Gaelic Folklore (21) : Fenodyree

Fenodyree, Phynnodderee, Fynoderee, Finoderee is a Manx brownie. 

What follows are descriptions and tales from old sources: 

21.

Fenodyree

The Phynnodderee

Another cherished phantasm of Manks superstition is the phynnodderee. This creature of the imagination is represented as being a fallen fairy, who was banished from fairy land by the elfin-king for having paid his addresses to a pretty Manks maid, who lived in a bower beneath the blue tree of Glen Aldyn, and for deserting the fairy court during the re-hollys vooar yn ouyr, or harvest moon, to dance in the merry glen of Rushen. He is doomed to remain in the Isle of Man till the end of time, transformed into a wild satyr-like figure, covered with long shaggy hair, like a he-goat, and was thence called the phynnodderee, or hairy one.

The Manks phynnodderee is seemingly analogous to the swart-alfar of the Edda, somewhat resembles the lubber fiend of Milton, and possesses several of the attributes of the Scottish brownie. (Jamieson described the brownie as a "spirit supposed, till of late years, to haunt some old houses, those, especially, attached to farms. Instead of doing any injury, he was believed to be very useful to the family, particularly to the servants if they treated him well, for whom, while they took their necessary refreshments in sleep, he was wont to do many pieces of drudgery."—Scottish Dictionary. " Some think the brownies not of supernatural origin, but distressed persons who were obliged to conceal themselves and wander about during some of the past turbulent ages.")

"His was the wizard hand that toil'd 

At midnight's witching hour,

That gather'd the sheep from the coming storm 

Ere the shepherd saw it lour,

Yet ask'd no fee save a scatter'd sheaf 

From the peasant's garner'd hoard,

Or cream-bowl pressed by a virgin-lip 

To be left in the household board."

(Mrs. E. S. Cream Green.)

The phynnodderee also cut down and gathered in meadow-grass, which would have been injured if allowed to remain exposed to the coming storm. On one occasion a fanner having expressed his displeasure with the spirit for not having cut his grass close enough to the ground, the hairy one in the following year allowed the dissatisfied farmer to cut it down himself, but went after him stubbing up the roots so fast that it was with difficulty the farmer escaped having his legs cut off by the angry sprite. For several years afterwards no person could be found to mow the meadow, until a fearless soldier, from one of the garrisons, at length undertook the task. He commenced in the centre of the field, and by cutting round as if on the edge of a circle, keeping one eye on the progress of the yiarn foldyragh or scythe, while the other "Was turned round with prudent care, Lest Phynnodderee catched him unaware," he succeeded in finishing his task unmolested. This field, situate in the parish of Marown, hard by the ruins of the old church of St. Trinian's, is, from the circumstance just related, still called yn cheance rhunt, or the round meadow.

The following is one of the many stories related by the Manks peasantry as indicative of the prodigious strength of the phynnodderee. A gentleman having resolved to build a large house and offices on his property, a little above the base of Snafield mountain, at a place called Sholt-e-will, caused the requisite quantity of stones to be quarried on the beach, but one immense block of white stone, which he was very desirous to have for a particular part of the intended building could not be moved from the spot, resisting the united strength of all the men in the parish. To the utter astonishment, however, of all not only this rock, but likewise the whole of the quarried stones, consisting of more than an hundred cart-loads, were in one night conveyed from the shore to the site of the intended onstead by the indefatigable phynnodderee, and in confirmation of this wonderful feat, the white stone is yet pointed out to the curious visitor. (MS. Account of Manks Customs.—Another large stone is pointed out to the visitor near Jurby Church, said to have been thrown by a giant from either Snafield or some of the adjoining mountains, after a companion who had insulted him, but who contrived to escape his rage by wading or swimming from Jurby to the coast of Scotland. Such memorials of fabulous achievements are also to be found in Scot land. In the town of Ayr, close to the Wallace Tower, is a block of blue whinstone of at least a ton weight, called Wallace's putting stane, which, tradition says, was slung by the Scottish champion against a squadron of English cavalry.)

