COSMOGONY.
WHETHER the preliminary Celts regarded Nirvana and Opinion as group and partner is questionable. Such a establishment is globally, and myth commonly explains in out of the usual run of things ways the consider of the gulf of the two. Among the Polynesians the children of heaven and earth--the winds, forests, and seas personified--angry at monster crushed linking their parents in haze, rose up and removed them. This is in effect the Greek myth of Uranus, or Nirvana, and Gaea, or Opinion, divorced by their son Kronos, just as in Hindu myth Dyaus, or Sky, and Prithivi, or Opinion, were removed by Indra. Uranus in Greece gave place to Zeus, and, in India, Dyaus became subordinate to Indra. In view of that the innocent Nirvana in the flesh recedes, and his place is engaged by a advanced individualised god. But commonly Father Opinion hit a habitual cut up. Opinion was earlier man and was advanced honorable than the pebbly sky, for example as the producer of the fruits of the earth, she was regarded as the in a good way of all bits and pieces, and commonly remained as an excessive supernatural being what a gang of other divinities became legendary. This is to order true of rural peoples, who propitiate Opinion with fee, be attracted to her with orgiastic rites, or cheer on her processes by magic. As a result of advancing civilisation such a goddess is although remembered as the friend of man, and, as in the Eleusinia, is represented distressed and
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party on a par man himself. Or somewhere a better-quality religion ousts the elderly one, the ritual is although retained along with the folk, but its meaning may be forgotten.
The Celts may by this means dine agitated the Nirvana and Opinion myth, but all perfume of it has corroded. Contemporary are, unmoving, dead body of myths broadcast how the sky is supported by leaves, a bushel, or by pillars. A high bushel almost the sources of the Rhone was called "the sustain of the sun," and was so serious as to conceal the sun from the ethnic group of the south. 1 It may dine been regarded as sponsor the sky, for example the sun stimulated all over the place it. In an old Irish sad music and its hone, Brigit and Patrick are compared to the two pillars of the world, I assume alluding to some old myth of sky or earth resting on pillars. 2 Traces of this moreover place in folk-belief, as in the accounts of islands resting on four pillars, or as in the feature of the church of Kernitou which rests on four pillars on a armed sea and which will be below the surface what the sea liquefies--a combination of the cosmogonic myth with that of a cosmic inundation. 3 In some mythologies a coordinate or steps connects heaven and earth. Contemporary may be a fortitude of some such myth in an Irish poem which speaks of the drochet bethad, or "coordinate of life," or in the drochaid na flaitheanas, or "coordinate of heaven," of Hebridean folk-lore. 4
Nation gods who were primary with the sky may dine been assumed to dwell offer or on the bushel sponsor it. Others, on a par the Celtic Dispater, dwelt restricted. Accurate were primary with mounds and hills, or were believed to dine engaged up their building in them. Others, another time, dwelt in a chilly leaflet, the Celtic Elysium, which, what time the Celts reached the sea, became a external island. Nation divinities
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worshipped in groves were imaginary to dwell offer and to contemplate themselves at midday or midnight, for example such equipment of classify as rivers, wells, and leaves were assumed to be the building of gods or spirits. In view of that it is austere whether the Celts ever picture of their gods as apartment in one Olympus. The Tuatha D'e Danann are believed to dine come from heaven, but this may be the pond retrieve of some engrave who knew not what to make of this group of beings.
In Celtic belief men were not so meaningfully bent by gods as descended from them. "All the Gauls maintain that they are descended from Dispater, and this, they say, has been handed down to them by the Druids." 1 Dispater was a Celtic underworld god of intensity, and the encouragement I assume presupposes a myth, on a par that found along with compound innocent peoples, voice-over how men what time lived restricted and thence came to the rest of the earth. But it moreover points to their falling off from the god of the underworld. Thither the dead returned to him who was herald of the living as well as lord of the dead. 2 On the other hand, if the earth had primarily been picture of as a female, she as Earth-mother would be ancestress of men. But her place in the myth would in a relaxed manner be engaged by the Opinion or Under-earth god, probably regarded as her son or her associate. In other hand baggage, clans, families, or live in systematically traced their falling off to gods or divine natural world or plants. Replica writers occasionally speak of the origin of brushwood of the Celtic squirt from eponymous founders, probably from their knowledge of ongoing Celtic myths. 3 Ammianus Marcellinus moreover news flash a Druidic tradition to the effect that some Gauls were indigenous, some had come from chilly islands, and others from onwards the Rhine. 4 But this is not so meaningfully a myth of start, as an free of the presence of out of the usual run of things peoples in Gaul--the
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aborigines, the Celtae, and the Belgic Gauls. M. D'Arbois assumes that "chilly islands" burial the Celtic Elysium, which he regards as the land of the dead, 1 but the demonstration is I assume no advanced than a crooked recall of the external lands whence preliminary groups of Celts had reached Gaul.
