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Druidism was the religion of the Celts and the Druids themselves were all-powerful taking precedence over the Celtic kings. Over and above the evidence of classical texts and of archaeology the richest source of information about the Druids is the vernacular material from Ireland and Wales. It is the authors unparalleled familiarity with the Gaelic texts and her ability to see Druidism through Celtic eyes that marks out this study from earlier books and strips away modern myths about the Druids.
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DRUIDS
PREACHERS OF IMMORTALITY
DRUIDS
PREACHERS OF IMMORTALITY
ANNE ROSS
For my husband Richard W. Feachem
First published in 1999
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2013
All rights reserved
© Anne Ross, 1999, 2013
The right of Anne Ross to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUBISBN 978 0 7509 5248 4
Original typesetting by The History Press
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Preface
Foreword – The Celtic languages
Introduction
1Druidic origins
2The classical commentators
3Questionable death and unusual burial
4The symbolic head
5The vernacular literatures
6Druids and Fenians
7Assemblies and calendar festivals
8Unity and diversity
9Folklore and festival
Epilogue
Bibliography
Further reading
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to record my debt of gratitude to my family and friends for all their encouragement down the years, which cannot be fully expressed in this brief statement. I would, however, wish to mention my deep indebtedness to my daughter, Berenice, for all her help in every way, and the numerous hours she has spent working with me in preparing the book for publication. Charles and Richard have both made their own, singular contributions, and to Richard I am especially indebted for his meticulous line drawings and maps. I would also like to record my gratitude to my publisher, Peter Kemmis Betty, for his kind consideration and patience.
PREFACE
The prehistory, protohistory and history of much of Europe west from the Urals and south from Prussia exhibits an unbroken series of material developments moving steadily onward from the establishment of the settled, rather than the nomadic, way of life. Evidence of this movement is seen in structures – dwellings and tombs – and in the progression from the use of stone through that of bronze to iron, in the manufacture of weaponry and other material objects.
While material changes took place steadily, the people remained much the same, judging by their skeletal remains.
Up to the 1960s material changes were generally accounted for by migration. Since then, however, this concept has been superseded by a realisation that there was no need for it; and the ‘migration theory’ is no longer heard except in uninformed echo.
In the first millennium BC the Greeks called those people Keltoi who used a certain language, the origin of which lay in the distant past. Those who lived in the region in which any version of this language was used were ‘Celts’, although they may well not have known it. Which people among the British before the seventeenth century, for example, would have called themselves Europeans? That word is first recorded in use in 1603 and, as meaning ‘a native of Europe’, in 1632.
Likewise, the peoples who lived alongside the Celts, but spoke their own languages, were not Celts. That is not to suggest, though, that they were any different in general behaviour or appearance from their Celtic neighbours.
In conversation with an Hungarian Museum Director from Budapest I happened to make reference to the Celts in central Europe. He instantly replied with great enthusiasm: ‘In Hungary we are all Celts! Soldiers come, heroes fall – but the people go on!’
FOREWORD
The Celtic Languages
The Celtic languages – which belong to the so-called Indo-European group of related tongues – are very ancient, as is the entire Celtic tradition. They are divided by philologists into two main groups; the first of these is known as P-Celtic or Brythonic (Gaulish, Celt-Iberian, Lepontic (N. Italy) and British, now known as Welsh). This latter group includes Breton, spoken in Brittany, the terrain of the powerful Gaulish tribe the Veneti, who were subjugated by the Romans in 56 BC. In the sixth and seventh centuries AD incomers from south-west Britain, speaking Welsh, resettled the region and established the foundations of modern Brittany (22). It is likely that native Veneti still remained and intermarried with the incomers.
The second group of Celtic origin is known as the Q-Celtic or Goidelic group, spoken by the Gaels. There is evidence that both P- and Q-Celtic were at one time used on the continent as place-names and deity names suggest. Moreover, the famous Coligny calendar employs both the P and Q forms. Ireland is named after its eponymous goddess Ériu and the genitive form of the name, Erin, came into common usage. Gaelic was also spoken in the Isle of Man and became the language of the North Western Highlands and Islands of Scotland from the fifth century AD.
