There are no remains of
either Celtic heathen temples or early Christian churches. The
theory that the so-called " Druid " circles were Celtic temples
is refuted by the two facts that the Celts were Aryans with
Aryan culture, and that they made use of metal — even iron —
tools from the earliest period we have record of them. The rude
stone circles are evidently not the work of a race well acquainted
with the use of metal. It is quite true that in religious ceremonies
old phases of culture, whether of dress, instruments, or buildings,
survive in a higher stage of civilisation. Thus the flint knife of
the " stone " age was used on solemn occasions at the Jewish cir-
cumcision, and at the sacrifices of old Carthage and Rome; and
the gowns of modern clergymen are the survivals of Middle-Age
dresses. This, however, operates but to a limited extent ; the
Jewish temple, unlike their rude stone altars, was built of Itewn
stone, made ready before being brought to the temple, so that
** there was neither hammer nor axe, nor any tool of iron^ heard
in the house while it was building." In this way a metal-using
people reconciled the old with the new phase of culture, and we
cannot suppose that the Celts, even if they did use stone circles,
which is most improbable, would not have reconciled them to
their state of cultifre by dressing and shaping the stones, as,
indeed, the Bronze Age builders of Stonehcnge had begun to do.
Along with temples, the classical writers continually mention
" groves " as especial places where Celtic worship was conducted.
A grove was a secret recess embowered by tall trees, and marked
by votive offerings, insignia of the gods, and an altar of stone, or
some equivalent The distinguishing features of a grove were
secrecy and sacrcdness. Groves are prior in time to temples, and
Grimm has analysed the Teutonic words for " temple" to signify
" wood" or even "grove." He says — ^**The earliest seat of heathen
worship was in groves, whether on mountain or in pleasant mead ;
there the first temples were afterwards built, and there also were
the tribunals of the nation." The classical words for temple —

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Latin, templum^ Greek, iemenos^ both from the root tein^ to cut,

mean, originally, a " clearing " — a forest clearing, in fact The

Greek iemenos^ which may mean a sacred grove, is often used it,

speaking of Celtic places of worship. The Gaulish word of like

signification was nemeton^ which appears in several place-names in

Britain, Gaul, and Asia Minor; in the latter country the Galatian

council of the twelve tetrarchies met at a place called Drynemeton,

that is, " oak-grove." In old Irish, the word appears as turned^ a

chapel, and is the same in root as the Gaelic neamh^ heaven, and

the Latin luvius^ a grove. Lucan, in the following lines, gives us

a vivid description of a Gaulish grove, dwelling on the superstitions

and miracles connected with it, and alluding to the worship of

the "sccrctum illud," the abstract existence, which Tacitus says f*

the Germans reverenced, who, here as elsewhere in religion, ^'

differed but little from the Celts.

" A grove, inviolate from lengtli of age, !j

With interwoven branches, mazy cage, - |;

Enclosed a darkened apace of earth and sdr, ■[

With chilly shades, where son could enter ne'er. 'I

There not the rustic gods nor satyrs sport.
Nor slyvans, gods of groves, with nymphs resort ;
But barbarous priests, on altars dire^ adore
Their gods, and stain each tree with human gore.
If miracles of old can be received
And pious tales of gods can be believed,
There not the feathered songster builds her nest.
Nor lonely dens conceal the savage beast ;
There no tempestuous winds presume to fly,
Ev'n lightnings glance aloof, obliquely by.
Nor ever breezes lilt or lay the leaves, •
But shivering horror in the branches heaves :
The plenteous stream the darkened fountains leaves :
The images of gods, a mournful band.
Have ne'er been shaped so rude by artist's hand-^
Misshapen forms with limbs looped off forth stand.
The very place, with oaks all hoar and drear.
Inspires the gazer's soul with numbing fear :
Tis not the deities of wonted form
They worship thus *mid terrors and alarm.
But gods unknown — it but increases fear
They do not know the gods they so revere.
Oft, as fame tells, the earth in throbs of woe
Is heard to groan from hollow depths below ;
The Uilcful yew, though dead, has oft been seen,
To rise from earth and spring with dusky green ;

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With sparkling flames the trees, anbuming shine»
And round their boles prodigioos serpents twine.
The pious worshippers approach not near.
But ^un their gods and kneel with distant fear ;
The priest himself when Phoebus, god of light.
Rolling, has reached his full meridian height.
Or night rules all, dreads to approach the place
And shuns the masters of the grove to iace.**

The favourite tree among the Gauls for groves was the oak;
*• the Druids," says Pliny, " choose groves of oak and conduct no
sacrifice without its leaf," and he suggests that the name Druid
is from the same root as Greek Drus^ an oak, a derivation which
IS yet the only one worth consideration of the many suggested.
The sacredness of groves and of trees has not yet died out among
the Celts. In Ireland it is counted especially unlucky to cut
down trees in raths and such early structures. Mr Kinahan, in
the "Folklore Record" for 1882, says: — A man, near Kilma-
ganny. County Kilkenny, came to me in a great state of mind
one morning, as the previous night some one had cut a thorn
tree in a rath on his land, and some ill-luck must come to him
before the end of the year. I tried to console him by saying the
year [it being October] was nearly out, so that he would probably
live out the charm, but curiously enough before Christmas he
buried a fine girl of a daughter.**

