(3) Sacramental eating of an animal.—­The custom of “hunting the wren,” found over the whole Celtic area, is connected with animal worship and may be totemistic in origin.  In spite of its small size, the wren was known as the king of birds, and in the Isle of Man it was hunted and killed on Christmas or S. Stephen’s day.  The bird was carried in procession from door to door, to the accompaniment of a chant, and was then solemnly buried, dirges being sung.  In some cases a feather was left at each house and carefully treasured, and there are traces of a custom of boiling and eating the bird.[751] In Ireland, the hunt and procession were followed by a feast, the materials of which were collected from house to house, and a similar usage obtained in France, where the youth who killed the bird was called “king."[752] In most of these districts it was considered unlucky or dangerous to kill the bird at any other time, yet it might be ceremonially killed once a year, the dead animal conferred luck, and was solemnly eaten or buried with signs of mourning.  Similar customs with animals which are actually worshipped are found elsewhere,[753] and they lend support to the idea that the Celts regarded the wren as a divine animal, or perhaps a totem animal, that it was necessary to slay it ritually, and to carry it round the houses of the community to obtain its divine influence, to eat it sacramentally or to bury it.  Probably like customs were followed in the case of other animals,[754] and these may have given rise to such stories as that of the eating of MacDatho’s wonderful boar, as well as to myths which regarded certain animals, e.g. the swine, as the immortal food of the gods.  Other examples of ritual survivals of such sacramental eating have already been noted, and it is not improbable that the eating of a sacred pastoral animal occurred at Samhain.

(4) Exogamy.—­Exogamy and the counting of descent through the mother are closely connected with totemism, and some traces of both are found among the Celts.  Among the Picts, who were, perhaps, a Celtic group of the Brythonic stock, these customs survived in the royal house.  The kingship passed to a brother of the king by the same mother, or to a sister’s son, while the king’s father was never king and was frequently a “foreigner.”  Similar rules of succession prevailed in early Aryan royal houses—­Greek and Roman,—­and may, as Dr. Stokes thought, have existed at Tara in Ireland, while in a Fian tale of Oisin he marries the daughter of the king of Tir na n-Og, and succeeds him as king partly for that reason, and partly because he had beaten him in the annual race for the kingship.[755] Such an athletic contest for the kingship was known in early Greece, and this tale may support the theory of the Celtic priest-kingship, the holder of the office retaining it as long as he was not defeated or slain.  Traces of succession through a sister’s son are found in the Mabinogion, and Livy describes