The Picts of Scotland and probably Northern Ireland used a different language, possibly non-Indo-European in origin, although both Goidelic and Brythonic elements have been identified in their inscriptions and appear in their king-lists.
The Celtic languages changed and were modified with the passage of time and it can be confusing when we find that names are spelt in different ways according to the dates of the texts; for example, the divine hero can be spelt Fionn or Finn; the goddess Medb is spelt Maeve, and so on. It is a specialist subject and the reader is advised to consult such scholarly works as Professor Glanville Price’s brilliantly edited Encyclopedia of the Languages of Europe (Blackwell, Oxford, 1998).
The problems of attempting to reconstruct an early society by way of linguistic evidence alone need not be emphasised and we are extremely fortunate to have the support of today’s highly sophisticated archaeological techniques.
INTRODUCTION
They have philosophers and theologians who are held in much honour and are called Druids; they have sooth-sayers too of great renown who tell the future by watching the flights of birds and by observation of the entrails of victims; and everyone waits upon their word.
(Diodorus Siculus, Histories, V, 31, 2-5)
The early Celtic world: its archaism, social structure and religious attitudes
The main sources for any study of Celtic origins and subsequent history are the inevitable travellers’ tales which contain some items of great interest; however, it must be noted that they are of unequal quality and value. Nevertheless, they provide us with some of our earliest glimpses into a rapidly evolving Celtic world. Amongst these, of course, we must rate the prolific, sometimes colourful, and perhaps not always exact observations of the ethnographers. Used in conjunction with the evidence for Celtic place and river names, some of which (especially the river names) must be of very great antiquity, they do provide the framework at least, into which we may fit the pieces of ‘evidence’ for the early Celtic world. Also there are the comments of the Celtic world looking in upon itself – ‘the Celts through Celtic eyes’. Finally, we depend for much information from the writings of the classics, first Greek and then Roman:
Among all the Gallic peoples, generally speaking, there are three categories of men who are held in exceptional honour; the Bards, the Vates, and the Druids. The Bards are singers and poets; the Vates, diviners and natural philosophers; while the Druids, in addition to natural philosophy, study also moral philosophy. The Druids are considered the most just of men, and on this account they are entrusted with the decision, not only of the private disputes, but of the public disputes as well; so that, in former times, they even arbitrated cases of war, and made the opponents stop when they were about to line up for battle, and the murder cases in particular, had been turned over to them for decision. Further, when there is a big yield (of criminals for sacrifice) from these cases, there is forthcoming a big yield from the land, too, as they think. However, not only the Druids, but others as well, say that men’s souls, and also the universe, are indestructible, although both fire and water will at some time or other prevail over them.
(Strabo, Geographica, IV, 4, c. 197, 4)
The common people are nearly regarded as slaves; they possess no initiative, and their views are never invited on any question. Most of them, being weighed down by debt or by heavy taxes, or by the injustice of the more powerful, hand themselves over into slavery to the upper classes, who all have the same legal rights against these men that a master has towards his slave. One of the two classes is that of the Druids, the other that of the knights. The Druids are concerned with the worship of the gods, look after public and private sacrifice, and expound religious matters. A large number of young men flock to them for training and hold them in high honour. For they have the right to decide nearly all public and private disputes and they also pass judgment and decide rewards and penalties in criminal and murder cases and in disputes concerning legacies and boundaries.
(Caesar, De Bello Gallico, VI, 13, 1)
Next we proceed to documentary evidence in the vernacular literature, particularly that of Ireland, supported or modified by the Latin writings of the early Celtic church, which we may regard as the ‘pagans through Christian eyes’ as most of the priests of the Celtic church were Celts themselves. Fortunately for our record, although claiming to abhor the more outrageously pagan practices of their – as yet – un-Christianised fellow-countrymen, it is evident from the writings that they were still under the spell of the heady poetry, with all its metrical complexity and close observation of the beauties and wonders of nature which both pagan and Christian attributed to God’s creation or to that of the Druids who at some earlier stage had claimed to having themselves created the world. Moreover, their three fundamental precepts would have pertained equally to pagan and Christian ethic. These were: ‘Worship the gods; be manly; tell the truth.’
