A huntress goddess of the Black Forest in Germany. She is accompanied by a hunting dog.
Some of the southern Gaulish altars of the Roman-Celtic period are very small. The ones that have survived are made of stone, though it is possible some were wooden. This is reminiscent of the small, portable altars used by the early Christian missionaries, who may well have borrowed this practice from the pagan Celts.
The small altars have religious symbols carved on their fronts, such as a swastika or a wheel, to show dedication to the sun god or sky god. Some have an extra symbol, a palm branch or conifer, that may be a fertility symbol.
Larger altars have carved plinths and cornices, showing classical influence, and they too have a religious symbol or two carved on them.
The altar from Tresques in the Lower Rhône Valley is of particular interest in having a seven-spoked wheel on one side and a rosette with seven petals on the other. The circularity of the two symbols and the repetition of the division into seven suggest that they were connected in some way.
Another altar from the Rhône Valley shows signs that deliberate attempts were made to deface the religious symbols; this may have been the work of Christians.
Some altars were dedicated to two gods at once, such as Jupiter and Silvanus. An altar from Alesia shows a god seated on a throne that is carved with wheels; he is accompanied by an eagle.
Altars in the Rhineland and Britain were significantly different than the Gaulish altars. They were much more Roman in style, and this is a reflection of their military character; they were set up by the legions, who were bound to be more Romanized than the civilian communities of the Celtic west. One outstanding example is the altar found at Cologne. It has a very realistic carving of a wheel below a well-carved inscription to Jupiter.
The altars found along Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England are standard Roman military monuments in every way except that they bear a Celtic not a Roman religious symbol: the wheel.
The consort of the god Lenus at Trier.
A war goddess in Britain, according to Dio Cassius (see Sacred Grove).
The Irish god of youth and beauty, and one of the Tuatha dé Danann, the gods of the ancient Irish, who later became the heroic fairies, the Daoine Sidhe. Their king, the Daghda, allocated to them his realms and palaces. He took two palaces for himself, gave one to Lug, son of Ethne, and one to Ogma, but his son Angus Mac Og was away, and so was forgotten. When he returned and complained about being disinherited, the Daghda ceded his own palace on the Boyne (probably the Newgrange passage grave) to him for a day and a night. Angus was not satisfied with this, and claimed the Brug na Boinne for himself forever.
See Annwn.
The Celtic Underworld, ruled over by Arawn. Annwn is not a place of punishment or everlasting lamentation, but an Otherworldly place where the power of the ancestors resides (see Otherworld). Mortal men and women are allowed to visit Annwn and return to the world of the living. From it the Wild Hunt rides out.
The boar goddess of the Ardennes is shown riding a wild boar.
See Don.
The bear goddess.
A healing god in Celtic Gaul. In the Romano-Celtic period, he was associated with Apollo, and sometimes called Apollo Atepomarus. Small figurines of horses were offered to him at some of Apollo’s healing sanctuaries, such as Sainte-Sabine in Burgundy.
The root epo refers to the word for “horse,” as in Epona, and the name “Atepomarus” as a whole has been translated as “Great Horseman” or “possessing a great horse.
An Irish war goddess. She is a battle Fury, appearing on the battlefield to confront Cú Chulainn. In this mythic confrontation, she drives a chariot, wears a red cloak, and has red eyebrows; she is intent on terrifying the young hero.
Badb can shapeshift into Badb Catha, “The Battle Raven.” In this form she flaps round the battlefield, picking over the corpses of fallen warriors, and revels in the bloodshed.
Pronounced and often spelled “banshee,” this refers to the Gaelic fairy woman, the best known of the Celtic fairies from Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. She is known as Bean-Nighe, “The Little Washer by the Ford,” because she is often seen by the side of the stream, washing the bloodstained clothes of those about to die.
A god commonly worshiped 1,800 years ago along the western half of Hadrian’s Wall.
A common Celtic healer god, often associated in the minds of the Romans with Apollo. Belenus was popular in central and southern Gaul and northern Italy, especially, it seems, in the old Celtic kingdom of Noricum in the eastern Alps. Tertullian says he was the special deity there.
Ausonius, a poet writing in Bordeaux in the fourth century AD, mentions that there were sanctuaries dedicated to Belenus in south-western France. He mentions one of the temple priests of the Belenus cult by name: Phoebicius. The link between Phoebicius, Phoebus, and Apollo suggests that this was an adopted name, acquired when he became a temple priest.
The name “Belenus” suggests that there may be a connection with the Celtic name for May Day, Beltane. If the word “Beltane” means “shining fire,” Belenus could have been a solar god, and this would explain his “translation” as Apollo, who was also a sun god.
A major Celtic annual festival that falls on May 1, May Day, and marks the start of the summer half of the year. The first element, bel, probably means “shining” or “brilliant.” The second element, tane or tene, means “fire.” This great festival marking the start of summer was celebrated by big gatherings of people and the lighting of May fires. Livestock were driven between twin bonfires to protect them from disease. It is said by some folklorists that the dancing that accompanied this was a ritual enactment of the sun’s movement through the sky.
May Day was celebrated as a major festival in various parts of the western Celtic region, especially in southern Britain. The festivities of Tudor England were described in detail:
Against May-day every parish, town and village assemble themselves together, both men, women and children, old and young. They go to the woods and groves, some to the hills and mountains, where they spend all the night in pleasant pastimes; and in the morning they return bringing with them birch boughs and branches of trees with which to deck their houses.
But their chief jewel they bring with them is their may-pole, which they bring home with great care; they have twenty or forty yoke of oxen, every ox having a sweet nosegay of flowers placed on the top of his horns, and these oxen draw this may-pole which is covered all over with flowers and herbs, bound round about with strings from the top to the bottom, and sometimes painted with different colours, with two or three hundred men, women and children following it.
And this being reared up with handkerchiefs and flags streaming on the top, they strew the ground about, bind boughs about it, set up the summer halls, bowers and arbours hard by it; and then they fall to leap and dance about it.
Maypole dancing was certainly a major feature of the May Day festivities by the late Middle Ages, but no one really knows how old this custom is. The emphasis on celebrating outside, on going off into the woods and groves, is very reminiscent of the old Iron Age Celtic custom of open-air worship, and this suggests that it may be ancient. Maypole dancing is a custom that has survived in the lands of the Atlantic Celts (England, the Basque Country, Galicia, and Portugal), though it is carried on in other places too, such as Sweden and Germany.
As far as the British Isles are concerned, the Maypole seems to have been found mainly in England, which may be taken to suggest a Germanic origin rather than an indigenous western Celtic origin. The places in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland where Maypole dancing became established are said to have been in areas of English colonization, yet the earliest documented reference to a Maypole comes from a part of “Welsh Wales.” A Welsh poem written by Gryffedd ap Adda ap Dafydd in about 1350 describes how the people of Llanidloes in central Wales (a “non-English” area) erected a tall birch pole.
The custom of raising posts for ritual purposes has its beginnings back in the Neolithic and even before. It was common in those times to raise avenues and rings of posts, sometimes concentric rings of posts. This happened at Stanton Drew, Mount Pleasant, and most famously at Durrington Walls and Woodhenge. And single posts were raised at the site of Stonehenge as long ago as 7000 BC, in the Middle Stone Age.
Whenever the custom had its beginning, there were increasing numbers of references to Maypoles from AD 1350 on. By 1400 the custom was certainly well-established across southern Britain. The Maypole became a community symbol, a focus for communal endeavor. There was a negative aspect of this: they became trophies. In Hertfordshire and Warwickshire in the early seventeenth century, people stole the Maypoles belonging to neighboring villages, which could lead to violent skirmishes.
The anarchic and disorderly behavior surrounding the May Day festivities brought an ever-increasing tide of disapproval from some Protestant groups in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Under the Protestant Edward VI, many Maypoles, such as the famous Cornhill Maypole in London, were destroyed. A Maypole was stored under the eaves of the church of St. Andrew Undershaft in the City of London. Each spring it was taken out and set up for May Day, until 1517, when the riotous behavior of students brought the custom to an end. The Maypole itself survived until 1547 when a Puritan mob destroyed it as “a pagan idol.” Mary Tudor, who was intolerant in other ways, rather surprisingly allowed the reinstatement of Maypoles. But the rise of Presbyterianism in Scotland was to lead to their virtual extinction there.
The English Long Parliament’s ordinance of 1644 denounced Maypoles as “a Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness.” At Henley-in-Arden in 1655, officials stepped in to prevent them from being erected. The ordinance may have been flouted in many other places, while the authorities turned a blind eye to local custom. Maypole dancing became a symbol of resistance to the Long Parliament and to the Commonwealth that followed.
At the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Londoners put up Maypoles “at every crossway” as a sign that Old England was restored. The tallest of them was in the Strand; it was more than 130 feet (39m) high. It stood beside the church of St Mary-le-Strand until it was blown down by the wind in 1672.
The Maypole continued to be a symbol of “Merrie England” into the nineteenth century, when the tradition was developed by adding colored ribbons, which produced plaiting woven onto the pole as pairs of boys and girls danced around it. As the plaited ribbons became shorter, the dancers were brought closer to the pole, and closer and closer to one another. This type of quaint conceit was typical of much of the invented custom and folklore of the time.
In some areas, a rather different Maypole tradition developed, called garlanding—small hand-held sticks covered with intricate decorations made of flowers, greenery, and crepe paper. Children were encouraged to design and make these and take them to school on May Morning. A prize was often given for the best garland: it might be tea with the vicar.
The tallest surviving Maypoles in England are at Nun Monkton in North Yorkshire (88 feet/27m tall) and Barwick-in-Elmet (86 feet/26m).
The novel Fanny Hill (1750) contains a reference to a Maypole:
…and now, disengag’d from the shirt, I saw, with wonder and surprise, what? Not the play-thing of a boy, not the weapon of a man, but a maypole of so enormous a standard, that had proportions been observ’d, it must have belong’d to a young giant.
The author, John Cleland, may have picked up a long-standing colloquial use of “Maypole” as a euphemism for “penis.” This is a long way from proving that Maypoles were intended to have a phallic significance. Disentangling folklore from fakelore is often difficult.
A very tall cannibal hag with blue face and iron claws. She is said to live in a cave in the Dane Hills in Leicestershire, England. There was a great oak tree at the entrance to the cave and Black Annis was said to hide in the tree in order to leap down onto stray children and lambs and devour them. It is also said that she gouged the cave out of the rock with her own claws.
Frightening stories about Black Annis were still told in the early twentieth century. Children were told that you could hear her grinding her teeth as she approached, which gave people just enough time to bolt their doors and step back well away from the windows. It was possible for Annis to get in through windows, and this was why Leicestershire cottages had small windows (or so it was said). Annis could reach in through a window, with her long arms, and snatch a baby.
By ancient custom, on Easter Monday there was a drag hunt from Annis’ Bower to the Mayor of Leicester’s house. The dragged bait was a dead cat doused with aniseed. The drag hunt died out at the end of the eighteenth century. The connection is that Black Annis had a monstrous cat.
Annis may be a late version of Anu, a Celtic mother goddess.
The Boyne River. Angus the Young is the son of the Daghda by Boanna: he is the Irish god of love (see Angus Mac Og). His palace is believed to be at the Newgrange passage grave, which stands beside the Boyne.
Boanna is also the goddess of the river, “She of the White Cows”.
There is a legend about Boanna, who is detained by Nechtan when she questions the power of his sacred spring, which is the source of knowledge.
See Borvo.
See Borvo.
See Borvo.
Borvo, Bormo, or Bormanus was a Gaulish god associated with hot springs. The name means “bubbling or boiling spring water.” Although connected with healing, Borvo appears by himself, not usually linked with Apollo. This implies that his was an exclusively Celtic cult: one that was not taken up by the Romans.
Worship of Borvo was common in the Rhône and Loire valleys, Provence, the Alps, and Galicia. He had major cult sites at Bourbonne-les-Bains and Aix-les-Bains and sometimes had a female consort called Bormana; she even appears by herself at the healing spring of St. Vulbas.
Borvo’s female consort was Damona, “The Divine Cow.”
In around AD 900, Brighid was said to be expert in poetry, divination, and prophecy, and was worshiped by the filidh, an elite class of poets (see People: Learning). She was the daughter of the Daghda and had two sisters also called Brighid, one associated with healing and one with the smith’s craft. So there were three goddesses called Brighid, which is an interesting example of triplism, or the rule of three.
Ironically, Brighid has survived in the shape of her namesake, the Christian St. Brighid. Lady Gregory, in her Gods and Fighting Men, proposes that the name “Brighid” meant “Fiery Arrow.”
The historical element in St. Brighid is slight, so it is likely that the “Christian saint” is a disguised transformation of the Celtic goddess. Her cult was legitimized by the prefix “Saint”—the Church could scarcely object to the veneration of a saint. St. Brighid’s feast day is February 1, which is the major pre-Christian Celtic festival of Imbolg, the spring festival.
St. Brighid was born at sunrise neither within nor without a house and she hangs her wet cloak on the rays of the sun to dry. The house in which she stays appears to be ablaze. She and 19 of her nuns take turns in looking after a sacred flame that burns perpetually; it is protected by a hedge through which no male may pass. This legend brings the saint close to the Celtic goddess Sulis. According to Solinus, writing in the third century AD, the sanctuary of Minerva (known by the Celtic name Sulis) also contained a perpetual fire.
No clear boundary can be drawn between the life of the Christian saint and the Celtic goddess. The mortal St. Brighid is supposed to have lived in the fifth century AD.
It is very likely that St. Brighid’s great monastery of Kildare was originally a pagan sanctuary. There are stories that in the remote past a community of Druidesses lived there and that they were responsible for maintaining the sacred fire that burned there; by virtue of their duty they were known as the Daughters of Fire. Gerald of Wales mentioned this, stressing the Christian connections of the place, though without disguising its evident paganism. This is the sacred fire surrounded by the hedge that no man was allowed to pass through.
Other Christian monastic sites probably occupied pre-Christian foundations in a similar way. The holy well that bears St. Brighid’s name at Liscannor in County Clare may have had an earlier existence as another pre-Christian sacred spring.
Brigantia, “Exalted One”, who was the protectress of the Brigantes tribe, is likely to have been another transformation of Sulis-Brighid.
A megalith in the shape of a chair. A fairy is believed to sit in the chair at night.
See Lughnasad.
The house of the fairies. In Galicia, dolmens or megalithic tombs are said to be the homes of fairies, who are associated with the dead. In a similar way in Brittany, megalithic tombs are known as the Maison des Korrigans. Rock-cut tombs are known as fairies’ beds (see Cadeira da Moura; Mouras Encantada).
An important stag-antlered fertility god, Cernunnos is usually shown as a male human figure sitting cross-legged, Buddha-like, on the ground. On the Paris relief known as the Tiberian Sailors’ Pillar, he is shown with stag’s ears and a torc hanging from each antler; the image bears the name “Cernunnos,” which means “Horned One.” The image is found in Britain, but it is more common in Gaul, where more than 30 examples are known. One bronze image from Bouray shows the god sitting cross-legged as usual, but instead of human feet he has the hooves of a stag.
Not all of these horned nature gods are named, but the label “Cernunnos” is commonly used to describe them all. Most of these images (as for most of the other gods) are late, but there is a Val Camonica carving of Cernunnos that was made as early as the fourth century BC, so his worship prevailed across a long time span.
The finest, most spectacular image of Cernunnos is the one on the Gundestrup cauldron, where he is shown as lord of the animals, accompanied by his stag, his ram-horned snake, his boar, and his bull. Cernunnos and his stag are as one: the artist has very deliberately made the antlers of Cernunnos and the antlers on the stag beside him exactly the same.
He is a god of the forest, of nature, of fertility, of fecundity, and therefore of human prosperity. This is reinforced by an impressive stone relief from Rheims, on which Cernunnos is shown with a sack of money; the coins flow out in a copious stream. Underneath him are a stag and a bull and he is flanked by two naked youths.
