Celtic Religion | Page 4

witness to the religious zeal of a mind that was haunted by stone.
Before proceeding to exemplify this thesis the subsequent trend of
Celtic civilisation may be briefly sketched.
Through the pacific intercourse of commerce, bronze weapons and
implements began to find their way, about 2000 B.C. or earlier, from
Central and Southern Europe into Gaul, and thence into Britain. In
Britain the Bronze Age begins at about 1500 or 1400 B.C., and it is
thought by some archaeologists that bronze was worked at this period
by the aid of native tin in Britain itself. There are indications, however,
that the introduction of bronze into Britain was not by way of
commerce alone. About the beginning of the Bronze period are found
evidences in this island of a race of different type from that of neolithic
man, being characterised by a round skull and a powerful build, and by
general indications of a martial bearing. The remains of this race are
usually found in round barrows.
This race, which certainly used bronze weapons, is generally believed

to have been the first wave that reached Britain of Aryan conquerors of
Celtic speech from the nearest part of the continent, where it must have
arrived some time previously, probably along the Rhine valley. As the
type of Celtic speech that has penetrated farthest to the west is that
known as the Goidelic or Irish, it has not unreasonably been thought
that this must have been the type that arrived in Britain first. There are
indications, too, that it was this type that penetrated furthest into the
west of Gaul. Its most marked characteristic is its preservation of the
pronunciation of U as 'oo' and of QU, while the 'Brythonic' or Welsh
variety changed U to a sound pronounced like the French 'u' or the
German 'u' and also QU to P. There is a similar line of cleavage in the
Italic languages, where Latin corresponds to Goidelic, and Oscan and
Umbrian to Brythonic. Transalpine Gaul was probably invaded by
Aryan-speaking Celts from more than one direction, and the infiltration
and invasion of new- comers, when it had once begun, was doubtless
continuous through these various channels. There are cogent reasons
for thinking that ultimately the dominant type of Celtic speech over the
greater part of Gaul came to be that of the P rather than the QU type,
owing to the influx from the East and Northeast of an overflow from
the Rhine valley of tribes speaking that dialect; a dialect which, by
force of conquest and culture, tended to spread farther and farther West.
Into Britain, too, as time went on, the P type of Celtic was carried, and
has survived in Welsh and Cornish, the remnants of the tongue of
ancient Britain. We know, too, from the name Eporedia (Yvrea), that
this dialect of Celtic must have spread into Cisalpine Gaul. The latter
district may have received its first Celtic invaders direct from the
Danube valley, as M. Alexandre Bertrand held, but it would be rash to
assume that all its invaders came from that direction. In connection,
however, with the history of Celtic religion it is not the spread of the
varying types of Celtic dialect that is important, but the changes in the
civilisation of Gaul and Britain, which reacted on religious ideas or
which introduced new factors into the religious development of these
lands.
The predatory expeditions and wars of conquest of military Celtic
tribes in search for new homes for their superfluous populations
brought into prominence the deities of war, as was the case also with

the ancient Romans, themselves an agricultural and at the same time a
predatory race. The prominence of war in Celtic tribal life at one stage
has left us the names of a large number of deities that were identified
with Mars and Bellona, though all the war-gods were not originally
such. In the Roman calendar there is abundant evidence that Mars was
at one time an agricultural god as well as a god of war. The same, as
will be shown later, was the probable history of some of the Celtic
deities, who were identified in Roman times with Mars and Bellona.
Caesar tells us that Mars had at one time been the chief god of the
Gauls, and that in Germany that was still the case. In Britain, also, we
find that there were several deities identified with Mars, notably
Belatucadrus and Cocidius, and this, too, points in the direction of a
development of religion under military influence. The Gauls appear to
have made great strides in military matters and in material civilisation
during the Iron Age. The culture of the Early Iron Age of Hallstatt had
been developed in Gaul on characteristic lines of its own, resulting in
the form