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The Religion of the Ancient Celts

Chapter 9 GODS AND MEN.

Word Count: 2039    |    Released on: 01/12/2017

artly divine, and who may themselves have been gods. One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature. No house could contain Bran, and certain divine people

pomorphic, myths would arise telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in part, accounts for these transformation myths. The gods are also immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The Tuatha Dé Danann are "unfading," their "duration is perennial."517 This immortality is sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is the result of eating immortal food-Manannan's swine, Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal ale, or the apples of Elysium. The stories t

a divine name and -genos or -gnatos, "born of," "son of," are found in inscriptions over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic documents-Boduogenos, Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these names were believed to be of divine descent on one side. Spirits of nature or the elements of nature personified might also be parents of mortals, as a name like

uch gods. Wherever divine kings are found, fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance of their tabus. To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain before they grow old and weak, and their vigour passes on to their successors. Their death benefits their people.521 But frequently the king might reign as long as he could hold his own against all comers, or, again, a slave or criminal was for a time treated as a mock king, and slain as the divine king's substitute. Scattered hints in Irish literature and in folk survivals show that some such course as this had been pursued by the Celts with regard to their divine kings, as it was also elsewhere.522 It is not impossible that some at least of the Druids stood in a similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably at first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually with three hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great national council.523 This council at a consecrated place (nemeton), its likeness to the annual Druidic gathering in Gaul, and the possibility that Dru- has some connection with the name "Druid," point to a religious as well as political aspect of this council. The "tetrarchs" may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the kingly prerogative of acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul. The wife of

toe, had to be cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he could be slain. This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account is incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were not known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though he says nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it is not unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his time, the oxen which we

or gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess became the consort of the god, a female representative would continue as the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marria

(return) O'Gr

ii. 203. Cf. C?sar, vi. 14,

Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 11

9:(return)

robably influenced fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod

he words attributed to King Ailill, "If I am slain,

existence of Celtic incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his inferences seem far-fetched. The divine

(return) Stra

turn) Plutarch,

i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stac

urn) Livy, v. 34;

ws of Ireland, i. 22; Diog. Laer

:(return) Pl

:(return) P.

ee guarded by Gramoplanz (Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain it

:(return) Se

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The Religion of the Ancient Celts
The Religion of the Ancient Celts
J. A. MacCulloch Literature
“To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult, remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic religion! The bygone faith of a people who have inspired the world with noble dreams must be constructed painfully, and often in fear and trembling, out of fragmentary and, in many cases, transformed remains.We have the surface observations of classical observers, dedications in the Romano-Celtic area to gods mostly assimilated to the gods of the conquerors, figured monuments mainly of the same period, coins, symbols, place and personal names. For the Irish Celts there is a mass of written material found mainly in eleventh and twelfth century MSS. Much of this, in spite of alteration and excision, is based on divine and heroic myths, and it also contains occasional notices of ritual. From Wales come documents like the Mabinogion, and strange poems the personages of which are ancient gods transformed, but which tell nothing of rite or cult. Valuable hints are furnished by early ecclesiastical documents, but more important is existing folk-custom, which preserves so much of the old cult, though it has lost its meaning to those who now use it. Folk-tales may also be inquired of, if we discriminate between what in them is Celtic and what is universal. Lastly, Celtic burial-mounds and other remains yield their testimony to ancient belief and custom.From these sources we try to rebuild Celtic paganism and to guess at its inner spirit, though we are working in the twilight on a heap of fragments. No Celt has left us a record of his faith and practice, and the unwritten poems of the Druids died with them. Yet from these fragments we see the Celt as the seeker after God, linking himself by strong ties to the unseen, and eager to conquer the unknown by religious rite or magic art. For the things of the spirit have never appealed in vain to the Celtic soul, and long ago classical observers were struck with the religiosity of the Celts. They neither forgot nor transgressed the law of the gods, and they thought that no good befell men apart from their will. The submission of the Celts to the Druids shows how they welcomed authority in matters of religion, and all Celtic regions have been characterised by religious devotion, easily passing over to superstition, and by loyalty to ideals and lost causes. The Celts were born dreamers, as their exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much that is spiritual and romantic in more than one European literature is due to them.”
1 Chapter 1 INTRODUCTORY.2 Chapter 2 THE CELTIC PEOPLE.3 Chapter 3 THE GODS OF GAUL AND THE CONTINENTAL CELTS.4 Chapter 4 THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE.5 Chapter 5 THE TUATHA Dé DANANN6 Chapter 6 THE GODS OF THE BRYTHONS7 Chapter 7 THE CúCHULAINN CYCLE.8 Chapter 8 THE FIONN SAGA.9 Chapter 9 GODS AND MEN.10 Chapter 10 THE CULT OF THE DEAD.11 Chapter 11 PRIMITIVE NATURE WORSHIP.12 Chapter 12 RIVER AND WELL WORSHIP.13 Chapter 13 TREE AND PLANT WORSHIP.14 Chapter 14 ANIMAL WORSHIP.15 Chapter 15 COSMOGONY.16 Chapter 16 SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION.17 Chapter 17 TABU.18 Chapter 18 FESTIVALS.19 Chapter 19 ACCESSORIES OF CULT.20 Chapter 20 THE DRUIDS.21 Chapter 21 MAGIC.22 Chapter 22 THE STATE OF THE DEAD.23 Chapter 23 REBIRTH AND TRANSMIGRATION.24 Chapter 24 ELYSIUM.