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heads unshorn and long, but shaved the rest of their bodies, except their upper lip, and stained their skins of a blue colour, by means of woad, which gave them a horrible aspect in battle.

Antiquarian and philological researches confirm these testimonies of history. The funereal mounds or barrows found in many parts of Britain give doubtless a good specimen of the state of arts among the people who deposited their dead in these rude tombs. In the large collection made by the late Sir Richard Hoare, the implements, ornaments, and utensils of a great number of barrows of various kinds are deposited. From the inspection of these we might be led to imagine that the ancient Britons were nearly on a level with the New Zealanders or Tahitians of the present day, or perhaps not very superior to the Australians. In these tombs hatchets and cutting instruments are made of stone; there are no such implements of iron: arrow-heads are of the same material; rings, necklaces, and ornaments of various kinds are almost always of fish-bone, or some rude material of a similar kind. It is only in a very few barrows, and those perhaps of more modern date than the rest, that there are any decorations made of gold; and this is so much the more remarkable, as the tombs of ancient races spread over many parts of Europe and in the north of Asia are very generally found to contain pieces of the precious metals in plates and in different forms of ornament; and as the use of gold and silver for such purposes is known in general to precede by a long time the employment of iron tools or the invention of iron implements. Metallic instruments and golden and silver ornaments would doubtlessly be more frequently found in the British barrows had the art of working these metals been long and generally known. This art was, however, known before the arrival of the Romans, for Strabo enumerates among the produce of Britain, corn, herds, gold, silver, iron. It is possible that the art of mining in Britain was first practised by the Phoenicians,* and in later ages that the Veneti and other

* The Phoenicians are said to have brought tin from the Cassiterides. It must, however, be noticed that Gesenius discredits the long voyages of the Phoenicians, at least those towards the north, from the fact that no Phœnician inscriptions have been found to the northward of the Straits. The fact is not conclusive against their supposed trading voyages, though it seems to indicate that they had no settlements in these countries.

traders from Spain, Gaul, and Marseilles succeeded those enterprising discoverers. The Welsh and Erse names of many of the metals would almost induce us to believe that the first knowledge of them among the Britons was due to the Romans. Aur, ariant, plum, express gold, silver, and lead in Welsh. Copr, haiarn, copper and iron, are almost English words; in Erse iron is iarunn. The Welsh word près, brass, may perhaps be a genuine British word, and the original of the AngloSaxon bræs. There were two other old Welsh words for metals, alcan and malen. Alcan is supposed to have been a white metal, and the word is used in the Welsh translation of the Bible to express tin. Had it any affinity to the old Turkish and Mongolian word for gold, viz. altan? The other word, malen, is rendered steel.

The Welsh have also peculiar names for different sorts of grain, which is perhaps a proof that the ancestors of the aboriginal Britons were acquainted with these productions. Gwenith, wheat, probably meant "white corn:" haidh, barley, has perhaps the same derivation as hordeum. Rhýg, rye, may have been derived from rug, the Swedish name for that grain, or from the Esthonian rikki. The Erse word for barley, córna and órna, has some resemblance to the Finnish word ohra; and that for oats, coirce, in Welsh ceirch, is perhaps the same original word as the Finnish cagra. March, horse, an old Celtic word, is connected with the German mahre, Mongolian morin, Chinese, popular pronunciation, mar.

*

Paragraph 4.-Of the Religion of the Celtic nations.

Although so much has been written on the religion of the Gauls and Britons, the extent of our real information on this subject is extremely limited. Nothing is more surprising than the confident manner which many Welsh writers have assumed, and the imposing air of authority with which they lay down positions supported by little or no evidence. Some of them appear to have imagined that they possessed by birthright a claim

• Ceirch is in Cornish cerh. The Latin Ceres has been compared with this. But ceres was wheat or wheaten bread, and the word wants one of the radical letters of ceirch.

to be believed, on their mere assertion, in all that they have thought fit to dream and invent respecting the opinions of their forefathers. They make an appeal to oral tradition, and pretend that the bards of Wales have handed down among them the esoteric doctrine of the Druids by a perpetual succession from the time when the pagan worship of the ancient Celts was in its full prevalence and integrity. That they actually possess such traditionary knowledge they have never condescended to furnish the slightest proof. They have indeed the remains of bards, some of which, and particularly the verses of Taliessin, contain many obscure passages, which are, like the Sibylline poems, of dark and mysterious import, supposed to be pregnant with mysteries of old mythology, and equally susceptible of almost any interpretation. These compositions are curious relics of antiquity and of times little explored, and they are highly deserving of a more careful and of a much more critical elucidation than they have yet obtained. But the poems of Welsh and Irish bards, composed some centuries after the extirpation of the Druids, and long after the establishment of Christianity in Britain, among a people whose intellectual character had been entirely formed upon the model of monkish lore, (and that the prevalent notions of the Welsh and Irish were of this description, Nennius and Mark the Hermit, and the Irish fables clearly prove,) can hardly be trusted as exhibiting an authentic representation of the primitive mythology of the Gauls. We have for an inquiry into this subject no other data than a few passages left by ancient writers, and some inscriptions which have been found in various parts of Gaul and Britain.

