A Brief History of the Celts

by Peter Berresford Ellis

  We know, from early Irish sources, the Irish Celtic names of some of these surgical instruments. Early Irish physicians carried a stethoscope, a horn called a gipne or gibne, explained in Cormac’s Glossary with the words adarc lege (physician’s horn). The surgical probe was called a fraig.

  In the ancient Celtic world, water was the source of health as well as of life. The link with water, the divine waters from heaven from which the Celtic peoples, according to their philosophy, had their origin, was all-pervasive. Therefore we find that rivers and springs were the focus of ritual practices designed to ensure well-being. Like their fellow Indo-Europeans, the Hindus, the Celts regarded water with veneration and they had their sacred rivers. They bathed in them and offered votive gifts to the deities of the springs and rivers; these offerings included wooden models of themselves or the affected part of their limbs, together with all manner of treasures.

  Most Celtic river names are identified with goddesses. The Marne, for example, comes from Matrona, which means ‘mother’; the Severn in Britain is named after Sabrina; the Wharfe is sacred to Verbeia; the Boyne in Ireland is named after the goddess Boann; while the Shannon takes its name from the goddess Siannon. Sequana was the goddess of the Seine, and the source of the river on the Châtillon plateau, north-west of Dijon, was where she was particularly worshipped with votive objects being cast into the river to ensure well-being and health. Among these were solar wheel amulets. A healing shrine was established at ‘Fontes Sequanae’ (The Springs of Sequana) and the Romans took over the site and built two temples and other structures there.

  Sequana seems to have been particularly prayed to and given offerings in connection with various diseases of the organs. Some of the votive offerings are wooden and stone images of limbs, organs, heads and complete bodies, many images showing blindness or swollen eyes. The images were offered to her with coins and items of jewellery. This does not mean, of course, that the people placed their faith in the offering to the goddess alone but that, as well as placing themselves in the hands of their physicians, a prayer to their gods and goddesses would not come amiss. In fact, there was little difference in their attitude to our attitude today.

  The offering of images of limbs and organs was by no means confined to the Celtic world. The practice occurred among the Greeks, and even in medieval times in certain Christian communities. But certainly it was widespread in the Celtic world, and many such images are to be found at the healing shrines in Britain. One fascinating example is a pair of sculptured breasts which were offered to the goddess Sulis at Aquae Sulis (Bath). Presumably a young woman was suffering, perhaps from breast cancer, and sought to invoke the aid of the goddess. Sulis was a major deity of healing and her sanctuaries were found in Britain and in Gaul.

  We find, in the Irish medical tracts, that baths were frequently prescribed for healing. Fingin, the Druid physician of Conchobhar Mac Nessa, cured the wounded warriors by baths of medical herbs. In Cormac’s Glossary such a medicated bath was called fothrucad and most often given for leprosy – doinnlóbru.

  A hot air bath was used in Ireland as a cure for, among other things, rheumatism. It was called a tigh ’n alluis, or ‘sweating house’. One such ancient structure survives on Inishmurray, in Donegal Bay, and several have been described in nineteenth-century sources which have now been vandalised and destroyed. The ‘sweating house’ was a stone cabin, around 2 metres long. A turf fire was kindled inside and the place heated like an oven. The fire was removed. The patient, wrapped in a blanket, went inside and sat down on a bench. The door was closed up. The patient remained until a profuse perspiration developed and then, on leaving, they plunged in cold water before being rubbed dry. The patient was encouraged to meditate (dercad) to achieve a state of peace (sitcháin). This process has been found in many cultures in the world, even among the Native American peoples, and has the same religious connotations as in the Celtic world.

  The fame of the Irish baths spread to the Continent. Professor Henry Hennessy observed, in 1885, that ‘it is remarkable that what are called Turkish baths in Ireland and Great Britain have been designated Roman-Irish baths in Germany and Bohemia’.

