The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 5

[119] Professor Anwyl gives the following statistics: There are 35 G.o.ddesses mentioned once, 2 twice, 3 thrice, 1 four times, 2 six times, 2 eleven times, 1 fourteen times (Sirona), 1 twenty-one times (Rosmerta), 1 twenty-six times (Epona) (_Trans. Gael. Soc. Inverness_, xxvi. 413).

[120] Caesar, vi. 17.

[121] D'Arbois, _Les Celtes_, 54; _Rev. Arch._ i. 201. See Holder, _s.v._

[122] Solinus, xxii. 10; Holder, _s.v._

[123] Ptolemy, ii. 2.

[124] See p. 71, _infra_.

[125] Dio Ca.s.s. lxii. 7; Amm. Mare, xxvii. 4. 4.

[126] Plutarch, _de Vir. Mul._ 20; Arrian, _Cyneg._ x.x.xiv. 1.

[127] S. Greg. _Hist._ viii. 15.

[128] Grimm, _Teut. Myth._ 283, 933; Reinach, _RC_ xvi. 261.

[129] Reinach, _BF_ 50.

[130] Holder, i. 1286; Robert, _RC_ iv. 133.

[131] Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 27.

[132] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 43.

[133] Holder, _s.v._; Bulliot, _RC_ ii. 22.

[134] Holder, i. 10, 89.

[135] Holder, _s.v._; see p. 213, _infra_.

[136] Holder, ii. 463. They are very numerous in South-East Gaul, where also three-headed G.o.ds are found.

[137] See pp. 274-5, _infra_.

[138] Courcelle-Seneuil, 80-81.

[139] See my article "Calendar" in Hastings' _Encyclop. of Religion and Ethics_, iii. 80.

[140] _CIL_ v. 4208, 5771, vii. 927; Holder, ii. 89.

[141] For all these t.i.tles see Holder, _s.v._

[142] There is a large literature devoted to the _Matres_. See De Wal, _Die Maeder Gottinem_; Vallentin, _Le Culte des Matrae_; Daremberg-Saglio, _Dict. s.v. Matres_; Ihm, _Jahrbuch. des Vereins von Alterth. in Rheinlande_, No. 83; Roscher, _Lexicon_, ii. 2464 f.

[143] See Maury, _Fees du Moyen Age_; Sebillot, i. 262; Monnier, 439 f.; Wright, _Celt, Roman, and Saxon_, 286 f.; Vallentin, _RC_ iv. 29. The _Matres_ may already have had a sinister aspect in Roman times, as they appear to be intended by an inscription _Lamiis Tribus_ on an altar at Newcastle. Hubner, 507.

[144] Anwyl, _Celt. Rev._ 1906, 28. Cf. _Y Foel Famau_, "the hill of the Mothers," in the Clwydian range.

[145] See p. 73, _infra_.

[146] Vallentin, _op. cit._ iv. 29; Maury, _Croyances du Moyen Age_, 382.

[147] Holder, _s.v._

[148] See pp. 69, 317, _infra_.

[149] For all these see Holder, _s.v._; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 103; _RC_ iv. 34.

[150] Florus, ii. 4.

[151] See the table of identifications, p. 125, _infra_.

[152] We need not a.s.sume with Jullian, 18, that there was one supreme G.o.d, now a war-G.o.d, now a G.o.d of peace. Any prominent G.o.d may have become a war-G.o.d on occasion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE IRISH MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE.

Three divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland, one telling of the Tuatha De Danann, the others of Cuchulainn and of the Fians. They are distinct in character and contents, but the G.o.ds of the first cycle often help the heroes of the other groups, as the G.o.ds of Greece and India a.s.sisted the heroes of the epics. We shall see that some of the personages of these cycles may have been known in Gaul; they are remembered in Wales, but, in the Highlands, where stories of Cuchulainn and Fionn are still told, the Tuatha De Danann are less known now than in 1567, when Bishop Ca.r.s.ewell lamented the love of the Highlanders for "idle, turbulent, lying, worldly stories concerning the Tuatha Dedanans."[153]

