*MYTHS & LEGENDS OF THE CELTIC RACE*
[Queen Maev]
Queen Maev
*T. W. ROLLESTON*
*MYTHS & LEGENDS OF THE CELTIC RACE*
[[Logo]]
CONSTABLE - LONDON
British edition published by Constable and Company Limited, London
First published 1911 by George G. Harrap & Co., London
PREFACE
The Past may be forgotten, but it never dies. The elements which in the
most remote times have entered into a nation’s composition endure through
all its history, and help to mould that history, and to stamp the
character and genius of the people.
The examination, therefore, of these elements, and the recognition, as far
as possible, of the part they have actually contributed to the warp and
weft of a nation’s life, must be a matter of no small interest and
importance to those who realise that the present is the child of the past,
and the future of the present; who will not regard themselves, their
kinsfolk, and their fellow-citizens as mere transitory phantoms, hurrying
from darkness into darkness, but who know that, in them, a vast historic
stream of national life is passing from its distant and mysterious origin
towards a future which is largely conditioned by all the past wanderings
of that human stream, but which is also, in no small degree, what they, by
their courage, their patriotism, their knowledge, and their understanding,
choose to make it.
The part played by the Celtic race as a formative influence in the
history, the literature, and the art of the people inhabiting the British
Islands—a people which from that centre has spread its dominions over so
vast an area of the earth’s surface—has been unduly obscured in popular
thought. For this the current use of the term “Anglo-Saxon” applied to the
British people as a designation of race is largely responsible.
Historically the term is quite misleading. There is nothing to justify
this singling out of two Low-German tribes when we wish to indicate the
race-character of the British people. The use of it leads to such
absurdities as that which the writer noticed not long ago, when the
proposed elevation by the Pope of an Irish bishop to a cardinalate was
described in an English newspaper as being prompted by the desire of the
head of the Catholic Church to pay a compliment to “the Anglo-Saxon race.”
The true term for the population of these islands, and for the typical and
dominant part of the population of North America, is not Anglo-Saxon, but
Anglo-Celtic. It is precisely in this blend of Germanic and Celtic
elements that the British people are unique—it is precisely this blend
which gives to this people the fire, the _élan_, and in literature and art
the sense of style, colour, drama, which are not common growths of German
soil, while at the same time it gives the deliberateness and depth, the
reverence for ancient law and custom, and the passion for personal
freedom, which are more or less strange to the Romance nations of the
South of Europe. May they never become strange to the British Islands! Nor
is the Celtic element in these islands to be regarded as contributed
wholly, or even very predominantly, by the populations of the so-called
“Celtic Fringe.” It is now well known to ethnologists that the Saxons did
not by any means exterminate the Celtic or Celticised populations whom
they found in possession of Great Britain. Mr. E.W.B. Nicholson, librarian
of the Bodleian, writes in his important work “Keltic Researches” (1904):
“Names which have not been purposely invented to describe race must never
be taken as proof of race, but only as proof of community of language, or
community of political organisation. We call a man who speaks English,
lives in England, and bears an obviously English name (such as Freeman or
Newton), an Englishman. Yet from the statistics of ‘relative nigrescence’
there is good reason to believe that Lancashire, West Yorkshire,
Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Rutland,
Cambridgeshire, Wiltshire, Somerset, and part of Sussex are as Keltic as
Perthshire and North Munster; that Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire,
Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire, Devon, Dorset, Northamptonshire,
Huntingdonshire, and Bedfordshire are more so—and equal to North Wales and
Leinster; while Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire exceed even this degree,
and are on a level with South Wales and Ulster.”(1)
It is, then, for an Anglo-Celtic, not an “Anglo-Saxon,” people that this
account of the early history, the religion, and the mythical and romantic
literature of the Celtic race is written. It is hoped that that people
will find in it things worthy to be remembered as contributions to the
general stock of European culture, but worthy above all to be borne in
mind by those who have inherited more than have any other living people of
the blood, the instincts and the genius of the Celt.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAPTER I: THE CELTS IN ANCIENT HISTORY
CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF THE CELTS
CHAPTER III: THE IRISH INVASION MYTHS
CHAPTER IV: THE EARLY MILESIAN KINGS
CHAPTER V: TALES OF THE ULTONIAN CYCLE
CHAPTER VI: TALES OF THE OSSIANIC CYCLE
CHAPTER VII: THE VOYAGE OF MAELDUN
CHAPTER VIII: MYTHS AND TALES OF THE CYMRY
ILLUSTRATIONS
Queen Maev
Prehistoric Tumulus at New Grange
Stone Alignments at Kermaris, Carnac
Stone-worship at Locronan, Brittany
CHAPTER I: THE CELTS IN ANCIENT HISTORY
*Earliest References*
In the chronicles of the classical nations for about five hundred years
previous to the Christian era there are frequent references to a people
associated with these nations, sometimes in peace, sometimes in war, and
evidently occupying a position of great strength and influence in the
Terra Incognita of Mid-Europe. This people is called by the Greeks the
Hyperboreans or Celts, the latter term being first found in the geographer
Hecatæsus, about 500 B.C.(2)
Herodotus, about half a century later, speaks of the Celts as dwelling
“beyond the pillars of Hercules”—_i.e._, in Spain—and also of the Danube
as rising in their country.
Aristotle knew that they dwelt “beyond Spain,” that they had captured
Rome, and that they set great store by warlike power. References other
than geographical are occasionally met with even in early writers.
Hellanicus of Lesbos, an historian of the fifth century B.C., describes
the Celts as practising justice and righteousness. Ephorus, about 350
B.C., has three lines of verse about the Celts in which they are described
as using “the same customs as the Greeks”—whatever that may mean—and being
on the friendliest terms with that people, who established guest
friendships among them. Plato, however, in the “Laws,” classes the Celts
among the races who are drunken and combative, and much barbarity is
attributed to them on the occasion of their irruption into Greece and the
sacking of Delphi in the year 273 B.C. Their attack on Rome and the
sacking of that city by them about a century earlier is one of the
landmarks of ancient history.
