names of deities such as Tarvos (the bull), Moccos (the pig), Epŏna (the goddess of horses), Damŏna (the goddess of cattle), Mullo (the ass), as well as the fact that the ancient Britons, according to Cæsar, preserved the hen, the goose, and the hare, but did not kill and eat them, all point to the fact that in these countries as elsewhere certain animals were held in supreme respect and were carefully guarded from harm.  Judging from the analogy of kindred phenomena in other countries, the practice of respecting certain animals was often associated with the belief that all the members of certain clans were descended from one or other of them, but how far this system was elaborated in the

Celtic world it is hard to say.  This phenomenon, which is widely known as totemism, appears to be suggested by the prominence given to the wild boar on Celtic coins and ensigns, and by the place assigned on some inscriptions and bas-reliefs to the figure of a horned snake as well as by the effigies of other animals that have been discovered.  It is not easy to explain the beginnings of totemism in Gaul or elsewhere, but it should always be borne in mind that early man could not regard it as an axiomatic truth that he was the superior of every other animal.  To reach that proud consciousness is a very high step in the development of the human perspective, and it is to the credit of the Celts that, when we know them in historic times, they appear to have attained to this height, inasmuch as the human form is given to their deities.  It is not always remembered how great a step in religious evolution is implied when the gods are clothed with human attributes.  M. Salomon Reinach, in his account of the vestiges of totemism among the Celts, suggests that totemism was merely the hypertrophy of early man’s social sense, which extended from man to the animals around him.  This may possibly be the case, but it is not improbable that man also thought to discover in

certain animals much-needed allies against some of the visible and invisible enemies that beset him.  In his conflict with the malign powers around him, he might well have regarded certain animals as being in some respects stronger combatants against those powers than himself; and where they were not physically stronger, some of them, like the snake, had a cunning and a subtlety that seemed far to surpass his own.  In course of time certain bodies of men came to regard themselves as being in special alliance with some one animal, and as being descended from that animal as their common ancestor.  The existence side by side of various tribes, each with its definite totem, has not yet been fully proved for the Gaulish system, and may well have been a developed social arrangement that was not an essential part of such a mode of thought in its primary forms.  The place of animal-worship in the Celtic religion will be more fully considered in a later chapter.  Here it is only indicated as a necessary stage in relation to man’s civilisation in the hunting and the pastoral stages, which had to be passed through before the historic deities of Gaul and Britain in Roman times could have come into being.  Certain of the divine names of the historic period, like Artio (the bear-goddess), Moccus (the

pig), Epŏna (the mare), and Damŏna (the sheep), bear the unmistakable impress of having been at one time those of animals.

As for the stage of civilisation at which totemism originated, there is much difference of opinion.  The stage of mind which it implies would suggest that it reflects a time when man’s mind was preoccupied with wild beasts, and when the alliances and friendships, which he would value in life, might be found in that sphere.  There is much plausibility in the view put forward by M. Salomon Reinach, that the domestication of animals itself implies a totemistic habit of thought, and the consequent protection of these animals by means of taboos from harm and death.  It may well be that, after all, the usefulness of domestic animals from a material point of view was only a secondary consideration for man, and a happy discovery after unsuccessful totemistic attentions to other animals.  We know not how many creatures early man tried to associate with himself but failed.

In all stages of man’s history the alternation of the seasons must have brought some rudiments of order and system into his thoughts, though for a long time he was too preoccupied to reflect upon the regularly recurring vicissitudes of his life.  In the pastoral stage, the sense of order came to

be more marked than in that of hunting, and quickened the mind to fresh thought.  The earth came to be regarded as the Mother from whom all things came, and there are abundant indications that the earth as the Mother, the Queen, the Long-lived one, etc., found her natural place as a goddess among the Celts.  Her names and titles were probably not in all places or in all tribes the same.  But it is in the agricultural stage that she entered in Celtic lands, as she did in other countries, into her completest religious heritage, and this aspect of Celtic religion will be dealt with more fully in connection with the spirits of vegetation.  This phase of religion in Celtic countries is one which appears to underlie some of its most characteristic forms, and the one which has survived longest in Celtic folk-lore.  The Earth-mother with her progeny of spirits, of springs, rivers, mountains, forests, trees, and corn, appears to have supplied most of the grouped and individualised gods of the Celtic pantheon.  The Dis, of whom Cæsar speaks as the ancient god of the Gauls, was probably regarded as her son, to whom the dead returned in death.  Whether he is the Gaulish god depicted with a hammer, or as a huge dog swallowing the dead, has not yet been established with any degree of certainty.

CHAPTER IV—CELTIC RELIGION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF INDIVIDUALISED DEITIES

Like other religions, those of the Celtic lands of Europe supplemented the earlier animism by a belief in spirits, who belonged to trees, animals, rocks, mountains, springs, rivers, and other natural phenomena, and in folk-lore there still survives abundant evidence that the Celt regarded spirits as taking upon themselves a variety of forms, animal and human.  It was this idea of spirits in animal form that helped to preserve the memory of the older totemism into historic times.  It is thus that we have names of the type of Brannogĕnos (son of the raven), Artogĕnos (son of the bear), and the like, not to speak of simpler names like Bran (raven), March (horse), surviving into historic times.  Bronze images, too, have been found at Neuvy-en-Sullias, of a horse and a stag (now in the Orleans museum), provided with rings, which were, as M. Salomon Reinach suggests,

probably used for the purpose of carrying these images in procession.  The wild boar, too, was a favourite emblem of Gaul, and there is extant a bronze figure of a Celtic Diana riding on a boar’s back.  At Bolar, near Nuits, there was discovered a bronze mule.  In the museum at Mayence is a bas-relief of the goddess of horses, Epŏna (from the Gaulish Epos=Lat. equus, horse), riding on horseback.  One of the most important monuments of this kind is a figure of Artio, the bear-goddess (from Celtic Artos, a bear), found at Muri near Berne.  In front of her stood a figure of a bear, which was also found with her.  The bull of the Tarvos Trigaranos bas-relief