COSMOGONY.
Whether the early Celts regarded Heaven and Earth as husband and wife is
uncertain. Such a conception is world-wide, and myth frequently explains
in different ways the reason of the separation of the two. Among the
Polynesians the children of heaven and earth--the winds, forests, and
seas personified--angry at being crushed between their parents in
darkness, rose up and separated them. This is in effect the Greek myth
of Uranus, or Heaven, and Gæa, or Earth, divorced by their son Kronos,
just as in Hindu myth Dyaus, or Sky, and Prithivi, or Earth, were
separated by Indra. Uranus in Greece gave place to Zeus, and, in India,
Dyaus became subordinate to Indra. Thus the primitive Heaven personified
recedes, and his place is taken by a more individualised god. But
generally Mother Earth remains a constant quantity. Earth was nearer man
and was more unchanging than the inconstant sky, while as the producer
of the fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the source of all
things, and frequently remained as an important divinity when a crowd of
other divinities became prominent. This is especially true of
agricultural peoples, who propitiate Earth with sacrifice, worship her
with orgiastic rites, or assist her processes by magic. With advancing
civilisation such a goddess is still remembered as the friend of man,
and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented sorrowing and rejoicing like
man himself. Or where a higher religion ousts the older one, the ritual
is still retained among the folk, though its meaning may be forgotten.
The Celts may thus have possessed the Heaven and Earth myth, but all
trace of it has perished. There are, however, remnants of myths showing
how the sky is supported by trees, a mountain, or by pillars. A high
mountain near the sources of the Rhone was called "the column of the
sun," and was so lofty as to hide the sun from the people of the
south.[766] It may have been regarded as supporting the sky, while the
sun moved round it. In an old Irish hymn and its gloss, Brigit and
Patrick are compared to the two pillars of the world, probably alluding
to some old myth of sky or earth resting on pillars.[767] Traces of this
also exist in folk-belief, as in the accounts of islands resting on four
pillars, or as in the legend of the church of Kernitou which rests on
four pillars on a congealed sea and which will be submerged when the sea
liquefies--a combination of the cosmogonic myth with that of a great
inundation.[768] In some mythologies a bridge or ladder connects heaven
and earth. There may be a survival of some such myth in an Irish poem
which speaks of the _drochet bethad_, or "bridge of life," or in the
_drochaid na flaitheanas_, or "bridge of heaven," of Hebridean
folk-lore.[769]
Those gods who were connected with the sky may have been held to dwell
there or on the mountain supporting it. Others, like the Celtic
Dispater, dwelt underground. Some were connected with mounds and hills,
or were supposed to have taken up their abode in them. Others, again,
dwelt in a distant region, the Celtic Elysium, which, once the Celts
reached the sea, became a far-off island. Those divinities worshipped in
groves were believed to dwell there and to manifest themselves at midday
or midnight, while such objects of nature as rivers, wells, and trees
were held to be the abode of gods or spirits. Thus it is doubtful
whether the Celts ever thought of their gods as dwelling in one Olympus.
The Tuatha Dé Danann are said to have come from heaven, but this may be
the mere assertion of some scribe who knew not what to make of this
group of beings.
In Celtic belief men were not so much created by gods as descended from
them. "All the Gauls assert that they are descended from Dispater, and
this, they say, has been handed down to them by the Druids."[770]
Dispater was a Celtic underworld god of fertility, and the statement
probably presupposes a myth, like that found among many primitive
peoples, telling how men once lived underground and thence came to the
surface of the earth. But it also points to their descent from the god
of the underworld. Thither the dead returned to him who was ancestor of
the living as well as lord of the dead.[771] On the other hand, if the
earth had originally been thought of as a female, she as Earth-mother
would be ancestress of men. But her place in the myth would easily be
taken by the Earth or Under-earth god, perhaps regarded as her son or
her consort. In other cases, clans, families, or individuals often
traced their descent to gods or divine animals or plants. Classical
writers occasionally speak of the origin of branches of the Celtic race
from eponymous founders, perhaps from their knowledge of existing Celtic
myths.[772] Ammianus Marcellinus also reports a Druidic tradition to the
effect that some Gauls were indigenous, some had come from distant
islands, and others from beyond the Rhine.[773] But this is not so much
a myth of origins, as an explanation of the presence of different
peoples in Gaul--the aborigines, the Celtæ, and the Belgic Gauls. M.
D'Arbois assumes that "distant islands" means the Celtic Elysium, which
he regards as the land of the dead,[774] but the phrase is probably no
more than a distorted reminiscence of the far-off lands whence early
groups of Celts had reached Gaul.
