Celtic Religion

Celtic Religion

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Title: Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times
Author: Edward Anwyl

Release Date: March 23, 2006 [eBook #18041]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC
RELIGION***

Transcribed from the 1906 Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd. edition by
David Price, [email protected]

CELTIC RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES
By EDWARD ANWYL, M.A.
LATE CLASSICAL SCHOLAR OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF WELSH AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AT
THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH
ACTING-CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL WELSH BOARD FOR
INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION
LONDON ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD 16 JAMES
STREET HAYMARKET 1906
Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

FOREWORD
It is only as prehistoric archaeology has come to throw more and more
light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become
possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern
viewpoint. The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to
numerous writers on this subject, but his researches into some portions
of the field especially have suggested to him the possibility of giving a
new presentation to certain facts and groups of facts, which the existing
evidence disclosed. It is to be hoped that a new interest in the religion
of the Celts may thereby be aroused.
E. ANWYL.
ABERYSTWYTH, February 15, 1906.

CHAPTER I
--INTRODUCTORY: THE CELTS
In dealing with the subject of 'Celtic Religion' the first duty of the
writer is to explain the sense in which the term 'Celtic' will be used in
this work. It will be used in reference to those countries and districts
which, in historic times, have been at one time or other mainly of Celtic
speech. It does not follow that all the races which spoke a form of the
Celtic tongue, a tongue of the Indo-European family, were all of the
same stock. Indeed, ethnological and archaeological evidence tends to
establish clearly that, in Gaul and Britain, for example, man had lived
for ages before the introduction of any variety of Aryan or
Indo-European speech, and this was probably the case throughout the
whole of Western and Southern Europe. Further, in the light of
comparative philology, it has now become abundantly clear that the
forms of Indo-European speech which we call Celtic are most closely
related to those of the Italic family, of which family Latin is the best
known representative. From this it follows that we are to look for the
centre of dissemination of Aryan Celtic speech in some district of
Europe that could have been the natural centre of dissemination also for
the Italic languages. From this common centre, through conquest and
the commercial intercourse which followed it, the tribes which spoke
the various forms of Celtic and Italic speech spread into the districts
occupied by them in historic times. The common centre of radiation for
Celtic and Italic speech was probably in the districts of Noricum and
Pannonia, the modern Carniola, Carinthia, etc., and the neighbouring
parts of the Danube valley. The conquering Aryan-speaking Celts and
Italians formed a military aristocracy, and their success in extending the
range of their languages was largely due to their skill in arms,
combined, in all probability, with a talent for administration. This
military aristocracy was of kindred type to that which carried Aryan
speech into India and Persia, Armenia and Greece, not to speak of the
original speakers of the Teutonic and Slavonic tongues. In view of the
necessity of discovering a centre, whence the Indo-European or Aryan
languages in general could have radiated Eastwards, as well as
Westwards, the tendency to-day is to regard these tongues as having

been spoken originally in some district between the Carpathians and the
Steppes, in the form of kindred dialects of a common speech. Some
branches of the tribes which spoke these dialects penetrated into
Central Europe, doubtless along the Danube, and, from the Danube
valley, extended their conquests together with their various forms of
Aryan speech into Southern and Western Europe. The proportion of
conquerors to conquered was not uniform in all the countries where
they held sway, so that the amount of Aryan blood in their resultant
population varied greatly. In most cases, the families of the original
conquerors, by their skill in the art of war and a certain instinct of
government, succeeded in making their own tongues the dominant
media of communication in the lands where they ruled, with the result
that most of the languages of Europe to-day are of the Aryan or
Indo-European type.