The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 17

The strife of creeds in Ireland, the old order changing, giving place to new, had evidently impressed itself on the minds of Celtic poets and romancers. It suggested itself to them as providing an excellent "situation"; hence we constantly hear of the meeting of G.o.ds, demiG.o.ds, or heroes with the saints of the new era. Frequently they bow before the Cross, they are baptized and receive the Christian verity, as in the _Colloquy_ and in some doc.u.ments of the Cuchulainn cycle. Probably no other European folk-literature so takes advantage of just this situation, this meeting of creeds, one old and ready to vanish away, the other with all the buoyant freshness of youth.

Was MacPherson's a genuine Celtic epic unearthed by him and by no one else? No mortal eye save his has ever seen the original, but no one who knows anything of the contents of the saga can deny that much of his work is based on materials collected by him. He knew some of the tales and ballads current among the folk, possibly also some of the Irish MS.

versions. He saw that there was a certain unity among them, and he saw that it was possible to make it more evident still. He fitted the floating incidents into an epic framework, adding, inventing, altering, and moulding the whole into an English style of his own. Later he seems to have translated the whole into Gaelic. He gave his version to the world, and found himself famous, but he gave it as the genuine translation of a genuine Celtic epic. Here was his craft; here he was the "charlatan of genius." His genius lay in producing an epic which people were willing to read, and in making them believe it to be not his work but that of the Celtic heroic age. Any one can write an epic, but few can write one which thousands will read, which men like Chateaubriand, Goethe, Napoleon, Byron, and Coleridge will admire and love, and which will, as it were, crystallise the aspirations of an age weary with cla.s.sical formalism. MacPherson introduced his readers to a new world of heroic deeds, romantic adventure, deathless love, exquisite sentiments sentimentally expressed. He changed the rough warriors and beautiful but somewhat unabashed heroines of the saga into sentimental personages, who suited the taste of an age poised between the bewigged and powdered formalism of the eighteenth century, and the outburst of new ideals which was to follow. His _Ossian_ is a cross between Pope's _Homer_ and Byron's _Childe Harold_. His heroes and heroines are not on their native heath, and are uncertain whether to mince and strut with Pope or to follow nature with Rousseau's n.o.ble savages and Saint Pierre's Paul and Virginia. The time has gone when it was heresy to cast doubt upon the genuineness of MacPherson's epic, but if any one is still doubtful, let him read it and then turn to the existing versions, ballads, and tales. He will find himself in a totally different atmosphere, and will recognise in the latter the true epic note--the warrior's rage and the warrior's generosity, dire cruelty yet infinite tenderness, wild l.u.s.t yet also true love, a world of magic supernaturalism, but an exact copy of things as they were in that far-off age. The barbarism of the time is in these old tales--deeds which make one s.h.i.+ver, customs regarding the relations of the s.e.xes now found only among savages, social and domestic arrangements which are somewhat lurid and disgusting. And yet, withal, the note of bravery, of pa.s.sion, of authentic life is there; we are held in the grip of genuine manhood and womanhood. MacPherson gives a picture of the Ossianic age as he conceived it, an age of Celtic history that "never was on sea or land." Even his ghosts are un-Celtic, misty and unsubstantial phantasms, unlike the embodied _revenants_ of the saga which are in agreement with the Celtic belief that the soul a.s.sumed a body in the other world.

MacPherson makes Fionn invariably successful, but in the saga tales he is often defeated. He mingles the Cuchulainn and Ossianic cycles, but these, save in a few casual instances, are quite distinct in the old literature. Yet had not his poem been so great as it is, though so un-Celtic, it could not have influenced all European literature. But those who care for genuine Celtic literature, the product of a people who loved nature, romance, doughty deeds, the beauty of the world, the music of the sea and the birds, the mountains, valour in men, beauty in women, will find all these in the saga, whether in its literary or its popular forms. And through it all sounds the undertone of Celtic pathos and melancholy, the distant echo

"Of old unhappy, far-off things And battles long ago."

FOOTNOTES:

[506] See Joyce, _OCR_ 447.

