Our ancestors, Scots, Picts, and Cymry : and what their traditions tell us

Contents

Introduction page ix

I. Moon Reverence at the Present Day . . 3

II. A Female Phcebus 11

Introduction

ACCORDING TO THEIR EARLIEST RECORDS, the Piets of the British Isles claim a Thracian origin. Herodotus tells that the nobles of the Agathyrsi tattooed themselves, and the claim of the Piets to be Agathyrsi is on record, and shows their acquaintance with Thracian tradition. Orpheus, the bard who made trees to dance to his music, was a Thracian, and early Irish story says that the children of Nemed ( nemet , a “grove ”) were almost the earliest invaders of Ireland. A dancing grove can only apply to those worshippers who frequented such localities.

The Cotytto of Milton’s Comus was a Thracian divinity celebrated with riotous proceedings in festivals called Cotyttia. Cotus was the name of a series of Thracian kings extending from a period 382 years b.c. to the time of Hadrian a.d. 76. Strabo (63 b.c.) mentions the Thracian mysteries of Cotytto and Bendis (Artemis), and at the same time speaks of Cotys as a local deity whose worship was accompanied with noise. Suidas (10th century a.d.) tells that Cotus was a Corinthian divinity, and quotes Synesius, who speaks of the “ troupe ” (Oiotaurou) of Cotus as unchaste. We conclude with certainty that Cotus (masculine) and Cotytto (feminine) are expressions for the male and female of an androgynous divinity; but the Cotyttia applied to them as hermaphrodite.

Eupolis, an Athenian comedian who ceased exhibiting 412 B.c., wrote a comedy called the Bafitce, Cotytto being the goddess which these Dippers or

Dyers, whichever way we translate the name, held ix in honour. Juvenal (a.d. 60-140) says of them —

“ Such orgies did they celebrate with the secret torch The Baptae who wore out the Cecropian Cotytto.”

A scholiast on Juvenal explains that the Dippers were lost to decency and as described by Eupolis represented Athenians who danced in imitation of women and fatigued a female harp-player. This commentator evidently considered harp-playing natural to Cotytto, and in fact uses the name Cotytto as that of the harp-player. Lucian (a.d. 120-200) talks of the reader of the Baptce blushing, and Hesychius (about a.d. 400) tells us that Eupolis, fired with anger against the Corinthians, exhibited on the stage Cotytto, a “ deity of a vulgar sort ” (poprixog, “ coarse/* of an uneducated kind, barbarous therefore). The Baptae were described as molles, and curling the hair was sacrificing to Cotytto. The male Baptae were said to imitate the dancing of women ; Horace expressly says the Cotyttia were female orgies. The fact is, we know very little at first hand of Cotytto, but all subsequent evidence goes to prove a belief in the licence of her mysteries as partaken of both by men and women.

That the word Baptae signifies “ dyers ” is certain. Fritzsche, a German critic, held that they got their title ficcirrcci possibly because they dyed their garments in the orchestra ; Meineke says a certain measure of support is given to this extraordinary idea, as in a play of Eupolis “ dyeing the beauteous things held holy to the goddess ” is mentioned. That they should have been called Dippers on account of some ritual

INTRODUCTION immersion would only apply to them a description equally deserved by the frequenters of almost all other mysteries. The same may be said if the dyeing were confined to the hair or to colouring the cheeks, as practices common to a courtesan class. The explanation seems to be found in the comparison of the habit of theBritish women, of which we are informed by Pliny, that they stained themselves so as to imitate the dark races for religious mysteries, and the rites of Cotytto as said to have been practised by Alcibiades took the form of drinking parties at night and other deeds aided by the licence of darkness.

