Celtic mythology

“ Still, we have far fewer propositions to lay down than questions to ask: thus to go no further afield than the well-known stories attaching to the name of Heracles, how many of them are Aryan, how many Semitic, and how many Aryan and Semitic at one and the same time? That is the sort of question which besets the student of Celtic mythology at every step; for the Celtic nations of the present day are the mixed descendants of Aryan invaders and the native populations which those Aryan invaders found in possession. ”

“ I believe that the fairy creed, this ancient source of inspiration, of symbolic interpretation of man's relation to nature, is not yet dried up, and that English literature, with its mixed strain of Teutonic and Celtic blood, with its share in the mythologies of both these races, and in especial with its claim to the sole body of mythology and romance, the Celtic, which grew up wholly unaffected by classic culture, is destined to drink deeply of it in the future as in the past, and to find in it the material for new creations of undying beauty. ”

“ Celtic mythology developed likewise, but to an extent as far less as the Celt had lagged behind the Greek in the race of civilisation. The old gods, themselves an outcome of the primitive agricultural creed, were transformed into the wizard champions and enchantresses of the romances, but they remained in touch with their earliest forms; the link between the fairy of the peasant and the fairy of literature (for heroic saga is literature although traditional literature) was never wholly snapped ”

“ D'Arbois de Jubainville considers that, together with Æsus, Teutates, Taranus, and, in Irish mythology, Balor and the Fomorians, he represents the powers of darkness, death, and evil, and Celtic mythology is thus interpreted as a variant of the universal solar myth, embodying the conception of the eternal conflict between Day and Night. ”

“ Gods figure as kings, heroes, saints, or fairies, and a new mythical past has been created out of the débris of an older mythology. There is little of the limpid clearness of the myths of Hellas, and yet enough to delight those who, in our turbulent modern life, turn a wistful eye upon the past.
To make matters worse, modern writers on Celtic tradition have displayed a twofold tendency. They have resolved every story into myths of sun, dawn, and darkness, every divinity or hero Into a sun-god or dawn-goddess or ruler of a dark world. ”

“ From the remarks already made, it will have been seen that we must cast about us for other means, than the mere name, to discover the insular Celt's god who should be identified with Zeus. Now in Irish and Welsh literature, the great figures of Celtic mythology usually assume the character of kings of Britain and of the sister-island respectively, and most of the myths of the modern Celts are to be found manipulated so as to form the opening chapters of what has been usually regarded as the early history of the British Isles. ”

“ In dealing with Celtic religion, mythology, and legend, it is not so much the varying local and temporal forms that demand our attention, as the all-pervading and animating spirit, which shows its essential character even through the scanty remains of the ancient Celtic world. ”

“ Transformation allied to rebirth was asserted of various Celtic divinities, and if the myths have been transformed, enough of their old selves remained for identification after romantic writers and pseudo-historians gave them a new existence. Some mythic incidents doubtless survive much as they were in the days of old, but all alike witness to the many-sided character of the life and thought of their Celtic progenitors and transmitters. ”

“ Nor is it likely that they had mystic theories of rebirth, if that was a wide-spread Celtic belief; and existing examples of it always concern gods and heroes, not mere mortals. They are straightforward enough and show no esoteric mystic origin or tendency, any more than do similar myths among savages, nor do they set forth philosophic theories of retribution, such as were evolved by Pythagorean and Indian philosophy. Modern investigators, themselves in the mythopoeic stage, easily reflect back their ideas upon old Celtic tales. ”

“ They are the disjecta membra of a lost mythology, the legacy of pre-historic Celtic heathendom, which even the most learned and ingenious interpreters of primitive folk-lore and religion find it well-nigh impossible to restore into a coherent and intelligible whole. ”

