Ancient Man in Britain
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In the early centuries of our era the term "Britannus" was shortened in Latin to "Britto" plural "Brittones". This diminutive form, which may be compared with "Scotty" for Scotsman, became popular. In Gaelic it originated the form "Breatain", representing "Brittones" (Britons), which was applied to the Britons of Strathclyde, Wales, and Cornwall, who retained their native speech under Roman rule; in Welsh, the rendering was "Brython". The Welsh name for Scotland became "Prydyn". The northern people of Scotland, having come under the sway of the Picts, were referred to as Picts just as they became "Scots" after the tribe of Scots rose into prominence. In this sense the Scottish Cruithne were Picts. But the Cruithne (Britons) of Ireland were never referred to as Picts. Modern scholars who have mixed up Cruithne and Picts are the inventors of the term "Irish Picts".
The Picts of Scotland have been traditionally associated with the round buildings known as "brochs", which are all built on the same plan. "Of 490 known brochs", says Professor W. J. Watson, "Orkney and Shetland possess 145, Caithness has 150, and Sutherland 67—a total of 362. On the mainland south of Sutherland there are 10 in Ross, 6 Inverness-shire, 2 in Forfar, 1 in Stirling, Midlothian, Selkirk, and Berwick-shires, 3 in Wigtownshire. In the Isles there are 28 in Lewis, 10 in Harris, 30 in Skye, 1 in Raasay, and at least 5 in the isles of Argyll. The inference is that the original seat of the broch builders must have been in the far north, and that their influence proceeded southwards. The masonry and contents of the brochs prove them to be the work of a most capable people, who lived partly at least by agriculture and had a fairly high standard of civilization.... The distribution of the brochs also indicate that their occupants combined agriculture with sea-faring.... The Wigtown brochs, like the west coast ones generally, are all close to the sea, and in exceedingly strong positions."
These Scottish brochs bear a striking resemblance to the nuraghi of the island of Sardinia. Both the broch and the nuraghe have low doorways which "would at once put an enemy at a disadvantage in attempting to enter".
Describing the Sardinian structures, Mr. T. Eric Peet writes:99 "All the nuraghi stand in commanding situations overlooking large tracts of country, and the more important a position is from a strategical point of view the stronger will be the nuraghe which defends it". Ruins of villages surround these structures. "There cannot be the least doubt", says Peet, "that in time of danger the inhabitants drove their cattle into the fortified enclosure, entered it themselves, and then closed the gates."
In the Balearic Islands are towers called talayots which "resemble rather closely", in Peet's opinion, the nuraghi of Sardinia. The architecture of the talayots, the nuraghi, and the brochs resembles that of the bee-hive tombs of Mycenæ (pre-Hellenic Greece). There are no brochs in Ireland. The "round towers" are of Christian origin (between ninth and thirteenth centuries a.d.). A tomb at Labbamologa, County Cork, however, resembles the tombs of the Balearic Isles and Sardinia (Peet, Rough Stone Monuments, pp. 43-4).
The Picts appear to have come to Scotland from the country of the ancient Pictones, whose name survives in Poitiers (Poictiers) and the province of Poitou in France. These Pictones were anciently rivals of the Veneti, the chief sea-traders in Western and Northern Europe during the pre-Roman period. We gather from Cæsar that the Pictones espoused the cause of the Romans when the Veneti and their allies revolted. They and their near neighbours, the Santoni, supplied Cæsar with ships.100 These were apparently skiffs which were much lighter and smaller than the imposing vessels of the Veneti. As the big vessels of the Armada were no match for the smaller English vessels, so were the Veneti ships no match for the skiffs of the Pictones.
The Picts who settled in Orkney appear to have dominated the eastern and western Scottish sea-routes. It is possible that they traded with Scandinavia and imported Baltic amber. Tacitus states that the Baltic people, who engaged in the amber trade, spoke a dialect similar to that of Britain, worshipped the mother-goddess, and regarded the boar as the symbol of their deity.101 Orkney, as has been noted, is derived from the old Celtic word for boar. The boar-people of Orkney who came under the sway of the Picts may have been related to the amber traders.
