126 CRANIA BBITANNIOA. [CHAP. V. CHAP. V.] HISTORICAL ETHNOLOGY OE BRITAIN. 127
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At Stonehengc, as previously at Abury, at the great festivals or p a n e g y r e s , disputes would be
decided, justice administered and religious rites celebrated by the Druids; whilst there would
be games for the people, with perhaps chariot races in the curious entrenched hippodrome, nearly
two miles in length, and which was connected by its own avenue with the sacred precinct. The
epoch of Divitiacus, the powerful Belgie king of the Suessiones, who ruled in Gaul and Britain,
is about 100 B.C., and to this period the erection of Stonehenge may probably be referred. But
if so, Stonehenge cannot, as often thought, have been the temple of Apollo in the Hyperborean
island, described by Hecatsens three hundred years before our era *. If by this island Britain
were intended, as on the whole is probable, then its magnificent sacred enclosure and remarkable
circular temple must rather be identified with the more ancient Abury, which wOl thus, on
historical grounds, be connected with a solar worship.
The form of idolatry wliich prevailed among the Celts in the earliest times consisted in the
worship of the elements and heavenly bodies—fixe, air, earth and water, the sun, moon and
stars. Such, in the time of Ctesar, were still the deities of the German tribes t , who had not,
like the Celts, been brought into much contact with the polytheism of Phoenicia, Greece and
Rome. Of this primitive cult in Gaul and Britain, there are many traces.. Such was the
worship paid in the south of Gaul, at the commencement of our era, to the prevalent north-west
Avind, Cireiusi. fountains, lakes and rivers were especially reverenced, as the sacred lake at
Tolosa, into which offerings of the precious metals were thrown §, and the river Divona, the
name of which in the Celtic signifies the fountain of the gods ||. Mountains were worshipped,
as the alpine summit of Penninus, the deity of the VeragrilT; and expiatory sacrifices were made
* Diodorus, lib. ii. c. 47. Hecataeus, who wrote on the
Hyperboreans, is expressly named by .^lian (Hist. Animal., lib.
xi. c. I) as " not the Milesian, but he of Abdera." This Hecatsens
was a contemporary of Alexander, and, it is said, accompanied
that monarch to Syria: nuder the first Ptolemy he
travelled in Egypt. Thongh a wise and learned man, his work
on the Hyperboreans seems to have been an nncritical collection
of stories, many of which were clearly mythical. The passage in
Diodorus, however, when separated from the part derived from
Herodotus and other earlier writers, looks like a genuine geographical
notice, such as might have been derived by the contemporary
of Pytheas from some Greek or Phoenician voyagers,
whilst the passage to the Cassiterides was still enveloped in
mystery ; whence, perhaps, the absence of any distinctive name
for the island. The general description of it, " not less than
Sicily, lying towards the north in the ocean opposite Celtica,"
agrees remarkably with that of Britain by Diodorus (lib. v.
c. 21. quoted ante p. Go). By Celtica, Gaul must surely have
been intended by a Greek writer three centuries before our
era. (Compare Herod, lib. ii. c, 33 ; lib, iv. c. 49.) In this
island "fertile and varied in its productions, possessed of a
beautiful chmate" (comp. Caesar, B. G. lib. v. c. 12. aclfin.),
" yielding two crops a year," " it is not difficult," as the latest
editor of Herodotus observes, " to recognize our own country."
(Rawlinson, Herodotus, 1858,vol. iii. p. 27.) Herbert (Cyclops
Christianus, 1849, p. 1-18) confuses the whole subject in a
learned mist. The Hyperborean islanders, according to one
account, were called Ccrambycse (Steph. Byz. s.v. Cerambycce
and Elixcea; comp. Pliny, lib. vi. § 14). These authors represent
the name as derived from a river Cerambycas; but the
first part of the name, whether traced to the Greek Kepas or to
the Celtic, suggests the probabihty that it may denote the hornlike
projections and promontories of the western extremity of
Britain, " Cerniu, Kernyw, (Cornubia) nomina regionum ob
prominentiam." (Zeuss, Gram. Celt. p. 1107, 150.) The ancients
could at least have known nothing of the Arctic ocean
or of Nova Zembla, where some would look for the island of
the Hyperboreans.
f B. G. lib. vi. c. 21. "Deorum numero eos solos ducunt,
quos cernunt, et quorum aperti: opibus juvantur, Solem et
Vulcanum et Lunam ; reliquos ne famil quidem acceperunt."
Within a century and a half from Caesar, the Germans had
begun to worship several gods identical with those of the
Gauls—Mercury, Hercules and Mars. (Tac. Germ. c. ix. xl.)
The religion of all the Indo-European nations seems originally
to have been of the same description as that attributed to the
Germans by Caesar. For ancient India, see the Vedas ; for
the Persians, Herodotus (hb. i. c. 131) and Strabo (lib. xv.
c. 3. § 13) ; and for the Scythians, who were perhaps Indo-
Europeans, Herodotus (lib. iv. c. 59, with Rawlinson, adloc.).
The religious systems of the East—of Phoenicia, Syria, and
Babylonia—were more prominently connected with the heavenly
bodies than those of the Indo-Europeans.
X Seneca, Quaist. Nat. lib. v. c. 17. Pliny, hb. ii, § 4fl.
