Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference)

by James MacKillop

  The Roman Minerva, like her Greek counterpart Athena, was primarily a goddess of wisdom, invention and the martial arts; only secondarily was she a patroness of domesticity and crafts. The Gaulish Minerva, however, Caesar tells us, taught the first principles of the arts and crafts. Her worship was widespread in Gaul and also extended to Britain where, as the geographer Solinus (second century AD) describes, her sanctuary possessed a perpetual fire, earning her the epithet Belisama [most brilliant]. In Britain too the cult of Minerva became thoroughly conflated with the native healing goddess Sulis at the shrine of Bath, known as Aquae Sulis in Roman times. Their merger is often cited as the archetypal example of interpretatio Romana. In inscriptions the name of the indigenous goddess always goes first: Sulis-Minerva or Sul-Minerva. The much-photographed large bronze head of Sulis-Minerva, ripped from its torso with helmet severed, indicates that the goddess at Bath was portrayed in classical dress. Elsewhere Minerva’s sometime epithet Sulevia links her with the triad of mother-goddesses, Suleviae, known in many parts of the Roman-occupied Celtic world and in Rome itself. Minerva may also be identified with the tribal goddess Brigantia, worshipped in what is now Yorkshire.

  The motif of her perpetual fire in Britain as well as her links to Brigantia may signal that Gaulish Minerva is identical with the pre-Christian Irish fire goddess Brigit, a patroness of smithing, fertility, cattle, crops and poetry. Although much associated with Co. Kildare, Brigit was probably worshipped at Corleck Hill, near Drumeague, Co. Cavan, where a stone head thought to be hers once stood. She is honoured in one of the four seasonal feasts of early Ireland, Imbolc, 1 February on the Gregorian calendar. Brigit, in turn, contributes much to the persona of St Brigid of Kildare (d. 525), still argued to be an historical personage by Church authorities, whose feast day is also 1 February (see Chapter 5).

  Dis Pater, Dispater or simply Dis is a name Caesar and other Romans preferred for the god we call Pluto or Hades, deity of the nether world, ruler of the dead. The preference for ‘Dis Pater’ was not simply a euphemism for dreaded Pluto, whose name actually translates as ‘giver of wealth’. Dis, from the Latin dives, also implies wealth, as in the riches of the earth or the numbers who attend or accompany; Dis Pater, therefore, could be translated as ‘Rich Father’. Caesar reports the druids as preaching that all Gauls were descended from this divine ancestor, a congruent faith for the ‘rich father’, even if he ruled the dead. While the notion of a common ancestor clearly struck Caesar as peculiar, it has many parallels in Indo-European tradition, as far away as India, as well as in medieval Ireland. Scattered groups in early Irish society claimed descent from the hero Lug Lámfhota, as later great dynasties were thought to flow from the loins of Conn Cétchathach [of the Hundred Battles] and Niall Noígiallach [of the Nine Hostages], the latter extending into Gaelic Scotland. Put another way, Caesar may simply have ascribed the name of Dis Pater to one or a series of ancestor cults. Then again the name Dis Pater is found in inscriptions and his persona is given icons. On an upright stone at Varhély in what is today Romania, Dis Pater is accompanied by a three-headed dog, perhaps a local variant of Cerberus of classical tradition. Elsewhere in the Balkans and in southern Germany, Dis Pater is portrayed holding a scroll, perhaps a roster for the day of reckoning; accompanying him is the apparent consort Aericura, a Celto-Germanic goddess.

  If Dis Pater may indeed be identified with a native deity, nominations have not been lacking. The ninth-century Berne Commentaries assert that Taranis is the Gaulish god behind Dis Pater as well as behind Jupiter, a notion not supported by later commentators or archaeological evidence. A better case can be made for Sucellus [L. the good striker, he who strikes to good effect], who is always seen with a long-shafted mallet or hammer, whose significance – weapon or tool – is not known. A very masculine figure with curling hair and beard, Sucellus is always seen with his cult partner Nantosuelta. He is often seen with a dog (another Cerberus?), a cask and a drinking jar. His worship was widespread in Gaul but also known in Britain. Anne Ross in Pagan Celtic Britain (1967) argues that the horned Cernunnos provided the ultimate identity for Dis Pater, as he was a god of wealth, underground regions and fecundity; further, his widespread worship implies that Cernunnos was the ancestor deity of the Gauls. Still other commentators see a parallel to Gaulish Dis Pater in the pre-Christian Irish god Donn, who was thought to reside at Tech Duinn [the House of Donn], a rocky islet near Dursey Island at the extreme western end of the Beare Peninsula, Co. Cork, in the southernmost reaches of the province of Munster. Donn, seen as aloof, preferring to live away from other gods, was unquestionably the ruler of the dead; the dead live with him on Tech Duinn. But he is also an ancestor deity. He became confused with Donn mac Míled, son of Míl Espáine in the pseudo-history Lebor Gabála [Book of Invasions], who went to live on the same rocky islet after he offended the goddess Ériu. In early Christian commentary, the souls of the damned were thought to linger in Tech Duinn on their way to hell. Pious folklore borrowed aspects of Donn to describe the devil. Later oral tradition ascribed to Donn the power to cause storms and shipwrecks.