The Celts made use of statues in their worship: Caesar
mentions that there were very many statues of Mercury, and
other writers, as Lucan, in the lines quoted above, bear testimony
to the same fact Before they used images, they were content
with emblems of the gods; thus we are told by a writer of the
second century that the Celts worshipped Zeus, and that a tall
oak represented his statue, a reference which again puts the Celts
on a level with the Germans of Tacitus, who had no statues, and
even thought it an impiety to represent celestial grandeur in
human shape. Some remains of Gaulish art in statue-making
have weathered the ravages of ages, and of these the statuettes of
Taranis are the most numerous and interesting. Uninfluenced
by Roman or Greek art, their statues were rude and unshapely,
as Lucan says: — " Simulacraque maesta deorum arte carent"
Gildas speaks of the grim-faced idols mouldering in the deserted
temples; and idols of bronze to the number of nineteen were dug

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up at Devizes in 17 14. A true Celtic statue called by its Breton
votaries the " Groah-Goard," and known as the " Venus of Qui-
nipily" was worshipped in Britanny till the 17th century. It
was a huge misshapen figure, 7 feet high with a large and un-
couth body, a flattened bust, and eyes, nose, and mouth like
those of an Egyptian idol. We meet in Irish history with the
mystical figure of Crom or Crom-Cruaich, king-idol of Erin, first,
in the reign of King Tiemmas (1543 B.c), who, we are told, died
along with three-fourths of his people whilst they were ** ic adrad
Chroim-Chroich, rig idaill hErenn," and, a second time, in St
Patrick's life, who found at Mag Slecht Q' adoration plain '^ in
Cavan, Crom-Cruaich, the chief idol of Erin, covered with gold
and silver, and having twelve other idols about it covered with
brass. The saint caused the earth to swallow these up as far as
their heads, where they still were, as a sign of the miracle, when
the pious Middle- Age scribe was writing.

The Gaulish altars and also the Gaelic altars were pillars of
stone inscribed with emblems of the sun and moon, or a beast,
bird, or something which symbolised some force of nature —
"dealba nan dula" — representations of the elements, as Cormac
calls them. Another feature of Celtic groves and temples con-
sisted of the many votive tablets and images, with representaticm
of limbs, faces, and bodily parts, hung up on the walls or sus-
pended from the trees. These were set up as thank-oflerings
for rescue from some sickness or pain in the part represented, or
with a view that relief from pain might come. The ** rag-bush"
by the modem wells, and the crutches and other accessories of
infirmities left at holy wells, are a remnant of ancient and analo-
gous beliefs in the deities of the fountains. A more ghastly
sight, however, would be presented by the many heads of animals,
and, possibly, of men hung up in the groves, like trophies of the
chase, but really intended as votive offerings, and rendered, at
times, all the ghastlier by having their mouths prized and kept
open by sticks of wood. This custom is still kept in remem-
brance in modem architectural designs.

For Celtic religious rites we have to trust almost entirely, in
attempting to discover them, to the superstitions and customs of
Christian and modern times. Superstition is the survival, in
another phase of culture, of earlier religion and science. At

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present wc shall only deal with some customs and superstitions
that appear to bear on Celtic religious ritual, leaving the wider
question of quaint customs and superstitions to be dealt with
afterwards. The classical writers mention but little of Celtic
rites. The human sacrifices attracted most attention : " They
sacrifice men," says Diodorus, " striking them at the place above
the diaphragm [on the back, Strabo says], and from their fall, the
convulsion of the limbs and the flow of the blood, they predict
the future." When the Romans put a stop to their human
sacrifices, vestiges, however, remained, as Mela says, of the old
but abolished savagery, and "just as they refrain from going the
whole length of slaughter, they nevertheless touch and graze the
persons devoted to sacrifice after bringing them to the altars."
An interesting parallel to this in modern times occurs in the
Samoan islands. There cannibalism has for ages been unknown,
yet the punishment that carries the highest disgrace among them
is to put the delinquent into a cold oven^ an evident survival from
the time when such a person would be roasted and eaten. The
remembrance of these old Celtic human sacrifices was until lately
kept up at the Beltane fires.

The only religious rites of any consequence that can be
pointed to are those connected with the worship of fire and the
changes of the year. It must not be supposed that the Celts
were greater worshippers of fire, sun, and moon than the other
European nations, and that this worship was distinctive of them.
The fire worship was equally as strong among Teutons, Romans,
and Greeks as among the Celts, and quite as long maintained into
modern times. But Celtic idiosyncracies bring some features of
the worship and practices into greater prominence. The custom
of showing reverence by walking round persons or things, keep-
ing the right hand towards them, is derived from the apparent
course of the sun, and is known as " deiseil " (dextralis)^ " right-
hand-wise." In India the old name for the custom is similarly
the " right-hand-tum," dakshiman kri. The "need-fire" — Gaelic,
teinC'Ciginn — is a "survival " from a very ancient phase of culture,
and, possibly, from a time when men lived in a warmer climate,
.ind the rubbing of sticks easily produced 'fire. It is also signifi-
cant that, in the best preserved form of the custom, the need-fire
makers must have no metal about them, a survival which points

