[519] Ib., text, pp. 123, 323, and Intro., p. 159.
[520] Book II, 69-70; see our study, p. [267].
[521] Rennes Dinnshenchas, Stokes’s trans. in Rev. Celt., xv. 457.
[522] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 323.
[523] The Celts may have viewed the mistletoe on the sacred oak as the seat of the tree’s life, because in the winter sleep of the leafless oak the mistletoe still maintains its own foliage and fruit, and like the heart of a sleeper continues pulsing with vitality. The mistletoe thus being regarded as the heart-centre of the divine spirit in the oak-tree was cut with a golden sickle by the arch-druid clad in pure white robes, amid great religious solemnity, and became a vicarious sacrifice or atonement for the worshippers of the tree god. (Cf. Frazer, G. B.,2 iii. 447 ff.)
[524] Pliny, Nat. Hist., xvi. 95; cf. Rhŷs, Hib. Lect., p. 218.
[525] Dissert., viii; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219.
[526] Meineke’s ed., xii. 5, 1; cf. Rhŷs, ib., p. 219. The oak-tree is pre-eminently the holy tree of Europe. Not only Celts, but Slavs, worshipped amid its groves. To the Germans it was their chief god; the ancient Italians honoured it above all other trees; the original image of Jupiter on the Capitol at Rome seems to have been a natural oak-tree. So at Dodona, Zeus was worshipped as immanent in a sacred oak. Cf. Frazer, G. B.,2 iii. 346 ff.
[527] Cf. Mahé, Essai, pp. 333-4; quotation from Hist. du Maine, i. 17.
[528] Cf. Mahé, Essai, p. 334; quoted from Lib. VII, indict. i, epist. 5.