Celtic Mythology is a study on ancient folk tales and legends of old Ireland, Wales and other Celtic regions, which remained a precious legacy to their illustrative history. The book deals with different aspects of folklore and mythology: myths of the creation, tales of gods and their position and behavior, the mythical creatures and animals, folk tales of the divine land and many more. Well grounded in history and sociology, the author relates these folk tales, legends and myths of Gaelic, Brythonic and Gaulish people to each other and explores the influence of Christianity on their development through the ages.
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John Arnott MacCulloch. Celtic Mythology
Celtic Mythology
Table of Contents
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. THE STRIFE OF THE GODS
CHAPTER II. TUATHA DÉ DANANN AND MILESIANS
CHAPTER III. THE DIVISION OF THE SÍD
CHAPTER IV. MYTHIC POWERS OF THE GODS
CHAPTER V. GODS HELPING MORTALS
CHAPTER VI. DIVINE ENMITY AND PUNISHMENT
CHAPTER VII. THE LOVES OF THE GODS
CHAPTER VIII. THE MYTHS OF THE BRITISH CELTS
CHAPTER IX. THE DIVINE LAND
CHAPTER X. MYTHICAL ANIMALS AND OTHER BEINGS
CHAPTER XI. MYTHS OF ORIGINS
CHAPTER XII. THE HEROIC MYTHS. I. CÚCHULAINN AND HIS CIRCLE
CHAPTER XIII. THE HEROIC MYTHS (Continued) II. FIONN AND THE FÉNN
CHAPTER XIV. THE HEROIC MYTHS (Continued) III. ARTHUR
CHAPTER XV. PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY
CELTIC
FOOTNOTES
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John Arnott MacCulloch
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A legend reported by Pliny concerns some natural product, perhaps a fossil echinus, in explanation of the origin of which this myth was current, or to it an existing serpent-myth had been attached. Numerous serpents collected on a day in summer and, intertwining, formed a ball with the foam from their bodies, after which their united hissings threw it into the air. According to the Druids, he who would obtain it must catch it on a mantle before it touched the ground and must escape hastily, putting running water between himself and the pursuing serpents. The ball was used magically.26
Classical observers cite vaguely some myths about the otherworld and they admired profoundly the Celtic belief in immortality, which, if Lucan's words are correct, was that of the soul animating a new body there. Diodorus also affirms this, though he compares it with the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration;27 yet in the same passage he shows that the dead passed to another world and were not reborn on earth. Irish mythology tells us nothing about the world of the dead, though it has much to say of a gods' land or Elysium, to which the living were sometimes invited by immortals. This Elysium was in distant islands, in the hollow hills, or under the waters. Plutarch, on the authority of Demetrius, who may have been a Roman functionary in Britain, reports that round Britain are many desert islands, named after gods and heroes. Demetrius himself visited one island lying nearest these, inhabited by a people whom the Britons regarded as sacred, and while he was there, a storm arose with fiery bolts falling. This the people explained as the passing away of one of the mighty, for when a