  Caesar’s half-dozen do not constitute a Gaulish pantheon, as we have said, and neither do they exhaust interpretatio Romana. Other classical observers perceived yet two more Gaulish deities in Roman guise, a god of eloquence whom they identified with Hercules, and a craft god, Gaulish Vulcan. A key informant here is Lucian (second century AD), a witty Greek born in Syria whose Dialogues often treat the gods lightly.

  Lucian learned from a Gaulish informant that the Gauls associated polished speech with Hercules because of his great strength rather than with Hermes (Greek counterpart to Mercury), as the Greeks did. Hercules, called Heracles by the Greeks, was initially portrayed as the heroic but mortal son of Zeus from a dalliance with Alcmene, and came to be worshipped as a god after his self-immolation in honour of his divine father. Lucian’s informant further advised him that the Gaulish name for Hercules is Ogmios. While in Gallia Narbonensis (now southern France), Lucian encountered a startling picture of the indigenous god. He bore some of the attributes of Hercules, such as the club and the bow, but he appeared older: bald and sunburned. His eloquence appeared to enslave. Thin gold chains came from the tip of his tongue to the ears of an otherwise happy-looking band of men who tagged along behind him. This portrayal of Ogmios was later re-imagined by the German Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). In the ancient world there was scant physical evidence to support Lucian’s story, only two lead curse tablets found at Bregenz, Austria, on the shore of Lake Constance; both invoke Ogmios’s name, one in a curse on an infertile woman, that she never marry.

  The later, insular personage who appears to bear the closest resemblance to Ogmios is Ogma, the Irish orator-warrior of the Tuatha Dé Danann, one of the three principal champions of his people, along with Lug Lámfhota and the Dagda. He was the patron of poetry and eloquence and was also the fabled inventor of the ogham alphabet, a philological cognate of his name. Ogham was the earliest form of written Irish in which the Latin alphabet was adapted to twenty ‘letters’ of straight lines and notches. Like Gaulish Hercules, Ogma was conventionally known as a ‘strong man’. Compelling as the Ogmios-Ogma link may appear, authoritative scholars including Rudolf Thurneysen and Anton van Hamel long ago disputed that the names are cognate. More recent commentators have asserted that the Irish god’s name may still be derived from Ogmios, even through intermediaries, if not actually from the same root or direct contact.

  Neither Julius Caesar nor other Roman commentators speak of a Gaulish Vulcan, and references to Vulcan in Roman-occupied territories are rare, existing only on silver plaques found at Barkway, Hertfordshire. It is archaeological evidence alone that points to the cult of a smith god among the ancient Celts, with most remains in the north of Roman Britain. Among the complete survivals is a second-century AD earthenware vessel found at Corbridge, Northumberland, depicting a bearded figure dressed in a smith’s costume: a conical cap and a belted tunic lea
ving the left shoulder uncovered. He stands over an anvil clasping an ingot in one hand and a pair of tongs in the other. Appliqués of conventional smith’s tools, anvils, hammers and tongs, appear on rough, grey ceramic potsherds found in Durham, North Yorkshire and Northumberland. A bronze figure of a smith has been found in Lyon, France, very similar to one in Sunderland. Collectively, these examples do not prove a Celtic counterpart to Vulcan – no lameness, for example – but they do imply a native divinity parallel in many respects to the Roman god.

  Smiths and other craftsmen enjoy a high regard, a reverence, even a sense of awe for their apparently magical powers, in many pre-technological societies. For the observer without a knowledge of elementary physics, the sight of a man who can yield a stream of brilliant liquid metal from the firing of a certain rough rock evokes a practical wizardry. In early Gaelic Scotland a smith need only hold his hammer over the sick or infirm in order to drive away illness.

