The Religion of the Ancient Celts

o summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its

story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt,

Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths,

theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult, remain to yield their re-

port of the outward form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on

the other hand, are the records of Celtic religion! The bygone faith of a peo-

ple who have inspired the world with noble dreams must be constructed

painfully, and often in fear and trembling, out of fragmentary and, in many

cases, transformed remains.

We have the surface observations of classical observers, dedications in the

Romano-Celtic area to gods mostly assimilated to the gods of the conquerors,

figured monuments mainly of the same period, coins, symbols, place and

personal names. For the Irish Celts there is a mass of written material found

mainly in eleventh and twelfth century MSS. Much of this, in spite of alter-

ation and excision, is based on divine and heroic myths, and it also contains

occasional notices of ritual. From Wales come documents like the Mabino-

3 J. A. (JOHN ARNOTT) MACCULLOCH

gion, and strange poems the personages of which are ancient gods trans-

formed, but which tell nothing of rite or cult.[2] Valuable hints are fur-

nished by early ecclesiastical documents, but more important is existing folk-

custom, which preserves so much of the old cult, though it has lost its mean-

ing to those who now use it. Folk-tales may also be inquired of, if we discrim-

inate between what in them is Celtic and what is universal. Lastly, Celtic

burial-mounds and other remains yield their testimony to ancient belief and

custom.

From these sources we try to rebuild Celtic paganism and to guess at its in-

ner spirit, though we are working in the twilight on a heap of fragments. No

Celt has left us a record of his faith and practice, and the unwritten poems

of the Druids died with them. Yet from these fragments we see the Celt as

the seeker after God, linking himself by strong ties to the unseen, and eager

to conquer the unknown by religious rite or magic art. For the things of the

spirit have never appealed in vain to the Celtic soul, and long ago classical ob-

servers were struck with the religiosity of the Celts. They neither forgot nor

transgressed the law of the gods, and they thought that no good befell men

apart from their will.[3] The submission of the Celts to the Druids shows

how they welcomed authority in matters of religion, and all Celtic regions

have been characterised by religious devotion, easily passing over to supersti-

tion, and by loyalty to ideals and lost causes. The Celts were born dreamers,

as their exquisite Elysium belief will show, and much that is spiritual and

romantic in more than one European literature is due to them.

The analogy of religious evolution in other faiths helps us in reconstruct-

ing that of the Celts. Though no historic Celtic group was racially pure,

the profound influence of the Celtic temperament soon "Celticised" the re-

ligious contributions of the non-Celtic element which may already have had

many Celtic parallels. Because a given Celtic rite or belief seems to be "un-