THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT CELTS BY J.A. MACCULLOCH HON. D.D.(ST. ANDREWS); HON. CANON OF CUMBRAE CATHEDRAL AUTHOR OF "COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY" "RELIGION: ITS ORIGIN AND FORMS" "THE MISTY ISLE OF SKYE" "THE CHILDHOOD OF FICTION: A STUDY OF FOLK-TALES AND PRIMITIVE THOUGHT" Edinburgh: T. & T. CLARK, 38 George Street 1911 Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, FOR T. & T. CLARK, EDINBURGH. LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. TO ANDREW LANG PREFACE The scientific study of ancient Celtic religion is a thing of recent growth. As a result of the paucity of materials for such a study, earlier writers indulged in the wildest speculative flights and connected the religion with the distant East, or saw in it the remains of a monotheistic faith or a series of esoteric doctrines veiled under polytheistic cults. With the works of MM. Gaidoz, Bertrand, and D'Arbois de Jubainville in France, as well as by the publication of Irish texts by such scholars as Drs. Windisch and Stokes, a new era may be said to have dawned, and a flood of light was poured upon the scanty remains of Celtic religion. In this country the place of honour among students of that religion belongs to Sir John Rh[^y]s, whose Hibbert Lectures _On the Origin and Growth of Religion as illustrated by Celtic Heathendom_ (1886) was an epoch-making work. Every student of the subject since that time feels the immense debt which he owes to the indefatigable researches and the brilliant suggestions of Sir John Rh[^y]s, and I would be ungrateful if I did not record my indebtedness to him. In his Hibbert Lectures, and in his later masterly work on _The Arthurian Legend_, however, he took the standpoint of the "mythological" school, and tended to see in the old stories myths of the sun and dawn and the darkness, and in the divinities sun-gods and dawn-goddesses and a host of dark personages of supernatural character. The present writer, studying the subject rather from an anthropological point of view and in the light of modern folk survivals, has found himself in disagreement with Sir John Rh[^y]s on more than one occasion. But he is convinced that Sir John would be the last person to resent this, and that, in spite of his mythological interpretations, his Hibbert Lectures must remain as a source of inspiration to all Celtic students. More recently the studies of M. Salomon Reinach and of M. Dottin, and the valuable little book on _Celtic Religion_, by Professor Anwyl, have broken fresh ground.[1]