The Scottish broch-people, associated in tradition with the Picts, were notorious for their piratic habits. In those ancient days, however, piracy was a common occupation. The later Vikings, who seized the naval base of Orkney for the same reason we may conclude as did the Picts, occupied the brochs. Viking means "pirate", as York Powell has shown. In Egil's Saga (Chapter XXXII) the hero Bjorn "was sometimes in Viking but sometimes on trading voyages".102
It may be that the term pictus with the racial name Pecti, because the Picts had adopted the sailor-like habit of tattoing their skins—a habit which probably had a religious significance. Claudian, the fourth-century Roman poet, refers to "the fading steel-wrought figures on the dying Pict". Like the sea-faring Scots of northern Ireland who harried the Welsh coast between the second and fifth centuries of our era, the Picts of Scotland had skiffs (scaphæ) with sails and twenty oars a side. Vessels, masts, ropes, and sails were painted a neutral tint, and the crews were attired in the same colour. Thus "camouflaged", the Picts and Scots were able to harry the coasts of Romanized Britain. They appear to have turned Hadrian's wall from the sea. The Pictish sea-faring tribes, the Keiths or Cats and the Mæatæ, have left their names in Caithness, Inchkeith, Dalkeith, &c., and in the Isle of May, &c.103
A glimpse of piratical operations in the first century before the Christian era is obtained in an Irish manuscript account of certain happenings in the reign of King Conaire the Great of Ireland. So strict was this monarch's rule that several lawless and discontented persons were forced into exile.
"Among the most desperate of the outlaws were the monarch's own foster brothers, the four sons of Dond Dess, an important chieftain of Leinster. These refractory youths, with a large party of followers, took to their boats and ships and scoured the coasts of Britain and Scotland, as well as of their own country. Having met on the sea with Ingcel, the son of the King of Britain, who, for his misdeeds, had been likewise banished by his own father, both parties entered into a league, the first fruits of which were the plunder and devastation of a great part of the British coast."
By courtesy of the Director of The British School of Rome
A SARDINIAN NURAGHE (page 134)
Compare with the Scottish "Broch", page 132.
They afterwards made a descent on the coast of Ireland, and when King Conaire returned from a visit to Clare, "he found the whole country before him one sheet of fire, the plunderers having landed in his absence and carried fire and sword wherever they went".104
In his description of Britain, Tacitus says that the inhabitants varied in their physical traits. Different conclusions were drawn concerning their origin. He thought the Caledonians were, because of their ruddy hair and muscular limbs, of German descent, and that the dark Silures of Wales were descendants of Iberian colonists. He noted that the inhabitants of southern England resembled those of Gaul.105
Later writers have expressed divergent views regarding the ethnics of the British Isles. One theory is that the fair Teutonic peoples, who invaded Britain during the post-Roman period, drove the "dark Celts" westward, and that that is the reason why in England and Scotland the inhabitants of western areas are darker than those in the eastern. As we have seen, however, the early metal workers settled in the western areas for the reason that the minerals they sought for were located there. In south-western Scotland the inhabitants are darker than those on the east, except in Aberdeenshire, where there are distinctive megalithic remains and two famous pearling rivers, the Ythan and Ugie, as well as deposits of flint and traces of gold.
The people of Scotland are, on the whole, the tallest and heaviest people in Europe. It has been suggested that their great average stature is due to the settlement in their country of the hardy Norsemen of the Viking period, but this is improbable, because the average stature of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark is lower than that of Scotland. A distinctive feature of the Scottish face is the high cheek-bone. The Norse cheek-bone is distinctly flatter. It may be that the tall Crô-Magnons, who had high cheek-bones, have contributed to Scottish physical traits. That all the fair peoples of Britain and Ireland are, as has been indicated, not necessarily descendants of the fair Celts and Anglo-Saxons is evident from the traces that have been found of the early settlement in these islands of the proto-Scandinavians, who introduced the Maglemosian culture long before the introduction of the Neolithic industry. Modern ethnologists lean to the view that the masses of the present-day population of Europe betray Palæolithic racial affinities. In no country in Europe, other than our own, have there been fewer ethnic changes. As we have seen, there were only two or three intrusions from the Continent between the periods when the bronze and iron industries were introduced—that is, during about a thousand years. The latter invasions were those of types already settled in Britain. As in other countries, the tendency to revert to the early types represented by the masses of the people has not been absent in our native land. The intrusions of energetic minorities may have caused changes of languages and habits of life, but in time the alien element has been absorbed.106 Withal, the influences of climate and of the diseases associated with localities have ever been at work in eliminating the physically unfit—that is, those individuals who cannot live in a climate too severe for their constitutions. In large industrial cities the short, dark types are more numerous than the tall, fair, and large-lunged types. The latter appear to be more suited for an open-air life.