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to the Stone Age. Another general fact in regard to Celtic
need-fire was that all the district fires within sight had previously
to be extinguished, to be re-lighted only from the pure need- fire
The need-fire was variously produced. In Mull, about 1767, a
hill-top was selected, within sight of which all fires were put out,
and then the pure fire was produced by turning a wheel over nine
spindles of wood VixM\\ the friction caused combustion. Martin in
his " Western Isles '* thus describes it : — ^** The tinegin they used
as an antidote against the plague or murrain in cattle, and it was
performed thus — All the fires in the parish were extinguished, and
then eighty-one married men, being thought the necessary num-
ber for effecting this design, took two great planks of wood, and
nine of them were employed by turns, who by their united efforts
rubbed one of the planks against the other until the heat thereof
produced fire ; and from this fire each family is supplied with
new fire, which is no sooner kindled than a pot full of water is
quickly set on it, and afterwards sprinkled on the people infected
with the plague or upon the cattle that have the murrain." In
Caithness the friction was produced by working a horizontal
wooden bar, supplied with levers, in two upright pieces of wood,
into which it was inserted at each end. In all cases, within
Christian historic times, the need-fire was lighted as a charm
against the plague, whether it attacked men or cattle. Fire has
always been considered the purifier par excellence^ and clearly no
fire could be so pure as the need-fire, which was there and then
produced for the first time. But though latterly restricted to
being a charm against the plague, the need-fire shows clear traces
of a higher religious purpose. These fires were lighted at the great
festivals of the solar and lunar year, and from them all the fires
of the neighbourhood, previously extinguished, were re-lighted.
Priests, we know, presided at these sacred fires, and men and
cattle were passed through them, as Cormac and others tell us.
One of St Patrick's first struggles with King Loegaire was over
the sacred Beltane (?) fire. " Fire is kindled by him at that
place on Easter Eve," says a Middle-Irish life of the saint;
" Loegaire is enraged when he sees the fire. For that was a pro-
hibition of Tara which the Gael had, and no one durst kindle a
fire in Ireland on that day until it had been kindled first at Tara
at the solemnity. And the Druids said 'unless that fire be

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quenched before this night, he whose fire it is shall have the
kingdom of Ireland for ever.' " But that fire was not quenched,
and the boldness of the missionary, along with the inevitable
miracles, brought Loegaire and his people to the side of the Saint
and Christianity.

The need-fire and the sunwise-tum, "deiseil," are but the
outward embodiments of the great worship of fire and light
The discovery how to make fire at will was a tremendous step in
human progress, and has impressed itself on the oldest mytho-
logies in the many myths in regard to the "descent of fira*
In India the god is taken down from his hiding place in heaven
and given to man, and his sign is the wooden RrC'drill^ pramanfAa.
Prometheus and history represent the Greek equivalent myth.
The sun was reverenced by imitation of its course — the " deiseil,"
though, also as still on the .Continent any day, the Gaels at
Beltane morn worshipped the rising sun by taking off the caps,
and saluting him with " failte " or hail. For distinctive instances
of rites we must have recourse to the observances and customs
of certain festal days throughout the year.

The year is a solar period, the unit of which is the day, but
ancient peoples felt the want of an intermediate reckoner of
time, and this was found in the moon and its monthly period.
In fact, the moon was the measurer of time />ar excellence^ as the
words for month in English, Latin, Greek, and Gaelic prove, for
they are from the root of " moon." Its four phases give rise to
weeks of seven or eight days, eight among the Romans; and the
Celts, as well as the Teutons and Greeks, reckoned their time by
nights, and not by days. Pliny inforins us that the Celtic- year
and the Celtic months began on the 6th day of the moon.
Customs and superstitions in regard to the moon and its waxing
and waning still survive in connection with the cutting of wood
or turf, the starting of new enterprises or of a journey, and such
like. The lunar time does not square with the solar time of revolu-
tion, and the ancients were in endless confusion in regard to their
calendars. The Celts corrected lunar by solar time every thirty
years, which Pliny tells us was their cycle. The month may
have been alternately 29 and 30 days, to suit the 29^^ days of
lunar revolution, and possibly by having 1 3 lunar months for eleven
years of the thirty, they managed to make the solar fit with the

95

lunar time to within a fevv days. The year was originally
divided into two seasons — ^summer and winter,^/?;// and i^n;//, and
then spring was added, the name of which diflfers in root in the
two great branches of the Celtic race. The week is most probably
non-Celtic in idea, and also in names to a very great extent
The Welsh names of the days of the week are Roman; the
Gaelic names are mixed, Roman and Christian. Sunday is Di-
domhnuich (dies dominica); Monday, Di-luain (dies Lunae);
Tuesday, Di-Mairt (dies Martis) ; Wednesday, Di-ciadaoin (dies
primi y^>/;///, " day of first fast;" for religious people, as Bede
Iclls us, fasted on Wednesdays as well as Fridays), a purely
church name; Thursday, Di-ardaoin, or, Irish, Dia-dardaoin,
"day between two fasts;" Friday, Di-h-aoine, "day of fast;" and
Saturday, Di-Sathuime (dies Satumi.)

Fire and sun worship, and along with these, the worship of
the earth-powers, fell on the four great solar periods, the two
solstices and the two equinoxes. Lunar time was made to fit these
by holding the feasts on the first full moon, or the 14th of the
month, after the equinox or solstice. The great winter feast on
December 25th, when the sun just turned on its northward
course again, was solemnised in honour of the new birth of the
"unconqucrcd sun," dies natalis invicti solis, and was held in
Rome in honour of the sun-god Mithra, of Persian origin, whose
festival was finally established by Aurelian as national and
Roman, about A.D. 273. A hundred years later the Christian
Church accepted it, doubtfully and reluctantly, as the natal day
of Christ, thus entering on a course which it consistently pursued
of christianising all pagan rites, festivals, and even temples. The
midsummer solstice was therefore dedicated to St John the
Baptist, and so on. The Celtic, or rather Gaelic festivals, of a
distinctive kind, are three in number; Bealltuinn (ist May),
Lunasduinn (ist August), and Samhuinn (ist November.) Why
these festivals should be a month later than the solar periods in
each case, is doubtful ; but it is clear that these periods suit the
climatic changes of the seasons in the North better than the
earlier, though truer, solar periods.

