Druidism in Britain and Gaul
Culture Mixing--Classical Evidence regarding Druids--Doctrine
of Transmigration of Souls--Celtic Paradises: Isles of
the Blest, Land-under-waves, Fairyland, and "Loveless
Land"--Paradise as Apple-land--Apples, Nuts, and Pork of
Longevity--Mistletoe connected with the Oak, Apple, and Other
Trees--Druids and Oracular Birds--Druids as Soothsayers--Thomas
the Rhymer as "True Thomas"--Christ as the Druid of St.
Columba--Stones of Worship--Druid Groves and Dolmens in
Anglesea--Early Christians denounce Worship of Stones, Trees,
Wells, and Heavenly Bodies--Vows over Holy Objects--Bull
Sacrifices, Stone Worship, &c., in Highlands--"Cup-marked"
Stones--Origin of Druidism--Milk-Goddesses and Milk-yielding
Trees--European and Oriental Milk Myths--Tree Cults and
Megalithic Monuments.
When the question is asked "What was the religion of the ancient
Britons?" the answer generally given is "Druidism". But such a term
means little more than "Priestism". It would perhaps be better not
to assume that the religious beliefs of our remote ancestors were
either indigenous or homogeneous, or that they were ever completely
systematized at any period or in any district. Although certain
fundamental beliefs may have been widespread, it is clear that there
existed not a few local or tribal cults. "I swear by the gods of my
people" one hero may declare in a story, while of another it may be
told that "Coll" (the hazel) or "Fire" was his god. Certain animals
were sacred in some districts and not in others, or were sacred to
some individuals only in a single tribe.
In a country like Britain, subjected in early times to periodic
intrusions of peoples from different areas, the process of "culture
mixing" must have been active and constant. Imported beliefs
were fused with native beliefs, or beliefs that had assumed
local features, while local pantheons no doubt reflected local
politics--the gods of a military aristocracy being placed over the
gods of the subject people. At the same time, it does not follow that
when we find a chief deity bearing a certain name in one district,
and a different name in another, that the religious rites and
practices differed greatly. Nor does it follow that all peoples who
gave recognition to a political deity performed the same ceremonies
or attached the same importance to all festivals. Hunters, seafarers,
and agriculturists had their own peculiar rites, as surviving
superstitions (the beliefs of other days) clearly indicate, while the
workers in metals clung to ceremonial practices that differed from
those performed by representatives of a military aristocracy served
by the artisans.
Much has been written about the Druids, but it must be confessed
that our knowledge regarding them is somewhat scanty. Classical
writers have made contradictory statements about their beliefs and
ceremonies. Pliny alone tells that they showed special reverence for
the mistletoe growing on the oak, and suggests that the name Druid
was connected with the Greek word _drus_ (an oak). Others tell that
there were Druids, Seers, and Bards in the Celtic priesthood. In his
book on divination, Cicero indicates that the Druids had embraced
the doctrines of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, who was born
about 586 B.C., including that of the transmigration of souls.[108]
Julius Cæsar tells that the special province of the Druids in Gaulish
society was religion in all its aspects; they read oracles, and
instructed large numbers of the nation's youth. Pomponius Mela[109]
says the instruction was given in caves and in secluded groves. Cæsar
records that once a year the Druids presided over a general assembly
of the Gauls at a sacred spot in the country of the Carnutes, which
was supposed to be the centre of Gaul. It is not known whether this
holy place was marked by a mound, a grove, a stone circle, or a
dolmen. The Archdruid was chief of the priesthood. Cæsar notes that
the Germans had no Druids and paid no attention to sacrifices.
[108] Cæsar (_De Bello Gallico_, VI, XIV, 4) says the Druids
believed the soul passed from one individual to another.
[109] A Spaniard of the first century A.D.
Of special interest is the statement that the Druids believed in the
doctrine of Transmigration of Souls--that is, they believed that
after death the soul passed from one individual to another, or into
plants or animals before again passing into a human being at birth.
