Celtic Mythology. John Arnott MacCulloch

just as folkcustoms, the meaning of which may be uncertain to those who practise them, are descended from the rituals of a vanished paganism; but such existing traditions could be used only with great caution as indexes of the older myths.

      There were hundreds of Gaulish and Romano-British gods, as an examination of the Latin inscriptions found in Gaul and Britain² or of Alfred Holder's Altceltischer Sprachschatz³ will show. Many are equated with the same Roman god, and most of them were local deities with similar functions, though some may have been more widely popular; but we can never be sure to what aspect of the Roman divinity's personality a parallel was found in their functions. Moreover, though in some cases philology shows us the meaning of their names, it would avail little to speculate upon that meaning, tempting as this may be—a temptation not always successfully resisted. This is also true of the symbols depicted on monuments, though here the function, if not the myth, is more readily suggested. Why are some deities horned or three-headed, or why does one god carry a wheel, a hammer, or an S-symbol? Horns may suggest divine strength or an earlier beast-god, the wheel may be the sun, the hammer may denote creative power. Other symbols resemble those of Classical divinities, and here the meaning is more obvious. The three Matres, or "Mothers," with their symbols of fertility were Earth Mothers; the horned deity with a bag of

       PLATE II Gaulish Coins

      1. Coin of the Nervii, with horse and wheel-symbol (cf. Plates III, 4, IV, XV).

       2. Gaulish coin, with horse, conjoined circles, and S-symbol (cf. Plates III, 3, IV, XIX, 2-5).

       3. Coin of the Cenomani, with man-headed horse (cf. Plate III, 2) and wheel. 4. Coin of the Remi (?), with bull (cf. Plates III, 5, IX, B, XIX, I, 6, XX, B, XXI), and S-symbol.

       4. Coin of the Turones, with bull.

       5. Armorican coin, showing sword and warrior dancing before it (exemplifying the cult of weapons; cf. pp. 33-34)

       7. 8. Gaulish coins, with swastika composed of two S-symbols (.). 9, 10. Gaulish coin, showing bull's head and two S-symbols; reverse, bear (cf. Plate XXIII) eating a serpent. 1 11. Coin of the Carnutes, showing wolf (cf. Plate III, 1) and S-symbols.

      grain was a god of plenty. Such a goddess as Epona was a divinity of horses and mules, and she is represented as riding a horse or feeding foals. But what myths lie behind the repre- sentation of Esus cutting down a tree, whose branches, extend- ing round another side of the monument, cover a bull and three cranes — Tarvos Trigaranos? Is this the incident depicted on another monument with a bull's head among branches on which two birds are perched?⁴

      Glimpses of myths are seen in Classical references to Celtic gods. Caesar, whose information (or that of his source) about the gods of Gaul is fragmentary, writes: "They worship chiefly the god Mercury. Of him there are many simulacra;⁵ they make him inventor of all arts and guide of journeys and marches, and they suppose him to have great power over the acquiring of money and in matters of merchandise. After him come Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. Concerning these they hold much the same opinions as other nations — Apollo repels diseases, Minerva teaches the beginnings of arts and crafts, Jupiter sways celestial affairs. Mars directs wars."⁶ There is no evidence that all the Gauls worshipped a few gods. Many local deities with similar functions but different names is the evidence of the inscriptions, and these are grouped col- lectively by Caesar and assimilated to Roman divinities. There are many local Mercuries, Minervas, Apollos, and the like, each with his Celtic name attached to that of the Roman god. Or, again, they are nameless, as In the case of the Yorkshire inscription, "To the god who invented roads and paths"— an obvious Mercury. Caesar adds, "The Gauls declare that they are descended from Dispater, and this, they say, has been handed down by the Druids."⁷ If, as the present writer has tried to show elsewhere,⁸ Dispater is the Roman name of a Celtic god, whether Cernunnos, or the god with the hammer, or Esus, or all three, who ruled a rich underworld, then this myth resembles many told elsewhere of the first men emerging from the earth, the autochthones. The parallel Celtic myth has not survived. In Ireland, if it ever existed there, it gave place to stories of descent from fictitious personages, like Mile, son of Bile, invented by the early scribes, or from Biblical patriarchs.