At Sommerécourt, a sculpture of Cernunnos was found with sockets in the god’s head where bronze or perhaps even real antlers were fitted. As usual, he sits cross-legged, but this time he is accompanied by a goddess as well as ram-horned snakes. Another image shows Cernunnos flanked by two youths who are standing on snakes.
A bronze image from Curgy (Seine et Loire) is of special interest. The god is sitting cross-legged, but this time he has three heads, perhaps for emphasis. He is feeding two ram-horned snakes with fruit piled up in his lap; the serpents coil round his body. The central head has sockets for the fitting of antlers.
Cernunnos was evidently a mainly Gaulish deity; there are few images of him in Britain. This implies that he was an imported deity, but he was not imported by the Romans. A pre-Roman Celtic silver coin has been found at Petersfield in Hampshire, showing Cernunnos with a sun wheel between his antlers. This is a link across to the image of Cernunnos on the Gundestrup cauldron, where he is also associated with a wheel god.
It would be possible to describe more individual examples of Cernunnos images, and there were lots of complex variations. One key recurring feature is his association with the stag. Another is the ram-horned snake. The overall impression is one of well-being and prosperity. Cernunnos is a god of nature, perhaps the god of nature, as well as the god of fruit, of corn, of beasts, and of plenty. The close co-existence of stag and stag god imply shapeshifting; Cernunnos could perhaps appear as a stag and a stag might metamorphose into the god.
With the arrival of Christianity, the old horned gods, especially very powerful horned gods such as Cernunnos, became identified with the Devil. Looked at objectively, there is no reason to see Cernunnos as anything other than totally benign, but those conditioned by a Christian upbringing are likely to be uneasy about a god wearing horns.
A god commonly worshiped along Hadrian’s Wall. “Cocidius” means “Red One.”
At Otterburn, just below the summit of a ridge, is a square chamber 7 feet (2m) across tucked away among huge slabs of rock. It is a natural chamber that was apparently used in antiquity as a shrine to Cocidius. Originally it had a roof over it. On the right, at the entrance, is a slab with a carefully carved image of Cocidius cut into it. He is shown naked, with a large, pear-shaped head, and he is waving a spear and a round shield.
Cocidius was worshiped at several places along the western end of Hadrian’s Wall and always associated with the Roman legionaries, so it is particularly interestingly that his images are carved in indigenous Celtic style. It seems that, to this extent at least, the Roman soldiers in Britain “went native.”
This unique bronze calendar was found in France, near Bourg-en-Bresse, at the end of the nineteenth century. It was made in the Romano-Celtic period, in the reign of Augustus.
It was evidently made under the auspices of Druids, as it shows the Druidical belief in lucky and unlucky days. Each month is divided into a good half, marked MAT (“auspicious”) and a bad half, marked ANM (“inauspicious.”) These were appropriate and inappropriate times to act. This idea was shared by the Romans, and it is one that has in a very small way survived to the present, with the idea that the thirteenth day of the month (especially if it is a Friday) is an unlucky day.
The Ulster Cycle of tales includes an episode about Queen Medb of Connaught, in which she is prevented from joining battle for a fortnight when the Druids advise her to wait for an auspicious day to fight.
The Gauls counted in nights. This nocturnal custom may have been widespread in the Celtic west. Until relatively recently in Britain it was possible to speak of a “sennight” (seven-nights), meaning a week—Shakespeare used it. “Fortnight” (fourteen-nights) is still in general use for two weeks.
The Gauls’ month consisted of 29.5 days. The Druids seem to have wanted to reconcile the lunar calendar with the solar cycle, and did this by having a year of 12 months, alternately 29 and 30 days long, making a year of 354 days (or nights, as preferred). The difference between lunar and solar years was made up every 2.5 years by adding a thirteenth month. The years in turn formed cycles; according to Diodorus Siculus, great sacrificial ceremonies were held every five years, and there were “centuries” of 30 years that were used in assembling longer chronologies.
The Coligny calendar, covering a cycle of 62 consecutive months, was inscribed on a sheet of bronze and unfortunately exists only in a fragmentary state. But it is a very important object because it is the oldest extensive document in an ancient Celtic language. It uses Roman lettering and numerals, but its content is completely independent of the Roman calendar. It must have been made by Gaulish Druids. It is of outstanding interest in itself, but also because it has points in common with the Greek calendar, which in a similar way used an additional month every so often to catch up with the astronomical year. The month names also have similarities. The Gallic Ellembiu has its Greek equivalent in Elaphebolion, and the Gallic Equos in the Greek Hippios: both meaning “horse.” The Greek model was evidently an influence on the Druids.
There is no sign of anything like a Celtic timepiece, except in some of the sanctuaries, where there were isolated clusters of posts that could have been used as sun-dials.
Coventina was a northern British goddess. She presided over a spring inside a sacred enclosure that was bounded by a rough, stone wall. The spring fed a small pool, into which visitors threw offerings of jewelry, figurines, and coins. Pins were thrown in as well, and these are taken as associated with infants and childbirth. The goddess was a water nymph, and she may have been associated with water-associated child-bearing. Women may have appealed to her to help them through the ordeal of childbirth.
A beautiful carved plaque found at the shrine of Coventina at Carrawburgh in Northumberland shows three Coventinas, each sheltering under her own elegant archway.
Each goddess holds up a jar, as if toasting her worshiper. Their dresses are shown with parallel curving folds that cleverly suggest the rippling water that is Coventina’s element.
When Coventina’s Well was excavated in 1876 it was found to be crammed with votive offerings cast into it during the Roman occupation, though it is almost certain that the Romans took over and developed a pre-existing cult spring. There were more than 13,000 coins.
Thirteen stone altars depicting the goddess were thrown into the pool, and it is possible that these went in at a time when the sanctuary itself was in danger—they may have been thrown into the water to save them from desecration.
See Gobhniu.
According to Irish folk-tales, a god called Crom Cruach is Lord of the Mound. It was alleged by the anonymous eleventh-century monks who wrote The Book of Leinster that bloody rituals were performed in his name:
…They did evilly
beat on their palms, thumped their bodies,
wailing to the monster who enslaved them.
Their tears falling in showers.
In rank stood twelve idols of stone;
the figure of Crom was in gold.
Another writer alleged that “the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan were offered in sacrifice to the god Crom.” These sacrifices, it was said, took place on the Plain of Adoration in County Cavan.
An Irish semi-divine hero, the quintessential Celtic warrior, magnified to super-hero scale. Warriors were expected to bring home the head of an enemy as a trophy (see Headhunting). Cú Chulainn could hold nine trophy heads in one hand and ten in the other—and juggle them.
See Hooded Dwarves.
Cunomaglos is a Celtic epithet meaning “Hound Lord.”
At Nettleton Shrub in Wiltshire, the Roman god Apollo was known as hound lord. Apollo was a name the Romans gave to the Celtic healer gods. Dogs were used for hunting, but they were also associated with healing.
See The Daghda.
The Daghda, or Dagda, is wedded to the land by being married to the territorial goddess Boanna of the Boyne River. He is the Irish Father of all the Gods. His name may mean “All-Competent” and he is a very strong, club-swinging giant.
The union of Boanna and the Daghda is a classic example of a marriage between a nature goddess who nourishes the Earth and a tribal god, and the Daghda is a fertility figure. He owns a magic cauldron that never empties and possesses magical powers of rejuvenation. The water the cauldron contains is a fertility symbol. Water is regarded as playing a major role in healing.
The Dadhda’s other attribute is his magic club. With one end of it he can deal death to the living, and with the other life to the dead. When he drags it behind him it leaves a track as deep as the boundary ditch separating two provinces.
In spite of his great power and his position as father-figure among the gods, he is often treated as a figure of fun. Unlike Zeus or Jupiter, his counterparts in the Mediterranean cultures, he is ugly, rough, crude, pot-bellied, and wears peasant clothing. Short garments are the mark of the peasant and the vagabond entertainer, yet the Daghda’s tunic barely covers his backside. His clothes are uncouth, and his behavior is even more so. He is insatiably greedy for porridge and an anecdote in the Irish folk-tales tells how he was lured by the Fomhoire, a mysterious race of evil non-humans who settled in Ireland long ago and were driven out by the Tuatha de Danann, into eating a prodigious amount—a king’s cauldron full of it.
Yet the Daghda is also an accomplished harpist. The beautiful melodies he plays are, Vivaldi-like, cues to the passage of the seasons (see People: Music).
A female consort of the healing god (Apollo). At Bourbonne-Lancy there is an inscription that connects her with incubation, or healing sleep. At Alesia, she was the consort of Apollo Moritasgus, the Celtic god of hot springs. “Moritasgus” means “masses of sea-water.” Damona also appears as the consort of Borvo: she had two husbands.
See Don.
In his book On the Cessation of Oracles, Plutarch mentions what Demetrius reported regarding Britain:
Demetrius said that of the islands round Britain, many were deserted and scattered about, and some of them were named after demons and heroes. He said that, for the purpose of inquiry and investigation, by the emperor’s order, he sailed to the inhabited island which lay nearest to the deserted islands. It had only a few inhabitants, who were priests, and it was held sacred by the Britons.
Just after Demetrius landed on the island, there was a great disturbance in the air, and many meteors, and blasts of wind burst down, and whirlwinds descended. When it was calm again, the islanders said that the extinction had taken place of one of the superior powers, for, as they explained, a lamp when burning does no harm, but being put out is noxious to many people; in like manner great souls, when first kindled, are benign and harmless, whilst their going out and dissolution, often, as in the present case, stirs up stormy winds, and aerial tumults; it even infects the air with pestilential tendencies. In that region also, they said, Saturn was confined in one of the islands by Briareus, and lay asleep; for that his slumber had been artfully produced in order to chain him, and round about him were many daemons for his guards and servants.
Here, in the sleeping divine king, is one of the mystical ingredients in the Arthurian legend, but dating from long before the time of the historical Arthur.
Often a Celtic goddess is shown together with a god, whether Celtic or Roman. It can be difficult to tell which is the principal deity and which is the consort, though it is clear from Irish mythology that the female may be the dominant figure.
The Aedui, a Gaulish tribe, venerated a couple whose names have not been recorded. The goddess had a horn of plenty (see Symbols: Cornucopia) and patera (dish) as the badges of her prosperity role. Elsewhere the divine couples have inscriptions to accompany them, and where they do there is sometimes a link to a locality. At Luxeuil, we find Luxovius and Bricta. There are also Ucuetis and Bergusia. Sucellus and Nantosuelta are another couple.
Perhaps the most interesting divine couple in Britain were Mercury and Rosmerta. This was a mixed marriage: a Roman god paired with a Celtic goddess. A stone tablet found in Gloucester, at the Shakespeare Inn, shows the pair standing side by side. Mercury is naked, with caduceus, purse, and cockerel. Rosmerta is fully dressed and carrying a double-ax, patera, and wooden bucket. She is thought to be a version of the Celtic fertility goddess. Her name means “The Good Supplier,” which makes her a bringer of prosperity. Often she carries a basket of fruit or Mercury’s purse.
The couple collected some interesting associations in Britain. An image from Bath shows them with a ram and three hooded dwarves. Rosmerta’s bulging purse on a stone from Gloucester shows her importance for prosperity.
Don was the Welsh goddess who was the equivalent of the Irish goddess Dana. Dana is the Irish mother goddess of the Tuatha dé Danann, an ancestral figure associated with the land of Ireland. Possibly Don was an import from Ireland.
The Children of Don also correspond closely to the Children of Dana. Don had three children: Gwydion the Wizard, Gofannon the Smith (see Gobhniu), and Arianrhod, the mother of Llew.
The god presiding over the Irish Underworld. Donn means “Dark One.” Julius Caesar said the Gauls claimed they were descended from Dis Pater, who was the Roman Lord of the Underworld. It is unlikely that the Gauls literally claimed descent from a Roman god—Caesar was probably “translating” the Gaulish god into what he saw as the Roman equivalent—but the Celtic equivalent of Dis Pater was Donn. It is quite likely that the Gauls would have claimed descent from a common ancestor. Some gods, such as Lugh, were claimed as the ancestors of widely separated tribes.
Donn is difficult to trace, and it may be that the god Sucellus may, in some aspects, have carried out his role. There are representations of Sucellus with a hammer, and Dis Pater is also known to have had a hammer. So the Irish Donn may have been the same as the Gaullish Sucellus.
Donn’s Irish abode was a small, rocky island known as Tech Duinn, the House of Donn, off the southwest coast of Ireland. The people of Ireland were believed to travel to his island home when they died. This “going west,” quite literally into the sunset, was a common way of thinking of death and the journey to the afterlife.
The Druids were the most famous Celtic priests. The name may be derived from dru-uid, meaning “very wise.”
We have a romanticized view of the Druids thanks to the art, literature, and antiquarianism of the eighteenth century—a vision of dignified, long-haired, white-robed priests peacefully embowered in woodland clearings, cutting mistletoe from the boughs of sacred oaks with gold sickles, and presiding over religious ceremonies in the open air. Fanciful though the description sounds, it is partly true. Some of this is supported by contemporary classical writers. But the robes are unlikely to have been white: brown and blue woolen tartan was a likelier fabric, or unbleached, undyed wool.
We know about the Druids through the writings of several Greco-Roman writers, such as Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, and Julius Caesar. Unfortunately all three of these writers seem to base what they say on just one source, Posidonius, and what they say is strongly influenced by personal agenda. What they describe is a very powerful priesthood that was able to control Celtic society, but it is difficult to gauge how wide their influence really was. Caesar, for instance, talks about the Druids only in one passage in Book 6 of his Gallic Wars. Lucan’s comment that the Druids knew the secrets of the universe is thought to have been sarcastic.
Some commentators think that the influence of the Druids was more social than political, but there is evidence that they were the source of the power structure in the hierarchy of Celtic society. Under the impact of Rome, that hierarchy diminished in power, and the power of the Druids ebbed away too. So, as the Roman Empire encroached and impinged on the Celtic lands, the influence of the Druids gradually diminished and could not really have been much of a threat to Rome. Under the emperor Augustus, the Druids were tolerated, so long as they did not seek to interfere with Roman citizens. Under Tiberius, there was a clampdown, and Claudius tried hard to wipe Druidism out.
There was a Celtic rising in Gaul in AD 69–70, led by Civilis, and during this time the Druids made something of a comeback. In the third century they were still active, as they were recorded as making prophesies against Severus Alexander and Maximin, and in the fourth, when the Bordeaux poet Ausonius mentions two famous Druids and the tradition of father-to-son succession. The Irish sources also refer to Druids as prophets and soothsayers. Cathbad of Ulster was one of these.
From the references, it is clear that the Druids were a major religious force in both Gaul and Britain. They were also a political power, holding the balance between civil and military authorities and ensuring that any attempt at tyranny would fail.
Caesar said that the Druids had their main cult center in Britain and that that was where they originated. They were magicians and in their oral tradition was contained the entire liturgy, knowledge of religious ritual, and all the accumulated religious wisdom of the Celts. The Druids officiated at ceremonies in which the gods were worshipped; they supervised sacrifices and gave rulings on all religious questions. On a particular day each year they met at a sacred site in the territory of the Carnutes tribe, near Chartres in France, summoned by one who held authority over all of them. This gathering-place was regarded as the center of Gaul.
In a similar way, the Irish filidh had a leader who was elected from among their number, and they were closely associated with a place called Uisnech, the “navel” of Ireland. This was the location of the primal fire, and it is said that a great assembly was held there. The system in operation seems to have been pan-Celtic.
Pliny describes a feast that was prepared on the sixth day of the lunar cycle. It involved the Druids climbing a sacred oak tree where they cut down a mistletoe bough using a golden sickle and caught it in a white cloak. The ceremony also included the sacrifice of two bulls.
The Druids were heavily involved in divination and their role as prophets is well documented. They supervised the calendar and they were probably responsible for nominating certain days as lucky and others as unlucky. In both Gaul and Ireland there were traditions of lucky and unlucky days (see Coligny Calendar).
