CELTIC RELIGION IN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES

By
Edward Anwyl, M.A.

Late classical scholar of oriel College, Oxford
professor of Welsh and comparative philology at
the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
acting-chairman of the central Welsh Board
for intermediate education

London
Archibald Constable & co Ltd
16 James Street Haymarket
1906

Edinburgh:  T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

FOREWORD

It is only as prehistoric archaeology has come to throw more and more light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern viewpoint.  The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to numerous writers on this subject, but his researches into some portions of the field especially have suggested to him the possibility of giving a new presentation to certain facts and groups of facts, which the existing evidence disclosed.  It is to be hoped that a new interest in the religion of the Celts may thereby be aroused.

E. Anwyl.

Aberystwyth,
February 15, 1906.

CHAPTER I—­INTRODUCTORY:  THE CELTS

In dealing with the subject of ‘Celtic Religion’ the first duty of the writer is to explain the sense in which the term ‘Celtic’ will be used in this work.  It will be used in reference to those countries and districts which, in historic times, have been at one time or other mainly of Celtic speech.  It does not follow that all the races which spoke a form of the Celtic tongue, a tongue of the Indo-European family, were all of the same stock.  Indeed, ethnological and archaeological evidence tends to establish clearly that, in Gaul and Britain, for example, man had lived for ages before the introduction of any variety of Aryan or Indo-European speech, and this was probably the case throughout the whole of Western and Southern Europe.  Further, in the light of comparative philology, it has now become abundantly clear that the forms of Indo-European speech which we call Celtic are most closely related to those of the Italic family, of which family Latin is the best known representative.  From this it follows that we are to look for the centre of dissemination of Aryan Celtic speech in some district of Europe that could have been the natural centre of dissemination also for the Italic languages.  From this common centre, through conquest and the commercial intercourse which followed it, the tribes which spoke the various