- Ritual and the Druids -
200 ft (6I m), at the Romano-British shrine at Muntham Court, Sussex, contained a
great many dog skeletons. The shrine is dated to the first century.
Animal sacrifice was much favoured by the Celts and the Germanic peoples alike,
and the custom long persisted in the Celtic world, where, for example, one animal
would be ritually slain in order to preserve the flock or herd from some decimating
disease. Henderson (I 9 I I: 27 I -2) gives a personal account of such a custom:
I well recollect how in the Highlands, when any loss occurred among the cattle
in spring (earchall) the hooves and sometimes the head or parts of it were taken
away to the wood and buried secretly in the soil under the great trees where
nobody could possibly molest them. It was still better to bury them on an
adjoining estate, and across a river. This was to put away the earchall and to
prevent the loss of more animals. In some of the Isles there is still a memory of
a cure for a species of cattle-plague .... The old people said if the heifer's head
were struck off at a single blow with a clean or stainless sword that the plague
would cease ... this was done in the eighteenth century.
In Wales, according to the Revd John Evans in I812, 'when a violent disease
breaks out among the horned cattle, the farmers ... give up a bullock for a victim,
which is carried to the top of a precipice whence it is thrown down' (ibid.).
Celtic sacrifice, human and animal, is indeed well attested. More integral to
druidism and to Celtic religion in general is the custom of deposition, which has a
long ancestry in Europe. This was carried out into the earth, through which the
deities could be reached in their Otherworld, known as Annwn or Annwfn and sited
beneath the earth (dwfn) according to Welsh tradition. In Irish belief this sub-
terranean Elysium was situated through the sidh (Otherworld) mounds, down
wells or beneath lakes and pools or in rivers. The Celts did not love their deities; they
made contracts with them as they did in their own society. By making offerings into
pits, wells, springs, peat-bogs and all watery places, no doubt with solemn attendant
ritual, the druids were in fact 'binding' the gods into making reciprocal gifts to
mankind - including, no doubt, security against their own hostility (Figure 23.6).
A votive and, perhaps, sacrificial deposit, comprising four magnificent horns
decorated with La Tcne patterns and accompanied by human skulls, was recovered
from Loughnashade, the lough which in all probability was connected with the
nearby royal and sacred stronghold of Emain Macha, Navan Fort near Armagh,
Ireland. Sacred places elsewhere in the Celtic world are often associated with lakes
and pools. Here the whole surrounding landscape would seem to have been devoted
to ritual, and the huge I30 ft (40 m) circular wooden structure - a kind of artificial
oak grove, perhaps - destroyed by burning in 95 or 94 Be, provides evidence of
druidic activity and ritual on an unprecedented scale. It must indeed be regarded as
one of the most important religious iron age sites in Europe. It is contemporary with
the traditions of the Ulster Cycle, with the Chamalicres defixio, and with comments
on the Celts and their religion by Poseidonios and, later, Caesar.
In an important article in Emania (I992: 4I), c.]. Lynn asks:
Who was the organiser, the master-mind, the motivator and the interpreter of
this series of events? Who knew the secrets of the gods? Clearly there was a44 I