The Greeks and Romans fancied that they recognised the objects of their own worship in the gods adored by all other nations; and when Cæsar informs us that the Gauls performed divine honours to five of the Roman divinities, we are to understand by the assertion that the five principal objects of adoration among the Celtic people bore some resemblance in their attributes and in the ceremonial of the worship paid to them, to the Roman gods with whom Cæsar identified them. These five divinities were Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. Mercury, as Cæsar declares, was the principal

object of religious worship, and to him the most numerous images were inscribed. It seems that the Gauls were idolaters, and that their principal god was, like Mercury, the inventor of arts, the conductor and guardian in journeys, and the patron of gain and profit in merchandise. Such we are told were the attributes of the Gaulish Mercury. Apollo, or the Gaulish deity taken for Apollo by the Romans, was a protector against diseases; Minerva was the promoter of arts, Jupiter the ruler of the heavenly firmament, Mars the god of war.

Three of these Gallic divinities, but it is uncertain which of them, are mentioned in a celebrated passage of Lucan under their proper Celtic designations.

"Et quibus immitis placatur sanguine diro
Teutates, horrensque feris altaribus Hesus,
Et Taranis Scythicæ non mitior ara Dianæ.
Vos quoque qui fortes animas, belloque peremptas
Laudibus in longum vates dimittitis ævum
Plurima securi fudistis carmina Bardi.

Et vos barbaricos ritus, inoremque sinistrum
Sacrorum Druidæ positis repetistis ab armis."

It is probable that Taranis was the Celtic god whom the Romans identified with Jupiter, because taran is the Welsh word for thunder. It is unsafe to infer anything respecting the Celta from what is known concerning the Teutonic nations, but it may be worth while to observe that the Thor of the Northmen, who has always been identified with Jupiter, was, according to Adam of Bremen, the ruler of the air, and of lightning and thunder, winds and storms. Taran in Welsh, Toran in Erse, is in name as well as in attributes analogous to Thor.

It is generally supposed that Hesus, who is also mentioned by Lactantius, is the Celtic god identified with Mars. A statue of this god, at least one bearing the name of Esus, was formerly discovered underground in Paris. It has been described by many writers as resembling a man in the vigour of youth, naked except a covering round the loins and a loose garment over the left shoulder, wearing a crown of boughs, and holding in the left hand a branch which he is about to cut off with an axe brandished in the right.

Mercury is supposed to be Teutates. In some copies of the

twenty-sixth book of Livy the name of Mercurius Teutates occurs, but in other copies merely Mercurius. Duw Taith, coming in sound very near to Teutates, means, as old Sammes has observed, in Welsh, the god of travelling. It is remarkable that the name of this god approaches in Welsh so nearly to Thoth, Thoyth, Taautus, eastern designations appropriated to Hermes, and likewise to the Tuisco and Teut of the Germans. Belenus, Belinus, and Belis, was a god of the Gauls mentioned by several writers, as by Tertullian and Julius Capitolinus. From a passage of the latter author it appears that Belenus was considered to be Apollo. Herodian calls him Belis, and says that by the citizens of Aquileia Belis was said to be Apollo.* The Balder of the Northmen was the same in attributes as Belin or Belis.+

The names of many Celtic gods are preserved in inscriptions. The following are among the most remarkable.

Three ancient inscriptions in the collection of Gruter contain the name of Abellio, a god of the ancient Gauls. Gruter and others suppose this to be the same as Belenus.‡

Belatucadrus.§-Several inscriptions are described by Camden in the north of England bearing this name on altars, and dedicated-Sancto deo Belatucadro.

Atys or Attis, as well as Belenas, was a Gallic name for the Sun. "Attidem cum nominamus, Solem significamus." || Aufaniæ or Aufaniæ matres were goddesses of the Gauls.¶ Aventia, an unknown Gallican and particularly Helvetian deity.

Bacurdus, a Gallic god whose name occurs in two inscriptions at Cologne given by Gruter.

Camulus is another name of the god of war occurring in two of Gruter's inscriptions.

Nehalunnia, probably a goddess of sailors. Ogmius was the

*Tertullian, Apolog. cap. 24. Julius Capitol. Herodian, lib. viii.

There is an inscription extant, " Apollini Beleno ;" and another, " Apollini Bellino." (Religion des Gaulois, i. 379, 381. Ritson's Mem. of the Celts, p. 80.) See Gruter's Collection of Ancient Inscriptions, 2 vols. folio.

§ Cadrus, the termination, is probably cadyr, Welsh for mighty. || Arnob. ad Gentes, b. v. p. 187.

Du Fresne, and Keysler's Antiq.

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