Gaelic Folklore (20): Sacrifice, Prayer, And Divination.

20.

Sacrifice, Prayer, And Divination.

What follows are descriptions and tales from an old source:

The Semites are often considered the worst offenders in the matter of human sacrifice, but in this, according to classical evidence, they were closely rivalled by the Celts of Gaul. They offered human victims on the principle of a life for a life, or to propitiate the gods, or in order to divine the future from the entrails of the victim. We shall examine the Celtic custom of human sacrifice from these points of view first.

Cæsar says that those afflicted with disease or engaged in battle or danger offer human victims or vow to do so, because unless man's life be given for man's life, the divinity of the gods cannot be appeased.  The theory appears to have been that the gods sent disease or ills when they desired a human life, but that any life would do; hence one in danger might escape by offering another in his stead. In some cases the victims may have been offered to disease demons or diseases personified, such as Celtic imagination still believes in,  rather than to gods, or, again, they may have been offered to native gods of healing. Coming danger could also be averted on the same principle, and though the victims were usually slaves, in times of great peril wives and children were sacrificed.  After a defeat, which showed that the gods were still implacable, the wounded and feeble were slain, or a great leader would offer himself.  Or in such a case the Celts would turn their weapons against themselves, making of suicide a kind of sacrifice, hoping to bring victory to the survivors.

The idea of the victim being offered on the principle of a life for a life is illustrated by a custom at Marseilles in time of pestilence. One of the poorer classes offered himself to be kept at the public expense for some time. He was then led in procession, clad in sacred boughs, and solemnly cursed, and prayer was made that on him might fall the evils of the community. Then he was cast headlong down. Here the victim stood for the lives of the city and was a kind of scape-victim, like those at the Thargelia.

Taranis

Human victims were also offered by way of thanksgiving after victory, and vows were often made before a battle, promising these as well as part of the spoil. For this reason the Celts would never ransom their captives, but offered them in sacrifice, animals captured being immolated along with them.  The method of sacrifice was slaughter by sword or spear, hanging, impaling, dismembering, and drowning. Some gods were propitiated by one particular mode of sacrifice--Taranis by burning, Teutates by suffocation, Esus (perhaps a tree-god) by hanging on a tree. Drowning meant devoting the victim to water-divinities.

Other propitiatory sacrifices took place at intervals, and had a general or tribal character, the victims being criminals or slaves or even members of the tribe. The sacrificial pile had the rude outline of a human form, the limbs of osier, enclosing human as well as some animal victims, who perished by fire. Diodorus says that the victims were malefactors who had been kept in prison for five years, and that some of them were impaled.  This need not mean that the holocausts were quinquennial, for they may have been offered yearly, at Midsummer, to judge by the ritual of  The victims perished in that element by which the sun-god chiefly manifested himself, and by the sacrifice his powers were augmented, and thus growth and fertility were promoted. These holocausts were probably extensions of an earlier slaying of a victim representing the spirit of vegetation, though their value in aiding fertility would be still in evidence. This is suggested by Strabo's words that the greater the number of murders the greater would be the fertility of the land, probably meaning that there would then be more criminals as sacrificial victims.  Varro also speaks of human sacrifice to a god equated with Saturn, offered because of all seeds the human race is the best, i.e. human victims are most productive of fertility.  Thus, looked at in one way, the later rite was a propitiatory sacrifice, in another it was an act of magico-religious ritual springing from the old rite of the divine victim. But from both points of view the intention was the same--the promotion of fertility in field and fold.

2.Toutates

Divination with the bodies of human victims is attested by Tacitus, who says that "the Druids consult the gods in the palpitating entrails of men," and by Strabo, who describes the striking down of the victim by the sword and the predicting of the future from his convulsive movements.  To this we shall return.

Human sacrifice in Gaul was put down by the Romans, who were amazed at its extent, Suetonius summing up the whole religion in a phrase--druidarum religionem diræ immanitatis.  By the year 0 A.D. it had ceased, though victims were offered symbolically, the Druids pretending to strike them and drawing a little blood from them.  Only the pressure of a higher civilisation forced the so-called philosophic Druids to abandon their revolting customs. Among the Celts of Britain human sacrifice still prevailed in  A.D.  Dio Cassius describes the refinements of cruelty practised on female victims (prisoners of war) in honour of the goddess Andrasta--their breasts cut off and placed over their mouths, and a stake driven through their bodies, which were then hung in the sacred grove.  Tacitus speaks of the altars in Mona (Anglesey) laved with human blood. As to the Irish Celts, patriotic writers have refused to believe them guilty of such practices,  but there is no a priors reason which need set them apart from other races on the same level of civilisation in this custom. The Irish texts no doubt exaggerate the number of the victims, but they certainly attest the existence of the practice. From the Dindsenchas, which describes many archaic usages, we learn that "the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions of every clan" were offered to Cromm Cruaich--a sacrifice of the firstborn,--and that at one festival the prostrations of the worshippers were so violent that three-fourths of them perished, not improbably an exaggerated memory of orgiastic rites.  Dr. Joyce thinks that these notices are as incredible as the mythic tales in the Dindsenchas. Yet the tales were doubtless quite credible to the pagan Irish, and the ritual notices are certainly founded on fact. Dr. Joyce admits the existence of foundation sacrifices in Ireland, and it is difficult to understand why human victims may not have been offered on other occasions also.

The purpose of the sacrifice, namely, fertility, is indicated in the poetical version of the cult of Cromm--

"Milk and corn

They would ask from him speedily,

In return for one-third of their healthy issue."

The Nemedian sacrifice to the Fomorians is said to have been two-thirds of their children and of the year's supply of corn and milk --an obvious misunderstanding, the victims really being offered to obtain corn and milk. The numbers are exaggerated,  but there can be no doubt as to the nature of the sacrifice--the offering of an agricultural folk to the divinities who helped or retarded growth. Possibly part of the flesh of the victims, at one time identified with the god, was buried in the fields or mixed with the seed-corn, in order to promote fertility. The blood was sprinkled on the image of the god. Such practices were as obnoxious to Christian missionaries as they had been to the Roman Government, and we learn that S. Patrick preached against "the slaying of yoke oxen and milch cows and the burning of the first-born progeny" at the Fair of Taillte.  As has been seen, the Irish version of the Perseus and Andromeda story, in which the victim is offered not to a dragon, but to the Fomorians, may have received this form from actual ritual in which human victims were sacrificed to the Fomorians.  In a Japanese version of the same story the maiden is offered to the sea-gods. Another tale suggests the offering of human victims to remove blight. In this case the land suffers from blight because the adulteress Becuma, married to the king of Erin, has pretended to be a virgin.

The Druids announced that the remedy was to slay the son of an undefiled couple and sprinkle the doorposts and the land with his blood. Such a youth was found, but at his mother's request a two-bellied cow, in which two birds were found, was offered in his stead.  In another instance in the Dindsenchas, hostages, including the son of a captive prince, are offered to remove plagues--an equivalent to the custom of the Gauls.

Human sacrifices were also offered when the foundation of a new building was laid. Such sacrifices are universal, and are offered to propitiate the Earth spirits or to provide a ghostly guardian for the building. A Celtic legend attaches such a sacrifice to the founding of the monastery at Iona. S. Oran agrees to adopt S. Columba's advice "to go under the clay of this island to hallow it," and as a reward he goes straight to heaven.  The legend is a semi-Christian form of the memory of an old pagan custom, and it is attached to Oran probably because he was the first to be buried in the island. In another version, nothing is said of the sacrifice. The two saints are disputing about the other world, and Oran agrees to go for three days into the grave to settle the point at issue. At the end of that time the grave is opened, and the triumphant Oran announces that heaven and hell are not such as they are alleged to be. Shocked at his latitudinarian sentiments, Columba ordered earth to be piled over him, lest he cause a scandal to the faith, and Oran was accordingly buried alive.  In a Welsh instance, Vortigern's castle cannot be built, for the stones disappear as soon as they are laid. Wise men, probably Druids, order the sacrifice of a child born without a father, and the sprinkling of the site with his blood.  "Groaning hostages" were placed under a fort in Ireland, and the foundation of the palace of Emain Macha was also laid with a human victim.  Many similar legends are connected with buildings all over the Celtic area, and prove the popularity of the pagan custom. Over the whole Celtic area a rich profusion of grave-goods has been found, consisting of weapons, armour, chariots, utensils, ornaments, and coins.  Some of the interments undoubtedly point to sacrifice of wife, children, or slaves at the grave. Male and female skeletons are often in close proximity, in one case the arm of the male encircling the neck of the female. In other cases the remains of children are found with these. Or while the lower interment is richly provided with grave-goods, above it lie irregularly several skeletons, without grave-goods, and often with head separated from the body, pointing to decapitation, while in one case the arms had been tied behind the back.  All this suggests, taken in connection with classical evidence regarding burial customs, that the future life was life in the body, and that it was a replica of this life, with the same affections, needs, and energies. Certain passages in Irish texts also describe burials, and tell how the dead were interred with ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented their attack. 1Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many tumuli. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead husbands. 

