Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  A systemization so patronizing and short-sighted has two severe shortcomings that are probably immediately apparent to the reader. First, Caesar attributes spheres and functions to the Gaulish gods analogous with a Roman model that may never have existed in the Gaulish context. Second, Caesar implies a Roman-style pantheon of Gaulish gods worshipped throughout the culture, whereas other evidence does not corroborate that there was ever such an ordering or that any gods were worshipped universally.

  Before we disparage Caesar’s efforts further, we should acknowledge that his point of view is not alien to that of most modern readers. Our education, our sense of order and logic, derive from classical culture as reinterpreted over the centuries. Further, modern readers are likely to have studied classical mythology, Greek as well as Roman, before investigating the Celtic, as mentioned earlier. If one does not expect that the Celtic god is a duplicate of Apollo or Mars, a modern reader can be forgiven for thinking the Celtic god might be portrayed in some of the same ways, for example to be pictured in sculptures or carvings, venerated in sacred hymns or characterized in sacred narratives. Such corroboration is, alas, hard to come by.

  Edward Anwyl noted as long ago as 1906 in Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times that of the 374 deity names known at the time from inscriptions and other records, 305 occur only once. Texts in the Gaulish language are disappointingly skimpy. One of the longest, the Larzac Inscription, found in a cave in southern France in 1983, employs only 160 Gaulish words in Latin cursive script, none of them portraying divine figures in narrative.

  The multiplicity of names does not necessarily mean that each name refers to a single divinity. We know from Greek tradition that important deities may be known by more than one name. Apollo, for example, is also known as Phoebus, his preferred name in the Iliad, just as Athena may be known as Pallas. In later Irish tradition, one name may indicate a trio of deities who are grouped together, such as Mórrígna, which includes the Mórrígan, Badb and Macha. Again among the Irish, one name may also indicate three distinct persons, as there are three discrete Machas, only one of whom is included under Mórrígna (see triplism, pp. 44–6 below). Gods may also be known under pious circumlocutions, such as ‘the god of our people’, or as Christians say, ‘Our Lord’. Joseph Vendryes (1948) reminds us that the Gaulish god called Teutates cited by Lucan (first century AD) appears to derive his name from the word for ‘tribe’, teutā (cf. Old Irish tuath), so that his name might very well mean ‘the god of the tribe’.

  An untold number among the multiplicity of Gaulish names undoubtedly indicate local deities, unknown a half hour’s walk from their presumed demesne. The Gauls may well have anticipated later oral tradition in Ireland, Gaelic Scotland, Wales and Brittany that assigns a spirit, spectre or even ‘fairy’ to most prominent caves, promontories, waterfalls, heaths or crossroads. Such phenomena are unlikely to be called ‘gods’ by English observers, as centuries of education in classical models give us more demanding expectations, such as that a ‘god’ be something like an Olympian. We recognize that such creatures as the menacing Scottish kelpie, a ‘water horse’, or the spectral Breton yannig, a maritime demon, are of a lesser order, even if we are uncertain about which rubric might contain them. An isolated Gaulish inscription or a cryptic reference in a Roman text does not allow us to know the status of the supernatural figure in that long-extinct culture.

  Overlying all these questions is the process modern scholars have named interpretatio Celtica, apparently initiated by indigenous populations. When Romans built temples to the gods of their pantheon in occupied territories, resident Gauls and Britons appear to have fused some of their gods with those of the conqueror. The merging (or confusion) of cults is commonplace elsewhere in the ancient world. The cult of the old earth mother Ge (also Gaia, Gaea) was so closely associated with that of her daughter Themis, consort of Zeus, that the two are sometimes seen as one and called Ge-Themis in modern texts. Among the great world religions the process is called syncretism, as when, for example, the evangelism of Christian missionaries in Guatemala becomes riddled with native animist cults. This appears to be what happened in the name of Mars Vesontius in what is today Besançon in eastern France. Joseph Vendryes argues that the local god was equated with and merged into Mars, displacing the earlier interpretation so that the dedication simply linked Mars to the location (Vesontius/Besançon). So it is with Apollo Grannus of Gaul, Jupiter Parthinus of Dalmatia or Mars Rigonemetis of Lincolnshire, whose name incorporates nemeton, the Celtic word for sacred grove. Not all fusions are complete, however. Some other native deities may be merged with the Roman pantheon, as Mars Olloudius or Mars Teutates, or their inscriptions may appear by themselves, as Olloudius or Teutates.

