Ancient Man in Britain

by Donald A. Mackenzie

Valentine

ONE OF THE GREAT TRI-LITHONS, STONEHENGE

(see page [174])

The moist stone had an indwelling spirit, and was therefore a holy object which made vows and agreements of binding character. In Japan a stone of this kind is called shintai ("god body"). The Gaelic name for a god body is "cuach anama" ("soul shrine", or "spirit-case", or "spirit-husk"). Coich na cno is the shell of a nut. The Chinese believe that moist and coloured stones are the "eggs" of weather-controlling dragons.

The connection between blue and the mother goddess is of great antiquity. Imitation cowries and other shells in blue enamelled terra-cotta have been found in Egyptian graves. Blue was the colour of the "luck stone" of Hathor, the sky and water goddess whose symbols included the cowrie. The Brigantes of ancient Britain had, according to Seneca, blue shields. Shields were connected with the goddess of war. In Gaelic, blue is the luck colour for womens' clothing.[160] English and Scottish fishermen still use blue as a mourning colour. When a death takes place, a blue line is painted round a fishing-boat. The desire for protection by invoking the blue goddess probably gave origin to this custom.

As influences came from the coloured airts, so did the great deities and the groups of minor deities associated with them. The god Lugh, for instance, always comes in the old stories from the north-east, while the goddess Morrigan comes from the north-west.[161] The fierce wind-raising Scottish goddess of spring comes from the south-west. All over Britain the fairies come from the west and on eddies of wind like the Greek nereids. In Scotland the evil-working giants come from the black north. It was believed that the dead went westward or south-westward towards Paradise. The fact that the axis of Stonehenge circle and avenue points to the north-east is of special interest when we find that the god Lugh, a Celtic Apollo, came from that airt. Either Lugh, or a god like him, may have been invoked to come through the avenue or to send his influence through it, while the priests walked in procession round the circle sunwise. Apparently the south-west part of the circle, with its great trilithons, resembling the portals of the goddess Artemis, was specially consecrated to a goddess like the Scottish Cailleach ("Old Wife") who had herds of wild animals, protected deer from huntsmen, raised storms, and transformed herself into a standing stone. The Gaulish goddess Ro-smerta ("very smeared") is regularly associated with the god identified with Mercury. The god Smertullis is equated with Essus (the war god) by d'Arbois de Jubainville.

The differently coloured winds were divine influences and revealed their characters by their colours. It was apparently because water was impregnated with the influences of the deities that wind and water beliefs were closely associated. Holy and curative wells and sacred rivers and lakes were numerous in ancient Britain and Ireland. Offerings made at wells were offerings made to a deity. These offerings might be gold and silver, as was the case in Gaul, or simply pins of copper. A good many wells are still known as "pin wells" and "penny wells". The metals and pearls and precious stones supposed to contain vital substance were offered to the deities so as to animate them. The images of gods were painted red for the same reason, or sacrifices were offered and their altars drenched with blood. In Ireland children were sacrificed to a god called Crom Cruach and exchanged for milk and corn. As a Gaelic poem records:

Great was the horror and the scare of him.

The ancient doctrines of which faint or fragmentary traces survive in Britain and Ireland may have been similar to those taught by the Druids in Gaul. According to Pomponius Mela, these sages professed to know the secrets of the motions of the heavenly bodies and the will of the gods.[162] Strabo's statement that the Druids believed that "human souls and the world were immortal, but that fire and water would sometime prevail" is somewhat obscure. It may be, however, that light is thrown on the underlying doctrine by the evidence given in the next chapter regarding the beliefs that fire, water, and trees were intimately connected with the chief deity.