nto
connection with the Druids.[1087] But _ban-drui_ may have been applied
to women with priestly functions, such as certainly existed in
Ireland--e.g. the virgin guardians of sacred fires, to whose functions
Christian nuns succeeded.[1088] We know also that the British queen
Boudicca exercised priestly functions, and such priestesses, apart from
the _Dryades_, existed among the continental Celts. Inscriptions at
Arles speak of an _antistita deae_, and at Le Prugnon of a _flaminica
sacerdos_ of the goddess Thucolis.[1089] These were servants of a
goddess like the priestess of the Celtic Artemis in Galatia, in whose
family the priesthood was hereditary.[1090] The virgins called
Gallizenae, who practised divination and magic in the isle of Sena, were
priestesses of a Gaulish god, and some of the women who were "possessed
by Dionysus" and practised an orgiastic cult on an island in the Loire,
were probably of the same kind.[1091] They were priestesses of some
magico-religious cult practised by women, like the guardians of the
sacred fire in Ireland, which was tabu to men. M. Reinach regards the
accounts of these island priestesses as fictions based on the story of
Circe's isle, but even if they are garbled, they seem to be based on
actual observation and are paralleled from other regions.[1092]

The existence of such priestesses and divineresses over the Celtic area
is to be explained by our hypothesis that many Celtic divinities were at
first female and served by women, who were possessed of the tribal lore.
Later, men assumed their functions, and hence arose the great
priesthoods, but conservatism sporadically retained such female cults
and priestesses, some goddesses being still served by women--the
Galatian Artemis, or the goddesses of Gaul, with their female servants.
Time also brought its revenges, for when paganism passed away, much of
its folk-ritual and magic remained, practised by wise women or witches,
who for generations had as much power over ignorant minds as the
Christian priesthood. The fact that Caesar and Tacitus speak of Germanic
but not of Celtic priestesses, can hardly, in face of these scattered
notices, be taken as a proof that women had no priestly _role_ in Celtic
religion. If they had not, that religion would be unique in the world's
history.

FOOTNOTES:

[1002] Pliny, _HN_ xvi. 249.

[1003] D'Arbois, _Les Druides_, 85, following Thurneysen.

[1004] D'Arbois, _op. cit._ 12 f.; Deloche, _Revu