Of all these varieties of human sacrifice, those offered for fertility, probably at Beltane or Midsummer, were the most important. Their propitiatory nature is of later origin, and their real intention was to strengthen the divinity by whom the processes of growth were directed. Still earlier, one victim represented the divinity, slain that his life might be revived in vigour. The earth was sprinkled with his blood and fed with his flesh in order to fertilise it, and possibly the worshippers partook sacramentally of the flesh. Propitiatory holocausts of human victims had taken the place of the slain representative of a god, but their value in promoting fertility was not forgotten. The sacramental aspect of the rite is perhaps to be found in Pliny's words regarding "the slaying of a human being as a most religious act and eating the flesh as a wholesome remedy" among the Britons. (Pliny, HN xxx. . The feeding of Ethni, daughter of Crimthann, on human flesh that she might sooner attain maturity may be an instance of "medicinal cannibalism"). The eating of parents among the Irish, described by Strabo, was an example of "honorific cannibalism." This may merely refer to "medicinal cannibalism," such as still survives in Italy, but the passage rather suggests sacramental cannibalism, the eating of part of a divine victim, such as existed in Mexico and elsewhere. Other acts of cannibalism are referred to by classical writers. Diodorus says the Irish ate their enemies, and Pausanias describes the eating the flesh and drinking the blood of children among the Galatian Celts. Drinking out of a skull the blood of slain (sacrificial) enemies is mentioned by Ammianus and Livy, and Solinus describes the Irish custom of bathing the face in the blood of the slain and drinking it.  In some of these cases the intention may simply have been to obtain the dead enemy's strength, but where a sacrificial victim was concerned, the intention probably went further than this. The blood of dead relatives was also drunk in order to obtain their virtues, or to be brought into closer rapport with them.  This is analogous to the custom of blood brotherhood, which also existed among the Celts and continued as a survival in the Western Isles until a late date.

One group of Celtic human sacrifices was thus connected with primitive agricultural ritual, but the warlike energies of the Celts extended the practice. Victims were easily obtained, and offered to the gods of war. Yet even these sacrifices preserved some trace of the older rite, in which the victim represented a divinity or spirit.

Head-hunting, described in classical writings and in Irish texts, had also a sacrificial aspect. The beads of enemies were hung at the saddle-bow or fixed on spears, as the conquerors returned home with songs of victory.  This gruesome picture often recurs in the texts. Thus, after the death of Cúchulainn, Conall Cernach returned to Emer with the heads of his slayers strung on a withy. He placed each on a stake and told Emer the name of the owner. A Celtic oppidum or a king's palace must have been as gruesome as a Dayak or Solomon Island village. Everywhere were stakes crowned with heads, and the walls of houses were adorned with them. Poseidonius tells how he sickened at such a sight, but gradually became more accustomed to it.  A room in the palace was sometimes a store for such heads, or they were preserved in cedar-wood oil or in coffers. They were proudly shown to strangers as a record of conquest, but they could not be sold for their weight in gold.  After a battle a pile of heads was made and the number of the slain was counted, and at annual festivals warriors produced the tongues of enemies as a record of their prowess.

These customs had a religious aspect. In cutting off a head the Celt saluted the gods, and the head was offered to them or to ancestral spirits, and sometimes kept in grove or temple.  The name given to the heads of the slain in Ireland, the mast of Macha, shows that they were dedicated to her, just as skulls found under an altar had been devoted to the Celtic Mars. (A dim memory of head-taking survived in the seventeenth century in Eigg, where headless skeletons were found, of which the islanders said that an enemy had cut off their heads.) Probably, as among Dayaks, American Indians, and others, possession of a head was a guarantee that the ghost of its owner would be subservient to its Celtic possessor, either in this world or in the next, since they are sometimes found buried in graves along with the dead.  Or, suspended in temples, they became an actual and symbolical offering of the life of their owners, if, as is probable, the life or soul was thought to be in the head. Hence, too, the custom of drinking from the skull of the slain had the intention of transferring his powers directly to the drinker.  Milk drunk from the skull of Conall Cernach restored to enfeebled warriors their pristine strength,  and a folk-survival in the Highlands--that of drinking from the skull of a suicide (here taking the place of the slain enemy) in order to restore health--shows the same idea at work. All these practices had thus one end, that of the transference of spirit force--to the gods, to the victor who suspended the head from his house, and to all who drank from the skull. Represented in bas-relief on houses or carved on dagger-handles, the head may still have been thought to possess talismanic properties, giving power to house or weapon. Possibly this cult of human heads may have given rise to the idea of a divine head like those figured on Gaulish images, or described, e.g., in the story of Bran. His head preserved the land from invasion, until Arthur disinterred it,  the story being based on the belief that heads or bodies of great warriors still had a powerful influence. (Sometimes the weapons of a great warrior had the same effect. The bows of Gwerthevyr were hidden in different parts of Prydein and preserved the land from Saxon invasion, until Gwrtheyrn, for love of a woman, dug them up)  The representation of the head of a god, like his whole image, would be thought to possess the same preservative power. (In Ireland, the brain of an enemy was taken from the head, mixed with lime, and made into a ball. This was allowed to harden, and was then placed in the tribal armoury as a trophy.)

A possible survival of the sacrifice of the aged may be found in a Breton custom of applying a heavy club to the head of old persons to lighten their death agonies, the clubs having been formerly used to kill them. They are kept in chapels, and are regarded with awe.

Animal victims were also frequently offered. The Galatian Celts made a yearly sacrifice to their Artemis of a sheep, goat, or calf, purchased with money laid by for each animal caught in the chase. Their dogs were feasted and crowned with flowers.  Further details of this ritual are unfortunately lacking. Animals captured in war were sacrificed to the war-gods by the Gauls, or to a river-god, as when the horses of the defeated host were thrown into the Rhine by the Gaulish conquerors of Mallius.  We have seen that the white oxen sacrificed at the mistletoe ritual may once have been representatives of the vegetation-spirit, which also animated the oak and the mistletoe. Among the  In Ireland the peasantry still kill a sheep or heifer for S. Martin on his festival, and ill-luck is thought to follow the non-observance of the rite.  Similar sacrifices on saints' days in Scotland and Wales occurred in Christian times.  An excellent instance is that of the sacrifice of bulls at Gairloch for the cure of lunatics on S. Maelrubha's day (August th). Libations of milk were also poured out on the hills, ruined chapels were perambulated, wells and stones worshipped, and divination practised. These rites, occurring in the seventeenth century, were condemned by the Presbytery of Dingwall, but with little effect, and some of them still survive.  In all these cases the saint has succeeded to the ritual of an earlier god. Mr. Cook surmises that S. Maelrubha was the successor of a divine king connected with an oak and sacred well, the god or spirit of which was incarnate in him. These divine kings may at one time have been slain, or a bull, similarly incarnating the god or spirit, may have been killed as a surrogate. This slaying was at a later time regarded as a sacrifice and connected with the cure of madness.  The rite would thus be on a parallel with the slaying of the oxen at the mistletoe gathering, as already interpreted. Eilean Maree (Maelrubha), where the tree and well still exist, was once known as Eilean mo righ (the island of my king), or Eilean a Mhor Righ (of the great king), the king having been worshipped as a god. This piece of corroborative evidence was given by the oldest inhabitant to Sir Arthur Mitchell.  The people also spoke of the god Mourie.
insular Celts animal sacrifices are scarcely mentioned in the texts, probably through suppression by later scribes, but the lives of Irish saints contain a few notices of the custom, e.g. that of S. Patrick, which describes the gathering of princes, chiefs, and Druids at Tara to sacrifice victims to idols.

