The Religion of the Ancient Celts

t when such practices survive over a long period they assume the form of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in con

ily ghosts. The honour in which mythic or real heroes were held may point to an actual cult, the hero being worshipped when dead, while he still continued his guardianship of the tribe. We know al

has succeeded to the place of the other, while the fairy is even said to be the ghost of a dead person.537 Certain arch?ological remains have also a connection with this ancient cult. Among Celtic remains in Gaul are found andirons of clay, ornamented with a ram's head. M. Dechelette sees in this "the symbol of sacrifice offered to the souls of ancestors on the altar of the hearth."538 The ram was already associated as a sacrificial animal with the cult of fire on the hearth, and by an easy transition it was connected with the cult of the dead there. It is found as an emblem on ancient tombs, and the domestic Lar was purified by the

a death, food is placed out for the spirits, or, at a burial, nuts are placed in the coffin.543 In some parts of France, milk is poured out on the grave, and both in Brittany and in Scotland the dead are supposed to partake of the funeral feast.544 These are survivals from pagan times an

u, and the Leinstermen met at Carman on the same day to commemorate King Garman, or in a variant account, a woman called Carman. She and her sons had tried to blight the corn of the Tuatha Dé Danann, but the sons were driven off and she died of grief, begging that a fair should always be held in her name, and promising abundance of milk, fruit, and fish for its observance.547 These may be ?tiological myths

obtain plenty, and the festival would also commemorate those who had died for this good cause, while it would also appease their ghosts should these be angry at their violent deaths. Certain of the dead were thus commemorated at Lugnasad, a festival of fertility. Both the corn-spirit or divinity slain in the reaping of the corn, and the human victims, were a

t certain slain persons represented spirits of fertility, or because trees and plants growing on the barrows of the dead were thought to be tenanted by their spirits.550 In Scandinavia, the dead were associated with female spirits or fylgjur, identified with the disir, a kind of earth-goddesses, living in hollow hills.551 The nearest Celtic analogy to these is the Matres, goddesses of fertility. Bede says that Christmas eve was called Modranicht, "Mothers' Night,"552 and as many of the rites of Samhain were transferred to Yule, the former date of Modranicht may have been Samhain, just as the Scandinavian Disablot, held in November, was a festival of the disir and of

h. We have here returned to the cult of the dead at the hearth.554 Possibly the Yule log was once a log burned on the hearth-the place of the family ghosts-at Samhain, when new fire was kindled in each house. On it liba

o this, All Souls, a festival of all the dead, was added on November 2nd.555 To some extent, but not entirely, it has neutralised the pagan rites, for the old ideas connected with Samhain still survive here and th

us Italicus, v. 652; Lucan

Ammian. Marcell. xv. 1

ot, Fouilles du Mont Beuvra

, Folk-lore des Hautes Vosges, 295; Bérenger

érenger-Féraud, i. 33; Rev. des Trad. i. 142; Carmicha

us brownie who overturns furniture and smashes cr

chelette, Rev. Arch. xxx

eturn) Cicero,

rn) Dechelette, 25

instance the ram is marked with crosses like those eng

2:(return)

n) Lady Wilde, 118;

i. 229; Gregor, 21; Cambry, V

Folk-Lore, iv. 357; MacCulloch, Misty I

e great festivals are also those of the chief pagan ceme

n) Rennes Dindsench

eturn) Cf. Fraz

Cf. Chambers, Medi?v

Boreale, i. 405, 419. Perhaps for a similar reason a cult

n) Miss Faraday, Fo

turn) Bede, de T

eturn) Vigfusso

les, 157; Haddon, Folk-Lore, iv.

return) Frazer