Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

Irish Gods. t 2 i
early introduction of Latin, Norman-French, and l-jv^lish
increased the obscurity, and hampered the hibours of
copyists in the Middle Ages, as was the case witli that
composite language known now as Welsh.
The god most prominently set forth in early Irish
missionary records, in the Lives of the Saints, and in the
ancient Bards, is Crom, Cronim Cruach or Cenn Cruach,
the bleeding head ;
or Cronnii Cnuiic/i, the Crooked or Hcnt
One of the Mound. As Crom-cniagJiair, the great Creator,
he has, by some writers, been identified with the Persian
Kcriini KerugJier. Crom has been rendered great ; and
Cruin, the thiinderer. One considers Cromkac as the altar
of the Great God. He is also known as CeancroitJd, and
the head of all gods. Cromduff-Sunday, kept early in
August, was the festival of Black Crom.
He figures in the several Lives of St. Patrick. At the
touch of the Saint's sacred staff of Jesus, his image fell to
the ground. He is associated with Mag Slecht, a mound
near Ballymagauran, of TuUyhead Barony, County Cavan.
The Welsh god Pen Crug or Cruc, Chief of the Mound,
answered to the Irish deity.
He was certainly the Sun-god, for his image was
surrounded by the fixed representations of twelve lesser
divinities. Irish imagination pictured the first of gold, the
others of silver. They were certainly stones; and, as
Andrew Lang remarks, "All Greek temples had their
fetish stone, and each stone had its legend." The one
surrounded with the twelve would readily suggest
the Sun
and the twelve Signs of the Zodiac.
An old reference to Crom has been recorded in O-ham
letters, thus translated, " In it Cruach was and twelve idds
of stone around him, and himself of gold." In thc^ old
book Dinseanchus we read thus of Crom Cruach—"lo
whom they sacrificed the first-born of every ollspring,