Irish Druids and Old Irish Religions

2 28 Old hish Religions.
who was killed by a boar. Sacrifices of black pigs
were made to Mars Sylvanus. The sow was sacred to
Isis, and sacrificed to Osiris. It Avas sacred to Demeter
or Ceres, as representing the corn spirit. In Egypt, during
later periods, the boar personated Typhon. In the picture
of the Last Judgment, to be seen on the famous sarcophagus
at the Sloane Museum of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the condemned
soul is observed transformed into a pig. One of
the Phoenician gods is beheld holding one by the tail.
The Jews were not to keep, eat, or even touch the
creature, w^hich was held sacred, as devoted to evil.
Certain
passages, as Isa. Ixv. 3 and 4, and Ixvi. 3 and 17, are curious
in relation to it. " Although swine and their herdsmen,"
says Gladstone, " were deemed unclean, there was a very
particular and solemn injunction for the sacrifice of two
swine to Osiris, and to the moon, by every Egyptian. The
poor, who could not supply the animals, offered the figures
of swine made of dough." The Phoenician priests, like
those of Druidism, were called swine. A sow figure has
been found in the ruins of the Mashonaland Zimbabwe,
both on pottery and carved in soapstone. Mahomet was
satisfied that so unclean an animal did not exist before
the Ark days. The pig was once slain for divination
purposes.
The Prophet of old condemned those who sacrificed in
gardens, and who ate swine's flesh. Was it because the
neighbouring Syrians were accustomed, in fear, to do
homage to the destroyer of Adonis ? Or, did the Jews
abstain from eating it, from the fear of offending an adverse
power ^ The Norsemen offered the pig to their sun-god.,
killed at the winter solstice. The animal appears on
Gaulish coins, under or over a horse and \\\q flciir-de-lis.
It. was the national symbol of Gaul, as seen in their
standards.