The Religion of the Ancient Celts

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The Religion of the Ancient Celts

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Title: The Religion of the Ancient Celts
Author: J. A. MacCulloch
Release Date: January 12, 2005 [EBook #14672]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE RELIGION
OF THE

ANCIENT CELTS
BY
J.A. MACCULLOCH

HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE
CATHEDRAL
AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY" "RELIGION: ITS
ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE" "THE
CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND
PRIMITIVE THOUGHT"
Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
1911
Printed by
MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO.
LIMITED.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
TO
ANDREW LANG

PREFACE

The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent
growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study, earlier
writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and connected the
religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains of a monotheistic
faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under polytheistic cults.
With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois de Jubainville
in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts by such scholars
as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to have dawned,
and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of Celtic
religion. In this country the place of honour among students of that
religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures On the
Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom
(1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since
that time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable
researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I
would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his
Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on The Arthurian
Legend, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school,
and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the
darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host
of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer,
studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and
in the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement
with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced
that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in spite of
his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must remain as a
source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently the studies of
M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable little book on
Celtic Religion, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh ground.[1]
In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and have
endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of view
and in the light of the anthropological method. I have also interpreted
the earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals over the Celtic area
wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so. The results are summarised
in the introductory chapter of the work, and students of religion, and
especially of Celtic religion, must judge how far they form a true

interpretation of the earlier faith of our Celtic forefathers, much of
which resembles primitive religion and folk-belief everywhere.
Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and we are
left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the existing
materials, and to the light shed on them by the comparative study of
religions. As this book was written during a long residence in the Isle
of Skye, where the old language of the people still survives, and where
the genius loci speaks everywhere of things remote and strange, it may
have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than in a
busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how much
would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited his
former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters
which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not be!
I have to