According to Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the latter part of the
first century A.D., the Gauls took little account of the end of life,
believing they would come to life after a certain term of years,
entering other bodies. He also refers to the custom of throwing
letters on the funeral pyre, so that the dead might read them.[110]
This suggests a belief in residence for a period in a Hades.
[110] Book V. Chap. XXVIII.
The doctrine of Transmigration of Souls did not, however, prevail
among all Celtic peoples even in Gaul. Valerius Maximus, writing
about A.D. 30, says that the Gauls were in the habit of lending sums
of money on the promise that they would be repaid in the next world.
Gaelic and Welsh literature contains little evidence of the doctrine
of Transmigration of Souls. A few myths suggest that re-birth was
a privilege of certain specially famous individuals. Mongan, King
of Dalriada in Ulster, and the Welsh Taliessin, for instance, were
supposed to have lived for periods in various forms, including
animal, plant, and human forms, while other heroes were incarnations
of deities. The most persistent British belief, however, was that
after death the soul passed to an Otherworld.
Julius Cæsar says that Druidism was believed to have originated
in Britain.[111] This cannot apply, however, to the belief in
transmigration of souls, which was shared in common by Celts, Greeks,
and Indians. According to Herodotus, "the Egyptians are the first
who have affirmed that the soul is immortal, and that when the body
decays the soul invariably enters another body on the point of
death". The story of "The Two Brothers" (Anpu and Bata) indicates
that the doctrine was known in Egypt. There are references in the
"Book of the Dead" to a soul becoming a lily, a golden falcon, a
ram, a crocodile, &c., but this doctrine was connected, according
to Egyptologists, with the belief that souls could assume different
shapes in the Otherworld. In India souls are supposed to pass
through animal or reptile forms only. The Greek doctrine, like the
Celtic, includes plant forms. Certain African tribes believe in the
transmigration of souls.
[111] Pliny (Book XXX) says Britain seems to have taught Druidism
to the Persians. Siret's view, given in the concluding part of
this chapter, that Druidism was of Eastern origin, is of special
interest in this connection.
In ancient Britain and Ireland the belief obtained, as in Greece
and elsewhere, that there was an Underworld Paradise and certain
Islands of the Blest (in Gaelic called "The Land of Youth", "The
Plain of Bliss", &c.) The Underworld was entered through caves,
wells, rivers or lakes, or through the ocean cavern from which the
moon arose. There are references in Scottish folk-tales to "The
Land-Under-Waves", and to men and women entering the Underworld
through a "fairy" mound, and seeing the dead plucking fruit and
reaping grain as in the Paradise of the Egyptian god Osiris. It is
evident that Fairyland was originally a Paradise, and the fairy queen
an old mother goddess. There are references in Welsh to as gloomy
an Underworld as the Babylonian one. "In addition to _Annwfn_, a
term which", according to the late Professor Anwyl, "seems to mean
the 'Not-world', we have other names for the world below, such as
_anghar_, 'the loveless place'; _difant_, the unrimmed place (whence
the modern Welsh word _difancoll_, 'lost for ever'); _affwys_, the
abyss; _affan_, 'the land invisible'." In a Welsh poem a bard speaks
of the Otherworld as "the cruel prison of earth, the abode of death,
the loveless land".[112]
[112] _Celtic Religion_, p. 62.
The Border Ballads of Scotland contain references to the Fairyland
Paradise of the Underworld, to the islands or continent of Paradise,
and to the dark Otherworld of the grave in which the dead lie among
devouring worms.
In one Celtic Elysium, known to the Welsh and Irish, the dead feast
on pork as do the heroes in the Paradise of the Scandinavian god
Odin. There is no trace in Scotland of a belief or desire to reach a
Paradise in which the pig was eaten. The popularity of the apple as
the fruit of longevity was, however, widespread. It is uncertain when
the beliefs connected with it were introduced into England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland. As they were similar to those connected with
the hazel-nut, the acorn, the rowan, &c., there may have simply been
a change of fruit rather than a religious change, except in so far
as new ceremonies may have been associated with the cultivated apple
tree.