The “ dyers ” of the Thracian Cotus-Cotytto may be held convicted of deeds of darkness, and this would be properly expressed of them and their congeners by a term derived from the Greek 2 xonog, “ darkness,” hence Scoti ! The very name Cotus, Cotys, lends itself to a supposititious connection. Frequently an initial s appears in other languages, Latin having lost it. Can - da, a” tail,” appears in Gothic as skauts. Pliny’s nurus, a “ young married woman,” is in O.G. snur, a “ daughter-in-law.” It is a curious fact worth mentioning that Latin casa, a ” simple hut,” a “ thatched cottage,” occurring in the Candida Casa of Ninian, Whithorn in Galloway, is the equivalent of the Greek (rzyjvyj, a " tent,” a “ booth,” a word appearing in the Scottish place-name (Gaelic, Sgain) Scone, the locality from which Edward I. carried off the Coronation Stone. Putting in a secondary position philological argument,

we advance the proposition that the above is the proxi bable explanation of the term Scot. We have shown that the rites of Cotus-Cotytto were subject of consideration in Rome at the commencement of our era, and in fact it is from these commentators that we gather the information we have of the Cotyttia, and we see from Pliny how at the same time mysteries of a parallel sort were carried on in Britain. Such being the case, what more likely locality for the appearance of a name such as we suggest in Scoti ?

Circular dancing we have tried to prove as existing in the earliest British ritual, and for what it may be worth we recall that the Ninian of the White House is also called Ringan. What became the capital city of Scotland, in the near neighbourhood of which is Scone, is called “ Perth ” ; this in Welsh means a “ bush,” a “ hedge,” the same as the protection round the altar of Brigit, made, as Geoffrey of Monmouth informs us, of brushwood. Perth’s old name is given as Bertha, with which we compare perthgce, a quickset hedge in Welsh.

Chapter One Moon Reverence At The Present Day

A

Chapter One Moon Reverence At The Present Day

LUCK IS AN EXPRESSION COMMON IN EVERYbody's month, and good luck is the hope and desire of as many. Whatever the origin of the word, it really signifies a casualty, something which, even if worked for, whether successful or unsuccessful, has been influenced by chance. Luck which when spoken of without qualification means good luck therefore defines an accrued benefit. It is something which increases directly or indirectly the prosperity of the one to whom it happens.

Taking an average, good and bad luck should happen equally to any individual during the continuance of life ; or if one individual rejoices in a greater proportion of good luck, some other individual is presumably the victim of a like proportion of bad luck — the good of the first tends to increase, the good of the second tends to diminution.

Happenings for good or evil occur to every inhabitant of our little earth, and it wouldbe but natural that the speculative mind should take some object in nature to which to give reverence for its powers of increase, and so, as it were, attract these to himself. One of the commonest of superstitions is that which directs that on first seeing the new moon everyone should turn the silver in his pocket ; and writing in connection with Gaelic ideas, we should remember that the same term, airgiod, is used both for silver in particular and money in general. Brand, in his Antiquities , tells us, on the authority of Bailey the lexicographer, 3 that in some counties in England at the prime of the moon, she was addressed, “It is a fine moon, God bless her,” and adds that the ancient Irish worshipped the. moon, and that in Scotland, more especially in the highlands, the women make a curtsey to the new moon.

Well, they do it yet. A lady informed us that it was customary on Loch Fyneside to bow to the new moon when first seen, the person bowing or curtseying addressing her, “Lady moon, lady moon, I bow to thee.” The reciter had done it frequently, she said, as a custom of the place ; she made no inquiry as to the reason for doing it, and believed it was a relic of moon worship. It is still done there by the young people, probably also by the older. The same custom held good in Barvas in Lewis, the reciter there stating that the people turned their face towards the new moon and made a curtsey. Mentioning this to a young lady in Edinburgh, she informed me that she had a habit of doing it herself. These three instances carrying us from the Lewis through Argyllshire to Midlothian may be taken as an indication of the universality of the habit in Scotland to this day. But that is not the only custom indicating respect to the new moon. In Harris, when she is first seen, earth is taken from the shoe sole — it must be touched by the hand alone — and is put under the pillow that the operator may dream of the future spouse. In Islay they say if a man have something in his right hand (money, etc.) when he first sees the new moon, he will receive a gift

