The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 1

The Religion of the Ancient Celts.

by J. A. MacCulloch.

PREFACE

The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study, earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois de Jubainville in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to have dawned, and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of Celtic religion. In this country the place of honour among students of that religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures _On the Origin and Growth of Religion as ill.u.s.trated by Celtic Heathendom_ (1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on _The Arthurian Legend_, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school, and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the darkness, and in the divinities sun-G.o.ds and dawn-G.o.ddesses and a host of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer, studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable little book on _Celtic Religion_, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh ground.[1]

In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and have endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of view and in the light of the anthropological method. I have also interpreted the earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals over the Celtic area wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so. The results are summarised in the introductory chapter of the work, and students of religion, and especially of Celtic religion, must judge how far they form a true interpretation of the earlier faith of our Celtic forefathers, much of which resembles primitive religion and folk-belief everywhere.

Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and we are left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the existing materials, and to the light shed on them by the comparative study of religions. As this book was written during a long residence in the Isle of Skye, where the old language of the people still survives, and where the _genius loci_ speaks everywhere of things remote and strange, it may have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not be!

I have to thank Miss Turner and Miss Annie Gilchrist for valuable help rendered in the work of research, and the London Library for obtaining for me several works not already in its possession. Its stores are an invaluable aid to all students working at a distance from libraries.

J.A. MACCULLOCH.

THE RECTORY, BRIDGE OF ALLAN, _October_ 1911.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult, remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic religion! The bygone faith of a people who have inspired the world with n.o.ble 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 cla.s.sical observers, dedications in the Romano-Celtic area to G.o.ds mostly a.s.similated to the G.o.ds of the conquerors, figured monuments mainly of the same period, coins, symbols, place and personal names. For the Irish Celts there is a ma.s.s 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 doc.u.ments like the _Mabinogion_, and strange poems the personages of which are ancient G.o.ds transformed, but which tell nothing of rite or cult.[2] Valuable hints are furnished by early ecclesiastical doc.u.ments, 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 G.o.d, 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 cla.s.sical observers were struck with the religiosity of the Celts. They neither forgot nor transgressed the law of the G.o.ds, and they thought that no good befell men apart from their will.[3] The submission of the Celts to the Druids shows how they welcomed authority in matters of religion, and all Celtic regions have been characterised by religious devotion, easily pa.s.sing over to superst.i.tion, and by loyalty to ideals and lost causes. The Celts were born dreamers, as their exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much that is spiritual and romantic in more than one European literature is due to them.

The a.n.a.logy of religious evolution in other faiths helps us in reconstructing that of the Celts. Though no historic Celtic group was racially pure, the profound influence of the Celtic temperament soon "Celticised" the religious contributions of the non-Celtic element which may already have had many Celtic parallels. Because a given Celtic rite or belief seems to be "un-Aryan," it need not necessarily be borrowed.

The Celts had a savage past, and, conservative as they were, they kept much of it alive. Our business, therefore, lies with Celtic religion as a whole. These primitive elements were there before the Celts migrated from the old "Aryan" home; yet since they appear in Celtic religion to the end, we speak of them as Celtic. The earliest aspect of that religion, before the Celts became a separate people, was a cult of nature spirits, or of the life manifested in nature. But men and women probably had separate cults, and, of the two, perhaps that of the latter is more important. As hunters, men wors.h.i.+pped the animals they slew, apologising to them for the slaughter. This apologetic att.i.tude, found with all primitive hunters, is of the nature of a cult. Other animals, too sacred to be slain, would be preserved and wors.h.i.+pped, the cult giving rise to domestication and pastoral life, with totemism as a probable factor. Earth, producing vegetation, was the fruitful mother; but since the origin of agriculture is mainly due to women, the Earth cult would be practised by them, as well as, later, that of vegetation and corn spirits, all regarded as female. As men began to interest themselves in agriculture, they would join in the female cults, probably with the result of changing the s.e.x of the spirits wors.h.i.+pped. An Earth-G.o.d would take the place of the Earth-mother, or stand as her consort or son. Vegetation and corn spirits would often become male, though many spirits, even when they were exalted into divinities, remained female.

With the growth of religion the vaguer spirits tended to become G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and wors.h.i.+pful animals to become anthropomorphic divinities, with the animals as their symbols, attendants, or victims. And as the cult of vegetation spirits centred in the ritual of planting and sowing, so the cult of the divinities of growth centred in great seasonal and agricultural festivals, in which the key to the growth of Celtic religion is to be found. But the migrating Celts, conquering new lands, evolved divinities of war; and here the old female influence is still at work, since many of these are female. In spite of possessing so many local war-G.o.ds, the Celts were not merely men of war. Even the _equites_ engaged in war only when occasion arose, and agriculture as well as pastoral industry was constantly practised, both in Gaul and Britain, before the conquest.[4] In Ireland, the belief in the dependence of fruitfulness upon the king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished there.[5] Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave rise to culture divinities, perhaps evolved from G.o.ds of growth, since later myths attributed to them both the origin of arts and crafts, and the introduction of domestic animals among men. Possibly some culture G.o.ds had been wors.h.i.+pful animals, now wors.h.i.+pped as G.o.ds, who had given these animals to man. Culture-G.o.ddesses still held their place among culture-G.o.ds, and were regarded as their mothers. The prominence of these divinities shows that the Celts were more than a race of warriors.