[507] Montelius, _Les Temps Prehistoriques_, 57, 151; Reinach, _RC_ xxi.

8.

[508] The popular versions of this early part of the saga differ much in detail, but follow the main outlines in much the same way. See Curtin, _HTI_ 204; Campbell, _LF_ 33 f.; _WHT_ iii. 348.

[509] In a widespread group of tales supernatural knowledge is obtained by eating part of some animal, usually a certain snake. In many of these tales the food is eaten by another person than he who obtained it, as in the case of Fionn. Cf. the Welsh story of Gwion, p. 116, and the Scandinavian of Sigurd, and other parallels in Miss c.o.x, _Cinderella_, 496; Frazer, _Arch. Rev._ i. 172 f. The story is thus a folk-tale formula applied to Fionn, doubtless because it harmonised with Celtic or pre-Celtic totemistic ideas. But it is based on ancient ideas regarding the supernatural knowledge possessed by reptiles or fish, and among American Indians, Maoris, Solomon Islanders, and others there are figured representations of a man holding such an animal, its tongue being attached to his tongue. He is a _shaman_, and American Indians believe that his inspiration comes from the tongue of a mysterious river otter, caught by him. See Dall, _Bureau of Ethnol._ 3rd report; and Miss Buckland, _Jour. Anth. Inst._ xxii. 29.

[510] _TOS_ iv.; O'Curry, _MS. Mat._ 396; Joyce, _OCR_ 194, 339.

[511] For ballad versions see Campbell, _LF_ 198.

[512] Numerous ballad versions are given in Campbell _LF_ 152 f. The tale is localised in various parts of Ireland and the Highlands, many dolmens in Ireland being known as Diarmaid and Grainne's beds.

[513] For an account differing from this annalistic version, see _ZCP_ i. 465.

[514] O'Grady, ii. 102. This, on the whole, agrees with the Highland ballad version, _LF_ 198.

[515] _IT_ iv.; O'Grady, _Silva Gad._ text and translation.

CHAPTER IX.

G.o.dS AND MEN.

Though man usually makes his G.o.ds in his own image, they are unlike as well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been G.o.ds.

One mark of the Celtic G.o.ds is their great stature. No house could contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants, and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The G.o.ds have also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can also transform themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The animal names of certain divinities show that they had once been animals pure and simple, but when they became anthropomorphic, myths would arise telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in part, accounts for these transformation myths. The G.o.ds are also immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The Tuatha De 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 telling of the deaths of the G.o.ds in the annalists may be based on old myths in which they were said to die, these myths being connected with ritual acts in which the human representatives of G.o.ds were slain. Such rites were an inherent part of Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of G.o.ds like Osiris or Adonis, based on their functions as G.o.ds of vegetation, was connected with elaborate myths telling of their death and revival. Something akin to this may have occurred among the Celts.

The divinities often united with mortals. G.o.ddesses sought the love of heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the G.o.ds, and G.o.ds had amours with the daughters of men.[518] Frequently the heroes of the sagas are children of a G.o.d or G.o.ddess and a mortal,[519] and this divine parentage was firmly believed in by the Celts, since personal names formed of a divine name and _-genos_ or _-gnatos_, "born of," "son of," are found in inscriptions over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic doc.u.ments--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 Morgen, from _Morigenos_, "Son of the Sea," and many others suggest. For this and for other reasons the G.o.ds frequently interfere in human affairs, a.s.sisting their children or their favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the heroes of the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as when Morrigan besought healing from Cuchulainn.