Other survivals of animal sacrifice are found in cases of cattle-plague, as in Morayshire sixty years ago, in Wales, Devon, and the Isle of Man. The victim was burned and its ashes sprinkled on the herd, or it was thrown into the sea or over a precipice.  Perhaps it was both a propitiatory sacrifice and a scape-animal, carrying away the disease, though the rite may be connected with the former slaying of a divine animal whose death benefited all the cattle of the district. In the Hebrides the spirits of earth and air were propitiated every quarter by throwing outside the door a cock, hen, duck, or cat, which was supposed to be seized by them. If the rite was neglected, misfortune was sure to follow. The animal carried away evils from the house, and was also a propitiatory sacrifice.

The blood of victims was sprinkled on altars, images, and trees, or, as among the Boii, it was placed in a skull adorned with gold.  Other libations are known mainly from folk-survivals.

Thus Breton fishermen salute reefs and jutting promontories, say prayers, and pour a glass of wine or throw a biscuit or an old garment into the sea.  In the Hebrides a curious rite was performed on Maundy Thursday. After midnight a man walked into the sea, and poured ale or gruel on the waters, at the same time singing:

"O God of the sea,

Put weed in the drawing wave,

To enrich the ground,

To shower on us food." 

Those on shore took up the strain in chorus.  Thus the rite was described by one who took part in it a century ago, but Martin, writing in the seventeenth century, gives other details. The cup of ale was offered with the words, "Shony, I give you this cup of ale, hoping that you will be so kind as to send plenty of seaweed for enriching our ground for the ensuing year." All then went in silence to the church and remained there for a time, after which they indulged in an orgy out-of-doors. This orgiastic rite may once have included the intercourse of the sexes--a powerful charm for fertility. "Shony" was some old sea-god, and another divinity of the sea, Brianniul, was sometimes invoked for the same purpose.  Until recently milk was poured on Gruagach stones in the Hebrides, as an offering to the Gruagach, a brownie who watched over herds, and who had taken the place of a god.

Prayer

Prayer accompanied most rites, and probably consisted of traditional formulæ, on the exact recital of which depended their value. The Druids invoked a god during the mistletoe rite, and at a Galatian sacrifice, offered to bring birds to destroy grasshoppers, prayer was made to the birds themselves.  In Mona, at the Roman invasion, the Druids raised their arms and uttered prayers for deliverance, at the same time cursing the invaders, and Boudicca invoked the protection of the goddess Andrasta in a similar manner.  Chants were sung by the "priestesses" of Sena to raise storms, and they were also sung by warriors both before and after a battle, to the accompaniment of a measured dance and the clashing of arms.  These warrior chants were composed by bards, and probably included invocations of the war-gods and the recital of famous deeds. They may also have been of the nature of spells ensuring the help of the gods, like the war-cries uttered by a whole army to the sound of trumpets.  These consisted of the name of a god, of a tribe or clan, or of some well-known phrase. As the recital of a divine name is often supposed to force the god to help, these cries had thus a magical aspect, while they also struck terror into the foe.  Warriors also advanced dancing to the fray, and they are depicted on coins dancing on horseback or before a sword, which was worshipped by the Celts.  The Celtiberian festival at the full moon consisted entirely of dancing. The dance is a primitive method of expressing religious emotion, and where it imitates certain actions, it is intended by magical influence to crown the actions themselves with success. It is thus a kind of acted prayer with magical results.

Divination

A special class of diviners existed among the Celts, but the Druids practised divination, as did also the unofficial layman. Classical writers speak of the Celts as of all nations the most devoted to, and the most experienced in, the science of divination. Divination with a human victim is described by Diodorus. Libations were poured over him, and he was then slain, auguries being drawn from the method of his fall, the movements of his limbs, and the flowing of his blood. Divination with the entrails was used in Galatia, Gaul, and Britain.  Beasts and birds also provided omens. The course taken by a hare let loose gave an omen of success to the Britons, and in Ireland divination was used with a sacrificial animal.  Among birds the crow was preeminent, and two crows are represented speaking into the ears of a man on a bas-relief at Compiègne. The Celts believed that the crow had shown where towns should be founded, or had furnished a remedy against poison, and it was also an arbiter of disputes.  Artemidorus describes how, at a certain place, there were two crows. Persons having a dispute set out two heaps of sweetmeats, one for each disputant. The birds swooped down upon them, eating one and dispersing the other. He whose heap had been scattered won the case. Birds were believed to have guided the migrating Celts, and their flight furnished auguries, because, as Deiotaurus gravely said, birds never lie. Divination by the voices of birds was used by the Irish Druids.

Omens were drawn from the direction of the smoke and flames of sacred fires and from the condition of the clouds.  Wands of yew were carried by Druids-- the wand of Druidism of many folk-tales--and were used perhaps as divining-rods. Ogams were also engraved on rods of yews, and from these Druids divined hidden things. (The Irish for consulting a lot is crann-chur, "the act of casting wood.") By this means the Druid Dalan discovered where Etain had been hidden by the god Mider. The method used may have been that of drawing one of the rods by lot and then divining from the marks upon it. A similar method was used to discover the route to be taken by invaders, the result being supposed to depend on divine interposition.  The knowledge of astronomy ascribed by Cæsar to the Druids was probably of a simple kind, and much mixed with astrology and though it furnished the data for computing a simple calendar, its use was largely magical.  Irish diviners forecast the time to build a house by the stars, and the date at which S. Columba's education should begin, was similarly discovered.

The Imbas Forosnai, "illumination between the hands," was used by the Filé to discover hidden things. He chewed a piece of raw flesh and placed it as an offering to the images of the gods whom he desired to help him. If enlightenment did not come by the next day, he pronounced incantations on his palms, which he then placed on his cheeks before falling asleep. The revelation followed in a dream, or sometimes after awaking. (Cf. the two magic crows which announced the coming of Cúchulainn to the other world (D'Arbois, p.  v. 0); Perhaps the animal whose flesh was eaten was a sacred one. Another method was that of the Teinm Laegha. The Filé made a verse and repeated it over some person or thing regarding which he sought information, or he placed his staff on the person's body and so obtained what he sought. The rite was also preceded by sacrifice; hence S. Patrick prohibited both it and the Imbas Forosnai.  Another incantation, the Cétnad, was sung through the fist to discover the track of stolen cattle or of the thief. If this did not bring enlightenment, the Filé went to sleep and obtained the knowledge through a dream. Another Cétnad for obtaining information regarding length of life was addressed to the seven daughters of the sea. Perhaps the incantation was repeated mechanically until the seer fell into a kind of trance. Divination by dreams was also used by the continental Celts.

Other methods resemble trance-utterance. "A great obnubilation was conjured up for the bard so that he slept a heavy sleep, and things magic-begotten were shewn to him to enunciate," apparently in his sleep. This was called illumination by rhymes, and a similar method was used in Wales. When consulted, the seer roared violently until he was beside himself, and out of his ravings the desired information was gathered. When aroused from this ecstatic condition, he had no remembrance of what be had uttered. Giraldus reports this, and thinks, with the modern spiritualist, that the utterance was caused by spirits.  The resemblance to modern trance-utterance and to similar methods used by savages is remarkable, and psychological science sees in it the promptings of the subliminal self in sleep.

The taghairm of the Highlanders was a survival from pagan times. The seer was usually bound in a cow's hide—the animal, it may be conjectured, having been sacrificed in earlier times. He was left in a desolate place, and while he slept spirits were supposed to inspire his dreams.  Clothing in the skin of a sacrificial animal, by which the person thus clothed is brought into contact with it and hence with the divinity to which it is offered, or with the divine animal itself where the victim is so regarded, is a widespread custom. Hence, in this Celtic usage, contact with divinity through the hide would be expected to produce enlightenment. For a like reason the Irish sacrificed a sheep for the recovery of the sick, and clothed the patient in its skin.  Binding the limbs of the seer is also a widespread custom, perhaps to restrain his convulsions or to concentrate the psychic force.

Both among the continental and Irish Celts those who sought hidden knowledge slept on graves, hoping to be inspired by the spirits of the dead.  Legend told how, the full version of the Táin having been lost, Murgan the Filé sang an incantation over the grave of Fergus mac Roig. A cloud hid him for three days, and during that time the dead man appeared and recited the saga to him.

In Ireland and the Highlands, divination by looking into the shoulder-blade of a sheep was used to discover future events or things happening at a distance, a survival from pagan times.  The scholiast on Lucan describes the Druidic method of chewing acorns and then prophesying, just as, in Ireland, eating nuts from the sacred hazels round Connla's well gave inspiration.  The "priestesses" of Sena and the "Druidesses" of the third century had the gift of prophecy, and it was also ascribed freely to the Filid, the Druids, and to Christian saints. Druids are said to have prophesied the coming of S. Patrick, and similar prophecies are put in the mouths of Fionn and others, just as Montezuma's priests foretold the coming of the Spaniards.  The word used for such prophecies--baile, means "ecstasy," and it suggests that the prophet worked himself into a frenzy and then fell into a trance, in which he uttered his forecast. Prophecies were also made at the birth of a child, describing its future career. Careful attention was given to the utterances of Druidic prophets, e.g. Medb's warriors postponed their expedition for fifteen days, because the Druids told them they would not succeed if they set out sooner.