THE PRESENT-DAY MOON REVERENCE before that moon is over. An independent reciter mentioned the same as the belief in Harris. In Lewis, we are told, whatever it is should be turned over three times, possibly to cover one’s good luck for a month — that is, during waxing, full, and waning moon. On the other hand, if one is standing on the road, his hands in his pockets, and sees the new moon for the first time, he will have no work while that moon lasts ; and what a man has in his hand when he sees the new moon for the first time, he will get renewed before the moon is out. In Melness in Sutherland it is lucky to see the new moon when one is busy with necessary work, it is unlucky to do so with empty hands or standing or sitting idle ; but if seen with folded arms, the seer will be a corpse before the moon is out. A Kintyre man informed us that when a little boy, following the maid to the well for water, she made him lift her empty “ stoups,” and then called his attention to the new moon, so that he might have something in his hand. A form of address to the new moon comes to us from Islay, “ Sud agaibh a’ghealach ur ; righ nan dul, g’a beannachadh” (Here’s to you, new moon ; king of the elements bless her). All constellations are naturally feminine in Gaelic. In Bemara, Harris, they have a moon festival. The day when the second moon of spring, La dara sholus an eanaich is full, is a holiday given up to play and festivity. After nightfall, the young people go out in companies, and turning their faces towards the full moon, bow and curtsey to it. This is pure lunar worship. If we take 5 for granted that the moon was the principal object of worship among the " Scots,” the Islay form of address has been modified to suit the Christian theology as is that given by Brand, “ Lady moon, I bow to thee,” which takes no account of a higher power.

Brand says an Irish formula of worship, to which attention was first drawn by a Frenchman, was, when people saw the new moon they knelt down, recited the Lord’s prayer, and then cried with a loud voice, “ May thou leave us as safe as thou hast found us.” Whatever authority Duchesne had for these particulars, the reciting of the paternoster kneeling is to be taken in a Rabelaisian sense, and this is proved by the expressed wish that they should be left as they had been found, a petition only to be made to a power for evil, or, under the circumstances that those making the prayer were afraid that their action would have results entailing trouble on themselves.

That the moon has left traces of her worship among the Gael there can be no doubt. Not that the Englishspeaking part of our fellow-countryfolk had not like ideas, for, still on the authority of Brand, the first night of the new moon, sitting astride on a gate or stile, they asked the moon to declare to them who should be their husband. In Yorkshire, instead of straddling the gate bar, they knelt on an earth-fast stone.

Brand calls attention to the coincidence that in Gaelic rath means good fortune, and also that the word is applied to a circular object — a wheel, he says

( voth ) ; but it is undoubtedly the Gaelic for a circular

THE PRESENT-DAY MOON REVERENCE

artificial mound such as is said to have been the dwelling-place of a chief. Now, raths are especially believed to be the habitations of fairies. Mio-rath, mi-rath is ill-luck, mi mio being negative particles. Mi-rath literally signifies “ not a circle.”

The whole superstitions connected, then, with the moon have to do with increase to perfection and decrease to extinction, and this influence is ascribed to it as connected with moisture. Brand quotes a publication of 1637 in which occurs the following question and answer. Q. “Wherefore is it that we gather those fruits which we desire should be faultless in the wane of the moon, and geld cattle more safely in the wane than in the increase ? A . Because in that season bodies have less humour and heat, by which an innated putrefaction is wont to make them faulty and unsound.” Newton’s Directions for Health, 1574, tell us that “ the moone is ladie of moysture,” and Shakespeare in Hamlet calls her “ the moist star.” Another authority tells us, “Whatever man would have to grow he sets about it in her increase, but for what he would have made less he chooses her wane.”

As samples of the power ascribed to the moon, the coupling of cattle and horses must take place with an increasing moon, but timber, peats, and the corns on your toes must be cut during its decrease. There are dozens of individual directions in accordance with the general principle above stated still in the mouths of our countryfolk, but a list of them would not advance our knowledge in the least degree.

That the dew falls at night is doubtless the principal reason for connecting the moon with moisture in general, abelief existing from the earliest time of which we have record; and as all growth is associated with moisture and the circulation of fluid, and rigidity and contraction are evident in all old age, it is easy to understand how the moon should take first place as an object of veneration in connection with increase and decrease, good luck and bad luck, and moisture supposed to be abundant when the moon is expanding, and deficient when it is contracting.