The gentleman for whom this very acceptable piece of work was performed, wishing to remunerate the naked phynnodderee, caused a few articles of clothing to be laid down for him in his usual haunt. The hairy one on perceiving the habiliments lifted them up one by one, thus expressing his feelings in Manks:

Bayrn da'n choine, dy doogh da'n choine,

Cooat da'en dreeym, dy doogh da'n dreeym,

Breechyn da'n toyn, dy doogh da'n toyn,

 Agh my she lhiat ooiley, shoh cha nee lhiat Glen reagh Rushen.

Cap for the head, alas, poor head.

Coat for the back, alas, poor back.

Breeches for the breech, alas, poor breech.

If these be all thine, thine cannot be the merry Glen of Rushen.

Having repeated these words, he departed with a melancholy wail, and now

“You may hear his voice on the desert hill When the mountain winds have power;

'Tis a wild lament for his buried love, And his long lost Fairy Bower."

Many of the old people lament the disappearance of the phynnodderee, for they say, "There has not been a merry world since he lost his ground."

An Historical and Statistical Account or the Isle of Man, Vol. II, J. Train (1865)

The Manx brownie is called the fenodyree, and he is described as a hairy and apparently clumsy fellow, who would, for instance, thrash a whole barnful of corn in a single night for the people to whom he felt well disposed; and once on a time he undertook to bring down for the farmer his wethers from Snaefell. When the fenodyree had safely put them in an outhouse, he said that he had some trouble with the little ram, as it had run three times round Snaefell that morning. The farmer did not quite understand him, but on going to look at the sheep, he found, to his infinite surprise, that the little ram was no other than a hare, which, poor creature, was dying of fright and fatigue. I need scarcely point out the similarity between this and the story of Peredur, who, as a boy, drove home two hinds with his mother’s goats from the forest: he owned to having had some trouble with the goats that had so long run wild as to have lost their horns, a circumstance which had greatly impressed him. To return to the fenodyree, I am not sure that there were more than one in Man.

I have never heard him spoken of in the plural; but two localities at least are assigned to him, namely, a farm called Ballachrink, in Colby, in the south, and a farm called Lanjaghan, in the parish of Conchan, near Douglas. Much the same stories, however, appear to be current about him in the two places, and one of the most curious of them is that which relates how he left. The farmer so valued the services of the fenodyree, that one day he took it into his head to provide clothing for him. The fenodyree examined each article carefully, and expressed his idea of it, and specified the kind of disease it was calculated to produce. In a word, he found that the clothes would make head and foot sick, and he departed in disgust, saying to the farmer, ‘Though this place is thine, the great glen of Rushen is not.’ Glen Rushen is one of the most retired glens in the island, and it drains down through Glen Meay to the coast, some miles to the south of Peel. It is to Glen Rushen, then, that the fenodyree is supposed to be gone; but on visiting that valley in 1890 in quest of Manx-speaking peasants, I could find nobody there who knew anything of him. I suspect that the spread of the English language even there has forced him to leave the island altogether. Lastly, with regard to the term fenodyree, I may mention that it is the word used in the Manx Bible of 1819 for satyr in Isaiah xxxiv. 143, where we read in the English Bible as follows: ‘The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow.’ In the Vulgate the latter clause reads: et pilosus clamabit alter ad alterum. The term fenodyree has been explained by Cregeen in his Manx Dictionary to mean one who has hair for stockings or hose. That answers to the description of the hairy satyr, and seems fairly well to satisfy the phonetics of the case, the words from which he derives the compound being fynney, ‘hair,’ and oashyr, ‘a stocking’; but as oashyr seems to come from the old Norse hosur, the plural of hosa, ‘hose or stocking,’ the term fenodyree cannot date before the coming of the Norsemen; and I am inclined to think the idea more Teutonic than Celtic. At any rate I need not point out to the English reader the counterparts of this hairy satyr in the hobgoblin ‘Lob lie by the Fire,’ and Milton’s ‘Lubber Fiend,’ whom he describes as one that

Basks at the fire his hairy strength,

And crop-full out of doors he flings,

Ere the first cock his matin rings.

Lastly, I may mention that Mr. Roeder has a great deal to say about the fenodyree under the name of glashtyn; for it is difficult to draw any hard and fast line between the glashtyn and the fenodyree, or even the water-bull, so much alike do they seem to have been regarded. Mr. Roeder’s items of folklore concerning the glashtyns (see the Lioar Manninagh, iii. 139) show that there were male and female glashtyns, and that the former were believed to have been too fond of the women at Ballachrink, until one evening some of the men, dressed as women, arranged to receive some youthful glashtyns. Whether the fenodyree is of Norse origin or not, the glashtyn is decidedly Celtic.

Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (Volume 1, by John Rhys, 1901

1. Phynodderee

The Phynnodderee is defined by Cregeen  as a "satyr," and  he quotes the following text to show that his name is used in the Manx Bible in that sense:  Hig beishtyn oaldey yn aasagh dy cheilley marish beishtyn oaldey yn ellan, as nee yn phynnodderree gyllagh da e heshey", The wild beasts of the desert  shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow" (Isaiah 34, 14). The popular idea of the Phynnodderee is that he is a fallen Fairy, and that in appearance he is something between a man and a beast, being covered with black shaggy hair and having fiery eyes. Many stories are related by the Manx peasants of his prodigious strength. He may be compared with the Gruagach, a creature about whom Campbell writes as follows: "The Gruagach was supposed to be a Druid or Magician who had fallen from his high estate, and had become a strange hairy creature." The following story is told about one of these:

"The small island of Inch, near Easdale, is inhabited by a brownie, which has followed the MacDougalls of Ardincaple for ages, and takes a great interest in them. He takes care of their cattle in that island night and day, unless the dairy-maid, when there in summer with the milk cattle, neglects to leave warm milk for him at night in a knockingstone in the cave, where she and the herd live during their stay in the island. Should this perquisite be for a night forgot, they will be sure in the morning to find one of the cattle fallen over the rocks with which the place abounds. It is a question whether the brownie has not a friend with whom he shares the contents of the stone, which will, I daresay, hold from two to three Scotch pints."

The Folk-Lore of the Isle of Man, by Arthur William Moore (1891)

The Phynodderee, or Good-Natured Fairy.

Oh, merry were the 'little people' in the pretty Glen of Rushen! How they danced and sang beneath the moon's pale beams, or under the brighter rays of the sun, or chased each other from one tall fern to another, playing hide and seek under the shade of the dark trailing ivy that spread its sheltering leaves over the soft green moss, from whence peeped out many a purple violet and gentle primrose, with here and there the starlike daisies that scarce bent their bright heads under the light tread of the fairy feet. Ay ! merry indeed were they, and fairy music and fairy laughter sounded out on the air, mingling with the pleasant ripple of the stream that took its sparkling way to the wide sea beyond, scattering as it flowed showers of grateful moisture to the waiting flowers that grew along its banks.

Amongst all the joyous crew one alone stood aloof, pensive and sad, taking no part in all the mirth and revelry. He was what might be called a giant by the'good people,' being nearly two feet high, with dark hair and flowing beard. His eyes, that rivalled in hue the deep shade of the violets near, and his whole face were clouded o'er with melancholy. In vain did many a pretty fay try to lure him to the dance, or at least a game. He was not to be tempted from his unhappy musings, and while the revels were at their height, he had disappeared from among the sportive throng. When again we see him, it is in the first hours of the new day. In some mysterious way he has been conveyed in so short a space of time as from the previous midnight from Glen Rushen to the beautiful Glen of Auldyn, near Ramsey. Whether he had flown all those many miles on a bat's back the fairy's favourite steed-or on 'the wings of love,' we are not prepared to state; but this we can positively aver, that our hero was at those early hours standing under the blue tree in Glen Auldyn, and gazing with anxious, longing eyes at a cottage built under the shade of this tree against which he leaned. No sound broke the stillness, save the murmur of the little stream that ran swiftly on its course to swell the waters of the river Sulby, or now and again the faint bleating of the sheep on the hillside might be heard. Over this hillside, as the hours passed, came gleams of ruddy light ; and as these rays rose higher and higher, proclaiming the advancing day, signs of wakefulness were perceptible at the little cot. A tiny wreath of smoke curled upwards in the fresh morning air ; sturdy roosters woke the echoes with their shrill cry. Presently the door of the cottage opens, and a clear voice rings out blithe and cheery

'Oh ! Vollee Charane craad hooar oo dty Sthoyr ? My lomarcan daag oo mee.'

and then the singer comes into view-a pretty, brightfaced Manx girl, and as she does, the watcher steps forward and is met by anything but pleased looks by the country maid. 'What! you here again, little man?' she cries in angry tones. 'I want naught to do wi' ye.'