Mythical personages or divinities are said in the Irish texts to have stood on one leg, with one arm extended, and one eye closed, when uttering prophecies or incantations, and this was doubtless an attitude used by the seer.  A similar method is known elsewhere, and it may have been intended to produce greater force. From this attitude may have originated myths of beings with one arm, one leg, and one eye, like some Fomorians or the Fachan whose weird picture Campbell of Islay drew from verbal descriptions.

Early Celtic saints occasionally describe lapses into heathenism in Ireland, not characterised by "idolatry," but by wizardry, dealing in charms, and fidlanna, perhaps a kind of divination with pieces of wood.  But it is much more likely that these had never really been abandoned. They belong to the primitive element of religion and magic which people cling to long after they have given up "idolatry."

The Religion of the Ancient Celts, By J. A. MacCulloch,  1911

Divination
Divination (Fiosachd). It is noticeable that the chief articles from which the Highland soothsayer drew his predictions, supplied him with a luxury. 

Shoulder-blade Reading (Slinneineachd). This mode of divination was practised, like the augury of the ancients, as a profession or trade. It consisted in foretelling important events in the life of the owner of a slaughtered animal from the marks on the shoulder- blade, speal or blade-bone. Professors of this difficult art deemed the right speal-bone of a black sheep or a black pig the best for this purpose. This was to be boiled thoroughly, so that the flesh might be stripped clean from it, untouched by nail or knife or tooth. The slightest scratch destroyed its value. The bone being duly prepared was divided into upper and lower parts, corresponding to the natural features of the district in which the divination was made. Certain marks indicated a crowd of people, met, according to the skill of the diviner, at a funeral, fight, sale, etc. The largest hole or indentation was the grave of the beast's owner (ùaigh an t-sealbhaduir], and from its position his living or dying that year was prognosti- cated. When to the side of the bone, it presaged death; when in its centre, much worldly prosperity (gum biodh an saoghal aige).

Mac-a-Chreachaire, a native of Barra, was a celebrated shoulder-blade reader in his day. According to popular tradition he was present at the festivities held on the occasion of the castle at Bàgh Chiòsamul (the seat of the MacNeills, then chiefs of the island) being finished.  A shoulder-blade was handed to him, and he was pressed again and again to divine from it the fate of the castle. He was very reluctant, but at last, on being promised that no harm would be done him, he said the castle would become a cairn for thrushes (càrn dhruideachun), and this would happen when the Rattle stone (Clach-a-Ghlagain) was found, when people worked at sea-weed in Baile na Creige (Rock-town, a village far from the sea), and when deer swam across from Uist, and were to be found on every dung- hill in Barra. All this has happened, and the castle is now in ruins. Others say the omens were the arrival of a ship with blue wool, a blind man coming ashore unaided, and that when a ground officer with big fingers (maor na miar mòra) came, Barra would be measured with an iron string. A ship laden with blue cloth was wrecked on the island, and a blind man miraculously escaped; every finger of the ground officer proved to be as big as a bottle(!), and Barra was surveyed and sold. 

When Murdoch the Short (Murchadh Gearr), heir to the Lordship of Lochbuy in the Island of Mull, circ. A.D. 1400, was sent in his childhood for protection from the ambitious designs of his uncle, the Laird of Dowart, to Ireland, he remained there till eighteen years of age. In the meantime his sister (or half-sister) became widowed, and, dependant on the charity and hospitality of others, wandered about the Ross of Mull from house to house with her family. It was always in the prophecy (san tairgneachd) that Murdoch would return. One evening, in a house to which his sister came, a wedder sheep was killed. After the meal was over, her oldest boy asked the farmer for the shoulder-blade. He examined it intently for some time in silence, and then, exclaiming that Murdoch was on the soil of Mull (air grunnd Mhuile), rushed out of the house and made for Lochbuy, to find his uncle in possession of his rightful inheritance. 

On the night of the massacre of Glencoe, a party of the ill-fated clansmen were poring over the shoulder-blade of an animal slain for the hospitable entertain-ment of the soldiers. One of them said, "There is a shedding of blood in the glen" (tha dbrtadh fuil sa ghleann). Another said there was only the stream at the end of the house between them and it. The whole party rushed to the door, and were among the few that escaped the butchery of that dreadful night.

It is a common story that a shoulder-blade seer once saved the lives of a company, of whom he him- self was one, who had 'lifted' a cattle spoil (crack), by divining that there was only the stream at the end of the house between them and their pursuers. 

A shoulder-blade sage in Tiree sat down to a substantial feast, to which he had been specially invited, that he might divine whether a certain friend was on his way home or not. He examined the shoulder-bone of the wedder killed on the occasion critically, unable to make up his mind. "Perhaps," he said, "he will come, perhaps he will not." A boy, who had hid himself on the top of a bed in the room, that he might see the fun, could not help exclaiming, "They cannot find you untrue." The bed broke, and the diviner and his companions, thinking the voice came from the skies, fled, When the boy recovered he got the dinner all to himself.

Superstitions of the highlands and islands of Scotland, by John Gregorson Campbell, 1900.

Picture source:
1. https://nl.pinterest.com/pin/454863631090703039/?lp=true
2. Ib.

Nico

Gaelic Folklore (17): The Magic Art Among The Celts, part 2

17.

The Magic Art Among The Celts, part 2

s in the case of Greek tradition, we find the draught of forgetfulness or healing a prominent feature of Celtic sorcery. Finn, or Fionn, leader of the Fenians, better known in legend as Finn MacCoul, possessed this virtue—that a drink given from his cupped hands would heal any wound or cure any disease. When his wife Grainne eloped with Diarmid, and that hero was wounded almost to death by the boar of Ben Gulban, he begged Finn to save him, "for when thou didst get the noble precious gift of divining at the Boinn, it was given thee that to whomsoever thou shouldst give a drink from the palms of thy hands, he should after that be young and sound from every sickness". But Finn, almost insane with jealousy, tarried so long in bearing the healing draught to his foe that when at last he approached with the life-giving water he found the Celtic Adonis beyond his aid.   

hen Cuchullin, grieving for the beauteous Fand, the wife of the sea-god Manannan, felt no longer the urge to live, the Druids gave him a draught of forgetfulness, so that her memory troubled his mind no more. Another version of the legend tells how Manannan shook his mantle of oblivion between the lovers. In the Scottish Gaelic story of The Daughter of King Underwaves, already alluded to, "a little man" tells Diarmid, the hero, that if he proceeds to a magic well he will there find a draught which will have the property of freeing him from his infatuation for the supernatural woman who has so greatly disturbed his life. He must put this water into a certain cup which possesses arcane virtues, dropping into it at the same time "a gulp of blood". When she drinks it he must refill the vessel and after quaffing it a second time she will be free of an ailment which torments her, while Diarmid, on his part, will lose his affection for her. All this he accomplishes, and accordingly frees himself from her spells.   

he magic wand wielded by the Druid magicians is a constant factor in Celtic tale. It’s told that the Druid's staff was generally made from the wood of the yew tree. In the story of Diarmid and Grainne we are informed that Reachtaire, a sorcerer, struck his son with a magic wand, thus transforming him into "a cropped pig having neither ears nor tail". Ulan, a comrade of Finn, had a fairy sweetheart who was jealous of his wife. She struck her rival with a Druidic wand, turning her into the most beautiful wolf-hound which eyes ever beheld. In this condition she became the mother of the two world-famous hounds, Brann and Sceoluing, but was later restored to human form upon her husband's promising lifelong fidelity to the fairy.  The children of Lir were changed by strokes from a magic wand into four swans that flew over Loch Dearg for three hundred years, until released by St. Caemhoc.  