The classical writers were fascinated by the Druids’ role in carrying out human sacrifice. Though the Druids did not actually carry out sacrifices—lesser functionaries did that—their presence was necessary to validate them. Their main purpose in carrying out sacrifice was not propitiation of the gods but divination. Strabo (second century BC) says that the Druid soothsayers of the Cimbri tribe killed their victims with a sword stroke in the back and foretold the future from how they fell, the nature of the convulsions, and the flow of blood. The victims’ blood was collected and then examined carefully for further clues to the future.
The Druids were also alleged to be interested in harvesting mistletoe. So it is particularly significant that Lindow Man, the man murdered in Cheshire and buried in a bog, was found to have mistletoe as well as the remains of a griddle cake in his stomach. It looks as if he was a Druidic sacrifice (see Places: Lindow Moss).
It seems from a number of accounts that the Druids also made great use of bird-watching in divination.
The classical writers mentioned, but did not emphasize, a key role played by the Druids in transmitting knowledge. In a largely pre-literate society, memorizing and reciting knowledge handed down from an earlier generation was of great importance. The Druids worked hard to maintain this oral tradition, committing vast amounts of knowledge, both religious and scientific, to memory. Writing was used only for trade, which was regarded by the Druids as a profane activity.
The Druids also wanted to hold back the divine figuration—what the gods actually looked like—in much the same way that they wanted to keep their textual knowledge to themselves. Lucan describes the Druids as living deep in the forest, and claiming to know the secrets of the gods.
Normally very brief and concise, Julius Caesar had much to say about the Druids:
All the Druids are under one head, whom they hold in the highest regard… The Druidic doctrine is believed to have been originated in Britain and from there imported into Gaul; even today those who want to make a profound study of it generally go to Britain for the purpose. The Druids are exempt from military service and do not pay taxes like other citizens. These important privileges are naturally attractive: many present themselves of their own accord to become students of Druidism and others are sent by their parents and relatives. It is said that these pupils have to memorize a great number of verses—so many that some of them spend twenty years at their studies…
A lesson they take particular pains to inculcate is that the soul does not perish, but after death passes from one body to another; they think this is the best incentive to bravery, because it teaches men to disregard the terrors of death. They also hold long discussion about the heavenly bodies and their movements, the size of the universe and of the earth, the physical constitution of the world, and the power and properties of the gods; and they instruct the young men in all these subjects.
Professor Stuart Piggott had some very wise things to say about the Druids. One of them was that we have to distinguish between Druids-as-known and Druids-aswished-for. Druids-as-wished-for arrived, as if by stealth, during a slow Celtic revival starting in the sixteenth century.
Several French scholars interested themselves in the ancient Gauls, culminating in Noel Taillepied, who in 1585 wrote his book Histoire de l’Estat et Républiques des Druides (History of the State and Republics of the Druids). In 1623, M. I. Guenebault, a medical doctor from Dijon, published a find of a cinerary urn as Le Reveil de l’Antique Tombeau de Chyndonax, Prince des Vacies, Druides, Celtiques, Diionnois (The Discovery of the Ancient Tomb of Chyndonax, Prince of Vacies, Druids, Celts, and People of Dijon). Layers of speculative fantasy were added to these accounts during the following century, to a point where in 1649 the English antiquarian John Aubrey could just assume that monuments such as Avebury and Stonehenge were connected with the Druids. “Their [the ancient Britons’] religion is at large described by Caesar. Their priests were Druids. Some of their temples I pretend [i.e. claim] to have restored, as Avebury, Stonehenge, &c., as also British sepulchres.”
Aubrey’s modest inference was taken up by another English antiquarian, William Stukeley, in the 1740s and expanded into a largescale fantasy. By this time the word “Celt” was coming into general use as an alternative to “Briton.” In the end, Stukeley used “British” in his 1740 title, Stonehenge, a Temple Restor’d to the British Druids, closely followed in 1743 by Abury, a Temple of the British Druids. And Stukeley’s Druids were the precursors, somehow, of Christians. Stukeley wrote:
My intent is (besides preserving the memory of these extraordinary monuments, now in great danger of ruin) to promote, as much as I am able, the knowledge and practice of ancient and true Religion, to revive in the minds of the learned the spirit of Christianity.
This was Druids-as-wished-for on a grand scale (see Places: Anglesey).
The horse goddess Epona appears in the Roman-Celtic phase as part of a new repertoire of religious imagery. Some features connect her with the fertility and prosperity role of the mother goddesses. Many of the worshipers who made dedications to her were soldiers, especially cavalrymen. She is shown nearly always riding sidesaddle on a horse, or in the company of horses, but there are only a few representations of her in Britain.
Like the mother goddesses, Epona is sometimes associated with death, and she appears in cemeteries in Gaul. She seems to have been worshiped mainly in rural and domestic settings. The Celts regularly used mares as work animals on their farms. Epona was probably a patron saint of horsebreeding and regarded as the protectress of horsemen.
In Gaulish sanctuaries, she was associated with healing waters; at some of them she was shown naked, like a nymph.
Epona is distinctive among the Celtic gods and goddesses in being mentioned by Roman writers. Juvenal and Minucius Felix describe her as presiding over stables.
A Celtic god about whom little is known. Two stone reliefs carved in the first century AD show him as a woodcutter. They show an episode from a myth in which Esus played a part, but tell us little about his true mythic role (see Symbols: Crane). His name appears in only one inscription.
Lucan, writing in the first century AD, mentioned three Celtic gods—Esus, Teutates, and Taranis—as if they were of great importance. He may have been right, but in terms of the inscriptions they seem not to have been very important. This is a reminder that we need to be careful in taking what the classical writers said at face value. Sometimes they latched onto a cult practice because it had some particular interest to them, so they gave it greater importance than perhaps it had to the Celts. Julius Caesar, for example, writing about the Druids, had his own agenda: the ulterior motive of self-justification. A great deal of Celtic cult practice was in reality no odder than what was going on within the Roman belief system. The Romans seized on things that they could represent as obscene or weird and made much of them, things such as headhunting, human sacrifice, and divination by ritual murder.
A carved, stone plaque from Gloucester shows the divine couple Mercury and Rosmerta together with Fortuna. Mercury has a winged cap and caduceus. Rosmerta is also carrying a caduceus. Fortuna carries a horn of plenty and a rudder on a globe (see Symbols: Cornucopia; Wheel).
An Irish smith god, the Celtic Vulcan. He was known in Wales as Gofannon. Smiths had an aura of supernatural ability about them: an aura that probably dated back to the first Bronze Age metalworkers (see Symbols: Spear). They were figures who inspired respect, awe, and a certain amount of fear. The words of a hymn written in the eighth century AD ask for God’s help “against the spells of women and smiths and druids.”
There was an equivalent in Gaul, who was overlooked by Julius Caesar. The Gaulish Vulcan was given greater dignity and respect than his Roman counterpart, who was portrayed, like the Greek god Hephaistos, as a figure of fun.
Gobhniu, as Gobban the Wright, was also remembered in Irish folk-tales as a great builder, the master of all masons. He was one of a group of three craftsman gods. The others were Luchta the wright and Creidhne the metal-worker. In the Battle of Magh Tuiredh, these three gods provided the weapons for Lugh and the Tuatha dé Danann. Gobhniu forged the heads; Luchta made the shafts; and Creidhne made the rivets. Together the magic three formed a divine assembly line.
Gobhniu was host and provider at the Otherworld feast—the Feast of Gobhniu. Here there may be a link across to the Greek equivalent, Hephaistos, who is made to serve the gods with drink. A dim remembrance of the smith god’s role in feasting may be preserved in the Welsh laws, which stipulate that the smith of the court shall have the first drink at a feast (see People: Food and Feasting).
Julius Caesar commented that the Gauls (the Celts with whom he had most contact) were a profoundly religious people. This is true of the Celts in general, and they seem to have seen sanctity everywhere around them. Every mountain, spring, and river had its own deity. Celtic mythology has been described as “local and anarchical.”
One problem we have in identifying the deities worshiped by the Celts is that it is not always clear whether there were many gods or many different manifestations of one god. This is compounded by the processing of the Celtic pantheon by the Romans. Obviously it suited the mobile legions of the Roman army to be able to worship their gods wherever they happened to be, so “translating” local Celtic deities into their Roman equivalents was a useful exercise. The Romans seem to have assumed that the Celtic gods were “really” Roman gods, and it was just a question of identifying which was which.
Often these translated deities were addressed by both their Celtic and their Roman names, such as Sulis-Minerva at Bath or LenusMars at Trier, but Mars was tentatively paired with several Celtic gods with different characteristics, and they may have been separate guardian gods for different tribes. At Bath and Mainz, Mars Loucetius, “Brilliant Mars,” was given an entirely Celtic consort, in the form of Nemetona. Mercury was given a Celtic wife called Rosmerta, “The Good Provider,” who enhanced his fertility function.
Where divine couples existed, the goddess was the one who retained the Celtic name, while the god retained his Roman title. This may be connected with the tendency to associate Celtic goddesses with territory.
The Romans were more interested in an equivalence for the sake of making their soldiers’ lives easier, but their translations do not necessarily penetrate into the interior of the Celtic reality. They also used Roman art-forms to depict Celtic gods and goddesses who may not have had any iconography in the free Celtic world. Examples of Roman imagination being applied to Celtic deities include Epona, Sequana of the Seine, Artio of Berne, and Arduinna of the Ardennes.
A common Celtic theme is shapeshifting, the ability to change from one form into another. This may explain some of the weird hybrid images we see in the artwork: woodland gods that seem to be half-human, half-tree, or river nymphs that seem to be half-girl, half-water.
There was perhaps an element of cultural colonization in this Romanization of Celtic gods and goddesses, but there was no intention on the part of the Romans to belittle—rather the opposite. Quite a number of Celtic sanctuaries were taken up and enormously embellished and enhanced in the Roman occupation. Outstanding examples are the Celtic spring sanctuaries of Sulis at Bath and Nemausus at Nîmes.
The question remains unresolved: did the Celts have a large number of separate gods, or were they worshiping a smaller number with different names for different aspects, or different names in different places? The Celtic world was divided into many separate tribal territories, and it easy to imagine that each had its own local gods. If a tribe quarreled with a neighboring tribe, it would have imagined itself going into battle supported and led by its own unique guardian god, the god of the tribe, rather than a god shared with other tribes. The Daghda was a typical Irish tribal god. Distinct and different gods were part of the tribal sociopolitical system. In the Ulster Cycle, warriors swear by the gods of their tribe. On the other hand, the Druids operated across the whole of the Celtic world and they played a role in creating some uniformity, at least elements of a shared pantheon. This may be why some images are very widespread—the horned god, the mother goddess, and triplism (see Symbols: Rule of Three). And there were common recurring themes, such as springs, lakes, bogs, and rivers.
Caesar commented that Mercury was the most commonly worshiped god:
After him they honour Apollo, Mars, Jupiter and Minerva. Of these deities they have almost the same ideas as other peoples; Apollo drives away diseases, Minerva teaches the first principles of the arts and crafts, Jupiter rules the heavens and Mars controls the outcome of war.
He does not mention that the Celts had their own names for these and other gods, and he was oversimplifying when he said that their ideas were the same as those of “other peoples,” meaning of course the Romans; in this he is contradicted by such Celtic documents as survive. He does not allow for the existence of tribal gods such as the dea Brigantia and dea Tricoria, the goddesses of the Brigantes and Tricorii tribes.
Caesar gives us the Roman view: the Celtic world as seen through Roman eyes. He also does something more sinister, which is to make a pre-emptive strike at the Celtic pantheon by making it out to be unoriginal: a crude and second-rate copy of the Roman original. The reality is that the Celtic pantheon was far more complex, far richer, and far subtler.
In Galicia, the gold of the mouras (fairies) may be offered as a reward, or it may be found, perhaps in a vase or some other container. This is the Galician version of the fairies’ crock of gold.
On St. John’s Day, at midsummer, the fairies may appear with their treasures. The association of enchantment (or breaking enchantment) at the summer solstice suggests that this may be an ancient belief.
The Celtic Apollo, god of healing. Dio Cassius said that in AD 215 the emperor Caracalla was unable to find a cure at the shrines of Serapis, Aesculapius, or Grannus. A temple at Brigetio in Hungary was dedicated to Apollo Grannus and his consort Sirona.
According to Moroccan myth, every time a human is born in this world, a djinn called a Grine is born in another world: a world alongside our own. The actions of the human being influence the actions of the Grine, and the actions of the Grine influence those of the human. The Grine is a kind of spirit double.
Not very much is known about the detail of Celtic religious ceremonies, except that they involved the use of cult vessels, some of them very big. They were used from the Bronze Age onward and may be associated with water cults. The most famous of these cult vessels is the Gundestrup cauldron, which was found in Raevemose Bog in Gundestrup, Jutland, Denmark.
The Gundestrup cauldron is one of the most important pieces of ancient Celtic artwork that has survived. It is spectacular. It is large, over 2 feet (60cm) in diameter, and made of gilt silver. It is covered with decorations in low relief, showing several mythic scenes, and it tells us a great deal about Celtic beliefs in the first century BC. There is a cross-legged Celtic god and there is a snake with ram’s horns, but the imagery is not easy to interpret. There are certain motifs, such as the shield and war-trumpet, that are of La Tène type, and there are also symbols that are not known from any other places in western Europe. One scholar has pointed out that the nearest parallels in artwork are in Romania, and that suggests that the bowl itself may have come from there originally.
The seated stag-horned god must be the Celtic god Cernunnos, and he belongs to the Celtic west, so the imagery seems to be a hybrid, representing religious beliefs from both sides of Europe. That in itself is interesting; why would a wealthy patron, whoever it was, commission a ritual vessel that combined the religious iconography of his own region with that of another? What could the motive have been?
A wizard and bard of North Wales who is one of the sons of the Welsh goddess Don. In the Mabinogion, he performed many works of magic aimed against the men of South Wales.
The male human head is an image that recurs again and again in Celtic religious art. Everything that made a man what he was resided in his head; it was the seat of the soul. When a warrior killed his enemy in battle, he owned the body of his victim and could dispose of it as he wished. It was his privilege, his right, to take the head if he wanted it as a battle trophy.
This widespread custom appears frequently in accounts by early historians. Here is one, by Diodorus Siculus, writing in about 40 BC:
They cut off the heads of enemies killed in battle and attach them to the necks of their horses. The bloodstained spoils they hand over to their attendants and carry off as booty, while striking up a paean and singing a customary song of victory; and they nail up these first fruits upon their houses just as do those who lay low wild animals in certain kinds of hunting. They embalm the heads of their most distinguished enemies in cedar-oil and preserve them carefully in a chest, and display them with pride to strangers, saying that one of their ancestors, or his father, or the man himself, refused the offer of a large sum of money for this head. They say that some of them boast that they refused the weight of the head in gold, thus displaying what is only a barbarous kind of magnanimity.
Strabo repeated this account almost word for word, but adding that Posidonius, whose lost work was used by both writers, had actually seen such heads on display in many places when he had traveled through southern Gaul. According to Strabo, Posidonius had initially been disgusted by the sight, but had got used to it.
It was important for a warrior to take home the head of an enemy, not least because he had to prove that he was brave and strong—and victorious. The Celts were great tellers of tales, but tall tales of a distant skirmish were not enough. The bloody head of an enemy warrior said 1,000 times more; it was incontrovertible. Probably the heads of important enemies were valued more highly, and above all the heads of the chiefs, the battleleaders. The fact that the heads were preserved and kept shows that they might be needed to provide evidence (to the skeptical?) of past bravery in later years.
Before the military engagement at Sentinum in Italy in 295 BC, the Roman historian Livy writes that the consuls received no news of the disaster that had overtaken one of the legions “until some Gallic horsemen came in sight, with heads hanging at their horses’ breasts or fixed on their spears, and singing their customary of triumph.” The heads were not ornamental; they were symbolic. No doubt the best warriors built up substantial collections of preserved heads and they would have done the boasting without any need for words.