§ Posidon, a^jwrf Strabonem, lib, iv. c, i. J 13.
II Auson. Clarae Urbes, lib. xiv. v. 31, 32.
" Salve urbis genius, medico potabilis haustu,
Bivona Celtarum lingua, Pons addite Divis."
Divona in "Welsh is represented by duw, god, and avon, river.
If Livy, lib. xsi. c. 38.
f
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to the Earth itseK*. Trees, especiaUy oaks, were the objects of particular reverence. The
worship of springs, trees, rocks and stones long survived the establishment of Christianity, and
has left traces to the present day. In the sixth centm-y, Gregory of Tours describes the divme
honoui-s paid to a lake in Gaul, into which the peasantry threw offerings of linen and woollen
cloth, cheese, bread and waxf. Gildas says that the Britons of the fifth eent^iry still
worshipped the mountains and rivers of the country J. Various British coins exhibit symbols of
stars, crescents and suns, which may refer to the ancient astral and elemental worship §. In
Ireland no other than this primitive form of paganism, in which the Sun was the principal
object, seems ever to have prevailed. In the time of Patrick, the monarch Laeghaire is described
as swearing to a treaty by the sun, the wind, and all the elements; and to the account of his death
by lightning, A.B. 458, it is added, " and it was the Sun and Wind which killed him, because he
had violated them II." Of the worship of fire there is evidence both in the belteine, and in the
perpetual fire, kept up in a circular wattled enclosure at Kildare, which was attended in rotation,
night by night, by nineteen vii-gins, and on the twentieth, as was reported for centuries after
her death, by Brigid herselflf.
In Gaul and South Britain, the more ancient elemental worship had, before the time of
Csesar, in part been superseded by that of the same powers of nature personified as gods, having
more or less correspondence with those of Rome, Greece, and the East. How far these Celtic
deities were of native origin, or were adopted from the more civilized peoples with whom they
had relations, is not certain; they were perhaps in part the one and in part the other. Csesar
names five principal Celtic gods, whom he identifies with the Mercury, ApoUo, Mars, Jupiter,
and Minerva of Rome**. He notices the attributes ascribed to them, but does not give their
proper Celtic names, which we must trace in Lucan and other writers, and in inscriptions.
CcEsar tells us that the god most of all worshipped by the Gauls was Mercury, of whom they
had numerous images, regarding him as the inventor of the arts'of life, the guide of their journeys
and expeditions, and as influencing everything relating to the acquisition of wealth. It is
remarkable that such a deity should have had the first place in the Celtic pantheon; and it
has been suggested that the numerous images sacred to him in Gaul, which were probably
* Pliny, lib. XXV. % 59. " Favis ante et melle Terra; ad
piamentum datis." Seep. 117,
t Glor. Confess, c. 2. The circumstances named by Gregory
remind us of the rags of linen, wool, &c. still hung by
the Gael and the Irish around the sacred wells, the worship of
which was denounced hy St. Patrick. (Tirechan, in Betham,
Appendix, xxix. xxx.) At the close of the ninth century the
people of Gaul worshipped trees, and offered to them the heads
of animals which they hung on the branches. Gregory the
Great to Brunehaut, lib. vii. Ind. 1. Epist. 5,
X Gildas, Hist, c, 2, An inscription on an altar at Ilkley
(Olicana) shows that the river Wharfe, Ferbeia, was worshipped
in Roman times. (Camden, vol. iii. pp. 239, 289.
Orelli, 2061.) At the same period the Seine had a temple,
as Bea Sequana (Baudot, " Rapport sur les Sources de la
Seine," Paris, 1845). Both streams had probably been worshipped
previously ; the one by the Brigantes, the other hy
the Lingones.
§ Especially the coins found at Farley in Surrey, in 1848.
Numismatic Chronicle, vol. xi. p, 92. figs. 5, C. Archseological
Journal, vol. xiii. p. 304. fig. 1.
II Annals of Four Masters, A.D. 457, 458. Another account
represents Laeghaire as swearing by " the Sun and Moon, the
Water and Air, Day and Night, Sea and Land." For other
proofs of the worship of the elements in Ireland, see " Battle
of Magh Leana," 1855, pp. 105, 111 ; for that of the Sun, see
St. Patrick, Confess, c. 5. § 24 ; "Battle of Gabhra," 1854,
p . 9 9 ; Archffiologia, vol. vii.p. 278. The mountain Callan, in
Clare, still bears the name of altar of the Sxm—Altair na Greine.
^ Girald. Camb.Top.Hib. Ed. Camden, 1603. Distinct, ii.
c. 34-36. A strong pagan element appears in the various
traditions as to this great Irish saint. Her monastery of Kildare
{nil, church ; darach, oak, Irish) is said to have taken its name
from a very high oak which she had blessed, the trunk of
which remained in great veneration down to the days of
Giraldus. In ancient Irish hymns she is styled " Queen of the
true God." (Book of Hymns, Todd, 1855, p. 59 et seq.)
B. G. lib. vi. c. 17. " Deum maxime Mercurium colunt;
* * * post hunc Apollinem et Martem et Jovem et Minervam.
De his eandemfere, qnam rcliqusE gentes, liahent opinionem."
Romano-Gallic inscriptions (quoted at p. 129, note §) confirm
Ctesar, and give us the names of a few more Celtic deities.
S 2