he Druidic wand plays an important part, a blow from it causing transformation and spells . It must be remarked, too, that the wood used for wands and Druidic rites and fires was not the oak, as in Gaul: sacred wood among the Irish Druids would appear to have been the yew, hawthorn, and more especially the rowan tree. There is an allusion to a magic wand in Welsh tradition. In a song ascribed to the ancient British bard Taliesin, which is to be found in the collection known as The Myvyrian Archaiology , mention is made of "the magic wand of Mathonwy, which grows in the wood, with more exuberant fruit, on the bank of the river of spectres". Mathonwy was one of the rulers of the British Underworld and thus a master of Magic by native right, though in the Mabinogion his son Math is styled Prince of Gwynedd in North Wales. But Math's magic wand had one association with Welsh myth, for in the tale in the Mabinogion which bears his name he employs it as a means of divination to discover whether the lady Arianrhod was a virgin or otherwise. The lady protested, doubtless as many another had done before her, that she was; but Math insisted that she should step over his wand, whereupon she left a child upon the floor, the famous Llew Llaw Gyffes. As she made her way, full of confusion, to the door, another child made its appearance. This was Dylan, who was later to become a marine deity. In Yorkshire they still say that "if a girl strides over a broom-handle she will be a mother before she is a wife", and it seems not improbable that the proverb may be a recollection of some such belief as we find in the above story that the chastity of a maid could be tested by stepping over a magic wand. The broomstick is an obvious symbol such as would exactly fit the purposes of mimetic magic, and is there not a saying in some northern English shire that if an unmarried woman has a child, "She has jumped o'er the besom"?

ut it was not by aid of a wand, but rather with a javelin, that a Druid brought about the cessation of a magical drouth. A certain rebel chief conspired with another Druid in plaguing the King of Munster and his folk of the Irish south-west. One of the most harmful enchantments the magician inflicted upon this community was a spell by means of which all the water in the country was dried up. Man and beast perished and the crops began to wither, when the King succeeded in discovering a Druid of greater magical capacity than the former, who, by the expedient of casting his spear into the soil, opened up a bubbling spring at the spot where the weapon had fallen.

he raising of magical obstacles to hinder or check pursuit by an enemy was certainly a Druidic art. One of the best illustrations of it is to be found in the Scottish tale of The Son of the King of Eirin. This young prince vowed that he would never marry a woman whose hair was not as black as the raven's wing and whose cheek as red as its blood—a vow which seems to have been common among the Celtic aristocracy. He discovered such a maiden in the daughter of the King of the Great World, and promptly eloped with her. Her father pursued them, but the girl proved to be a sorceress of considerable resource, for she raised a forest in his path by means of working magic upon a piece of thorn, so that the pair succeeded in eluding pursuit. In another tale of similar character the heroine escapes from a giant by plucking a hair out of her head and transforming it into a bridge by means of which she crosses a river.  In the Morayshire tale of Nicht Nought Naething, a giant's daughter with whom the hero has eloped, espying her father hot on their trail, takes a comb from her hair and casts it behind her. "From every one of its prongs there grew up a fine thick briar in the way of the giant." She contrives other obstacles successively with her hair-dagger, which sprouts into a chevaux de frise, and with a magic flask, the contents of which swell into a vast wave, which drowns the giant, "so that he was dead and dead indeed"!  

n the occult lore of old Ireland we learn of the existence of a marvellous silverbranch or bough, by virtue of which the gods lured favoured mortals to their joyous country. In some accounts of Celtic magical arts this important arcane device is frequently ignored or only partially described, and as it was the especial property of the god Manannan, who is so intimately associated with Druidic art, it appears essential to make good this deficiency and to provide a reasonably full description of it in these pages. This bough was, in effect, a link with the unseen world, a talisman by the aid of which certain mortals with whom the gods desired to establish communion and fellowship were enabled to make entrance into the overseas paradise of these divinities while yet alive. This bough, or branch, was cut from a mystical apple tree and gave forth a magical music which none might resist. The apples which it bore served the pilgrim for meat and drink while in the Land of the Gods and during the whole period of his sojourn therein. The tree from which it had been cut grew at the door of the Court in Magh Mell, "The Plain of Honey".

A silver tree upon which the sun shines,

Like unto gold in its splendid lustre,

so it is described in the incident known as "The Sick-bed of Cuchullin". Perhaps the most illuminating of the tales concerning it is that which recounts the manner in which Cormac MacAirt, the High King of Ireland, was lured to the Paradise of the gods by its agency. As Cormac was walking in the plain adjacent to his palace he observed a young man who held in his hand a wonderful branch which had nine golden apples depending from it. When the youth shook this branch, the apples, beating against each other, made sweet and mystic music, so that he who heard it straightway forgot his sorrow and care. It had also the property of lulling folk into a magical oblivion. Cormac asked the young man if he would sell the branch, and to his dismay the youth demanded his wife, son and daughter in exchange for the bauble. The King, temporarily deranged by the music it gave forth, agreed to the bargain. At first his wife and children naturally expressed themselves as horrified by his rashness, but after Cormac had shaken the silver branch and compelled it to discourse music, they at once forgot their dismay at the manner in which he had disposed of them and departed with the young man joyfully enough. But after a year had passed, Cormac longed to see his wife and children once more, and set out to find them. A magic cloud enveloped him and soon he found himself in a wonderful plain, where he entered a fine house, in which he encountered a supernatural pair whom he knew by certain tokens to be Manannan, the god of the sea, and his wife. After some delay Cormac's wife, son and daughter entered the hall, and Manannan admitted that it was he who had taken them away from Cormac, as it had been his main intention to lure him to his happy country by this means. Cormac and his wife and family slept that night in the house of Manannan, and when they awoke in the morning it was to find themselves in their palace at Tara, with the silver branch and other magical articles beside them.   The magical properties of this branch were also brought to bear upon Bran, the son of Febal, who was likewise decoyed through its agency to the country of the gods, where he sojourned in an island solely inhabited by women. 

he magical stone of the kings of Ireland which was situated at Tara, and which recognized the true High King of that island by emitting a loud shriek when he stood upon it, has also Druidic associations. It is identified by knowledgeable writers with the Lia Fail, and is indeed the original Lia Fail, as I hope to make plain in my remarks upon it in another chapter. One of the earliest tales concerning it tells how King Conn of the Hundred Battles repaired one morning at sunrise to the battlements of the Ri Raith, or royal fortress at Tara, accompanied by his three Druids, Mael, Bloc and Bluicné and his three bards Ethain, Corb and Cesare, for the purpose of watching the firmament, so that no hostile being from the air might suddenly descend upon Erin unknown to him. While perambulating the battlements, Conn chanced to tread on a stone, which immediately shrieked under his feet so loudly as to be heard all over Tara, and throughout all East Meath. He asked his Druids to explain the omen to him, and so profound was its significance that they required fifty-three days to arrive at a decision respecting the phenomenon. At length they told him that the name of the stone was Fal and that it hailed from Inis Fal, or the island of Fal. "It has shrieked under your royal feet," they said, "and the number of shrieks it has given forth is the number of kings that will succeed you."  Later, a supernatural being, no other than the god Lugh, led Conn away to his residence to inform him of the length of his reign and the names and fortunes of his successors.

his stone, the Lia Fail, was one of the four precious things brought to Ireland by the Tuatha Dé Danann. Rhys associates it with the property of light, and this he refers to its connection with a sun-god "in his earlier identification with the sun. In other words, it was a fetish connected with his worship". He further identifies the stone with the worship of Nuada, the principal Gaelic sun-god, and thinks that Tara was his high-place. The recognition of Conn by the stone was the last instance of its functioning as an oracle, as, at the birth of Christ, its "heart" sprang out of it as far as the village of Tailltenn, where it was known as "Fal's Heart". Now Tailltenn and its sun-festival were associated with the god Lugh, and this would seem to imply "nothing less than the eclipsing of the older god's glory by that of the younger", that is that Lugh superseded Nuada.  

ow some attention to a passage in British magical narrative which raises certain problems in connection with the personal identity of the Druid Merlin, some of which it will be more appropriate to deal with at a later stage when considering the arcane position of that important figure. In this place I shall follow the account as it is to be found in the seventeenth chapter of the Sixth Book of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories of the British Kings. The British ruler, Vortigern, dismayed at the result of his unworthy conspiracy with the invading Saxons, through which the nobility of Britain had been decimated at Stonehenge, consulted his Magi (in all likelihood the Druids are intended here) as to his personal safety. They advised him to build as a refuge a tower of exceeding strength on Mount Eryri, or Snowdon. He assembled a large number of masons at the spot and the work was duly proceeded with. But the building of the stronghold was nightly interrupted by some occult force, the foundations being swallowed up by the soil so that no man knew what had caused such an upheaval. The King's soothsayers arrived at the conclusion that only by seeking out a fatherless boy, slaying him and sprinkling his blood over the foundation stones could the building of the tower be carried on—a memory of the ancient belief that by an act of human sacrifice alone could the powers who disturbed the soil be placated. After a long search they succeeded in discovering such a lad, whose mother was a daughter of the King of Demetia and a nun.