The great festival of Beltane occurred on May-day. Cor-

mads reference to this pagan festival is the first and most im-

portant: — "Bclltaine, Le. bil tcne, a goodly fire, ix, two fires

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which Druids used to make through incantations (or with great
incantations), and they used to bring the cattle to those fires as
a preservative against diseases of each year." Here we have to
note that the fire was made by Druidic incantations, which
means no more than that it was made by the " tinegin," or
need-fire method, and that it was a preservative against disease
in cattle. Cormac's derivation has the misfortune of making a
wrong division of the syllables of the word, which are beallt-
uinn, or belt-ane ; not bel-tane. We must reject any derivation
that so divides the word, and hold that the latter part of the
word has nothing to do with teine fire, but is, probably, the — n
termination of most words of time. Hence derivations which
connect the word with the fire of Baal or Bel are out of place,
granting that such a god as Bel is Celtic, and not invented for the
occasion. Belinus is the Celtic Apollo. Mr Fitzgerald's derivation
of Beltane, from bile-tineadh, " fire-tree," is to be rejected on the
ground of wrong division of the word, and his instances adduced
of the existence in Ireland of usages pointing to a belief in a
world-tree of the Norse type appear to be too slight and too
little founded on general Celtic, especially Scottish, traditions iii
regard to the Beltane festival. The world-tree, and consequent
may-pole, are not distinctively, if at all, Celtic in this connection.
" The first of May," says M. D'Arbois de Jubainville, " was con-
secrated to Beltene, one of the names of the god of death, the
god who gave and took away life," the root in this case being
the prc-historic infinitive beltiu^ to die. Why the festival of the
beginning of the summer, the outburst of nature, and the con-
quest of the death and winter powers should be sacred, not to
the god of life and light, but to his opposite, is a thing which
'this derivation and theory cannot account for. The November
feast might well be one where the loss of the sun-god and vic-
tory of the god of death were commemorated, but the first of
summer is far from appropriate for this. Both in Welsh and
Gaelic myth the victory of the light-gods is indicated on the
first of May ; Gwyn fights for Cordelia, and the Tuath de Dan-
ann overcame the Firbolg, the Earth powers, on that day.
Grimm hesitatingly hints what appears to be the true derivation :
— The Norse sun-god is called Balder, and he suggests that this
is connected with Lithuanian baltas^ "white." The connection

97

of Beltane with these two words is confirmed by the Gaelic
saying of " la buidhc Bealltuinn,** "yellow May-day,** which may
be a reminiscence of the primary meaning of Beltane.

We have numerous accounts of the Beltane rites, all pointing
to fire and sun worship — phases of purification, sacrifice, and
divination. One of the best accounts is given in the Old Statistical
Account of the parish of Callander. " Upon the first of May," it
says, " which is called Bcltan or BM-tein, all the boys in a town-
ship or hamlet meet on the moors. They cut a table in the green
sod, of a round figure, by casting a trench in the ground of such
circumference as to hold the whole company. They kindle a fire
and dress a repast of eggs and milk in the consistence of a
custard. They knead a cake of oatmeal which is toasted at the
embers against a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they
divide the cake into so many portions, as similar as possible to
one another in size and shape, as there are persons in the com-
pany. They daub one of these portions all over with charcoal
until it be perfectly black. They put all the bits of the cake into
a bonnet. Every one, blindfold, draws out a portion. He who
holds the bonnet is entitled to the last bit Whoever draws the
black bit, is the devoted person who is to be sacrificed to Baal,
whose favour they implore in rendering the year productive of
the sustenance of man and beast. There is little doubt of these
inhuman sacrifices having been once offered in this country, as
well as in the East, although they now pass from the act of sacri-
ficing, and only compel the devoted person to leap three times
through the flames ; with which the ceremonies of the festival are
closed." To this sensible account and its inferences, all but the
reference to Baal, we agree fully. Most authorities hold, with
Cormac, that there were two fires, between which and through
which they passed their cattle and even their children. Criminals
were made to stand between the two fifes, and hence the proverb,
in regard to a person in extreme danger, as the Rev. D Macqueen
gives it, " He is betwixt two Beltein fires." Pennant adds some
interesting facts : the rites began with spilling some caudle on
the ground by way of libation ; whereupon "everyone takes a cake
of oatmeal upon which are raised nine square knobs, each one de-
dicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their
flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer

IT

98

of them. Each person then turns his face to the fire, breaks off a
knob, and flinging it over his shoulders, says, * This I give to thee,
preserve thou my horses ; this to thee, preserve thou my sheep,'
and so on. After that, they use the same ceremony to the noxi-
ous animals : * This I give to thee, O fox ! spare thou my lambs :
this to thee, O hooded crow ! this to thee, O eagle.' " Shaw, the
historian of Moray, tells us that the fires were kindled with a flint;
the " Druidic incantations " of Cormac and the " tinegin " were not
used within the last century at least for lighting the Beltane fire ;
their use seems latterly to have been restricted to raising the
need-fire during cattle plagues.

