Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race - Knowledge Rush

68 Myths and Legends of the Celtic Race[85][86]human sacrifice is, of course, not specially Druidic—it is foundin all parts both of the Old and of the New World at a certainstage of culture, and was doubtless a survival from the time ofthe Megalithic People. The fact that it should have continuedin Celtic lands after an otherwise fairly high state of civilisationand religious culture had been attained can be paralleled fromMexico and Carthage, and in both cases is due, no doubt, to theuncontrolled dominance of a priestly caste.Human Sacrifices in IrelandBertrand endeavours to dissociate the Druids from thesepractices, of which he says strangely there is “no trace” inIreland, although there, as elsewhere in Celtica, Druidism wasall-powerful. There is little doubt, however, that in Irelandalso human sacrifices at one time prevailed. In a very ancienttract, the “Dinnsenchus,” preserved in the “Book of Leinster,”it is stated that on Moyslaught, “the Plain of Adoration,” therestood a great gold idol, Crom Cruach (the Bloody Crescent).To it the Gaels used to sacrifice children when praying for fairweather and fertility—“it was milk and corn they asked from itin exchange for their children—how great was their horror andtheir moaning!” 67And in EgyptIn Egypt, where the national character was markedly easygoing,pleasure-loving, and little capable of fanatical exaltation,we find no record of any such cruel rites in the monumentalinscriptions and paintings, copious as is the information whichthey give us on all features of the national life and religion. 68Manetho, indeed, the Egyptian historian who wrote in the third67 “The Irish Mythological Cycle,” by d'Arbois de Jubainville, p. 6l. The“Dinnsenchus” in question is an early Christian document. No trace of a beinglike Crom Cruach has been found as yet in the pagan literature of Ireland, norin the writings of St. Patrick, and I think it is quite probable that even in thetime of St. Patrick human sacrifices had become only a memory.68 A representation of human sacrifice has, however, lately been discoveredin a Temple of the Sun in the ancient Ethiopian capital, Meroë.