This is of course a triadic concept, and as we shall see, the number three and its products were of great sanctity and significance. Although the Druids did not commit their secret lore to writing, for fear it might fall into hostile or irreverent hands, they did use Greek letters for more mundane matters of communication. Moreover, as the magnificent abundance of triadic utterances in Welsh – and in Irish – suggests, the Druids and their learned colleagues used these triadic statements as mnemonics for their sacred traditions. The remarkable Celtic sensitivity to natural beauty and to the things of nature expresses itself in the magnificent poetry of, first of all the Irish bards, the third component of the Druidic orders and later of medieval Wales. The words used for this tripartite order, which is found in Europe and in the British Isles, are Gaulish as recorded by the classics: Druides (‘priest-philosophers’), Vates or Manteis (‘diviners and prophets’), and the Bardi (‘panegyric poets’). It is a most noteworthy fact that this threefold category of learned orders is found several centuries later, with the same connotations, in Ireland. It was clearly common to the entire Celtic world and these were the most powerful elements and the most influential in the whole of Celtic society. Indeed, the power of the Druids was so great that the Romans, who spent much time in trying to deprive the Celts of their political and military powers and make them subordinate to the will of Rome, issued an edict, the intention of which was greatly to weaken the political influence of the highest order of this trilogy of learned men.
From the above we learn that the Celts, whose society was tribally organised, depended in various ways upon this threefold group of scholars who had spent, in the case of a Druid – Irish Druí; Welsh Derwydd, Dryw (the latter also means ‘wren’, a sacred Druidic bird) – some 20 years in mastering his subject, and thus qualifying to teach his acolytes orally – for the Druids did not use the written word for educational purposes, believing that it weakened the memory. The Druid chanted the lesson and the pupils chanted it back until the seminar was completed and their knowledge considered adequate. Books were no doubt in the possession of the Druids, in Gaul as in Ireland and elsewhere in the Celtic world, but they would have been kept in some secret place, to which the non-initiated would have no access.
It took some 12 years to become a Vatis (Irish Fáith; Welsh Gweledydd). Poetry was sacred to the Celts and the three degrees of learned men must master the highly complex poetic metres until they were completely facile in their use. The Vates or Fáith were also prophets and men of general high learning.
It took seven years of practice in composition to become a Bard (Irish Bard; Welsh Bardd) who was accredited with great powers of praise and of satire and was thus feared; the functions of the poet and the Druid were very similar in so far as both were skilled in magic. Women, too, could be trained in all three orders and, like the men, were taught the highly secret language known in Irish as bérla na bfiled. There is a delightful passage in a medieval Irish tale, which describes the courtship by Cú Chulainn of Emer, daughter of one of the regional kings of Ireland. The young warrior crosses the country in all his finery, his chariot and mettlesome ponies driven by his skilful charioteer, and, knowing the girl’s father to be absent, he leaves his charioteer outside the gates, leaps over the ramparts – and finds the only girl he knows is fit to be his wife sitting on the green lawns with her maidens, working at their embroidery. Emer’s beauty astonishes Cú Chulainn, and Emer, when she looks up, is amazed by the sight of the youth whose renown and comeliness have often been described to her. He begins to speak to her in bérla na bfiled, to which she replies fluently and so they are able to converse about how they can come together. Meanwhile, the girls continue their sewing, comprehending nothing of what is being said.
The Celtic tribe consisted of the King, the men of learning i.e. Druids, Prophets and Bards, the warriors and finally the artisans and craftsmen; the unskilled people were regarded as being of little consequence. Sometimes the King and Druid were one and the same. The Druid had many functions; his training was long and arduous, taking up to 20 years before it was complete; he was fully integrated into Celtic society and had several important rôles, priest, prophet, and very importantly teacher; physician, guardian of the laws and genealogies. The File (Welsh Gweledydd) was also a prophet and an esoteric poet using, as we know from Old Irish, immensely complicated metrical systems. The third class, the Bards were employed to praise their rulers and to satirize their enemies. They had an unexpectedly important rôle in society, as they were considerably feared. Their praise-poetry was vital to ensure the much-coveted Fame (Irish clú, Gaelic cliú, Welsh clod) to which all rulers aspired, whereas their satire could cause physical blemish or even have the power to bring about the death of the one subjected to it.
