The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 23

[677] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 51; Jullian, 41.

[678] Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 60.

[679] See Sebillot, i. 293; Le Braz, i. 259; _Folk-Lore Journal_, v.

218; _Folk-Lore Record_, 1882.

[680] Val. Probus, _Comm. in Georgica_, ii. 84.

[681] Miss Hull, 53; O'Ourry, _MS. Mat._ 465. Writing tablets, made from each of the trees when they were cut down, sprang together and could not be separated.

[682] _Stat. Account_, iii. 27; Moore, 151; Sebillot, i. 262, 270.

[683] Dom Martin, i. 124; _Vita S. Eligii_, ii. 16.

[684] _Acta Sanct._ (Bolland.), July 31; Sulp. Sever. _Vita S. Mart._ 457.

[685] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 76; Maury, 13, 299. The story of beautiful women found in trees may be connected with the custom of placing images in trees, or with the belief that a G.o.ddess might be seen emerging from the tree in which she dwelt.

[686] De la Tour, _Atlas des Monnaies Gaul_, 260, 286; Reinach, _Catal.

Sommaire_, 29.

[687] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 44.

[688] See p. 162, _supra_.

[689] See Cameron, _Gaelic Names of Plants_, 45. In Gregoire de Rostren, _Dict. francois-celt._ 1732, mistletoe is translated by _dour-dero_, "oak-water," and is said to be good for several evils.

[690] Pliny, xxiv. 11.

[691] Ibid.

[692] Ibid. xxv. 9.

[693] See Carmichael, _Carmina Gadelica_; De Nore, _Coutumes ... des Provinces de France_, 150 f.; Sauve, _RC_ vi. 67, _CM_ ix. 331.

[694] O'Grady, ii. 126.

[695] Miss Hull, 172; see p. 77, _supra_.

CHAPTER XIV.

ANIMAL WORSHIP.

Animal worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of historic times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or attributes of divinities. The older cult had been connected with the pastoral stage in which the animals were divine, or with the agricultural stage in which they represented the corn-spirit, and perhaps with totemism. We shall study here (1) traces of the older animal cults; (2) the transformation of animal G.o.ds into symbols; and (3) traces of totemism.

1.

The presence of a bull with three cranes (_Tarvos Trigaranos_) on the Paris altar, along with the G.o.ds Esus, Juppiter, and Vulcan, suggests that it was a divine animal, or the subject of a divine myth. As has been seen, this bull may be the bull of the _Tain bo Cuailgne_. Both it and its opponent were reincarnations of the swine-herds of two G.o.ds. In the Irish sagas reincarnation is only attributed to G.o.ds or heroes, and this may point to the divinity of the bulls. We have seen that this and another altar may depict some myth in which the bull was the incarnation of a tree or vegetation spirit. The divine nature of the bull is attested by its presence on Gaulish coins as a religious symbol, and by images of the animal with three horns--an obvious symbol of divinity.[696] On such an image in bronze the Cimbri, Celticised Germans, swore. The images are pre-Roman, since they are found at Hallstadt and La Tene. Personal names like Donnotaurus (the equivalent of the _Donn Taruos_ of the _Tain_) or Deiotaros ("divine bull"), show that men were called after the divine animal.[697] Similarly many place-names in which the word _taruos_ occurs, in Northern Italy, the Pyrenees, Scotland, Ireland, and elsewhere, suggest that the places bearing these names were sites of a bull cult or that some myth, like that elaborated in the _Tain_, had been there localised.[698] But, as possibly in the case of Cuchulainn and the bull, the animal tended to become the symbol of a G.o.d, a tendency perhaps aided by the spread of Mithraism with its symbolic bull. A G.o.d Medros leaning on a bull is represented at Haguenau, possibly a form of Mider or of Meduris, a surname of Toutatis, unless Medros is simply Mithras.[699] Echoes of the cult of the bull or cow are heard in Irish tales of these animals brought from the _sid_, or of magic bulls or of cows which produced enormous supplies of milk, or in saintly legends of oxen leading a saint to the site of his future church.[700] These legends are also told of the swine,[701] and they perhaps arose when a Christian church took the place of the site of a local animal cult, legend fusing the old and the new cult by making the once divine animal point out the site of the church. A late relic of a bull cult may be found in the carnival procession of the _Boeuf Gras_ at Paris.