  There were also male deities connected with healing. Lenus was the physician-deity of the Treveri, worshipped at Trier and Pommern, where the spring and a small set of baths were situated. He seemed to look after children particularly, and many images have been found with children holding out gifts, specifically of doves, to him. Lenus was also worshipped among the British Celts, at Caerwent in Gwent, and Chedworth in Gloucestershire.

  Belenus, the name meaning ‘bright’ or ‘brilliant’, was a sun deity who probably represented the sun’s curative powers. Vindonnus, whose sanctuary was at Châtillon-sur-Seine in Burgundy, was invoked in the case of eye afflictions for there are bronze plaques there depicting the eyes. He is, significantly, a god of light and his name is argued to mean ‘clear light’.

  Grannus was a healing deity who, according to Dio Cassius, was invoked by the Roman emperor Caracalla who went to his temple sanctuary. We are unsure which sanctuary this was, for his cult was found from north-east Gaul (Brittany) as far east as Hungary, and a pot discovered at Vestmanlung in Sweden bears a dedication to Grannus. This pot probably arrived in Sweden by means of trade or plunder. The name means ‘sun’ and at Trier the god is depicted driving a sun chariot.

  Only in Irish mythology do we have a god of medicine clearly defined. This was Dian Cécht who, with his daughter Airmid, guarded a healing spring which restored the dead and wounded to life. After Nuada, the leader of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, lost his hand in the first battle of Magh Tuireadh, Dian Cécht supplied him with a silver hand, earning Nuada the nickname Nuada Airgetlámh. However, this blemish excluded Nuada from kingship and Bres, the half Fomorii, became king. Dian Cécht’s son, Miach, proved himself a better physician by providing Nuada with a new hand of flesh and blood and allowed him to regain his kingdom.

  Dian Cécht grew increasingly jealous of his son especially when Miach and his sister sewed a cat’s eye into the socket of the one-eyed porter of Nuada’s palace and gave him sight. In rage Dian Cécht killed his son. Airmid gathered the herbs that grew on her brother’s grave and laid them out on her cloak in order of their various healing properties. Dian Cécht, still jealous, overturned the cloak and hopelessly confused the herbs so that no human would learn the secret of immortality by their use.

  Pliny was the first classical writer to give an account of Celtic medical knowledge, and he pointed out that it was the Druids who possessed these skills. As the Druids were the Celtic intellectual caste, it was natural that the professional role of healer would be one of those assumed by them. It has been asserted that the medical knowledge of the Druids was what gave them power in Celtic society, although this is a matter for debate. Pliny, in the first century AD, also stressed that the Druidic physicians were possessed of ‘magical lore’, something he was particularly interested in when writing his Naturalis Historia.

  When records begin in insular Celtic, the Druidic physicians are regarded as skilled in the prescription of herbs as well as in surgery; among the operations they performed were Caesarean sections, neurosurgery and straightforward amputations. We even find an entire medical corps accompanying the army of Conchobhar Mac Nessa during the Táin wars under the direction of Fingín Fáithliaig. It is no coincidence that the name is a compound of fáith, a seer, and liaig, a physician.

  We know from later European sources that the Irish physicians were renowned for their skill in medical botany, including the production of herbal sleeping potions (deoch suaim). Of course, the use of poisons was known. A herb called éccinél was recorded as a deadly poison but, alas, we are not sure to what this word refers. It corresponds with the old Irish word for hurtful, unkindly and unnatural. We are told that the poet Cridenbél was poisoned tre luib éccineol.

  It is Pliny who links the Druids with mistletoe, saying: ‘They believe that mistletoe given in drink will i
mpart fertility to any animal that is barren, and that it is an antidote to all poisons.’ In the modern pharmacopoeia, mistletoe is reputed to be beneficial to sufferers of insomnia, high blood pressure and certain malignant tumours. Pliny tells us that the smoke produced by burning the selago plant was thought to be good for all diseases of the eye.