“ Celtic and pre-Celtic folk alike had many myths, and these were bound to intermingle, with the result that such Celtic legends as we possess must contain remnants of the aboriginal mythology, though it, like the descendants of the aborigines, has become Celtic. It would be difficult, in the existing condition of the old mythology, to say this is of Celtic, that of non-Celtic origin, for that mythology is now but fragmentary. The gods of the Celts were many, but of large cantles of the Celtic race—the Celts of Gaul and of other parts of the continent of Europe—scarcely any myths have survived. ”

“ The poetry in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and the mythology and institutions of the Celtic conquerors of the Roman empire, outlived the darkness and the convulsions connected with their growth and victory, and blended themselves in a new fabric of manners and opinion. It is an error to impute the ignorance of the dark ages to the Christian doctrines or the predominance of the Celtic nations. ”

“ AS in most mythologies, the Celtic deities have powers which reflect those supposed to be possessed by medicine-men, as well as others peculiar to themselves. These were the subject of myths taught by the Druids, who knew many things concerning the might of the immortal gods.1 The gods were undying, and their abode was that of "the ever-living ones," where none ever died. ”

“ Nevertheless their folk-lore displays such remarkable homogeneity, from whatever quarter of the Celtic world it be derived, that it seems the soundest method to treat them as one people for all the purposes of the student of sociology, mythology, and religion. ”

“ SAVAGE and barbaric peoples possess many grotesque myths of the origin of various parts of nature. In recently existing Celtic folk-lore and in stories preserved mainly in the Dindsenchas conceptions not unlike these are found and doubtless were handed down from the pre-Christian period, whether Celtic or pre-Celtic, while in certain instances a saint takes the place of an older pagan personage. ”

“ But here he will at last make the formal acquaintance of all the chief characters of Celtic myth: of the Gaelic gods and the giants against whom they struggled; of the “Champions of the Red Branch” of Ulster, heroes of a martial epopee almost worthy to be placed beside “the tale of Troy divine”; and of Finn and his Fenians. He will meet also with the divine and heroic personages of vithe ancient Britons: with their earliest gods, kin to the members of the Gaelic Pantheon ”

“ Thirdly, whatever opinion be held respecting the connection of the North French romances and Celtic tradition, connection of some kind must be admitted. Now the study of Celtic tradition is only beginning to be placed upon a firm basis, and the stores of Celtic myth and legend are only beginning to be thrown open to the non-Celtic scholar. Were there in existence a Celtic parallel to Grimm's great work on German Mythology, the views for which the writer contends would have been, in all likelihood, admitted ere now, and there would have been no necessity for this work at all. ”

“ Some of them became the greater gods, while others assumed a darker character, perhaps because they were associated with sinister aspects of nature or with the dead. The Celts knew all these, and some still linger on in folk-belief. Fairy-like or semi-divine women seen by streams or fountains, or in forests, or living in lakes or rivers, are survivals of spirits and goddesses of river, lake, or earth; and they abound in Celtic folk-story as bonnes dames, dames blanches, fées, or the Irish Bé Find. ”

“ In the two heroic cycles—those of Cúchulainn and Fionn respectively—the disturbance has been less, and in these the Celtic magic and glamour are found. Some stories of the gods escaped these destructive factors, and in them these delectable traits are also apparent. They are romantic tales rather than myths, though their mythical quality is obvious.
Two mythical strata exist, one older and purely pagan, in which gods are immortal, though myth may occasionally have spoken of their death ”

“ It is true that the author is inclined to assume too much, to treat as fact what the scholars he is following have merely conjectured.”
+ + – Ath. 1906, 1: 9. Ja. 6. 1010w. “It aims in short, to impart some such knowledge of Celtic mythology as most persons of cultivation are supposed to possess of the mythology of Greece and Rome, and so far as the substance of the ancient tales is concerned it accomplishes this purpose satisfactorily.”
+ Nation. 83: 184. Ag. 30, ’06. 430w. Staley, Edgcumbe. Fra Angelico ”

