ly in different parts of Gaul and Britain according to the progress
that had been made in the differentiation of functions in social life.
The more we investigate the state of the Celtic world in ancient times,
the clearer it becomes, that in civilisation it was very far from being
homogeneous, and this heterogeneity of civilisation must have had its
influence on religion as well as on other social phenomena. The natural
conservatism of agricultural life, too, perpetuated many practices even
into comparatively late times, and of these we catch a glimpse in Gregory
of Tours, when he tells us that at Autun the goddess Berecyntia was
worshipped, her image being carried on a wagon for the protection of the
fields and the vines. It is not impossible that by Berecyntia Gregory
means the goddess Brigindu, whose name occurs on an inscription at Volnay
in the same district of Gaul. The belief in corn-spirits, and other
ideas connected with the central thought of the farmer's life, show, by
their persistence in Celtic as well as other folklore, how deeply they
had entered into the inner tissue of the agricultural mind, so as to be
linked to its keenest emotions. Here the rites of religion, whether
persuasive as in prayer, or compulsory as in sympathetic magic, whether
associated with communal or propitiatory sacrifice, whether directed to
the earth or to the heaven, all had an intensely practical and terribly
real character, due to man's constant preoccupation with the growth and
storage of food for man and beast. In the hunting, the pastoral, and
above all in the agricultural life, religion was not a matter merely of
imagination or sentiment, but one most intimately associated with the
daily practice of life, and this practical interest included in its
purview rivers, springs, forests, mountains, and all the setting of man's
existence. And what is true of agriculture is true also, in a greater or
less degree, of the life of the Celtic metal-worker or the Celtic sailor.
Even in late Welsh legend Amaethon (old Celtic _Ambactonos_), the patron
god of farming (Welsh _Amaeth_), and Gofannon, the patron god of the
metal-worker (Welsh _gof_, Irish _gobha_), were not quite forgotten, and
the prominence of the worship of the counterparts of Mercury and Minerva
in Gaul in historic times was due to the sense of respect and gratitude,
which each trade and each locality felt for the deity who had rid the
land of monsters, and who had brou