here the old female influence is still at work, since many of these are female.  In spite of possessing so many local war-gods, the Celts were not merely men of war.  Even the equites engaged in war only when occasion arose, and agriculture as well as pastoral industry was constantly practised, both in Gaul and Britain, before the conquest.[4] In Ireland, the belief in the dependence of fruitfulness upon the king, shows to what extent agriculture flourished there.[5] Music, poetry, crafts, and trade gave rise to culture divinities, perhaps evolved from gods of growth, since later myths attributed to them both the origin of arts and crafts, and the introduction of domestic animals among men.  Possibly some culture gods had been worshipful animals, now worshipped as gods, who had given these animals to man.  Culture-goddesses still held their place among culture-gods, and were regarded as their mothers.  The prominence of these divinities shows that the Celts were more than a race of warriors.

The pantheon was thus a large one, but on the whole the divinities of growth were more generally important.  The older nature spirits and divine animals were never quite forgotten, especially by the folk, who also preserved the old rituals of vegetation spirits, while the gods of growth were worshipped at the great festivals.  Yet in essence the lower and the higher cults were one and the same, and, save where Roman influence destroyed Celtic religion, the older primitive strands are everywhere apparent.  The temperament of the Celt kept him close to nature, and he never quite dropped the primitive elements of his religion.  Moreover, the early influence of female cults of female spirits and goddesses remained to the end as another predominant factor.

Most of the Celtic divinities were local in character, each tribe possessing its own group, each god having functions similar to those of other groups.  Some, however, had or gained a more universal character, absorbing divinities with similar functions.  Still this local character must be borne in mind.  The numerous divinities of Gaul, with differing names—­but, judging by their assimilation to the same Roman divinity, similar functions, are best understood as gods of local groups.  This is probably true also of Britain and Ireland.  But those gods worshipped far and wide over the Celtic area may be gods of the undivided Celts, or gods of some dominant Celtic group extending their influence on all sides, or, in some cases, popular gods whose cult passed beyond the tribal bounds.  If it seem precarious to see such close similarity in the local gods of a people extending right across Europe, appeal can be made to the influence of the Celtic temperament, producing everywhere the same results, and to the homogeneity of Celtic civilisation, save in local areas, e.g. the South of Gaul.  Moreover, the comparison of the various testimonies of onlookers points to a general similarity, while the permanence of the primitive elements in Celtic religion must have tended to keep it everywhere the same.  Though in Gaul we have only inscriptions and in Ireland only distorted myths, yet those testimonies, as well as the evidence of folk-survivals in both regions, point to the similarity of religious phenomena.  The Druids, as a more or less organised priesthood, would assist in preserving the general likeness.