  Caesar speaks of six gods among the Gauls and ranks them in order of his perception of their importance: Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, Minerva and Dis Pater (or Pluto). His placement of Mercury as first among the divinities is supported by the observation that he was most honoured among the Gauls, which is additionally confirmed by modern archaeology. There is a brief moment of reassurance here as the Roman Mercury, divine messenger and god of borders, ranks in the lower middle of the pantheon while Jupiter (or Jove), of course, is the supreme Roman deity. Caesar, whom we recognize as something of an agnostic in private, allowed his observations to re-order what he had brought with him.

  Gaulish Mercury, according to Caesar, was the inventor of all the arts, a guide on roads and on journeys, and the most influential in commerce and money-making. Unlike his Roman counterpart, his patronage of arts extended to those of war. Iconographic images often represent him much like the classical Mercury: youthful, beardless and equipped with the caduceus (snake-entwined traveller’s wand), the petasus (winged hat) and the purse of plenty; yet in other instances he could be bearded and dressed in Gaulish costume. In some representations he is triple-faced, and in others triple-phallused. His cult partner might be Maia, whom the Romans identified with an old Italian goddess of the springs, or Rosmerta, a native deity associated with prosperity, fertility and motherhood. In inscriptions he is assigned at least forty-five epithets or cognomens, including Mercury Moccus, from the Gaulish word for ‘pig’, implying an association with hunting.

  While the Romans never bothered to record a native name for Gaulish Mercury, modern scholars discern two. The favoured is Lugos or Lugus, found in many inscriptions and implicit in the Roman town name Lug(u) dunum, which is itself the root of the modern place names Lyon, Laon, Loudon, Leiden, Liegnitz, etc. Lugos/Lugus also looks like an anticipation of the Irish hero Lug Lámfhota, whose epithet Samildánach means ‘possessing many arts, crafts, trades’, the Welsh Lleu Llaw Gyffes and the calendar feast of Lughnasa. Attractive as this argument is for the continuity of continental and insular Celtic culture, other commentators suggest the name Erriapus for Gaulish Mercury on the evidence of a carved head found in the Garonne region of southern France.

  Apollo’s name is immediately associated with poetry, music and the civilizing benefits of culture in modern reference, but his realm was wider in the ancient world. As the only deity of the Roman pantheon borrowed whole and entire from the Greeks, not merely adapted or fashioned into a counterpart, as Mercury was, Apollo’s cult nonetheless underwent a sea change in the journey from Delphi to the banks of the Tiber. The Roman populace favoured Apollo’s healing powers, which they linked to his association with the sun. Modern handbooks of mythology are more likely to shift this power to Apollo’s adopted ‘son’, Asclepius or Aesculapius. Yet it is the power of healing, especially at thermal springs (warmth presuming the power of the sun), that Caesar cites in distinguishing Gaulish Apollo. He is sometimes assigned one of two consorts, Damona in northeastern Gaul and Sirona, whose cult extended from what is now Hungary to Brittany. Gaulish Apollo had as many as fifteen epithets, of which the most conspicuous were Belenus, Citharoedus, Grannus, Moritasgus and Vindonnus, each of them worshipped at healing springs.

  Once again, the Romans gave
no thought to a Gaulish name for Gaulish Apollo but they inadvertently preserved evidence to allow us to decipher several native identities. Among the most resonant of these is the cognomen Belenus, as it is indeed also the name of a deity who was worshipped from the Adriatic to Scotland and as late as the beginning of the third century AD in the eastern Alps. The Celtic root bel- (Gaulish: bright [?], brilliant [?]) also appears in the Irish Beltaine and the Scottish Gaelic Bealltuinn, names for May Day, one of four principal holidays on the Celtic calendar. Belenus, then, must have been a solar character like Roman Apollo. Such wisps of information hardly give us the full identity of Gaulish Apollo but they hint at shadowy but sure outlines just beyond our grasp.

  Gaulish Apollo’s sometime consort Damona is the more usual cult partner of Borvo (also Bormanus and Bormo), a healing god of Gaul with shrines scattered from Bourbonne-les-Bains in the upper Marne valley to Galicia in northwestern Spain. At Vichy he is seen seated with a warrior’s helmet and shield, a horned serpent rearing up against him. If these accoutrements signal a patronage of the arts of war, then Borvo too may be Gaulish Apollo.