The history of this people during the time when they were the dominant
power in Mid-Europe has to be divined or reconstructed from scattered
references, and from accounts of episodes in their dealings with Greece
and Rome, very much as the figure of a primæval monster is reconstructed
by the zoologist from a few fossilised bones. No chronicles of their own
have come down to us, no architectural remains have survived; a few coins,
and a few ornaments and weapons in bronze decorated with enamel or with
subtle and beautiful designs in chased or repoussé work—these, and the
names which often cling in strangely altered forms to the places where
they dwelt, from the Euxine to the British Islands, are well-nigh all the
visible traces which this once mighty power has left us of its
civilisation and dominion. Yet from these, and from the accounts of
classical writers, much can be deduced with certainty, and much more can
be conjectured with a very fair measure of probability. The great Celtic
scholar whose loss we have recently had to deplore, M. d’Arbois de
Jubainville, has, on the available data, drawn a convincing outline of
Celtic history for the period prior to their emergence into full
historical light with the conquests of Cæsar,(3) and it is this outline of
which the main features are reproduced here.
*The True Celtic Race*
To begin with, we must dismiss the idea that Celtica was ever inhabited by
a single pure and homogeneous race. The true Celts, if we accept on this
point the carefully studied and elaborately argued conclusion of Dr. T.
Rice Holmes,(4) supported by the unanimous voice of antiquity, were a
tall, fair race, warlike and masterful,(5) whose place of origin (as far
as we can trace them) was somewhere about the sources of the Danube, and
who spread their dominion both by conquest and by peaceful infiltration
over Mid-Europe, Gaul, Spain, and the British Islands. They did not
exterminate the original prehistoric inhabitants of these
regions—palæolithic and neolithic races, dolmen-builders and workers in
bronze—but they imposed on them their language, their arts, and their
traditions, taking, no doubt, a good deal from them in return, especially,
as we shall see, in the important matter of religion. Among these races
the true Celts formed an aristocratic and ruling caste. In that capacity
they stood, alike in Gaul, in Spain, in Britain, and in Ireland, in the
forefront or armed opposition to foreign invasion. They bore the worst
brunt of war, of confiscations, and of banishment. They never lacked
valour, but they were not strong enough or united enough to prevail, and
they perished in far greater proportion than the earlier populations whom
they had themselves subjugated. But they disappeared also by mingling
their blood with these inhabitants, whom they impregnated with many of
their own noble and virile qualities. Hence it comes that the
characteristics of the peoples called Celtic in the present day, and who
carry on the Celtic tradition and language, are in some respects so
different from those of the Celts of classical history and the Celts who
produced the literature and art of ancient Ireland, and in others so
strikingly similar. To take a physical characteristic alone, the more
Celtic districts of the British Islands are at present marked by darkness
of complexion, hair, &c. They are not very dark, but they are darker than
the rest of the kingdom.(6) But the true Celts were certainly fair. Even
the Irish Celts of the twelfth century are described by Giraldus
Cambrensis as a fair race.
*Golden Age of the Celts*
But we are anticipating, and must return to the period of the origins of
Celtic history. As astronomers have discerned the existence of an unknown
planet by the perturbations which it has caused in the courses of those
already under direct observation, so we can discern in the fifth and
fourth centuries before Christ the presence of a great power and of mighty
movements going on behind a veil which will never be lifted now. This was
the Golden Age of Celtdom in Continental Europe. During this period the
Celts waged three great and successful wars, which had no little influence
on the course of South European history. About 500 B.C. they conquered
Spain from the Carthaginians. A century later we find them engaged in the
conquest of Northern Italy from the Etruscans. They settled in large
numbers in the territory afterwards known as Cisalpine Gaul, where many
names, such as _Mediolanum_ (Milan), _Addua_ (Adda), _Viro-dunum_
(Verduno), and perhaps _Cremona_ (_creamh_, garlic),(7) testify still to
their occupation. They left a greater memorial in the chief of Latin
poets, whose name, Vergil, appears to bear evidence of his Celtic
ancestry.(8) Towards the end of the fourth century they overran Pannonia,
conquering the Illyrians.
*Alliances with the Greeks*
All these wars were undertaken in alliance with the Greeks, with whom the
Celts were at this period on the friendliest terms. By the war with the
Carthaginians the monopoly held by that people of the trade in tin with
Britain and in silver with the miners of Spain was broken down, and the
overland route across France to Britain, for the sake of which the
Phocæans had in 600 B.C. created the port of Marseilles, was definitely
secured to Greek trade. Greeks and Celts were at this period allied
against Phœnicians and Persians. The defeat of Hamilcar by Gelon at
Himera, in Sicily, took place in the same year as that of Xerxes at
Salamis. The Carthaginian army in that expedition was made up of
mercenaries from half a dozen different nations, but not a Celt is found
in the Carthaginian ranks, and Celtic hostility must have counted for much
in preventing the Carthaginians from lending help to the Persians for the
overthrow of their common enemy. These facts show that Celtica played no
small part in preserving the Greek type of civilisation from being
overwhelmed by the despotisms of the East, and thus in keeping alive in
Europe the priceless seed of freedom and humane culture.
*Alexander the Great*
When the counter-movement of Hellas against the East began under Alexander
the Great we find the Celts again appearing as a factor of importance.
In the fourth century Macedon was attacked and almost obliterated by
Thracian and Illyrian hordes. King Amyntas II. was defeated and driven
into exile. His son Perdiccas II. was killed in battle. When Philip, a
younger brother of Perdiccas, came to the obscure and tottering throne
which he and his successors were to make the seat of a great empire he was
powerfully aided in making head against the Illyrians by the conquests of
the Celts in the valleys of the Danube and the Po. The alliance was
continued, and rendered, perhaps, more formal in the days of Alexander.