The Druids belonged to the élite class of Irish society known as the Aes Dáno, which referred especially to the poets but also to smiths, jurists and the Druids. The Warriors were vital, both for protection and for the land-acquisition of the tribe. The rest of the people consisted of the farmers and the craftsmen but they held a lower place in the Laws. Nevertheless, every member of the tribe, down to the lowest servant or slave, had his or her place within the legal system and had certain rights. The worst punishment that could be meted out to a wrongdoer was to be driven out of the tribal domain into the wilderness where he would become what in early Irish was termed écland, i.e. an outcast, without a tribe or clan and therefore entirely devoid of any protection.
The Irish Druids, Fili and Bards were much given to divining the future by means of spells. There were three important methods of performing these rites: imbas forosna (‘knowledge that enlightens’); teinm laeda, which involved offerings to demons and animal sacrifice; díchetal do chennaib (‘invocation by means of heads’). The earliest known account of imbas forosna is given by Bishop Cormac of Cashel in the ninth century. The poet must chew a piece of the raw flesh of a pig, dog or cat which he then offers to his idols. He puts his hands on his cheeks and falls asleep; then the future is revealed to him. Cormac says that St Patrick banned imbas forosna and teinm laeda because of their pagan character, but did not dislike díchetal do chennaib. This suggests that stone heads may have been employed in this period, not human skulls. However, we know that divination was carried out by means of human skulls in the shamanistic traditions of northern Europe and as these were used for many other purposes, both evil-averting and prognostic (see also Chapter 4) we cannot rule out this possibility. The whole process must have been conducted with a high degree of secrecy after the coming of Christianity to the Celtic world.
In spite of their associations with paganism the poets were a wealthy and influential group in possession of considerable and enduring power in Irish society down the ages.
Mogh Ruith: Chief Druid of Ireland and all the World
The name of this eminent pagan character means literally ‘Servant of the Wheel’. He was thought to have lived between the first and third centuries AD. Some writers regard him as the Sun-god, because he had only one eye. He figures in the medieval Irish texts as a powerful Druid, and, in common with Druids and Druidism in general, he was capable of marvellous feats and possessed of magical powers. His name derives from the word roth (‘wheel’). Mogh Ruith allegedly lived to a great age, during which he witnessed the reigns of 19 kings. He was the eponymous ancestor of the tribe of Fir Maige Féne whose name still exists in the baronry of Fermoy (Fir Maige in Co. Cork). His mother was a young girl brought from Britain as a slave. Mogh Ruith had a splendid chariot of findruine (‘white bronze’ or ‘white gold’), set with shining gems. To those who travelled in it night seemed like day. In it he flew through the air like a great bird.
Another enigmatic roth or ‘wheel’ was the magical Roth Rámach, ‘oared wheel’, which is associated with this character elsewhere. Cormac, in his ninth-century Glossary, refers to this wheel as Roth Fáil (‘the wheel of light’, cf. Welsh gwawl ‘light’). In one of the prophecies attributed to St Columba (Colum Cille) the Roth Rámach is described as a huge ship which could sail over both sea and land. A fragment of this wheel was identified with a pillar-stone which was situated at Cleghile, close to the town of Tipperary. It was said to have had such power that it would kill any who laid hands on it, blind those who looked upon it and render deaf those who heard it. Two further details of the tradition of Mogh Ruith may be noted: he was looked upon as the champion of paganism, therefore the enemy of Christianity. Because of this, some scholarly writers concluded that the euhemerized Mogh Ruith had learnt his Druidheachd (Druidism or magic) from Símón Druí (Simon Magus: Magus was often used for Druid in the medieval period in Ireland). According to ecclesiastical tradition, Simon Magus was, in a later legend, represented as a formidable opponent of St Peter and he attempted to demonstrate his superior powers by rising up into the air in a fiery chariot. Moreover, the belief that the deathdealing pillar-stone of Cnámchaill was a fragment from the great roth or wheel (in Roth Rámach) strengthened the supposition that the Wheel was itself an instrument of destruction. It was prophesied that the Roth Rámach would sweep across Europe before Judgment Day as a punishment for the way in which Simon Magus and others from every nation had opposed St Peter.
