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THE RELIGION
OF THE
ANCIENT CELTS
BY
J.A. MACCULLOCH
HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE CATHEDRAL
AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY"
"RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE"
"THE CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND PRIMITIVE THOUGHT"
Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street
1911
Printed by
MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED,
FOR
T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH.
LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED.
NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
TO
ANDREW LANG
PREFACE
The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent
growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study,
earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and
connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains
of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under
polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois
de Jubainville in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts
by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to
have dawned, and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of
Celtic religion. In this country the place of honour among students of
that religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures _On
the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_
(1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that
time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable
researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I
would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his
Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on _The Arthurian
Legend_, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school,
and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the
darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host
of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer,
studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in
the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement
with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced
that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in
spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must
remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently
the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable
little book on _Celtic Religion_, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh
ground.[1]
In this book I have made use of all the available sources, and have
endeavoured to study the subject from the comparative point of view and
in the light of the anthropological method. I have also interpreted the
earlier cults by means of recent folk-survivals over the Celtic area
wherever it has seemed legitimate to do so. The results are summarised
in the introductory chapter of the work, and students of religion, and
especially of Celtic religion, must judge how far they form a true
interpretation of the earlier faith of our Celtic forefathers, much of
which resembles primitive religion and folk-belief everywhere.
Unfortunately no Celt left an account of his own religion, and we are
left to our own interpretations, more or less valid, of the existing
materials, and to the light shed on them by the comparative study of
religions. As this book was written during a long residence in the Isle
of Skye, where the old language of the people still survives, and where
the _genius loci_ speaks everywhere of things remote and strange, it may
have been easier to attempt to realise the ancient religion there than
in a busier or more prosaic place. Yet at every point I have felt how
much would have been gained could an old Celt or Druid have revisited
his former haunts, and permitted me to question him on a hundred matters
which must remain obscure. But this, alas, might not be!
I have to thank Miss Turner and Miss Annie Gilchrist for valuable help
rendered in the work of research, and the London Library for obtaining
for me several works not already in its possession. Its stores are an
invaluable aid to all students working at a distance from libraries.
J.A. MACCULLOCH.
THE RECTORY,
BRIDGE OF ALLAN,
_October_ 1911.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See also my article "Celts" in Hastings' _Encyclopaedia of Religion
and Ethics_, vol. iii.
[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Throughout this book, some characters are used
which are not part of the Latin-1 character set used in this e-book. The
string "[^y]" is used to represent a lower-case "Y" with a circumflex
mark on top of it, "[=a]" is used to represent a lower-case "A" with a
line on top of it, and "[oe]" is used to represent the "oe"-ligature.
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