      Apollonius, writing in the third century b. c, reports a Celtic myth about the waters of Eridanus. Apollo, driven by his father's threats from heaven because of the son whom Karonis bore to him, fled to the land of the Hyperboreans; and the tears which he shed on the way formed the tossing waters.⁹ Some Greek myth is here mingled with a local legend about the origin of a stream and a Celtic god, possibly Belenos, who had a neighbouring temple at Aquileia. In an island of the Hyperboreans (a Celtic people dwelling beyond the Rhipaean Mountains whence Boreas blew) was a circular temple where Apollo was worshipped. Every year near the vernal equinox the god appeared in the sky, harping and dancing, until the rising of the Pleiades.¹⁰ It is natural that this "circular temple" should have been found in Stonehenge.

      Lucian (second century a. d.) describes a Gaulish god Ogmios, represented as an old man, bald-headed and with wrinkled and sun-burnt skin, yet possessing the attributes of Hercules—the lion's skin, the club, the bow, and a sheath hung from his shoulder. He draws a multitude by beautiful chains of gold and amber attached to their ears, and they follow him with joy. The other end of the chains is fixed to his tongue, and he turns to his captives a smiling countenance. A Gaul explained that the native god of eloquence was regarded as Hercules, because he had accomplished his feats through eloquence; he was old, for speech shows itself best in old age; the chains indicated the bond between the orator's tongue and the ears of enraptured listeners.¹¹

      Lucian may have seen such a representation or heard of a Gaulish myth of this kind, and as we shall see, an Irish god Ogma, whose name is akin to that of Ogmios, was a divine warrior and a god of poetry and speech. Ogma is called grianainech ("sun-faced," or "shining-faced"), perhaps a parallel to Lucian's description of the face of Ogmios. The head of Ogmios occurs on Gaulish coins, and from one of his eyes proceeds a ray or nail. This has suggested a parallel with the Ulster hero Cuchulainn in his "distortion," when the lón láith (? "champion's light") projected from his forehead thick and long as a man's fist. Another curious parallel occurs in the Táin Bó Cúalnge, or "Cattle-Spoil of Cualnge," where, among the Ulster forces, is a strong man with seven chains on his neck, and seven men dragged along at the end of each, so that their noses strike the ground, whereupon they reproach him. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the myth of Ogmios.¹²

      A British goddess Sul, equated with Minerva at Bath, is mentioned by Solinus (third century a. d.) as presiding over warm springs. In her temple perpetual fires burned and never grew old, for where the fire wasted away it turned into shining globes. ^^ The latter statement is travellers' gossip, but the "eternal fires" recall the sacred fire of St. Brigit at Kildare, tended by nineteen nuns in turn, a day at a time, and on the twentieth by the dead saint herself. The fire was tabu to males, who must not even breathe on it.¹³ This breath tabu in connexion with fire is found among Parsis, Brahmans, Slavs, in Japan, and formerly in Riigen. The saint succeeded to the myth or ritual of a goddess, the Irish Brigit, or the Brigindo or Brigantia of Gaulish and British inscriptions, who was likewise equated with Minerva.

      A tabued grove near Marseilles is mythically described by Lucan, who wrote in the first century of our era, and doubtless his account is based on local legends. The trees of the grove were stained with the blood of sacrifices, and the hollow caverns were heard to roar at the movement of the earth; the yew trees bent down and rose again; flames burned but did not consume the wood; dragons entwined surrounded the oaks. Hence people were afraid to approach the sacred grove, and the priest did not venture within its precincts at midnight or midday, lest the god should appear—"the destruction that wasteth at noonday."¹⁴ In Galatia Artemis was thought to wander with demons in the forest at midday, tormenting to death those whom she met; while Diana in Autun was regarded as a midday demon who haunted cross-roads and forests. Whether these divinities represent a Celtic goddess is uncertain, and their fateful midday aspect may have been suggested by the "midday demon" of the Septuagint version of Psalm xc. 6. Both accounts