The midsummer festival, christianised into St John's Eve
and Day, for the celebration of the summer solstice, is not a
specially Celtic, as it is a Teutonic, feast The wheels of wood,
wrapped round with straw, set on fire, and sent rolling from a
hillock summit, to end their course in some river or water, which
thus typified the descending course of the sun onward till next
solstice, is represented on Celtic ground by the occasional use of
a wheel for producing the tiiugviy but more especially by the
custom in some districts of rolling the Beltane bannocks from the
hill summit down its side. Shaw remarks — ^" They made the
Deas-sail [at Midsummer] about their fields of com with burning
torches of wood in their hands, to obtain a blessing on their
corn. This I have often seen, inore^ indeed^ in tJu Lowlands than
in the Highlands. On Midsummer Eve, they kindle fires near
their cornfields, and walk round them with burning torches." In
Cornwall last century they used to perambulate the villages carry-
ing lighted torches, and in Ireland the Eve of Midsummer was
honoured with bonfires round which they carried torches.

The specially Celtic feast or "Feill" was held some five
weeks later, on the ist August, Lammas Day. It is called in
Scottish Gaelic " Lunasduinn," in Irish " Lunasd," old Irish "Lug-
nasad," the fair of Lug. The legend says that Luga of the Long
Arms, the Tuatha De Danann king, instituted this fair in honour
of his foster-mother Tailtiu, queen of the Firbolgs. Hence the
place where it was held was called Tailtiu after her, and is the
modern Teltown. The fair was held, however, in all the capitals
of ancient Ireland on that day. Games and manly sports char-
acterised the assemblies. Luga, it may be noted, is the sun-god.

99

who thus institutes the festival, and it is remarkable that at
ancient Lyons, in France, called of old Lug-dunum, a festival was
held on this very day, which was famous over all Gaul.

Equal to Beltane in importance was the solemnity of Hal-
lowe'en, known in Gaelic as Samhuinn or " summerend." Like
Bcltan it was sacred to the gods of light and of earth ; Ceres,
Apollo, and Dis also, must have been the deities whose wor-
ship was honoured. The earth goddess was celebrated for the
ingathering of the fruits ; Apollo or Belinus and Proserpine were
bewailed for their disappearing from earth, and Dis, who was god
of death and winter's cold, and who was especially worshipped by
the Celts, as Csesar says, was implored for mercy, and his subjects,
the. manes of the dead, had special worship directed to them. It
was, indeed, a great festival — the festival of fire, fruits, and death.
The features that still remain in popular customs in regard to
Hallowe'en clearly show its connection with the gods of fire and
fate; bonfires and divination are its characteristics. The Statistical
Account, already quoted, says of Hallowe'en : — "On All-Saint's
Even they set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire
is consumed, the ashes are carefully collected in the form of a
circle. There is a stone put in, near the circumference, for every
person of the several families interested in the bonfire, and what-
ever stone is moved out of its place or injured before next morn-
ing, the person represented by that stone is devoted or fey^ and
is supposed not to live twelve months from that day." A some-
what similar custom is recorded by Pennant as existing in North
Wales, where every family made a great bonfire in the most
conspicuous place near the house, and when the fire was ex-
tinguished, every one threw a white stone into the ashes, having
first marked it. If next morning any of these stones is found
wanting, they have a notion that the person who threw it in will
die before next Hallowe'en. We can only refer to the various
laughable and serious methods of divination resorted to on
Hallowe'en night to read into the future ; our national poet Burns
has left us a graphic picture of the night and its ceremonies in
** Halloween." It may be remarked that the mystic apple plays
an important part in these ceremonies, as it alt^o does in so many
Celtic fairy tales. The custom in various parts of keeping a heap
of cakes, called soul-cakes^ to give away to all-comers, and more

100

especially to the poor, clearly commemorates the ancient offering
to the dead of food on this night What was dedicated in Pagan
times to the manes of the dead, is in modern times converted into
doles of bread to the poor, as Mr Tylor points out

Martin records a religious rite of the Lews people that must
not be passed over here. " The inhabitants of this island had an
ancient custom to sacrifice to a sea-god called Shony, at Hallo-tide,
in the following manner : — The inhabitants round the island came
to the Church of St Malvey, having each man his provision along
with him; every family furnished a peck of malt, and this was
brewed into ale; one of their number was picked out to wade
into the sea up to the middle, and carrying a cup of ale in his
hand, standing still in that posture, cried out with a loud voice,
saying, * Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you'll be
so kind as to send us plenty of sea-ware for enriching our ground
for the ensuing year' ; and so threw the cup of ale into the sea.
This was performed in the night-time. At his return to land
they all went to church, where there was a candle burning upon
the altar ; and then standing silent for some time, one of them
gave a signal, at which the candle was put out, and im.mediately
all of them went to the fields, where they fell a-drinking their ale
and spent the remainder of the night in dancing, singing, etc"
This they believed to be a powerful means to procure a plentiful
crop. This superstition is but lately dead, though the sacrifice had
been repressed, for they proceeded in spring to the end of a long
reef and invoked " Briannuil" to send a strong north wind to drive
plenty sea-ware ashore. There are other instances of sacrifice
within the last two hundred years in^the Highlands. An annual
sacrifice on the 25th August to St Mourie in Applecross and
Gairloch troubled the Dingwall Presbytery in the 17th century.
These rites consisted in immolating bulls, pouring of milk on
hills as oblations, visiting ruined chapels and *' circulating" them,
divining by putting the head into a hole in a stone, and the
worshipping of wells and stones. The bulls were sacrificed ** in
ane heathenish manner" for the recovery of man and beast from
disease. A Morayshire farmer some thirty years ago, in the case
of a murrain, lighted the need-fire with all due ceremony, then
dug a pit and sacrificed an ox to the *' unknown" spirit Sacrifice

101

of cocks for epilepsy has not been infrequent in modern times ;
this is done by burying them alive.