This practice was very widespread across Iron Age Europe, not just in the lands of the Atlantic Celts. The Romans liked to think this was a barbarous practice and Strabo declared that the Romans put a stop to it. We forget, and sometimes the Romans themselves chose to forget, that the Romans were part of that Iron Age world and had absorbed many of its customs; they liked to think of themselves as civilized and the rest of the world as barbarian. But occasionally they too took heads as trophies.
Headhunting by Romans is shown in three scenes on Trajan’s Column: on the Great Trajanic Frieze and other carvings celebrating Trajan’s victory in his two Dacian Wars (AD 101–102 and 105–106). In two scenes on Trajan’s Column, a couple of soldiers offer freshly severed heads to Trajan, who seems to reach out with his right arm to accept them. In a battle scene, a Roman soldier clutches between his teeth the hair of an earlier victim’s head, while dealing with a second opponent. In the third image, a soldier climbs a scaling-ladder, holding on his shielded left arm a severed head as he does battle with a defendant on the battlements. As legionaries construct a road, behind them stand severed heads impaled on poles. This has been explained in terms of the Roman army using Celtic units to whom this would have been normal practice, but the practice was evidently condoned—not least in the formal commemoration of the warfare on Trajan’s Column.
Perhaps surprisingly, Julius Caesar does not mention headhunting by the Gauls, but he does say in a reminiscence about Spain that after a victory outside Munda in 45 BC his own troops built a palisade decorated with the severed heads of their enemies. The soldiers who carried this out were “Roman,” but Caesar says they are Gauls of the Larks, the Fifth Legion conscripted by him in Gaul some years before. So the practice of headhunting may on that occasion have been associated with the Celtic recruits, the levied auxiliaries, rather than the regular Roman soldiers. But the Trajanic Frieze shows members of Trajan’s own mounted bodyguard with severed heads, so regular Roman soldiers were involved as well, and with the emperor’s blessing.
In 54 BC, Labienus launched his troops at Indutiomarus, the chief of the Treveri. The Roman soldiers succeeded in killing the chief and cutting off his head, which they took back to the Roman camp. This brutal gesture had the desired effect: when the Gauls heard that the Romans had the head of Indutiomarus, they gave up the fight. They understood; it was a case of the Romans giving the Treveri a taste of their own medicine.
We know from archeology that severed heads were carried home and carefully stored, some to be set up in niches in shrines and temples and offered up to the gods. The imposing stone shrine at Roquepertuse in Provence has in its walls skull-shaped niches that were specially made to display severed human heads. The surviving skulls at Roquepertuse belonged to strong young men in their prime, evidently warriors, and they date from the third century BC. At the sanctuary of St. Blaise, again in Provence, there are also niches for displaying heads.
Many shrines carried representations of severed heads carved in low relief in stone or wood. At Entremont, also in Provence, a stone slab taller than a man is covered with very stylized severed heads; it apparently represents a niche wall. One of the actual skulls at the Entremont shrine was nailed onto the wall and it still has a javelin-point embedded in it—a clear sign of a battle victim.
The presence of stone heads as well as real human heads shows that the offering of severed heads as battle trophies was absolutely essential. If by any chance the supply of real heads dried up, or the shrine was desecrated and robbed, the stone heads could still stand duty as symbolic offerings to the gods. At Entremont there is a fine life-sized statue showing a warrior god sitting cross-legged: a typical Celtic position. His left hand rests on a severed human head; is this the trophy he wants to be offered, or is he showing his people the trophy head that he himself has harvested to keep the tribe safe? The image could be interpreted either way.
When Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, was enraged at the way she and her family had been treated by the Romans, she led a rebellion during which her warriors took their trophies in the form of severed heads. During the rebellion, Colchester was destroyed and London attacked, and the fires that the Britons started left a red, burned layer across the City of London that is still clearly identifiable as “Boudicca’s Destruction Layer” and datable to AD 61. The Walbrook Skulls are believed to be some of the severed heads of Londoners massacred by Boudicca at that time.
Folk-tales carry within them vivid memories of headhunting. In the ancient Irish epic, the Tain, we hear of the youthful hero, Cú Chulainn, taking heads as trophies. He decapitates the three sons of Nechta: the formidable warriors, Fannell, Foill, and Tuchell, who boasted that they had killed more Ulstermen than there were Ulstermen surviving. On his return, wildly triumphant, to the fortress at Emain Macha, a woman there looks out and sees him riding toward the stronghold. She cries, “A single chariot-warrior is here … and terrible is his coming. He has in his chariot the bloody heads of his enemies.”
The Romans never conquered or occupied Ireland, or even attempted it, so they would never have seen Irish warriors behaving like this, but they saw it elsewhere, and they always deplored it. They made a point of deploring this universal Celtic custom, even though they occasionally did it themselves. Headhunting, like human sacrifice, was one of the badges of barbarism. It was just not the Roman thing to do (officially).
In Welsh storytelling, we find the same emphasis on the severed head, and its special magical quality, but with a twist. In the Mabinogion, the hero Bran is mortally wounded. He asks his companions to cut off his head and carry it with them on their travels as it will bring them good fortune:
“And take you my head, and bear it even unto the White Mount in London, and bury it there with the face towards France. And a long time you will be upon the road. And all that time the head will be to you as pleasant company as it ever was when on my body.”
After decapitation, Bran’s head goes on talking, which is often a feature of these tales (see Myths: The Ballad of Bran). In Ireland, the head of Conall Cernach similarly had magical powers. It was prophesied that his people would gain strength from using his head as a drinking vessel.
Turning a skull into a bowl, a magical cult vessel, was evidently something that actually happened in the Celtic world. The Roman historian Livy describes the killing of a Roman general, Postumius, in 216 BC, by a north Italian tribe, the Boii. They beheaded Postumius, defleshed the head, cleaned it, then gilded it, and used it as a cult vessel. Livy also described the Gauls taking the heads of their enemies in battle, and either impaling them on their spears or fastening them to their saddles.
The cult of the head was taken over in the Christian period in stories about the early saints. As soon as a severed head appears in a story, its archaic reference back to an Iron Age pagan world is obvious. St. Melor was one of these Dark Age saints, venerated in Cornwall and Brittany. He met his death by decapitation, but then his severed head spoke to his murderer, telling him to set it on a staff stuck in the ground. When this was done, the head and staff turned into a beautiful tree, and from its roots an unfailing spring began to flow. The biblical story of Aaron’s Rod was filtered through Celtic pagan lore.
A Scottish folk-tale tells of the murder of three brothers at the Well of the Heads. Their bodies were beheaded by their father. Three prophecies were uttered by one of the heads as it passed an ancient standing stone. The head declared that its owner, when living, had made a girl pregnant and that her child would one day avenge its uncles’ deaths. When the boy reached 14, he did indeed behead the murderer, and threw the head down a well. The severed head, the ancient stone, the well, kinship, revenge, and the rule of three—all the ingredients of this story from the Western Isles were drawn from long-remembered Celtic archetypes.
The Celts were not by any means the only headhunters in the world, but they carried the custom to obsessive lengths. There was a universal interest in venerating the human head and acquiring trophy heads; it prevailed right across Iron Age Europe. If one single belief can be claimed as pervading Celtic superstition, it must be the cult of the severed head.
Healing was a major function of Celtic sanctuaries and Celtic gods. The Roman healer god was Apollo, so his name was often added, during the Roman occupation, to the name of the Celtic healer. So, in the Vosges, there was a cult center dedicated to Apollo Grannus; one at Aix-la-Chapelle was known by the Latin name Aquae Granni; and an inscription at Trier mentions Grannus Phoebus.
An Iron Age hunter god of the Durotriges tribe in Dorset. Hunting was a daily exercise of skill and courage. It was more than a secular activity; as it involved killing animals, which were sacred, it involved transgressing the territory of the gods. Catching an animal meant stealing something from nature, and it was a theft that had to be paid for. It had to be conducted as a form of sacrifice, an offering back to the gods. It also had to involve the consent of the victim or the deity who presided over the victim. According to Arrian, the Celts never hunted “without the gods.”
The Cerne Giant in Dorset is a representation of Helis the hunter god who was guardian god of the tribe (see Places: Cerne Abbas). Returning from the hunt with a battle trophy, with the severed head swinging by its dreadlocks in his left hand, Helis shows that he is ready to hunt human as well as animal victims to help his tribe.
An ancient god of the forest. He is a horned god, and so may be a late survival of the god Cernunnos. The name survives in England, which means that the name, and the deity, could have either a Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) or an indigenous Celtic origin.
In Windsor Castle (1843), the novelist Harrison Ainsworth conjures up a vision of Herne as a forest god presiding over Windsor Great Park: “a wild, spectral object, possessing a slight resemblance to a human being, clad in the skin of a deer and wearing on its head a sort of helmet, formed of a skull of a stag, from which branched a large pair of antlers. It was surrounded by a blue phosphoric light.”
John Masefield similarly introduces Herne as a character in his children’s novel The Box of Delights (1935).
There are large numbers of holy wells in Britain and Ireland, many of which are stone shrinelike structures built around natural springs (see Ritual Shaft, Sacred Springs). There are 600 in Scotland, more than 1,000 in England, the same number in Wales and 3,000 in Ireland.
The sanctity of water and its sources has always been a key feature of the belief system of the Atlantic Celts.
Sacred wells were honored with dances and religious ceremonies. Some of the wells are now little more than wishing wells, but some have specific rituals attaching to them still. The Clootie Well in Culloden Wood near Inverness in Scotland is one that still has its own ceremony. On Culloden Sunday, in early May, people go to the well and drink from it, making a wish and throwing in a coin as an offering to the spirit of the well. Then a piece of cloth, a clootie, is tied to the branch of a tree near the well. The clootie must be left there to disintegrate—removing it brings bad luck. The custom of hanging rags on thorn bushes was practised at other sacred sites too.
On major feast days, holy wells were decked with flowers. In Derbyshire in England, the pre-Christian custom of well-dressing continues, though it seems to have been intermittent everywhere. Local folklore enthusiasts are often responsible for reviving an old custom and suddenly a village will resume a well-dressing custom that has been allowed to fall into abeyance.
Probably in the early days, well-dressing was no more than someone leaving a posy for a water nymph who was perhaps being thanked for finding a maiden a suitable youth. By the start of the nineteenth century, wells were decorated with simple garlands. Over the years, well-dressing was becoming a more elaborate and intricate art. By 1818, the craft had developed further. Boards were cut to the shape that was to be the design and covered with moist clay to hold the flowers.
A modern well-dressing usually consists of a large picture, usually with a religious subject, and made with a mosaic of overlapping petals, or in some villages whole flower-heads. Other natural organic materials are used as well: bark, moss, lichen, leaves, and berries. Sometimes pebbles, sand, or seashells are used. All of these are held in place by being pressed into soft clay on a background board.
Traditionally, well-dressing was done exclusively by men, but such customary rules are no longer permissible.
Several places in Derbyshire in England maintain the custom of well-dressing. Of these, Tissington is the one with the longest continuous tradition, going back to 1615, when it is said that it was resumed as a thanksgiving after a prolonged and serious drought. Tissington’s five wells were the only wells in the area to flow ceaselessly during that drought, supplying not only Tissington but the surrounding communities as well. But there is also a tradition that the practice started in 1350, when Tissington was spared the Black Death while all the other villages around were ravaged by it. Tissington was spared, it was believed, because of the purity of its well water.
However it started (or restarted), Tissington’s well-dressing takes place on Ascension Day each year, starting with a service of thanksgiving in the church, followed by a procession of clergy, choir, and congregation to visit each of the five dressed wells in turn.
Buxton’s well-dressing takes place on the Thursday closest to the summer solstice. Often it is said that this started in 1840, though this was probably a revival of a much older practice. Well rituals were probably performed beside St. Anne’s Well, which in the Middle Ages was a healing well. Roman remains have been found nearby, so the practice may have been going on intermittently for 2,000 years or more. In the Middle Ages a statue was found in the well, and people assumed it must be St. Anne. It may have been a Romano-Celtic statue, perhaps of a pagan water sprite, but it was enshrined regardless in a chapel near the well. Many miracles were ascribed to it.
In 1538 it was unfortunately swept away by Sir William Bassett, who was one of Thomas Cromwell’s agents. The chapel was forcibly closed and eventually demolished.
Modern well-dressing revives the practice, and includes the blessing of two dressed wells; there is a whole-town festival, presided over by a Wells Festival Queen.
Hooded dwarves, or genii cucullati, are often shown in threes, a common image in the Cotswolds and along Hadrian’s Wall (see Symbols: Rule of Three).
A carved image at Cirencester shows three hooded dwarves with a seated mother goddess. The tableau does not make it clear what the relationship is between the dwarves and the seated mother, though we are told that her name is Cuda.
Also from Cirencester, a single dwarf, or cucullatus, accompanies a mother. He holds an egg and she carries fruit. The association of hooded dwarves with mothers is very strong.
There are also groups of three dwarves holding eggs. These images link the dwarves with fertility. On the other hand the hooded and shrouded nature of the dwarves implies a connection with death.
The horned god has a very ancient ancestry. There are cave paintings dating from the Old Stone Age in France showing a horned god.
Antler masks have been found at a hunter-gatherer settlement called Star Carr in England. As long ago as 8,600 BC, there was a small lakeside camp at Star Carr (the lake has now completely silted up) built on a birch and brushwood hut platform. The hunting camp could have accommodated no more than four families. At that time the area was surrounded by a forest of birch and pine trees, with some willows near the lakeside. This was hunting territory, and people camped at Star Carr mainly to hunt the deer who lived in the forest, especially red deer. In the campsite red deer antlers were found that had been carefully splintered to make sharp points for arrows, javelins for hunting, and harpoons for fishing.
The antler masks are thought to have been worn in religious ceremonies in which men became transformed into animals—evidence of an early belief in shapeshifting. The existence of a horned man/god across huge spans of time shows how enduring the idea was in western Europe.
The most famous horned god is Cernunnos, who wears a fine set of stag’s antlers, but there are other gods who are shown with horns but not antlers. Horned gods were worshiped as far back as the Bronze Age. There were even horned birds and horned swans, but horned men were more common. Some carvings show that the horned gods were wearing helmets, and that the horns were actually mounted on the helmets rather than growing, supernaturally, out of the gods’ heads.
Horns were attributed to certain gods at certain times, to emphasize or increase their power as symbols, whatever it was they symbolized. Horns symbolize fertility in particular. Another reason for gods displaying horns was to emphasize their connection with the animal world. There was an intimate connection in the Celtic world between gods and nature—between religion and the natural world. The preference for worship out in the open air, in nature, similarly expressed a deep-seated bond between nature and the spiritual life.
One manifestation is the Druidical practice of stabbing sacrificial victims, with seers watching their death throes in order to foretell the future.
Diodorus Siculus describes it with an air of disbelief:
They have also certain philosophers and theologians who are treated with special honour, whom they call Druids. They further make use of seers, thinking them worthy of high praise. These latter by their augural observances and by the sacrifice of animals can foretell the future and they hold all the people subject to them. In particular when enquiring into matters of great importance they have a strange and incredible custom; they devote to death a human being and stab him with a dagger in the region above the diaphragm, and when he has fallen they foretell the future from his fall, and from the convulsions of his limbs and, moreover, from the spurting of the blood, placing their trust in some ancient and long-continued observation of these practices.
Tacitus, too, describes human sacrifice in Britain. In particular, he describes what happened on the island of Anglesey. There was a sacred grove with altars drenched in human blood and entrails, which were scrutinized by the Druids for the purpose of prophesying the future.
In the first century AD Lucan describes how the Britons “resumed the barbarous rites of their wicked religion”. He mentions three gods, Teutates, Esus, and Taranis, as gods whom the Gauls attempted to appease with human sacrifice. Others, later commenting on Lucan’s description, said that there were specific types of sacrifice appropriate to each deity. Taranis was appeased by burning, Teutates by drowning, and Esus by hanging from a tree. It looks as the three elements of fire, water, and air were consciously represented. Lucan describes a nemeton, a sacred grove, near Marseille where altars were heaped with unspeakable offerings and every tree was spattered with human blood; even the priests were afraid to enter the wood at certain times.
