Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF THE CELTS 43escaped in some degree from the oppression of this militaryaristocracy, and from the sharp dividing line which it drewbetween the classes, yet even there a reflexion of the state ofthings in Gaul is found, even there we find free and unfree tribesand oppressive and dishonouring exactions on the part of theruling order.Yet, if this ruling race had some of the vices of untamedstrength, they had also many noble and humane qualities. Theywere dauntlessly brave, fantastically chivalrous, keenly sensitiveto the appeal of poetry, of music, and of speculative thought.Posidonius found the bardic institution flourishing among themabout 100 B.C.,and about two hundred years earlier Hecatæus [58]of Abdera describes the elaborate musical services held by theCelts in a Western island—probably Great Britain—in honourof their god Apollo (Lugh). 34 Aryan of the Aryans, they hadin them the making of a great and progressive nation; but theDruidic system—not on the side of its philosophy and science,but on that of its ecclesiastico-political organisation—was theirbane, and their submission to it was their fatal weakness.The culture of these mountain Celts differed markedly fromthat of the lowlanders. Their age was the age of iron, not ofbronze; their dead were not burned (which they considered adisgrace), but buried.The territories occupied by them in force were Switzerland,Burgundy, the Palatinate, and Northern France, parts of Britainto the west, and Illyria and Galatia to the east, but smaller groupsof them must have penetrated far and wide through all Celticterritory, and taken up a ruling position wherever they went.34 See Holder,“Altceltischer Sprachschatz.” sulb voce “Hyperboreoi.”