A Gaelic story tells of a youth who in Paradise held a fragrant
golden apple in his right hand. "A third part of it he would eat and
still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished."
As long as he ate the apple "nor age nor dimness could affect him".
Paradise was in Welsh and Gaelic called "Apple land".[113] Its "tree
of life" always bore ripe fruit and fresh blossoms. One of the Irish
St. Patrick legends pictures a fair youth coming from the south[114]
clad in crimson mantle and yellow shirt, carrying a "double armful of
round yellow-headed nuts and of most beautiful golden-yellow apples".
There are stories, too, about the hazel with its "good fruit", and
of holy fire being taken from this tree, and withal a number of
hazel place-names that probably indicate where sacred hazel groves
once existed. Hallowe'en customs connected with apples and nuts are
evidently relics of ancient religious beliefs and ceremonies.
[113] Avalon, Emain Ablach, &c.
[114] The south was on the right and signified heaven, while the
north was on the left and signified hell.
The Druids are reported by Pliny (as has been stated) to have
venerated the mistletoe, especially when it was found growing on an
oak. But the popular parasitic plant is very rarely found associated
with this tree. In France and England it grows chiefly on firs
and pines or on apple trees, but never on the plane, beech, or
birch.[115] It is therefore doubtful if the name Druid was derived
from the root _dru_ which is found in the Greek word _drus_ (oak).
In Gaelic the Druids are "wise men" who read oracles, worked spells,
controlled the weather, and acted as intercessors between the
gods and men. Like the dragon-slayers of romance, they understood
"the language of birds", and especially that of the particular
bird associated with the holy tree of a cult. One sacred bird was
the wren. According to Dr. Whitley Stokes the old Celtic names of
wren and Druid were derived from the root _dreo_, which is cognate
with the German word _treu_ and the English _true_. The Druid
was therefore, as one who understood the language of the wren, a
soothsayer, a truth-sayer--a revealer of divine truth. A judgment
pronounced by Druid or king was supposed to be inspired by the deity.
It was essentially a divine decree. The judge wore round his neck
the symbol of the deity. "When what he said was true, it was roomy
for his neck; when false, it was narrow." This symbol according to
_Cormac's Glossary_ was called _sin_ (sheen). Some seers derived
their power to reveal the truth by tasting the blood or juice of a
holy animal or reptile, or, like Thomas the Rhymer, by eating of an
apple plucked from the tree of life in the Paradise of Fairyland.
In an old ballad it is told that when Thomas was carried off to the
Underworld by the fairy queen he was given an inspiring apple that
made him a "truth-sayer" (a prophet).
[115] Bacon wrote: "Mistletoe groweth chiefly upon crab trees,
apple trees, sometimes upon hazels, and rarely upon oaks; the
mistletoe whereof is counted very medicinal. It is evergreen in
winter and summer, and beareth a white glistening berry; and it
is a plant utterly differing from the plant on which it groweth."
Syne they came to a garden green
And she pu'd an apple frae a tree;
"Take this for thy wages, True Thomas;
It will give thee the tongue that can never lee (lie)."
"True Thomas" was "Druid Thomas".
An interesting reference to Druidism is found in a Gaelic poem
supposed to have been written by St. Columba, in which the missionary
says:
The voices of birds I do not reverence,
Nor sneezing, nor any charm in this wide world.
Christ, the Son of God, is my Druid.
There are Gaelic stories about Druids who read the omens of the air
and foretell the fates of individuals at birth, fix the days on which
young warriors should take arms, &c.