A cult of a swine-G.o.d Moccus has been referred to. The boar was a divine symbol on standards, coins, and altars, and many bronze images of the animal have been found. These were temple treasures, and in one case the boar is three-horned.[702] But it was becoming the symbol of a G.o.ddess, as is seen by the altars on which it accompanies a G.o.ddess, perhaps of fertility, and by a bronze image of a G.o.ddess seated on a boar. The altars occur in Britain, of which the animal may be the emblem--the "Caledonian monster" of Claudian's poem.[703] The Galatian Celts abstained from eating the swine, and there has always been a prejudice against its flesh in the Highlands. This has a totemic appearance.[704]

But the swine is esteemed in Ireland, and in the texts monstrous swine are the staple article of famous feasts.[705] These may have been legendary forms of old swine-G.o.ds, the feasts recalling sacrificial feasts on their flesh. Magic swine were also the immortal food of the G.o.ds. But the boar was tabu to certain persons, e.g. Diarmaid, though whether this is the attenuated memory of a clan totem restriction is uncertain. In Welsh story the swine comes from Elysium--a myth explaining the origin of its domestication, while domestication certainly implies an earlier cult of the animal. When animals come to be domesticated, the old cult restrictions, e.g. against eating them, usually pa.s.s away. For this reason, perhaps, the Gauls, who worshipped an anthropomorphic swine-G.o.d, trafficked in the animal and may have eaten it.[706] Welsh story also tells of the magic boar, the _Twrch Trwyth_, hunted by Arthur, possibly a folk-tale reminiscence of a boar divinity.[707] Place-names also point to a cult of the swine, and a recollection of its divinity may underlie the numerous Irish tales of magical swine.[708] The magic swine which issued from the cave of Cruachan and destroyed the young crops are suggestive of the theriomorphic corn-spirit in its occasional destructive aspect.[709]

Bones of the swine, sometimes cremated, have been found in Celtic graves in Britain and at Hallstadt, and in one case the animal was buried alone in a tumulus at Hallstadt, just as sacred animals were buried in Egypt, Greece, and elsewhere.[710] When the animal was buried with the dead, it may have been as a sacrifice to the ghost or to the G.o.d of the underworld.

The divinity of the serpent is proved by the occurrence of a horned serpent with twelve Roman G.o.ds on a Gallo-Roman altar.[711] In other cases a horned or ram's-headed serpent appears as the attribute of a G.o.d, and we have seen that the ram's-headed serpent may be a fusion of the serpent as a chthonian animal with the ram, sacrificed to the dead.

In Greece Dionysus had the form both of a bull and a horned serpent, the horn being perhaps derived from the bull symbol. M. Reinach claims that the primitive elements of the Orphic myth of the Thracian Dionysos-Zagreus--divine serpents producing an egg whence came the horned snake Zagreus, occur in dislocated form in Gaul. There enlacing serpents were believed to produce a magic egg, and there a horned serpent was worshipped, but was not connected with the egg. But they may once have been connected, and if so, there may be a common foundation both for the Greek and the Celtic conceptions in a Celtic element in Thrace.[712] The resemblances, however, may be mere coincidences, and horned serpents are known in other mythologies--the horn being perhaps a symbol of divinity. The horned serpent sometimes accompanies a G.o.d who has horns, possibly Cernunnos, the underworld G.o.d, in accordance with the chthonian character of the serpent.[713] In the Cuchulainn cycle Loeg on his visit to the Other-world saw two-headed serpents--perhaps a further hint of this aspect of the animal.[714]

In all these instances of animal cults examples of the tendency to make the divine animal anthropomorphic have been seen. We have now to consider some instances of the complete anthropomorphic process.

2.