The pantheon was thus a large one, but on the whole the divinities of growth were more generally important. The older nature spirits and divine animals were never quite forgotten, especially by the folk, who also preserved the old rituals of vegetation spirits, while the G.o.ds of growth were wors.h.i.+pped at the great festivals. Yet in essence the lower and the higher cults were one and the same, and, save where Roman influence destroyed Celtic religion, the older primitive strands are everywhere apparent. The temperament of the Celt kept him close to nature, and he never quite dropped the primitive elements of his religion. Moreover, the early influence of female cults of female spirits and G.o.ddesses remained to the end as another predominant factor.

Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character, each tribe possessing its own group, each G.o.d having functions similar to those of other groups. Some, however, had or gained a more universal character, absorbing divinities with similar functions. Still this local character must be borne in mind. The numerous divinities of Gaul, with differing names--but, judging by their a.s.similation to the same Roman divinity, similar functions, are best understood as G.o.ds of local groups. This is probably true also of Britain and Ireland. But those G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped far and wide over the Celtic area may be G.o.ds of the undivided Celts, or G.o.ds of some dominant Celtic group extending their influence on all sides, or, in some cases, popular G.o.ds whose cult pa.s.sed beyond the tribal bounds. If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the local G.o.ds of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be made to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere the same results, and to the h.o.m.ogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul. Moreover, the comparison of the various testimonies of onlookers points to a general similarity, while the permanence of the primitive elements in Celtic religion must have tended to keep it everywhere the same. Though in Gaul we have only inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those testimonies, as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both regions, point to the similarity of religious phenomena. The Druids, as a more or less organised priesthood, would a.s.sist in preserving the general likeness.

Thus the primitive nature-spirits gave place to greater or lesser G.o.ds, each with his separate department and functions. Though growing civilisation tended to separate them from the soil, they never quite lost touch with it. In return for man's wors.h.i.+p and sacrifices, they gave life and increase, victory, strength, and skill. But these sacrifices, had been and still often were rites in which the representative of a G.o.d was slain. Some divinities were wors.h.i.+pped over a wide area, most were G.o.ds of local groups, and there were spirits of every place, hill, wood, and stream. Magic rites mingled with the cult, but both were guided by an organised priesthood. And as the Celts believed in unseen G.o.ds, so they believed in an unseen region whither they pa.s.sed after death.

Our knowledge of the higher side of Celtic religion is practically a blank, since no description of the inner spiritual life has come down to us. How far the Celts cultivated religion in our sense of the term, or had glimpses of Monotheism, or were troubled by a deep sense of sin, is unknown. But a people whose spiritual influence has later been so great, must have had glimpses of these things. Some of them must have known the thirst of the soul for G.o.d, or sought a higher ethical standard than that of their time. The enthusiastic reception of Christianity, the devotion of the early Celtic saints, and the character of the old Celtic church, all suggest this.

The relation of the Celtic church to paganism was mainly intolerant, though not wholly so. It often adopted the less harmful customs of the past, merging pagan festivals in its own, founding churches on the sites of the old cult, dedicating sacred wells to a saint. A saint would visit the tomb of a pagan to hear an old epic rehea.r.s.ed, or would call up pagan heroes from h.e.l.l and give them a place in paradise. Other saints recall dead heroes from the Land of the Blessed, and learn the nature of that wonderland and the heroic deeds

"Of the old days, which seem to be Much older than any history That is written in any book."

Reading such narratives, we gain a lesson in the fine spirit of Christian tolerance and Christian sympathy.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Some writers saw in the bardic poetry a Druidic-esoteric system and traces of a cult practised secretly by the bards--the "Neo-Druidic heresy"; see Davies, _Myth. of the Brit. Druids_, 1809; Herbert, _The Neo-Druidic Heresy_, 1838. Several French writers saw in "Druidism" a monotheistic faith, veiled under polytheism.

[3] Livy, v. 46; Caesar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, _Cyneg_.

x.x.xv. 1.

[4] Caesar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained there and cultivated the lands."

