The Project Gutenberg eBook, Celtic Religion, by Edward Anwyl

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Title: Celtic Religion
in Pre-Christian Times

Author: Edward Anwyl

Release Date: March 23, 2006 [eBook #18041]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CELTIC RELIGION***

Transcribed from the 1906 Archibald Constable & Co. Ltd. edition by David
Price, ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

CELTIC RELIGION
IN PRE-CHRISTIAN TIMES

By
EDWARD ANWYL, M.A.

LATE CLASSICAL SCHOLAR OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF WELSH AND COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY AT
THE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF WALES, ABERYSTWYTH
ACTING-CHAIRMAN OF THE CENTRAL WELSH BOARD
FOR INTERMEDIATE EDUCATION

LONDON
ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE & CO LTD
16 JAMES STREET HAYMARKET
1906

Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty

FOREWORD

It is only as prehistoric archaeology has come to throw more and more
light on the early civilisations of Celtic lands that it has become
possible to interpret Celtic religion from a thoroughly modern viewpoint.
The author cordially acknowledges his indebtedness to numerous writers on
this subject, but his researches into some portions of the field
especially have suggested to him the possibility of giving a new
presentation to certain facts and groups of facts, which the existing
evidence disclosed. It is to be hoped that a new interest in the
religion of the Celts may thereby be aroused.

E. ANWYL.

ABERYSTWYTH,
_February_ 15, 1906.

CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTORY: THE CELTS

In dealing with the subject of 'Celtic Religion' the first duty of the
writer is to explain the sense in which the term 'Celtic' will be used in
this work. It will be used in reference to those countries and districts
which, in historic times, have been at one time or other mainly of Celtic
speech. It does not follow that all the races which spoke a form of the
Celtic tongue, a tongue of the Indo-European family, were all of the same
stock. Indeed, ethnological and archaeological evidence tends to
establish clearly that, in Gaul and Britain, for example, man had lived
for ages before the introduction of any var