Like other religions, those of the Celtic lands of Europe supplemented
the earlier animism by a belief in spirits, who belonged to trees,
animals, rocks, mountains, springs, rivers, and other natural phenomena,
and in folk-lore there still survives abundant evidence that the Celt
regarded spirits as taking upon themselves a variety of forms, animal and
human. It was this idea of spirits in animal form that helped to
preserve the memory of the older totemism into historic times. It is
thus that we have names of the type of Brannogenos (son of the raven),
Artogenos (son of the bear), and the like, not to speak of simpler names
like Bran (raven), March (horse), surviving into historic times. Bronze
images, too, have been found at Neuvy-en-Sullias, of a horse and a stag
(now in the Orleans museum), provided with rings, which were, as M.
Salomon Reinach suggests, probably used for the purpose of carrying these
images in procession. The wild boar, too, was a favourite emblem of
Gaul, and there is extant a bronze figure of a Celtic Diana riding on a
boar's back. At Bolar, near Nuits, there was discovered a bronze mule.
In the museum at Mayence is a bas-relief of the goddess of horses, Epona
(from the Gaulish _Epos_=Lat. _equus_, horse), riding on horseback. One
of the most important monuments of this kind is a figure of Artio, the
bear-goddess (from Celtic _Artos_, a bear), found at Muri near Berne. In
front of her stood a figure of a bear, which was also found with her. The
bull of the Tarvos Trigaranos bas-relief of Notre Dame was also in all
likelihood originally a totem, and similarly the horned serpents of other
bas-reliefs, as well as the boar found on Gaulish ensigns and coins,
especially in Belgic territory. There is a representation, too, of a
raven on a bas-relief at Compiegne. The name 'Moccus,' which is
identified with Mercury, on inscriptions, and which is found inscribed at
Langres, Trobaso, the valley of the Ossola and the Borgo san Dalmazzo, is
undoubtedly the philological equivalent of the Welsh _moch_ (swine). In
Britain, too, the boar is frequently found on the coins of the Iceni and
other tribes. In Italy, according to Mr. Warde Fowler, the pig was an
appropriate offering to deities of the earth, so that in the widespread
use of the pig as a symbol in the Celtic world, there may be some ancient
echo of a connection between it and the earth-spirit. Its diet of
acorns, too, may have marked it out, in the early days of life in forest-
clearings, as the animal embodiment of the oak-spirit. In the legends of
the Celtic races, even in historic times, the pig, and especially the
boar, finds an honoured place. In addition to the animals
aforementioned, the ass, too, was probably at one time venerated in one
of the districts of Gaul, and it is not improbable that Mullo, the name
of a god identified with Mars and regarded as the patron of muleteers,
mentioned on inscriptions (at Nantes, Craon, and Les Provencheres near
Craon), meant originally 'an ass.' The goddess Epona, also, whose
worship was widely spread, was probably at one time an animal goddess in
the form of a mare, and the name of another goddess, Damona, either from
the root _dam_=Ir. _dam_, (ox); or Welsh _daf-ad_ (sheep), may similarly
be that of an ancient totem sheep or cow. Nor was it in the animal world
alone that the Celts saw indications of the divine. While the chase and
the pastoral life concentrated the mind's attention on the life of
animals, the growth of agriculture fixed man's thoughts on the life of
the earth, and all that grew upon it, while at the same time he was led
to think more and more of the mysterious world beneath the earth, from
which all things came and to which all things returned. Nor could he
forget the trees of the forest, especially those which, like the oak, had
provided him with their fruit as food in time of need. The name Druid,
as well as that of the centre of worship of the Gauls of Asia Minor,
Drunemeton (the oak-grove), the statement of Maximus of Tyre that the
representation of Zeus to the Celts was a high oak, Pliny's account of
Druidism (_Nat. Hist_., xvi. 95), the numerous inscriptions to Silvanus
and Silvana, the mention of Dervones or Dervonnae on an inscription at
Cavalzesio near Brescia, and the abundant evidence of survivals in folk-
lore as collected by Dr. J. G. Frazer and others, all point to the fact
that tree-worship, and especially that of the oak, had contributed its
full share to the development of Celtic religion, at any rate in some
districts and in some epochs. The development of martial and commercial
civilisation in later times tended to restrict its typical and more
primitive developments to the more conservative parts of the Celtic
world. The fact that in Caesar's time its main centre in Gaul was in the
territory of the Carnutes, the tribe which has given its name to
Chartres, suggests that its chief votaries were mainly in that part of
the country. This, too, was the district of the god Esus (the eponymous
god of the Essuvii), and in some degree of Teutates, the cruelty of whose
rites is mentioned by Lucan. It had occurred to the present writer,
before finding the same view expressed by M. Salomon Reinach, that the
worship of Esus in Gaul was almost entirely local in character. With
regard to the rites of the Druids, Caesar tells us that it was customary
to make huge images of wickerwork, into which human beings, usually
criminals, were placed and burnt. The use of wickerwork, and the
suggestion that the rite was for purifying the land, indicates a
combination of the ideas of tree-worship with those of early agricultural
life. When the Emperor Claudius is said by Suetonius to have suppressed
Druidism, what is meant is, in all probability, that the more inhuman
rites were suppressed, leading, as the Scholiasts on Lucan seem to
suggest, to a substitution of animal victims for men. On the side of
civil administration and education, the functions of the Druids, as the
successors of the primitive medicine men and magicians, doubtless varied
greatly in different parts of Gaul and Britain according to the progress
that had been made in the differentiation of functions in social life.
The more we investigate the state of the Celtic world in ancient times,
the clearer it becomes, that in civilisation it was very far from being
homogeneous, and this heterogeneity of civilisation must have had its
influence on religion as well as on other social phenomena. The natural
conservatism of agricultural life, too, perpetuated many practices even
into comparatively late times, and of these we catch a glimpse in Gregory
of Tours, when he tells us that at Autun the goddess Berecyntia was
worshipped, her image being carried on a wagon for the protection of the
fields and the vines. It is not impossible that by Berecyntia Gregory
means the goddess Brigindu, whose name occurs on an inscription at Volnay
in the same district of Gaul. The belief in corn-spirits, and other
ideas connected with the central thought of the farmer's life, show, by
their persistence in Celtic as well as other folklore, how deeply they
had entered into the inner tissue of the agricultural mind, so as to be
linked to its keenest emotions. Here the rites of religion, whether
persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory as in sympathetic magic, whether
associated with communal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed to
the earth or to the heaven, all had an intensely practical and terribly
real character, due to man's constant preoccupation with the growth and
storage of food for man and beast. In the hunting, the pastoral, and
above all in the agricultural life, religion was not a matter merely of
imagination or sentiment, but one most intimately associated with the
daily practice of life, and this practical interest included in its
purview rivers, springs, forests, mountains, and all the setting of man's
existence. And what is true of agriculture is true also, in a greater or
less degree, of the life of the Celtic metal-worker or the Celtic sailor.
Even in late Welsh legend Amaethon (old Celtic _Ambactonos_), the patron
god of farming (Welsh _Amaeth_), and Gofannon, the patron god of the
metal-worker (Welsh _gof_, Irish _gobha_), were not quite forgotten, and
the prominence of the worship of the counterparts of Mercury and Minerva
in Gaul in historic times was due to the sense of respect and gratitude,
which each trade and each locality felt for the deity who had rid the
land of monsters, and who had brought man into the comparative calm of
civilised life.