ming year, is probably
connected with the Midsummer sacrifice of the horse.[727] Among the
Teutons the horse was a divine sacrificial animal, and was also sacred
to Freyr, the god of fertility, while in Teutonic survivals a horse's
head was placed in the Midsummer fire.[728] The horse was sporadically
the representative of the corn-spirit, and at Rome the October horse was
sacrificed in that capacity and for fertility.[729] Among the Celts, the
horse sacrificed at Midsummer may have represented the vegetation-spirit
and benefited all domestic animals--the old rite surviving in an
attenuated form, as described above.

Perhaps the goddess Damona was an animal divinity, if her name is
derived from _damatos_, "sheep," cognate to Welsh _dafad_, "sheep," and
Gaelic _damh_, "ox." Other divine animals, as has been seen, were
associated with the waters, and the use of beasts and birds in
divination doubtless points to their divine character. A cult of
bird-gods may lurk behind the divine name Bran, "raven," and the
reference to the magic birds of Rhiannon in the _Triads_.

3.

Animal worship is connected with totemism, and certain things point to
its existence among the Celts, or to the existence of conditions out of
which totemism was elsewhere developed. These are descent from animals,
animal tabus, the sacramental eating of an animal, and exogamy.

(1) _Descent from animals._--Celtic names implying descent from animals
or plants are of two classes, clan and personal names. If the latter are
totemistic, they must be derived from the former, since totemism is an
affair of the clan, while the so-called "personal totem," exemplified by
the American Indian _manitou_, is the guardian but never the ancestor of
a man. Some clan names have already been referred to. Others are the
Bibroci of south-east Britain, probably a beaver clan (_bebros_), and
the Eburones, a yew-tree clan (_eburos_).[730] Irish clans bore animal
names: some groups were called "calves," others "griffins," others "red
deer," and a plant name is seen in _Fir Bile_, "men of the tree."[731]
Such clan totemism perhaps underlies the stories of the "descendants of
the wolf" at Ossory, who became wolves for a time as the result of a
saintly curse. Other instances of lycanthropy were associated with
certain families.[732] The belief in lycanthropy might easily attach
itself to existing wolf-clans, the transformation being then explained
as the result of a curse. T