Other festival days retain a spice of heathen Celticism about
them yet The last night of the year the fire must not be
allowed to go out, and there is a particular dislike at this time to
give a neighbour a " kindling" or even light for a pipe, a feeling
which in some degree exists at Beltane and Hallowe'en. Candle-
mas day is known as La Fheill-Brighde, St Brigit's day, who is
really the canonised fire-goddess, the Vesta of the heathen Gaels.
Some customs in regard to her worship were mentioned already,
and Martin relates an interesting custom in the Western Isles on
Candlemas, showing St Brigit clearly on the aspect of Vesta, the
hearth and home goddess. The mistress and servants of each
family take a sheaf of oats and dress it up in women's apparel,
put it in a large basket and lay a wooden club by it, and this they
call Briid's-bed, and then they cry thrice, " Briid is come, Briid is
welcome." Next morning they look in the ashes to see the
impression of Briid's club there, and if they do they reckon it a
true presage of a good crop and prosperous year, and the contrary
they regard an ill omen. Shrove Tuesday was a great day in the
Highlands for cock-fighting; then each scholar brought cocks to
fight and decide who should be king and queen of the school for
the ensuing year. It was also a noted day for ball-playing. Its
popularity for nut-burning and marriage-divination by putting
symbolic articles into brose or cakes is yet great

Celtic Burial Rites.

The customs at burial and the disposal of the dead among
the early Celts can only be discovered in a general way. The
earlier Arj^an races evidently burned the bodies of the dead,
preser\ed the bones in urns, and raised over them a circular
mound. The poems of Homer present us with what may be
regarded as typical examples of early Greek and Celtic burials.
A pyre of wood was constructed, and on the top of it the body
was laid. Sheep and oxen were slain, their fat was placed
about and upon the body, and their carcases were heaped around
it Jars of honey and oil were placed on the pile. Horses,
favourite dogs, and captives were slain and cast on the pyre, and
the whole set on fire. A wail was raised and the dead addressed

102

by name. WTicn the fire burned low, it was finally extinguished
with wine, the bones were collected — " the whitened l>ones," as
the poet says — and placed in an urn of gold. Then they dug a
grave, and raised over it a mound. In historic times, in Greece
and Republican Rome, the burning of the dead was the excep-
tion, not the rule; but in Imperial Rome the custom revived,
and became the rule, while inhumation, at least of the better
classes, was the exception. Christianity, however, finally stopped
the burning of the dead. The old mounds had also developed
into the elegance of built tombs, vaults, and monuments with
inscriptions and other accessories of civilisation. Among the
Celts of Gaul in Caisar*s time, evidently the Homeric age of
burial was still prevalent ; all the classical writers of that and the
succeeding century testify to the burning of the bodies among
the Gauls, but they arc silent as to the character of the tombs.
" Their funerals,'* Casar says, " arc magnificent and costly, con-
sidering their civilisation ; and all that they think was dear to them
when alive they put in the fire, even animals ; and shortly before
this generation the slaves and dependants that they were con-
sidered to have loved, were burned along with them in the
regular performance of funeral rites." Mela confirms this fully :
'* They burn and bury along with the dead whatever is of use to
them when alive, and there were some who, of their own free
will, cast themselves on the funeral piles of their relatives, ex-
pecting to live along with them." Thus, we have not merely the
burning of the bodies, but also the burning of things useful in
this life, and more especially of slaves and relatives ; the latter
practice having become, previous to historic times, obsolete. No
trace of the remembrance of a time when the dead were burnt
can be found in the earliest histories and myths of Ireland or
Britain, although abundance of instances occur where personal
and other property has been buried along with the dead ; and
even the immolation of captives is not unknown, as when the
Munster hostages were buried alive around the grave of Fiachra,
about the end of the fourth century of our era. Sacrifice of
animals is referred to in the story of Etain, the fairy queen of
Eochaid Aiream, who was left to " dig the Pert (grave), to raise
the wail, and slay the quadrupeds," for Ailill the king's brother.
Burial of arms is mentioned more than once; an old "Druidic"

103

poem celebrates the fall of Mog-Neid, King of Munster in the
.second century of our era ; it says —

" The grave of Mog-Neid is on Magh Tualaing,
With his lance at his shoulder.
With his club, so rapid in action.
With his helmet, with his sword."

The Scottish Gaelic " Lay of Dargo" presents us with a much
more touching and important instance of devotion than any of
these. Dargo's wife expressed her love for her husband when
the concocted story of his death was brought to her, the effects
of which killed her, in these words —

*' Chi mi 'n seobhag, chi mi 'n ch
Leis an d*roinn mo riin an t-sealg,
'S o na bMonmhuinn leis an triuir,
Chirear sinn 'san tiir le Dearg."

I see the hawk, I sec the hound.
With which ipy love performed the chase,
And as the three to him were bound,
Let us in earth with Dearg have place.

What kind of tomb was erected over them ? In answer to
this question, we are at once referred to the numerous barrows
and tumuli scattered over the country, and more especially in
Ireland, where the remarkable mounds on the Boyne could not
fail to attract the attention of all ages. "The traditions and
history of the mound-raising period have in other countries passed
away," says Standish 0*Grady very truly ; " but in Ireland chey
have been all preserved in their original fulness and vigour, hardly
a hue has faded, hardly a minute circumstance has been suffered
to decay." A proud claim is this, and one which for the very
uniqueness among the nations that it postulates for Ireland,
invites criticism and suspicion. The Euhemerist historians and
scribes of Ireland have woven an intimate chain of connection
between every event of their modest (!) four thousand years*
chronology and the topography of their country ; be it the for-
tunes of Ccsair before the Flood, or of Partolan immediately
after, or of Brian Boromh a generation or two before the writer's
time, yet every event is chronicled with a minuteness of gene-
alogy, detail, and localisation that is quite oblivious of the per-
spective of time, the long roll of ages with their change of customs,
and the uncertainty as to the far distant past We saw that the