"Pockets" of peoples of distinctive type are to be found in different parts of the British Isles. In Barvas, Lewis, and elsewhere in the Hebrides, pockets of dark peoples of foreign appearance are reputed by theorists, as has been indicated, to be descendants of the sailors of the Spanish Armada. They resemble, however, the Fir-bolgs of Ireland and the Silures of Wales. Hertfordshire has a dark, short people too. Galloway, the country of the ancient Selgovæ (hunters), is noted for its tall people. It may be that there is a Crô-Magnon strain in Galloway, and that among the short, dark peoples are descendants of the ancient metal workers, including the Easterners who settled in Spain. (See Chaps. IX and XII.) Beddoe thinks that the Phœnician type "occasionally crops up" in Cornwall.107
CHAPTER XII
Druidism in Britain and Gaul
Culture Mixing—Classical Evidence regarding Druids—Doctrine of Transmigration of Souls—Celtic Paradises: Isles of the Blest, Land-under-waves, Fairyland, and "Loveless Land"—Paradise as Apple-land—Apples, Nuts, and Pork of Longevity—Mistletoe connected with the Oak, Apple, and Other Trees—Druids and Oracular Birds—Druids as Soothsayers—Thomas the Rhymer as "True Thomas"—Christ as the Druid of St. Columba—Stones of Worship—Druid Groves and Dolmens in Anglesea—Early Christians denounce Worship of Stones, Trees, Wells, and Heavenly Bodies—Vows over Holy Objects—Bull Sacrifices, Stone Worship, &c., in Highlands—"Cup-marked" Stones—Origin of Druidism—Milk-Goddesses and Milk-yielding Trees—European and Oriental Milk Myths—Tree Cults and Megalithic Monuments.
When the question is asked "What was the religion of the ancient Britons?" the answer generally given is "Druidism". But such a term means little more than "Priestism". It would perhaps be better not to assume that the religious beliefs of our remote ancestors were either indigenous or homogeneous, or that they were ever completely systematized at any period or in any district. Although certain fundamental beliefs may have been widespread, it is clear that there existed not a few local or tribal cults. "I swear by the gods of my people" one hero may declare in a story, while of another it may be told that "Coll" (the hazel) or "Fire" was his god. Certain animals were sacred in some districts and not in others, or were sacred to some individuals only in a single tribe.
In a country like Britain, subjected in early times to periodic intrusions of peoples from different areas, the process of "culture mixing" must have been active and constant. Imported beliefs were fused with native beliefs, or beliefs that had assumed local features, while local pantheons no doubt reflected local politics—the gods of a military aristocracy being placed over the gods of the subject people. At the same time, it does not follow that when we find a chief deity bearing a certain name in one district, and a different name in another, that the religious rites and practices differed greatly. Nor does it follow that all peoples who gave recognition to a political deity performed the same ceremonies or attached the same importance to all festivals. Hunters, seafarers, and agriculturists had their own peculiar rites, as surviving superstitions (the beliefs of other days) clearly indicate, while the workers in metals clung to ceremonial practices that differed from those performed by representatives of a military aristocracy served by the artisans.
Much has been written about the Druids, but it must be confessed that our knowledge regarding them is somewhat scanty. Classical writers have made contradictory statements about their beliefs and ceremonies. Pliny alone tells that they showed special reverence for the mistletoe growing on the oak, and suggests that the name Druid was connected with the Greek word drus (an oak). Others tell that there were Druids, Seers, and Bards in the Celtic priesthood. In his book on divination, Cicero indicates that the Druids had embraced the doctrines of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher, who was born about 586 b.c., including that of the transmigration of souls.108 Julius Cæsar tells that the special province of the Druids in Gaulish society was religion in all its aspects; they read oracles, and instructed large numbers of the nation's youth. Pomponius Mela109 says the instruction was given in caves and in secluded groves. Cæsar records that once a year the Druids presided over a general assembly of the Gauls at a sacred spot in the country of the Carnutes, which was supposed to be the centre of Gaul. It is not known whether this holy place was marked by a mound, a grove, a stone circle, or a dolmen. The Archdruid was chief of the priesthood. Cæsar notes that the Germans had no Druids and paid no attention to sacrifices.