In England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales not only trees and birds
were reverenced, but also standing stones, which are sometimes
referred to even in modern Gaelic as "stones of worship". Some
stories tell of standing stones being transformed into human beings
when struck by a magician's wand. The wand in one story is possessed
by a "wise woman". Other traditions relate that once a year the
stones become maidens who visit a neighbouring stream and bathe in
it. A version of this myth survives in Oxfordshire. According to
Tacitus there were on the island of Mona (Anglesea), which was a
centre of religious influence, not only Druids, but "women in black
attire like Furies"--apparently priestesses. As has been noted, a
large number of dolmens existed on Mona, in which there were also
"groves devoted to inhuman superstitions".[116]
[116] _The Annals of Tacitus_, XIV, 30. The theory that mediæval
witches were the priestesses of a secret cult that perpetuated
pre-Roman British religion is not supported by Gaelic evidence.
The Gaelic "witches" had no meetings with the devil, and never
rode on broomsticks. The Gaelic name for witchcraft is derived
from English and is not old.
The early Christian writers refer to the "worship of stones" in
Ireland. In the seventh century the Council at Rouen denounced all
those who offer vows to trees, or wells, or stones, as they would
at altars, or offer candles or gifts, as if any divinity resided
there capable of conferring good or evil. The Council at Arles (A.D.
452) and the Council at Toledo (A.D. 681) dealt with similar pagan
practices. That sacred stones were associated with sacred trees is
indicated in a decree of an early Christian Council held at Nantes
which exhorts "bishops and their servants to dig up and remove and
hide in places where they cannot be found those stones which in
remote and woody places are still worshipped and where vows are still
made". This worship of stones was in Britain, or at any rate in part
of England, connected with the worship of the heavenly bodies. A
statute of the time of King Canute forbids the barbarous adoration
of the sun and moon, fire, fountains, stones, and all kinds of trees
and wood. In the Confession attributed to St. Patrick, the Irish
are warned that all those who adore the sun shall perish eternally.
_Cormac's_ _Glossary_ explains that _Indelba_ signified _Images_
and that this name was applied to the altars of certain idols. "They
(the pagans) were wont to carve on them the forms of the elements
they adored: for example, the figure of the sun." Irish Gaels swore
by "the sun, moon, water, and air, day and night, sea and land".
In a Scottish story some warriors lift up a portion of earth and
swear on it. The custom of swearing on weapons was widespread in
these islands. In ancient times people swore by what was holiest to
them.[117]
[117] "Every weapon has its demon" is an old Gaelic saying.
One of the latest references to pagan religious customs is found in
the records of Dingwall Presbytery dating from 1649 to 1678. In the
Parish of Gairloch, Ross-shire, bulls were sacrificed, oblations of
milk were poured on the hills, wells were adored, and chapels were
"circulated"--the worshippers walked round them sunwise. Those who
intended to set out on journeys thrust their heads into a hole in
a stone.[118] If a head entered the hole, it was believed the man
would return; if it did not, his luck was doubtful. The reference to
"oblations of milk" is of special interest, because milk was offered
to the fairies. A milk offering was likewise poured daily into
the "cup" of a stone known as Clach-na-Gruagach (the stone of the
long-haired one). A bowl of milk was, in the Highlands, placed beside
a corpse, and, after burial took place, either outside the house
door or at the grave. The conventionalized Azilian human form is
sometimes found to be depicted by small "cups" on boulders or rocks.
Some "cups" were formed by "knocking" with a small stone for purposes
of divination. The "cradle stone" at Burghead is a case in point.
It is dealt with by Sir Arthur Mitchell (_The Past in the Present_,
pp. 263-5), who refers to other "cup-stones" that were regarded as
being "efficacious in cases of barrenness". In some hollowed stones
Highland parents immersed children suspected of being changelings.
[118] According to the Dingwall records knowledge of "future
events in reference especialle to lyfe and death" was obtained by
performing a ceremony in connection with the hollowed stone.