Chapter Two A Female Phcebus

WE KNOW, ON THE AUTHORITY OF HESYchius, that what appears as a Greek name, Scotia, was applied to an Egyptian goddess of night equated with the Roman Venus, who, comparatively a recent Roman divinity, was assuredly the goddess of Love in its most sensual aspect. 2*or/a is gloom, darkness. Venus was identified with Aphrodite, a name connected in appearance with cc<ppog, “ foam,” and so spoken of by Homer, connecting her from the earliest times with moisture. Not the moon, however, but the evening star heralding the darkness was sacred to Venus and Aphrodite, no doubt because night is the appropriate time for sensual love. This was as it should be, seeing that the goddess of the moon, Diana, was one of the earliest of the Roman divinities, probably of Sabine and Latin derivation. Diana, Artemis in Greek, is called < poifiq , meaning “ the shining one,” female. Judging, then, from the records we have of the more advanced Roman civilisation, a civilisation all-powerful for nearly four centuries at the commencement of our era in the southern parts of this island, we naturally expect that the Celts of the west would see the same qualities in the luminary of the night as those which had been recognised by Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, and that they might not improbably adopt the name used by the Romans to characterise an object of worship of their own.

Let us examine the characteristics of Diana — that is, the moon. First we notice that she was also called Jana, of which name the masculine form is Janus, the two-faced deity whose name was used as signifying a year. The moon, of course, has two faces as looked at when waxing or when waning ; and as a guess founded upon this fact, we may suppose Janus to represent a male moon. Diana undoubtedly is the female moon, and all her characteristics show that she represents the new moon in its earliest stage. She is represented as a virgin, and as such a potential mother. The chase was a natural source of profit, successful hunting depending a good deal upon luck, and Diana, as the bearer of a bow, the early crescent moon, was naturally made a huntress.

Diana’s most celebrated shrine was at Aricia, near the foot of the Alban Mount, the goddess there being called Diana Nemorensis, the modem name of the locality being Nemi. An Irish story tells us that Nemed settled in Ireland AnnoMundi 2850, being, according to Keating, with the exception of Partholon, the first settler in Ireland. Ireland was divided by his descendants into three parts. The name Nemed is undoubtedly connected with a grove, and three is the lucky number, for what the suggested connection is worth — the new moon, the full moon, the old moon.

We believe Janus to be a male moon, and we have found that his name was applied as an equivalent to the word annus , a circle of time, showing probably the same idea as in the Irish word rath , a circle, and luck. Now we do find a female goddess in Rome, Anna Perenna, a goddessof spring, therefore of growth and good

fortune, but pre-eminently the goddess of the revolv-

DIANA — A FEMALE PHCEBUS mg year, the offerings made to whom were made ut annare perennareque commode liceat. Diana, Anna Perenna, and Janus were all old Latin gods of the times before the pre-eminence of Rome, and from a folk-lore point of view we can hardly doubt their connection one with the other. The question then rises, are there any grounds upon which one can found — let us put it in this way — for rejecting the Di from the name of the moon goddess, and taking ana as the root and therefore connecting it with anus, a ring ? Looking upon di as dis, the inseparable particle which means apart from, implying separation, is not di-ana, a portion disjoined from the circular full moon, the j of Janus and Jana also referring to the same particle. Jana == Diana is the new crescent moon ; Janus the moon as the imperfect moon showing two faces, one during increase and one during decrease ; AnnaPerenna being the perfect moon, the complete circle.

We seem to find confirmation of the suggestion that Diana is the new moon in what we are told of Diana Lucifera, otherwise Diana Phascelida — that is,theLycian Diana, Diana of Phaselis in Lycia. She is represented with two torches, and the name of her city is connected in sound at any rate with phaselus, a “ kidney bean.” The crescent or kidney form, and the two torches representing the points of the crescent, are sufficiently distinctive of what is delineated.

It must not be supposed that we consider the name Ana as specifically Roman ; are we not told (in Luke ii. 38) that the Saviour was welcomed by the prophet- 13 ess Anna, who “ spoke of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem ” ? Anna who was thus interested in the regeneration of her countrymen was of the tribe of Asher, doubtless connected with the asherah , the “ grove ” of the English Bible, the representative of and equivalent of Diana Nemorensis, the female potency, and was the daughter of Phanuel, the " shining sun.” Anu was a male Assyrian deity. There is an Anna in India, and Anna was a name for Dido, a surname of the Phoenician goddess of the moon, worshipped as the protecting deity of the citadel of Carthage.

We should judge from this that Ana, Anna, Anne was almost a common possession of the religions of the world as known to the ancients, and that what we know of it in Latin history owes the peculiarities of its details to the influence of the local language.