“ For so the eternal Beauty brings itself to the memory of man from time to time brooding over nations, as in the early Aryan heart, suffusing life and thought with the sun-sense of pervading Deity, or as in Greece where its myriad rays, each an intuition of loveliness, descended and dwelt not only in poet, sage and sculptor, but in the general being of the people. What has been called the Celtic renaissance in literature is one of the least of the signs. ”

“ Magic is just the word for it,—the magic of nature; not merely the beauty of nature,—that the Greeks and Latins had; not merely an honest smack of the soil, a faithful realism,—that the Germans had; but the intimate life of nature, her weird power and her fairy charm. As the Saxon names of places, with the pleasant wholesome smack of the soil in them,—Weathersfield, Thaxted, Shalford,—are to the Celtic names of places, with their penetrating, lofty beauty,—Velindra, Tyntagel, Caernarvon,—so is the homely realism of German and Norse nature to the fairy-like loveliness of Celtic nature. ”

“ Celtic tradition is not only rich and varied beyond all others in this respect, it often thus secures its chief artistic effects. The talismans of Celtic romance, the fairy branch of Cormac, the Ga-bulg of Cuchullain, the sounding-hammer of Fionn, the treasures of the Boar Trwyth after which Prince Kilhwch sought, the glaives of light of the living folk-tale, have one and all a weird, fantastic, half-human existence, which haunts and thrills the imagination. ”

“ Many races have imagined a happy Other-world, but no other race has so filled it with magic beauty, or so persistently recurred to it as the Celts. They stood on the cliffs which faced the west, and as the pageant of sunset passed before them, or as at midday the light shimmered on the far horizon and on shadowy islands, they gazed with wistful eyes as if to catch a glimpse of Elysium beyond the fountains of the deep and the halls of the setting sun. In all this we see the Celtic version of a primitive and instinctive human belief. ”

“ What you say about the survival of folklore as a living heritage is absolutely true—how true perhaps few know, except those who have lived among the Gaels, of their blood, and speaking the ancient language. The Celtic paganism lies profound and potent still beneath the fugitive drift of Christianity and Civilisation, as the deep sea beneath the coming and going of the tides. ”

“ To summon a dead religion from its forgotten grave and to make it tell its story, would require an enchanter's wand. Other old faiths, of Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, are known to us. But in their case liturgies, myths, theogonies, theologies, and the accessories of cult, remain to yield their report of the outward form of human belief and aspiration. How scanty, on the other hand, are the records of Celtic religion! ”

“ It is only by the most exact and searching examination, conducted with all the appliances of the philologist, the palæographer, the historian, and the archaeologist, of all the remains written, figured, and oral of Celtic romance, that we can hope to trace its development and to set forth its true nature. The truth at which we thus arrive, by means which maybe deemed pedantic and wearisome, is far more beautiful than those lazy imaginings we spin out of our own consciousness. ”

“ Yet, without claiming such superlative potency for the Celtic intellect and character, we may feel confident that it has a distinctive differentia of its own which makes it worthy of our homage, worthy, therefore, of our efforts to preserve it, a peculiar aroma attaching to it, a sparkling, yet tender old-world weirdness which the world ought not willingly to let die. ”

“ Her sons, carrying Christianity and a new humanism over Great Britain and the Continent, became the teachers of whole nations, the counsellors of kings and emperors. For once, if but for a century or two, the Celtic spirit dominated a large part of the Western world, and Celtic ideals imparted a new life to a decadent civilisation until they succumbed, not altogether to the benefit of mankind, before a mightier system—that of Rome. ”

“ In the foregoing lecture I tried to reconstruct, mainly out of the ruins of the Gaulish pantheon, the fallen edifice of Celtic paganism; and in so doing, I endeavoured to confine myself as much as I conveniently could to what may be called the theology of the early Celts; but it is impossible to do justice to our subject without pursuing it, as I now briefly propose to do, into its later stages, represented by such myths as the Celtic nations of modern times happen to retain embedded in their literature or woven into their folk-lore. ”