104

Irish gods were changed to kings ; nay, more, their tombs can
still be seen on the banks of the Boyne ! There are the barrows
of the Dagda and his heroes, and there, too, Cuchulain rests
beneath his mound. But just about his time Eochaid Aiream
had introduced the practice of simple burial beneath the earth,
and had abolished the old custom of burying the dead "by rais-
ing great heaps of stones over their bodies." These barrows are,
mythologically considered, pre-Celtic ; they are beyond the ken
of Irish history and myth, just as much as the Cromlechs are,
which popular archaeology accounts for as the ** Beds of Diarmat
and Grainne" or "Granna's Beds" — the beds occupied by this
pair in their flight before Finn. Considered, again archaeologi-
cally, they belong also to the races that preceded the Celts, as the
character of the interments and of the accompanying articles
proves. We have, however, continued reference in the myths
and talcs to the burial of early Christian times — the grave, the
stone over it, and the inscription. How little the Irish writers
understood the change of customs wrought by time is seen in the
description by an Irish writer of the I2th century of the burial
of Patroclus at Troy ; Achilles "built his tomb, and he set up his
stone and wrote his name." Homer's account has already been
given. The Irishman described the custom of his own time as
existing in the time of the Trojan War.

105

THE HEROIC TALES OF THE CELTS.

The materials of Irish Mythology have well been divided by
M. D'Arbois de Jubainville into three leading parts: there is,
first, the mythological cycle which deals with the gods and the
ethnology of the country, and which we have treated in the
foregoing pages. There are, secondly, the Cuchulain cycle, and,
thirdly, the Ossianic cycle, both dealing with the heroes of the
race. Between the god-cycle and the hero-cycles there is a long
break, which is filled up in the histories with meagre details, but
full genealogies of intermediate kings, with now and then an
oasis of mythical incident, like Cimbaeth's conquest of the war-
goddess, Macha Red-mane, and Labraid Loingseach's hunted
youth and punishment of the usurping uncle. A wonderful list
it is! Are these kings and chiefs but shadows conjured from
the fertile imagination of bards and monks? Most of them un-
doubtedly are mere genealogical stop-gaps, though a few names
and events may have lived on in legend and myth. For, what
are the facts in regard to the literary documents of Irish history?
None go back in MS. earlier than the year iioo, and the lan-
guage in which the oldest MS. is written i^ just the language of
the time at which it was written. It is useless to postulate for
the composition of the literary matter a date of six centuries or
more previously ; the writings may be as old as that and older,
but their final recension in the nth century is couched in the
language of that time, and great caution must be exercised in
sifting out what is and what is not old. At the best, the result
remains unsatisfactory, and unsafe to theorise upon. Yet, it must
be said that Irish history from after the time of St Patrick may
be trusted, for it can be often tested by contemporary and other
documents. When we remember the mythical history of St
Patrick himself, and that he is divisible into three different per-
sonages, dating from 400 to 500 — for St Patrick dies at the age
of 122 in the 14th year of King Lughaidh! — we are entitled to

106

place little confidence in Irish hbtory antecedent to him. In fact,
Irish history begins with the introduction of Christianity. Pre-
vious to that, it is mythical and legendary. There are three dis-
tinctive periods, however ; first, there is the mythological epoch
commencing with Partolan and ending with the expulsion of the
Tuatha-De-Danann and the instalment of the Milesian race.
Then, secondly, comes the Milesian race of kings, filling up the
void of fifteen hundred years till the Christian era or shortly
before it, when the Cuchulain cycle of events begins. Again,
thirdly, the period from the beginning of the Christian era to the
time of St Patrick is one which may be trusted possibly in its
leading features. The vraisiviilitude of Irish history has imposed
on the best scholars, and even Professor Windisch is inclined to
euhemerise the Cuchulain and Fenian cycles, and to believe the
stories of the reigns of Conchobar and Cormac. But, really, the
feats performed by Cuchulain are in the highest degree mythical ;
his life is a fairy tale that fits not into history, and, indeed,
his name has no place in the ''Annals of the Four Masters!"
Nor is Finn and his Fenian militia (!) band much better treated ;
he is, indeed, mentioned in an obscure way as having fallen in
A.D. 283, while the fatal field of Gabhra is represented as an
ordinary event in Irish history unconnected with the collapse of
a mighty and miraculous host The fact is, the Irish annalists
found it difficult to fit the fairy heroes into their histories, just as
is the case with the British Arthur. There is no place for him in
the kingly lists, and he is accordingly, like Finn, a " dux belli."
Yet the fairy tales and romances regard these heroes as kings
and princes, but the histories cannot recognise them ; they do
not fit in well, for, in reality, they belong to no particular time,
but are the incarnation of the national deities in national heroes.
These heroes cannot, therefore, be tied down to history; the
most popular incidents in their lives are of a wholly unhistorical
character — enchantments, fairy scenes and chases, gigantic heroes
that over-stride firths and valleys — ^such arc the characteristics of
nearly all the tales. The historical part is poor and non-popular.
The only historical incident recognised, and that, too, doubtfully,
by the popular imagination, is the battle of Gabhra, where the
Feni were overthrown ; and that battle, if historical at all, was
fought, not by the Finn and Oscar of popular tradition, but by

107

some of the numerous chiefs and kinglets bearing the names of
the mythic heroes.