  Not surprisingly, then, early Ireland, Wales, Scotland and the Isle of Man provide us with more than half a dozen divine or superhuman smiths, of which the most memorable are the Irish Goibniu and his popular counterparts, the Gobbán Saor and the Welsh Gofannon and Glwyddyn Saer. All four of these names relate to a word meaning ‘smith’, Old Irish gobae and Welsh gof, gofan, and indeed all four personae may have derived from the same divinity. Goibniu was the smith of the divine family, Tuatha Dé Danann, and part of the triad of craft gods, na trí dé dána, along with Credne, the bronze artificer, and Luchta, the carpenter or wright. Goibniu is a tireless armourer in Cath Maige Tuired [The (Second) Battle of Mag Tuired], where he fashions for the hero Lug Lámfhota the spear that penetrates Balor’s eye. His keen arrow and spear tips are always lethal. He might also be a fighter himself, as when he slays the spy Rúadán who had impaled the smith with one of his own spears. Like so many Celtic divinities, Goibniu could be a healer: an Old Irish charm cites his name to aid removal of a thorn. More pertinently, he hosts the otherworldly feast Fled Goibnenn [Goibniu’s feast], where guests imbibe great quantities of an intoxicating drink, now thought to be ale. Instead of merely getting drunk, guests are protected from old age and decay. His delivery of splendid drinks points to a link with Hephaestus, Greek counterpart to Vulcan, who provides a comparable service to the gods in the Iliad.

  The folk figure Gobbán Saor [Ir. saor: smith, wright], known in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic traditions, clearly derives from Goibniu, although many storytellers thought he was historical. He was credited with assisting workmen in the construction of early monasteries and round towers. Both Goibniu and Gobbán appear to have contributed to the shadowy Welsh figure Glwyddyn Saer, perhaps derived from the many Irish incursions and settlements in Wales. Standing much taller in myth is the Welsh divine smith Gofannon, one of the children of Dôn, who also appears in the celebrated eleventh-century story Culhwch and Olwen. For this third task, Culhwch was asked to get Gofannon to sharpen the plough of Amaethon, the divine ploughman and magician. Gofannon’s murder of his nephew Dylan signals to many commentators a parallel with Goibniu’s slaying of Rúadán.

  TRIPLISM

  The early Celts, like other Indo-Europeans, attached symbolic significance to most frequently used numbers, but gave the greatest to the number three. Artistic expression dating from all periods of Celtic history underscores this penchant. A shorn skull with three separate faces, dating from the early Iron Age, was found at Corleck, Co. Cavan, Ireland. A curly-haired, curly-bearded, three-faced personage peers out from a terracotta vase found at Bavay, France. Other three-headed or tricephalic figures survive at Reims, France, in Germany, the Channel Islands, Scotland, and elsewhere in Ireland. Swirling La Tène art often resolves in figures with three cusps. Gaulish Mercury, as cited earlier, displays three faces and three phalluses. The traditional symbol of the Isle of Man is the three-legged triskele just as Brittany is represented by the trefoil.

  No explanation of the power of three is given in any Celtic-language text, even though traditional learning was often formulated into the triad in both Ireland and Wales. The extensive Welsh Triads, Trioedd Ynys Prydain, brought together in the twelfth century, deal with such diverse matters as native learning, poetry, law and medicine. But other commentators have had much to say about the power of three in the larger European context. Pythagoras (sixth century BC) cites three as the perfect number, signalling beginning, middle and end. The stool of the pythia or soothsaying priestess at the oracle of Delphi always had three legs, a tripod; it was stable and would not rock. In many religions three may represent life: male, female and progeny. Three may also represent the visible world: sky, earth and underground; or space: before, after and right here, or above, below and this world, one explanation of the universal cross. The influential myth theorist Georges Dumézil argued that three became such a significant number on analogy with the tripartite division of early European society: farmers, warriors and clergy.

