The Religion of the Ancient Celts

The Celtic conception of Elysium, the product at once of religion, mythology, and romantic imagination, is found in a series of Irish and Welsh tales. We do not know that a simi...

The meaning formerly given to _Tuatha Dé Danann_ was "the men of science who were gods," _danann_ being here connected with _dán_, "knowledge." But the true meaning is "the trib...

Our knowledge of the gods of the Brythons, i.e. as far as Wales is concerned, is derived, apart from inscriptions, from the _Mabinogion_, which, though found in a fourteenth cen...

The passage in which Cæsar sums up the Gaulish pantheon runs: "They worship chiefly the god Mercury; of him there are many symbols, and they regard him as the inventor of all th...

Pliny thought that the name "Druid" was a Greek appellation derived from the Druidic cult of the oak ([Greek: _drus_]).[1002] The word, however, is purely Celtic, and its meanin...

The Celtic year was not at first regulated by the solstices and equinoxes, but by some method connected with agriculture or with the seasons. Later, the year was a lunar one, an...

The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of G...

Animal worship pure and simple had declined among the Celts of historic times, and animals were now regarded mainly as symbols or attributes of divinities. The older cult had be...

The most prominent characters in the Fionn saga, after the death of Fionn's father Cumal, are Fionn, his son Oisin, his grandson Oscar, his nephew Diarmaid with his _ball-seire_...

Among the Celts the testimony of contemporary witnesses, inscriptions, votive offerings, and survivals, shows the importance of the cult of waters and of water divinities. Mr. G...

The events of the Cúchulainn cycle are supposed to date from the beginning of the Christian era--King Conchobar's death synchronising with the crucifixion. But though some perso...

Among all the problems with which man has busied himself, none so appeals to his hopes and fears as that of the future life. Is there a farther shore, and if so, shall we reach...

Three divine and heroic cycles of myths are known in Ireland, one telling of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the others of Cúchulainn and of the Fians. They are distinct in character and...

The Celts, like all other races, were devoted to magical practices, many of which could be used by any one, though, on the whole, they were in the hands of the Druids, who in ma...

In Irish sagas, rebirth is asserted only of divinities or heroes, and, probably because this belief was obnoxious to Christian scribes, while some MSS. tell of it in the case of...

In primitive religion the place of worship is seldom a temple made with hands, but rather an enclosed space in which the symbol or image of the god stands. The sacredness of the...

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, va...

In early thought everything was a person, in the loose meaning then possessed by personality, and many such "persons" were worshipped-- earth, sun, moon, sea, wind, etc. This le...

The Celts had their own cult of trees, but they adopted local cults--Ligurian, Iberian, and others. The _Fagus Deus_ (the divine beech), the _Sex arbor_ or _Sex arbores_ of Pyre...

Though man usually makes his gods 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...

Whether the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and wife is uncertain. Such a conception is world-wide, and myth frequently explains in different ways the reason of...

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...

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...

The Irish _geis_, pl. _geasa_, which may be rendered by Tabu, had two senses. It meant something which must not be done for fear of disastrous consequences, and also an obligati...

[635] See Pughe, _The Physicians of Myddfai_, 1861 (these were descendants of a water-fairy); Rh[^y]s, _Y Cymmrodor_, iv. 164; Hartland, _Arch. Rev._ i. 202. Such water-gods wit...

[1212] S. Aug. _de Civ. Dei_, xv. 23; Isidore, _Orat._ viii. 2. 103. _Dusios_ may be connected with Lithuanian _dvaese_, "spirit," and perhaps with [Greek: Thehos] (Holder, _s.v...