The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore by Patricia Monaghan (2004).pdf

the encyclopedia of

CELTIC MYTHOLOGY

AND FOLKLORE

Patricia Monaghan

The Encyclopedia of Celtic Mythology and Folklore

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Monaghan, Patricia.

The encyclopedia of Celtic mythology and folklore / Patricia Monaghan.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8160-4524-0 (alk. paper)

1. Mythology, Celtic—Encyclopedias. 2. Celts—Folklore—Encyclopedias.

3. Legends—Europe—Encyclopedias. I. Title.

BL900.M66 2003

299'.16—dc21 2003044944

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This book is printed on acid-free paper.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A TO Z ENTRIES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

479

INDEX

486

INTRODUCTION

Who Were the Celts?

The terms Celt and Celtic seem familiar today—

familiar enough that many people assume that

they are ethnic descriptions, words that define a

people related by blood and culture. Such peo-

ple are imagined as fair-skinned, possibly red-

haired, often freckled. More important, it is

presumed they share an inborn mystical inclina-

tion. They see in ways that others do not or can-

not. They acknowledge a world beyond the

world of the senses. Some even have the second

sight, the ability to see fairies and other spirits

dancing through the soft evening. For evening

always gathers around the Celts, a misty twilight

where things are never quite solid and defined.

The image is a charming one; it has drawn

many to the study of Celtic culture. But it is also

incorrect. The word Celt is not as exact as many

people presume. It does not define a race or a

tribe; the alleged Celtic mysticism is not an

invariably inherited trait. Nor does “Celtic”

describe a culture that was so centralized that all

Celts everywhere felt the same way toward

nature, worshiped the same gods, and per-

formed rituals in the same fashion.

No ancient people called themselves “the

Celts.” They called themselves Belgae, Cantii,

Icini, Brigantes, Voconces, Arverni, or by any

one of scores of other tribal names. Where con-

temporary imagination sees a single culture,

these ancient people themselves knew dozens of

linguistically related groups, each bearing a

name derived from an ancestor, a god or a god-

dess, a totem animal, a sacred location. The

word Celt may originally have been one of these

tribal names, used by other Europeans as a

generic term for the whole people.

If the name itself is not exact, neither is what

it names. There is no one agreed-upon definition

of what constituted Celtic society and the Celtic

worldview. Indeed, some claim that Celtic peo-

ples adapted themselves to and absorbed influ-

ences from pre-Celtic cultures wherever they

lived and that, therefore, the idea of a Celtic cul-

ture is itself hopelessly flawed. Narrowly, a Celt

can be defined as someone who spoke or speaks

a Celtic language. Beyond that, scholars and

other experts disagree as much as they agree.

The Celts in Classical Literature

Literacy is not a value shared by all cultures.

The Celts did not write down their myths and

histories, honoring instead the spoken word and

the human memory. As a result, we have no

written documents from early Celtic times,

when they were settling central Europe. Instead,

the earliest writings we have about the Celts are

in the languages of their enemies: the Greeks

and, later, the Romans.

The Celts were already a mature culture

when they began to appear in the writings of

their southern neighbors. Until then, they lived

too far away to be of interest, and besides, they

were no threat to the wealth and power of

Greece and Rome. In the last several centuries

before the common era, however, the Celts

began to seek new territories. Whether this was

because they were being pushed out of tradi-

tional homelands by other invaders, or because a

population explosion put pressure on resources,

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