Julius Caesar’s presentation of the Celtic practice of human sacrifice suggests that he at least thought the power of the Celtic gods could be neutralized only by exchanging one human life for another. When Gauls were threatened by illness or the prospect of battle, the Druids would perform a human sacrifice for them: a life for a life. Sometimes the replacement life offered up would be that of a prisoner-of-war and sometimes it would be that of a criminal. If neither of these was available, it might have to be an innocent life instead.
It appears that those committing serious crimes were incarcerated for five years and then executed by impaling. Those taken prisoner in battle were used as sacrificial victims. Sometimes they were burned alive in a gigantic wicker cage shaped like a man (see Wicker Giant). Sometimes they were shot with arrows; this is surprising, in that fighting with bows and arrows was unusual at the time. At the same time, a man was executed at Stonehenge in the early Bronze Age by being shot and killed with arrows at close range, so there was a long tradition of using the bow and arrow to execute someone.
There is also the possibility that human sacrifice was carried out as a foundation offering. Both at Maiden Castle and at South Cadbury there were human burials that look like foundation offerings.
The evidence for human sacrifice is much stronger in ancient Gaul. At the Romano-Celtic sanctuary of Ribemont-sur-Ancre in Picardy, the remains of up to 250 young men have been found. At the nearby sanctuary of Gournay, there is archeological evidence that sacrificial victims were beheaded with an ax.
The classical writers put special emphasis on human sacrifice as an indicator of barbarism, because the practice was forbidden in the Roman Empire (see Places: Lindow Moss).
See Imbolg.
A quarter-day festival in the ancient Celtic year, thought to be connected with the lactation of ewes. February 1 marked the halfway point between the festivals of Samhain in November and Beltane in May.
A custom associated with Imbolg, of unknown antiquity, is the trial marriage, which survived until fairly recently in County Meath in Ireland. At Imbolg, young men and women might walk toward one another in the street, kiss, and be married; a year later they could come back and walk away from each other, ending the marriage.
Diodorus Siculus remarked that the Celts believed strongly in the immortality of the human soul. One piece of evidence he offered in support of this view was the fact that mourners threw letters to the dead onto the funeral pyre. But this may not have meant that the dead were believed to live for all eternity—it may only imply that there was a short time after death when the spirit of the dead person was still close by and might be communicated with. In fact, many of us have had the experience of visiting the house of someone who has recently died, perhaps to clear their belongings away in readiness to put their house up for sale, and had the powerful impression of the dead person’s continuing presence. It is easily explained by the arrangement of all the dead person’s possessions, arranged in a characteristic way, conveying the personality, and implying that the dead person has just left the room and may return at any moment. In an archaic society such as that of the ancient Celts, that feeling would have been just as strong. But it is because of this type of feeling that, in common with all societies, archaic or advanced, we have funerals. There has to be a leave-taking, a moment of separation when we let the dead person go and when we return to our own lives again. In our advanced and largely secular society, a society in which few people believe in the survival of the human soul, we still write messages to the dead and leave them flowers.
There is nevertheless other evidence that the ancient Celts believed in the immortality of the human soul. Writing about the Druids, Julius Caesar said, “A lesson they take particular pains to inculcate is that the soul does not perish, but after death passes from one body to another.” In other words the Celts believed in reincarnation.
In Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar comments about Celtic religious beliefs:
The Druids attach particular importance to the belief that the soul does not perish but passes after death from one body to another; they think that this belief is the most effective way to encourage bravery because it removes fear of death.
This belief carried over into the idea of shapeshifting, where some beings could adopt a new life-form without even the separating pause of death.
A number of classical writers tell of a warrior elite existing in Gaul and Britain, second in rank to the warrior king. This elite was associated with rich and elaborate graves, and the richness of the grave goods strongly implies that there was a belief in an afterlife in which all the gear necessary for good living would be needed. There was also an elaborate funeral in which these grave goods were assembled. Again, Caesar commented on the practice in Gaul:
Although Gaul is not a rich country, funerals there are splendid and costly. Everything the dead man is thought to have been fond of is put on the pyre, including even animals. Not long ago slaves and dependants known to have been their master’s favourites were buried with them at the end of the funeral.
All this points to a belief in an afterlife. Lucan expressed it as a belief in a long life in which death was merely a pause, a bridge between one life and another.
This belief seems to have been real. There were many burials where pairs of hob-nailed boots were provided, perhaps to wear for the journey to the Otherworld, or to wear once there. At Cambridge, infants were buried with shoes that were far too big for them; apparently their parents nursed the hope that their children would grow into them as they grew up in the Otherworld.
The Irish had a strong tradition of reincarnation, perhaps several times. The King of the Land of Promise, Manannan, had magical powers, including the power to give new life. Manannan is of interest because he is associated with a real historical figure, the Irish King Mongan, who lived in the seventh century AD.
The name of the Roman god Janus is used now, though probably not in antiquity, to describe gods with two faces or even two heads looking in opposite directions.
The sculpted Janus head at the Roquepertuse sanctuary in Provence is probably the finest example. This consists of two complete Celtic heads: they are bald with a goose in between them.
See Sky God.
See Lugh.
See Lud.
See Crom Cruach.
See Gobhniu.
A British god who seems to have no Continental equivalent: a true native god. Some think he may have had the status of a supreme deity.
In a late legend, Lud had a temple on the site of St. Paul’s cathedral in London. It is also possible that he gave his name to the city, as Lud’s Fort. Ludgate in London seems like another link with the ancient god of the place.
Lud was later known in Wales as Lludd Llaw Ereint. With Mordaf and Rhydderch, he formed a triad.
In Ireland, Lud appears as the Nuade who led the third invasion.
A powerful young Celtic god, given the name Mercury by the Romans. Smertrios is also known as Mercury, but this is not really contradictory, as the Romans often misidentified Celtic gods, for instance calling several different Celtic gods Mars.
In un-Romanized Ireland this god was called Lugh, “The Shining One,” and he was known as “skilled in many arts together.”
In the tale of The Battle of Magh Tuiredh, Lugh is credited with commanding all the arts possessed by the craftsmen in the house of Nuadha, King of the Tuatha dé Danann. He went to the royal court of Tara when a great feast was in progress. The doorkeeper asked him his skill and when Lugh said, “I am a wright,” the doorkeeper said he was not needed as they had a wright already. “I am a smith,” said Lugh, but the doorkeeper said the Tuatha had a smith already. So it went on, with Lugh listing his skills as harper, champion, hero, poet, historian, sorcerer, and cupbearer, but the Tuatha dé Danann had all of these. Then Lugh asked, “Do you have anyone who combines all these skills?” They did not and Lugh was allowed to enter.
Lugh was worshiped elsewhere too. In Wales he was known as Lleu. His name survived in place-names such as Lugudunum (Lyons) and Luguvallum (Carlisle). The town of Lyons was chosen by Augustus as the capital of the province of Gaul and the location of his own annual festival on August 1. This evidently continued an existing Celtic festival that was dedicated to the town’s divine patron, not only the emperor Augustus but also the god Lugh. This is the ancient harvest festival celebrated in the Celtic world as Lughnasad, “The Commemoration of Lugh.”
Lugh was a more civilized and sophisticated god than the Daghda. He had a spear and a sling instead of the Daghda’s heavy club. He was a lively and colorful figure, youthful, athletic, and handsome, and able to defeat malevolent beings from the Otherworld. His epithet “of the long arm” may refer to the fact that he could kill at a distance with a slingshot or a spear, or it may have the more general meaning that his power had a long reach.
A major festival on August 1, celebrating the first fruits of the harvest. In Gaul during the Roman occupation, the annual fair at Lugdunum (Lyons) was changed so that it could be reconvened under the patronage of the deified emperor Augustus.
Lughnasad was adopted generally into the Christian Church calendar as Lammas. In Ireland in later times the date of the festival was shifted slightly to suit the harvesting of potatoes. The last Sunday in July became Garlic Sunday, which was set aside for the lifting and gathering of the first of the potato crop. People kept to this date, even if it meant going without food—July was “Hungry July”—as it was feared that the crop would be spoilt disastrously if it was lifted on the wrong date. This day was marked by a special feast, with the new potatoes being cooked and eaten with cabbage and bacon. It was also a time for assemblies on hilltops, and beside springs, wells, and lakes, though these had to be respectably converted into Christian places, often associated with St. Patrick. The saint in effect became a Christian replacement for the god Lugh.
In Ireland Lughnasad has been continuously celebrated or marked, at least from the early Middle Ages, right down to the present day. One event that still takes place on Garlic Sunday is the mass pilgrimage up Croagh Patrick in County Mayo: a 2-mile (3km) walk up a rocky hill on bare and bleeding feet. The custom of going up this mountain is a very ancient one. In pagan times the faithful ascended to greet wonder-working Lugh, the Shining One who overpowered a primitive Earth god to win the harvest for his people.
In Ireland and parts of Scotland, Lughnasad survives as the Lammas cattle fair. The word “Lammas” is related to the loaf that was made from flour from the first of the grain crop. Lammas also became known as Glove Sunday, when gloves were given as presents. It is difficult to see how this element could be an ancient Celtic tradition: 2,000 years ago no one wore gloves.
The same feast was known as Calan Awst in Welsh.
See Maponos.
See Maponos.
See Immortality.
The Irish sea god, with his magical powers of creating illusion, carries heroes to the Otherworld across the sea or beneath it. His name, meaning “Son of the Sea,” connects him with the Isle of Man, and the waters over which he presided are those around the Isle of Man: the Irish Sea.
His magic horse is called Aonbarr. One of his magic swords is named The Answerer.
He is known in the island of Britain, but by the name of Manawydan.
The legend of the sea journey to the Otherworld has established Manannán’s presence in Irish literature. The Voyage of Bran was written in the seventh century AD and describes how Manannán travels across the sea in his chariot and addresses Bran, a mortal voyager:
It seems to Bran a wondrous beauty
In his curragh on a clear sea;
While to me in my chariot from afar
It is a flowery plain in which I ride.
What is a clear sea
For the proved craft in which Bran sails,
Is a Plain of Delights with profusion of flowers,
For me in my two-wheeled chariot.
Bran sees a host of waves,
Breaking across the clear sea;
I myself in Magh Mon [his home in the Isle of Man]
Red-tipped flowers without blemish.
Speckled salmon leap from the womb
Of the white sea on which you look;
they are calves, they are brightcoloured lambs,
At peace, without mutual hostility…
It is along the top of a wood
That your tiny craft has sailed across the ridges,
A beautiful wood with its harvest of fruit
Under the prow of your little boat.
A wood with blossom and fruit
And on it the true fragrance of the vine;
A wood without decay or death,
With leaves the colour of gold…
The poem vividly expresses the idea of an Otherworld which is this world turned upside down. The sea becomes land, the waves become wooded ridges or the horses of Mannanàn, the foam becomes fruit, and the hostile emptiness becomes a paradisical land of plenty. Gods and mortals see things very differently.
See Manannán mac Lir.
There was a cult of the “Divine Youth” Maponos in northern Britain and also in Gaul, associated with healing springs. He was especially popular with the Roman legionaries along Hadrian’s Wall.
Maponos is skilled in the art of music and in Britain the Romans equated him with Apollo the Harper.
In Wales he appears as Mabon, son of Modron (Matrona, the Divine Mother). Mabon is a hunter. In the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, he pursues the magic boar Twrch Trwyth and retrieves from between its ears the razor that Culhwch wants.
In Ireland, the nearest equivalent to Mabon/Maponos is Mac ind Og, the Young Lad, also called Oenghus. He is the son of the Daghda, the chief god of the Irish. Oenghus’s mother is Boanna, the wife of Nechtan; Boanna was the original water deity.
Julius Caesar commented that the Roman god Mars was popular among the Gauls and that booty won in battle was consecrated to him. But Caesar himself cannot have encountered situations where Celts were worshiping Mars. At some time the Romans applied their war god’s name to a Celtic god, or more likely to a number of gods with warlike characteristics, and the name Mars may later have been added to the Celtic name. What the Romans met in the Celtic lands was a tribe’s protector god, under all sorts of names.
In both Britain and Gaul, the Roman name “Mars” is linked with a large number of Celtic names. Sometimes the link is with Toutatis. Sometimes the pairing is with an epithet that emphasizes a particular personal aspect of the protector god: Caturix (Master of Fighting), Camulos (Powerful), Segomo (Victorious), Rigisamus (Greatest King), Albiorix (King of the World), Belatucandros (Fair Shining One), and Loucetius (Brilliant). Sometimes the epithet is connected with a locality, such as Mars Condatis (Mars of the Watersmeet).
So, we should not see a single powerful god, the Roman Mars, as being worshiped everywhere in the Celtic world. There were many: an infinite number of local protector gods, whom the Romans found it convenient to label “Mars,” but the native Celts would probably not have seen any connection among them.
See Mother Goddess.
This Roman name is given to an unnamed god shown in a bronze figurine found at Heddenheim in Germany. This fine classical statuette shows a young naked god wearing a torc round his neck and a cloak wrapped over his shoulder and around his left arm. He holds a bulging purse in his outstretched left hand. At his feet are three animals: a goat, a tortoise, and a cock.
Julius Caesar noted that “of the gods they worship Mercury most of all. He has the greatest number of images. They hold that he is the inventor of all the arts and a guide on the roads and on journeys, and they believe him the most influential for money-making and commerce.”
The god Caesar called Mercury was known to the native peoples as Lugh.
Some exceptionally well-made metal mirrors were produced by master craftsmen. The Desborough and Birdlip mirrors with their beautifully decorated backs were probably made under royal patronage. Others have been found with simpler patterning, such as the one from Great Chesterford in Essex.
It is often said that these mirrors show how concerned the Celts were about their appearance: a proof of vanity. But even when new and well-polished, they can have given only an unsatisfactory and shadowy reflection. The biblical expression “through a glass darkly” springs to mind.
It is possible that the bronze mirrors were not just used for personal grooming but as aids to foretelling the future. Staring at the dim, dark surface of the mirror may have been an aid to prayerful meditation, and through the darkness might float images of what was to come. The mirrors were more than mirrors: they were windows into the future.
The Monster of Noves is a huge stone statue depicting a monster that looks something like a lion. Its great jaws gape slightly, and a half-eaten limb hangs out. It has paws with claws extending to grasp severed human heads.
The awful image, designed to disgust and terrify, shows the triumph of death over life. The sculpture may be as old as the fourth century BC.
A very similar stone sculpture was found at Linsdorf in Alsace.
A Celtic god of hot springs. Moritasgus means “Masses of Seawater.” At Alesia in Gaul, he appears as Apollo Moritasgus with a consort, Damona. He had a substantial healing sanctuary at Alesia, complete with baths and porticoes, and a polygonal shrine.
“The Phantom Queen,” the Mórrígan is a complex character. She is a spiteful Irish goddess of war and destruction, but also a goddess of motherhood and territory. The dual role suggests that she is rather like the Celtic war gods, who also have a role in bringing prosperity and well-being. The Mórrígan nevertheless brings death, destruction, and chaos. She is a battle Fury; she does not fight in battle herself, but uses magic to generate terror among contending warriors.
One day Cú Cuchlainn is so intent on fighting that he ignores the overtures of a girl who turns out to be the Mórrígan; in revenge, she attacks him, shapeshifting into several different animal forms to do so.
Sometimes the Mórrígan is presented as one of a trio of war goddesses: the other two being Badhbh (Crow or Raven) and Nemhain (Frenzy). There are occasional references in Irish tales to the Three Mórrígans, the Celtic equivalent of the Valkyries. It may be that these are thought of as a threefold Mórrígan, rather than separate goddesses. Some commentators have tried to equate the trio with maiden, bride, and crone aspects of the same goddess (see Symbols: Rule of Three).
The mother goddess is a complex being. Her cult inextricably brings together the living and the dead. She is shown accompanied by images of life and abundance, yet her likeness is buried in tombs with corpses. She also has a destructive aspect. For some reason she is closely associated with warfare.