  More tenuous but even more intriguing is Gaulish Apollo’s possible identification with Maponos, the Divine Youth, whose cult flourished in the north of Britain but was also found in Gaul. Like the others, Maponos’s name is found at healing springs, at least in Gaul. In Britain he is equated with Apollo Citharoedus (the harper/cithern player) and attributed with skill in the art of music; this latter talent, of course, was an attribute of Apollo in Greece and Rome. Maponos, most commentators now agree, contributes to the conception of the Welsh divine hero Mabon. Linguist Eric Hamp argues further that an accurate gloss of the title Mabinogi, for the four related narratives of medieval Welsh literature, would be ‘the (collective) material pertaining to the god Maponos’ (see Chapter 13). If Maponos is indeed a divine persona behind Gaulish Apollo, the shadow he cast was long. The British divinity is additionally the counterpart of the Irish Angus Óg, god of youth, beauty and (qualifiedly) love, especially when he is referred to by one of the many forms of his patronymic, Mac Óc, Mac-ind-Óc, etc.

  The Roman deity Mars, like the Roman Apollo, was attributed spheres and functions not always accounted for in tidy, modern handbook accounts of him. Certainly he was the principal god of war, patron of the Roman army, ranking second only to Jupiter in the pantheon; his very name gives us the English word ‘martial’. Among the Roman populace more generally, however, including emigrants to conquered colonies of Gaul and Britain, Mars retained qualities of Mamers, his anticipation among the Sabines and Oscans as well as the Italianate Mavers or Mavors. Such a deity was a pacific defender of fields and borders, thus a tribal or territorial entity as well as a healer. For these reasons Roman observers attributed to Gaulish Mars diverse powers in addition to those of combat. In shrines at Movilly, now in Burgundy, eastern France, and at Trier, he is not a warrior on the Roman model but rather he fights and protects against bad health and infertility. One explanation for this may be that once Gaul became an occupied province, Mars was more likely to re-enact the powers of his earlier manifestations and to shake off (though not completely) the more bellicose persona, linked to Greek Ares, of conquering armies or the imperial capital. And so it was that Gaulish Mars was more likely to be aligned with healing gods; Mars Vorocius, dressed as a Celtic soldier, was thought to heal ailments of the eye at what is today Vichy, central Gaul. Afflictions of the eye might also be taken to Mars Mullo (cf. L. mullo: mule), worshipped widely in northwestern Gaul in what is today Normandy and Brittany. Mars Nabelcus was a protective local deity in Provence. The cult of the great healer-god Mars Lenus attracted huge numbers of worshippers among the Traveri of the Moselle valley, centring on the Roman city of Trier. Such associations extended to Roman-occupied Britain. Mars Loucetious was commemorated on the altar of the healing temple at Bath. And Mars is equated with the British god Nodons, whose third-century AD healing sanctuary at Lydney Park on the River Severn, Gloucestershire, is one of the most substantial surviving monuments from Roman Britain.

  Such worship did not, however, drive out all the warlike manifestations associated with Gaulish Mars. His sometime epithet ‘Caturis’ means ‘king of combat’ or ‘master of fighting’. Mars was linked with Segomo, whose name means ‘victorious’, in both Gaul and Britain. Mars Corotiacus in Britain is depicted as a cavalryman trampling an adversary beneath his hoofs. As Mars Camulos, in Britain he began to absorb the important native war god whose name was recorded in the Roman place-name Camulodunum, ancestor of modern Colchester.

  Of these local associations of Gaulish Mars, the one attracting the most interest is Mars Toutatis, found only at Barkway, Hertfordshire. On one hand, this may only mean that Mars was the god of the local tribe, teutā, as Vendryes has argued (see above). Or it may mean that Gaulish Mars is ultimately identified with the war god named Teutates, described by Roman poet Lucan in Pharsalia (first century AD). Our only other evidence for Mars = Teutates comes from the anonymous ninth-century AD author of the Berne Commentaries on Lucan (Scholia Bernensia) who forthrightly equates the two. Other sources identify Teutates with Gaulish Mercury, whose functions, we have said, often overlap with those of Mars.

  Teutates, Taranis and Esus, according to Lucan and others (not Caesar), were the three principal native gods of Gaul. Their names are often cited together, Teutates appearing first, but they do not appear to have formed a triad. Despite many inscriptions to Teutates in Gaul and Britain, he remains a shadowy figure, perhaps because what we think of as his name may be only the designation ‘god of our tribe’ (teutā). Lucan records that Teutates was propitiated with human sacrifice; later commentators would specify that drowning was the favoured mode of execution, especially on 1 November, the feast known as Samain on the Old Irish calendar. Modern commentators profess to see Teutates as the figure plunging victims into a vat of water on the Gundestrup Cauldron (fourth-third centuries BC).

