Celtic Mythology and Religion

THE " DRUID CIRCLES. 210,
metals were used,
including Ihe precious ones, and
the more useful, such as copper, tin, and bronze,
and, in over-running Europe, they had iron ;
their
religion was polytheistic—the worship of the higher
objects of nature under anthropomorphic form,
with a strong admixture of ancestor-worship and
other lower forms. Of the Aryan races, the Celts
made their appearance in the West first, at the
dawn of history occupying Northern Italy, the
Upper Danube, Switzerland, France and the Low
Countries, most of Spain, and all Britain and Ireland.
The state of culture of the Celts we can discover
by their Aryan descent to a great extent, but as
they became modified through disseverance from the
rest, and through mingling with the pre-Celtic
peoples, we require to study every scrap of historical
reference we get, and also the inscriptions and other
monuments that remain to us of their ancient life ;
while we have also to study their language, their
customs, their oldest literary efforts, and their
mythic tales, legends, and histories. The study of
all these, steadied by a reference to the customs
and developments of races nearly akin, like those
of Rome and Greece, enables us to read the " weatherworn
"
history of the Celts, and to know their state
of culture. Caesar and the other classical writers
did not perceive their kinship with the Celts ; unless
when for political reasons the Senate might call
the Mdui " brothers and kinsmen," yet in thendescriptions
they take some four-fifths of the facts