[5] Cf. Pliny, _HN_ xvii. 7, xviii. 18 on the wheeled ploughs and agricultural methods of Gauls and Britons. Cf. also Strabo, iv. 1. 2, iv. 5. 5; Girald. Camb. _Top. Hib._ i. 4, _Descr. Camb._ i. 8; Joyce, _SH_ ii. 264.

CHAPTER II.

THE CELTIC PEOPLE.

Scrutiny reveals the fact that Celtic-speaking peoples are of differing types--short and dark as well as tall and fairer Highlanders or Welshmen, short, broad-headed Bretons, various types of Irishmen. Men with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But all alike have the same character and temperament, a striking witness to the influence which the character as well as the language of the Celts, whoever they were, made on all with whom they mingled. Ethnologically there may not be a Celtic race, but something was handed down from the days of comparative Celtic purity which welded different social elements into a common type, found often where no Celtic tongue is now spoken. It emerges where we least expect it, and the stolid Anglo-Saxon may suddenly awaken to something in himself due to a forgotten Celtic strain in his ancestry.

Two main theories of Celtic origins now hold the field:

(1) The Celts are identified with the progenitors of the short, brachycephalic "Alpine race" of Central Europe, existing there in Neolithic times, after their migrations from Africa and Asia. The type is found among the Slavs, in parts of Germany and Scandinavia, and in modern France in the region of Caesar's "Celtae," among the Auvergnats, the Bretons, and in Lozere and Jura. Representatives of the type have been found in Belgian and French Neolithic graves.[6] Professor Sergi calls this the "Eurasiatic race," and, contrary to general opinion, identifies it with the Aryans, a savage people, inferior to the dolichocephalic Mediterranean race, whose language they Aryanised.[7]

Professor Keane thinks that they were themselves an Aryanised folk before reaching Europe, who in turn gave their acquired Celtic and Slavic speech to the preceding ma.s.ses. Later came the Belgae, Aryans, who acquired the Celtic speech of the people they conquered.[8]

Broca a.s.sumed that the dark, brachycephalic people whom he identified with Caesar's "Celtae," differed from the Belgae, were conquered by them, and acquired the language of their conquerors, hence wrongly called Celtic by philologists. The Belgae were tall and fair, and overran Gaul, except Aquitaine, mixing generally with the Celtae, who in Caesar's time had thus an infusion of Belgic blood.[9] But before this conquest, the Celtae had already mingled with the aboriginal dolichocephalic folk of Gaul, Iberians, or Mediterraneans of Professor Sergi. The latter had apparently remained comparatively pure from admixture in Aquitaine, and are probably the Aquitani of Caesar.[10]

But were the short, brachycephalic folk Celts? Caesar says the people who call themselves "Celtae" were called Gauls by the Romans, and Gauls, according to cla.s.sical writers, were tall and fair.[11] Hence the Celtae were not a short, dark race, and Caesar himself says that Gauls (including Celtae) looked with contempt on the short Romans.[12] Strabo also says that Celtae and Belgae had the same Gaulish appearance, i.e.

tall and fair. Caesar's statement that Aquitani, Galli, and Belgae differ in language, inst.i.tutions, and laws is vague and unsupported by evidence, and may mean as to language no more than a difference in dialects. This is also suggested by Strabo's words, Celtae and Belgae "differ a little" in language.[13] No cla.s.sical writer describes the Celts as short and dark, but the reverse. Short, dark people would have been called Iberians, without respect to skulls. Cla.s.sical observers were not craniologists. The short, brachycephalic type is now prominent in France, because it has always been so, eliminating the tall, fair Celtic type. Conquering Celts, fewer in number than the broad and narrow-headed aborigines, intermarried or made less lasting alliances with them. In course of time the type of the more numerous race was bound to prevail. Even in Caesar's day the latter probably outnumbered the tall and fair Celts, who had, however, Celticised them. But cla.s.sical writers, who knew the true Celt as tall and fair, saw that type only, just as every one, on first visiting France or Germany, sees his generalised type of Frenchman or German everywhere. Later, he modifies his opinion, but this the cla.s.sical observers did not do.

Caesar's campaigns must have drained Gaul of many tall and fair Celts.

This, with the tendency of dark types to out-number fair types in South and Central Europe, may help to explain the growing prominence of the dark type, though the tall, fair type is far from uncommon.[14]

(2) The second theory, already antic.i.p.ated, sees in Gauls and Belgae a tall, fair Celtic folk, speaking a Celtic language, and belonging to the race which stretched from Ireland to Asia Minor, from North Germany to the Po, and were masters of Teutonic tribes till they were driven by them from the region between Elbe and Rhine.[15] Some Belgic tribes claimed a Germanic ancestry,[16] but "German" was a word seldom used with precision, and in this case may not mean Teutonic. The fair hair of this people has made many suppose that they were akin to the Teutons.

