CELTIC MYTHOLOGY (Illustrated Edition). T. W. Rolleston

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СКАЧАТЬ against "the spells of women" and of Druids.¹⁰³³ Women in Ireland had a knowledge of futurity, according to Solinus, and the women who took part with the Druids like furies at Mona, may have been divineresses.¹⁰³⁴ In Ireland it is possible that such women were called "Druidesses," since the word ban-drui is met with, the women so called being also styled ban-fili, while the fact that they belonged to the class of the Filid brings them into connection with the Druids.¹⁰³⁵ But ban-drui may have been applied to women with priestly functions, such as certainly existed in Ireland—e.g. the virgin guardians of sacred fires, to whose functions Christian nuns succeeded.¹⁰³⁶ We know also that the British queen Boudicca exercised priestly functions, and such priestesses, apart from the Dryades, existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at Arles speak of an antistita deae, and at Le Prugnon of a flaminica sacerdos of the goddess Thucolis.¹⁰³⁷ These were servants of a goddess like the priestess of the Celtic Artemis in Galatia, in whose family the priesthood was hereditary.¹⁰³⁸ The virgins called Gallizenæ, who practised divination and magic in the isle of Sena, were priestesses of a Gaulish god, and some of the women who were "possessed by Dionysus" and practised an orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire, were probably of the same kind.¹⁰³⁹ They were priestesses of some magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards the accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the story of Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to be based on actual observation and are paralleled from other regions.¹⁰⁴⁰

      The existence of such priestesses and divineresses over the Celtic area is to be explained by our hypothesis that many Celtic divinities were at first female and served by women, who were possessed of the tribal lore. Later, men assumed their functions, and hence arose the great priesthoods, but conservatism sporadically retained such female cults and priestesses, some goddesses being still served by women—the Galatian Artemis, or the goddesses of Gaul, with their female servants. Time also brought its revenges, for when paganism passed away, much of its folk-ritual and magic remained, practised by wise women or witches, who for generations had as much power over ignorant minds as the Christian priesthood. The fact that Cæsar and Tacitus speak of Germanic but not of Celtic priestesses, can hardly, in face of these scattered notices, be taken as a proof that women had no priestly rôle in Celtic religion. If they had not, that religion would be unique in the world's history.

950. Pliny, HN xvi. 249.

951. D'Arbois, Les Druides, 85, following Thurneysen.

952. D'Arbois, op. cit. 12 f.; Deloche, Revue des Deux Mondes, xxxiv. 466; Desjardins, Geog. de la Gaule Romaine, ii. 518.

953. Cæsar, vi. 13.

954. Pliny, HN xxx. 1.

955. Rh^ys, CB⁴ 69 f.

956. Gomme, Ethnol. in Folk-lore, 58, Village Community, 104.

957. Sergi, The Mediterranean Race, 295.

958. Reinach, "L'Art plastique en Gaule et le Druidisme," RC xiii. 189.

959. Holmes, Cæsar's Conquest of Gaul, 15; Dottin, 270.

960. Diog. Laert. i. 1; Livy xxiii. 24.

961. Desjardins, op. cit. ii. 519; but cf. Holmes, 535.

962. Gutuatros is perhaps from gutu-, "voice" (Holder, i. 2046; but see Loth, RC xxviii. 120). The existence of the gutuatri is known from a few inscriptions (see Holder), and from Hirtius, de Bell. Gall. viii. 38, who mentions a gutuatros put to death by Cæsar.

963. D'Arbois, Les Druides, 2 f., Les Celtes, 32.

964. Ausonius, Professor. v. 7, xi. 24.

965. Lucan, iii. 424; Livy, xxiii. 24.

966. Diod. Sic. v. 31; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Timagenes apud Amm. Marc. xv. 9.

967. Cicero, de Div. i. 41. 90; Tac. Hist. iv. 54.

968. Phars. i. 449 f.

969. HN xxx. i.

970. Filid, sing. File, is from velo, "I see" (Stokes, US 277).

971. Fáthi is cognate with Vates.

972. In Wales there had been Druids as there were Bards, but all trace of the second class is lost. Long after the Druids had passed away, the fiction of the derwydd-vardd or Druid-bard was created, and the later bards were held to be depositories of a supposititious Druidic theosophy, while they practised the old rites in secret. The late word derwydd was probably invented from derw, "oak," by some one who knew Pliny's derivation. See D'Arbois, Les Druides, 81.

973. For these views see Dottin, 295; Holmes, 17; Bertrand, 192-193, 268-269.

974. Diog. Laert. i. proem. 1. For other references see Cæsar, vi. 13, 14; Strabo, iv. 4. 4; Amm. Marc. xv. 9; Diod. Sic, v. 28; Lucan, i. 460; Mela, iii. 2.

975. Suet. Claud. 25; Mela, iii. 2.

976. Pliny, xxx. 1.

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