CELTIC MYTHOLOGY (Illustrated Edition). T. W. Rolleston
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Brian Boru, fought his way to power, Ireland knew no effective secular government till it was imposed upon her by a conqueror. The last words of the historical tract from which we quote are Dermot's cry of despair:
“Woe to him that with the clergy of the churches battle joins.”
This remarkable incident has been described at some length because it is typical of a factor whose profound influence in moulding the history of the Celtic peoples we can trace through a succession of critical events from the time of Julius Caesar to the present day. How and whence it arose we shall consider later; here it is enough to call attention to it. It is a factor which forbade the national development of the Celts, in the sense in which we can speak of that of the classical or the Teutonic peoples.
What Europe Owes to the Celt
Yet to suppose that on this account the Celt was not a force of any real consequence in Europe would be altogether a mistake. His contribution to the culture of the Western world was a very notable one. For some four centuries—about A.D. 500 to 900—Ireland was the refuge of learning and the source of literary and philosophic culture for half Europe. The verse-forms of Celtic poetry have probably played the main part in determining the structure of all modern verse. The myths and legends of the Gaelic and Cymric peoples kindled the imagination of a host of Continental poets. True, the Celt did not himself create any great architectural work of literature, just as he did not create a stable or imposing national polity. His thinking and feeling were essentially lyrical and concrete. Each object or aspect of life impressed him vividly and stirred him profoundly; he was sensitive, impressionable to the last degree, but did not see things in their larger and more far-reaching relations. He had little gift for the establishment or institutions, for the service of principles; but he was, and is, an indispensable and never-failing assertor of humanity as against the tyranny of principles, the coldness and barrenness of institutions. The institutions of royalty and of civic patriotism are both very capable of being fossilised into barren formulae, and thus of fettering instead of inspiring the soul. But the Celt has always been a rebel against anything that has not in it the breath of life, against any unspiritual and purely external form of domination. It is too true that he has been over-eager to enjoy the fine fruits of life without the long and patient preparation for the harvest, but he has done and will still do infinite service to the modern world in insisting that the true fruit of life is a spiritual reality, never without pain and loss to be obscured or forgotten amid the vast mechanism of a material civilisation.
1. He speaks of “Nyrax, a Celtic city,” and “Massalia (Marseilles), a city of Liguria in the land of the Celts” (“Fragmenta Hist. Græc.”).
2. In his “Premiers Habitants de l'Europe,” vol. ii.
3. See for these names Holder's “Altceltischer Sprachschatz.”
4. Vergil might possibly mean “the very-bright” or illustrious one, a natural form for a proper name. Ver in Gallic names (Vercingetorix, Vercassivellasimus, &c.) is often an intensive prefix, like the modern Irish fior. The name of the village where Vergil was born, Andes (now Pietola), is Celtic. His love of nature, his mysticism, and his strong feeling for a certain decorative quality in language and rhythm are markedly Celtic qualities. Tennyson's phrases for him, “landscape-lover, lord of language,” are suggestive in this connexion.
5. Ptolemy, a friend, and probably, indeed, half-brother, of Alexander, was doubtless present when this incident took place. His work has not survived, but is quoted by Arrian and other historians.
6. One is reminded of the folk-tale about Henny Penny, who went to tell the king that the sky was falling.
7. The Book of Leinster is a manuscript of the twelfth century. The version of the “Táin” given in it probably dates from the eighth. See de Jubainville, “Premiers Habitants,” ii. 316.
8. Dr. Douglas Hyde in his “Literary History of Ireland” (p. 7) gives a slightly different translation.
9. It is also a testimony to the close accuracy of the narrative of Ptolemy.
10. Roman history tells of various conflicts with the Celts during this period, but de Jubainville has shown that these narratives are almost entirely mythical. See “Premiers Habitants,” ii. 318-323.
11. E.g., Moymell (magh-meala), the Plain of Honey, a Gaelic name for Fairyland, and many place-names.
12. For these and many other examples see de Jubainville's “Premiers Habitants,” ii. 255 sqq.
13. Quoted by Mr. Romilly Allen in “Celtic Art,” p. 136.
14. “Premiers Habitants,” ii. 355, 356.
15. Irish is probably an older form of Celtic speech than Welsh. This is shown by many philological peculiarities of the Irish language, of which one of the most interesting may here be briefly referred to. The Goidelic or Gaelic Celts, who, according to the usual theory, first colonised the British Islands, and who were forced by successive waves of invasion by their Continental kindred to the extreme west, had a peculiar dislike to the pronunciation of the letter p. Thus the Indo-European particle pare, represented by Greek παρά, beside or close to, becomes in early Celtic are, as in the name Are-morici (the Armoricans, those who dwell ar muir, by the sea); Are-dunum (Ardin, in France); Are-cluta, the place beside the Clota (Clyde), now Dumbarton; Are-taunon, in Germany (near the Taunus Mountains), &c. When this letter was not simply dropped it was usually changed into c (k, g). But about the sixth century B.C. a remarkable change passed over the language of the Continental Celts. They gained in some unexplained way the faculty for pronouncing p, and even substituted it for existing c sounds; thus the original Cretanis became Pretanis, Britain, the numeral qetuares (four) became petuares, and so forth. Celtic place-names in Spain show that this change must have taken place before the Celtic conquest of that country, 500 B.C. Now a comparison of many Irish and Welsh words shows distinctly this avoidance of p on the Irish side and lack of any objection to it on the Welsh. The following are a few illustrations:
| Irish | Welsh | English |
| crann | prenn | tree |
| mac | map | ton |
| cenn | pen | head |
| clumh (cluv) | pluv | feather |
| cúig | pimp | five |
The conclusion that Irish must represent the older form of the language seems obvious. It is remarkable that even to a comparatively late date the Irish preserved their dislike to p. Thus they turned the Latin Pascha (Easter) to Casg; purpur, purple, to corcair, pulsatio (through French pouls) to cuisle. It must be noted, however, that Nicholson in his “Keltic Researches” endeavours to show that the so-called Indo-European p—that is, p standing alone and uncombined with another consonant—was pronounced by the Goidelic Celts at an early period. The subject can hardly be said to be cleared up yet.