eoffrey calls the boy Ambrosius Merlin, indicated that Vortigern's wizards were in error, and assured him that the real cause of the nightly disturbance of the foundations of the tower was the presence of two dragons beneath the site, which did battle one with the other, thus overthrowing the structure. Vortigern commanded that the site should be excavated, and it was found that the monsters actually had their lairs in a pool beneath the soil. All were naturally confounded at the wisdom displayed by the boy, and deemed that he was "possessed by some spirit of God". In the Prophecies of Merlin, as given by Geoffrey in his Seventh Book, we find that the leviathans who had overthrown Vortigern's castle in its early stages were red and white in hue, the former being symbolic of the Britons, while his rival represented the Saxons. The latter, predicted Merlin Ambrosius, would prevail for a time, but in the end the white dragon should be "rooted out". The red dragon was immemorially associated with the British race. It was the crest of Uther, the father of Arthur, who, in the mythological sense, was himself a dragon, and bore the title of Pendragon, that is Chief or Great Dragon. Algernon Herbert translates the name as The Terrible One with the Dragon's Head,  while Mr. R. Briffault describes Uther as a dragon. There does not, however, as Mr. E. K. Chambers remarks, appear to be any ground for the assumption that Uther was the father of Arthur, or that this descent is drawn from genuine ancient Celtic sources, Geoffrey being the first to allude to it, although such a view cannot interfere with the identification of Uther with the dragon in a symbolical sense. In the story of Llud and Llevelys as given in the Welsh Mabinogion we find that these dragons had disturbed the isle of Britain five hundred years before the events narrated above and that King Llud, to put an end to their strife, dug a great pit at Oxford, in which he placed a large tank of mead, concealed by a covering of satin. In time the dragons appeared in the air, and fought frantically until they fell upon the satin cloth and duly sank into the mead. Llud then wrapped them in the cloth and buried them upon the site in the Snowdon district, near Beddgelert, still known as Dinas Emrys.

aising the dead, or bringing them back to life, appears to have been included among the principles of Celtic Magic. We have already seen that the Tuatha Dé Danann were able to resuscitate those Athenians slain in battle with the Syrians by sending spirits into their dead bodies. When Bran, the great British god-enchanter, invaded Ireland for the purpose of liberating his sister Branwen from the tyranny of her Irish husband King Matholwch, he found that a magic cauldron which he had given to his brother-in-law was being made use of to restore to life those Irish warriors who had been slain in the course of the combat betwixt the Britons and the Hibernians. But his crafty brother Evnissyen disguised himself as an Irish champion and lay on the ground as though dead. He was duly placed by the Irish in the cauldron, when he stretched himself spasmodically, and with one mighty effort burst both the magic vessel and his own heart. We also learn that the British gods Manawyddan and Pryderi, rulers of the Underworld, had among their treasures the Three Birds of Rhiannon, which could sing the dead to life and the living to death.

mong the gods of the Celts we find the practice of Magic continually recurring. The British god Math, brother to that mysterious Don, on whom the entire British Pantheon of light looked as a mother, was regarded as a ruler of the Underworld, although he appears to have lacked any of the usual affrighting characteristics, of plutonic deities. In the Mabinogion he is represented as a magician par excellence, and as passing on his arcane gifts to his nephew Gwydion, who, through the knowledge thus attained, became the "Druid" of the gods, the master of illusion and phantasy, and the instructor of mankind in all the useful arts of life.  In the same way the Irish hero Cuchullin was instructed by Cathbad the Druid, who had, he said, "made him a master of inquiry in the arts of the god of Druidism or magic and rendered him skilled in all that was excellent in visions''. Here we should particularly remark the term "dé druidechta", which means in Gaelic "of the god of Druidism". This phrase, doubtless meant the divinity with whom the Druids had to do, and with whose aid they practised their magical arts. We are not, unfortunately, told the name of the god; but it is natural to suppose that it was the chief of the Goidelic pantheon, and this is practically settled by the kind of miracles which the Druids are usually represented as able to perform with most success in their competition with the early saints engaged in the task of Christianizing Ireland. These miracles may be described as mostly atmospheric, consisting of such feats as bringing on a heavy snow, palpable darkness or a great storm. Rhys equates the British god Math with the Goidelic "god of Druidism" alluded to above, who was probably Nuada. Math was able to hear without difficulty "every sound of speech that reached the air", he was utterly righteous and just in his dealings with gods and men, he was the great diviner, teacher, and master of omens.

s we have seen, Gwydion appears to have succeeded Math as "druid of the gods". Gwydion wed with his sister Arianrhod, who disowned the only surviving son of the union, the great British sun-god, Llew Llaw Gyffes, "the Long-handed one of Light", and refused to give him a name. Llew was also gifted with Magic.  But the chief arcane triumph of the British gods was certainly the creation of the famous damsel Blodeuwedd, or "Flower-face", whom Math and Gwydion made out of flowers, the blossoms of broom, of oak, and meadowsweet, the most exquisite creature whom mankind had yet beheld. She was given to Llew as his wife. But she betrayed her too trusting husband, and the manner in which she did so has become, more by reason of its obscurity than anything else, one of the most famous passages in British arcane literature.

he story of Blodeuwedd is to be found in the mabinogi, or tale, of Math, Son of Mathonwy. The faithless flower-maiden fell in love with Gronwy Pevr, Lord of Penllyn, and the pair resolved to rid themselves of Llew. Blodeuwedd beguiled her husband into a revelation of the one and only way in which he might be despatched. The spear which alone could slay him must be a year in the making and could be made only on Sundays, during the time when Mass was being celebrated. Llew could not be killed either in a house or in the open, nor on horseback, nor afoot. Being of the seed divine, his life had been most carefully environed with magical prohibitions and safeguards. But, he confided to his wife, these difficulties might be overcome "by making me a bath on the bank of a river, and making a round roof above the vat, and thatching it well and snugly after that, and bringing a he-goat and placing it beside the vat, and by placing one foot on the back of the he-goat and the other on the edge of the vat". Whoever should smite him with a spear prepared in accordance with the above instructions and while he was in such a position would compass his death.

t is plain that here we are confronted by an example of that simple cunning which, appears to have been associated with early Magic. The gods might, by their divine powers, decree the safety of a great hero or demi-god, yet it was possible for any crafty little nonentity to overthrow and bring to naught all their designs by the exercise of low cunning, and, by some tricky device, worthy of the "Philadelphia lawyer" of tradition, to overreach them and cause the ruin of their most illustrious favourites. Gronwy, advised by the treacherous Blodeuwedd, set about making the fatal weapon which was to take the life of her husband, and when the time was ripe she caused him to take up a position of vantage under the lee of a hill. She then begged Llew to give her a practical demonstration of the lethal position which he had described to her. In answer to her request he betook himself to a bath which she had built to his " specifications", thus displaying less of divine acumen than most mortals would have credited him with. All the accessories had been carefully prepared. Llew bathed, reassumed his nether garments, and placed one of his feet on the edge of the bath, the other on the back of the goat. Gronwy, espying his opportunity, cast the fatal spear. But Llew, instead of falling dead, was changed into an eagle and flew away with discordant cries.

is uncle Gwydion at once went in search of him and at last discovered him in what seems to have been an advanced state of decomposition. Gwydion struck the eagle with his magic wand, so that he reassumed human shape, but the hapless Llew had lost flesh and was now nothing but skin and bone. With the assistance of the best physicians in the country he regained his health within a year's time. Gwydion transformed Blodeuwedd into an owl, while Llew compelled Gronwy to assume the same position at the bath which had been so nearly fatal to himself, and while he was in that attitude, slew him.

iancecht, the Irish god of leechcraft, was also a distinctly magical figure. He treated a certain well with magic herbs and every wounded warrior who was plunged into its water overnight was fit for combat on the morrow. Manannan MacLuythe Irish sea-god, is said to have been a Druid, one Manannan Mac Oirbsen, who rose to a position of godhead. He could "transform himself into many shapes by wizardry". He travelled in his magic boat made of copper, the Wave-sweeper, which needed neither oar nor rudder.  He was the possessor of a famous magical mantle, which, if shaken between two persons, made it impossible for them to meet again. This may be an allegory of the fog which sweeps across the Irish Channel, fit symbol of severance by Magic. Vivien, the Lady of the Lake, possesses a similar mantle, symbolizing the mist which rises from water. The god Angus, another Irish deity, is also the owner of a magic cloak which could render him invisible, while Caswallan, the British hero who robbed Manawyddan, the British sea-god, of his lands and sovereignty, was the wearer of a magical tartan which conferred invisibility upon its wearer.