When about to undertake his conquest of Asia (334 B.C.) Alexander first
made a compact with the Celts “who dwelt by the Ionian Gulf” in order to
secure his Greek dominions from attack during his absence. The episode is
related by Ptolemy Soter in his history of the wars of Alexander.(9) It
has a vividness which stamps it as a bit of authentic history, and another
singular testimony to the truth of the narrative has been brought to light
by de Jubainville. As the Celtic envoys, who are described as men of
haughty bearing and great stature, their mission concluded, were drinking
with the king, he asked them, it is said, what was the thing they, the
Celts, most feared. The envoys replied: “We fear no man: there is but one
thing that we fear, namely, that the sky should fall on us; but we regard
nothing so much as the friendship of a man such as thou.” Alexander bade
them farewell, and, turning to his nobles, whispered: “What a vainglorious
people are these Celts!” Yet the answer, for all its Celtic bravura and
flourish, was not without both dignity and courtesy. The reference to the
falling of the sky seems to give a glimpse of some primitive belief or
myth of which it is no longer possible to discover the meaning.(10) The
national oath by which the Celts bound themselves to the observance of
their covenant with Alexander is remarkable. “If we observe not this
engagement,” they said, “may the sky fall on us and crush us, may the
earth gape and swallow us up, may the sea burst out and overwhelm us.” De
Jubainville draws attention most appositely to a passage from the “Táin Bo
Cuailgne,” in the Book of Leinster(11), where the Ulster heroes declare to
their king, who wished to leave them in battle in order to meet an attack
in another part of the field: “Heaven is above us, and earth beneath us,
and the sea is round about us. Unless the sky shall fall with its showers
of stars on the ground where we are camped, or unless the earth shall be
rent by an earthquake, or unless the waves of the blue sea come over the
forests of the living world, we shall not give ground.”(12) This survival
of a peculiar oath-formula for more than a thousand years, and its
reappearance, after being first heard of among the Celts of Mid-Europe, in
a mythical romance of Ireland, is certainly most curious, and, with other
facts which we shall note hereafter, speaks strongly for the community and
persistence of Celtic culture.(13)
*The Sack of Rome*
We have mentioned two of the great wars of the Continental Celts; we come
now to the third, that with the Etruscans, which ultimately brought them
into conflict with the greatest power of pagan Europe, and led to their
proudest feat of arms, the sack of Rome. About the year 400 B.C. the
Celtic Empire seems to have reached the height of its power. Under a king
named by Livy Ambicatus, who was probably the head of a dominant tribe in
a military confederacy, like the German Emperor in the present day, the
Celts seem to have been welded into a considerable degree of political
unity, and to have followed a consistent policy. Attracted by the rich
land of Northern Italy, they poured down through the passes of the Alps,
and after hard fighting with the Etruscan inhabitants they maintained
their ground there. At this time the Romans were pressing on the Etruscans
from below, and Roman and Celt were acting in definite concert and
alliance. But the Romans, despising perhaps the Northern barbarian
warriors, had the rashness to play them false at the siege of Clusium, 391
B.C., a place which the Romans regarded as one of the bulwarks of Latium
against the North. The Celts recognised Romans who had come to them in the
sacred character of ambassadors fighting in the ranks of the enemy. The
events which followed are, as they have come down to us, much mingled with
legend, but there are certain touches of dramatic vividness in which the
true character of the Celts appears distinctly recognisable. They applied,
we are told, to Rome for satisfaction for the treachery of the envoys, who
were three sons of Fabius Ambustus, the chief pontiff. The Romans refused
to listen to the claim, and elected the Fabii military tribunes for the
ensuing year. Then the Celts abandoned the siege of Clusium and marched
straight on Rome. The army showed perfect discipline. There was no
indiscriminate plundering and devastation, no city or fortress was
assailed. “We are bound for Rome” was their cry to the guards upon the
walls of the provincial towns, who watched the host in wonder and fear as
it rolled steadily to the south. At last they reached the river Allia, a
few miles from Rome, where the whole available force of the city was
ranged to meet them. The battle took place on July 18, 390, that
ill-omened _dies Alliensis_ which long perpetuated in the Roman calendar
the memory of the deepest shame the republic had ever known. The Celts
turned the flank of the Roman army, and annihilated it in one tremendous
charge. Three days later they were in Rome, and for nearly a year they
remained masters of the city, or of its ruins, till a great fine had been
exacted and full vengeance taken for the perfidy at Clusium. For nearly a
century after the treaty thus concluded there was peace between the Celts
and the Romans, and the breaking of that peace when certain Celtic tribes
allied themselves with their old enemy, the Etruscans, in the third
Samnite war was coincident with the breaking up of the Celtic Empire.(14)
Two questions must now be considered before we can leave the historical
part of this Introduction. First of all, what are the evidences for the
widespread diffusion of Celtic power in Mid-Europe during this period?
Secondly, where were the Germanic peoples, and what was their position in
regard to the Celts?
*Celtic Place-names in Europe*
To answer these questions fully would take us (for the purposes of this
volume) too deeply into philological discussions, which only the Celtic
scholar can fully appreciate. The evidence will be found fully set forth
in de Jubainville’s work, already frequently referred to. The study of
European place-names forms the basis of the argument. Take the Celtic name
_Noviomagus_ composed of two Celtic words, the adjective meaning new, and
_magos_ (Irish _magh_) a field or plain.(15) There were nine places of
this name known in antiquity. Six were in France, among them the places
now called Noyon, in Oise, Nijon, in Vosges, Nyons, in Drôme. Three
outside of France were Nimègue, in Belgium, Neumagen, in the Rhineland,
and one at Speyer, in the Palatinate.
The word _dunum_, so often traceable in Gaelic place-names in the present
day (Dundalk, Dunrobin, &c.), and meaning fortress or castle, is another
typically Celtic element in European place-names. It occurred very
frequently in France—_e.g., Lug-dunum_ (Lyons), _Viro-dunum_ (Verdun). It
is also found in Switzerland—_e.g., Minno-dunum_ (Moudon), _Eburo-dunum_
(Yverdon)—and in the Netherlands, where the famous city of Leyden goes
back to a Celtic _Lug-dunum._ In Great Britain the Celtic term was often
changed by simple translation into _castra_; thus _Camulo-dunum_ became
Colchester, _Brano-dunum_ Brancaster. In Spain and Portugal eight names
terminating in _dunum_ are mentioned by classical writers. In Germany the
modern names Kempton, Karnberg, Liegnitz, go back respectively to the
Celtic forms _Cambo-dunum, Carro-aunum,_ _Lugi-dunum_, and we find a
_Singi-dunum,_ now Belgrade, in Servia, a _Novi-dunum_, now Isaktscha, in
Roumania, a _Carro-dunum_ in South Russia, near the Dniester, and another
in Croatia, now Pitsmeza. _Sego-dunum_, now Rodez, in France, turns up
also in Bavaria (Wurzburg), and in England (_Sege-dunum,_ now Wallsend, in
Northumberland), and the first term, _sego_, is traceable in Segorbe
(_Sego-briga_) in Spain. _Briga_ is a Celtic word, the origin of the
German _burg_, and equivalent in meaning to _dunum_.