But fairness is relative, and the dark Romans may have called brown hair fair, while they occasionally distinguished between the "fair" Gauls and fairer Germans. Their inst.i.tutions and their religions (_pace_ Professor Rh[^y]s) differed, and though they were so long in contact the names of their G.o.ds and priests are unlike.[17] Their languages, again, though of "Aryan" stock, differ more from each other than does Celtic from Italic, pointing to a long period of Italo-Celtic unity, before Italiotes and Celts separated, and Celts came in contact with Teutons.[18] The typical German differs in mental and moral qualities from the typical Celt.

Contrast an east country Scot, descendant of Teutonic stock, with a West Highlander, and the difference leaps to the eyes. Celts and Germans of history differ, then, in relative fairness, character, religion, and language.

The tall, blonde Teutonic type of the Row graves is dolichocephalic. Was the Celtic type (a.s.suming that Broca's "Celts" were not true Celts) dolicho or brachy? Broca thinks the Belgae or "Kymri" were dolichocephalic, but all must agree with him that the skulls are too few to generalise from. Celtic iron-age skulls in Britain are dolichocephalic, perhaps a recrudescence of the aboriginal type. Broca's "Kymric" skulls are mesocephalic; this he attributes to crossing with the short round-heads. The evidence is too scanty for generalisation, while the Walloons, perhaps descendants of the Belgae, have a high index, and some Gauls of cla.s.sical art are broad-headed.[19]

Skulls of the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age) are mainly broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic brachycephalic skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5 inches shorter), Selaigneaux, and Borreby.[20] Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled Belgae on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter with the Belgae (Broca's Kymri), and thinks that Gaulish skulls were round, with beetling brows.[21] Professors Ripley and Sergi, disregarding their difference in stature and higher cephalic index, identify them with the short Alpine race (Broca's Celts). This is negatived by Mr. Keane.[22]

Might not both, however, have originally sprung from a common stock and reached Europe at different times?[23]

But do a few hundred skulls justify these far-reaching conclusions regarding races enduring for thousands of years? At some very remote period there may have been a Celtic type, as at some further period there may have been an Aryan type. But the Celts, as we know them, must have mingled with the aborigines of Europe and become a mixed race, though preserving and endowing others with their racial and mental characteristics. Some Gauls or Belgae were dolichocephalic, to judge by their skulls, others were brachycephalic, while their fairness was a relative term. Cla.s.sical observers probably generalised from the higher cla.s.ses, of a purer type; they tell us nothing of the people. But the higher cla.s.ses may have had varying skulls, as well as stature and colour of hair,[24] and Irish texts tell of a tall, fair, blue-eyed stock, and a short, dark, dark-eyed stock, in Ireland. Even in those distant ages we must consider the people on whom the Celts impressed their characteristics, as well as the Celts themselves. What happened on the Eurasian steppe, the hypothetical cradle of the "Aryans," whence the Celts came "stepping westwards," seems clear to some, but in truth is a book sealed with seven seals. The men whose Aryan speech was to dominate far and wide may already have possessed different types of skull, and that age was far from "the very beginning."

Thus the Celts before setting out on their _Wanderjahre_ may already have been a mixed race, even if their leaders were of purer stock. But they had the bond of common speech, inst.i.tutions, and religion, and they formed a common Celtic type in Central and Western Europe. Intermarriage with the already mixed Neolithic folk of Central Europe produced further removal from the unmixed Celtic racial type; but though both reacted on each other as far as language, custom, and belief were concerned, on the whole the Celtic elements predominated in these respects. The Celtic migration into Gaul produced further racial mingling with descendants of the old palaeolithic stock, dolichocephalic Iberians and Ligurians, and brachycephalic swarthy folk (Broca's Celts). Thus even the first Celtic arrivals in Britain, the Goidels, were a people of mixed race, though probably relatively purer than the late coming Brythons, the latest of whom had probably mingled with the Teutons. Hence among Celtic-speaking folk or their descendants--short, dark, broad-beaded Bretons, tall, fair or rufous Highlanders, tall chestnut-haired Welshmen or Irishmen, Highlanders of Norse descent, short, dark, narrow-headed Highlanders, Irishmen, and Welshmen--there is a common Celtic _facies_, the result of old Celtic characteristics powerful enough so to impress themselves on such varied peoples in spite of what they gave to the Celtic incomers.

These peoples became Celtic, and Celtic in speech and character they have remained, even where ancestral physical types are rea.s.serting themselves. The folk of a Celtic type, whether pre-Celtic, Celtic, or Norse, have all spoken a Celtic language and exhibit the same old Celtic characteristics--vanity, loquacity, excitability, fickleness, imagination, love of the romantic, fidelity, attachment to family ties, sentimental love of their country, religiosity pa.s.sing over easily to superst.i.tion, and a comparatively high degree of s.e.xual morality. Some of these traits were already noted by cla.s.sical observers.