he combats between the British gods of light and darkness are fulfilled of magical incidents. The hounds of Manawyddan and Pryderi, we are told, one day roused a white boar which took refuge in a magic castle, and was followed by the pack. The gods entered the castle, but signs of neither boar nor hounds could they perceive. In the courtyard stood an exquisite fountain, to which was attached a rich golden bowl. Pryderi raised the bowl to examine it, whereupon his hands cleaved to it so that it was impossible to disengage them. Manawyddan returned to his wife Rhiannon, who accompanied him to the castle, where she did her utmost to free Pryderi from his embarrassing position. But despite her efforts her hands also adhered to the bowl, and with a clap of thunder the castle vanished, along with the two captives.

ater Manawyddan found that the wheat growing upon his lands was disappearing, ear by ear. Convinced that the same enemy who had carried off Pryderi and Rhiannon was the author of this fresh outrage, he kept watch over the grain. At midnight he heard a great tumult, and beheld a host of mice biting off the ears of grain. He succeeded in catching one, decided to hang the animal, and had just made a small gallows for the purpose, when a man dressed like a travelling scholar accosted him and asked what he was about to do. On being informed of his intention, the stranger offered Manawyddan money to liberate the mouse, but this was refused. Still other men addressed him in the field, offering him considerable bribes to free the creature, but to the last of these, who was habited like a bishop, he declared that the only price he would entertain for the animal's life was that Pryderi and Rhiannon should be set at liberty, for naturally his suspicions had been aroused by his visitors' manifest anxieties as to the fate of the mouse. The "Bishop" turned out to be Llwyd, a magician, and the mouse his wife, whom, with his servitors, he had transformed for the purpose of stripping Manawyddan of his harvest to wipe off an ancient grudge he had against the god. Rhiannon and Pryderi were at once transported to the spot, the fields resumed their prosperous appearance, and the mouse returned to human shape. All of which we learn from the mabinogi of Manawyddan the Son of Llyr.

he Irish saga of The Fate of the Children of Tuirenn teems with magical incidents. Lugh, the sun-god, had slain certain Fomorians who oppressed his people as tax-gatherers, and in revenge his father Cian was slain by the sons of Tuirenn—Brian, Luchar and Lucharba. In vain did Cian assume the form of a pig, for the brethren penetrated his disguise and killed him. Lugh, to punish them for the crime, extorted from them the heaviest fine he could think of—that they must filch and present him with three apples from the Garden of the Hesperides; the skin of a pig belonging to King Tuis of Greece, the touch of which cured wounded persons; the spear of Pisear, King of Persia; the horses and chariot of Dobhar, King of Sicily; the seven pigs of Easal, King of the Golden Pillars; the hound-whelp of the King of Loruaidhe, which could catch a wild beast on seeing it; and the cooking-spit of the women of the isle of Fianchuive, which lay at the bottom of the sea between Scotland and Ireland. It was also ordained that they must give three shouts on the hill of Choc Miodhchaoin, in the land of Lochlann, a most dangerous proceeding when the character of its inhabitants fell to be considered. These seven objects, animals and performances appear to have constituted something in the nature of the seven wonders of the world according to Celtic tradition, and all of them have doublets in Celtic lore. The apples are found in Celtic stories of the Overseas paradise, the lance approximates to that of the god Lugh, the hound resembles Brann, the famous dog of Finn, the pigs are similar to those of Manannan and the British god Arawn, the horses equate with the steeds of Manannan, and the cooking-spit is reminiscent of that made by the god-smith Gobniu.

he adventures of the trio are much too long and complicated even to summarize, but in the course of them the brethren transform themselves into divers birds and animals, wage many combats, descend into the depths of the ocean, and at last succeed in achieving all but one of the labours set them. But before they had time to give the three shouts on the hill of Miodhchaoin, Lugh wove a Druidical spell round them so that they utterly forgot this part of their task and sailed back to Ireland, whereupon the cunning god challenged them with the omission. At the hill in question they were so sorely wounded that they had much ado to return to Eire, where they gradually succumbed to their injuries.  

et us consider briefly some other magical weapons as they are described in Celtic lore. The magical spear is usually manufactured by a certain smith and for a certain purpose. The Celtic smith is almost invariably an arcane figure with uncanny associations, a wizard capable of making supernatural weapons, an idea that may have descended from the Bronze or Iron Ages when metals were novel elements and appeared to possess supernatural attributes of sharpness and life-taking quality. It is a smith who prepares the spear which takes the life of Balor, the Fomorian cyclops-god with one eye, into which Lugh, his grandson, plunges the weapon in revenge for the slaying of his sire, MacKineely. That smith is the Irish god Gobniu, and brother to MacKineely. Llew, as we have seen, was discomfited in great measure by the casting of a magic spear from the hand of his wife's paramour Gronwy. This spear was wrought on Sundays only, during the time of Mass, and it was essential that its making should occupy an entire year. Thus it seems to have some arcane association with time, astrological or otherwise. That the atmosphere was full of spirits associated with the luminaries of heaven who were at particular seasons of the year supposed to strike down mortals with darts or arrows which communicated diseases such as epilepsy is a very ancient superstition, common to many countries so far apart as Britain and ancient Mexico, and the magic spear may indeed have been a confused reminiscence of this belief.

he Irish sun-god Lugh was also the possessor of a magical spear which seems to have symbolized a ray of the sun. It was gifted with an individual life of its own and was so thirsty for blood that it could be kept from slaying only by steeping its head in an infusion of poppy leaves which acted as a narcotic upon it. On the day of battle it was taken out of this brew, when it called out mightily, lashing itself into a frenzy and emitting flashes of fire. When freed, it launched itself against the ranks of the enemy in a tireless orgy of slaughter.

e also encounter numerous references to magical swords in Celtic romance. The Irish sea-god Manannan had three such weapons, The Retaliator, The Great Fury, and The Little Fury. His compatriot divinity, Nuada "of the Silver Hand", possessed that particular blade which is associated with the traditions of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Finn MacCoul was the owner of a notable sword, the Macan Luin, which had been made especially for him by his grandfather. It was of so fine an edge that a second blow with it was needless. It had been tempered in the blood of "a living thing", to wit that of a hound. It is scarcely necessary to mention Excalibur, the sword of Arthur, in a catalogue of Celtic magical weapons, nor does its fame require that one should do so.

rom time immemorial the Celtic peoples have retained the custom at religious and other ceremonies of walking in procession right-handwise, that is "with the sun", or keeping to the right in a circular motion. That this custom proceeds from an ancient cult of sun-worship is scarcely questionable. In Irish and Scottish Gaelic this motion is known as deiseal that is "right-handwise", and is regarded as propitious because in harmony with the movement of the sun. Its opposite, tuathal , or circling to the left, is considered ominous, and is known in England and Lowland Scotland as "widdershins, or "withershins", derived from the Anglo-Saxon "wither" meaning "against" and "sith" or "sins", "to walk". Toland says that the common people in the Western Isles of Scotland in his day (the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries), invariably walked round cairns when they had occasion to be in their neighbourhood, three times, from east to west, Protestants as well as Catholics. "This custom," he says, "was us'd three thousand years ago, and God knows how long before, by their ancestors the ancient Gauls, of the same religion with them, who turn'd round righthandwise when they worshipped their gods." The people of Colonsay, before any enterprise, passed "sunways around the church" and turned their boats about in the same direction. Wedding processions in the Highlands and baptismal parties frequently passed round the church in this direction, and herdsmen danced three times sunways around the fire at the Bealltainn festivals.  To proceed in the opposite way was almost invariably the habit of the practitioners of the Black Art. A Scottish witch, Jonet Forsyth, who was refused corn by a neighbour, walked round a stack "contrair to the sunis cours", with consequent injury to the grain, as did many others of the sisterhood when thwarted.   