In vain the fairy pleaded as full many a morn before he had done. Promises of untold grandeur or threats of dire misfortune were powerless to move the obdurate fair one to listen with favour to his vows of love.

'Get ye gone, and let me never see ye more,' was all he got for answer. And, alas! his ill luck was not to end here, for the king was so incensed at his repeated absences from the fairy court, and, what aggravated his offence, his daring to make love to a mortal maid, that he not only expelled him from Glen Rushen and association with any of his former friends, but by spells-unknown, we trust, to fairies of the present day-changed his appearance into something, we should judge, resembling a satyr's, for we are told he was suddenly transformed to the height and size of an ordinary man, his body clothed with long shaggy hair like the beasts of the field, and all his former beauty gone! 

Misfortune, however, seems not to have had the ill effect it is said to exercise sometimes on the mind, by souring the temper and exciting unamiable feelings towards those more happily placed; for this poor fay, whose strength must have been supernatural indeed, used it always in behalf of those who were in great need of help. The anxious, weary farmer has many a time had his heart lightened when he has risen in the early morn to see, perhaps, a field ploughed, or crops gathered in, or some other labour performed in a night, that weeks of toiling, late and early, with many to help, and consequently many to pay, would not see accomplished. But woe betide him if, in gratitude of heart, he placed some offering for the kindly fairy, for from that day he lost all chance of his good offices. Indeed, it is sometimes given as a reason why farmers of more recent times are left without this supernatural aid, that one, to show his appreciation of the Phynodderee's assistance, left a gift for him of wearing apparel, and so offended was the fairy that he has never since mixed himself up in mortal affairs. (This account of the Phynodderee hears a striking resemblance to the 'brownie,' or good-natured fairy, of the Scots.-J. H. L.)

Shadowland in Ellan Vannin, Folk Tales of the Isle of Man, by J. H. Leney, 1890

The Fynoderee

The Fynoderee went to the meadow

To lift the dew at grey cock crow,

The maiden hair and the cow herb

He was stamping them both his feet under;

He was stretching himself on the meadow,

He threw the grass on the left hand;

Last year he caused us to wonder,

This year he’s doing far better.

He was stretching himself on the meadow,

The herbs in bloom he was cutting,

The bog bean herb in the curragh,

As he went on his way it was shaking,

Everything with his scythe he was cutting,

To sods was skinning the meadows,

And if a leaf were left standing,

With his heels he was stamping it under.

(Old Song.)

The Fynoderee of Gordon

There was one time a Fynoderee living in Gordon. Those persons who saw him said that he was big and shaggy, with fiery eyes, and stronger than any man. One night he met the blacksmith who was going home from his shop and held out his hand to him to shake hands. The blacksmith gave him hold of the iron sock of the plough which he had with him, and he squeezed it as if it had been a piece of clay, saying: ‘There’s some strong Manx-men in the world yet!’

The Fynoderee did all his work at night and went into hidlans in the daytime. One night, when he was out on his travels he came to Mullin Sayle, out in Glen Garragh. He saw a light in the mill, so he put his head through the open top-half of the door to see what was going on inside, and there was Quaye Mooar’s wife sifting corn. When she caught sight of the great big head she was frightened terrible. She had presence of mind, however, to hand him the sieve and say: ‘If thou go to the river and bring water in it, I’ll make a cake for thee; and the more water thou carry back, that’s the bigger thy cake will be.’

So the Fynoderee took the sieve, and ran down to the river; but the water poured from it and he could fetch none for the cake, and he threw the sieve away in a rage, and cried:

‘Dollan, dollan, dash!

Ny smoo ta mee cur ayn,

Ny smoo ta goll ass.’

Sieve, sieve, dash!

The more I put in,

The more there’s going out.

The woman got away while he was trying to fill the sieve, and when he came back to the mill he found it in darkness.