One more example: the word _magos_, a plain, which is very frequent as an
element of Irish place-names, is found abundantly in France, and outside
of France, in countries no longer Celtic, it appears in Switzerland
(_Uro-magus_ now Promasens), in the Rhineland (_Broco-magus_, Brumath), in
the Netherlands, as already noted (Nimègue), in Lombardy several times,
and in Austria.
The examples given are by no means exhaustive, but they serve to indicate
the wide diffusion of the Celts in Europe and their identity of language
over their vast territory.(16)
*Early Celtic Art*
The relics of ancient Celtic art-work tell the same story. In the year
1846 a great pre-Roman necropolis was discovered at Hallstatt, near
Salzburg, in Austria. It contains relics believed by Dr. Arthur Evans to
date from about 750 to 400 B.C. These relics betoken in some cases a high
standard of civilisation and considerable commerce. Amber from the Baltic
is there, Phoenician glass, and gold-leaf of Oriental workmanship. Iron
swords are found whose hilts and sheaths are richly decorated with gold,
ivory, and amber.
The Celtic culture illustrated by the remains at Hallstatt developed later
into what is called the La Tène culture. La Tène was a settlement at the
north-eastern end of the Lake of Neuchâtel, and many objects of great
interest have been found there since the site was first explored in 1858.
These antiquities represent, according to Dr. Evans, the culminating
period of Gaulish civilisation, and date from round about the third
century B.C. The type of art here found must be judged in the light of an
observation recently made by Mr. Romilly Allen in his “Celtic Art” (p.
13):
“The great difficulty in understanding the evolution of Celtic art lies in
the fact that although the Celts never seem to have invented any new
ideas, they possessed an extraordinary aptitude for picking up ideas from
the different peoples with whom war or commerce brought them into contact.
And once the Celt had borrowed an idea from his neighbours he was able to
give it such a strong Celtic tinge that it soon became something so
different from what it was originally as to be almost unrecognisable.”
Now what the Celt borrowed in the art-culture which on the Continent
culminated in the La Tène relics were certain originally naturalistic
motives for Greek ornaments, notably the palmette and the meander motives.
But it was characteristic of the Celt that he avoided in his art all
imitation of, or even approximation to, the natural forms of the plant and
animal world. He reduced everything to pure decoration. What he enjoyed in
decoration was the alternation of long sweeping curves and undulations
with the concentrated energy of close-set spirals or bosses, and with
these simple elements and with the suggestion of a few motives derived
from Greek art he elaborated a most beautiful, subtle, and varied system
of decoration, applied to weapons, ornaments, and to toilet and household
appliances of all kinds, in gold, bronze, wood, and stone, and possibly,
if we had the means of judging, to textile fabrics also. One beautiful
feature in the decoration of metal-work seems to have entirely originated
in Celtica. Enamelling was unknown to the classical nations till they
learned from the Celts. So late as the third century A.D. it was still
strange to the classical world, as we learn from the reference of
Philostratus:
“They say that the barbarians who live in the ocean [Britons] pour
these colours upon heated brass, and that they adhere, become hard
as stone, and preserve the designs that are made upon them.”
Dr. J. Anderson writes in the “Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries
of Scotland”:
“The Gauls as well as the Britons—of the same Celtic
stock—practised enamel-working before the Roman conquest. The
enamel workshops of Bibracte, with their furnaces, crucibles,
moulds, polishing-stones, and with the crude enamels in their
various stages of preparation, have been recently excavated from
the ruins of the city destroyed by Caesar and his legions. But the
Bibracte enamels are the work of mere dabblers in the art,
compared with the British examples. The home of the art was
Britain, and the style of the pattern, as well as the association
in which the objects decorated with it were found, demonstrated
with certainty that it had reached its highest stage of indigenous
development before it came in contact with the Roman culture.”(17)
The National Museum in Dublin contains many superb examples of Irish
decorative art in gold, bronze, and enamels, and the “strong Celtic tinge”
of which Mr. Romilly Allen speaks is as clearly observable there as in the
relics of Hallstatt or La Tène.
Everything, then, speaks of a community of culture, an identity of
race-character, existing over the vast territory known to the ancient
world as “Celtica.”
*Celts and Germans*
But, as we have said before, this territory was by no means inhabited by
the Celt alone. In particular we have to ask, who and where were the
Germans, the Teuto-Gothic tribes, who eventually took the place of the
Celts as the great Northern menace to classical civilisation?
They are mentioned by Pytheas, the eminent Greek traveller and geographer,
about 300 B.C., but they play no part in history till, under the name of
Cimbri and Teutones, they descended on Italy to be vanquished by Marius at
the close of the second century. The ancient Greek geographers prior to
Pytheas know nothing of them, and assign all the territories now known as
Germanic to various Celtic tribes.
The explanation given by de Jubainville, and based by him on various
philological considerations, is that the Germans were a subject people,
comparable to those “un-free tribes” who existed in Gaul and in ancient
Ireland. They lived under the Celtic dominion, and had no independent
political existence. De Jubainville finds that all the words connected
with law and government and war which are common both to the Celtic and
Teutonic languages were borrowed by the latter from the former. Chief
among them are the words represented by the modern German _Reich_, empire,
_Amt_, office, and the Gothic _reiks_, a king, all of which are of
unquestioned Celtic origin. De Jubainville also numbers among loan words
from Celtic the words _Bann_, an order; _Frei_, free; _Geisel_, a hostage;
_Erbe_, an inheritance; _Werth_, value; _Weih_, sacred; _Magus_, a slave
(Gothic); _Wini_, a wife (Old High German); _Skalks, Schalk_, a slave
(Gothic); _Hathu_, battle (Old German); _Helith, Held_, a hero, from the
same root as the word Celt; _Heer_, an army (Celtic _choris_); _Sieg_,
victory; _Beute_, booty; _Burg_, a castle; and many others.
