Myths & Legends of the Celtic Race Part 52

20 The Irish, says Edmund Spenser, in his View of the Present State of Ireland, use commonyle to send up and down to know newes, and yf any meet with another, his second woorde is, What newes?

21 Compare Spenser: I have heard some greate warriors say, that in all the services which they had seen abroad in forrayne countreys, they never saw a more comely horseman than the Irish man, nor that cometh on more bravely in his charge ... they are very valiante and hardye, for the most part great endurours of cold, labour, hunger and all hardiness, very active and stronge of hand, very swift of foote, very vigilaunte and circ.u.mspect in theyr enterprises, very present in perrils, very great scorners of death.

22 The scene of the surrender of Vercingetorix is not recounted by Csar, and rests mainly on the authority of Plutarch and of the historian Florus, but it is accepted by scholars (Mommsen, Long, &c.) as historic.

23 These were a tribe who took their name from the _gsum_, a kind of Celtic javelin, which was their princ.i.p.al weapon. The torque, or twisted collar of gold, is introduced as a typical ornament in the well-known statue of the dying Gaul, commonly called The Dying Gladiator. Many examples are preserved in the National Museum of Dublin.

24 Csars Conquest of Gaul, pp. 10, 11. Let it be added that the aristocratic Celts were, like the Teutons, dolichocephalicthat is to say, they had heads long in proportion to their breadth. This is proved by remains found in the basin of the Marne, which was thickly populated by them. In one case the skeleton of the tall Gallic warrior was found with his war-car, iron helmet, and sword, now in the Music de St.-Germain. The inhabitants of the British Islands are uniformly long-headed, the round-headed Alpine type occurring very rarely. Those of modern France are round-headed. The shape of the head, however, is now known to be by no means a constant racial character. It alters rapidly in a new environment, as is shown by measurements of the descendants of immigrants in America. See an article on this subject by Professor Haddon in Nature, Nov. 3, 1910.

25 In the Tain Bo Cuailgne, for instance, the King of Ulster must not speak to a messenger until the Druid, Cathbad, has questioned him.

One recalls the lines of Sir Samuel Ferguson in his Irish epic poem, Congal:

... For ever since the time When Cathbad smothered Usnachs sons in that foul sea of slime Raised by abominable spells at Creeveroes b.l.o.o.d.y gate, Do ruin and dishonour still on priest-led kings await.

_ 26 Celtice_, Diarmuid mac Cearbhaill.

27 It was the practice, known in India also, for a person who was wronged by a superior, or thought himself so, to sit before the doorstep of the denier of justice and fast until right was done him.

In Ireland a magical power was attributed to the ceremony, the effect of which would be averted by the other person fasting as well.

28 Silva Gadelica, by S.H. OGrady, p. 73.

29 The authority here quoted is a narrative contained in a fifteenth-century vellum ma.n.u.script found in Lismore Castle in 1814, and translated by S.H. OGrady in his Silva Gadelica. The narrative is attributed to an officer of Dermots court.

30 From Greek _megas_, great, and _lithos_, a stone.

31 See p. 78.

32 See Borlases Dolmens of Ireland, pp. 605, 606, for a discussion of this question.

33 Professor Ridgeway (see Report of the Brit. a.s.soc. for 1908) has contended that the Megalithic People spoke an Aryan language; otherwise he thinks more traces of its influence must have survived in the Celtic which supplanted it. The weight of authority, as well as such direct evidence as we possess, seems to be against his view.

34 See Holder,Altceltischer Sprachschatz. _sulb voce_ Hyperboreoi.

35 Thus the Greek _pharmakon_=medicine, poison, or charm; and I am informed that the Central African word for magic or charm is _mankwala_, which also means medicine.

36 If Pliny meant that it was here first codified and organised he may be right, but the conceptions on which magic rest are practically universal, and of immemorial antiquity.

37 Adopted 451 B.C. Livy ent.i.tles them the fountain of all public and private right. They stood in the Forum till the third century A.D., but have now perished, except for fragments preserved in various commentaries.

38 See Revue Archeologique, t. xii., 1865, Fouilles de Ren Galles.

39 Jade is not found in the native state in Europe, nor nearer than China.

40 Small stones, crystals, and gems were, however, also venerated. The celebrated Black Stone of Pergamos was the subject of an emba.s.sy from Rome to that city in the time of the Second Punic War, the Sibylline Books having predicted victory to its possessors. It was brought to Rome with great rejoicings in the year 205. It is stated to have been about the size of a mans fist, and was probably a meteorite. Compare the myth in Hesiod which relates how Kronos devoured a stone in the belief that it was his offspring, Zeus. It was then possible to mistake a stone for a G.o.d.

41 Replaced by a photograph in this edition.

42 See Sir J. Simpsons Archaic Sculpturings 1867.

43 The fact is recorded in the Annals of the Four Masters Under the date 861, and in the Annals of Ulster under 862.

44 See Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. x.x.x. pt. i., 1892, and New Grange, by G. Coffey, 1912.

45 It must be observed, however, that the decoration was, certainly, in some, and perhaps in all cases, carried out before the stones were placed in position. This is also the case at Gavrinis.

46 He has modified this view in his latest work, New Grange, 1912.

47 Proc. Royal Irish Acad., vol. viii. 1863, p. 400, and G. Coffey, _op. cit._ p. 30.

48 Les Sculptures de Rochers de la Sude, read at the Prehistoric Congress, Stockholm, 1874; and see G. Coffey, _op. cit._ p. 60.

49 Dolmens of Ireland, pp. 701-704.

50 The Religion of Babylonia and a.s.syria.

51 A good example from Amaravati (after Fergusson) is given by Bertrand, Rel. des G., p. 389.

52 Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, p. 313.

53 At Lkeberget, Bohusln; see Monteiius, _op. cit._

54 See Lord Kingsboroughs Antiquities of Mexico, _pa.s.sim_, and the Humboldt fragment of Mexican painting (reproduced in Churchwards Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man).

55 See Sergi, _op. cit._ p. 290, for the _Ankh_ on a French dolmen.

56 Bulletin de la Soc. dAnthropologie, Paris, April 1893.

57 The Welsh People, pp. 616-664, where the subject is fully discussed in an appendix by Professor J. Morris Jones. The pre-Aryan idioms which still live in Welsh and Irish were derived from a language allied to Egyptian and the Berber tongues.

58 Flinders Petrie, Egypt and Israel, pp. 137, 899.

59 I quote from Mr. H.B. Cotterills beautiful hexameter version.

60 Valerius Maximus (about A.D 30) and other cla.s.sical writers mention this practice.

61 Book V.

62 De Jubainville, Irish Mythological Cycle, p.191 _sqq._

63 The etymology of the word Druid is no longer an unsolved problem.

It had been suggested that the latter part of the word might be connected with the Aryan root VID, which appears in wisdom, in the Latin _videre_, &c., Thurneysen has now shown that this root in combination with the intensive particle _dru_ would yield the word _dru-vids_, represented in Gaelic by _draoi_, a Druid, just as another intensive, _su_, with _vids_ yields the Gaelic _saoi_, a sage.

64 See Rice Holmes, Csars Conquest, p. 15, and pp. 532-536. Rhys, it may be observed, believes that Druidism was the religion of the aboriginal inhabitants of Western Europe from the Baltic to Gibraltar (Celtic Britain, p. 73). But we only _know_ of it where Celts and dolmen-builders combined. Csar remarks of the Germans that they had no Druids and cared little about sacrificial ceremonies.

65 Rel. des Gaulois, leon xx.

66 Quoted by Bertrand, _op. cit._ p. 279.