The Religion of the Ancient Celts | Page 5

or, in some cases, popular gods whose cult passed beyond the
tribal bounds. If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the
local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be
made to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere
the same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in
local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul. Moreover, the comparison of the
various testimonies of onlookers points to a general similarity, while
the permanence of the primitive elements in Celtic religion must have
tended to keep it everywhere the same. Though in Gaul we have only
inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those testimonies,
as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both regions, point to the
similarity of religious phenomena. The Druids, as a more or less
organised priesthood, would assist in preserving the general likeness.
Thus the primitive nature-spirits gave place to greater or lesser gods,
each with his separate department and functions. Though growing
civilisation tended to separate them from the soil, they never quite lost
touch with it. In return for man's worship and sacrifices, they gave life
and increase, victory, strength, and skill. But these sacrifices, had been
and still often were rites in which the representative of a god was slain.
Some divinities were worshipped over a wide area, most were gods of
local groups, and there were spirits of every place, hill, wood, and
stream. Magic rites mingled with the cult, but both were guided by an
organised priesthood. And as the Celts believed in unseen gods, so they
believed in an unseen region whither they passed after death.
Our knowledge of the higher side of Celtic religion is practically a
blank, since no description of the inner spiritual life has come down to
us. How far the Celts cultivated religion in our sense of the term, or had
glimpses of Monotheism, or were troubled by a deep sense of sin, is
unknown. But a people whose spiritual influence has later been so great,

must have had glimpses of these things. Some of them must have
known the thirst of the soul for God, or sought a higher ethical standard
than that of their time. The enthusiastic reception of Christianity, the
devotion of the early Celtic saints, and the character of the old Celtic
church, all suggest this.
The relation of the Celtic church to paganism was mainly intolerant,
though not wholly so. It often adopted the less harmful customs of the
past, merging pagan festivals in its own, founding churches on the sites
of the old cult, dedicating sacred wells to a saint. A saint would visit
the tomb of a pagan to hear an old epic rehearsed, or would call up
pagan heroes from hell and give them a place in paradise. Other saints
recall dead heroes from the Land of the Blessed, and learn the nature of
that wonderland and the heroic deeds
"Of the old days, which seem to be Much older than any history That is
written in any book."
Reading such narratives, we gain a lesson in the fine spirit of Christian
tolerance and Christian sympathy.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] Some writers saw in the bardic poetry a Druidic-esoteric system and
traces of a cult practised secretly by the bards--the "Neo-Druidic
heresy"; see Davies, _Myth. of the Brit. Druids_, 1809; Herbert, _The
Neo-Druidic Heresy_, 1838. Several French writers saw in "Druidism"
a monotheistic faith, veiled under polytheism.
[3] Livy, v. 46; Cæsar, vi. 16; Dion. Hal. vii. 70; Arrian, Cyneg. xxxv.
1.
[4] Cæsar, vi. 15, cf. v. 12, "having waged war, remained there and
cultivated the lands."
[5] Cf. Pliny, HN xvii. 7, xviii. 18 on the wheeled ploughs and
agricultural methods of Gauls and Britons. Cf. also Strabo, iv. 1. 2, iv.
5. 5; Girald. Camb. _Top. Hib._ i. 4, _Descr. Camb._ i. 8; Joyce, SH ii.

264.
CHAPTER II.
THE CELTIC PEOPLE.
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, various types of Irishmen.
Men with Norse names and Norse aspect "have the Gaelic." But all
alike have the same character and temperament, a striking witness to
the influence which the character as well as the language of the Celts,
whoever they were, made on all with whom they mingled.
Ethnologically there may not be a Celtic race, but something was
handed down from the days of comparative Celtic purity which welded
different social elements into a common type, found often where no
Celtic tongue is now spoken. It emerges where we least expect it, and
the stolid Anglo-Saxon may suddenly awaken to something in himself
due to a forgotten Celtic strain in his ancestry.
Two main theories of Celtic origins