Celtic Mythology and Religion

128 CELTIC MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGION.
and his son Owen, with the army of ravens, are
clearly war deities.
The goddess Ana or Aine (gen.
Anann) has been
called the queen of heaven, and connected with the
worship of the moon. Cormac describes her as
" mater deorum Hibernensium " —mother of the
Irish gods.
" Well she used to nourish the gods,"
he adds, and in another place he says, " As Ana
was mother of the gods, so Buanann was mother
of the Fiann (heroes)." Camden found in his time
survival of moon-worship. " When they see the
moon first after the change," he says, " commonly
they bow the knee and say the Lord's Prayer, and
then, with a loud voice, they speak to the moon,
thus —' Leave us whole and sound as thou hast found
us." ' Keating gives the name of this goddess as
Danann, and explains the Tuatha-De-Danann as
the worshippers of the gods of Danann, the gods of
Danann being, according to him, Brian, Iucharba,
and Iuchar. These three gods are known on other
myths as the " children of Turenn," slain, as Keating
himself says, by Luga Lamfada. The goddess
Buanann, mentioned in connection with Ana or
Anann, appears in the story of the great Druid
Mogh Ruith as his patron, to whose Sid he fares to
consult her in his difficulties.
Minerva is the fifth and last deity mentioned by
Caesar as worshipped by the Gauls—their goddess
of arts and industry. A passage in Solinus, and
another in Giraldus Cambrensis, enable us to decide,