As the new Achaean religion in Greece and the Vedic sacred books of India regarded the aboriginal G.o.ds and heroes as demons and goblins, so did Christianity in Ireland sometimes speak of the older G.o.ds there. On the other hand, it was mainly Christian scribes who changed the old mythology into history, and made the G.o.ds and heroes kings. Doubtless myths already existed, telling of the descent of rulers and people from divinities, just as the Gauls spoke of their descent from Dispater, or as the Incas of Peru, the Mikados of j.a.pan, and the kings of Uganda considered themselves offspring of the G.o.ds. This is a universal practice, and made it the more easy for Christian chroniclers to trans.m.u.te myth into history. In Ireland, as elsewhere, myth doubtless told of monstrous races inhabiting the land in earlier days, of the strife of the aborigines and incomers, and of their G.o.ds, though the aboriginal G.o.ds may in some cases have been identified with Celtic G.o.ds, or wors.h.i.+pped in their own persons. Many mythical elements may therefore be looked for in the euhemerised chronicles of ancient Ireland. But the chroniclers themselves were but the continuers of a process which must have been at work as soon as the influence of Christianity began to be felt.[154] Their pa.s.sion, however, was to show the descent of the Irish and the older peoples from the old Biblical personages, a process dear to the modern Anglo-Israelite, some of whose arguments are based on the wild romancing of the chroniclers.

Various stories were told of the first peopling of Ireland. Banba, with two other daughters of Cain, arrived with fifty women and three men, only to die of the plague. Three fishermen next discovered Ireland, and "of the island of Banba of Fair Women with hardihood they took possession." Having gone to fetch their wives, they perished in the deluge at Tuath Inba.[155] A more popular account was that of the coming of Cessair, Noah's granddaughter, with her father, husband, a third man, Ladru, "the first dead man of Erin," and fifty damsels. Her coming was the result of the advice of a _laimh-dhia_, or "hand-G.o.d," but their s.h.i.+p was wrecked, and all save her husband, Finntain, who survived for centuries, perished in the flood.[156] Cessair's s.h.i.+p was less serviceable than her grandparent's! Followed the race of Partholan, "no wiser one than the other," who increased on the land until plague swept them away, with the exception of Tuan mac Caraill, who after many transformations, told the story of Ireland to S. Finnen centuries after.[157] The survival of Finntain and Tuan, doubles of each other, was an invention of the chroniclers, to explain the survival of the history of colonists who had all perished. Keating, on the other hand, rejecting the sole survivor theory as contradictory to Scripture, suggests that "aerial demons," followers of the invaders, revealed all to the chroniclers, unless indeed they found it engraved with "an iron pen and lead in the rocks."[158]

Two hundred years before Partholan's coming, the Fomorians had arrived,[159] and they and their chief Cichol Gricenchos fought Partholan at Mag Itha, where they were defeated. Cichol was footless, and some of his host had but one arm and one leg.[160] They were demons, according to the chroniclers, and descendants of the luckless Ham.

Nennius makes Partholan and his men the first Scots who came from Spain to Ireland. The next arrivals were the people of Nemed who returned to Spain, whence they came (Nennius), or died to a man (Tuan). They also were descendants of the inevitable Noah, and their sojourn in Ireland was much disturbed by the Fomorians who had recovered from their defeat, and finally overpowered the Nemedians after the death of Nemed.[161]

From Tory Island the Fomorians ruled Ireland, and forced the Nemedians to pay them annually on the eve of Samhain (Nov. 1st) two-thirds of their corn and milk and of the children born during the year. If the Fomorians are G.o.ds of darkness, or, preferably, aboriginal deities, the tribute must be explained as a dim memory of sacrifice offered at the beginning of winter when the powers of darkness and blight are in the ascendant. The Fomorians had a tower of gla.s.s in Tory Island. This was one day seen by the Milesians, to whom appeared on its battlements what seemed to be men. A year after they attacked the tower and were overwhelmed in the sea.[162] From the survivors of a previously wrecked vessel of their fleet are descended the Irish. Another version makes the Nemedians the a.s.sailants. Thirty of them survived their defeat, some of them going to Scotland or Man (the Britons), some to Greece (to return as the Firbolgs), some to the north, where they learned magic and returned as the Tuatha De Danann.[163] The Firbolgs, "men of bags,"

resenting their ignominious treatment by the Greeks, escaped to Ireland.

They included the Firbolgs proper, the Fir-Domnann, and the Galioin.[164] The Fomorians are called their G.o.ds, and this, with the contemptuous epithets bestowed on them, may point to the fact that the Firbolgs were the pre-Celtic folk of Ireland and the Fomorians their divinities, hostile to the G.o.ds of the Celts or regarded as dark deities. The Firbolgs are va.s.sals of Ailill and Medb, and with the Fir Domnann and Galioin are hostile to Cuchulainn and his men,[165] just as Fomorians were to the Tuatha De Danann. The strifes of races and of their G.o.ds are inextricably confused.