  Taranis, conventionally called ‘the thunderer’, was, in Lucan’s view, an even crueller god, for his worship demanded that victims be burned alive in wooden vessels. Indeed, Taranis’s worship was more brutal and heartless than that of the Scythian Diana (north of the Black Sea), a ghoulish standard of comparison. Modern commentators have speculated that the well-born man executed near Lindow Bog in the fourth century BC may have been sacrificed to Taranis or Teutates. Worship of Taranis may indeed have been bloodier than that of Teutates, but it appears less widely spread. His name survives on only seven altars, many of them modest affairs, from Britain to the Balkans. The ninth-century Berne Commentaries call Taranis a ‘master of war’ but link him to Jupiter rather than to Mars; the same source also allows an identification of Taranis with Dis Pater (see below). Supporting the first Berne assertion, Taranis is often paired with the wheel symbol, evoking the sun, also associated with Jupiter. But Taranis was only an embodiment of thunder as a natural force, and his cult gives no evidence of the anthropomorphized complexity of the Roman sky god. An echo of Taranis’s name persists in the Welsh hero Taran (Welsh taran: thunder), who survives the epic battle between kings Bendigeidfran and Matholwch in the Mabinogi.

  Esus, linked to both Mars and Mercury, was worshipped in many places in Gaul and appears to have been the eponymous god of the Esuvii of the northwest, in what is today Normandy. Hardly less demanding than the other two, he was, to Lucan, ‘uncouth Esus of the barbarous altars’. Human sacrifices were suspended from trees and ritually tortured, so that priests might read omens from the direction blood took in running from the wounds. Temple depictions link Esus with the crane and also with three symbolic egrets, birds later associated with the Irish hero Cúchulainn. As Esus was also sometimes seen as a woodcutter, an occasional role for Cúchulainn, learned speculation once asserted a link between Esus and the Irish hero that a more cold-eyed reading of the evidence has rejected.

  Gaulish Jupiter, as mentioned, ranked fourth in Caesar’s roster of the native gods. This would imply that the C
eltic god or gods he observed were not distinguished by their primacy over the rest of the divines or patriarchy of the divine families. Roman Jupiter’s other powers, over the sun and sky, as well as thunder, lightning and oak trees, offer analogues to what Caesar might have perceived in indigenous religion. As we have said, Taranis ‘the thunderer’ is frequently equated with Jupiter as well as with Mars. In an inscription found near Paris, the name Jupiter is associated with ‘Cernenus’, which may be a variant for Cernunnos, the antlered god. This would not identify Jupiter absolutely with Cernunnos, only associate the two. Anne Ross argues that the large, bearded, bare-chested figure on the Gundestrup Cauldron, holding a wheel symbol in his right hand, is Gaulish Jupiter, while the horned Cernunnos sits nearby. The wheel and the beard also appear on the bronze figure (first–second centuries AD) found at Le Châtelet, previously speculated to be Taranis, in the upper Marne valley; the stylized lightning flash and thunderbolt are similar to what is found in classical iconography but the wheel is distinctly Celtic.

  Simultaneous with the cults of the god or gods the Romans called Gaulish Jupiter, the Romans imported the worship of their own god Jupiter. Gradually the Roman cult absorbed those of indigenous gods worshipped high in mountain elevations. In the Alps around Great Saint Bernard’s Pass lay the sanctuary of Jupiter Poeninus, in Austria Jupiter Uxellinus, and in the Pyrenees Jupiter Beissirissa. Influence from the Mediterranean seems to have prompted the building of the 150-plus Jupiter columns or Jupiter-Giant columns, some standing 45 feet (14 m) high, found primarily near the borders of what are today Germany and France, the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, with a few in Britain. They are four- and eight-sided stone plinths, some copying oak trees but often with Corinthian capitals that honour the Celtic sky god. Roman motifs include inscriptions to Jupiter and Juno as well as trampled serpentine monsters, probable counterparts to the Giants of the Earth defeated by Jupiter. But the deity of the columns is often depicted with the Celtic sun wheel and may be seen as a horseman, as the Roman god never is.