on the island, but the women left it once a year for intercourse with the other sex.  Once a year the temple of the god was unroofed, and roofed again before sunset.  If any woman dropped her load of materials (and it was said this always happened), she was torn in pieces and her limbs carried round the temple.[944] Dionysius Periegetes says the women were crowned with ivy, and celebrated their mysteries by night in honour of Earth and Proserpine with great clamour.[945] Pliny also makes a reference to British rites in which nude women and girls took part, their bodies stained with woad.[946]

At a later time, S. Gregory of Tours speaks of the image of a goddess Berecynthia drawn on a litter through the streets, fields, and vineyards of Augustodunum on the days of her festival, or when the fields were threatened with scarcity.  The people danced and sang before it.  The image was covered with a white veil.[947] Berecynthia has been conjectured by Professor Anwyl to be the goddess Brigindu, worshipped at Valnay.[948]

These rites were all directed towards divinities of fertility.  But in harvest customs in Celtic Scotland and elsewhere two sheaves of corn were called respectively the Old Woman and the Maiden, the corn-spirit of the past year and that of the year to come, and corresponding to Demeter and Kore in early Greek agricultural ritual.  As in Greece, so among the Celts, the primitive corn-spirits had probably become more individualised goddesses with an elaborate cult, observed on an island or at other sacred spots.  The cult probably varied here and there, and that of a god of fertility may have taken the place of the cult of goddesses.  A god was worshipped by the Namnite women, according to Strabo, goddesses according to Dionysius.  The mangled victim was probably regarded as representative of a divinity, and perhaps part of the flesh was mixed with the seed-corn, like the grain of the Maiden sheaf, or buried in the earth.  This rite is common among savages, and its presence in old European ritual is attested by survivals.  That these rites were tabu to men probably points to the fact that they were examples of an older general custom, in which all such rites were in the hands of women who cultivated the earth, and who were the natural priestesses of goddesses of growth and fertility, of vegetation and the growing corn.  Another example is found in the legend and procession of Godiva at Coventry—­the survival of a pagan cult from which men were excluded.[949]

Pliny speaks of the nudity of the women engaged in the cult.  Nudity is an essential part of all primitive agricultural rites, and painting the body is also a widespread ritual act.  Dressing with leaves or green stuff, as among the Namnite women, and often with the intention of personating the spirit of vegetation, is also customary.  By unveiling the body, and especially the sexual organs, women more effectually represented the goddess of fertility, and more effectually as her representatives, or through their own powers, magically conveyed fertility to the fields.  Nakedness thus became a powerful magico-religious symbol, and it is found as part of the ritual for producing rain.[950]