All this must be taken as an introduction to what we have to say of the evidence of Celtic moon worship in our own islands.

Geoffrey in his romance of British History makes Ascanius have an illegitimate grandson called Brutus. Brutus unfortunately, shooting a deer, kills his father Sylvius, and for the parricide is banished to Greece, where he collects around him the dispersed Trojans, who choose him as their leader. W e need not detail the steps said to have preceded the departure of Brutus, his wife a daughter of the king of Greece, and the Trojan remnant to form a settlement for themselves. What interests us here is that Geoffrey makes them

DIANA — A FEMALE PHGEBUS happen on an island which had been devastated and was then uninhabited, called Loegecia, a name evidently connected with the Norse logr, the “ sea,” a word used in the Eddas, its equivalent, Ijoag, surviving in Shetland, Loegecia being the “ sea island.”* On it was an image of Diana which gave oracular answers to those consulting it. Brutus, making an offering of wine mixed with the blood of a white hart, asks —

Lying on the white hart’s skin, he received during sleep an answer from the goddess directing him to go to an island beyond Gaul, formerly inhabited by giants. There he was to raise a second and perennial Troy (Trinovantum, a name excogitated from the Trinobantes of Essex), the kings of which, his descendants, should govern the whole world.

Geoffrey, desiring to give a satisfactory genealogy to the Britons, made their rulers of Trojan and Greek royal descent and themselves worshippers of Diana, using the classical account of the sacred island off the mouth of the Loire inhabited by a college of priestesses, and calls it Loegecia so as to give the proper local religious colour to his story. Subsequently he calls modem England Loegria.

From the island of the shrine of Diana the wanderers go to Africa, visiting the Azores apparently, the " mountains of Azara ” (? Fayal), an unknown quan-

* Scottish Historical Review, vol. ix. p. 154.

tity to our author, however, for the Trojans are next found ravaging Mauretania. We may mention here that Claudian in his panegyric on Stilicho says the Moors were not falsely called Piets, which after all expresses no more than when an American calls a man with negro blood in him “ coloured.” J oined by more Trojans under Corineus, an invented eponymous progenitor for the Comishmen, naturally a great wrestler, the wanderers enter the mouth of the Loire, where they defeat a king called Pictus, ruler of Aquitaine, a district inhabited by a non-Celtic people, according to Julius Caesar. These fabulous dealings with the Moors, and the river of the Loire, and country about it, owe their origin certainly to a connection with Pictavia, and, deducing his name of Loegria from a connection with the Loire and Pictavia, we have no doubt it was an invented name for England as a land of Piets (Welsh, Lliwedawr). The numerical superiority of the inhabitants of Aquitania over Brutus’ Trojans is given as the reason for his retreat from Gaul and his subsequent settlement in Albion — that is, Britain.

Geoffrey wrote his history before 1147, it is believed founding on Welsh story. We quote it merely as romance— that is, romance founded on beliefs which would make it acceptable as local history. According to the sources on which Geoffrey drew, he considered Diana a moon-goddess, the proper principal deity for the ancient inhabitants of Britain.

Chapter Three

NIGHT WORSHIP fc? FEMALE DANCING

TACITUS’ ACCOUNT OF PAULINUS’ ATTACK on Mona brings us in contact with the part taken by the British female in a religious ceremony. On the shores of this island the Roman invaders were faced by a dense array of men in arms with women dashing through the ranks like furies, their dress funereal, their hair dishevelled, and carrying torches in their hands. No one can suppose that these females were the ordinary British matron of the period, — their association with Druids corroborates strongly the supposition that their worship was of the same sort as that of the priestesses of Sena and the Loire island, — and seeing there is no question of their setting fire to anything when Mona was invaded, their flourishing torches therefore lead to the conclusion that artificial light was of importance in their ceremonies, consequently that they were held in darkness : and the moon it is that rules the night . Now it is a remarkable fact that Tacitus, who wrote in the end of the first century, should use the Saxon word mona, “ the moon,” for this small island to the farthest west of Britain, and that the first notice of it shows it to us as what we may consider the site of a purely British cultus. It is clear that there is some connection between its Saxon name Mona and its subsequently being called Anglesey, i.e. Angle’s Island. Mon in Welsh is a “ point,” and we will see that in such names as Mailcun and Peronnik of the Graal, the idea of a “summit,” “something reached by successive steps,” has been connected with 19 the moon. We have no doubt that from the earliest times of which we have record Mon, Mona, the Menai Straits, Menevia, all point to a reverend regard for the moon as a source of supply, its grain-ripening power being still believed in by British agriculturists. The Araucanos of Chile do not include the sun in their religious beliefs — the only beneficent deity is the moon.*

