May 1, 1888.] 



♦ KNOW^LEDGE ♦ 



161 



of the northern and western parts, and the somewhat more 

 advanced tribes of the southern pirts, of the island were 

 aborigines, and if not, whence they had come, and what 

 was their relation to the races overspreading the northern 

 hemisphere, concerning whom no written records exist ; 

 what remains, either tangible, as weapons of war and the 

 chase, or intangible, as language, legend, myth, and custom 

 were extant, neither historians nor antiquaries tarried to 

 ask. What a vast and interesting, if obscure, field they 

 left unexplored we are beginning to see, thanks to the 

 industry and zeal of Professor Rhys and kindred labourers. 

 The old indifference and ignorance, due not only to defects 

 of educjition just referred to, but also to the delusion that 

 " when Britain first at Heaven's command arose from out 

 the azure main,'' she succeeded to the spiritual lordship and 

 pi-ivileges which the Jews had forfeited,* and appeared 

 equipped, Minerva-like, complete in all wisdom needful to 

 eternal salvation, are giving place to the desire to know 

 whether the couree of man's progi'ess in these islands runs 

 parallel or not with that of other civilised races, and if so, 

 what evidence is supplied by survivals. 



It is as a contribution to this question that Professor 

 Rhys's volume, in which the history of religion is for the 

 first time com[)reliensively treated from the Celtic point of 

 view, demands attention. Its somewhat late place in a. 

 valuable, if unequal, series itself illustrates our remarks on 

 the tardy recognition of the importance of ancient British 

 religions, but better late than never, and we will not lay 

 reproach at the doora of the llibbert Trustees, who are 

 spending their money to good purpose. 



Rarely has a more obscure and tough subject been taken 

 in hand than this with which Professor Rhys bravely 

 grapples, for the materials are not only scanty and scattered, 

 but are often hard to interpret. They consist of a few 

 references in ancient writers, and of inscriptions on votive 

 tablets and other monuments preserved in local museums 

 and described in transactions of provincial societies. Draw- 

 ing primarily on Ciesar's account of the Gaulish religion, 

 which may be taken as applicable to the religion of the 

 British Celts, since they migrated from Gaul, Professor 

 Rhys has sought to identify the Gaulish with the Roman 

 Pantheon. He remarks that, " unfortunately for the study 

 of Celtic religion and philology, few of the monuments of 

 Gaul supply us with inscriptions in the national tongue ; 

 and probably all of them, whether in Gaulish or in Latin, 

 date after the advent of the Roman conqueror and the 

 initLation of his policy of assimilating the gods of vanquished 

 Gaul with those of Rome. This policy took a very definite 

 form under Augustus. He, as ponti/ex maxlmus, united 

 the religions of the Roman world ; but the manner in which 

 Africa and the E;ist were treated could not be recommended 

 in the case of Gaul and Spain ; so when he undertook to 

 restore the position of the Lnres and Penates he included 

 among them the Gaulish divinities, who were henceforth 

 styled Augusll. The result in each instance was that the 

 name of the Gaulish god came to be treated more or less as 

 a mere epithet to that of the Roman divinity, with which 

 he began to be regarded as identical : thus the (iaulish 

 Grannos became Apollo Grannus, and Belisama became 

 Minerva Belisama, and so in other cases. ... In a word, 

 the Gaulish gods and goddesses were reduced in rank, and 

 forced, so to say, to become more or less Roman ; but they 



* A delusion of course rampant among the eccentrics who 

 believe in the descent of Britons from tlie lost Ten Tribes, and 

 wlw identify the British Lion with the Lion of the Tribe of Judali ! 

 As showing tiie prevalence of this craze, the Catalogue in the 

 Subject-Index of Modern Works issued by the British JIuseum 

 gives thirty-two books on the identity of Britain with Israel pub- 

 lished between 1S82 and 1SS6. 



were not banished or in any way proscribed." The search 

 for resemblances is justified not merely by the similar 

 polytheistic stage of the conquering and the conquered 

 races, but by their common, if remote, relationship, Celts 

 and Romans being members of the scattered Aryan family. 

 As illustrating the method adopted in this volume : when 

 Ctesar speaks of the Gauls as making Mercury the inventor 

 of arts, the patron of trades (as he was among the Romans) 

 and of roads and journeys. Professor Rhys cites an inscrip- 

 tion in which the god is described as Mercurio Aug. Artaio, 

 the Gallic atlix bsing cognate to the Celtic ilr, plough-land. 

 Again, Mars, god of war, is equated with the Gaulish god 

 Caturix, a compound meaning king of war or lord of battle, 

 tablets having been found near Geneva and elsewhere with 

 this inscription, Marti Catur(igi), kc. Ca;sar tells us that 

 Mercury was worshijjped as supreme, and the degradation 

 of Mars, who was once the chief Celtic god, to the third 

 place (Apollo being second) is, as Professor Rhys remarks, 

 probably due to the progress of the people in the arts 

 of peace. 



How far the author has succeeded in his laborious 

 attempt none but Celtic scholars can determine ; and even 

 were we competent to dt^liver judgment, our readers would 

 resent the introduction of the abstruse and tedious matter 

 which this would involve. They may share our reliance on 

 the caution and accuracy which have thus far distinguished 

 Professor Rhys's investigations, and may follow him with 

 confidence through this labj'rinth where lurk the disguised 

 and disfigured gods whom our predecessors worshipped, and 

 who have in many cases still further eluded us by becoming 

 changed into the kings and heroes of romance. Certain it 

 is that the Celts had their departmental deities, and that 

 the characters of these were more or less akin to nature- gods 

 of other polytheistic races. Among these stand out the 

 Celtic Apollo, healing sun- god, Belenus, the reputed 

 founder of Caerleon, and from whose name some derive 

 Billingsgate ; Aine or Aina, queen of heaven, mother of 

 the gods ; Taranis, god of thunder, to whom certain trees 

 and plants are sacred ; Manannan MacLir, a sun-god ; 

 Nodens, or Nud, and his alter ego Lir, seagod, worshipped 

 both in Britain and Ireland. During the Roman occupa- 

 tion a temple was erected to Nodens at Lydney on the 

 Severn, his wife being the Irish goddess of the Boyne, while 

 Lud, whose name reappears in Shakespeare's " Lear," and 

 whose daughter figures in Celtic romance, perhajjs survives 

 among us in London, if that name be not, as some anti- 

 quaries think, derived from Llyn-Diu, the " lake-forfc." 

 Upon this Professor Rhys has the interesting remark that 

 " the association of Llud, or ' King Lud,' as he has come to 

 be called in English, with London, is apparently founded on 

 a certain amount of fact : one of the Welsh names for 

 London is Caer-Liid or Lud's Fort, and if this is open to the 

 suspicion of having been suggested first by Geoffrey, that 

 can hardly be supposed possible in the case of the English 

 name of Ludgate Hill. The probability is that as a temple 

 on a hill near the Severn associated him with that river in 

 the west, so a still more ambitious temple on a hill connected 

 him with the Thames in the east; and as an aggressive 

 creed can hardly signalise its conquests more eflectually than 

 by appropriating the f^mes of the retreating faith, no site 

 could be guessed with more probability to have been .sacred 

 to the Celtic Zeus than the eminence on which the dome of 

 St. Paul's now rears its magnificent form." 



But besides the major gods of the Celtic Pantheon, 

 there is a crowd of dii mitwres, both native and borrowed, 

 spirits of forests, springs, and rivers, which last had their 

 own special divinities, as shown in the Dee and other 

 streams with kindred names. The mountains were dedi- 

 cated to airy powers; every village was protected by the 



