Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

CHAPTER II: THE RELIGION OF THE CELTS 65Alba....” “Hush,” says Mongan, “it is wrong of thee to reveal asecret.” The secret is, of course, that Mongan was a reincarnationof Finn. 62 But the evidence on the whole shows that the Celtsdid not hold this doctrine at all in the same way as Pythagorasand the Orientals did. Transmigration was not, with them, part ofthe order of things. It might happen, but in general it did not; thenew body assumed by the dead clothed them in another, not inthis world, and so far as we can learn from any ancient authority,there does not appear to have been any idea of moral retributionconnected with this form of the future life. It was not so muchan article of faith as an idea which haunted the imagination, andwhich, as Mongan's caution indicates, ought not to be broughtinto clear light.However it may have been conceived, it is certain that thebelief in immortality was the basis of Celtic Druidism. 63 Caesaraffirms this distinctly, and declares the doctrine to have been [82]fostered by the Druids rather for the promotion of courage thanfor purely religious reasons. An intense Other-world faith, suchas that held by the Celts, is certainly one of the mightiest ofagencies in the hands of a priesthood who hold the keys of thatworld. Now Druidism existed in the British Islands, in Gaul,and, in fact, so far as we know, wherever there was a Celticrace amid a population of dolmen-builders. There were Celtsin Cisalpine Gaul, but there were no dolmens there, and therewere no Druids. 64 What is quite clear is that when the Celts got62 De Jubainville, “Irish Mythological Cycle,” p.191 sqq.63 The etymology of the word “Druid” is no longer an unsolved problem. Ithad been suggested that the latter part of the word might be connected withthe Aryan root VID, which appears in “wisdom,” in the Latin videre, &c.,Thurneysen has now shown that this root in combination with the intensiveparticle dru would yield the word dru-vids, represented in Gaelic by draoi, aDruid, just as another intensive, su, with vids yields the Gaelic saoi, a sage.64See Rice Holmes, “Cæsar's Conquest,” p. 15, and pp. 532-536. Rhys,it may be observed, believes that Druidism was the religion of the aboriginalinhabitants of Western Europe “from the Baltic to Gibraltar” (“Celtic Britain,”