Celtic Mythology and Religion

CELTIC WORSHIP AND RITES. 153.
.temenos, which may mean a sacred grove, is often
used in speaking of Celtic places of worship. The
Gaulish word of like signification was nemeton, which
appears in several place-names in Britain, Gaul,
and Asia Minor ;
in the latter country the Galatian
council of the twelve tetrarchies met at a place
called Drynemeton, that is,
" oak-grove." In old
Irish, the word appears as nemed, a chapel, and is
the same in root as the Gaelic neamh, heaven, and
the Latin nemus, a grove.
Lucan, in the following
lines, gives us a vivid description of a Gaulish grove,
dwelling on the superstitions and miracles connected
with it, and alluding to the worship of the " secretum
illud," the abstract existence, which Tacitus says
the Germans reverenced,
who, here as elsewhere in
religion, differed but little from the Celts.
" A grove, inviolate from length of age.
L
With interwoven branches' mazy cage.
Enclosed a darkened space of earth and air,
With chilly shades, where sun could enter ne'er.