The cult of the wheel is very well attested in Celtic mythology. There was a major pan-Celtic deity whose name, Taranis, means ‘the Thunderer’, one of whose most regular attributes was the wheel (1). Votive wheels in bronze or gold have been found widely in Europe and apotropaic jewellery on which the sacred wheel is portrayed is prolific in the Celtic period. Vessels, perhaps for sacred purposes of pottery or metal were also frequently decorated with this most sacred Celtic symbol. The invention of wheeled transport of course obviously revolutionised man’s capacity for wider travel; and in the La Tène period the new technology of heating the iron and shrinking it onto the wooden felloe rendered the completed artefact infinitely more efficient and durable and allowed greater distances to be covered with less damage to the wheel. The wheel was both a symbolic object (parallels with the sun-disc are obvious), and the attribute of several powerful Celtic deities, as well as being an object of very real practical value in transport, especially after the invention of iron-rimmed tyres.
Chapter 1
DRUIDIC ORIGINS
Druidic origins are an integral part of the Celtic society which created them and in which they served as the most learned priests and scholars.
Before considering the nature of the Druidic orders, it will be necessary to glance at the source material. The evidence of archaeology can add validity to the written sources; later the Celtic oral tradition plays its own important rôle. Temporally it is to the Classical authors that we must look, considering, first, the writings of the Greeks and, later, the Latin comments of the Romans the veracity of which cannot always be assumed by reason of the fact that some of their comments were written in their rôle as conquerors. As we know, history tends to be written by the victors.
Nevertheless, in this complex subject every fragment of evidence must be considered. The Greeks were at war with the Celts at an earlier period than the Romans (2); however, many of their comments are not concerned with military matters but consist of travellers’ tales for, contrary to uninformed opinion, the peoples of Europe and the British Isles travelled over great distances in the last two millennia BC, using ancient trade routes and also embarking upon military expeditions. There may be evidence for direct trade with China, perhaps as early as the late Bronze Age, when bronze votive bird chariots and socketed celts were exchanged amongst other goods for much-coveted Chinese silk and commodities rare in the West.
By the sixth century BC at least, lavish graves of Hallstatt Celts were being created in southern Germany and elsewhere, testifying to a strong belief in life after death. This continues in the different but equally important La Tène graves, dating to the period of Celtic expansion in Europe. The future, with its evermore-sophisticated technologies, may reveal more wonders and a broader human picture. Meanwhile, the evidence of archaeology, and the writings about and by the Celts must be our most reliable source material.
In Ireland the concept of the warrior Druid was very highly developed. In opposition to this, the classical commentators on the Gauls convey the impression – indeed, in some cases actually state – that the Druids did not take part in the seemingly perpetual battles and skirmishes of the Gallic warriors. We examine more closely the classical comments on the Druids in Chapter 2 and elsewhere but I should like to point out at this stage that the classics do not actually say that the Druids did not take part in battles, but rather that they were exempt from doing so. This obviously gave them the option of entering the fray, not necessarily by physically fighting with weapons, but certainly – as is attested by the classics and a regular feature of Irish warfare – by exhorting their own side by means of Druidic magic and spells and by adopting ritual postures. In the Irish texts the Druids are described in some instances as encircling the armies, on one leg, with one eye closed and one arm extended (see Ross, A. 2000, fig.26). This magic posture was known as corrguinecht, because it appears to have imitated the position adopted by one of the most sacred birds, the crane or corr.
It is also an attitude taken by geese. Having possessed six Welsh geese, now reduced to two by the depredations of fox and polecat, I was fascinated to be able to study them closely when they were taking their habitual sleep during daylight hours. Five of them would tuck their heads underneath their wings; the sixth would stand on one leg, with one wing outstretched and with one eye open – and even now, rather pathetically, one of the geese will sleep while the other keeps guard as if he were protecting a whole flock. I have always been particularly impressed by the ornithological accuracy, not only of the Celtic and Gallo-Roman artists, but the verbal verisimilitude which indicates an acute observation of birds and the wildlife with which Ireland and the continent of Europe were at that time teeming. This was of course heightened by the fact that the gods and Druids were shape-shifters, according to the tradition, turning themselves or others into bird or animal form while retaining their human reason and power of speech.