An old bear cult gave place to the cult of a bear G.o.ddess and probably of a G.o.d. At Berne--an old Celtic place-name meaning "bear"--was found a bronze group of a G.o.ddess holding a patera with fruit, and a bear approaching her as if to be fed. The inscription runs, _Deae Artioni Licinia Sabinilla_.[715] A local bear-cult had once existed at Berne, and is still recalled in the presence of the famous bears there, but the divine bear had given place to a G.o.ddess whose name and symbol were ursine. From an old Celtic _Artos_, fem. _Arta_, "bear," were derived various divine names. Of these _Dea Artio(n)_ means "bear G.o.ddess," and _Artaios_, equated with Mercury, is perhaps a bear G.o.d.[716] Another bear G.o.ddess, Andarta, was honoured at Die (Drome), the word perhaps meaning "strong bear"--_And_- being an augmentive.[717] Numerous place-names derived from _Artos_ perhaps witness to a widespread cult of the bear, and the word also occurs in Welsh, and Irish personal names--Arthmael, Arthbiu, and possibly Arthur, and the numerous Arts of Irish texts. Descent from the divine bear is also signified in names like Welsh _Arthgen_, Irish _Artigan_, from _Artigenos_, "son of the bear." Another Celtic name for "bear" was the Gaulish _matu_, Irish _math_, found in _Matugenos_, "son of the bear," and in MacMahon, which is a corrupt form of _Mac-math-ghamhain_, "son of the bear's son," or "of the bear."[718]

Similarly a cult of the stag seems to have given place to that of a G.o.d with stag's horns, represented on many bas-reliefs, and probably connected with the underworld.[719] The stag, as a grain-eater, may have been regarded as the embodiment of the corn-spirit, and then a.s.sociated with the under-earth region whence the corn sprang, by one of those inversions of thought so common in the stage of transition from animal G.o.ds to G.o.ds with animal symbols. The elk may have been worshipped in Ireland, and a three antlered stag is the subject of a story in the Fionn saga.[720] Its third antler, like the third horn of bull or boar, may be a sign of divinity.

The horse had also been worshipped, but a G.o.ddess Epona (Gaul. _epo-s_, "horse"), protectress of horses and a.s.ses, took its place, and had a far-spread cult. She rides a horse or mare with its foal, or is seated among horses, or feeds horses. A representation of a mare suckling a foal--a design a.n.a.logous to those in which Epona feeds foals--shows that her primitive equine nature had not been forgotten.[721] The Gauls were horse-rearers, and Epona was the G.o.ddess of the craft; but, as in other cases, a cult of the horse must have preceded its domestication, and its flesh may not have been eaten, or, if so, only sacramentally.[722]

Finally, the divine horse became the anthropomorphic horse-G.o.ddess. Her images were placed in stables, and several inscriptions and statuettes have been found in such buildings or in cavalry barracks.[723] The remains of the cult have been found in the Danube and Rhine valleys, in Eastern Gaul, and in Northern Italy, all Celtic regions, but it was carried everywhere by Roman cavalry recruited from the Celtic tribes.[724] Epona is a.s.sociated with, and often has, the symbols of the _Matres_, and one inscription reads _Eponabus_, as if there were a group of G.o.ddesses called Epona.[725] A G.o.ddess who promoted the fertility of mares would easily be a.s.sociated with G.o.ddesses of fertility. Epona may also have been confused with a river-G.o.ddess conceived of as a spirited steed. Water-spirits took that shape, and the _Matres_ were also river-G.o.ddesses.

A statuette of a horse, with a dedication to a G.o.d Rudiobus, otherwise unknown, may have been carried processionally, while a mule has a dedication to Segomo, equated elsewhere with Mars. A mule G.o.d Mullo, also equated with Mars, is mentioned on several inscriptions.[726] The connection with Mars may have been found in the fact that the October horse was sacrificed to him for fertility, while the horse was probably a.s.sociated with fertility among the Celts. The horse was sacrificed both by Celts and Teutons at the Midsummer festival, undoubtedly as a divine animal. Traces of the Celtic custom survive in local legends, and may be interpreted in the fuller light of the Teutonic accounts. In Ireland a man wearing a horse's head rushed through the fire, and was supposed to represent all cattle; in other words, he was a surrogate for them. The legend of Each Labra, a horse which lived in a mound and issued from it every Midsummer eve to give oracles for the coming year, is probably connected with the Midsummer sacrifice of the horse.[727] Among the Teutons the horse was a divine sacrificial animal, and was also sacred to Freyr, the G.o.d of fertility, while in Teutonic survivals a horse's head was placed in the Midsummer fire.[728] The horse was sporadically the representative of the corn-spirit, and at Rome the October horse was sacrificed in that capacity and for fertility.[729] Among the Celts, the horse sacrificed at Midsummer may have represented the vegetation-spirit and benefited all domestic animals--the old rite surviving in an attenuated form, as described above.