The Tuatha De Danann arrived from heaven--an idea in keeping with their character as beneficent G.o.ds, but later legend told how they came from the north. They reached Ireland on Beltane, shrouded in a magic mist, and finally, after one or, in other accounts, two battles, defeated the Firbolgs and Fomorians at Magtured. The older story of one battle may be regarded as a euhemerised account of the seeming conflict of nature powers.[166] The first battle is described in a fifteenth to sixteenth century MS.,[167] and is referred to in a fifteenth century account of the second battle, full of archaic reminiscences, and composed from various earlier doc.u.ments.[168] The Firbolgs, defeated in the first battle, join the Fomorians, after great losses. Meanwhile Nuada, leader of the Tuatha De Danann, lost his hand, and as no king with a blemish could sit on the throne, the crown was given to Bres, son of the Fomorian Elatha and his sister Eri, a woman of the Tuatha De Danann. One day Eri espied a silver boat speeding to her across the sea. From it stepped forth a magnificent hero, and without delay the pair, like the lovers in Theocritus, "rejoiced in their wedlock." The hero, Elatha, foretold the birth of Eri's son, so beautiful that he would be a standard by which to try all beautiful things. He gave her his ring, but she was to part with it only to one whose finger it should fit. This was her child Bres, and by this token he was later, as an exile, recognised by his father, and obtained his help against the Tuatha De Danann. Like other wonderful children, Bres grew twice as quickly as any other child until he was seven.[169] Though Elatha and Eri are brother and sister, she is among the Tuatha De Danann.[170] There is the usual inconsistency of myth here and in other accounts of Fomorian and Tuatha De Danann unions. The latter had just landed, but already had united in marriage with the Fomorians. This inconsistency escaped the chroniclers, but it points to the fact that both were divine not human, and that, though in conflict, they united in marriage as members of hostile tribes often do.

The second battle took place twenty-seven years after the first, on Samhain. It was fought like the first on the plain of Mag-tured, though later accounts made one battle take place at Mag-tured in Mayo, the other at Mag-tured in Sligo.[171] Inconsistently, the conquering Tuatha De Danann in the interval, while Bres is their king, must pay tribute imposed by the Fomorians. Obviously in older accounts this tribute must have been imposed before the first battle and have been its cause. But why should G.o.ds, like the Tuatha De Danann, ever have been in subjection? This remains to be seen, but the answer probably lies in parallel myths of the subjection or death of divinities like Ishtar, Adonis, Persephone, and Osiris. Bres having exacted a tribute of the milk of all hornless dun cows, the cows of Ireland were pa.s.sed through fire and smeared with ashes--a myth based perhaps on the Beltane fire ritual.[172] The avaricious Bres was satirised, and "nought but decay was on him from that hour,"[173] and when Nuada, having recovered, claimed the throne, he went to collect an army of the Fomorians, who a.s.sembled against the Tuatha De Danann. In the battle Indech wounded Ogma, and Balor slew Nuada, but was mortally wounded by Lug. Thereupon the Fomorians fled to their own region.

The Tuatha De Danann remained masters of Ireland until the coming of the Milesians, so named from an eponymous Mile, son of Bile. Ith, having been sent to reconnoitre, was slain, and the Milesians now invaded Ireland in force. In spite of a mist raised by the Druids, they landed, and, having met the three princes who slew Ith, demanded instant battle or surrender of the land. The princes agreed to abide by the decision of the Milesian poet Amairgen, who bade his friends re-embark and retire for the distance of nine waves. If they could then effect a landing, Ireland was theirs. A magic storm was raised, which wrecked many of their s.h.i.+ps, but Amairgen recited verses, fragments, perhaps, of some old ritual, and overcame the dangers. After their defeat the survivors of the Tuatha De Danann retired into the hills to become a fairy folk, and the Milesians (the Goidels or Scots) became ancestors of the Irish.

Throughout the long story of the conquests of Ireland there are many reduplications, the same incidents being often ascribed to different personages.[174] Different versions of similar occurrences, based on older myths and traditions, may already have been in existence, and ritual practices, dimly remembered, required explanation. In the hands of the chroniclers, writing history with a purpose and combining their information with little regard to consistency, all this was reduced to a more or less connected narrative. At the hands of the prosaic chroniclers divinity pa.s.sed from the G.o.ds, though traces of it still linger.

"Ye are G.o.ds, and, behold, ye shall die, and the waves be upon you at last.

In the darkness of time, in the deeps of the years, in the changes of things, Ye shall sleep as a slain man sleeps, and the world shall forget you for kings."