GODS AND MEN.
Though man usually makes his gods in his own image, they are unlike as
well as like him. Intermediate between them and man are ideal heroes
whose parentage is partly divine, and who may themselves have been gods.
One mark of the Celtic gods is their great stature. No house could
contain Bran, and certain divine people of Elysium who appeared to Fionn
had rings "as thick as a three-ox goad."[516] Even the Fians are giants,
and the skull of one of them could contain several men. The gods have
also the attribute of invisibility, and are only seen by those to whom
they wish to disclose themselves, or they have the power of concealing
themselves in a magic mist. When they appear to mortals it is usually in
mortal guise, sometimes in the form of a particular person, but they can
also transform themselves into animal shapes, often that of birds. The
animal names of certain divinities show that they had once been animals
pure and simple, but when they became anthropomorphic, myths would arise
telling how they had appeared to men in these animal shapes. This, in
part, accounts for these transformation myths. The gods are also
immortal, though in myth we hear of their deaths. The Tuatha Dé Danann
are "unfading," their "duration is perennial."[517] This immortality is
sometimes an inherent quality; sometimes it is the result of eating
immortal food--Manannan's swine, Goibniu's feast of age and his immortal
ale, or the apples of Elysium. The stories telling of the deaths of the
gods in the annalists may be based on old myths in which they were said
to die, these myths being connected with ritual acts in which the human
representatives of gods were slain. Such rites were an inherent part of
Celtic religion. Elsewhere the ritual of gods like Osiris or Adonis,
based on their functions as gods of vegetation, was connected with
elaborate myths telling of their death and revival. Something akin to
this may have occurred among the Celts.
The divinities often united with mortals. Goddesses sought the love of
heroes who were then sometimes numbered among the gods, and gods had
amours with the daughters of men.[518] Frequently the heroes of the
sagas are children of a god or goddess and a mortal,[519] and this
divine parentage was firmly believed in by the Celts, since personal
names formed of a divine name and _-genos_ or _-gnatos_, "born of," "son
of," are found in inscriptions over the whole Celtic area, or in Celtic
documents--Boduogenos, Camulognata, etc. Those who first bore these
names were believed to be of divine descent on one side. Spirits of
nature or the elements of nature personified might also be parents of
mortals, as a name like Morgen, from _Morigenos_, "Son of the Sea," and
many others suggest. For this and for other reasons the gods frequently
interfere in human affairs, assisting their children or their
favourites. Or, again, they seek the aid of mortals or of the heroes of
the sagas in their conflicts or in time of distress, as when Morrigan
besought healing from Cúchulainn.
As in the case of early Greek and Roman kings, Celtic kings who bore
divine names were probably believed to be representatives or
incarnations of gods. Perhaps this explains why a chief of the Boii
called himself a god and was revered after his death, and why the Gauls
so readily accepted the divinity of Augustus. Irish kings bear divine
names, and of these Nuada occurs frequently, one king, Irél Fáith, being
identified with Nuada Airgetlam, while in one text _nuadat_ is glossed
_in ríg_, "of the king," as if _Nuada_ had come to be a title meaning
"king." Welsh kings bear the name Nudd (Nodons), and both the actual and
the mythic leader Brennus took their name from the god Bran. King
Conchobar is called _día talmaide_, "a terrestrial god." If kings were
thought to be god-men like the Pharaohs, this might account for the
frequency of tales about divine fatherhood or reincarnation, while it
would also explain the numerous _geasa_ which Irish kings must observe,
unlike ordinary mortals. Prosperity was connected with their observance,
though this prosperity was later thought to depend on the king's
goodness. The nature of the prosperity--mild seasons, abundant crops,
fruit, fish, and cattle--shows that the king was associated with
fertility, like the gods of growth.[520] Hence they had probably been
once regarded as incarnations of such gods. Wherever divine kings are
found, fertility is bound up with them and with the due observance of
their tabus. To prevent misfortune to the land, they are slain before
they grow old and weak, and their vigour passes on to their successors.
Their death benefits their people.[521] But frequently the king might
reign as long as he could hold his own against all comers, or, again, a
slave or criminal was for a time treated as a mock king, and slain as
the divine king's substitute. Scattered hints in Irish literature and in
folk survivals show that some such course as this had been pursued by
the Celts with regard to their divine kings, as it was also
elsewhere.[522] It is not impossible that some at least of the Druids
stood in a similar relation to the gods. Kings and priests were probably
at first not differentiated. In Galatia twelve "tetrarchs" met annually
with three hundred assistants at Drunemeton as the great national
council.[523] This council at a consecrated place (_nemeton_), its
likeness to the annual Druidic gathering in Gaul, and the possibility
that _Dru_- has some connection with the name "Druid," point to a
religious as well as political aspect of this council. The "tetrarchs"
may have been a kind of priest-kings; they had the kingly prerogative of
acting as judges as had the Druids of Gaul. The wife of one of them was
a priestess,[524] the office being hereditary in her family, and it may
have been necessary that her husband should also be a priest. One
tetrarch, Deiotarus, "divine bull," was skilled in augury, and the
priest-kingship of Pessinus was conferred on certain Celts in the second
century B.C., as if the double office were already a Celtic
institution.[525] Mythic Celtic kings consulted the gods without any
priestly intervention, and Queen Boudicca had priestly functions.[526]
Without giving these hints undue emphasis, we may suppose that the
differentiation of the two offices would not be simultaneous over the
Celtic area. But when it did take effect priests would probably lay
claim to the prerogatives of the priest-king as incarnate god. Kings
were not likely to give these up, and where they retained them priests
would be content with seeing that the tabus and ritual and the slaying
of the mock king were duly observed. Irish kings were perhaps still
regarded as gods, though certain Druids may have been divine priests,
since they called themselves creators of the universe, and both
continental and Irish Druids claimed superiority to kings. Further, the
name [Greek: semnotheoi], applied along with the name "Druids" to Celtic
priests, though its meaning is obscure, points to divine pretensions on
their part.[527]
The incarnate god was probably representative of a god or spirit of
earth, growth, or vegetation, represented also by a tree. A symbolic
branch of such a tree was borne by kings, and perhaps by Druids, who
used oak branches in their rites.[528] King and tree would be connected,
the king's life being bound up with that of the tree, and perhaps at one
time both perished together. But as kings were represented by a
substitute, so the sacred tree, regarded as too sacred to be cut down,
may also have had its _succedaneum_. The Irish _bile_ or sacred tree,
connected with the kings, must not be touched by any impious hand, and
it was sacrilege to cut it down.[529] Probably before cutting down the
tree a branch or something growing upon it, e.g. mistletoe, had to be
cut, or the king's symbolic branch secured before he could be slain.