The etymological history of some of these words is interesting. _Amt_, for
instance, that word of so much significance in modern German
administration, goes back to an ancient Celtic _ambhactos_, which is
compounded of the words _ambi_, about, and _actos_, a past participle
derived from the Celtic root _AG_, meaning to act. Now _ambi_ descends
from the primitive Indo-European _mbhi_, where the initial _m_ is a kind
of vowel, afterwards represented in Sanscrit by _a_. This _m_ vowel became
_n_ in those Germanic words which derive directly from the primitive
Indo-European tongue. But the word which is now represented by _amt_
appears in its earliest Germanic form as _ambaht_, thus making plain its
descent from the Celtic _ambhactos_.
Again, the word _frei_ is found in its earliest Germanic form as
_frijo-s,_ which comes from the primitive Indo-European _prijo-s_. The
word here does not, however, mean free; it means beloved (Sanscrit
_priya-s_). In the Celtic language, however, we find _prijos_ dropping its
initial _p_—a difficulty in pronouncing this letter was a marked feature
in ancient Celtic; it changed _j_, according to a regular rule, into _dd_,
and appears in modern Welsh as _rhydd_=free. The Indo-European meaning
persists in the Germanic languages in the name of the love-goddess,
_Freia_, and in the word _Freund_, friend, _Friede_, peace. The sense
borne by the word in the sphere of civil right is traceable to a Celtic
origin, and in that sense appears to have been a loan from Celtic.
The German _Beute_, booty, plunder, has had an instructive history. There
was a Gaulish word _bodi_ found in compounds such as the place-name
Segobodium (Seveux), and various personal and tribal names, including
Boudicca, better known to us as the “British warrior queen,” Boadicea.
This word meant anciently “victory.” But the fruits of victory are spoil,
and in this material sense the word was adopted in German, in French
(_butin_) in Norse (_byte_), and the Welsh (_budd_). On the other hand,
the word preserved its elevated significance in Irish. In the Irish
translation of Chronicles xxix. 11, where the Vulgate original has “Tua
est, Domine, magnificentia et potentia et gloria et victoria,” the word
_victoria_ is rendered by the Irish _búaidh_, and, as de Jubainville
remarks, “ce n’est pas de butin qu’il s’agit.” He goes on to say:
“_Búaidh_ has preserved in Irish, thanks to a vigorous and persistent
literary culture, the high meaning which it bore in the tongue of the
Gaulish aristocracy. The material sense of the word was alone perceived by
the lower classes of the population, and it is the tradition of this lower
class which has been preserved in the German, the French, and the Cymric
languages.”(18)
Two things, however, the Celts either could not or would not impose on the
subjugated German tribes—their language and their religion. In these two
great factors of race-unity and pride lay the seeds of the ultimate German
uprising and overthrow of the Celtic supremacy. The names of the German
are different from those of the Celtic deities, their funeral customs,
with which are associated the deepest religious conceptions of primitive
races, are different. The Celts, or at least the dominant section of them,
buried their dead, regarding the use of fire as a humiliation, to be
inflicted on criminals, or upon slaves or prisoners in those terrible
human sacrifices which are the greatest stain on their native culture. The
Germans, on the other hand, burned their illustrious dead on pyres, like
the early Greeks—if a pyre could not be afforded for the whole body, the
noblest parts, such as the head and arms, were burned and the rest buried.
*Downfall of the Celtic Empire*
What exactly took place at the time of the German revolt we shall never
know; certain it is, however, that from about the year 300 B.C. onward the
Celts appear to have lost whatever political cohesion and common purpose
they had possessed. Rent asunder, as it were, by the upthrust of some
mighty subterranean force, their tribes rolled down like lava-streams to
the south, east, and west of their original home. Some found their way
into Northern Greece, where they committed the outrage which so
scandalised their former friends and allies in the sack of the shrine of
Delphi (273 B.C.). Others renewed, with worse fortune, the old struggle
with Rome, and perished in vast numbers at Sentinum (295 B.C.) and Lake
Vadimo (283 B.C.). One detachment penetrated into Asia Minor, and founded
the Celtic State of Galatia, where, as St. Jerome attests, a Celtic
dialect was still spoken in the fourth century A.D. Others enlisted as
mercenary troops with Carthage. A tumultuous war of Celts against
scattered German tribes, or against other Celts who represented earlier
waves of emigration and conquest, went on all over Mid-Europe, Gaul, and
Britain. When this settled down Gaul and the British Islands remained
practically the sole relics of the Celtic empire, the only countries still
under Celtic law and leadership. By the commencement of the Christian era
Gaul and Britain had fallen under the yoke of Rome, and their complete
Romanisation was only a question of time.
*Unique Historical Position of Ireland*
Ireland alone was never even visited, much less subjugated, by the Roman
legionaries, and maintained its independence against all comers nominally
until the close of the twelfth century, but for all practical purposes a
good three hundred years longer.
Ireland has therefore this unique feature of interest, that it carried an
indigenous Celtic civilisation, Celtic institutions, art, and literature,
and the oldest surviving form of the Celtic language,(19) right across the
chasm which separates the antique from the modern world, the pagan from
the Christian world, and on into the full light of modern history and
observation.
*The Celtic Character*
The moral no less than the physical characteristics attributed by
classical writers to the Celtic peoples show a remarkable distinctness and
consistency. Much of what is said about them might, as we should expect,
be said of any primitive and unlettered people, but there remains so much
to differentiate them among the races of mankind that if these ancient
references to the Celts could be read aloud, without mentioning the name
of the race to whom they referred, to any person acquainted with it
through modern history alone, he would, I think, without hesitation, name
the Celtic peoples as the subject of the description which he had heard.