A flood of light has been thrown on the origin of Druidism by
Siret,[119] the discoverer of the settlements of Easterners in Spain
which have been dealt with in an earlier chapter. He shows that
the colonists were an intensely religious people, who introduced
the Eastern Palm-tree cult and worshipped a goddess similar to the
Egyptian Hathor, a form of whom was Nut. After they were expelled
from Spain by a bronze-using people, the refugees settled in Gaul
and Italy, carrying with them the science and religious beliefs
and practices associated with Druidism. Commercial relations were
established between the Etruscans, the peoples of Gaul and the south
of Spain, and with the Phoenicians of Tyre and Carthage during the
archæological Early Iron Age. Some of the megalithic monuments of
North Africa were connected with this later drift.
[119] _L'Anthropologie_, 1921. Tome XXX, pp. 235 _et seq._
The goddess Hathor of Egypt was associated with the sycamore fig
which exudes a milk-like fluid, with a sea-shell, with the sky
(as Nut she was depicted as a star-spangled woman), and with the
primeval cow. The tree cult was introduced into Rome. The legend
of the foundation of that city is closely associated with the
"milk"-yielding fig tree, under which the twins Romulus and Remus
were nourished by the wolf. The fig-milk was regarded as an elixir
and was given by the Greeks to newly born children.
Siret shows that the ancient name of the Tiber was Rumon, which was
derived from the root signifying milk. It was supposed to nourish
the earth with terrestrial milk. From the same root came the name of
Rome. The ancient milk-providing goddess of Rome was Deva Rumina.
Offerings of milk instead of wine were made to her. The starry
heavens were called "Juno's milk" by the Romans, and "Hera's milk" by
the Greeks, and the name "Milky Way" is still retained.
The milk tree of the British Isles is the hazel. It contains a milky
fluid in the green nut, which Highland children of a past generation
regarded as a fluid that gave them strength. Nut-milk was evidently
regarded in ancient times as an elixir like fig-milk.[120] There is
a great deal of Gaelic lore connected with the hazel. In Keating's
_History of Ireland_ (Vol. I, section 12) appears the significant
statement, "Coll (the hazel) indeed was god to MacCuil". "Coll" is
the old Gaelic word for hazel; the modern word is "Call". "Calltuinn"
(Englished "Calton") is a "hazel grove". There are Caltons in
Edinburgh and Glasgow and well-worn forms of the ancient name
elsewhere. In the legends associated with the Irish Saint Maedóg is
one regarding a dried-up stick of hazel which "sprouted into leaf
and blossom and good fruit". It is added that this hazel "endures
yet (A.D. 624), a fresh tree, undecayed, unwithered, nut-laden
yearly".[121] The sacred hazel was supposed to be impregnated with
the substance of life. Another reference is made to _Coll na nothar_
("hazel of the wounded"). Hazel-nuts of longevity, as well as
apples of longevity, were supposed to grow in the Gaelic Paradise.
In a St. Patrick legend a youth comes from the south ("south" is
Paradise and "north" is hell) carrying "a double armful of round
yellow-headed nuts and of beautiful golden-yellow apples". Dr. Joyce
states that the ancient Irish "attributed certain druidical or fairy
virtues to the yew, the hazel, and the quicken or rowan tree", and
refers to "innumerable instances in tales, poems, and other old
records, in such expressions as 'Cruachan of the fair hazels',
'Derry-na-nath, on which fair-nutted hazels are constantly found'....
Among the blessings a good king brought on the land was plenty of
hazel-nuts:--'O'Berga (the chief) for whom the hazels stoop', 'Each
hazel is rich from the hero'." Hazel-nuts were like the figs and
dates of the Easterners, largely used for food.[122]
[120] "Comb of the honey and milk of the nut" (in Gaelic _cir
na meala 'is bainne nan cnò_) was given as a tonic to weakly
children, and is still remembered, the Rev. Kenneth MacLeod,
Colonsay, informs me.
[121] Standish H. O'Grady, _Silva Gadelica_, p. 505.