  Writing in 1952, Joseph Vendryes pointed out that triune figures often have one dominant personality and two lesser ones, which are virtual ciphers. It may be, he argued, that there was initially only one dominating figure who was then doubled twice. Early Irish dynastic records support this contention as when they cite important figures’ names in triplicate. A prime example of his thesis in narrative literature appears in the Deirdre story (see Chapter 4). The tragic princess flees with her lover Noise, who has a developed dramatic personality, and the fugitive couple are accompanied by his two brothers Ardan and Ainnle, who are distinguished only by the sounds of their voices. At the same time, other early Irish texts also offer a refutation of Vendryes’ thesis. Of the trio of war-goddesses known as Mórrígna [Ir. great queens], Badb, the Mórrígan and Macha, each has a distinctive personality and takes a different role in an assortment of narratives; see Chapter 4. Badb, the crow goddess, visits places of battle both before and after conflict. The ferocious Mórrígan does not take part in battle but can stampede whole armies with her frightful appearance. Macha, one of three queens with this name, is the eponymous founder of Emain Macha, the eighteen-acre hillfort in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland.

  Triple divinities are easy enough to find elsewhere in European tradition, but often there is but one divine trio prominent in a single culture. For the Greeks the ‘triple goddess’ consists of Selene (above the earth), Hecate (below the earth) and Artemis (open places, hunting, athletic competition). Among the Celts there are dozens, more than we have names to assign to them. In both Gaul and Britain we find remains of triple mother-figures, cited earlier as the Matres. Distinctive hooded figures, the Genii Cucullati [L. hooded guardian spirits], are depicted in outdoor garments, and found as far apart as contemporary Austria and Britain. In Britain they appear as three dwarfs and are found in clusters near Hadrian’s Wall in the north and in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire. The hooded figures anticipate the appearance of Christian monks, with important exceptions; one ancient figure appears with an extended phallus, perhaps intended as a candle-holder. The spring sacred to the territorial goddess Coventina, herself a single persona, is presided over by figures of three goddesses. And, as mentioned before, Lucan (first century AD) cites the Gaulish gods Teutates, Taranis and Esus in close proximity to one another, implying a triad.

  Continuity is unmistakable in insular tradition. There are three personifications of Ireland, Ériu, Banba and Fódla. Three gods patronize the crafts: Goibniu, Credne and Luchta. According to the tenth-century Sanas Cormaic [Cormac’s Glossary], there are three Brigits, the pre-Christian fire-goddess and two lesser Brigits about whom details are not provided. The sorceress Tlachtga was raped by the three sons of Simon Magus and gave birth to triplets on a hill in Co. Meath, where a festival was long celebrated in her honour. Finn Emna, also known as the Three Finns of Emain Macha, were the triplet sons attributed to king Eochaid Feidliech who joined their mother in a rebellion against their father. The three Fothads do field battle with Fionn mac Cumhaill and his men. The Three Collas, Colla Uais, C
olla Menn and Colla Fo Chríth, eliminate Emain Macha as a centre of power and establish the kingdom of Airgialla in what are today Counties Armagh, Monaghan and parts of Louth and Tyrone. In Wales there are Three Exalted Prisoners and Three Generous Men of the Isle of Britain. Branwen of the Mabinogi is one of three matriarchs.

  SUMMARY

  From the ancient sources, written and material, we have gathered only shards of what was once a great edifice. Anthropomorphized gods and goddesses, as well as cults, heroes and heroines once existed among the peoples we call Celts. Comparable elements among the Sumerians, Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks and Romans gave rise to those stories in which some characters are gods that we call ‘mythology’ in English. Tantalizing wisps of narrative, like the portrait of Ogmios pulling a band of men with chains strung from the tip of his tongue, lead us to imagine that a larger body of narrative once existed, defining relationships between deities and heroes, attributing dramatic personalities to names we know only from survivals.

  The continuity of the Celtic languages from continental Europe to the British Isles does not imply an ethnic continuum from Hallstatt to the Hebrides and the Aran Islands, as we have said. By analogy, Castilian aristocrats and Bolivian tin-miners might both speak Spanish, but they are not the same people. A shared language, however, even a shared family of languages, means a continuity of concept. If the sun and the sky are named in comparable words, they may be conceived in comparable ways, and so with birds, animals and fish. The druid of ancient tradition stands comparison with the druid of insular tradition. The magic accorded the number three, hardly unique to the Celtic peoples, certainly appears to be a conceptual continuity. The nearly obscured names of Gaulish gods, such as Lugus/Lugos, show up in heroes from Irish and Welsh tradition, Lug and Lieu. For these and other reasons we benefit from examining the ancient survivals side by side with the greater body of tradition arising among the insular Celts centuries after the end of ancient learning.