Of the creation of the world no complete myth has survived, though from
a gloss to the _Senchus Mór_ we learn that the Druids, like the
Br[=a]hmans, boasted that they had made sun, moon, earth, and sea--a
boast in keeping with their supposed powers over the elements.[775]
Certain folk-beliefs, regarding the origin of different parts of nature,
bear a close resemblance to primitive cosmogonic myths, and they may be
taken as _disjecta membra_ of similar myths held by the Celts and
perhaps taught by the Druids. Thus sea, rivers, or springs arose from
the micturition of a giant, fairy, or saint, or from their sweat or
blood. Islands are rocks cast by giants, and mountains are the material
thrown up by them as they were working on the earth. Wells sprang up
from the blood of a martyr or from the touch of a saint's or a fairy's
staff.[776] The sea originated from a magic cask given by God to a
woman. The spigot, when opened, could not be closed again, and the cask
never ceased running until the waters covered the earth--a tale with
savage parallels.[777] In all these cases, giant, saint, or fairy has
doubtless taken the place of a god, since the stories have a very
primitive _facies_. The giant is frequently Gargantua, probably himself
once a divinity. Other references in Irish texts point to the common
cosmogonic myth of the earth having gradually assumed its present form.
Thus many new lakes and plains are said to have been formed in Ireland
during the time of Partholan and Nemed, the plains being apparently
built up out of existing materials.[778] In some cases the formation of
a lake was the result of digging the grave of some personage after whom
the lake was then named.[779] Here we come upon the familiar idea of the
danger of encroaching on the domain of a deity, e.g. that of the
Earth-god, by digging the earth, with the consequent punishment by a
flood. The same conception is found in Celtic stories of a lake or river
formed from the overflowing of a sacred well through human carelessness
or curiosity, which led to the anger of the divinity of the well.[780]
Or, again, a town or castle is submerged on account of the wickedness of
its inhabitants, the waters being produced by the curse of God or a
saint (replacing a pagan god) and forming a lake.[781] These may be
regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in one case, that of
the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved Dwyvan and Dwyfach and
a pair of all kinds of animals when Lake Llion overflowed, has
apparently borrowed from the Biblical story.[782] In other cases lakes
are formed from the tears of a god, e.g. Manannan, whose tears at the
death of his son formed three lochs in Erin.[783] Apollonius reports
that the waters of Eridanus originated from the tears of Apollo when
driven from heaven by his father.[784] This story, which he says is
Celtic, has been clothed by him in a Greek form, and the god in question
may have been Belenos, equated with Apollo. Sometimes the formation of
streams was ascribed to great hail-storms--an evident mythic rendering
of the damage done by actual spates, while the Irish myths of
"illimitable sea-bursts," of which three particular instances are often
mentioned, were doubtless the result of the experience of tidal waves.
Although no complete account of the end of all things, like that of the
Scandinavian Ragnarok, has survived, scattered hints tell of its former
existence. Strabo says that the Druids taught that "fire and water must
one day prevail"--an evident belief in some final cataclysm.[785] This
is also hinted at in the words of certain Gauls to Alexander, telling
him that what they feared most of all was the fall of the heavens upon
their heads.[786] In other words, they feared what would be the signal
of the end of all things. On Irish ground the words of Conchobar may
refer to this. He announced that he would rescue the captives and spoil
taken by Medb, unless the heavens fell, and the earth burst open, and
the sea engulphed all things.[787] Such a myth mingled with Christian
beliefs may underlie the prophecy of Badb after Mag-tured regarding the
evils to come and the end of the world, and that of Fercertne in the
_Colloquy of the Two Sages_.[788] Both have a curious resemblance to the
Sybil's prophecy of doom in the Voluspa. If the gods themselves were
involved in such a catastrophe, it would not be surprising, since in
some aspects their immortality depended on their eating and drinking
immortal food and drink.[789]
FOOTNOTES:
[766] Avienus, _Ora Maritima_, 644 f.
[767] _IT_ i. 25; Gaidoz, _ZCP_ i. 27.
[768] _Annales de Bretagne_, x. 414.
[769] _IT_ i. 50, cf. 184; _Folk-Lore_, vi. 170.
[770] Cæsar, vi. 18.
[771] See p. 341, _infra_.
[772] Diod. Sic. v. 24; Appian, _Illyrica_, 2.
[773] Amm. Marcel, xv. 9.
[774] D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.
[775] _Antient Laws of Ireland_, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is said to have
been created thus--his body of earth, his blood of the sea, his face of
the sun, his breath of the wind, etc. This is also found in a Frisian
tale (Vigfusson-Powell, _Corpus Poet. Bor._ i. 479), and both stories
present an inversion of well-known myths about the creation of the
universe from the members of a giant.
[776] Sébillot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf. _RC_ xv.
482, xvi. 152.
[777] Sébillot, ii. 6.
[778] _LL_ 56; Keating, 117, 123.
[779] _RC_ xv. 429, xvi. 277.
[780] See p. 191, _supra_.
[781] Sébillot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. 372, _infra_.
[782] _Triads_ in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh[^y]s, _HL_ 583, 663.
[783] _RC_ xvi. 50, 146.
[784] Apoll. iv. 609 f.
[785] Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
[786] Arrian, _Anab._ i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian, 85.
[787] _LL_ 94; Miss Hull, 205.
[788] _RC_ xii. 111, xxvi. 33.
[789] A possible survival of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da
Derga's Hostel" (_RC_ xxii. 54), where we hear of Leviathan that
surrounds the globe and strikes with his tail to overwhelm the world.
But this may be a reflection of Norse myths of the Midgard serpent,
sometimes equated with Leviathan.