As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who bore divine names were probably believed to be representatives or incarnations of G.o.ds. Perhaps this explains why a chief of the Boii called himself a G.o.d and was revered after his death, and why the Gauls so readily accepted the divinity of Augustus. Irish kings bear divine names, and of these Nuada occurs frequently, one king, Irel Faith, being identified with Nuada Airgetlam, while in one text _nuadat_ is glossed _in rig_, "of the king," as if _Nuada_ had come to be a t.i.tle meaning "king." Welsh kings bear the name Nudd (Nodons), and both the actual and the mythic leader Brennus took their name from the G.o.d Bran. King Conchobar is called _dia talmaide_, "a terrestrial G.o.d." If kings were thought to be G.o.d-men like the Pharaohs, this might account for the frequency of tales about divine fatherhood or reincarnation, while it would also explain the numerous _geasa_ which Irish kings must observe, unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with their observance, though this prosperity was later thought to depend on the king's goodness. The nature of the prosperity--mild seasons, abundant crops, fruit, fish, and cattle--shows that the king was a.s.sociated with fertility, like the G.o.ds of growth.[520] Hence they had probably been once regarded as incarnations of such G.o.ds. 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 pa.s.ses 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 subst.i.tute. 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 G.o.ds. Kings and priests were probably at first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually with three hundred a.s.sistants 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 one of them was a priestess,[524] the office being hereditary in her family, and it may have been necessary that her husband should also be a priest. One tetrarch, Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the priest-kings.h.i.+p of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the second century B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic inst.i.tution.[525] Mythic Celtic kings consulted the G.o.ds without any priestly intervention, and Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.[526]

Without giving these hints undue emphasis, we may suppose that the differentiation of the two offices would not be simultaneous over the Celtic area. But when it did take effect priests would probably lay claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as incarnate G.o.d. Kings were not likely to give these up, and where they retained them priests would be content with seeing that the tabus and ritual and the slaying of the mock king were duly observed. Irish kings were perhaps still regarded as G.o.ds, though certain Druids may have been divine priests, since they called themselves creators of the universe, and both continental and Irish Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the name [Greek: semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic priests, though its meaning is obscure, points to divine pretensions on their part.[527]

The incarnate G.o.d was probably representative of a G.o.d or spirit of earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who used oak branches in their rites.[528] King and tree would be connected, the king's life being bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one time both perished together. But as kings were represented by a subst.i.tute, so the sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down, may also have had its _succedaneum_. The Irish _bile_ or sacred tree, connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand, and it was sacrilege to cut it down.[529] Probably before cutting down the tree a branch or something growing upon it, e.g. mistletoe, 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 were slain during the rite took the place of the latter. Later romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some personage, the mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a branch carried by him had to be captured by his a.s.sailant, or plucked from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point to an old belief in tree and king as divine representatives, and to a ritual like that a.s.sociated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits.

Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded as romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the divine tree.

If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals by the female wors.h.i.+ppers. This would explain the slaying of one of their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or G.o.ds superseded G.o.ddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the G.o.ddess became the consort of the G.o.d, a female representative would continue as the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of later folk-custom. Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female cults with female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals from which men were excluded.[531]

FOOTNOTES:

[516] O'Grady, ii. 228.

[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Caesar, vi. 14, "the immortal G.o.ds" of Gaul.

[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.

[519] Leahy, ii. 6.

[520] _IT_ iii. 203; _Trip. Life_, 507; _Annals of the Four Masters_, A.D. 14; _RC_ xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle there, and in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato famine that his fairy banner should be waved.

[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill, "If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).

[522] See Frazer, _Kings.h.i.+p_; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, 1906, "The European Sky-G.o.d." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic incarnate G.o.ds. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in his view, a sky-G.o.d; he was more likely to have been the representative of a G.o.d or spirit of growth or vegetation.

[523] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.

[524] Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._ 20.

[525] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin, _Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater._

[526] Livy, v. 34; Dio Ca.s.s. lxii. 6.

[527] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p.

301, _infra_.

[528] Pliny, xvi. 95.

[529] P. 201, _infra_.

[530] Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough, and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree 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 its fruit, and the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its branches (_TOS_ vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 441.

[531] See Chap. XVIII.

CHAPTER X.

THE CULT OF THE DEAD.

The custom of burying grave-goods with the dead, or slaying wife or slaves on the tomb, does not necessarily point to a cult of the dead, yet when such practices survive over a long period they a.s.sume the form of a cult. These customs flourished among the Celts, and, taken in connection with the reverence for the sepulchres of the dead, they point to a wors.h.i.+p of ancestral spirits as well as of great departed heroes.