  In the pre-Christian period, in most European societies, even those of Greece and Rome, little provision was made for the treatment of the ailing poor. The sick, feeble and elderly were often put to death as the ultimate remedy for their ills. Disease was regarded as a curse inflicted by the supernatural powers. These powers had to be propitiated rather than the sick cured. There was no ‘system’ of health care. It is now part of European cultural folklore that the first hospice in Europe for the sick and needy, the first hospital, was established by the Christian matron, St Fabiola (d. c. AD 399) at Porto near Rome.

  Such institutions had, however, been established by the Indo-Europeans of India. The Charaka-Samhita (Annals of Charake) tell us that Asoka (c. 273–232 BC), the emperor of India, sickened by war and the struggle for power, turned to Buddhism and professional non-violence, establishing the first hospitals in India for the ailing poor.

  What is overlooked, in a European context, is that Irish sources refer to the establishment of the first hospital in Ireland by the semi-legendary queen Macha Mong Ruadh (d. c. 377 BC). She is said to have established a hospital called Bróin Bherg (House of Sorrow) at Emain Macha, Navan in Armagh. It is reported that this hospital remained in use in Navan until its destruction in AD 22. Legendary foundation or not, we do know that such hospitals were in existence by the time of the Christian period in Ireland, some for sick people with general ailments, and others serving specialist needs, such as leper hospitals. The Brehon Laws indicate the existence of an advanced and sophisticated medical system, for they ordered that hospitals be made available in all tribal areas. This implies a long tradition of medical practice. References by Pliny to the reputation of Gaulish physicians such as Crinias and Charmis and the use of astrology as an aid to medical diagnosis – a system Charmis was especially known for – show how progressive the Celtic system was. Martial refers to Alcon, a famous Roman surgeon who had studied at the Gaulish medical colleges. Gaulish Celtic physicians and orators certainly had an excellent reputation.

  Joseph O’Longan (in an unpublished MS in the Royal Irish Academy) shows that the use of astrological observations as an aid in medical diagnosis and prognosis was universal among Irish physicians. This was a standard practice throughout Europe in the medieval period. It is worthy of mention that one of the last books in Irish on astrological medical skills was written by a Jesuit priest from Donegal, Father Maghnus Ó Domhnaill, in 1694. Father Ó Domhnaill had studied at the Irish College in Salamanca University, which disbanded its faculty of astrology in 1777, the last university to do so.

  The Irish language contains the world’s largest collection of medical texts in any one language prior to 1800. There are translations of works credited to Hippocrates, Galen, Herophilus, Rhazes, Avicenna, Seapion, Dioscorides and many other European medical scholars in addition to the native books of learning. The majority of surviving texts date from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, such as the books of the O’Hickeys (1352), O’Lees (1443), O’Shiels and the 1512 Book of Mac Anlega (Son of the Doctor). The oldest surviving medical textbook in Ireland dates from 1352, now in the Royal Irish Academy, but it is a copy of a far older book. Even older medical texts are kept in the British Museum and the University Library, Cambridge. This wealth of ancient medical material has, to the shame of scholars, scarcely been examined.

  Under the Brehon Laws the provision of sick maintenance, including the price of curative treatment, attendance allowance and nourishing food, was made available for everyone who needed it. Expenses for the treatment of wounded people, those injured unlawfully, were paid out of the fines which the perpetrators of the deed had to pay. The Law of Torts says that ‘full sick maintenance [must be paid] to a worker injured for the sake of unnecessary profit . . .’

  The Brehon Laws make it clear that only qualified physicians could treat the sick and there were severe penalties if unqualified physicians were found practising. The qualified physicians were responsible for the treatment of their patient and if, through negligence or ignorance, they caused a patient’s condition to worsen, they had to pay compensation. Each qualified physician undertook by law to maintain four medical students and train them. Every so often the physician was allowed, under law, to take a sabbatical and devote himself to catching up on new knowledge and techniques.

  Each territory had to maintain a hospital. The law is exact on the conditions under which it was to be built and maintained. It should have four doors, be placed by a stream of running water, and be maintained free of charge or taxation by the local assembly. The existence of such hospitals is attested by the names of towns or places such as An Spidéal (Spiddal, Spital etc.). The local physician and his students were in charge. There was a full-time caretaker or hospital manager who was employed to keep away stray dogs, mentally sick people, who had their own institutions, and anyone liable to cause the sick or injured distress.