The Fynoderee was working very hard for the Radcliffes, who owned Gordon then. Every night he was grinding their corn for them, and often he would take a hand at the flails. If they put a stack into the barn in the evening and loosed every sheaf of it, they would find it thrashed in the morning, but he would not touch one sheaf of it unless it were loosed. In the summer time he was getting in their hay and cutting their corn. Many a time the people of the farm were passing the time of day with him. One cold frosty day, big Gordon was docking turnips and he blew on his fingers to warm them.

‘What are thou blowing on thee fingers for?’ said the Fynoderee.

‘To put them in heat,’ said the Farmer.

At supper that night the Farmer’s porridge was hot and he blew on it.

‘What are thou doing that for?’ said the Fynoderee. ‘Isn’t it hot enough for thee?’

‘It’s too hot, it is; I’m blowing on it to cool it,’ said the Farmer.

‘I don’t like thee at all, boy,’ said the Fynoderee, ‘for thou can blow hot and blow cold with one breath.’

The Fynoderee was wearing no clothes, but it is said that he never felt the cold. Big Gordon, however, had pity on him that he had none, and one frosty winter he went and got clothes made for him—breeches, jacket, waistcoat and cap—great big ones they were too. And he went and gave them to him in the barn one night. The Fynoderee looked on them and took them up, and says he:

Coat for the back is sickness for the back!

Vest for the middle is bad for the middle!

Breeches for the breech is a curse for the breech!

Cap for the head is injurious for the head!

If thou own big Gordon farm, boy

If thine this little glen east, and thine this little glen west,

Not thine the merry Glen of Rushen yet, boy!

So he flung the clothes away and walked his ways to Glen Rushen, out to Juan Mooar Cleary’s. He was working for him then, cutting the meadow hay for him, cutting turf for him, and seeing after the sheep. It happened one winter’s night that there was a great snow-storm. 

Juan  Mooar got up to see after the sheep, but the Fynoderee came to the window.

‘Lie, lie an’ take a sleep, Juan,’ says he; ‘I’ve got all the sheep in the fold, but there was one loaghtan (brown native sheep) yearling there that give me more trouble till all the res’. My seven curses on the little loaghtan! I was twice round Barrule Mooar afther her, but I caught her for all.’

When Juan went out in the morning all the sheep were safe in the cogee house and a big hare in with them, with two short lankets on him, that was the brown yearling!

After a time the Fynoderee went up to the top of Barrule Mountain to live, up to the very peak. Himself and the wife went to make a potful of porridge one day, and they fell out. She ran and left him. He threw a big white rock after her and it struck her on the heel—the mark of the blood is still on the stone at Cleigh Fainey. While she stooped to put a rag on her heel he threw a lot of small rocks at her, that made her give a spring to the Lagg, two miles away. Then he threw a big rock with the pot-stick in it—it’s in the Lagg river to-day. At that she gave two leaps over the sea to the Mountains of Mourne in Ireland; and for all that I know she’s living there still.

Manx Fairy Tales by Sophia Morrison, 1911

Yn Folder Gastey

"The Nimble Mower," celebrates the prowess of Finoderee, who thereby shares with Manannan and Berrey Dhone the honour of a song entirely devoted to himself. A verse translation will not obscure its single and doubtful allusion to a magical practice in the second line; I have, indeed, slightly accentuated the point with a simile which is not found in the original. (Similes are rare in the Manx ballad poetry, which prefers to stick grimly to its facts.)

THE NIMBLE MOWER.

Finoderee stole at dawn to the Round-field,

And skimmed the dew like cream from a bowl; 

The maiden's herb and the herb of the cattle, 

He was treading them under his naked sole.

He was swinging wide on the floor of the meadow, 

Letting the thick swath leftward fall;

We thought his mowing was wonderful last year, 

But the bree of him this year passes all !

He was lopping the blooms of the level meadow, 

He was laying the long grass ready to rake; 

The bog-bean out on the rushy curragh,

As he strode and mowed it was fair ashake !

The scythe that was at him went whizzing through all things,

Shaving the Round-field bare to the sod, 

And whenever he spotted a blade left standing 

He stamped it down with his heel unshod!