These apparent contradictions may have arisen from the very powerful position women held in ancient Celtic society. There are Iron Age tombs in both Germany and Burgundy that were rich burials of princesses or queens. The archeology shows this, and it is supported by literary evidence too.
The classical historians note that there were two British queens who created more fear and chaos among the Roman legions than any king: Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, and Cartimandua, Queen of the Brigantes. Irish literature shows the same story of politically powerful queens. Queen Medb of Connaught is a stronger figure than her husband Aillel. The same idea permeates Irish and Welsh myth, where a mortal king may marry a territorial nature goddess. In both Irish and Welsh sagas, descent through the female line is mentioned. In the Mabinogion, the Welsh god Mabon, Divine Youth, is the son of Modron (see Maponos). The Irish divine race, the Tuatha dé Danann, are the people of the goddess Danu. So the mother as founder of a dynasty and mother as monarch are fundamental Celtic ideas. If the matriarch is the mother of her people and of her territory, she must also be their protectress, and this is where her role in warfare comes in.
The central importance of the matriarchal dynasty-founder is demonstrated by the bronze cult wagon from the grave mound at Strettweg near Graz in Austria. The central figure is by far the largest, and it is a female figure; it is she who holds up the huge diskshaped bowl.
The physical representation of the mother goddess reached its fullest development in the RomanoCeltic period. As with other deities who had remained largely abstractions in the free Celtic period, the mother goddess was represented in human or humanoid form far more once the Roman occupation came.
The Three Mothers became a common group for portrayal in stone, as in the plaque from Cirencester. Two fully dressed women sit holding what look like apples on their laps, one on each side of a central seated woman who is holding a baby. In inscriptions they are described as Deae Matres, Mother Goddesses. There are sometimes extra words denoting the locality, though sometimes that is a whole province—Gaul or Britain. A dedication in southern England mentions the mothers of Germany, Italy, Gaul, and Britain. Another, from York, addresses the mothers of Gaul, Italy, and Africa. But mainly the mothers are tied to a specific location; the Nemausicae were tied to Nîmes, and the Treverae to the Treveri tribe around the city of Trier.
The mothers sit side by side, fully draped. They have various attributes, and the commonest are baskets of fruit, horns of plenty (see Symbols: Cornucopia), fish, loaves, and children. Occasionally a breast is bared so that an infant may be suckled. An image at Trier shows one mother with a swathing band, indicating that an infant is involved, while the other two have distaffs. This suggests that the mothers might be the Fates: the three goddesses who weave the destinies of mortals, from birth onward.
Usually the images are static, but a few are more animated. The elaborate stone relief of Triple Mothers with Children at Cirencester looks rather like a modern coffee morning, with three mature women relaxing while their toddlers play around them. But this is exceptional artwork, and far more Roman than Celtic in character.
Other mother goddesses are shown singly. At a shrine at Trier, the goddess Aveta is shown in several pipe-clay figurines; she is a goddess nursing a baby. Some “single mothers” look very like the figures in the Triple Mother images—seated, draped, and holding a basket of fruit or a horn of plenty. One of these, at Trier, was deliberately decapitated, possibly by Christians in the fourth century.
Matrona, the Divine Mother, is the goddess of the Marne River in France.
The moura encantada is a shapeshifting Galician fairy. These charming and beautiful fairies often appear singing and combing their lovely, long red hair with golden combs, promising to give treasure in exchange for setting them free by breaking their spell.
But they are also dangerously seductive. According to one story, they are the souls of young maidens who were left to guard the treasures that the enchanted mouros hid before heading for the Mourama. Often they appear as guardians of the pathways into the Earth, and so they can be seen at those special liminal places where mortals might glimpse the Otherworld, or even enter it. They might be seen at the entrances to caves, beside wells or rivers, or guarding castles or treasures. Folklorists think they may have absorbed memories of local deities, such as water nymphs or sprites and other nature spirits.
The fairytales featuring mouras encantadas are thought to be of pre-Roman, Celtic origin, with much in common with those of other Celtic water nymphs.
Every Galician town seems to have a tale about a moura encantada. Often they have been associated with megalithic monuments, perhaps because in remote antiquity, when these were built, they were intended to be physical links between this world and the next. In the nineteenth century, antiquarians followed the hints embedded in folk-tales about fairies to help them find megaliths.
Some scholars think the name moura is connected with death (via Latin mortuus), and that the fairies are in fact the deceased or the souls of the deceased. But it is equally possible that the word is related to mahra, the Celtic word meaning “spirit.”
Mouras encantadas often appear at fountains or springs as serpents. It used to be said of a man who married in a foreign country that he had “drunk from the spring.” In other words that he fell in love as a result of fairy enchantment. Behind this seems to be a hint of xenophobia: the idea that a man would have to be under a spell to fall in love with a foreigner.
Mouras may be “disenchanted,” and if that happens, they may become human. If it is by the intervention of a man, the moura may marry him—or simply disappear.
The idea of a fairy becoming mortal and falling in love with a mortal man or falling in love and then becoming mortal in order to live with him is very widespread, and probably has its roots in old Celtic Europe. It forms the storyline of Dvorak’s opera Rusalka.
Galician fairies, the mouras encantadas, were sometimes seen as spinning maidens. The maiden may carry stones on her head to build the hillforts, while she spins the yarn with a distaff carried at her waist. The mouras encantadas were believed to be responsible for building the ancient hillforts, the dolmens, and the megaliths—all the inexplicable works of ancient times. The coins found at these sites were called “fairy medals.”
In some stories the Galician fairy is a shapeshifter who can take the form of a snake. Less commonly she turns into a dog, goat, or horse.
A Galician fairy who appears in the form of an old woman.
The Galician fairyland, a magic subterranean place where the mouras encantadas live. This is the Galician Otherworld, the land of the dead.
A very small Galician elflike creature living underground.
The landscape of Munster in the south-west of Ireland was dominated by mountains and a wild sea coast and in legend it became associated with the Otherworld. Its lakes and beaches led down to a sunken Land of the Dead.
This Gaulish goddess is given various attributes. In Alsace, in the territory of the Mediomatrici, she is often shown carrying a model of a house on the end of a long pole. This emphasizes her role as a domestic goddess.
Nantosuelta is sometimes paired with the hammer-god Sucellos. The divine couple sometimes have other attributes such as barrels and pots, and this may be a reflection of their association with the protection of wine production in the Alsace region.
Nantosuelta’s name, “Winding River,” incorporates water symbolism, which is common among other goddesses too.
A Romano-Celtic goddess who is usually accompanied by a wolf-hound. The Nehalennia cult prevailed at the mouth of the Scheldt River in Holland, where there were two sanctuaries dedicated to her. She is mentioned on dedications and her image is shown on more than 100 altars. She is associated with prosperity, though the dog suggests that she may also be associated with healing or with the Underworld.
She is shown as a young woman seated on a throne in a vaulted apse between two columns and holding a basket of apples on her lap. She is always accompanied by the dog, but sometimes the apples are replaced by loaves of bread. In some altar images, she is shown standing beside the prow of a ship.
Some of the votive altars bear inscriptions that tell us they were offered in gratitude for a safe voyage across the North Sea. A typical inscription reads:
To the goddess Nehalennia,
on account of goods duly kept safe:
Marcus Secundinius Silvanus,
trader in pottery with Britain,
fulfilled his vow willingly and deservedly.
See Sacred Grove.
See Lud.
A Gaulish god, the equivalent of the Roman Hercules. Lucian says that the Celts saw Ogmios as extremely old and bald, with wrinkled skin, yet in spite of this he was portrayed as Hercules, complete with lionskin and club in one hand. He is sometimes called upon in lead curse tablets to bring misfortunes on certain named individuals. He was a god of eloquence.
The Otherworld of Irish folk-tale is a true Celtic paradise. There are no diseases there, no worries, no ugliness, and no old age. Instead there are in abundance, music, magic, and birdsong, and everyone is young.
This pagan paradise naturally became a focus for poets, even for poets who were monks. From the seventh century onward the subject was repeatedly and sensitively reworked.
Before setting off on his voyage to find the Otherworld, Bran mac Febhail first pictured it as an island, later as “three times fifty distant islands,” lying far to the west of Ireland:
There is a distant isle,
around which sea-horses glisten,
a fair course on which the white wave surges,
four pedestals uphold it.
A delight to the eye, a glorious range,
is the plain on which the hosts hold games;
coracle races against chariot
in the plain south of Findargad.
Pillars of white bronze beneath it
shining through aeons of beauty,
lovely land through the ages of the world,
on which the many blossoms fall.
Unknown is wailing or treachery
in the happy familiar land;
no sound there rough or harsh,
only sweet music striking on the ear.
Another poem from the period dwells in a similar way on the allure, even to medieval Christians, of a pagan paradise:
There, there is neither ‘mine’ nor ‘thine’;
white are teeth there, dark the brows;
a delight to the eye the array of our hosts;
every cheek there is the hue of the foxglove.
Fine though you think the ale of Ireland,
more exhilarating still is the ale of Tir Mar;
a wondrous land is the land I tell of,
youth does not give way to age there.
Sweet warm streams flow through the land,
the choice of mead and of wine;
splendid people without blemish,
conception without sin, without lust.
Yet, strangely, in this perfect land there is still fighting. Perhaps fighting was seen as necessary for young men to prove their manhood. Perhaps it was seen as a positive pleasure. Late one Friday night on a Northampton street many years ago, I came upon a small crowd of people gathered around a huge Irishman who was lying in a drunken heap on the pavement. His face was covered with blood and he was the worse for drink and fighting. I managed to haul him up onto his feet, while the small crowd looked on impassively. Swaying and beaming with gratitude, the Celtic giant offered to give me a fight. He was offering me a treat.
The story of Mac Da Tho’s Pig relates how Mac Da Tho, who is really a god presiding over the Otherworld feast, acts as host to the men of Connaught and Ulster. These opposing warbands sit down to a meal of pork and the usual quarrel breaks out over who should have the champion’s portion. Pork was always a major feature of these banquets, and archeologists have often found the remains of pork joints in late Iron Age graves, where both wine and a hearth were provided for a dead chief—and a guest, for company.
There is, however, a darker side to the Irish Otherworld. Sometimes it is described as a shadowy place presided over by the god Donn. At Samhain, when summer turns to winter, it is this more somber aspect that prevails; the spirits of the dead are allowed to move across the boundary into the world of the living and the barrier between nature and supernature temporarily dissolves.
The boundary between this world and the Otherworld is permeable at any time of the year. There are traditional tales of living mortals visiting the Otherworld, often enticed there by immortals, and later being allowed to return.
Yet Otherworldly time is different from everyday time. This is perhaps rooted in the experience we have all had, of dropping off to sleep for a few minutes and dreaming of events in apparent real time that seem to go on for hours or days. John Masefield develops this idea in his 1935 children’s book The Box of Delights. The world of dreams is taken to be akin to the Otherworld.
Another example of this is a story told in Pembrokeshire in Wales. A young shepherd joins a fairy dance and finds himself in a glittering palace surrounded by wonderful gardens. He spends many years there, very happily, among the fairies. There is one thing he is not allowed to do: drink from the fountain in the garden. As time passes, he increasingly wishes to drink from the fountain. In the end he dips his hands into it. Immediately the garden and the fairy palace vanish and he finds himself back on the cold hillside among his sheep. Only minutes have elapsed since he joined the fairy dance.
This type of experience is often described in mystical trances, in which an enormous amount happens, mentally and spiritually, within the space of a few moments. Some of the (possibly late) fairy tales emphasize the long spans of time it is possible to spend in the Otherworld; after these long visits the traveler returns, like the shepherd boy, to find that only a few minutes have passed. But many of the fairy tales turn this idea around. A fairy dance lasting a few minutes has taken a year or more in the everyday world, as in the tale of Rhys and Llewellyn, where a few days of feasting in the Otherworld take 200 years in the everyday world.
It is not always so. In some stories, characters move easily backward and forward between the worlds without any change in time zone. But the mortal traveler to the Otherworld runs the grave risk—among many others—that they may not be able to return to their own time. They could leave to spend a few minutes in the Otherworld and return years, decades, or centuries later to find no one living that they know and all their loved ones dead.
Galician fairies living inside stones. It was once believed that anyone sitting on one of these inhabited stones would become enchanted. If an enchanted stone was removed and taken to a house, all the animals in the house might die. On the other hand, an enchanted stone might have treasure inside it.
A fairy might travel to fairyland while sitting on an enchanted stone that could float in air or on water.
An integral part of the Celtic belief system. The seemingly endless journeying described in some of the late romances is often a kind of pilgrimage. The Grail Quest in particular shows the medieval approach to pilgrimage: the long, difficult journey toward a climax of spiritual revelation. There were real international pilgrimages of this kind, notably to the shrines of St. James at Santiago de Compostela in Galicia and St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury in England.
This was in the Middle Ages. But there is increasing archeological evidence that religious pilgrimages, on a similar scale, went on as much as 3,000 years earlier. Some high-status graves near Stonehenge have yielded unexpected forensic results: one man was a visitor from Switzerland. Nor was this an isolated link with mainland Europe. At Stonehenge, a piece of lava was found that can only have come from the Rhineland. In a sense, even the stones were pilgrims. The very big sarsen stones at Stonehenge came from the Marlborough Downs, 20 miles (30km) away, and were probably dragged laboriously on sledges to get them to Stonehenge. More surprisingly, the smaller stones at Stonehenge, the bluestones, were ferried from south-west Wales, 135 miles (220km) away as the crow flies.
Pilgrims brought wealth with them, and left it in the form of gifts and offerings, and services purchased. Certainly by the Middle Ages, some saints’ relics had become valuable commodities, simply because of their commercial potential. Often, the relics were forgeries. The monks at Glastonbury developed an entire mythology surrounding their abbey, concocting elaborate stories about Joseph of Arimathea and the grave of King Arthur—all to generate revenue to pay for repairing the abbey.
There is very little archeological evidence of the priests who officiated at religious ceremonies, beyond the shrines themselves. But there are a few inscriptions referring to priests and there is some priestly regalia.
Crowns and headdresses found in East Anglia, at Hockwold and Cavenham, show the sort of garb that priests wore. Possibly the gold chains with sun and moon symbols found at Backworth in Durham and Dolaucothi in Pembrokeshire were chains of priestly office. A strange object found at Milton in Cambridgeshire may have been used in ceremonies. It is a flat oval made of bronze and has two perforations that were probably attachments for bells. It was probably carried in procession and shaken to rattle the bells. Another, similar object was found not far away in a Norfolk hoard of religious bronze objects. This was shaped like a spearhead and was evidently mounted on top of a pole. It too had a couple of perforations, this time with surviving rings. This too probably had bells attached.
Metal face masks found at Bath and Tarbes may have been used by priests during ceremonies. Conceivably there were moments in rituals when the priest’s mortal face had to be hidden: moments when it was forbidden to look at the priest’s face. Or perhaps the priest was protecting himself from the presence of the god. The Tarbes mask dates from the third century BC. Another mask, a gold mask that is believed to have come from East Anglia, was nailed up on a wall or a post and probably represented the face of the god (see Druids).
A Galician fairy appearing as a snake with long, blonde hair.
A goddess whose name is derived from the ancient name “Rigantona,” meaning “Great Queen.” She is closely associated with horses, and it has been suggested that she and Epona, the horse goddess, may in fact be one and the same.
Rhiannon appears in the Welsh hero-legends, the Mabinogion. There she appears as a beautiful woman in a golden robe, sitting on a white horse. The hero, Pwyll, riding his own horse, tries in vain to catch up with her. At last he calls out to her and she stops. It transpires that she loves him but is betrothed to another; they prepare to marry.
A winding, labyrinthine tale follows, involving shapeshifting and magic and the birth of a son who disappears. The women who are supposed to care for the lost child collude to put the blame on Rhiannon. When she wakes up, she finds she is daubed with blood (the blood of a puppy) and surrounded by its bones, and is accused of killing and eating her infant child. She protests her innocence in vain. She is condemned to tell her story to every stranger that passes and, if necessary, to carry the stranger on her back. Eventually, she is changed into a horse.