  The Irish laws relating to medicine and the fragmentary evidence from the Continent demonstrate that ancient Celtic society was concerned with protecting its sick and ailing poor at a time when tending the ill was not a priority in neighbouring societies.

  9

  CELTIC COSMOLOGY

  In speaking of the Druids, Julius Caesar remarked:

  They also hold long discussions about the heavenly bodies and their movement, the size of the universe and of the earth, the physical constitutions of the world, and the power and properties of the gods; and they instruct the young men in all these subjects.

  Pomponius Mela (c. AD 43), author of the earliest surviving Latin work on geography, which offers explanations for the actions of the moon and the tides and the midnight sun in the north, mentions that the Celts had a reputation for their ‘speculations from the stars’. He states:

  They have, further, their eloquence and their Druids, teachers of wisdom, who profess to know the greatness and shape of the earth and the universe and the motion of the heavens and of the stars and what is the will of the gods.

  And Hippolytus (c. AD 170–c. 236), in Philosophumena, gives us one of the clearest statements by saying that the Celts fore-told the future from the stars by ciphers and numbers after the manner of Pythagoreans.

  From the very beginning of time the human species has been perceptive of natural phenomena. Early societies noticed that the sun and moon together affected the tides, and the sun regulated the seasons, giving light and heat which fructified the harvest. They also noticed that the motions of the moon could in some cases affect men and women and their mental attitudes. From these initial observations there developed a belief that the motions of what were then thought of as ‘stars’ influenced individuals and events on earth.

  Astrology was initially an integral part of astronomy. Indeed, Aristotle used the word ‘astrology’ rather than ‘astronomy’ to describe the whole science. It was only as late as the seventeenth century that astronomy and astrology really parted company with the dawning of the so-called ‘Age of Reason’.

  Historians of astronomy and astrology generally argue that the science had its origins in ancient Babylonia and made its way from Babylonia into Europe via Greece. Yet in fact we find that astrology did not have its ‘birth’ in any one place and that all societies, in whatever part of the world, evolved a system of cosmology, of looking at the heavens; they all developed a theory of the phenomena and the laws which govern them and, on the basis of seasonal observations, learned to predict the future by the movements of the planets. The Celts were no exception to other societies, but how did they view the heavens and relate to them?

  That the Celts were highly competent in astronomy is proved by the fact that they originated their
own calendrical system. The earliest surviving Celtic calendar is from Gaul and dated to the first century BC. This is the Coligny Calendar, now in the Palais des Arts in Lyons. It is a lunar calendar on engraved bronze plates and was discovered in November 1897. The language on it is Gaulish Celtic. Seymour de Ricci’s analysis in the Revue celtique at the time of the discovery pointed out that the calendar confirmed Pliny’s comment about the Celtic thirty-year calendrical cycle. Professor Heinrich Zimmer, a leading Celtic scholar as well as a Sanskrit expert, studied the calendar within months of its discovery and was the first to point out in his Altindisches Leben that it had many parallels to Vedic calendrical computations. He specifically cited the Taittirya Samhita.

  There have been many studies of the calendar but in 1992 Dr Garrett Olmsted’s seminal work, published in Germany, substantiated the Celtic parallels to the Vedic system. Olmsted was both a Celtic scholar and a qualified astronomer. While accepting that the surviving calendar was manufactured in the first century BC, Dr Olmsted went further and demonstrated by astronomical calculus that the calendar must have originally been computed in 1100 BC. In other words, we have a Celtic calendar that dates back three millennia, endorsing the comments of the classical sources regarding the long tradition and sophistication of Celtic calendrical methodology.

  Professor Eoin MacNeill, when he examined the calendar in 1924, posed the question: ‘Is it possible that the Coligny Calendar preserves the older Indo-European tradition of the Celts?’ He felt the answer was in the affirmative. Every study of the calendar has inclined to support this.