nd know: One of the strangest figures in Celtic sorcery, one indeed whose appearance in its records is fraught with a certain mystery. This was none other than the celebrated Simon Magus, the sorcerer alluded to in the eighth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, who bewitched the people of Samaria and led them to believe that he was possessed of divine power. St. Peter angrily repulsed him when he sought to purchase his conversion with money. Later tradition averred that he betook himself to Rome, where he once more came into collision with Peter, parading his magical power by flying through the air in public. The apostle breathed a vehement prayer for judgment upon him, whereupon the magician crashed to earth. Tradition adds that he died from the effects of the fall. In Irish legend Simon Magus is said to have aided the Druid Mog Ruith in making his celebrated wheel, the Roth Fail, which had the property of bearing the Druid through the heavenly spaces. But, like the flying machine of the British god Bladud, of whom we read in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History, it met with an accident. Mog Ruith's daughter Tlachtga conveyed some of its fragments to Ireland, one of which she erected as the pillar-stone of Cnamchoill, near Tipperary. In Celtic tradition its conveyance to Eire was looked upon as a dire calamity, and as fraught with extreme danger to the island's destinies. Rhys was of opinion that the fierce denunciation of Christianity by the Irish Druids resulted in the apostate Simon Magus becoming identified in a manner with the pagan Druidic caste. Again, the word "Druid" was translated into Latin as Magus, or magician, and as it was so frequently associated with Simon, the terms "Druid" and "Simon Magus" appear to have become interchangeable. Indeed, Simon was familiarly known in Ireland as "Simon the Druid".

ut the Roth Fail, "the wheel of light", was symbolic of the sun and as such came to be confused or identified, as in the story of Bladud, with a magic flying-machine which traversed the heavens, and therefore with the machine by which Simon is said to have aided his flights in Rome. The myth, on the whole, is similar to the Greek tale of Icarus, whose father Daedalus constructed a pair of wings by which the youth flew through the air. But the heat of the sun melted the wax which held them together, so that he fell to his death into the waters of the Ægean Sea.

t least one Roman author, Varro, tells us that the Druids practised walking on fire at some of their annual festivals. They walked slowly, he tells us, over a bed of burning coals, but he adds that they were able to accomplish this by the aid of a certain ointment with which they previously besmeared the soles of their feet. The practice, a very ancient one, has an almost world-wide recurrence. The Gabha-Bheil, or trial by Beli, a later Irish ceremony, compelled a suspected person to pass three times with bare feet through a fire as a proof of innocence, and at the Bealltainnfestival young men leapt through the fire, doubtless a "memory" of human sacrifice. Otherwise, I cannot find any justification for the statement of Varro, although it appears to me not at all improbable.

n some Irish and Highland tales we find mention of magical cups possessing occult properties. Thus in the West Highland story of Finn MacCoul and the Bent Grey Lad the hero is dispatched in search of "the quadrangular cup of the Fenians" which the King of Lochlann had filched from them. Any drink a man desired might be had from it, in which quality it seems to resemble the Grail vessel and the magic cup given by King Oberon to Huon of Bordeaux. In the tale of Uistean we encounter a cup which had the property of curing the dumb.  Good fortune accompanies the cup known as the Luck of Edenhall, but if it ever be broken the luck fails. Peace and plenty are the portion of the family which retains the cup of Ballafletcher, in the Isle of Man, but serious consequences associated with spiritual visitation would ensue did it meet with an accident.  

he act of compassing the death of an enemy by means of magic wrought upon an image or effigy in his likeness was known to and practised by the Celts both in ancient and modern times. Boethius (Hector Boece) alludes to a case of this description in his History of Scotland in connection with a conspiracy said to have been directed against the life of Duffus or Odo, one of the early Scottish kings, who flourished towards the end of the tenth century. This monarch was seized with a nameless distemper without any ostensible cause. He could not sleep and wasted away because of painful and incessant sweatings. Certain sorceresses in the town of Forres were suspected of a design to destroy him, and the miscreants were at last discovered in the act of basting an image of the king at a fire, reciting occult verses the while. When arrested, they confessed that their art had been revealed to them by demons and that the leading men of the province of Moray had employed them to slay the king by the means described. The image was destroyed—a risky proceeding in the circumstances, as we shall see—and the sorceresses expiated their guilt in the flames. Meanwhile the King recovered the exercise of all his normal faculties, leading an army against the rebel chiefs who had conspired against his life and punishing them as they deserved.

mages of this kind were, in the mediaeval period, usually made of wax, which would readily melt at a flame, thus presumably causing a wasting of the flesh in the hapless victim. But the specimens of such images—"pictures", as the older witches weirdly described them—known to later times, were generally modelled in clay, and were known in the Highlands as the corp creidh,or the "clay body". This effigy was placed on a board before a large and constantly replenished fire. Thorns, pins and needles were pushed into the still yielding clay, "elf-arrows" or primitive flint darts were cast at it to the accompaniment of dreadful oaths and imprecations, and finally the image was broken in pieces, upon which the victim was thought to yield up the ghost, blue flames issuing from his mouth!  This terrible instrument of Celtic vengeance, the invention of a sentiment unrestrained in its ferocity in remoter ages, and perhaps at times even in our own, has only of late been more generally discarded. Not so many years ago a corp creidh was discovered in a Highland burn, where it had been so disposes that the action of the water might wear it slowly away—the inference being that the unfortunate person who had earned the hatred of its maker might suffer the pangs of a lingering decline.  Rhys, writing on the subject of such figures, describes a corp creidh housed in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. It is made from clay and stuck full of pins and nails. The specimen in question hails from a neighbourhood in Inverness-shire and is the gift of a Major G--of that county. "It was intended for the Major", and was discovered by workmen at his front door. A similar experience, Sir John remarked, happened to a minister in the Highlands, who was observed to be wasting away. His friends instituted a search, when a corp creidh was discovered in a stream hard by his house. Within recent years, too, sheeps' hearts stuck full of pins have been discovered in the chimneys of cottages in the Highlands and in Wales, revealing a comparatively recent resort to a practice intended to do mortal hurt to an enemy.

he minutiae of Magic are well illustrated by Celtic tale. In the West Highland story of The Three Soldiers their three supernatural sweethearts bestow upon them a towel or napkin, a magic whistle and a purse. The first contains "every kind of meat" on each occasion it is spread; the second, when blown, ensures that the blower will be in the midst of his regiment; while the third will be found full of gold and silver every time its strings are unloosed. The three articles are beguiled from the soldiers by the stratagems of a king's daughter. But the napkin also possesses the property of a magic carpet, resembling those known to Oriental tale, for when one of the soldiers stands upon it in company with the Princess and wishes to be in "the uttermost isle of the deep", the pair speedily find themselves in such a locality. The Princess, once more placing herself upon the napkin, wishes herself back in Dublin, while the soldier sleeps, and on awaking he finds himself marooned on the island. He feels the pangs of hunger and discovers two kinds of apples in an orchard. One variety causes horns to sprout upon the eater's head, while the other as swiftly removes them. A vessel conveniently passes the island and bears the soldier back to Dublin, where he assumes the guise of a vendor of apples, and sells some of the harmful variety to the Princess, who partakes of them, with the result that horns appear on her head. Her hand in marriage is offered by the King her father to anyone who will rid her of this deformity, and the soldier effects the cure by supplying her with the antidote, but prefers to accept a large fee for his services rather than risk matrimony with a lady of a disposition so equivocal. 

here is indeed no end to the minor marvels of Magic in Celtic tale. The ears of friendly horses and bulls are the repositories not only of food and drink, but magical toys of the most fantastic description are also to be found there, concealed in fruit—golden cocks that crow, diminutive women who sew and spin, magic shears which function of themselves.  And here I may appropriately remark upon the bizarre character of Celtic story no less than upon its delicate spirit of invention, which equals that of any body of similar fiction and far surpasses all in its remote loveliness and quality of elfin magic, repaying the imaginative reader a million fold. In its record, indeed, the entire gamut of magical potency is expressed and in such a manner as to make it clear that the incidents it details are not donations from alien fiction or importations, but are rather descended from a common and greatly ancient fabric of human tradition, which its inherent spirit of marvel and craftsmanship has raised to a keener level of artistic performance.

peaking in a general sense, I may remark that only as regards a few essentials do we discover in Celtic Magic any marked difference from that of other European races. Most of the magical data I have already reviewed is familiar in the records of nearly all European magical systems—the raising of fogs or mists, change of scene by illusion, transformation and shape-shifting, the draught of healing or forgetfulness, the magic wand, the raising of magical obstacles, magical practice on the part of the gods—indeed all the arcane apparatus of the Celt appears to be of the selfsame species as that known to other European peoples and indeed to Asiatic and American races. Yet the treatment is vastly different in its superior aesthetic presentation.

The Magic Arts in Celtic Britain, by Lewis Spence, 1945

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