Perhaps the G.o.ddess Damona was an animal divinity, if her name is derived from _damatos_, "sheep," cognate to Welsh _dafad_, "sheep," and Gaelic _damh_, "ox." Other divine animals, as has been seen, were a.s.sociated with the waters, and the use of beasts and birds in divination doubtless points to their divine character. A cult of bird-G.o.ds may lurk behind the divine name Bran, "raven," and the reference to the magic birds of Rhiannon in the _Triads_.

3.

Animal worship is connected with totemism, and certain things point to its existence among the Celts, or to the existence of conditions out of which totemism was elsewhere developed. These are descent from animals, animal tabus, the sacramental eating of an animal, and exogamy.

(1) _Descent from animals._--Celtic names implying descent from animals or plants are of two cla.s.ses, clan and personal names. If the latter are totemistic, they must be derived from the former, since totemism is an affair of the clan, while the so-called "personal totem," exemplified by the American Indian _manitou_, is the guardian but never the ancestor of a man. Some clan names have already been referred to. Others are the Bibroci of south-east Britain, probably a beaver clan (_bebros_), and the Eburones, a yew-tree clan (_eburos_).[730] Irish clans bore animal names: some groups were called "calves," others "griffins," others "red deer," and a plant name is seen in _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree."[731]

Such clan totemism perhaps underlies the stories of the "descendants of the wolf" at Ossory, who became wolves for a time as the result of a saintly curse. Other instances of lycanthropy were a.s.sociated with certain families.[732] The belief in lycanthropy might easily attach itself to existing wolf-clans, the transformation being then explained as the result of a curse. The stories of Cormac mac Art, suckled by a she-wolf, of Lughaid mac Con, "son of a wolf-dog," suckled by that animal, and of Oisin, whose mother was a fawn, and who would not eat venison, are perhaps totemistic, while to totemism or to a cult of animals may be ascribed what early travellers in Ireland say of the people taking wolves as G.o.d-fathers and praying to them to do them no ill.[733] In Wales bands of warriors at the battle of Cattraeth are described in Oneurin's _G.o.dodin_ as dogs, wolves, bears, and ravens, while Owein's band of ravens which fought against Arthur, may have been a raven clan, later misunderstood as actual ravens.[734] Certain groups of Dalriad Scots bore animal names--Cinel Gabran, "Little goat clan,"

and Cinel Loarn, "Fox clan." Possibly the custom of denoting Highland clans by animal or plant badges may be connected with a belief in descent from plants or animals. On many coins an animal is represented on horseback, perhaps leading a clan, as birds led the Celts to the Danube area, and these may depict myths telling how the clan totem animal led the clan to its present territory.[735] Such myths may survive in legends relating how an animal led a saint to the site of his church.[736] Celtic warriors wore helmets with horns, and Irish story speaks of men with cat, dog, or goat heads.[737] These may have been men wearing a head-gear formed of the skin or head of the clan totem, hence remembered at a later time as monstrous beings, while the horned helmets would be related to the same custom. Solinus describes the Britons as wearing animal skins before going into battle.[738] Were these skins of totem animals under whose protection they thus placed themselves? The "forms of beasts, birds, and fishes" which the Cruithne or Picts tattooed on their bodies may have been totem marks, while the painting of their bodies with woad among the southern Britons may have been of the same character, though Caesar's words hardly denote this. Certain marks on faces figured on Gaulish coins seem to be tattoo marks.[739]

It is not impossible that an early wolf-totem may have been a.s.sociated, because of the animal's nocturnal wanderings in forests, with the underworld whence, according to Celtic belief, men sprang and whither they returned, and whence all vegetation came forth. The Gallo-Roman Silva.n.u.s, probably an underworld G.o.d, wears a wolf-skin, and may thus be a wolf-G.o.d. There were various types of underworld G.o.ds, and this wolf-type--perhaps a local wolf-totem ancestor a.s.similated to a local "Dispater"--may have been the G.o.d of a clan who imposed its mythic wolf origin on other clans. Some Celtic bronzes show a wolf swallowing a man who offers no resistance, probably because he is dead. The wolf is much bigger than the man, and hence may be a G.o.d.[740] These bronzes would thus represent a belief setting forth the return of men to their totem ancestor after death, or to the underworld G.o.d connected with the totem ancestor, by saying that he devoured the dead, like certain Polynesian divinities and the Greek Eurynomos.

