CHAPTER XXV SURVIVALS OF THE CELTIC PAGANISM INTO MODERN TIMES The fall of the Celtic state worship began earlier in Britain than in her sister island. Neither was it Christianity that struck the first blow, but the rough humanity and stern justice of the Romans. That people was more tolerant, perhaps, than any the world has ever known towards the religions of others, and gladly welcomed the Celtic gods-as gods-into its own diverse Pantheon. A friendly Gaulish or British divinity might at any time be granted the so-to-speak divine Roman citizenship, and be assimilated to Jupiter, to Mars, to Apollo, or to any other properly accredited deity whom the Romans deemed him to resemble. It was not against the god, but against his worship at the hands of his priests, that Roman law struck. The colossal human sacrifices of the druids horrified even a people who were far from squeamish about a little. bloodshed. They themselves had abolished such practices by a decree of the senate before Caesar first invaded Britain,1 and could not therefore permit within their empire a cult which slaughtered men in order to draw omens from their death-agonies.2 Druidism was first required to be renounced by 1 In the year 55 B.C. 2 Strabo, Book IV, chap. IV. those who claimed Roman citizenship; then it was vigorously put down among the less civilized tribes. Tacitus tells us how the Island of Mona (Anglesey) -the great stronghold of druidism-was attacked, its sacred groves cut down, its altars laid level, and its priests put to the sword.1 Pliny, recording how the Emperor Tiberius had “suppressed the druids", congratulates his fellow-countrymen on having put an end, wherever their dominion extended, to the monstrous customs inspired by the doctrine that the gods could take pleasure in murder and cannibalism. The practice of druidism, with its attendant barbarities, abolished in Britain wherever the long Roman arm could reach to strike, took refuge beyond the Northern Wall, among the savage Caledonian tribes who had not yet submitted to the invader's yoke. Naturally, too, it remained untouched in Ireland. But before the Romans left Britain, it had been extirpated everywhere, except among "the Picts and Scots". Christianity, following the Roman rule, completed the ruin of paganism in Britain, so far, at least, as its public manifestations were concerned. In the sixth century of our era, the monkish writer, Gildas, is able to refer complacently to the ancient British religion as a dead faith. "I shall not", he says, "enumerate those diabolical idols of my country, which almost surpassed in number those of Egypt, and of which we still see some mouldering away within or without the deserted temples, with stiff and deformed features as was customary. Nor will 1 Annals, Book XIV, chap. xxx. Natural History, Book XXX. I cry out upon the mountains, fountains, or hills, or upon the rivers, which now are subservient to the use of men, but once were an abomination and destruction to them, and to which the blind people paid divine honour." And with the idols fell the priests. The very word "druid" became obsolete, and is scarcely mentioned in the earliest British literature, though druids are prominent characters in the Irish writings of the same period. The secular arm had no power in Scotland and in Ireland, consequently the battle between Paganism and Christianity was fought upon more equal terms, and lasted longer. In the first country, Saint Columba, and in the second, Saint Patrick are the personages who, at any rate according to tradition, beat down the druids and their gods. Adamnan, Abbot of Iona, who wrote his Vita Columbæ in the last decade of the seventh century, describes how, a century earlier, that saint had carried the Gospel to the Picts. Their king, Brude, received him contemptuously, and the royal druids left no heathen. spell unuttered to thwart and annoy him. But, as the power of Moses was greater than the power of the magicians of Egypt, so Saint Columba's prayers caused miracles more wonderful and more convincing than any wrought by his adversaries. Such stories belong to the atmosphere of myth which has always enveloped heroic men; the essential fact is that the Picts abandoned the old religion for the new. A similar legend sums up the life-work of Saint 1 Gildas. See Six Old English Chronicles-Bohn's Libraries. (B 219) 2 C Patrick in Ireland. Before he came, Cromm Cruaich had received from time immemorial his yearly toll of human lives. But Saint Patrick faced the gruesome idol; as he raised his crozier, we are told, the demon fell shrieking from his image, which, deprived of its soul, bowed forward to the ground. It is far easier, however, to overthrow the more public manifestations of a creed than to destroy its inner vital force. Cromm Cruaich's idol might fall, but his spirit would survive-a very Proteus. The sacred places of the ancient Celtic religion might be invaded, the idols and altars of the gods thrown down, the priests slain, scattered, or banished, and the cult officially declared to be extinct; but, driven from the important centres, it would yet survive outside and around them. The more civilized Gaels and Britons would no doubt accept the purer gospel, and abandon the gods they had once. adored, but the peasantry-the bulk of the population-would still cling to the familiar rites and names. A nobler belief and a higher civilization come, after all, only as surface waves upon the great ocean of human life; beneath their agitations lies a vast slumbering abyss of half-conscious faith and thought to which culture penetrates with difficulty and in which changes come very slowly. We have already shown how long and how faithfully the Gaelic and Welsh peasants clung to their old gods, in spite of all the efforts of the clerics to explain them as ancient kings, to transform them into wonder-working saints, or to ban them as demons of hell. This conservative religious instinct |