This may explain Pliny's account of the mistletoe rite. The mistletoe or
branch was the soul of the tree, and also contained the life of the
divine representative. It must be plucked before the tree could be cut
down or the victim slain. Hypothetical as this may be, Pliny's account
is incomplete, or he is relating something of which all the details were
not known to him. The rite must have had some other purpose than that of
the magico-medical use of the mistletoe which he describes, and though
he says nothing of cutting down the tree or slaying a human victim, it
is not unlikely that, as human sacrifice had been prohibited in his
time, the oxen which were slain during the rite took the place of the
latter. Later romantic tales suggest that, before slaying some
personage, the mythico-romantic survivor of a divine priest or king, a
branch carried by him had to be captured by his assailant, or plucked
from the tree which he defended.[530] These may point to an old belief
in tree and king as divine representatives, and to a ritual like that
associated with the Priest of Nemi. The divine tree became the mystic
tree of Elysium, with gold and silver branches and marvellous fruits.
Armed with such a branch, the gift of one of its people, mortals might
penetrate unhindered to the divine land. Perhaps they may be regarded as
romantic forms of the old divine kings with the branch of the divine
tree.
If in early times the spirit of vegetation was feminine, her
representative would be a woman, probably slain at recurring festivals
by the female worshippers. This would explain the slaying of one of
their number at a festival by Namnite women. But when male spirits or
gods superseded goddesses, the divine priest-king would take the place
of the female representative. On the other hand, just as the goddess
became the consort of the god, a female representative would continue as
the divine bride in the ritual of the sacred marriage, the May Queen of
later folk-custom. Sporadically, too, conservatism would retain female
cults with female divine incarnations, as is seen by the presence of the
May Queen alone in certain folk-survivals, and by many Celtic rituals
from which men were excluded.[531]
FOOTNOTES:
[516] O'Grady, ii. 228.
[517] Ibid. ii. 203. Cf. Cæsar, vi. 14, "the immortal gods" of Gaul.
[518] Cf. Ch. XXIV.; O'Grady, ii. 110, 172; Nutt-Meyer, i. 42.
[519] Leahy, ii. 6.
[520] _IT_ iii. 203; _Trip. Life_, 507; _Annals of the Four Masters_,
A.D. 14; _RC_ xxii. 28, 168. Chiefs as well as kings probably influenced
fertility. A curious survival of this is found in the belief that
herrings abounded in Dunvegan Loch when MacLeod arrived at his castle
there, and in the desire of the people in Skye during the potato famine
that his fairy banner should be waved.
[521] An echo of this may underlie the words attributed to King Ailill,
"If I am slain, it will be the redemption of many" (O'Grady, ii. 416).
[522] See Frazer, _Kingship_; Cook, _Folk-Lore_, 1906, "The European
Sky-God." Mr. Cook gives ample evidence for the existence of Celtic
incarnate gods. With his main conclusions I agree, though some of his
inferences seem far-fetched. The divine king was, in his view, a
sky-god; he was more likely to have been the representative of a god or
spirit of growth or vegetation.
[523] Strabo, xii. 5. 2.
[524] Plutarch, _de Virt. Mul._ 20.
[525] Cicero, _de Div._ i. 15, ii. 36; Strabo, xii. 5. 3; Stachelin,
_Gesch. der Kleinasiat. Galater._
[526] Livy, v. 34; Dio Cass. lxii. 6.
[527] _Ancient Laws of Ireland_, i. 22; Diog. Laert. i. proem 1; see p.
301, _infra_.
[528] Pliny, xvi. 95.
[529] P. 201, _infra_.
[530] Cf. the tales of Gawain and the Green Knight with his holly bough,
and of Gawain's attempting to pluck the bough of a tree guarded by
Gramoplanz (Weston, _Legend of Sir Gawain_, 22, 86). Cf. also the tale
of Diarmaid's attacking the defender of a tree to obtain its fruit, and
the subsequent slaughter of each man who attacks the hero hidden in its
branches (_TOS_ vol. iii.). Cf. Cook, _Folk-Lore_, xvii. 441.
[531] See Chap. XVIII.