Some of these references have already been quoted, and we need not repeat
the evidence derived from Plato, Ephorus, or Arrian. But an observation of
M. Porcius Cato on the Gauls may be adduced. “There are two things,” he
says, “to which the Gauls are devoted—the art of war and subtlety of
speech” (“rem militarem et argute loqui”).
*Cæsar’s Account*
Cæsar has given us a careful and critical account of them as he knew them
in Gaul. They were, he says, eager for battle, but easily dashed by
reverses. They were extremely superstitious, submitting to their Druids in
all public and private affairs, and regarding it as the worst of
punishments to be excommunicated and forbidden to approach thu ceremonies
of religion:
“They who are thus interdicted [for refusing to obey a Druidical
sentence] are reckoned in the number of the vile and wicked; all
persons avoid and fly their company and discourse, lest they
should receive any infection by contagion; they are not permitted
to commence a suit; neither is any post entrusted to them.... The
Druids are generally freed from military service, nor do they pay
taxes with the rest.... Encouraged by such rewards, many of their
own accord come to their schools, and are sent by their friends
and relations. They are said there to get by heart a great number
of verses; some continue twenty years in their education; neither
is it held lawful to commit these things [the Druidic doctrines]
to writing, though in almost all public transactions and private
accounts they use the Greek characters.”
The Gauls were eager for news, besieging merchants and travellers for
gossip,(20) easily influenced, sanguine, credulous, fond of change, and
wavering in their counsels. They were at the same time remarkably acute
and intelligent, very quick to seize upon and to imitate any contrivance
they found useful. Their ingenuity in baffling the novel siege apparatus
of the Roman armies is specially noticed by Cæsar. Of their courage he
speaks with great respect, attributing their scorn of death, in some
degree at least, to their firm faith in the immortality of the soul.(21) A
people who in earlier days had again and again annihilated Roman armies,
had sacked Rome, and who had more than once placed Cæsar himself in
positions of the utmost anxiety and peril, were evidently no weaklings,
whatever their religious beliefs or practices. Cæsar is not given to
sentimental admiration of his foes, but one episode at the siege of
Avaricum moves him to immortalise the valour of the defence. A wooden
structure or _agger_ had been raised by the Romans to overtop the walls,
which had proved impregnable to the assaults of the battering-ram. The
Gauls contrived to set this on fire. It was of the utmost moment to
prevent the besiegers from extinguishing the flames, and a Gaul mounted a
portion of the wall above the _agger_, throwing down upon it balls of
tallow and pitch, which were handed up to him from within. He was soon
struck down by a missile from a Roman catapult. Immediately another
stepped over him as he lay, and continued his comrade’s task. He too fell,
but a third instantly took his place, and a fourth; nor was this post ever
deserted until the legionaries at last extinguished the flames and forced
the defenders back into the town, which was finally captured on the
following day.
*Strabo on the Celts*
The geographer and traveller Strabo, who died 24 A.D., and was therefore a
little later than Cæsar, has much to tell us about the Celts. He notices
that their country (in this case Gaul) is thickly inhabited and well
tilled—there is no waste of natural resources. The women are prolific, and
notably good mothers. He describes the men as warlike, passionate,
disputatious, easily provoked, but generous and unsuspicious, and easily
vanquished by stratagem. They showed themselves eager for culture, and
Greek letters and science had spread rapidly among them from Massilia;
public education was established in their towns. They fought better on
horseback than on foot, and in Strabo’s time formed the flower of the
Roman cavalry. They dwelt in great houses made of arched timbers with
walls of wickerwork—no doubt plastered with clay and lime, as in
Ireland—and thickly thatched. Towns of much importance were found in Gaul,
and Cæsar notes the strength of their walls, built of stone and timber.
Both Cæsar and Strabo agree that there was a very sharp division between
the nobles and priestly or educated class on the one hand and the common
people on the other, the latter being kept in strict subjection. The
social division corresponds roughly, no doubt, to the race distinction
between the true Celts and the aboriginal populations subdued by them.
While Cæsar tells us that the Druids taught the immortality of the soul,
Strabo adds that they believed in the indestructibility, which implies in
some sense the divinity, of the material universe.
The Celtic warrior loved display. Everything that gave brilliance and the
sense of drama to life appealed to him. His weapons were richly
ornamented, his horse-trappings were wrought in bronze and enamel, of
design as exquisite as any relic of Mycenean or Cretan art, his raiment
was embroidered with gold. The scene of the surrender of Vercingetorix,
when his heroic struggle with Rome had come to an end on the fall of
Alesia, is worth recording as a typically Celtic blend of chivalry and of
what appeared to the sober-minded Romans childish ostentation.(22) When he
saw that the cause was lost he summoned a tribal council, and told the
assembled chiefs, whom he had led through a glorious though unsuccessful
war, that he was ready to sacrifice himself for his still faithful
followers—they might send his head to Cæsar if they liked, or he would
voluntarily surrender himself for the sake of getting easier terms for his
countrymen. The latter alternative was chosen. Vercingetorix then armed
himself with his most splendid weapons, decked his horse with its richest
trappings, and, after riding thrice round the Roman camp, went before
Cæsar and laid at his feet the sword which was the sole remaining defence
of Gallic independence. Cæsar sent him to Rome, where he lay in prison for
six years, and was finally put to death when Cæsar celebrated his triumph.
But the Celtic love of splendour and of art were mixed with much
barbarism. Strabo tells us how the warriors rode home from victory with
the heads of fallen foemen dangling from their horses’ necks, just as in
the Irish saga the Ulster hero, Cuchulain, is represented as driving back
to Emania from a foray into Connacht with the heads of his enemies hanging
from his chariot-rim. Their domestic arrangements were rude; they lay on
the ground to sleep, sat on couches of straw, and their women worked in
the fields.