The first line of the original Manx as given in Moore's Ballads is otherwise remembered as Finoderee hie ad lheeaney ny lomarcan, or ad lheeaney lomarcan. In that case the meaning may be that Finoderee went to the meadow alone; or lheeaney ny lomarcan may be understood as a field-name comparable with " Glion ny Lomarcan " above the Dhoon in Maughold. Was Lomarcan, "the Lone One," ever a name for the Finoderee or some similar personage whose place in folk-lore he has usurped ?

Luss y voidyn, which in line 3 I have translated literally as "the maiden's herb," is, according to Kelly's Dictionary, "maidenlip," whatever plant that may be. Is loss y voidyn the same herb as the Irish lus na Maighdine Muire, which Dinneen says is the St. John's wort or yellow pimpernel ?

"The cattle herb," luss yn ollee, is known in England as the goutweed, Aegopodium podagraria (P. G. Ralfe).

Yiarn, literally "iron," in the last stanza, translated "scythe," is sometimes used for a sickle. Folder, in the title, certainly implies that he mowed with a scythe, but the title of a Manx song may be much more recent than the words. Scythes, however, were known in the Island at least so far back as 1577, when "a Sickle or Syth" is an alternative in the Customary Statutes. Finoderee therefore mowed the Lheeaney Rhunt, or the Lheeaney ny Lomarcan-as well as all the other meadows he has mowed unsung-with a scythe; but his may have been a scythe of the obsolete type, which had the blade almost in the same plane as the straight, thick shaft; a much heavier implement than the modern scythe, and one demanding greater strength and stamina, while correspondingly wider in its sweep. Finoderee's handling of his yiarn mooar was nonetheless masterly, as might have been expected from one of his superb physique. 

Moreover, in that age of gold, before he suffered his rebuff from the thankless farmer near St. Trinian's, he was more willing and more energetic than ever since. He was more numerous, or more ubiquitous, too, and most of the larger farms were lucky enough to possess one of him. As we may gather from the song, he was then not too shy to start work at daybreak and let himself be seen and admired in the grey light by the respectful villagers, while they peeped over each other's shoulders through the sallies and alders that screened the little verdant meadows of the Curragh Glass. In the days ere he lost confidence in Manxmen he not only mowed for them, he raked and carried for them, reaped, made bands, tied sheaves and built the stack for them, threshed it and stacked the straw again, herded sheep and cattle, and whisked horse-loads of wrack and stone about the land like the little giant he was. He attacked his jobs like a convulsion of nature, making the hard ground soft and the soft ground waterhence the Curraghs. When he mowed he flung the grass to the morning star or the paling moon without heed to the cock's kindly word of warning from the near-by farmyard. He could clear a daymath in an hour and want nothing better than a crockful of bithag afterwards. The concentrated fury of his threshing resembled a whirlwind, an earthquake, Doomsday; his soost was a blur and the air went dark with the flying husks. In the zeal and zest of his shepherding he sometimes drove an odd animal over the cliffs, allowing, but he made up for that by folding in wild goats, purrs and hares along with the sheep. For he was a doer, not a thinker, mightier in thew than in brain, and when he should have been cultivating his intelligence at the village school between his nights of labour he was curled up asleep in some hiding-place he had at the top of the glen.

Or so we may imagine him to have been in the days of his glory, since we can no longer hope to meet him unless in a degenerate aspect hardly distinguishable from humanity. Superhuman he may have been, but not supernatural. Indeed, in the second line of the " Nimble Mower " it looks as though he were operating an ordinary process of human magic, that of lifting the dew between daybreak and sunrise. Drawing a cord of plaited horsehair behind them along the grass before sunrise, especially on May Day, was a favourite morning exercise of women who wished to divert the milk and butter of their neighbours to their own dairies ; when a cow afterwards walked over the track of the cord the spell began to work upon her milk. Possibly it could then be milked out of the same cord hung from a nail in the witch's house, but of this I know nothing, nor wish to. Or the dew of the neighbour's land could be collected into a vessel, with the same intention. But it may be that Finoderee, who owned neither house nor churn, was merely removing the moisture which is such a hindrance to early-morning mowing. Since there is room for doubt, let us impute the better motive.(It has even been said that the dew of May (besides beautifying the complexion) gives, in the Isle of Man, immunity from witches. Rhys, Celtic Folklore, ii., 302.)

A Second  Manx  Scrapbook, by W. Walter Gill, 1932

1. Denman Rooke 

Nico

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