The Religion of the Ancient Celts Part 26

[774] D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.

[775] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is said to have been created thus--his body of earth, his blood of the sea, his face of the sun, his breath of the wind, etc. This is also found in a Frisian tale (Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Bor._ i. 479), and both stories present an inversion of well-known myths about the creation of the universe from the members of a giant.

[776] Sebillot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf. _RC_ xv.

482, xvi. 152.

[777] Sebillot, ii. 6.

[778] _LL_ 56; Keating, 117, 123.

[779] _RC_ xv. 429, xvi. 277.

[780] See p. 191, _supra_.

[781] Sebillot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. 372, _infra_.

[782] _Triads_ in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 583, 663.

[783] _RC_ xvi. 50, 146.

[784] Apoll. iv. 609 f.

[785] Strabo, iv. 4. 4.

[786] Arrian, _Anab._ i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian, 85.

[787] _LL_ 94; Miss Hull, 205.

[788] _RC_ xii. 111, xxvi. 33.

[789] A possible survival of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da Derga's Hostel" (_RC_ xxii. 54), where we hear of Leviathan that surrounds the globe and strikes with his tail to overwhelm the world.

But this may be a reflection of Norse myths of the Midgard serpent, sometimes equated with Leviathan.

CHAPTER XVI.

SACRIFICE, PRAYER, AND DIVINATION.

The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to cla.s.sical evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the principle of a life for a life, or to propitiate the G.o.ds, or in order to divine the future from the entrails of the victim. We shall examine the Celtic custom of human sacrifice from these points of view first.

Caesar says that those afflicted with disease or engaged in battle or danger offer human victims or vow to do so, because unless man's life be given for man's life, the divinity of the G.o.ds cannot be appeased.[790]

The theory appears to have been that the G.o.ds sent disease or ills when they desired a human life, but that any life would do; hence one in danger might escape by offering another in his stead. In some cases the victims may have been offered to disease demons or diseases personified, such as Celtic imagination still believes in,[791] rather than to G.o.ds, or, again, they may have been offered to native G.o.ds of healing. Coming danger could also be averted on the same principle, and though the victims were usually slaves, in times of great peril wives and children were sacrificed.[792] After a defeat, which showed that the G.o.ds were still implacable, the wounded and feeble were slain, or a great leader would offer himself.[793] Or in such a case the Celts would turn their weapons against themselves, making of suicide a kind of sacrifice, hoping to bring victory to the survivors.[794]

The idea of the victim being offered on the principle of a life for a life is ill.u.s.trated by a custom at Ma.r.s.eilles in time of pestilence. One of the poorer cla.s.ses offered himself to be kept at the public expense for some time. He was then led in procession, clad in sacred boughs, and solemnly cursed, and prayer was made that on him might fall the evils of the community. Then he was cast headlong down. Here the victim stood for the lives of the city and was a kind of scape-victim, like those at the Thargelia.[795]

Human victims were also offered by way of thanksgiving after victory, and vows were often made before a battle, promising these as well as part of the spoil. For this reason the Celts would never ransom their captives, but offered them in sacrifice, animals captured being immolated along with them.[796] The method of sacrifice was slaughter by sword or spear, hanging, impaling, dismembering, and drowning. Some G.o.ds were propitiated by one particular mode of sacrifice--Taranis by burning, Teutates by suffocation, Esus (perhaps a tree-G.o.d) by hanging on a tree. Drowning meant devoting the victim to water-divinities.[797]

Other propitiatory sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a general or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves or even members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude outline of a human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as well as some animal victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says that the victims were malefactors who had been kept in prison for five years, and that some of them were impaled.[798] This need not mean that the holocausts were quinquennial, for they may have been offered yearly, at Midsummer, to judge by the ritual of modern survivals.[799] The victims perished in that element by which the sun-G.o.d chiefly manifested himself, and by the sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility were promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an earlier slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation, though their value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence. This is suggested by Strabo's words that the greater the number of murders the greater would be the fertility of the land, probably meaning that there would then be more criminals as sacrificial victims.[800] Varro also speaks of human sacrifice to a G.o.d equated with Saturn, offered because of all seeds the human race is the best, i.e. human victims are most productive of fertility.[801] Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a propitiatory sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious ritual springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both points of view the intention was the same--the promotion of fertility in field and fold.

Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by Tacitus, who says that "the Druids consult the G.o.ds in the palpitating entrails of men," and by Strabo, who describes the striking down of the victim by the sword and the predicting of the future from his convulsive movements.[802] To this we shall return.

Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were amazed at its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole religion in a phrase--_druidarum religionem dirae immanitatis_.[803] By the year 40 A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered symbolically, the Druids pretending to strike them and drawing a little blood from them.[804]

Only the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the Celts of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in 77 A.D.[805] Dio Ca.s.sius describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims (prisoners of war) in honour of the G.o.ddess Andrasta--their b.r.e.a.s.t.s cut off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.[806] Tacitus speaks of the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish Celts, patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such practices,[807] but there is no _a priori_ reason which need set them apart from other races on the same level of civilisation in this custom.

The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate the number of the victims, but they certainly attest the existence of the practice. From the _Dindsenchas_, which describes many archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm Cruaich--a sacrifice of the first-born,--and that at one festival the prostrations of the wors.h.i.+ppers were so violent that three-fourths of them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic rites.[808] Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the mythic tales in the _Dindsenchas_. Yet the tales were doubtless quite credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not have been offered on other occasions also.

The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in the poetical version of the cult of Cromm--

"Milk and corn They would ask from him speedily, In return for one-third of their healthy issue."[809]

The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been two-thirds of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk[810]--an obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,[811] but there can be no doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice--the offering of an agricultural folk to the divinities who helped or r.e.t.a.r.ded growth. Possibly part of the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the G.o.d, was buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote fertility. The blood was sprinkled on the image of the G.o.d. Such practices were as obnoxious to Christian missionaries as they had been to the Roman Government, and we learn that S. Patrick preached against "the slaying of yoke oxen and milch cows and the burning of the first-born progeny" at the Fair of Taillte.[812] As has been seen, the Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda story, in which the victim is offered not to a dragon, but to the Fomorians, may have received this form from actual ritual in which human victims were sacrificed to the Fomorians.[813] In a j.a.panese version of the same story the maiden is offered to the sea-G.o.ds. Another tale suggests the offering of human victims to remove blight. In this case the land suffers from blight because the adulteress Bec.u.ma, married to the king of Erin, has pretended to be a virgin. The Druids announced that the remedy was to slay the son of an undefiled couple and sprinkle the doorposts and the land with his blood. Such a youth was found, but at his mother's request a two-bellied cow, in which two birds were found, was offered in his stead.[814] In another instance in the _Dindsenchas_, hostages, including the son of a captive prince, are offered to remove plagues--an equivalent to the custom of the Gauls.[815]

Human sacrifices were also offered when the foundation of a new building was laid. Such sacrifices are universal, and are offered to propitiate the Earth spirits or to provide a ghostly guardian for the building. A Celtic legend attaches such a sacrifice to the founding of the monastery at Iona. S. Oran agrees to adopt S. Columba's advice "to go under the clay of this island to hallow it," and as a reward he goes straight to heaven.[816] The legend is a semi-Christian form of the memory of an old pagan custom, and it is attached to Oran probably because he was the first to be buried in the island. In another version, nothing is said of the sacrifice. The two saints are disputing about the other world, and Oran agrees to go for three days into the grave to settle the point at issue. At the end of that time the grave is opened, and the triumphant Oran announces that heaven and h.e.l.l are not such as they are alleged to be. Shocked at his lat.i.tudinarian sentiments, Columba ordered earth to be piled over him, lest he cause a scandal to the faith, and Oran was accordingly buried alive.[817] In a Welsh instance, Vortigern's castle cannot be built, for the stones disappear as soon as they are laid. Wise men, probably Druids, order the sacrifice of a child born without a father, and the sprinkling of the site with his blood.[818] "Groaning hostages" were placed under a fort in Ireland, and the foundation of the palace of Emain Macha was also laid with a human victim.[819] Many similar legends are connected with buildings all over the Celtic area, and prove the popularity of the pagan custom. The sacrifice of human victims on the funeral pile will be discussed in a later chapter.

Of all these varieties of human sacrifice, those offered for fertility, probably at Beltane or Midsummer, were the most important. Their propitiatory nature is of later origin, and their real intention was to strengthen the divinity by whom the processes of growth were directed.

Still earlier, one victim represented the divinity, slain that his life might be revived in vigour. The earth was sprinkled with his blood and fed with his flesh in order to fertilise it, and possibly the wors.h.i.+ppers partook sacramentally of the flesh. Propitiatory holocausts of human victims had taken the place of the slain representative of a G.o.d, but their value in promoting fertility was not forgotten. The sacramental aspect of the rite is perhaps to be found in Pliny's words regarding "the slaying of a human being as a most religious act and eating the flesh as a wholesome remedy" among the Britons.[820] This may merely refer to "medicinal cannibalism," such as still survives in Italy, but the pa.s.sage rather suggests sacramental cannibalism, the eating of part of a divine victim, such as existed in Mexico and elsewhere. Other acts of cannibalism are referred to by cla.s.sical writers. Diodorus says the Irish ate their enemies, and Pausanias describes the eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children among the Galatian Celts. Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain (sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammia.n.u.s and Livy, and Solinus describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain and drinking it.[821] In some of these cases the intention may simply have been to obtain the dead enemy's strength, but where a sacrificial victim was concerned, the intention probably went further than this. The blood of dead relatives was also drunk in order to obtain their virtues, or to be brought into closer _rapport_ with them.[822] This is a.n.a.logous to the custom of blood brotherhood, which also existed among the Celts and continued as a survival in the Western Isles until a late date.[823]

One group of Celtic human sacrifices was thus connected with primitive agricultural ritual, but the warlike energies of the Celts extended the practice. Victims were easily obtained, and offered to the G.o.ds of war.