Rhiannon is also associated with birds. The birds of Rhiannon sing so exquisitely that they can send the living to sleep and awaken the dead to life. Both horses and birds are heavily symbolic of the journey to the Underworld: they accompany the spirits of the departed to the afterlife (see Myths: Blackbirds).
The Uffington White Horse may be a visualization of the shapeshifting Rhiannon.
See Lud.
Goddess of fords at Trier in Germany.
There was a widespread Celtic custom of digging pits and shafts down into the ground. It is possible that some of these were wells, but some are clearly for some ritual purpose. The custom extended across the Celtic world and into the Greco-Roman world, where special pits called bothroi and mundi were dug to reach down into the Underworld. The intention seems to have been to create doorways that would connect the two worlds.
There are late Iron Age examples in Britain, but it is likely that they were made throughout the Iron Age because some Bronze Age examples have been found too, at Swanwick and Wilsford. It was evidently a tradition of long standing.
In Germany ritual shafts were certainly made in the middle Iron Age, and they were located in rectangular enclosures. At Holzhausen there was an enclosure containing three such shafts, one of them containing evidence of animal or human sacrifice.
The pits at Danebury hillfort in Hampshire may have been dug for grain storage, and the hints at ritual activity around them could be explained as attempts to propitiate the gods of the Underworld for disturbing the earth, or perhaps to ensure that the gods looked after the grain properly.
Most of the pits in Britain belong to the first centuries BC and AD, and probably only a quarter of them were dug for ritual purposes.
The shaft at Muntham Court in Sussex was 200 feet (60m) deep and associated with a shrine containing the remains of many dog burials. Dogs were associated with the Underworld, so their presence here was apt.
At Newstead in Scotland several shafts were dug, one of them containing the body of a man.
One of the most interesting of the pits is the one at Deal in Kent. This was excavated to make an underground shrine at the bottom of a shaft 8 feet (2m) deep. The oval chamber contained a crude figurine carved out of a block of chalk. The base of the figurine is a shapeless block of chalk. This tapers into a carefully made neck. On top is a well-carved round face, perfectly Celtic in style. It is believed to have stood originally in a niche high up in the wall of the chamber. Footholds cut in the wall of the shaft show that it was intended that the chamber should be accessible—it was not just a tomb chamber—and it might have held as many as five people. The pottery found in the chamber suggests that the shrine was made in the first century AD.
There is a problem in distinguishing some of the ritual shafts from ordinary wells. Sinking wells for drawing water had become commonplace in the Roman world by the first century AD. The objects we see as ritual offerings could just as easily be accidental losses during the normal daily usage of the well. Sometimes there are complete vessels, which had probably been lowered to the bottom of the well to draw water.
When a well was considered to be of no further use, it was usually filled in for safety with ordinary domestic rubbish, and this too is difficult to distinguish from objects dropped in as offerings.
A goddess often associated with a wooden tub. Images from Gaul showing tubs sometimes have a paddle and a griddle, suggesting an activity such as dyeing. Rosmerta with a tub and a purse might be a patroness of commercial textile manufacture. Alternatively, the tub may be a small-scale symbol of endless plenty: a mini-cauldron.
Rosmerta is paired with Smertrios (the closest Celtic equivalent of the Roman god Mercury). The divine couple are sometimes shown as simple Gaulish peasants and carved in a natural way that implies that these are images made by Celts for Celts. Mercury is presented in a fairly standard way, but his female partner adds a homely concern for well-being in all aspects of life and death.
One possibility is that a Roman god has been deliberately paired with a native Celtic goddess. This produces a wide spectrum of responsibilities for the couple. He supplies good luck, success in agriculture and commerce, fertility, and well-being. Rosmerta brings depth. She protects from harm and from the caprices of fate, she lights the darkness, and she guides us through death to resurrection and regeneration. She represents spiritual comfort.
The Iron Age Celts built a few shrines and rather more sacred enclosures, but they also made widespread use of natural features as holy places. This is a very ancient practice that goes right back to Minoan Crete in 2000 BC, when mountaintops were regularly the focus of religious ceremonies. The Minoans also designated certain trees as sacred. The Celts, on the other side of Europe, had a very similar approach.
The Celtic word nemeton means “sacred grove” and the word survives in some Roman-Celtic place-names, such as Drunemeton in Turkey, Nemetobriga in Galicia, Medionemeton in Scotland, and Aquae Arnemetiae (Buxton) in England. The Irish equivalent to nemeton is fidnemed.
Roman commentators on the Celtic world mention sacred groves. Strabo mentions the reunification of three tribes in Galatia (Turkey) as being accomplished in a grove of sacred oak trees. The sacred location was chosen for the discussion of important administrative matters, perhaps for its neutrality and therefore safety for all parties attending, perhaps because the gods were expected to participate.
Tacitus describes the forest clearings on the island of Anglesey as the Druids’ last stronghold against the might of Rome. Dio Cassius describes a sacred wood where human sacrifices were offered to the war goddess Andraste. Lucan too describes sacred woods in the south of Gaul: woods that were spattered with human blood. Later commentators, explaining Lucan, said that the Druids worshiped their gods in woods without using temples, in other words explicitly saying that worship took place in the open air.
The names of deities were sometimes specifically related to a grove. At Altripp near Spier, the name Nemetona is found, “Goddess of the Grove,” and the tribe living in her territory were known as the Nemetes.
Sometimes a tribe identified itself with a particular tree species, probably the species growing in its sacred grove: the Eburones(Yew-tree People) and Lemovices (Elm-tree People). In Gaul, offerings were dedicated specifically to the beech tree. The very large posts raised as focal features in some of the sacred enclosures were probably symbolic of the tribe’s sacred tree.
Offerings were frequently deposited in sacred lakes. A small bay at the east end of Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland was a focus for this kind of ritual deposition. In a bed of peat off the shore of the lake a huge deposit of metalwork was found. It was put there in around 100 BC. People stood on a specially built timber platform, like a jetty, and from there they threw their offerings out into the lake: 170 swords, 270 spears, 400 brooches, and 27 wooden shields.
At Port at the north-eastern end of Lake Biel in Switzerland there was another concentration of offerings, mainly of swords and spears.
In Britain, Llyn Fawr in South Glamorgan is now a spread of peat, but in 600 BC it was a lake. Buried in the peat at Llyn Fawr were some imported Hallstatt material—harness, fittings for wagons, socketed axes, sickles, and two cauldrons made of sheet bronze. It is thought that the Llyn Fawr hoard was all deposited on one occasion, but at a time when the cauldrons were already antiques.
Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey in Wales yielded a similar cache of metalwork, but seemingly from a longer period. Offerings were deposited there from the second century BC to the first century AD, so they may have been left, item by item, over the whole of that period, or collected elsewhere and then deposited in the lake all at once. Llyn Cerrig is a wild and awe-inspiring place. The metal objects all come from the edge of a bog deposit overlooked by a sheer rock cliff 11 feet (3m) high; this made a fine vantage point from which the worshipers could throw their offerings out into the lake. The metalwork was uncorroded, showing that it was thrown straight into water. The offerings are military and upmarket in character: trumpets, chariot fittings, harness, weapons, slavechains, iron-working tools, and cauldrons. Some of the objects are flawless apart from the deliberate damage done to them immediately before being deposited. This was to kill the objects, to enable them to travel across to the Otherworld.
Llyn Cerrig was probably in use for sacrificial offerings until the Romans attacked the sacred groves of the Druidic center on Anglesey in AD 60 (see Druids). Tacitus described the scenes on Anglesey that greeted the horrified eyes of the Roman troops: bloodstained groves, howling priests, and black-robed, screaming women brandishing firebrands. But perhaps Tacitus exaggerated; the Romans were keen to justify the suppression of opponents.
The most famous sacred lake was Lake Tolosa at Toulouse in south-west France. The local inhabitants, the Volcae Tectosages, worshiped Belenus. They honored him by throwing offerings of gold and silver into the lake. When the Roman consul L. Servilius Caepio conquered the territory in 106 BC, he could not resist the temptation; he had 110,000 pounds (50,000kg) of silver hauled out of the lake and almost as much again in gold.
Sacred springs and holy wells are hard to separate. What often happened is that a natural spring that was venerated in the Iron Age was later Christianized—and dedicated to a named saint to make that clear. It was often embellished with masonry and the water guided by a duct to fill a small tank or pool. In this new form, it often became known as a well.
There is a fine granite-built baptistry at Dupath Well, Callington, Cornwall. Other examples include St. Nun’s Well at Pelynt in Cornwall and St. Hilda’s Well at Hinderwell in Yorkshire.
At Cerne Abbas, immediately below the graveyard and the site of Cerne Abbey, is St. Augustine’s Well. This is a shady hollow beneath some trees, where a natural spring has been surrounded by paving. The water from the well is supposed to have all kinds of magical healing properties, though this is hard to square with the fact that it runs out of the graveyard.
The most famous Celtic sacred vessel is undoubtedly the Gundestrup cauldron. This bowl of solid and gilded silver is 14 inches (36cm) high and 28 inches (71cm) diameter, with a capacity of 28 gallons (105 liters). But there was an even bigger cauldron, the Bra Cauldron, which also came from a bog in Jutland, and that could hold more than 130 gallons (490 liters).
A good many sacred sites where ritual offerings were made to water are associated with cauldrons.
A major Celtic festival on November 1, connected with rounding up livestock and choosing which of the animals would be killed and which kept for breeding. It marked the pastoral year’s end and the year’s beginning; it was the Old New Year. It was a moment out of time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld was down and the spirits of the dead were free to roam. The world was overrun by the forces of magic. A dim shadow of this feast, which was adopted into the Christian calendar as All Saints’ Day, survives as Hallowe’en: All Hallows Eve.
The name “Saman” is inscribed on the Coligny calendar, so we know that the name of the feast is at least 2,000 years old.
Many cultures have a special celebration of the dead: a day when they are deemed to live again, on parole. To an extent, by performing certain rituals, the reawakening of the dead may be conjured. One way is to go to an ancient burial mound or standing stone, or some other place that has an association with fairies, and run around it nine times.
The Celtic year is divided into four by the major solar events: the solstices and equinoxes. These are the longest and shortest days in the year and the days when day and night are of equal length. These are also the days that can be found out in the landscape, by observing where the sun rises and sets, and they mark out the year’s calendar (see Places: Newgrange, Stonehenge). There were also four quarter-days, which marked the halfway points between the solstices and equinoxes. In late antiquity, these festivals—Imbolg, Beltane, Lughnasad, and Samhain—seem to have been celebrated more than the solar events. The total of eight calendar festivals may be represented by an eight-spoked wheel.
See Places: Source de la Seine.
See Headhunting.
Although there are some examples of built temples and shrines, the Celts did not build many permanent, roofed temples. The stone-built temples at Entremont and Roquepertuse were extremely unusual.
The Celts did, however, build wooden temples in the pre-Roman period. One interesting example is at Frilford in Oxfordshire. In the Roman period two circular structures stood side by side, each about 33 feet (10m) across. One was a building with a porch, and the other was a horseshoe-shaped ditch surrounding a structure made of six substantial posts with votive offerings. These two structures were each preceded by an earlier, pre-Roman, circular shrine. A small Roman town was set up close by. It looks as if Frilford might have been an Iron Age cult site of some kind, and the Romans wanted to perpetuate and develop it.
The Romano-Celtic shrine at Worth in Kent was also probably built on the site of an older, pre-Roman, temple; three Iron Age model shields were found at the site. A similar follow-on from the Iron Age happened at Hayling Island in Hampshire, Maiden Castle in Dorset, and Haddenham in Cambridgeshire.
At Hayling Island, the Iron Age Celtic temple consisted of a circular shrine placed off-center inside a square enclosure, the entrances of both facing to the east. The Roman period temple that replaced it sat on exactly the same site. Although it was larger and more formal in style, its layout was the same: a circular shrine placed offcenter inside a square enclosure, the entrances of both facing east. The older temple was replaced and respected by deliberate imitation: the Roman version was simply bigger and “better.”
At Uley too a rectangular Roman-Celtic temple was built directly over the site of a rectangular Iron Age Celtic shrine, and on the same alignment.
Sometimes we see the Romans as sweeping away whatever was there before, but as far as shrines and temples went they conscientiously continued the local traditions.
There are parallels to the British shrines on the European mainland. At St. Margarethenam-Silberberg in Austria, there is a similar situation to the Frilford sanctuaries. At St. Germain-les Rocheux in Côte d’Or and at Schleidweiler, Trier, in Germany, again there are Romano-Celtic temples on the sites of Iron Age shrines. It is a common pattern. The double-square RomanoCeltic temples (square shrines with verandahs) were common right across southern Britain, Belgium, the whole of France, Switzerland, and south-west Germany.
The double-square temples consisted of a square cella, a box shape with a door and a pitched roof, and around this was built a low wall to provide a footing for the rows of columns to support a lean-to roof for the ambulatory. The walls of the cella rose higher than the ambulatory roof, allowing the possibility of inserting clerestory windows to light the interior. A statue or idol stood inside. The temple usually stood to one side of a rectangular enclosure. The central space in front of the temple door was the place for ceremonies—in the open air. It was here, probably, that sacrifices were made by the official the Romans called the victimarius, presided over by the priest.
Enclosed and roofed shrines were perhaps not built everywhere, though. Where there are wellpreserved remains of shrines, they are often small, 16–33 feet (5–10m) across, and they often stand at one end of a fenced enclosure. Then they look more like a focal point, perhaps the dwelling of a deity represented by a wooden idol, while the main ritual activity went on in the enclosure outside. And outside is the key to Celtic religious practice. The emphasis was on an open-air relationship with nature. This is very evident at Val Camonica in Italy, where there is a whole gallery of religious cult carvings on rock outcrops in a remote forest area.
Ritual enclosures existed at Aulnay-aux-Planches (Marne) and Libenice (Czech Republic). These were widely separated geographically and in time too—the Czech shrine was created in the third century BC, and the French in the tenth century BC—yet they were similar in design. Both were roughly rectangular, about 280 feet (85m) long and 82 feet (25m) wide, with cult stones at one or both ends. Both were places where people and animals were buried, and it may be that these represent animal and human sacrifices. The Czech site contained remnants of burned posts adorned with neckrings, and these may have been idols representing gods.
There were two enclosures in Germany, at Goloring and Goldberg, following a similar pattern. At Goloring there was a massive central post, a cult focus similar to Libenice and Hayling Island, and it is likely that the post was a symbolic sacred tree or sacred column. The remarkable stone at Pfalzfeld was probably a sacred column too; the high quality of its carving suggests that it was a focal point.
There is not much surviving evidence of offerings at Celtic shrines, by contrast with Roman shrines. This sometimes makes it difficult to be sure whether a site such as a rectangular enclosure was really for religious ritual or had some secular function instead. There are hints that human and animal sacrifices took place at some shrines, such as South Cadbury Castle, Aulnay, and Maiden Castle. Models of objects are found at some shrines, such as Frilford. Celtic gold coins were offerings to the gods at Harlow. At Hayling Island, coins were covered with gold to present an appearance of a richer offering; it is interesting to see that in the Iron Age it was thought possible to deceive and swindle the gods in this way.
At some shrines in Britain and mainland Europe, Neolithic axes were given as offerings in Iron Age shrines. In Gaul, these antiquities (already antiquities in the Iron Age) were deliberately smashed. This breaking is in itself a very ancient and widespread practice, and it represented a symbolic killing of the object offered, not to destroy it but to take it across the boundary that separates this world from the Otherworld, to send it to the realm of the gods. The collection of Neolithic stone axes for this purpose tells us something else about the Celts, which is their evident awareness of antiquity. They seem to have known that these distinctive objects came from the ancestors, and the no-longer-living ancestors were now in the Otherworld; so breaking and offering the stone axes was in effect a way of returning the ancestors’ possessions to them. This would please the ancestors and make it likelier that they would intercede with the gods on the mortals’ behalf.