*Polybius*
A characteristic scene from the battle of Clastidium (222 B.C.) is
recorded by Polybius. The Gæsati,(23) he tells us, who were in the
forefront of the Celtic army, stripped naked for the fight, and the sight
of these warriors, with their great stature and their fair skins, on which
glittered the collars and bracelets of gold so loved as an adornment by
all the Celts, filled the Roman legionaries with awe. Yet when the day was
over those golden ornaments went in cartloads to deck the Capitol of Rome;
and the final comment of Polybius on the character of the Celts is that
they, “I say not usually, but always, in everything they attempt, are
driven headlong by their passions, and never submit to the laws of
reason.” As might be expected, the chastity for which the Germans were
noted was never, until recent times, a Celtic characteristic.
*Diodorus*
Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Julius Cæsar and Augustus, who had
travelled in Gaul, confirms in the main the accounts of Cæsar and Strabo,
but adds some interesting details. He notes in particular the Gallic love
of gold. Even cuirasses were made of it. This is also a very notable trait
in Celtic Ireland, where an astonishing number of prehistoric gold relics
have been found, while many more, now lost, are known to have existed. The
temples and sacred places, say Posidonius and Diodorus, were full of
unguarded offerings of gold, which no one ever touched. He mentions the
great reverence paid to the bards, and, like Cato, notices something
peculiar about the kind of speech which the educated Gauls cultivated:
“they are not a talkative people, and are fond of expressing themselves in
enigmas, so that the hearer has to divine the most part of what they would
say.” This exactly answers to the literary language of ancient Ireland,
which is curt and allusive to a degree. The Druid was regarded as the
prescribed intermediary between God and man—no one could perform a
religious act without his assistance.
*Ammianus Marcellinus*
Ammianus Marcellinus, who wrote much later, in the latter half of the
fourth century A.D., had also visited Gaul, which was then, of course,
much Romanised. He tells us, however, like former writers, of the great
stature, fairness, and arrogant bearing of the Gallic warrior. He adds
that the people, especially in Aquitaine, were singularly clean and proper
in their persons—no one was to be seen in rags. The Gallic woman he
describes as very tall, blue-eyed, and singularly beautiful; but a certain
amount of awe is mingled with his evident admiration, for he tells us that
while it was dangerous enough to get into a fight with a Gallic man, your
case was indeed desperate if his wife with her “huge snowy arms,” which
could strike like catapults, came to his assistance. One is irresistibly
reminded of the gallery of vigorous, independent, fiery-hearted women,
like Maeve, Grania, Findabair, Deirdre, and the historic Boadicea, who
figure in the myths and in the history of the British Islands.
*Rice Holmes on the Gauls*
The following passage from Dr. Rice Holmes’ “Cæsar’s Conquest of Gaul” may
be taken as an admirable summary of the social physiognomy of that part of
Celtica a little before the time of the Christian era, and it corresponds
closely to all that is known of the native Irish civilisation:
“The Gallic peoples had risen far above the condition of savages;
and the Celticans of the interior, many of whom had already fallen
under Roman influence, had attained a certain degree of
civilisation, and even of luxury. Their trousers, from which the
province took its name of Gallia Bracata, and their many-coloured
tartan skirts and cloaks excited the astonishment of their
conquerors. The chiefs wore rings and bracelets and necklaces of
gold; and when these tall, fair-haired warriors rode forth to
battle, with their helmets wrought in the shape of some fierce
beast’s head, and surmounted by nodding plumes, their chain
armour, their long bucklers and their huge clanking swords, they
made a splendid show. Walled towns or large villages, the
strongholds of the various tribes, were conspicuous on numerous
hills. The plains were dotted by scores of oper hamlets. The
houses, built of timber and wickerwork, were large and well
thatched. The fields in summer were yellow with corn. Roads ran
from town to town. Rude bridges spanned the rivers; and barges
laden with merchandise floated along them. Ships clumsy indeed but
larger than any that were seen on the Mediterranean, braved the
storms of the Bay of Biscay and carried cargoes between the ports
of Brittany and the coast of Britain. Tolls were exacted on the
goods which were transported on the great waterways; and it was
from the farming of these dues that the nobles derived a large
part of their wealth. Every tribe had its coinage; and the
knowledge of writing in Greek and Roman characters was not
confined to the priests. The Æduans were familiar with the plating
of copper and of tin. The miners of Aquitaine, of Auvergne, and of
the Berri were celebrated for their skill. Indeed, in all that
belonged to outward prosperity the peoples of Gaul had made great
strides since their kinsmen first came into contact with
Rome.”(24)
*Weakness of the Celtic Policy*
Yet this native Celtic civilisation, in many respects so attractive and so
promising, had evidently some defect or disability which prevented the
Celtic peoples from holding their own either against the ancient
civilisation of the Græco-Roman world, or against the rude young vigour of
the Teutonic races. Let us consider what this was.
*The Classical State*
At the root of the success of classical nations lay the conception of the
civic community, the _πόλις_, the _res publica_, as a kind of divine
entity, the foundation of blessing to men, venerable for its age, yet
renewed in youth with every generation; a power which a man might joyfully
serve, knowing that even if not remembered in its records his faithful
service would outlive his own petty life and go to exalt the life of his
motherland or city for all future time. In this spirit Socrates, when
urged to evade his death sentence by taking the means of escape from
prison which his friends offered him, rebuked them for inciting him to an
impious violation of his country’s laws. For a man’s country, he says, is
more holy and venerable than father or mother, and he must quietly obey
the laws, to which he has assented by living under them all his life, or
incur the just wrath of their great Brethren, the Laws of the Underworld,
before whom, in the end, he must answer for his conduct on earth. In a
greater or less degree this exalted conception of the State formed the
practical religion of every man among the classical nations of antiquity,
and gave to the State its cohesive power, its capability of endurance and
of progress.
*Teutonic Loyalty*
With the Teuton the cohesive force was supplied by another motive, one
which was destined to mingle with the civic motive and to form, in union
with it—and often in predominance over it—the main political factor in the
development of the European nations. This was the sentiment of what the
Germans called _Treue_, the personal fidelity to a chief, which in very
early times extended itself to a royal dynasty, a sentiment rooted
profoundly in the Teutonic nature, and one which has never been surpassed
by any other human impulse as the source of heroic self-sacrifice.