In many individual names the first part is the name of an animal or plant, the second is usually _genos_, "born from," or "son of," e.g.

Artigenos, Matugenos, "son of the bear" (_artos_, _matu_-); Urogenos, occurring as Urogenertos, "he who has the strength of the son of the urus"; Brannogenos, "son of the raven"; Cunogenos, "son of the dog."[741] These names may be derived from clan totem names, but they date back to a time when animals, trees, and men were on a common footing, and the possibility of human descent from a tree or an animal was believed in. Professor Rh[^y]s has argued from the frequency of personal names in Ireland, like Curoi, "Hound of Roi," Cu Corb, "Corb's Hound," Mac Con, "Hound's Son," and Maelchon, "Hound's Slave," that there existed a dog totem or G.o.d, not of the Celts, but of a pre-Celtic race.[742] This a.s.sumes that totemism was non-Celtic, an a.s.sumption based on preconceived notions of what Celtic inst.i.tutions ought to have been. The names, it should be observed, are personal, not clan names.

(2) _Animal tabus._--Besides the dislike of swine's flesh already noted among certain Celtic groups, the killing and eating of the hare, hen, and goose were forbidden among the Britons. Caesar says they bred these animals for amus.e.m.e.nt, but this reason a.s.signed by him is drawn from his knowledge of the breeding of rare animals by rich Romans as a pastime, since he had no knowledge of the breeding of sacred animals which were not eaten--a common totemic or animal cult custom.[743] The hare was used for divination by Boudicca,[744] doubtless as a sacred animal, and it has been found that a sacred character still attaches to these animals in Wales. A c.o.c.k or hen was ceremonially killed and eaten on Shrove Tuesday, either as a former totemic animal, or, less likely, as a representative of the corn-spirit. The hare is not killed in certain districts, but occasionally it is ceremonially hunted and slain annually, while at yearly fairs the goose is sold exclusively and eaten.[745] Elsewhere, e.g. in Devon, a ram or lamb is ceremonially slain and eaten, the eating being believed to confer luck.[746] The ill-luck supposed to follow the killing of certain animals may also be reminiscent of totemic tabus. Fish were not eaten by the Pictish Meatae and Caledonii, and a dislike of eating certain fresh-water fish was observed among certain eighteenth century Highlanders.[747] It has been already seen that certain fish living in sacred wells were tabu, and were believed to give oracles. Heron's flesh was disliked in Ireland, and it was considered unlucky to kill a swan in the Hebrides.[748] Fatal results following upon the killing or eating of an animal with which the eater was connected by name or descent are found in the Irish sagas.

Conaire was son of a woman and a bird which could take human shape, and it was forbidden to him to hunt birds. On one occasion he did so, and for this as well as the breaking of other tabus, he lost his life.[749]

It was tabu to Cuchulainn, "the hound of Culann," to eat dog's flesh, and, having been persuaded to do this, his strength went from him, and he perished. Diarmaid, having been forbidden to hunt a boar with which his life was connected, was induced by Fionn to break this tabu, and in consequence he lost his life by one of the boar's bristles entering his foot, or (in a variant) by the boar's killing him. Another instance is found in a tale of certain men transformed to badgers. They were slain by Cormac, and brought to his father Tadg to eat. Tadg unaccountably loathed them, because they were transformed men and his cousins.[750] In this tale, which may contain the _debris_ of totemic usage, the loathing arises from the fact that the badgers are men--a common form of myths explanatory of misunderstood totemic customs, but the old idea of the relation between a man and his totem is not lost sight of. The other tales may also be reminiscent of a clan totem tabu, later centred in a mythic hero. Perhaps the belief in lucky or unlucky animals, or in omens drawn from their appearance, may be based on old totem beliefs or in beliefs in the divinity of the animals.