Ccesar tells us of the use of woad among the Britons. He says, “ All the Britons stain themselves with woad, which produces a blue colour ; and this makes them appear more terrible in battle.” But Pliny tells us, writing perhaps a century later, that the wives and young married women “ toto corpore oblitcz , quibusdam in sacris et nudce incedunt , TEthiopum colorem imitantes ” which shows us that for religious purposes they imitated the colouring of the dark races. Is it not a remarkable thing that in a future age we should find people called Scoti who, romance-writers tell us, came by Africa from Scythia to this country, or to Ireland more particularly, a name which, if derived from Greek, means the darkness people, and also a people who call themselves Cymry, which if derived from the Greek recalls the K/^gp/o/, who lived in perpetual darkness, and who latterly were supposed to come from the Palus Mseotis in Scythia, the country beyond the Black Sea ? The names “ Scoti ” and “ Cymry ” are both formed by dropping the Greek plural termination from the words 2 xortoi and

* Mcsurs et Legendes, Van Gennep, p. 347.

NIGHT WORSHIP fc? FEMALE DANCING

K respectively — 2 non and K/^sp/, Scoti and Cimmeri.

In the north-west of modern England we still have Cumberland — that is, the land of the Cumbri. Nor must we forget, while speaking of the Maeotae, that in what is now Scotland we find in the year 201 people called Maeatae who are said by the later Greek historian Xiphiline to have inhabited the plains and marshes of the lowlands, where was the “ Myreford ” of the Saxon Chronicle. The purport of the name of this ford is in the modern “ Athol ” ath-faodhaile, ford formed by the egress of the tide. This is evidently of Norse origin, vadilloxvodull, a shallowwater, especially places where fiords can be passed on horseback. The Maeatae make their appearance in Adamnan’s Colurnba as Miathi, a quotation, we believe, of no authority however. Adamnan’s date is 624-703. To explain the position as it appears, we must remember that Gaelic tradition says that the Piets reckoned succession in the female line, and that originally having come to these islands as invaders without women, they had got wives from the Scots, Scots being interpreted as equal to Irish. These “ Scotic ” women were, we have no doubt, Pliny’s woad-stained nurus, if the whole story is not imaginative.

In the recent researches made in Miletus in Caria the sculptures discovered on a building erected at the expense of Antiochus iv., King of Syria (175-164B.C.), show that they represent the Amazons with arms characteristic of the ancient Galatae, the Celtic invaders 21 of Greece and Syria. It is not at all certain what connection the Greeks of that date supposed to exist between the Galatians and the Amazons — whether they considered them as both branches of the Cimmerians, or that the women filled the warrior role which they ascribed to the Cimmerians, and the Cimbri identified with them ; but it is certain that the artists of that period (Antiochus iv.) chose to represent the wars between Pergamus (Troy) and the Galatae either under the form of a combat with Amazons or a combat with giants.* Now let us notice that Geoffrey made the island of Britain to which the Trojans came to have been inhabited originally, and sparsely on their arrival, by giants. Nor, if there is any truth in history, was the female warrior strange to Britain. Was not Cartimandua leader and chief of the Brigantes, no doubt with a husband Venusius attached to her. Cartimandua, however, divorced him for another, though he was “the most accomplished leader after the capture of Caractacus,” she having delivered Caractacus to the Romans — deeds which are good proof of her Amazonian quality. Another female leader was Boadicea, who fought Cerealis and captured Camalodunum, afterwards defeated by Paulinus. These two queens must be historical surely, but the names Scot, Cymru, Cumbrian, Mseat undoubtedly have the appearance of being afterthoughts, the results of a knowledge of Greek and Roman ideas. The name of the Brigantes themselves, instead of meaning “ highland- * Revue Celtique, vol. xxx. p. 69, Reinach.