*Celtic Religion*
No human influences are ever found pure and unmixed. The sentiment of
personal fidelity was not unknown to the classical nations. The sentiment
of civic patriotism, though of slow growth among the Teutonic races, did
eventually establish itself there. Neither sentiment was unknown to the
Celt, but there was another force which, in his case, overshadowed and
dwarfed them, and supplied what it could of the political inspiration and
unifying power which the classical nations got from patriotism and the
Teutons from loyalty. This was Religion; or perhaps it would be more
accurate to say Sacerdotalism—religion codified in dogma and administered
by a priestly caste. The Druids, as we have seen from Cæsar, whose
observations are entirely confirmed by Strabo and by references in Irish
legends,(25) were the really sovran power in Celtica. All affairs, public
and private, were subject to their authority, and the penalties which they
could inflict for any assertion of lay independence, though resting for
their efficacy, like the mediæval interdicts of the Catholic Church, on
popular superstition alone, were enough to quell the proudest spirit. Here
lay the real weakness of the Celtic polity. There is perhaps no law
written more conspicuously in the teachings of history than that nations
who are ruled by priests drawing their authority from supernatural
sanctions are, just in the measure that they are so ruled, incapable of
true national progress. The free, healthy current of secular life and
thought is, in the very nature of things, incompatible with priestly rule.
Be the creed what it may, Druidism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, or
fetichism, a priestly caste claiming authority in temporal affairs by
virtue of extra-temporal sanctions is inevitably the enemy of that spirit
of criticism, of that influx of new ideas, of that growth of secular
thought, of human and rational authority, which are the elementary
conditions of national development.
*The Cursing of Tara*
A singular and very cogent illustration of this truth can be drawn from
the history of the early Celtic world. In the sixth century A.D., a little
over a hundred years after the preaching of Christianity by St. Patrick, a
king named Dermot MacKerval(26) ruled in Ireland. He was the Ard Righ, or
High King, of that country, whose seat of government was at Tara, in
Meath, and whose office, with its nominal and legal superiority to the
five provincial kings, represented the impulse which was moving the Irish
people towards a true national unity. The first condition of such a unity
was evidently the establishment of an effective central authority. Such an
authority, as we have said, the High King, in theory, represented. Now it
happened that one of his officers was murdered in the discharge of his
duty by a chief named Hugh Guairy. Guairy was the brother of a bishop who
was related by fosterage to St. Ruadan of Lorrha, and when King Dermot
sent to arrest the murderer these clergy found him a hiding-place. Dermot,
however, caused a search to be made, haled him forth from under the roof
of St. Ruadan, and brought him to Tara for trial. Immediately the
ecclesiastics of Ireland made common cause against the lay ruler who had
dared to execute justice on a criminal under clerical protection. They
assembled at Tara, fasted against the king,(27) and laid their solemn
malediction upon him and the seat of his government. Then the chronicler
tells us that Dermot’s wife had a prophetic dream:
“Upon Tara’s green was a vast and wide-foliaged tree, and eleven
slaves hewing at it; but every chip that they knocked from it
would return into its place again and there adhere instantly, till
at last there came one man that dealt the tree but a stroke, and
with that single cut laid it low.”(28)
The fair tree was the Irish monarchy, the twelve hewers were the twelve
Saints or Apostles of Ireland, and the one who laid it low was St. Ruadan.
The plea of the king for his country, whose fate he saw to be hanging in
the balance, is recorded with moving force and insight by the Irish
chronicler:(29)
“ ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘for the iniquitous contest that ye have waged
against me; seeing that it is Ireland’s good that I pursue, and to
preserve her discipline and royal right; but ’tis Ireland’s
unpeace and murderousness that ye endeavour after.’ ”
But Ruadan said, “Desolate be Tara for ever and ever”; and the popular awe
of the ecclesiastical malediction prevailed. The criminal was surrendered,
Tara was abandoned, and, except for a brief space when a strong usurper,
Brian Boru, fought his way to power, Ireland knew no effective secular
government till it was imposed upon her by a conqueror. The last words of
the historical tract from which we quote are Dermot’s cry of despair:
“Woe to him that with the clergy of the churches battle joins.”
This remarkable incident has been described at some length because it is
typical of a factor whose profound influence in moulding the history of
the Celtic peoples we can trace through a succession of critical events
from the time of Julius Caesar to the present day. How and whence it arose
we shall consider later; here it is enough to call attention to it. It is
a factor which forbade the national development of the Celts, in the sense
in which we can speak of that of the classical or the Teutonic peoples.
*What Europe Owes to the Celt*
Yet to suppose that on this account the Celt was not a force of any real
consequence in Europe would be altogether a mistake. His contribution to
the culture of the Western world was a very notable one. For some four
centuries—about A.D. 500 to 900—Ireland was the refuge of learning and the
source of literary and philosophic culture for half Europe. The
verse-forms of Celtic poetry have probably played the main part in
determining the structure of all modern verse. The myths and legends of
the Gaelic and Cymric peoples kindled the imagination of a host of
Continental poets. True, the Celt did not himself create any great
architectural work of literature, just as he did not create a stable or
imposing national polity. His thinking and feeling were essentially
lyrical and concrete. Each object or aspect of life impressed him vividly
and stirred him profoundly; he was sensitive, impressionable to the last
degree, but did not see things in their larger and more far-reaching
relations. He had little gift for the establishment or institutions, for
the service of principles; but he was, and is, an indispensable and
never-failing assertor of humanity as against the tyranny of principles,
the coldness and barrenness of institutions. The institutions of royalty
and of civic patriotism are both very capable of being fossilised into
barren formulae, and thus of fettering instead of inspiring the soul. But
the Celt has always been a rebel against anything that has not in it the
breath of life, against any unspiritual and purely external form of
domination. It is too true that he has been over-eager to enjoy the fine
fruits of life without the long and patient preparation for the harvest,
but he has done and will still do infinite service to the modern world in
insisting that the true fruit of life is a spiritual reality, never
without pain and loss to be obscured or forgotten amid the vast mechanism
of a material civilisation.