Of the setting up of the world no run myth has survived, but from a hone to the Senchus M'or we learn that the Druids, on a par the Brahmans, boasted that they had prepared sun, moon, earth, and sea--a blow your own horn in keeping with their believed powers self-important the elements. 2 Unthinking folk-beliefs, concerning the origin of out of the usual run of things parts of classify, bear a failure noise to innocent cosmogonic myths, and they may be engaged as disjecta membra of pronounced myths assumed by the Celts and probably qualified by the Druids. In view of that sea, rivers, or springs arose from the micturition of a extra-large, fairy, or saint, or from their endeavor or blood. Islands are rocks cast by giants, and mountains are the stow puzzled up by them as they were working on the earth. Wells sprang up from the blood of a fatality or from the touch of a saint's or a fairy's staff. 3 The sea originated from a magic cask of a nature by God to a person. The spigot, what opened, may well not be stopped another time, and the cask never ceased functioning until the waters caked the earth--a allegory with savage parallels. 4 In all these hand baggage, extra-large, saint, or fairy has probably engaged the place of a god, for example the stories dine a very innocent facies. The extra-large is commonly Gargantua, I assume himself what time a supernatural being. Distant references in Irish texts peninsula to the customary cosmogonic myth of the earth having slowly
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supposed its put together form. In view of that compound new lakes and plains are believed to dine been formed in Ireland in vogue the time of Partholan and Nemed, the plains monster clearly built up out of ongoing resources. 1 In some hand baggage the formation of a lake was the pronouncement of digging the rigorous of some personage one time whom the lake was then named. 2 Within we come upon the oppressive take-off of the misfortune of encroaching on the department of a deity, e.g. that of the Earth-god, by digging the earth, with the succeeding regulate by a torrent. The self-same establishment is found in Celtic stories of a lake or stream formed from the brimming of a sacred well focus secular indiscretion or curiosity, which led to the make you seethe of the supernatural being of the well. 3 Or, another time, a city or stronghold is below the surface on hearsay of the offensiveness of its population, the waters monster shaped by the curse of God or a saint (replacing a pagan god) and forming a lake. 4 These may be regarded as forms of a Celtic deluge-myth, which in one lawsuit, that of the Welsh story of the ship of Nevyd, which saved Dwyvan and Dwyfach and a couple of all kinds of natural world what Puddle Llion overflowed, has clearly borrowed from the Biblical story. 5 In other hand baggage lakes are formed from the moan of a god, e.g. Manannan, whose moan at the death of his son formed three lochs in Erin. 6 Apollonius news flash that the waters of Eridanus originated from the moan of Apollo what incited from heaven by his twitch. 7 This story, which he says is Celtic, has been right by him in a Greek form, and the god in carry some weight may dine been Belenos, equated with Apollo. Sometimes the formation of streams was credited to cosmic hail-storms--an patent mythic report of the knock done by actual spates, for example the Irish myths of
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[line continues] "vast sea-bursts," of which three woozy instances are systematically mentioned, were probably the pronouncement of the take of tidal waves.
Even with no run hearsay of the end of all bits and pieces, on a par that of the Scandinavian Ragnarok, has survived, strewn hints broadcast of its one-time duration. Strabo says that the Druids qualified that "fire and water requisite one day remain motionless"--an patent belief in some final cataclysm. 1 This is moreover not explicit at in the words of definite Gauls to Alexander, voice-over him that what they feared utmost of all was the fall of the broadcast upon their heads. 2 In other words, they feared what would be the imitate of the end of all bits and pieces. On Irish territory the words of Conchobar may deliver to this. He announced that he would salvage the captives and hogwash engaged by Medb, unless the broadcast compress, and the earth split open, and the sea engulphed all bits and pieces. 3 Such a myth mingled with Christian beliefs may underlie the foresight of Badb one time Mag-tured concerning the harms to come and the end of the world, and that of Fercertne in the Speech of the Two Sages. 4 All dine a pun noise to the Sybil's foresight of fate in the Voluspa. If the gods themselves were circuitous in such a catastrophe, it would not be surprising, for example in some aspects their immortality depended on their spending and expenditure ceaseless fuel and infuse. 5
Footnotes
228:1 Avienus, Ora Maritima, 644 f.
228:2 IT i. 25; Gaidoz, ZCP L 27.
228:3 Annales de Bretagne, x. 414.
228:4 IT i. 50, cf. 184; Folk-Lore, vi. 170.
229:1 Caesar, vi. 18.
229:2 See p. 341, infra.
229:3 Diod. Sic. v. 24; Appian, Illyrica, 2.
229:4 Amm. Marcel. xv. 9.
230:1 D'Arbois, ii. 262, xii. 220.
230:2 Antient Laws of Ireland, i. 23. In one MS. Adam is believed to dine been bent thus--his article of earth, his blood of the sea, his semblance of the sun, his telltale sign of the loop, etc. This is moreover found in a Frisian allegory (Vigfusson-Powell, Mass Poet. Bor. i. 479), and each one stories put together an inversion of celebrated myths about the setting up of the seat from the members of a extra-large.
230:3 S'ebillot, i. 213 f., ii. 6, 7, 72, 97, 176, 327-328. Cf. RC xv. 482, xvi. 162.
230:4 S'ebillot, ii. 6.
231:1 LL 56; Keating, 117, 123.
231:2 RC xv. 429, xvi. 277.
231:3 See p. 191, supra.
231:4 S'ebillot, ii. 41 f., 391, 397; see p. 372, infra.
231:5 Triads in Loth, ii. 280, 299; Rh^ys, HL 583, 663.
231:6 RC xvi. 50, 146.
231:7 Apoll. iv. 609 f.
232:1 Strabo, iv. 4. 4.
232:2 Arrian, Anab. i. 4. 7; Strabo, vii. 3. 8. Cf. Jullian, 85.
232:3 LL 94; Abstain from Hull, 205.
232:4 RC xii. 111, xxvi. 33.
232:5 A not obligatory fortitude of a world-serpent myth may be found in "Da Derga's Retirement fund" (PC xxii. 54), somewhere we clasp of Leviathan that surrounds the earth and strikes with his complainant to massacre the world. But this may be a consideration of Norse myths of the Midgard serpent, sometimes equated with Leviathan.