[122] _A Smaller Social History of Ancient Ireland_, pp. 100-2
and 367-8.
Important evidence regarding the milk elixir and the associated myths
and doctrines is preserved in the ancient religious literature of
India and especially in the _Mahá-bhárata_. The Indian Hathor is the
cow-mother Surabhi, who sprang from Amrita (Soma) in the mouth of
the Grandfather (Brahma). A single jet of her milk gave origin to
"Milky Ocean". The milk "mixing with the water" appeared as foam,
and was the only nourishment of the holy men called "Foam drinkers".
Divine milk was also obtained from "milk-yielding trees", which were
the "children" of one of her daughters. These trees included nut
trees. Another daughter was the mother of birds of the parrot species
(oracular birds). In the Vedic poems _soma_, a drink prepared from a
plant, is said to have been mixed with milk and honey, and mention
is made of "_Su-soma_" ("river of Soma"). _Madhu_ (mead) was a drink
identified with _soma_, or milk and honey.[123]
[123] Macdonell and Keith, _Vedic Index_, under _Soma_ and
_Madhu_.
There are rivers of mead in the Celtic Paradise. Certain trees are
in Irish lore associated with rivers that were regarded as sacred.
These were not necessarily milk-yielding trees. In Gaul the plane
tree took the place of the southern fig tree. The elm tree in Ireland
and Scotland was similarly connected with the ancient milk cult.
One of the old names for new milk, found in "Cormac's Glossary", is
_lemlacht_, the later form of which is _leamhnacht_. From the same
root (_lem_) comes _leamh_, the name of the elm. The River Laune
in Killarney is a rendering of the Gaelic name _leamhain_, which in
Scotland is found as Leven, the river that gave its name to the area
known as Lennox (ancient _Leamhna_). Milk place-names in Ireland
include "new milk lake" (Lough Alewnaghta) in Galway, "which",
Joyce suggests, "may have been so called from the softness of its
water". A mythological origin of the name is more probable. Wounds
received in battle were supposed to be healed in baths of the milk
of white hornless cows.[124] In Irish blood-covenant ceremonies new
milk, blood, and wine were mixed and drunk by warriors.[125] As late
as the twelfth century a rich man's child was in Ireland immersed
immediately after birth in new milk.[126] In Rome, in the ninth
century, at the Easter-eve baptism the chalice was filled "not with
wine but with milk and honey, that they may understand ... that they
have entered already upon the promised land".[127]
[124] Joyce, _Irish Names of Places_, Vol. I, pp. 507-9, Vol. II,
pp. 206-7 and 345· Marsh mallows (_leamh_) appear to have been
included among the herbals of the milk-cult as the soma-plant was
in India.
[125] _Revue Celtique_, Vol. XIII, p. 75.
[126] Warren, _Liturgy and Ritual of the Celtic Church_, p. 67.
[127] Henderson's _Survivals_, p. 218.
The beliefs associated with the apple, rowan, hazel, and oak trees
were essentially the same. These trees provided the fruits of
longevity and knowledge, or the wine which was originally regarded
as an elixir that imparted new life and inspired those who drank it
to prophecy[128]. The oak provided acorns which were eaten. Although
it does not bear red berries like the rowan, a variety of the oak
is greatly favoured by the insect _Kermes_, "which yields a scarlet
dye nearly equal to cochineal, and is the 'scarlet' mentioned in
Scripture". This fact is of importance as the early peoples attached
much value to colour and especially to red, the colour of life blood.
Withal, acorn-cups "are largely imported from the Levant for the
purposes of tanning, dyeing, and making ink".[129] A seafaring people
like the ancient Britons must have tanned the skins used for boats
so as to prevent them rotting on coming into contact with water. Dr.