Once again, and not for the last time, we must ask the question as to where and how the Celtic world began:
In a restricted area of East Europe, the occurrence of female figurines in the settlement débris has led to unverifiable assumptions about the cult of a Mother Goddess; in Western Europe, an alien and unknown set of beliefs must have been involved in the building of megalithic or rock-cut collective tombs. We are, in fact, ignorant of what may well have been many varieties of religious experience among the European and Neolithic communities from the sixth to the late third millennium BC and their contribution to later Celtic religion is a wholly unknown factor. ... By the time of the historically documented Druids the background of possible religious tradition would then be roughly as follows. Taking as a starting-point the forms of Celtic religion as inferred from archaeology, epigraphy and the classical and vernacular texts, there are three main antecedent phases. The first would be the traditions, predominantly Indo-European, going back to the second millennium, and perhaps to its beginnings. Behind this again would be the wholly obscure religions of the Neolithic agriculturalists with, in Gaul and especially Britain, eastern and western components mixed from the end of the fourth millennium BC. And finally, underlying all, there would be the beliefs and rites of the hunting peoples of pre-agricultural Europe which might well have contained elements surviving in shamanism. It is a pedigree which could be a good twenty thousand years in length. Druidism, when we first encounter it, is an integral part of the social structure of Celtic Gaul; it is an Indo-European institution with, whatever criticisms may be levelled against the over-elaborate schemes of Dumézil and his school, analogues in the Brahmin class of Sanskrit India or the archaic priesthoods of early Rome. But there are distinctive [my emphasis] elements which may owe their existence to those earlier sources of European religious tradition we have just sketched out.
(Piggott 1968, pp.185 and 187)
Without, I hope, appearing to step beyond the bounds of rational surmise, I have recently become much intrigued by Lepenski Vir, a site on the River Danube near a point known as the ‘Iron Gates’ (Serbia/Romania) (3). Although this remarkable settlement in wild, remote and almost inaccessible landscape, close to the wide reaches of the river, pre-dates the presumptive origins of the Celts by at least two thousand years, I want briefly to consider whether there is any evidence to suggest that it played some rôle as the cradle of Celtic origins. What evidence is there that could possibly justify such a tentative assumption? There are certain features which would seem, perhaps, to point to some sort of link with the much later Celts as we have come to know them. First of all, this settlement, in remote and difficult mountainous terrain, was built on the very verge of the River Danube. Danube itself is a Celtic name, as are many of the river names of Europe. It stems from a root dana which simply means ‘water’. Moreover, it is traditionally the favourite cradle of the Celts for scholars. The king of the tribe – who often was also a Druid – was an immensely powerful figure, but the Druid took precedence even over the king. In the early Irish written tradition we learn that: ‘no man may speak before the king but the king himself may not speak before the Druid.’ The Druids of antiquity claimed that their origins and their doctrine were extremely old. They were clearly not thinking in terms of two or three centuries but of perhaps two or three thousand years.
Let us look now at some of the most prevalent of Druidic beliefs and teachings, some of which we have already noted. Relevant here is the universal importance which was accorded to the severed human head – animal heads too were displayed but did not possess quite the same powers. Fire also was a magical and essential focus of cult, and fire festivals at ancient sacred ceremonies have persisted on the same dates as those sacred to the ancient Celtic peoples. The hearth – like the threshold under which sacrificial offerings were often made – was likewise the focus of superstitious belief and worship and this belief has not yet died out in the surviving Celtic areas. In it, the sacred fire burned. Before it, a human head, perhaps of an ancestor was buried – even today in the Celtic lands a human or animal head, often that of the horse was, and perhaps still is, buried under the threshold and under the hearth and often two heads were also built into the upper part of the fireplace. At Lepenski Vir a human jaw (mandible) was found buried in front of the hearth. We may perhaps compare this to the much later central hearth in an Iron Age house excavated in South Uist, Outer Hebrides, Scotland, around which pig jaws had been carefully buried. Ancestorworship was (and to a certain extent, still may be) therefore a very important aspect of Celtic superstitious belief and at Lepenski Vir, our Neolithic site on the Danube, the impressive finds yielded by expert excavations in the last decade or so are strikingly reminiscent of those of the early Celtic world.
