[Gutenberg 18041] • Celtic Religion / in Pre-Christian Times

Intro...

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. It does not, however, follow necessarily from this

that the early religious ideas or the artistic civilisation of countries

now Aryan in speech, came necessarily from the conquerors rather than the

conquered. In the last century it was long held that in countries of

Aryan speech the essential features of their civilisation, their

religious ideas, their social institutions, nay, more, their inhabitants

themselves, were of Aryan origin.