Of special interest is the statement that the Druids believed in the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls—that is, they believed that after death the soul passed from one individual to another, or into plants or animals before again passing into a human being at birth. According to Diodorus Siculus, who lived in the latter part of the first century a.d., the Gauls took little account of the end of life, believing they would come to life after a certain term of years, entering other bodies. He also refers to the custom of throwing letters on the funeral pyre, so that the dead might read them.110 This suggests a belief in residence for a period in a Hades.
The doctrine of Transmigration of Souls did not, however, prevail among all Celtic peoples even in Gaul. Valerius Maximus, writing about a.d. 30, says that the Gauls were in the habit of lending sums of money on the promise that they would be repaid in the next world. Gaelic and Welsh literature contains little evidence of the doctrine of Transmigration of Souls. A few myths suggest that re-birth was a privilege of certain specially famous individuals. Mongan, King of Dalriada in Ulster, and the Welsh Taliessin, for instance, were supposed to have lived for periods in various forms, including animal, plant, and human forms, while other heroes were incarnations of deities. The most persistent British belief, however, was that after death the soul passed to an Otherworld.
Julius Cæsar says that Druidism was believed to have originated in Britain.111 This cannot apply, however, to the belief in transmigration of souls, which was shared in common by Celts, Greeks, and Indians. According to Herodotus, "the Egyptians are the first who have affirmed that the soul is immortal, and that when the body decays the soul invariably enters another body on the point of death". The story of "The Two Brothers" (Anpu and Bata) indicates that the doctrine was known in Egypt. There are references in the "Book of the Dead" to a soul becoming a lily, a golden falcon, a ram, a crocodile, &c., but this doctrine was connected, according to Egyptologists, with the belief that souls could assume different shapes in the Otherworld. In India souls are supposed to pass through animal or reptile forms only. The Greek doctrine, like the Celtic, includes plant forms. Certain African tribes believe in the transmigration of souls.
In ancient Britain and Ireland the belief obtained, as in Greece and elsewhere, that there was an Underworld Paradise and certain Islands of the Blest (in Gaelic called "The Land of Youth", "The Plain of Bliss", &c.) The Underworld was entered through caves, wells, rivers or lakes, or through the ocean cavern from which the moon arose. There are references in Scottish folk-tales to "The Land-Under-Waves", and to men and women entering the Underworld through a "fairy" mound, and seeing the dead plucking fruit and reaping grain as in the Paradise of the Egyptian god Osiris. It is evident that Fairyland was originally a Paradise, and the fairy queen an old mother goddess. There are references in Welsh to as gloomy an Underworld as the Babylonian one. "In addition to Annwfn, a term which", according to the late Professor Anwyl, "seems to mean the 'Not-world', we have other names for the world below, such as anghar, 'the loveless place'; difant, the unrimmed place (whence the modern Welsh word difancoll, 'lost for ever'); affwys, the abyss; affan, 'the land invisible'." In a Welsh poem a bard speaks of the Otherworld as "the cruel prison of earth, the abode of death, the loveless land".112
The Border Ballads of Scotland contain references to the Fairyland Paradise of the Underworld, to the islands or continent of Paradise, and to the dark Otherworld of the grave in which the dead lie among devouring worms.
In one Celtic Elysium, known to the Welsh and Irish, the dead feast on pork as do the heroes in the Paradise of the Scandinavian god Odin. There is no trace in Scotland of a belief or desire to reach a Paradise in which the pig was eaten. The popularity of the apple as the fruit of longevity was, however, widespread. It is uncertain when the beliefs connected with it were introduced into England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. As they were similar to those connected with the hazel-nut, the acorn, the rowan, &c., there may have simply been a change of fruit rather than a religious change, except in so far as new ceremonies may have been associated with the cultivated apple tree.
A Gaelic story tells of a youth who in Paradise held a fragrant golden apple in his right hand. "A third part of it he would eat and still, for all he consumed, never a whit would it be diminished." As long as he ate the apple "nor age nor dimness could affect him". Paradise was in Welsh and Gaelic called "Apple land".113 Its "tree of life" always bore ripe fruit and fresh blossoms. One of the Irish St. Patrick legends pictures a fair youth coming from the south114 clad in crimson mantle and yellow shirt, carrying a "double armful of round yellow-headed nuts and of most beautiful golden-yellow apples". There are stories, too, about the hazel with its "good fruit", and of holy fire being taken from this tree, and withal a number of hazel place-names that probably indicate where sacred hazel groves once existed. Hallowe'en customs connected with apples and nuts are evidently relics of ancient religious beliefs and ceremonies.
