A representation of human sacrifice has, however, lately been discovered in a Temple of the Sun in the ancient Ethiopian capital, Meroë.
“You [Celts] who by cruel blood outpoured think to appease the pitiless Teutates, the horrid Æsus with his barbarous altars, and Taranus whose worship is no gentler than that of the Scythian Diana”, to whom captive were offered up. (Lucan, “Pharsalia”, i. 444.) An altar dedicated to Æsus has been discovered in Paris.
Mont Mercure, Mercœur, Mercoirey, Montmartre (Mons Mercurii), &c.
To this day in many parts of France the peasantry use terms like annuit, o'né, anneue, &c., all meaning “to-night,” for aujourd'hui (Bertrand, “Rel. des G.,” p. 356).
The fili, or professional poets, it must be remembered, were a branch of the Druidic order.
For instance, Pelagius in the fifth century; Columba, Columbanus, and St. Gall in the sixth; Fridolin, named Viator, “the Traveller,” and Fursa in the seventh; Virgilius (Feargal) of Salzburg, who had to answer at Rome for teaching the sphericity of the earth, in the eighth; Dicuil, “the Geographer,” and Johannes Scotus Erigena—the master mind of his epoch—in the ninth.
Dealgnaid. I have been obliged here, as occasionally elsewhere, to modify the Irish names so as to make them pronounceable by English readers.
See [a]p. 48, note 1].
I follow in this narrative R.I. Best's translation of the “Irish Mythological Cycle” of d'Arbois de Jubainville.
De Jubainville, “Irish Mythological Cycle,” p. 75.