The Cuchulain cycle is set down as occurring at the begin-
ning of the Christian era, while the Fenian cycle is placed three
hundred years later. In any case, the two cycles are quite
distinct in their characteristics. In the Cuchulain cycle, the hero
alone performs all the wonders ; for instance, Cuchulain and his
charioteer alone keep the host of Meave at bay for a long period,
until the princes of Ulster recover their powers. Now in the
Fenian cycle, the heroes are banded together, and are captains
of armies. Cuchulain rides on a chariot ; the Fingalians know of
none such — they are a band of foot soldiers. The two cycles
have thus distinctive features, and they may be compared to the
hero-cycles of Classical Mythology. These divide into two;
there are the demigod heroes like Hercules, Theseus and
Perseus, who perform their feats alone ; and, again, there are the
more mortal heroes of the Trojan type, like Achilles, who beads
a band of men and performs marvels ; but, on the whole, the Feni
rather belong to the Argonautic conception, which is somewhat
earlier and is a thorough fairy tale, falling between the Hercules
type and the purely Trojan type. The Arthurian cycle is Trojan
in its characteristics.

Of Cuchulain's birth, " strange tales are told." Nominally
the son of Sualtam, he in reality was the son of the god Luga^-
the sun-god, whose far-darting and flashing qualities he displays
continually, for his power lies greatly in the use of the sling, and
in fighting from the car. As a young man, he, like all fairy and
mythic heroes, is lowly brought up, and serves Culann, the smith,
if we can trust so evidently ** cponymic " a myth, and hence he
was called Cu-Chulain, "Culaun's Hound." But his name
more likely contains the common prefix cu or con^ signifying
superiority, and not dog. Queen Meave makes a raid on Ulster
to get the famous bull, Donn Chualgne, and the Ulster people,
all save Cuchulain, are placed under a spell, whereby they cannot
move to fight. Cuchulain alone withstands the host of Meave,
dealing death with his sling, and fighting the champions " at the
ford." But he fails, apparently, through demoniac influences, and
Meave gets the bull ; but, as she returns home, the Ulster men
awake and pursue. A battle is fought,Cuchulain again appears,and

108

carries all before him. Such is the rationalistic history of the
" Cowspoil of Cualgne ; '* but evidently the spoil is connected
with the cattle of the sun-god, and is quite mythical, as Professor
Windisch reluctantly remarked, only to controvert it inconsis-
tently. The other incidents of his life are his mythical education ;
his feats ; the slaying of his son, Conlaoch, by mistake — the story
of Soohrab and Rustem of Persia ; and his tragic death through
witchcraft spells.

Finn is also a fairy hero ; his birth is antecedcd by his
father's violent death and his mother's flight ; he is brought up
in obscurity ; does wonderful youthful exploits ; tastes of
the salmon of knowledge, and so, by bruising his thumb,
which was burnt in the process of broiling the fish, in his
mouth, can always discover the truth ; acquires his father's
position, and is great. Innumerable are the tales of the Feni.
The real Fenian tales are composed of fairy battles, scenes, and
spells ; but they have got tinged with real events, such as, in
Scotland, the descents of the Norsemen; and, consequently,
Finn's fairy opponent sometimes partakes of a Norse name and
character. Finn is evidently the incarnation of the chief deity
of the Gaels — the Jupiter spoken of by Caesar and the Dagda of
Irish myth. His qualities are king-like and majestic, not sun-
like, as those of Cuchulain. He is surrounded by a band of
heroes that make a terrestrial Olympus, composed of counter-
parts to the chief deities. There is the fiery Oscar (ud-scar^
utter-cutter?) a sort of war-god ; Ossian, the poet and warrior,
corresponding to Hercules Ogmius ; Diarmat, of the shining
face, a reflection of the sun-god ; Caelte, the wind-swift runner ;
and so on.

Arthur and his knights correspond generally to Finn and
his heroic band ; Arthur's position in history and in popular
tradition agrees with Finn's, and many incidents are the same in
their lives — their birth and education in obscurity, like all heroes
of fairy lore; their recognition and advancement to the throne;
their kingly qualities and majestic wisdom; their domestic
life, the infidelity of their wives; and so on. The heroes of each
nation show also similarities, nor are even the names without a
resemblance. Tal-/V^/;/, the bard, son of the mystic Gwion, may
philologically correspond to Ossian, son of Finn, as Professor

109

Rhys allows. The incidents of the Arthurian cycle sometimes
correspond to the Cuchulain cycle of Ireland, as well as to the
Fenian. Thus Peredur's ideal of a bride — raven-black hair and
blood-red and snow-white cheeks — corresponds to the story of
Deirdre and the sons of Uisneach.

A word or two may be said as to the local habitation of the
heroic incidents. The Irish tales localise the events in Ireland,
and point to places whose names are derived from the incidents
of the tales. For example, the incidents of the killing of Diarmat
by the boar are located in Sligo ; but in Scotland the same story
is fixed in no less than two places — Argyllshire and Sutherland*
shire ; Ben-Gulbain in Argyllshire, and Ben-Loyal in Sutherland
have clear topographical traces of the story. And, again,
the Arthurian incidents are confidently located by different
theorists in Brittany, Wales, and Scotland. Mir Stuart-Glennie
has written a volume to prove that Scotland was the scene of
Arthur's victories, and Mr Skene supports him. No doubt the
claims are all genuine ; the story, in fact, is settled wherever a
colony of the Welsh or the Gaels settled in a new country. The
stories are racial and general, and can be tied down to neither
time nor place. Every branch and colony can claim them as
their own.

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