The Druids are reported by Pliny (as has been stated) to have venerated the mistletoe, especially when it was found growing on an oak. But the popular parasitic plant is very rarely found associated with this tree. In France and England it grows chiefly on firs and pines or on apple trees, but never on the plane, beech, or birch.115 It is therefore doubtful if the name Druid was derived from the root dru which is found in the Greek word drus (oak). In Gaelic the Druids are "wise men" who read oracles, worked spells, controlled the weather, and acted as intercessors between the gods and men. Like the dragon-slayers of romance, they understood "the language of birds", and especially that of the particular bird associated with the holy tree of a cult. One sacred bird was the wren. According to Dr. Whitley Stokes the old Celtic names of wren and Druid were derived from the root dreo, which is cognate with the German word treu and the English true. The Druid was therefore, as one who understood the language of the wren, a soothsayer, a truth-sayer—a revealer of divine truth. A judgment pronounced by Druid or king was supposed to be inspired by the deity. It was essentially a divine decree. The judge wore round his neck the symbol of the deity. "When what he said was true, it was roomy for his neck; when false, it was narrow." This symbol according to Cormac`s Glossary was called sin (sheen). Some seers derived their power to reveal the truth by tasting the blood or juice of a holy animal or reptile, or, like Thomas the Rhymer, by eating of an apple plucked from the tree of life in the Paradise of Fairyland. In an old ballad it is told that when Thomas was carried off to the Underworld by the fairy queen he was given an inspiring apple that made him a "truth-sayer" (a prophet).
Syne they came to a garden greenAnd she pu'd an apple frae a tree;"Take this for thy wages, True Thomas;It will give thee the tongue that can never lee (lie).""True Thomas" was "Druid Thomas".
An interesting reference to Druidism is found in a Gaelic poem supposed to have been written by St. Columba, in which the missionary says:
The voices of birds I do not reverence,Nor sneezing, nor any charm in this wide world.Christ, the Son of God, is my Druid.There are Gaelic stories about Druids who read the omens of the air and foretell the fates of individuals at birth, fix the days on which young warriors should take arms, &c.
In England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales not only trees and birds were reverenced, but also standing stones, which are sometimes referred to even in modern Gaelic as "stones of worship". Some stories tell of standing stones being transformed into human beings when struck by a magician's wand. The wand in one story is possessed by a "wise woman". Other traditions relate that once a year the stones become maidens who visit a neighbouring stream and bathe in it. A version of this myth survives in Oxfordshire. According to Tacitus there were on the island of Mona (Anglesea), which was a centre of religious influence, not only Druids, but "women in black attire like Furies"—apparently priestesses. As has been noted, a large number of dolmens existed on Mona, in which there were also "groves devoted to inhuman superstitions".116
The early Christian writers refer to the "worship of stones" in Ireland. In the seventh century the Council at Rouen denounced all those who offer vows to trees, or wells, or stones, as they would at altars, or offer candles or gifts, as if any divinity resided there capable of conferring good or evil. The Council at Arles (a.d. 452) and the Council at Toledo (a.d. 681) dealt with similar pagan practices. That sacred stones were associated with sacred trees is indicated in a decree of an early Christian Council held at Nantes which exhorts "bishops and their servants to dig up and remove and hide in places where they cannot be found those stones which in remote and woody places are still worshipped and where vows are still made". This worship of stones was in Britain, or at any rate in part of England, connected with the worship of the heavenly bodies. A statute of the time of King Canute forbids the barbarous adoration of the sun and moon, fire, fountains, stones, and all kinds of trees and wood. In the Confession attributed to St. Patrick, the Irish are warned that all those who adore the sun shall perish eternally. Cormac's Glossary explains that Indelba signified Images and that this name was applied to the altars of certain idols. "They (the pagans) were wont to carve on them the forms of the elements they adored: for example, the figure of the sun." Irish Gaels swore by "the sun, moon, water, and air, day and night, sea and land". In a Scottish story some warriors lift up a portion of earth and swear on it. The custom of swearing on weapons was widespread in these islands. In ancient times people swore by what was holiest to them.117