Most noteworthy is the remarkable series of stone heads, the expressive power of which makes a deep and unsettling impact upon the viewer. They are disconcertingly reminiscent of certain, later Celtic carved heads and like them, in spite of the ‘human’ features, one is reminded of the grim images which are conjured up by the early Irish descriptions of such dark and dangerously magical characters as the Fomorians, against whom the people of Ireland waged war. What stories could these almost sentient heads tell? The similarity to early Celtic stone carvings is further paralleled by the complex carved patterns on the socalled ‘altars’, reminiscent of the Newgrange style of stone decoration. For the time being the mystery of Lepenski Vir must be borne in mind but much remains to be explained before we can, if ever, link the site to the presumptive Danubian origins of the early Celts.
Or again, did the Celts originate, as some scholars have suggested, in the far West, in Ireland, which was described by Avienus as Insula Sacra, the Sacred Isle? There are certainly many indications that this could have been so. The ancient stonebuilt burial chambers and passage graves which stud the landscape, the hillforts which are now coming to be recognised as ceremonial sites rather than solely as structures for defence; the cult of the human head, the skull or a part of the skull or images of the head in stone and other substances, reveal traces of a great antiquity, as do the complex spiral and meandering decorative carvings on and inside such structures as passage graves, standing stones, lintels and so forth. All this, and much more; the very archaic nature of the Irish language, for example, which was committed to writing at an unusually early period; the prolific and complex nature of the legal system and the rigidly organised structure of Celtic tribal society, must be considered. Most remarkable is perhaps the richness and longevity of the vernacular literature, especially the amazingly complex nature of the poetic metres and the accurate knowledge of time and seasons, special days and periods, the astronomical phenomena, and the fact that they counted their days in nights and called themselves ‘sons of the god of night’. The Druids of Gaul are accredited by the classical commentators with having a triad of moral codes which are worthy of the Christian ethic. These, as noted above, are ‘Worship the gods, tell the truth, be manly.’ Reading through the Irish Triads again recently, I was struck by a very similar triadic dictate: ‘Three things that show every good man: a special gift, valour, piety.’
‘A special gift’ (Irish dón) could have one of several connotations: according to Marstrander’s Dictionary of the Irish Language (1913) it could mean ‘a gift, endowment, present ... a divine gift from God [or the gods, presumably] ... a grateful gift is speech without boasting ... in a special sense a latent endowment, faculty, ability ingenium ... skill in applying the principles of a special science ... the art of poetry ... a man versed in a certain art [magic?]’.
Ireland, then is an attractive and perhaps tempting choice for the ultimate place of origin for the complex and highly talented, war-mad peoples whom, for the sake of convenience we term ‘the Celts’. Tribally organised, each tribe had its own name which had clearly been bestowed upon it for a good reason; the Morini (sea people) who dwelt on the coastline of what we now call Pas-de-Calais, to name but one example. Whether they all knew themselves by this collective term must remain in question. The Greek ethnographers of the second and first centuries BC certainly used the term ‘Celt’ for the ‘barbarians’ who lived in the hinterland to the north and came to pose a constant and terrifying threat to Greek society. They did, however, state categorically that these people knew themselves as Celts (Keltoi). Their religion, with its ‘barbaric’ cult practices, shows a great homogeneity throughout the wider ‘Celtic’ world. Perhaps the most striking of these, as we have seen, is the veneration which was accorded to the severed human head. Other objects of veneration were the cult of ancestors, of graves, of the hearth, fire, certain kinds of trees and particular animals. The symbol of the cauldron was also widespread, either portrayed in some medium such as stone or metal (4), or as an actual, practical vessel (5 and 6) for various sacred or domestic purposes or, in the mythology, as a cult object possessing its own powers – as did weapons which were believed to be inhabited by demons. Miniature cauldrons, which were probably of a votive nature, have been recovered from various sites, and recently from a hoard found in Wiltshire (see Stead, 1998). Magical cauldrons also occur in the rich mediaeval literary tradition of Wales and Ireland.