Joyce writes of the ancient Irish in this connection, "Curraghs[130]
or wicker-boats were often covered with leather. A jacket of hard,
tough, tanned leather was sometimes worn in battle as a protecting
corslet. Bags made of leather, and often of undressed skins, were
pretty generally used to hold liquids. There was a sort of leather
wallet or bag called _crioll_, used like a modern travelling bag, to
hold clothes and other soft articles. The art of tanning was well
understood in ancient Ireland. The name for a tanner was _sudaire_,
which is still a living word. Oak bark was employed, and in
connection with this use was called _coirteach_ (Latin, _cortex_)."
The oak-god protected seafarers by making their vessels sea-worthy.
[128] Rowan-berry wine was greatly favoured. There are Gaelic
references to "the wine of the apple (cider)".
[129] George Nicholson, _Encyclopædia of Horticulture_, under
"Oak".
[130] Curragh is connected with the Latin _corium_, a hide.
Mistletoe berries may have been regarded as milk-berries because
of their colour, and the ceremonial cutting of the mistletoe with
the golden sickle may well have been a ceremony connected with the
fertilization of trees practised in the East. The mistletoe was
reputed to be an "all-heal", although really it is useless for
medicinal purposes.
That complex ideas were associated with deities imported into this
country, the history of which must be sought for elsewhere, is made
manifest when we find that, in the treeless Outer Hebrides, the
goddess known as the "maiden queen" has her dwelling in a tree and
provides the "milk of knowledge" from a sea-shell. She could not
possibly have had independent origin in Scotland. Her history is
rooted in ancient Egypt, where Hathor, the provider of the milk
of knowledge and longevity, was, as has been indicated, connected
with the starry sky (the Milky Way), a sea-shell, the milk-yielding
sycamore fig, and the primeval cow.
The cult animal of the goddess was in Egypt the star-spangled cow;
in Troy it was a star-spangled sow[131]. The cult animal of Rome was
the wolf which suckled Romulus and Remus. In Crete the local Zeus was
suckled, according to the belief of one cult, by a horned sheep[132],
and according to another cult by a sow. There were various cult
animals in ancient Scotland, including the tabooed pig, the red deer
milked by the fairies, the wolf, and the cat of the "Cat" tribes
in Shetland, Caithness, &c. The cow appears to have been sacred to
certain peoples in ancient Britain and Ireland. It would appear, too,
that there was a sacred dog in Ireland.[133]
[131] Schliemann, _Troy and Its Remains_, p. 232.
[132] _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, Vol. XXI, p. 129.
[133] It was because Zeus had been suckled by a sow that the
Cretans, as Athenæus records, "will not taste its flesh"
(Farnell, _Cults of the Greek States_, Vol. I, p. 37). In Ireland
the dog was taboo to Cuchullin. There is a good deal of Gaelic
lore about the sacred cow.
It is evident that among the Eastern beliefs anciently imported into
the British Isles were some which still bear traces of the influence
of cults and of culture mixing. That religious ideas of Egyptian
and Babylonian origin were blended in this country there can be
little doubt, for the Gaelic-speaking peoples, who revered the hazel
as the Egyptians revered the sycamore, regarded the liver as the
seat of life, as did the Babylonians, and not the heart, as did the
Egyptians. In translations of ancient Gaelic literature "liver" is
always rendered as "vitals".
[Illustration: Cult Animals and "Wonder Beasts" (dragons or
makaras) on Scottish Sculptured Stones]
It is of special interest to note that Siret has found evidence to
show that the Tree Cult of the Easterners was connected with the
early megalithic monuments. The testimony of tradition associates
the stone circles, &c., with the Druids. "We are now obliged",
he writes[134], "to go back to the theory of the archæologists of
a hundred years ago who attributed the megalithic monuments to the
Druids. The instinct of our predecessors has been more penetrating
than the scientific analysis which has taken its place." In Gaelic,
as will be shown, the words for a sacred grove and the shrine within
a grove are derived from the same root _nem_. (See also Chapter IX in
this connection.)
[134] _L'Anthropologie_ (1921), pp. 268 _et seq._