Yet even these sacrifices preserved some trace of the older rite, in which the victim represented a divinity or spirit.

Head-hunting, described in cla.s.sical writings and in Irish texts, had also a sacrificial aspect. The heads of enemies were hung at the saddle-bow or fixed on spears, as the conquerors returned home with songs of victory.[824] This gruesome picture often recurs in the texts.

Thus, after the death of Cuchulainn, Conall Cernach returned to Emer with the heads of his slayers strung on a withy. He placed each on a stake and told Emer the name of the owner. A Celtic _oppidum_ or a king's palace must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it.[825] A room in the palace was sometimes a store for such heads, or they were preserved in cedar-wood oil or in coffers. They were proudly shown to strangers as a record of conquest, but they could not be sold for their weight in gold.[826] After a battle a pile of heads was made and the number of the slain was counted, and at annual festivals warriors produced the tongues of enemies as a record of their prowess.[827]

These customs had a religious aspect. In cutting off a head the Celt saluted the G.o.ds, and the head was offered to them or to ancestral spirits, and sometimes kept in grove or temple.[828] The name given to the heads of the slain in Ireland, the "mast of Macha," shows that they were dedicated to her, just as skulls found under an altar had been devoted to the Celtic Mars.[829] Probably, as among Dayaks, American Indians, and others, possession of a head was a guarantee that the ghost of its owner would be subservient to its Celtic possessor, either in this world or in the next, since they are sometimes found buried in graves along with the dead.[830] Or, suspended in temples, they became an actual and symbolical offering of the life of their owners, if, as is probable, the life or soul was thought to be in the head. Hence, too, the custom of drinking from the skull of the slain had the intention of transferring his powers directly to the drinker.[831] Milk drunk from the skull of Conall Cernach restored to enfeebled warriors their pristine strength,[832] and a folk-survival in the Highlands--that of drinking from the skull of a suicide (here taking the place of the slain enemy) in order to restore health--shows the same idea at work. All these practices had thus one end, that of the transference of spirit force--to the G.o.ds, to the victor who suspended the head from his house, and to all who drank from the skull. Represented in bas-relief on houses or carved on dagger-handles, the head may still have been thought to possess talismanic properties, giving power to house or weapon. Possibly this cult of human heads may have given rise to the idea of a divine head like those figured on Gaulish images, or described, e.g., in the story of Bran. His head preserved the land from invasion, until Arthur disinterred it,[833] the story being based on the belief that heads or bodies of great warriors still had a powerful influence.[834] The representation of the head of a G.o.d, like his whole image, would be thought to possess the same preservative power.

A possible survival of the sacrifice of the aged may be found in a Breton custom of applying a heavy club to the head of old persons to lighten their death agonies, the clubs having been formerly used to kill them. They are kept in chapels, and are regarded with awe.[835]

Animal victims were also frequently offered. The Galatian Celts made a yearly sacrifice to their Artemis of a sheep, goat, or calf, purchased with money laid by for each animal caught in the chase. Their dogs were feasted and crowned with flowers.[836] Further details of this ritual are unfortunately lacking. Animals captured in war were sacrificed to the war-G.o.ds by the Gauls, or to a river-G.o.d, as when the horses of the defeated host were thrown into the Rhine by the Gaulish conquerors of Mallius.[837] We have seen that the white oxen sacrificed at the mistletoe ritual may once have been representatives of the vegetation-spirit, which also animated the oak and the mistletoe. Among the insular Celts animal sacrifices are scarcely mentioned in the texts, probably through suppression by later scribes, but the lives of Irish saints contain a few notices of the custom, e.g. that of S. Patrick, which describes the gathering of princes, chiefs, and Druids at Tara to sacrifice victims to idols.[838] In Ireland the peasantry still kill a sheep or heifer for S. Martin on his festival, and ill-luck is thought to follow the non-observance of the rite.[839] Similar sacrifices on saints' days in Scotland and Wales occurred in Christian times.[840] An excellent instance is that of the sacrifice of bulls at Gairloch for the cure of lunatics on S. Maelrubha's day (August 25th). Libations of milk were also poured out on the hills, ruined chapels were perambulated, wells and stones wors.h.i.+pped, and divination practised. These rites, occurring in the seventeenth century, were condemned by the Presbytery of Dingwall, but with little effect, and some of them still survive.[841] In all these cases the saint has succeeded to the ritual of an earlier G.o.d. Mr. Cook surmises that S. Maelrubha was the successor of a divine king connected with an oak and sacred well, the G.o.d or spirit of which was incarnate in him. These divine kings may at one time have been slain, or a bull, similarly incarnating the G.o.d or spirit, may have been killed as a surrogate. This slaying was at a later time regarded as a sacrifice and connected with the cure of madness.[842] The rite would thus be on a parallel with the slaying of the oxen at the mistletoe gathering, as already interpreted. Eilean Maree (Maelrubha), where the tree and well still exist, was once known as Eilean mo righ ("the island of my king"), or Eilean a Mhor Righ ("of the great king"), the king having been wors.h.i.+pped as a G.o.d. This piece of corroborative evidence was given by the oldest inhabitant to Sir Arthur Mitch.e.l.l.[843]

