rose the cult of the Earth-mother who was often also a
goddess of love as well as of fertility. Cerridwen, in all probability,
was a goddess of fertility, and Branwen a goddess of love.[1287] The
cult of fertility was usually associated with orgiastic and
indiscriminate love-making, and it is not impossible that the cauldron,
like the Hindu _yoni_, was a symbol of fertility.[1288] Again, the
slaughter and cooking of animals was usually regarded as a sacred act in
primitive life. The animals were cooked in enormous cauldrons, which
were found as an invariable part of the furniture of every Celtic
house.[1289] The quantities of meat which they contained may have
suggested inexhaustibility to people to whom the cauldron was already a
symbol of fertility. Thus the symbolic cauldron of a fertility cult was
merged with the cauldron used in the religious slaughter and cooking of
animal food. The cauldron was also used in ritual. The Cimri slaughtered
human victims over a cauldron and filled it with their blood; victims
sacrificed to Teutates were suffocated in a vat (_semicupium_); and in
Ireland "a cauldron of truth" was used in the ordeal of boiling
water.[1290] Like the food of men which was regarded as the food of the
gods, the cauldron of this world became the marvellous cauldron of the
Other-world, and as it then became necessary to explain the origin of
such cauldrons on earth, myths arose, telling how they had been stolen
from the divine land by adventurous heroes, Cuchulainn, Arthur, etc. In
other instances, the cauldron is replaced by a magic vessel or cup
stolen from supernatural beings by heroes of the Fionn saga or of
_Maerchen_.[1291] Here, too, it may be noted that the Graal of Arthurian
romance has affinities with the Celtic cauldron. In the _Conte du Graal_
of pseudo-Chretien, a cup comes in of itself and serves all present with
food. This is a simple conception of the Graal, but in other poems its
magical and sacrosanct character is heightened. It supplies the food
which the eater prefers, it gives immortal youth and immunity from
wounds. In these respects it presents an unmistakable likeness to the
cauldron of Celtic myth. But, again, it was the vessel in which Christ
had instituted the Blessed Sacrament; it contained His Blood; and it had
been given by our Lord to Joseph of Arimathea. Thus in the Graal there
was a fusion of the magic cauldron of Celtic paganism and the Sacred
Chalice of Christianity, with the