The Romans commented on the isolated rural sanctuaries of the Celts, especially in Gaul and Britain, because to them this was a strange idea. But remarkably nearly half of the Roman shrines built in Britain were also built in isolated rural locations. Of those, half were built in completely isolated spots, and the other half next to or on the sites of old native shrines. The Romans were following and copying local customs.
What went on in these shrines and temples?
Prayers and chanted hymns were offered to the presiding god or goddess and offerings were left. The offerings consisted of gold, silver, or bronze coins and weapons, both real, full-sized weapons and miniature, model weapons. Jewelry was another important type of offering, usually in the form of copper alloy brooches with safetypin-style attachments. Yet another category was horse harness. So, a rich variety of gifts was left in the shrine for the use of the gods. By the Romano-Celtic period, there was usually a complex of ancillary buildings around the shrine, and one of them would have been a shop, where worshipers might purchase something to leave as an offering.
Animal sacrifices would routinely have taken place, probably outside in the enclosure, and selected parts brought in as offerings. Animal sacrifices were widespread and commonplace events at Celtic shrines. There were special decorated sacrificial knives and special utensils and cutlery for presenting and serving the roasted offerings at sacrificial feasts. Some of these have been found in the sacred spring at Bath.
Though small, the shrines were carefully designed with strategically placed window openings to create dramatic lighting effects on the cult images. Lamps enhanced these effects. The homes of the gods were kept fragrant with incense, burnt in special clay vessels. Herbs were scattered on the sacrificial altars and hearths: herbs that would make the meat tastier to the gods and their worshipers.
Mysterious and Otherworldly sound was added with musical instruments. In a Romano-Celtic temple, rattles, tambourines, cymbals, and bells were used. In a purely Celtic shrine, the harp provided gentle melody to hint at the sweetness of the Otherworld.
Silvanus is the Italian woodland god. His cult includes hammers, pots, and billhooks as its icons.
The female consort of Grannus, the Celtic Apollo, in the Mainz and Moselle areas. Sirona also has a role as a fertility goddess, as she is shown with corn and fruit, or with a snake and a bowl of eggs.
The wheel god is a Celtic version of Jupiter, the sky god. Some Jupiter figures are accompanied by a second, smaller human figure standing or kneeling to the god’s left. Sometimes this second figure is made to appear sad. It is thought that it represents the Earth and the pairing of the two represents the dominion of the sky over earthly forces.
At Séguret (Vaucluse) the god is shown in the dress of a Roman general, but accompanied by an eagle, a thunderbolt, and a large wheel. In the background is an oak tree, which is a classical symbol of the god, enwrapped by a snake, which is not Roman but Celtic, symbolizing Earth or the Underworld (see Symbols: Serpent). It may seem odd to portray Jupiter as a Roman general, but the intention may be to show him in military triumph: the victory of light over darkness.
The association of the sky god image with oaks is a reference to the Roman association of Jupiter with oaks. In the second century AD Maximus of Tyre said that the Celtic image of Zeus was a tall oak tree. Valerius Flaccus commented that the Coralli tribe (probably Celts) worshiped images of Jupiter associated with wheels and columns (see Symbols: Sky Horseman).
The Celts were drawn to springs as places of mystery. The life-giving water came up out of the ground without any reason or cause, so it was supernatural: it must have a divine driving force. Springs often became associated with specific deities or sprites, and the water that flowed out was regarded as possessing special healing properties.
Some springs became major cult sites, such as the source of the Seine and Bath. Others were visited by pilgrims and were of no more than local significance, such as the Source des Roches de Chamalières (south of Clermont Ferrand). A typical one was Les Fontaines Salées (Yonne), which offered mineral water with medicinal properties and was in use from the early Iron Age. In the first century AD it was developed with a formally paved pool in a circular enclosure; around it were the remains of an older oval structure. At the healing spring at Mavilly (Côte d’Or) several interesting objects were found, including a figure of Mars, a Celtic ram-horned snake, and a La Tène shield. Vichy was another healing spring sanctuary, which may have replaced the Chamalières site. At Vichy, failing eyesight seems to have been the main health problem, but there was a bronze figure showing a twisted spine, so we have to assume people came with a wide range of problems, in the same way as they come today to a general hospital.
The evidence for cult spring sites in Britain is less obvious than in France, but there were such sites. The most important was the temple of Sulis at Bath, which had an international clientele, but there were many lesser sites for more local use as well. The Roman name for Buxton in Derbyshire was Aquae Arnemetiae (the waters of the goddess who lives in the sacred grove). The healing springs at Buxton are close together on the valley floor and yield two different kinds of water. The Buxton springs are still noted for their mineral water.
See Sucellus.
Sucellus (or Sucellos) was the Gaulish hammer god. He is shown wielding a long-handled hammer and nicknamed “The Good Striker.” In the south of Gaul he was given some of the attributes of the woodland god Silvanus as protector of harvest and cattle. At some locations at least he is paired with the goddess Nantosuelta.
He was a very popular god in Gaul, though, from the evidence we have, less popular in Britain. An inscription in the Rhône Valley reads “Sucellum propitium nobis” (Sucellus is favorably disposed to us).
It has been pointed out that the “hammer” is really a mallet and that it has an unusually long handle. This suggests that it is not a real, earthly hammer, but has some supernatural use. Perhaps the hammer or mallet was seen as useful for symbolically banging bad luck on the head.
The healing spring goddess worshiped at Bath, known to the Romans as Minerva. One of Minerva’s epithets is Sulevia. Julius Caesar lists her as one of the principal deities of the Gauls. She was especially popular among ordinary people as the patroness of domestic crafts, and this devotion continued into the Christian period.
In the seventh century AD, St. Eligius rebuked people for invoking the pagan goddess Minerva when they were weaving or dyeing, which shows that it was an ingrained custom.
The nearest equivalent in Ireland is the goddess Brighid.
The sun god is represented in a variety of ways. One is the wheel god, with the wheel as an obvious symbol of the sun. But the sun is also represented by the swastika, with the legs of the swastika apparently representing the rotating movement of the sun. It is not clear, though, how people in antiquity could have arrived at the idea that the sun rotates. We now know that the sun spins on its axis, but how could people have known that 2,000 years ago? The legs on the swastika may instead represent the sun’s ability to travel, to “walk,” right across the sky each day.
There are quite a few images where wheels, swastikas, and dedications to a sky god occur together. Sometimes the wheel stands as a symbol on its own, decorating the front surface of an altar, like the one found at Gilly, near Nimes.
Taranis is the god of thunder. The poet Lucan, writing in the first century AD, referred to three Celtic gods encountered by Julius Caesar and his army in Gaul, one of which was Taranis. Lucan describes his worship as “crueller than the cult of Scythian Diana”—the Celts offered him human sacrifices.
There is a small but widespread amount of archeological evidence for the worship of Taranis. At Scardona on the Adriatic there are inscriptions to a “Thunderer” and altars at Tours, Orgon, and Chester were dedicated to “Thunder.”
But the scarcity of Taranis’s name suggests that Lucan may have been wrong; maybe he was not a major god. There is also the possibility that he was an aspect of the sky god: one of the several faces of Jupiter. Some inscriptions support this view. “Taranis” means no more than “Lord of Thunder,” and so could be an epithet of Jupiter. Linking the two in an inscription merely puts the Celtic epithet with the name of the Roman god, to emphasize the thundering aspect of Jupiter, who had other aspects as well, such as light-bringer and all-powerful ruler of the sky. The name “Taranis” does not seem to have been used in Ireland or Wales, and it may be that the thunder god was known by different names there.
He could be represented by the wheel or the spiral, which is sometimes used to symbolize lightning.
The time of the fairies in Galicia. Legends and folk-tales take place “once upon a time.”
The god Teutates was described by the Roman commentator Lucan (first century AD) as “cruel Teutates propitiated by bloody sacrifice.” Another writer took this up and expanded on it, explaining that the victims of Teutates were drowned by being plunged headfirst into a full cauldron. Some scholars think this was an invention designed to please a Roman audience. Others point out that a scene on the Gundestrup cauldron does in fact show a god plunging human victims into a vat, so something of the kind may have happened. In Irish legend there are recurring stories of ritual murder in vats of alcohol.
See Human Sacrifice; Places: Lindow Moss.
The ancient Irish Otherworld, the Celtic heaven, literally “the Land of the Young,” Tir nan Og lay far to the west across the sea. It was one of the lands to which the Tuatha dé Danann retreated after they were defeated by the Milesians (see Myths: The Book of Invasions).
In Tir nan Og time runs to a different pace compared with earthly time. It is a land of beauty, where the grass is forever green and where music, feasting, hunting, love, and fighting (the ancient Celtic pleasures) go on all day. There is no death; if any of those fighting are killed, they are brought back to life again the next day.
It is possible for mortals to visit Tir nan Og, by invitation, but they are put under a vow of secrecy. If they violate this, then the weight of their mortal years can come upon them.
These were the gods of the ancient Irish, who later became the heroic fairies, the Daoine Sidhe. When they were defeated by the Milesians, they retreated to an underground realm (see Myths: The Book of Invasions).
See Symbols: Water.
Four-cornered enclosures without any sacrificial remains are known by the German name Viereckschanzen. They date from the Iron Age. Holzhausen in Bavaria is an example.
A god of eyesight, a curer of eye problems, Vindonnus is shown as a sun god, giving off rays of light. His name means “Clear Light” and he is connected with healing water. Votive models of various limbs were offered to him, among them bronze models of eyes.
Taking a vow was a well-established rite. The vow was a solemn promise, conditional upon the deity granting what was requested. The Celts applied this rite exclusively to warfare. Julius Caesar wrote:
When they have decided to fight a battle they generally promise to Mars the booty they hope to take, and after a victory they sacrifice the captured animals and collect the rest of the spoil in one spot.
The vow shows the Celts’ piety. Booty that could have been a source of enrichment for the warriors was entirely devoted to the gods and their sanctuaries.
Every tribe had its war god whose responsibility it was to protect the tribe, lead it into battle, and ensure its victory. The Romans applied the label “Mars” to every Celtic god with warlike attributes, but it is not clear whether the Celts had a concept of a general war god beyond the tribal guardian gods. The images are often presented unnamed; where there is a name it is prefixed “Mars.”
Surviving shrines to war gods are very scarce. There was one at Bewcastle, to judge from the finds of dedications to the war god Cocidius. Later Roman geographies, such as the Ravenna Cosmography, mention a fanum Cocidi, a shrine of Cocidius, and it is thought that Bewcastle was probably where this stood.
There was a temple at Woodeaton too, to judge from the finds of cult objects there. These included several miniature spears. Miniature weapons were often left as votive offerings by worshipers: a practice common to many ancient cultures. At Woodeaton there were also two images of a war god.
Images of the war god vary across the spectrum, from completely Celtic in style to completely Roman. One of the simplest images is the one from Maryport in Cumbria. Carved in low relief on a square plaque, it shows a crudely drawn male with a large, round face, horns, a spear, and a shield. Often these images show naked warriors—Celtic warriors often fought naked—and often they are shown with erections (see Symbols: Nudity). Images such as these are described as ithyphallic. The reasons for showing warriors in this state of arousal have been the subject of a lot of speculation (see Symbols: Phallus).
Sometimes the war god is shown with a goose. The goose is a good equivalent in the animal world for the tribal guardian god. Geese are very alert, react immediately and fearlessly to the approach of strangers, and are very aggressive; they “see off” strangers. These are exactly the characteristics required of an effective tribal protector god. Mars-Lenus at Caerwent is an example of a war god with a goose for a companion. It may be significant that Julius Caesar mentions the goose as a taboo animal: a sacred creature that may not be eaten.
In southern Britain, the war god was often a horseman, which may indicate the prevailing way of fighting. The horseman god was particularly venerated in the land of the Catuvellauni in eastern England. There was a sacred enclosure at Brigstock in Northamptonshire where several bronze horsemen were found, and this precinct may have been dedicated to the horseman god. At Kelvedon in Essex, a first-century BC pot was stamped with horsemen with stylized spiky hair, hexagonal Celtic shields, and objects that look like shepherds’ crooks. Images of horsemen in sacred contexts have been found at many sites across southern England, showing that there was a preference for rendering the war god on horseback. A stone plaque from Nottinghamshire shows a crudely stylized warrior on horseback and carrying or rather displaying a round shield and a spear. At the Romanized end of the scale is the finely made bronze horseman from Westwood Bridge, Peterborough.
In some places the titles given are very grand. Mars Rigisamus (Mars Greatest King or King of Kings) suggests that the war god was preeminent among the deities. Perhaps locally this was the case. At Corbridge, the warrior-god image bears the wheel symbolizing the Celtic sky and sun god. The horseman-god images reach a climax in the depictions on the Jupiter columns, where the sky god is a horseman overriding evil and death. On a smaller scale, the Martlesham statuette of Mars Corotiacus shows a horseman god riding down an enemy, who may merely represent human enemies or, on a grander scale, evil, night, death, and other negative forces (see Cocidius, Helis; Places: Cerne Abbas, Maryport; Symbols: Sky Horseman).
A bronze figurine found at Le Châtelet (Haute Marne) in France shows how the wheel god was imagined: naked, with a mane of hair on his head and a bushy beard, reminiscent of Greco-Roman depictions of Zeus and Jupiter. In fact this might be the Celtic Jupiter. In his left hand, he is holding a six-spoked wheel, which is a sun symbol, and in his right hand he brandishes a thunderbolt; below the thunderbolt is the spiral symbol of lightning. The wheel god is evidently a powerful sky god, and the equivalence with Jupiter and Zeus is clear.
Images of the wheel god were mass-produced in pipe-clay in central France (the Allier District). These cheap images were probably made for poor people to leave as offerings or to carry as talismans. Two main Jupiter types were produced: one with eagle and thunderbolt, and one with wheel and thunderbolt. It looks as if the eagle and wheel are interchangeable, with the eagle for Romanized customers, and the wheel for Celtic customers.
A figure from Landouzy-la-Ville (Aisne) shows a bearded, naked god. He has a grim expression as he holds a wheel over an altar. The dedication on the supporting plinth reads “To Jupiter Best and Greatest and the Spirit of the Emperor.” This is a Celtic god in terms of attributes and attitude, yet Romanized to the extent of having the inscription in Latin and the Roman emperor mentioned; the long hair and curly beard are typical of Roman images.
Another wheel god image associates the god with fertility. This is not a normal association for Jupiter, but the Celtic world was essentially rural and the Celts were preoccupied with fertility and venerating fertility. So a seated wheel god might be flanked by horns of plenty, cornucopiae (see Symbols: Cornucopia).
Celtic sun-wheel signs were left as votive offerings at some of the hot spring sanctuaries in Gaul. Sun wheels were also thrown into Gaulish rivers, such as the Seine, Marne, Oise, and Loire. In southwestern France there was a custom of rolling a flaming wheel down into a river; the pieces were then retrieved and reassembled in the sun god’s temple. The ritual was a reflection of the solar cycle.
Julius Caesar describes a particular form of human sacrifice carried out by the Druids: colossal human figures were made out of wickerwork, sacrificial victims were shut inside, and the wicker giants set alight. It is certain that the Celts carried out human sacrifices, though probably not by this method; it is hard to see how any wicker structure could hold people inside it once set on fire. The image is nevertheless compelling and memorable, which is what Caesar needed in his campaign to portray the Celts as barbarians who needed Roman conquest.
The idea was borrowed, with great dramatic success, for the film The Wicker Man, written by Anthony Shaffer and released in 1973.
The Celts seem, from the evidence we have, not to have celebrated a midwinter festival. The Romans had Saturnalia, which was in time replaced by Christmas, and the absence of an Iron Age Celtic midwinter feast is strange. The Neolithic communities certainly did honor the winter solstice, as well as the summer solstice, and attached great importance to both (see Newgrange). It may be that this was one tradition that did not carry through into the Iron Age. Alternatively, it may be that there was a pre-Roman midwinter feast, on which Saturnalia was based, but no evidence of it has survived.