The people also spoke of the G.o.d Mourie.

Other survivals of animal sacrifice are found in cases of cattle-plague, as in Morays.h.i.+re sixty years ago, in Wales, Devon, and the Isle of Man.

The victim was burned and its ashes sprinkled on the herd, or it was thrown into the sea or over a precipice.[844] Perhaps it was both a propitiatory sacrifice and a scape-animal, carrying away the disease, though the rite may be connected with the former slaying of a divine animal whose death benefited all the cattle of the district. In the Hebrides the spirits of earth and air were propitiated every quarter by throwing outside the door a c.o.c.k, hen, duck, or cat, which was supposed to be seized by them. If the rite was neglected, misfortune was sure to follow. The animal carried away evils from the house, and was also a propitiatory sacrifice.

The blood of victims was sprinkled on altars, images, and trees, or, as among the Boii, it was placed in a skull adorned with gold.[845] Other libations are known mainly from folk-survivals. Thus Breton fishermen salute reefs and jutting promontories, say prayers, and pour a gla.s.s of wine or throw a biscuit or an old garment into the sea.[846] In the Hebrides a curious rite was performed on Maundy Thursday. After midnight a man walked into the sea, and poured ale or gruel on the waters, at the same time singing:

"O G.o.d of the sea, Put weed in the drawing wave, To enrich the ground, To shower on us food."

Those on sh.o.r.e took up the strain in chorus.[847] Thus the rite was described by one who took part in it a century ago, but Martin, writing in the seventeenth century, gives other details. The cup of ale was offered with the words, "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you will be so kind as to send plenty of seaweed for enriching our ground for the ensuing year." All then went in silence to the church and remained there for a time, after which they indulged in an orgy out-of-doors. This orgiastic rite may once have included the intercourse of the s.e.xes--a powerful charm for fertility. "Shony" was some old sea-G.o.d, and another divinity of the sea, Brianniul, was sometimes invoked for the same purpose.[848] Until recently milk was poured on "Gruagach stones" in the Hebrides, as an offering to the Gruagach, a brownie who watched over herds, and who had taken the place of a G.o.d.[849]

PRAYER.

Prayer accompanied most rites, and probably consisted of traditional formulae, on the exact recital of which depended their value. The Druids invoked a G.o.d during the mistletoe rite, and at a Galatian sacrifice, offered to bring birds to destroy gra.s.shoppers, prayer was made to the birds themselves.[850] In Mona, at the Roman invasion, the Druids raised their arms and uttered prayers for deliverance, at the same time cursing the invaders, and Boudicca invoked the protection of the G.o.ddess Andrasta in a similar manner.[851] Chants were sung by the "priestesses"

of Sena to raise storms, and they were also sung by warriors both before and after a battle, to the accompaniment of a measured dance and the clas.h.i.+ng of arms.[852] These warrior chants were composed by bards, and probably included invocations of the war-G.o.ds and the recital of famous deeds. They may also have been of the nature of spells ensuring the help of the G.o.ds, like the war-cries uttered by a whole army to the sound of trumpets.[853] These consisted of the name of a G.o.d, of a tribe or clan, or of some well-known phrase. As the recital of a divine name is often supposed to force the G.o.d to help, these cries had thus a magical aspect, while they also struck terror into the foe.[854] Warriors also advanced dancing to the fray, and they are depicted on coins dancing on horseback or before a sword, which was wors.h.i.+pped by the Celts.[855] The Celtiberian festival at the full moon consisted entirely of dancing. The dance is a primitive method of expressing religious emotion, and where it imitates certain actions, it is intended by magical influence to crown the actions themselves with success. It is thus a kind of acted prayer with magical results.